Archaeologists have discovered an underground maze in Egypt crammed with more than 50 mummies.
The buried network was unearthed in Saqqara, 25 kilometres south of Cairo, by a team of Egyptian and French researchers. They hope studying the contents and layout of the site will reveal new information about the culture of the first millennium BC.
"It's a maze of corridors with mummies everywhere, right and left, up and down. When people came, there was no more space so they put the coffins in the wall, or they cut another shaft, or they put a mummy above a mummy," said Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Antiquities Council, speaking to Reuters.
The team believes the site was used from about 660 BC to 30 BC, a span that began with an Egyptian cultural renaissance and lasted until the end of the Ptolemaic period, when a succession of 15 Greeks ruled Egypt following Alexander the Great's conquest in 332 BC.
The mummies are wrapped in linen and encased in wooden or stone coffins - and some are exquisitely preserved. "I have never seen ... a mummy from the Ptolemaic period that is so unique, that is well preserved. The linen is covering it in a beautiful way," said Hawass.
More: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994926
The buried network was unearthed in Saqqara, 25 kilometres south of Cairo, by a team of Egyptian and French researchers. They hope studying the contents and layout of the site will reveal new information about the culture of the first millennium BC.
"It's a maze of corridors with mummies everywhere, right and left, up and down. When people came, there was no more space so they put the coffins in the wall, or they cut another shaft, or they put a mummy above a mummy," said Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Antiquities Council, speaking to Reuters.
The team believes the site was used from about 660 BC to 30 BC, a span that began with an Egyptian cultural renaissance and lasted until the end of the Ptolemaic period, when a succession of 15 Greeks ruled Egypt following Alexander the Great's conquest in 332 BC.
The mummies are wrapped in linen and encased in wooden or stone coffins - and some are exquisitely preserved. "I have never seen ... a mummy from the Ptolemaic period that is so unique, that is well preserved. The linen is covering it in a beautiful way," said Hawass.
More: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994926