In 1981 Wilfred Griggs of Brigham Young University and Leonard Lesko of UC–Berkeley undertook a massive joint excavation in Egypt. With their teams, they journeyed to the eastern edge of the Fayoum, a fertile depression in Egypt that lies roughly fifty miles southwest of Cairo. They went to excavate a structure thought to be either a large tomb or a small pyramid and a large Greco-Roman cemetery known as the Fag el-Gamous Cemetery. They worked together for one year, after which Lesko accepted a position at Brown University, and the excavation fell solely to BYU under the direction of Dr. Griggs.

During that first year, Lesko determined that the large structure was indeed a pyramid. It sat atop the northeastern escarpment at the highest point, commanding a view of both the Nile Valley and the Fayoum depression, marking the entry way to the Fayoum—a pass known as the Way of the Water Buffalo (Fag el-Gamous in Arabic) because this was how water buffalo were taken to and from the Fayoum to the train station near the Nile. As is tradition, the pyramid was named after the nearest town. Thus began excavations of the Seila Pyramid.

The Cemetery

Within the shadow of the pyramid lay the cemetery, with boundaries reported to include a staggering three hundred acres. In the first few years of the 1900s, a renowned pair of scholars from Oxford, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, had spent a little time digging around the cemetery and found some remarkable burials with stunning portraits painted on them. But nothing had been done at the cemetery after Grenfell and Hunt’s brief dig there. Griggs was determined to make a systematic and scientific exploration of this burial ground. While it was promising, no one knew how much it had to offer.

Griggs was indefatigable in his work. Over the next few decades, he overcame financial, logistical, and bureaucratic challenges, constantly working toward casting the light of scientific exploration on the lives of the people who were buried at Fag el-Gamous. Griggs and his team often pushed the cutting edge of bioarchaeology, whether that be through constantly updating their methods for examining human remains or employing the burgeoning science of DNA analysis.

Initially much of their time was spent in the sporadic mudstone escarpments that surround the desert floor that borders the fertile part of the Fayoum. This fertile area was created by canals that keep water flowing downhill into the depression, allowing for productive farming. Above the canal is a large floor of sand and several small outcrops of mudstone. Both the sand and the small stone formations are the kind of place the ancient Egyptians used for burials. Additionally, the area preserved human remains remarkably well due to the dry sand and arid climate. In the stone shelves was where Griggs and his team first found some of their most interesting burials.

During the 1980s, Griggs and team found that one of the hills, Hill B, contained a tomb with twelve small burial chambers. Mudbrick plastered walls helped complete each chamber. They also found large ceramic sarcophagi in the tombs, but plundering and the collapse of some of the walls and ceiling had broken them. Some grain offerings were present too, as were several bodies, some of which were very elaborately wrapped and preserved.[1] Many other smaller tombs were found in Hill A and Hill B, including a tomb with 158 cat burials.[2] Today the excavation team has joined researchers at the Université Paris Diderot to do DNA analysis on these cats as part of a study of cats in Egypt and in the world.

Most of the tombs in these hills were from the Greco-Roman era, though a few tombs were from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (approximately 2000 BC).[3] Twenty-two tombs in all were excavated.

One of the more spectacular finds was a tomb that yielded a mummy with a golden mask extending to her shoulders (Hill B, Tomb 4).[4] The burial was a female in her thirties whose mask and other decorations included scenes from the Book of the Dead: a scarab pushing a sun disk, a vulture wearing the crown of Osiris with outstretched wings, and the four sons of Horus. Pottery found in the tomb and 14C analysis date the burial to about 220 BC.[5] John Gee and Kerry Muhlestein will soon publish more about the coffin and its inscription.

