A Girl and Her Goddess

By Marie-Astrid Calmettes, Egyptologist
Jessica Kaiser, Osteologist
and Brian V. Hunt

More than 2,500 years ago, a very ill young woman died and was buried at the already long-abandoned site of the city of the pyramid builders at Giza. Her grave goods included an amulet of an obscure goddess that suggests the woman may not have been from the Giza area.

Not only that, but she may not have been of Egyptian descent.

GPMP’s primary investigation at Giza is the 4th dynasty settlement of the pyramid builders. In one quarter of our dig site, however, we’re faced with the reality that hundreds of Late Period (747-525 BC) burials and a few Old Kingdom (2575-2134 BC) burials cover the site above the 4th dynasty levels. We cannot investigate the older levels without first carefully excavating, recording, and removing the Late Period burials.

At the end of the 4th Dynasty, the pyramid builders abandoned their city to the desert sands, as the 5th Dynasty kings moved the workers to Abusir and Saqqara. Two millennia later, the ancient Egyptians began using the site of the former Giza workmen’s village to bury their dead. The first of these were interred on a slope along the western edge of our dig site.