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Kom El-Shokafa

On the west of Alexandria, as for the ancient Egyptian religion, lies its City of the dead. while the ancient Egyptians mummified their dead, the Hellenistic believed in cremation.

The area of Kom El-Shokafa   used to contain a mound of shards of terra cotta which mostly consisted of jars and objects made of clay. These objects were left by those visiting the tombs, who would bring food and wine for their consumption during the visit. However, they did not wish to carry these containers home from that place of death.

1900, by mere chance, a donkey pulling a cart fell through a hole in the ground and into one of the catacombs. The discovery was made on that date by an Alexandrian, Monsieur Es-Sayed Aly.

Kom El-Shokafa, These catacombs date back to the late first century AD. Kom El-Shokafa lies on the site where the village and fishing port of Rhakotis” the oldest part of Alexandria”

The Necropolis is of the catacomb type that was widespread during the first three centuries in Italy (Rome). This type of catacomb was usually limited to the burial of deceased Christians. It was, to the believers of this new religion, an asylum where they could be safe from the injustice of the emperors.

In the tombs below the cathedral of Saint Sebastian in Rome we can find catacombs in the form of streets stretching for many miles.

But in the Necropolis of Kom el-Shuqafa there is no trace of Christian burials. The catacombs are unique both for their plan and for its decoration which represents a melding and mixing of the cultures and traditions of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

Scholars believe that the catacombs at first may had served only one wealthy family that still practiced the ancient Egyptian pagan religion. However, they were expanded into a mass burial site.

Where they dug out loculi and then closed the openings with marble and limestone. The name was written on the Stele Or “stela”.

At Kom El-Shokafa there is a mix between Roman and the Pharaonic arts, which is not only represented in the architecture of the tomb, but also its engraving and statues, perhaps it was the desire of the tomb’s owner that is clear in the religious scenes shown in the drawings.

At Kom El-Shokafa, there is a shaft about six meters in diameter to lower the bodies of the deceased down to the actual burial area.

There are ninety-nine steps that decrease in height as they approach the surface, so that at the top there is almost no step at all. This was designed for the tomb visitors so that after viewing the deceased in the lower levels, the climb back up to the surface would become easier as the visitor became tired from the climb out.

To the left (southeast) of the rotunda the tombs have a funeral banquet hall called a “Triclinium”.

a wide staircase from the Rotunda, which divides to accommodate the prompter’s box (a covered shaft to the third lower level), leads down to the second level that contains the Main Tomb.

There are two  statues cut in the rock. 1^st statue represents a man standing with left leg step forward and wearing kilt, he has a curly hair and Greek features, the statue is cut in Greek style.

2^nd statue represents a woman standing with left leg step forward, and she is dressed in long tight fitting transparent robe, however she has curly hair and Greek features and the statue was also cut in the Greek style.

the entrance of the burial chamber, there is a round shield at the middle of which there is the face of Medouza, “Medouza is represented as the face of an ugly woman and the locks of her hair are small circles.” ,  It is believed that if someone looked at Medouza , he would turn into stone.

Beneath the shield there is a serpent holding 2 symbols one of Hermes “wisdom” and the second one for Dionysus “death”.

In one of these loculi, the mummy of a priestess of goddess “Nemesis” – goddess of revenge and sport in ancient Greek mythology – was found”, this mummy and its jewelry are now in the Graeco-Roman museum at Alexandria.

The hall of Caraculla

It is a separate tomb; however it is now approached from a break in the hall of the Rotunda. At the time of discovery, large quantities of bones were found, at the beginning scholars believed that those bones were remains of the famous massacre carried out by the Roman emperor Caraculla among the youth of Alexandria, that’s why it was called “The hall of Caraculla”.

But later on when these bones were examined, they found out that the majority of bones belong to horses. So We believe that there was a temple in this area to goddess “Nemesis” – This tomb was perhaps dedicated to burial of some horses to honor them because they had won some races.