4,000-Year-Old Stone Slabs Unearthed at the Temple of the Sun in Cairo

A team of Egyptian-German archaeologists discovered in eastern Cairo's Matareya a collection of 4,000-year-old stone slabs with ancient Egyptian inscriptions on it at the Temple of the Sun.

According to Egyptologists Ayman Ashmawy and Dietrich Raue, heads of the mission, one of the slabs depicts Atum being responsible for the floods of the Nile during the Third Intermediate Period (664-332 BC).

The pieces of stones date back to as early as the 12^th and 20^th Dynasties and onward. The artefacts were discovered near a limestone burning area at the Sun Temple in Matareya, also known as ancient Heliopolis.

Within the same region on October 25, the Ain Shams University archaeological mission headed by Mamdouh al-Damati found an ancient royal celebration hall dating back to the era of Ramses II.

Matareya has its own open-air museum, where the director of the Matareya archaeological site said a shelter was built to protect the open-air museum from the limestone burning installations.

Images from Egypt Antiquities Ministry/AP.