3,000-year-old honoured horse found buried in Egyptian desert fort
A horse laid to rest with care has been found inside an ancient Egyptian fort after 3,000 years.
The skeleton was uncovered at Tell el-Abqain, a fortress site in Egypt's Beheira province, by an Egyptian archaeological mission working at the site, CairoScene. The latest reports list a group of new finds at the fort, including the horse grave and inscribed slabs, ARTnews.
The burial is about 3,000 years old, CBS News. The horse was laid to rest on purpose. Its position in the ground points to a deliberate burial rather than an animal simply discarded where it fell.
Archaeologists described the animal as a likely warhorse given an honorific burial, a formal burial with honours. In ancient Egypt, horses were closely tied to the military and to chariots, the fast two-wheeled vehicles pulled by pairs of horses. A horse kept, fed and then buried inside a fort would have been valuable.
Close to the bones, the team found fittings in alabaster and limestone. They may have belonged to a chariot horse harness, the straps and mounts used to hitch a horse to a chariot. The pieces were found near enough to suggest they were buried with the animal.
The fort itself is described as a New Kingdom-period fortress, meaning it dates to an era of powerful pharaonic rule, Greek Reporter. At the same site, archaeologists found a stela of Ramesses II. A stela is a carved stone slab, often set up to mark authority or record an event.
What makes this stand out is the combination. Fort walls tell one story about soldiers and borders. A carefully buried horse and a royal name tell another, about the animals and people who kept the place running.
No human remains linked to the horse have been reported. The mission's work at Tell el-Abqain is continuing, and further study of the bones and fittings is expected to clarify how the horse lived and why it was honoured in death.