Most excavation seasons focused on one or more five-by-five-meter squares in the sand cemetery. The sand cemetery is densely populated in burials. Over the years we have done a great deal of analysis designed to help us understand the lives of the people who lived there. For example, we found that between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, the female mortality rate was double that of males, presumably due to childbirth.[6] We also determined that—in a sample of 752 burials—the juvenile and child mortality rate at the cemetery was approximately 32 percent, much lower than rates at many other locations elsewhere in Egypt.[7] However, we have recently done extensive work in cooperation with the BYU Department of Information Systems to create a sophisticated database of the burials that will soon be available online for everyone. We were able to see that the lowest, or oldest, burials contain no children. This suggests that for a period children were buried elsewhere, and thus we need to refigure our child mortality rate using only the later burials.

Since Kerry Muhlestein became the director for the excavation project in 2011, the emphasis has been on fully analyzing (using technology now available) and publishing the excavations already conducted, as well as conserving the artifacts already found. He and his excavation team are also continuing the work Griggs began in trying to determine whether the inhabitant’s conversion to Christianity is visible on a large scale in their burials. If it is, it may help us more precisely date when this area of Egypt started to become Christian. Several clues may point toward a conversion. There is a consistent pattern of older burials being oriented towards the west, while later burials are oriented to the east. Many of these east-oriented burials also exhibit patterns of having wrapped bundles at the face and feet, ribbons wound around them, and an increase in the number of textiles that were part of the burial. It is likely that burials exhibiting all those traits were Christian, though we cannot tell at this point. Further research may cast more light on this subject.

We have also conducted a tremendous amount of research on the cause of death for many burials, especially those for whom trauma and disease are easily evident in their bones.[8]

We also recently created a catalogue of some of the artifacts that have come from the cemetery, and we are currently creating a complete catalog of all the preserved artifacts they were buried with. As the excavation ends, with 2026 serving as the last season of actual excavation, the analysis and publishing work will begin more intensely. The creation of a database will allow for more sophisticated research, and it will yield a tremendous amount of information about the lives and deaths of the people who lived in this part of Egypt during the Greco-Roman era.

The Pyramid

After Lesko’s initial season of excavating the Seila Pyramid, no work was done there for some time. Griggs began excavating there again in 1987, assisted by Nabil Swelim.[9] For two years, they conducted a tremendous amount of careful archaeology. During the first year, they discovered two stelae, one of which was inscribed with the name of Snefru, first king of the fourth dynasty, and father of Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid. At last we knew who had built the pyramid. Snefru, on the other hand, is known for building the first true—or smooth-sided rather than stepped—pyramid.

During these two years, they found altars, the remains of ritual structures on the north and east side, and fragments of a statue. Areas around the pyramid, particularly the eastern side, were further investigated in 1995, at which time a ritual path known as causeway was found, along with a foundation deposit which indicated that the entire world was dedicated to this pyramid.

In 2014 a geological survey helped us better understand the kinds of stone used in the pyramid’s construction. In 2018 a more extensive analysis of the causeway and ritual structures on the eastern side were conducted. In 2022 carefully excavating the lowest layers of the pyramid taught us that mudbrick had been used to help level the base of the pyramid, to our knowledge a unique method for this pyramid.

In 2009 a team of engineers used GPS to extensively examine the pyramid’s measurements. It produced hundreds of data points. However, as better technology developed, we spent more seasons at the pyramid. In 2023 and 2024 we did high-density laser scanning of the pyramid, which allowed us to gather millions of data points. We overlayed photos on them and manipulated the images so that we could view them from every size. This allowed us to create a much more accurate reconstruction of the pyramid’s original size.

Our original reconstruction indicated that the Seila Pyramid had been built as a four-stepped pyramid that had probably been turned into a true pyramid. We now believe that it was originally built as a six-stepped pyramid, similar to the Djoser Pyramid, and that afterward it was finished into a true smooth-sided pyramid, similar to what happened with its sister pyramid, the Meidum Pyramid, which lies six miles straight east of the Seila Pyramid. We cannot be certain that the Seila Pyramid was a true pyramid, but clues strongly suggest that it was. This means that it and the Meidum Pyramid were the first true pyramids ever created. Because the Seila Pyramid is smaller and could have been finished more quickly, it is likely that it was the first true pyramid. This work was of such interest to others that it became the subject of an episode of National Geographic’s Lost Treasures of Egypt.[10]

