1
million mummies has reportedly been found in Egypt
A
massive cemetery with up to 1 million mummies has reportedly been found in
Egypt, but the announcement of the discovery apparently landed a U.S. research
team in hot water, and possibly even kicked off the project.
Archaeologists
from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, said the bodies date from between
the 1st century and 7th century A.D., when Egypt was controlled by the Roman
and Byzantine empires. These mummies didn't belong to the Egyptian elite, but
to the poor.
"A lot of their wealth, as little as they had, was
poured into these burials," BYU Egypt
Excavation Project director Kerry Muhlestein said, according to LiveScience.
So
far, 1,700 mummies have been found; yet given the size of the cemetery and
density of the bodies, the team believes there are many more.
“The cemetery is very large, and so far seems to maintain
that kind of burial density throughout,” Muhlestein said, according
to KSL.com. “Thus
the math suggests that there are over a million mummies in the cemetery.”
Muhlestein
recently described some of the burials at a conference in Toronto.
"We
once found a male who was over 7 feet tall who was far too tall to fit into the
shaft, so they bent him in half and tossed him in," Muhlestein said,
according to LiveScience.
The
team also found a number of child burials.
“As a
father of six, each time I see one of these children I have to wonder about
what that child’s family went through as they buried the child,” Muhlestein
said, perKSL.com. “These children often received such delicate care. It is easy
to see that a lot of love was poured into the grave with these little ones.”
The story of a million mummies, including a "giant" and mummified
children, made headlines around the world.
One widely
circulated report in Britain's Daily Mailcaught
the attention of Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities, and officials there were not
happy about it. According to Luxor Times, the ministry has ordered the team to
stop work at the site.
“What was published in the newspaper is not true,"
Dr. Youssef Khalifa, head of the ancient Egypt department told the website.
"There
are no million mummies, a mummy definition to begin with means a complete
mummified body and there is only one mummy
found at the site of Fag El Gamous in 1980 which is at the Egyptian museum
since then."
Khalifa
described the recent discoveries as "only poor skeletons" and plenty
of bones, some wrapped in textiles.
At
dispute may be the definition of the word "mummy," as even Muhlestein
admitted that these were not what many think of when they imagine mummies.
"I
don't think you would term what happens to these burials as true
mummification," Muhlestein told LiveScience. "If we want to use the
term loosely, then they were mummified."
Muhlestein
told Luxor Times he thinks there's been a misunderstanding.
"I
would like to work this out with the Ministry, for whom I have the greatest
respect," Muhlestein said. His department also appears to have shut down
its Facebook page, which had been filled with information and photos about the
site.
The
ministry, however, appears to be digging in.
“What
was published was clearly stating wrong information and I think the Permanent
Committee will also approve our department’s decision to stop the
mission," Khalifa was quoted as saying.
Pasted
from <http:www.huffingtonpost.com