كوم الشقافة

Mound of Shards, also known as the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, lies in Alexandria, Egypt. A spiral staircase descends from the entrance into three levels carved through solid rock.

The complex began as a family tomb during the Roman period, around the second century, then expanded over roughly three centuries into a large necropolis. Egyptian gods with Roman faces stand beside Greek ornament and hieroglyphs, bringing three artistic traditions together underground. Lower chambers once held hundreds of burials, while the triclinium hosted ritual meals where families remembered their dead. Part of the lower level now lies flooded.

Pottery fragments once covered the mound after families broke offering vessels so nobody could reuse them. A donkey falling through a shaft led to the site’s rediscovery at the beginning of the twentieth century, after more than a millennium underground.