Egyptian archaeologists announced Saturday that they have discovered at least one hundred ancient wooden coffins and 40 gold statues in a giant cemetery south of Cairo.
The discovery also included 20 boxes of the god Horus, plus statues, amulets and four gold masks, according to egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
The decorated sarcophaguses, some of which contained mummies, and statues were buried more than 2,500 years ago in the “Tomb of the Nobles”, where the sacred necropolis of cats, animals and birds was found. The elements date back to the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt around 320 a. C. around 30 a. C. in the era overdue from 664 a.
At the press conference a coffin was opened and the inside of the mummy was scanned with an X-ray. The examination revealed that the mummy was a healthy guy before dying between the ages of 40 and 45, according to Mostafa Waziry, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Egyptian archaeologists have discovered other “s full of coffins, gilded, painted, decorated,” Waziri told reporters.
El-Anany said that more discoveries would be revealed in the coming weeks and that the artifacts would be transferred to the Great Egyptian Museum, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir and the Museum of the New Administrative Capital.
Since September, the ancient government has had at least 140 sealed sarcophagus, most of them mummies inside, in the same saqqarah neighborhood.
Saqqarah, which also has several ancient monasteries and larger animal necropolises, belongs to the necropolis of Egypt’s first capital, Memphis, which includes the pyramids of Giza. The ruins of Memphis were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s.
Contributing: The Associated Press
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