However, this pyramid, along with the Meidum Pyramid, is significant for more reasons. Pyramids before these two had a north-south orientation. After this, pyramids were primarily oriented east and west. The Meidum Pyramid exhibits evidence for ritual activities on both the north and east sides. The Seila pyramid had a ritual structure on the north side, with evidence of an altar for solid offerings and an altar for liquid offerings, as well as a small statue probably used as part of the liquid offerings. There was also a large ritual structure on the eastern side of the Seila Pyramid, with evidence of ritual offerings there and the remains of a model boat. Both the Seila Pyramid and the Meidum Pyramid have ritual walkways leading away from the pyramid on the eastern side.

Conclusion

After over four decades of excavation, with painstaking notations and tireless efforts, the BYU Egypt Excavation Project has created one of the most extensive sets of knowledge about Greco-Roman burials in existence. Further, we have new information to provide the world about the advent of true pyramids. We also have decades of relationships built with Egyptians in government offices and small villages.

Once the burial database is finished, we anticipate that a great deal more research will be possible. We hope that we will be able to see patterns that yield insights into the lives of all those who lived in the Fayoum. Years of research, analysis, and publishing lie ahead. We believe that in some ways the best years of the project lie just beyond the close of the actual excavation.

Notes

[1] Wilfred Griggs, “General Archaeological and Historical Report of 1987 and 1988 Seasons at Fag el-Gamous,” in Actes du IVe Congrès Copte: Louvain-la-Neuve, 5-10 Septembre 1988, ed. Marguerite Rassart-Debergh and Julien Ries, vol. 1 of Publications de l’Institut Orientaliste de Louvain 40 (Peeters Press Louvain-Paris, 1992), 197.

[2] C. Wilfred Griggs, Marvin C. J. Kuchar, Mark J. Rowe, and Scott R. Woodward, “Identities Revealed: Archaeological and Biological Evidences for a Christian Population in the Egyptian Fayum,” in The Ancient Near East, Greece, and Rome, ed. T. W. Hillard, R. A. Kearsley, C. E. V. Nixon, and A. M. Nobbs, Ancient History in a Modern University, vol. 1 (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 83.

[3] C. Wilfred Griggs, “Burial Techniques and Body Preservation in the Fag el Gamous Cemetery,” Actas del I Congreso Internacional de Estudios sobre Momias, 1992 (Museo Arqueologico de Tenerife, 1995), 659–60.

[4] C. Wilfred Griggs, Marvin C. Kuchar, Scott R. Woodward, Mark J. Rowe, R. Paul Evans, Naguib Kanawati, and Nasry Iskander, “Evidence of a Christian Population in the Egyptian Fayum and Genetic and Textile Studies of the Akhmim Noble Mummies,” BYU Studies 33, no. 2 (1993): 219.

[5] Griggs, “Evidence of a Christian Population,” 219.

[6] Griggs, “Excavating a Christian Cemetery,” 150.

[7] R. Paul and Kerry Muhlestein, “Death of a Child: The Demographic and Preparation Trends of Child Burials in the Greco-Roman Fayoum of Egypt,” in Handbook of Children of Antiquity, ed. Lesly Beaumont, Matthew Dillon, and Nicola Harrington (Routledge, forthcoming).

[8] For more on the excavations, see Kerry Muhlestein, editor in chief, and Krystal V. L. Pierce and Bethany Jensen, eds., Excavations at Fag el-Gamous and the Seila Pyramid, Harvard Egyptological Studies,vol. 7. (Brill, 2020).

[9] Nabil Swelim, “Reconstructions of the Layer Monument of Snfrw at Seila,” in Echoes of Eternity: Studies Presented to Gaballa Aly Gaballa, ed.Ola el-Aquizy and Mohamed S. Ali (Wiesbaden, 2010), 40–56.

[10] Lost Treasures of Egypt, season 4, episode 8, “Rise of the Pyramids.”