Rich Trove of Mummies May Be World’s Biggest

In a remote desert oasis in Egypt, archeologists have literally stumbled upon a treasure trove of as many as 10,000 mummies that promises to shine a brilliant spotlight on the period 2,000 years ago when Roman legionaries ruled the land of the pharaohs.

Preliminary surveys suggest that the site contains the largest concentration of mummies in the world. Teams of researchers have already excavated 105 mummies--many of them sheathed in gold--from four tombs in the newly discovered cemetery in the Bahariyya Oasis, more than 200 miles from the pyramids and temples of Egypt’s Giza Plateau.

Sheer numbers are only part of the story. Some of the unusually well-preserved mummies--mostly children--are covered completely in a thin layer of gold. Others wear gilded gypsum masks, extending to their midriffs, with “magnificent designs of ancient Egyptian divinities on their chests,” said Zahi Hawass, director general of the Giza site as well as the monuments at Saqqara on the Nile River.

Others are housed in clay sarcophagi painted with human faces, while the remainder are simply wrapped in linen “like the mummies of Hollywood horror movies,” he said. “I never expected to find something like this so far from the shadows of the pyramids.”

Hawass will discuss the findings publicly for the first time Sunday at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Hawass, who is also an adjunct professor at UCLA, has close ties with the Southern California chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt. The center is co-sponsoring the Sunday symposium.

The site has also yielded statues, pottery, jewelry and other artifacts suggesting that the region was much more prosperous than researchers had previously believed.

The Bahariyya Oasis and its capital city of el-Bawiti are in the barren interior of Egypt, a three-hour drive southwest of Cairo. Underground aquifers still provide water for agriculture, but during the period of Roman domination from about 31 BC to AD 400, a milder climate permitted large-scale production of dates and grain. Much of the grain was exported to Rome, and wine made from the dates was shipped throughout the world.

The region’s principal claim to fame before now was a modest temple dedicated to Alexander the Great discovered at the end of the last century. Three years ago, a guard at that temple was riding his donkey nearby when the animal’s leg buckled and it fell, punching a small hole in the desert floor.

Preliminary studies indicated that the hole was in the ceiling of a buried tomb. A team of archeologists went back to the site earlier this year and excavated the four tombs that yielded the 105 mummies.

Surface studies indicate that the cemetery covers four square miles and may house as many as 10,000 more bodies. Hawass has already started calling the region the Valley of the Golden Mummies.

The first tomb the team entered, now called Tomb 54, contained 29 mummies stacked neatly around the room. When the noonday sunlight entered the tomb through the damaged ceiling, Hawass said, the entire interior seemed to blaze with fire from the reflections off the gold. “It was dazzling,” he said in an interview.

The different types of mummies clearly represent different social strata at the oasis, Hawass said. The gilded masks cover the wealthy and powerful--landowners, administrators and military officers. The decorated terra cotta sarcophagi hold artisans and craftsmen and, perhaps, valued servants. The simple linen-wrapped mummies are ordinary workers.

Most of the mummies hold Greek or Roman coins in their hands in the ancient tradition of bribing those who would ferry them to the nether world. One such coin from Tomb 54 bears the likeness of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.

Near the mummies were mourning statues, images of women, pottery, scarabs, jewelry and statues of the god Bes, the roly-poly dwarf god of pleasure and fun who was the patron god of Bahariyya. The team also found a life-size, well-preserved sandstone statue of Bes with some of the original paint still on it.

The artifacts are typical of what archeologists would expect to find in tombs, and the presence of so many suggests that grave robbers had not discovered the cemetery.

Near the graveyard, the team has also found, but not yet begun excavating, a palace that probably held the administrative offices of the region. Outside the palace are the mud-brick walls of a winery that undoubtedly was responsible for much of the wealth of the oasis.

In November, Hawass said, the Egyptian government will open at least one of the new tombs to the public, along with the Temple of Alexander the Great and some previously discovered tombs.

But most of the mummies themselves will not be put on display. “I do not believe that bodies of the deceased should be exposed to the public as a thrill,” Hawass said.

The discoveries at the Valley of the Golden Mummies--preliminarily revealed in June--will also be featured in upcoming issues of National Geographic and Archeology magazines, as well as in National Geographic television specials and shows on the Discovery Channel and CNBC.

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This story has been edited to reflect a correction to the original published text. The Roman domination of Egypt began in 31 BC.

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