A team of Egyptian and Italian archaeologists have discovered more than 30 mummies in the southern city of Aswan. These Egyptian mummies date back to late Pharaonic and Greco-Roman period, between the 6th century B.C. and the 4th century A.D.
Not only mummies, researchers have also uncovered several artifacts. These included pottery, funerary masks, decorative vases, vessels still containing food, parts of a painted wooden coffin and two statues depicting the Egyptian bird god, Ba.
Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities announced about the Mummies Discovered in an Ancient Egyptian Tomb in early April of this year.
“The main room had around 30 mummies, among which some of young children. They were deposited in a long lateral niche,” ministry officials wrote in a Facebook post.
An intact hieroglyphic text (formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt) specified that a trade leader named Tjt owned the hidden ancient tomb.
The steps of the tomb led down from the surface had two burial chambers but a wall sealed them.
Patrizia Piacentini, a professor of Egyptology at the University of Milan said, “We know that Aswan was important in the late Pharaonic and Greco-Roman periods, but we didn’t know where the people were buried”.
The ministry of antiquities invited the professor to conduct the excavation.
Mummies Discovered in an Ancient Egyptian Tomb
The archaeologists found approximately 30 mummies in the first chamber — the bodies of men, women and children — and further four in a side chamber. Two mummies that were found overlapping were said to be the mummies of a mother and her child.
“From these ancient tombs, you can understand what they ate, how they died, at what age they died,” she said.
This excavated ancient tomb was one of the several burial sites located in the city Aswan.
However, this tomb was discovered as a part of massive excavation. During this, archaeologists found around 300 tombs dating back from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD. “The archaeologists of Egypt had already excavated 25 tombs in the area from 2015 to 2018”, ministry officials wrote.
