CAIRO: After the discovery of 53 tombs in an excavation area of Lahon near the archeological sites in Fayoum some 50 miles south of Cairo, last year, Farouk Hosni, Minister of Culture, announced on Sunday that the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and a team of Egyptian archaeologists headed by Abdel Rahman El-Aydi unearthed a new cemetery in the area including 45 tombs. The new discovery also contains a set of wooden coffins and inside mummified bodies inside .Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said in a statement, “Each tomb contains a painted wooden sarcophagus with the mummy of the deceased still inside it.” Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, said that the discoveries included an 18th dynasty tomb containing 12 wooden sarcophagi stacked on top of each other, with each sarcophagus containing a preserved mummy and was in “excellent condition.” Hawass, in a press statement, said that the tombs have images corresponding to various Egyptian gods and a number of these tombs are “painted with significant religious texts as the people of ancient Egypt believed it would enable the dead to easily go through the underworld.” Hawass added that 14 tombs were discovered in the cemetery dating to the first and the second dynasty, “including one of the oldest sarcophagus, “which is almost completely intact. It has almost all its funerary utensils as well as a wooden sarcophagus which houses the mummy wrapped in linen,” he added. Aydi, the head of mission, pointed out that 31 of the tombs found are estimated to be belong to a period of ancient Egypt dating to around 1080–725 BCE. BM
