Zakaria Goneim
Attribution:
Supreme Council of Antiquities
Zakaria Goneim
Discovered the Step pyramid of Sekhemkhet
Egyptian archaeologist Zakaria Goneim is most famous for his discovery of the unfinished pyramid of Sekhemkhet at Saqqara in 1951.
Before World War II, Goneim excavated the area around the pyramid of Unas. He returned to Saqqara years later to explore the outline of a buried site he had noticed on his first visit.
Goneim was astonished to discover the outer walls of an enclosure and pyramid base resembling that of the neighbouring Djoser Pyramid. Hieroglyphs indicated that it was built for Djoser’s successor, Sekhemkhet, who ruled 2649 – 2643BC.
Only the first step of the pyramid – rising to around seven metres – was completed before the pharaoh’s death. Goneim and his team worked their way into the burial chamber and discovered a sarcophagus of pristine alabaster. Both the chamber and the sarcophagus were sealed and intact, suggesting that the site had not been disturbed since the pyramid builders left.
The find garnered massive media attention and was compared to that of Tutankhamun’s tomb 30 years earlier. However, when Goneim opened the sarcophagus in June 1954, the coffin was empty. Goneim speculated it may have been a ‘decoy’ tomb, and later researchers uncovered another, plundered burial chamber that may have been that of the pharaoh.
The press labelled the excavation a fiasco and quickly lost interest. The fact remained, however, that Goneim had found the second-oldest pyramid in Egypt. He embarked on a lecture tour of the USA and published an account of his work called The Buried Pyramid.
Unfortunately, the archaeologist’s standing fell even further when he was accused of stealing artefacts. Although there was little proof to support the charges, Goneim was stripped of his duties and interrogated by police.
The story has it that the missing items were eventually found in a storeroom at the Egyptian Museum. Unfortunately, it was already too late. Goneim drowned himself in the Nile in 1959 – by which time he was largely forgotten.
Despite Goneim’s fate, no one has yet to tried to attach a curse to the pyramid, which remains largely buried and closed to the public.
