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Dwarf Mummy?
Photograph courtesy Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities
"Dressed" in Roman robes, a 2,000-year-old coffin stares back from a rare Egyptian grave in the Bahariya Oasis, about 225 miles (362 kilometers) southwest of Cairo (Egypt map).
The as yet unopened plaster sarcophagus, believed to contain a mummy, is among the ancient treasures uncovered at a newfound cemetery, Egyptian officials announced on April 12.
The site contains at least 14 tombs from the era when ancient Rome controlled Egypt, from 30 B.C. to A.D. 395. Jewelry, funerary masks, and pottery were also found, though the sand-covered tombs have been damaged by humidity and seeping groundwater.
Measuring just 3.2 feet (97 centimeters) long and carved with the finery of an influential woman, the sarcophagus remains something of a mystery.
"When I saw it for the first time, I thought it was a dwarf. ... ," said Mahmoud Affifi, director of Cairo and Giza antiquities for Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. "Maybe she was a small girl, but [even] now we don't know," he said.
(See pictures of more tomb finds in Egypt's Bahariya Oasis.)
—Andrew Bossone in Cairo
Published April 20, 2010
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Ancient Egyptian Bodyguards
Photograph courtesy Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities
Embossed on a sheet of gold from the newfound Greco-Roman tombs in Egypt, the four sons of Horus—ancient Egypt's god of the sky—were believed to protect the intestines, lungs, stomach, and liver.
Appropriately, the brothers—Qebehsenuef, Hapi, Duamutef, and Imsety—often decorated jars holding mummies' organs.
The region where the golden sheet was found, the Baharya Oasis, is best known for the discovery in 1996 of the "Valley of the Golden Mummies." The valley has since yielded hundreds of Greco-Roman mummies, many of them in gilded coffins.
(Video: Tombs of Ancient Egypt.)
Published April 20, 2010
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Mask of Immortality
Photograph courtesy Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities
Rescued from the sands of Egypt's Bahariya Oasis, a newfound, 2,000-year-old plaster mask reflects the Greco-Roman style.
Ancient Egyptians believed that funerary masks transferred the wearer from mortality to a divine state, a belief that persisted during the Greco-Roman period. Despite increasing European influence on Egypt during that time, priests are also known to have worn Egyptian-style animal masks in temple rituals.
"This mask was put on the face of the mummy, but we didn't find these mummies yet, because the area is [permeated] by groundwater," making excavations challenging, the Supreme Council of Antiquities's Afifi said.
(Reated pictures: "'Beautiful' Mummies, Gilded Caskets Found in Egypt" [2008].)
Published April 20, 2010
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Brushing Away the Centuries
Photograph courtesy Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities
Archaeologists carefully tease the tiny Greco-Roman sarcophagus from its rock-hewn tomb in the Bayariya Oasis, Egypt.
The architecture of the newfound cemetery may be unique among the tombs found so far at the oasis, officials said.
In a typical tomb at the site, as in the nearby Valley of the Golden Mummies, a long stairway descends to a corridor, which leads to a room with small mastabas in its corners. Mastabas are rectangular ceremonial structures often found above Egyptian tombs.
(See a picture of a painted, Egyptian-style tomb in the Bahariya Oasis.)
Published April 20, 2010
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Plastered Mummy
Photograph courtesy Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities
Sands still half-cover the newfound Greco-Roman sarcophagus, shown in mid-excavation. This and other artifacts from the site suggest the area might have been a wealthy enclave during Egypt's Roman period.
The carving was once mostly colored red, the Supreme Council of Antiquities's Afifi said, but centuries of humidity have drained the sarcophagus of color—though not entirely of clues to the burial rituals of the period.
"In the Valley of the Golden Mummies they are covered by linen and some plaster," he said. "But here this mummy is covered by layers of plaster," turning the deceased into something of a human statue.
(Also see "King Tut Was Disabled, Malarial, and Inbred, DNA Shows.")
Published April 20, 2010
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