An ancient cemetery with more than 300 tombs of mummies has been unearthed in Egypt in a discovery that scientists have since dubbed the “City of the Dead.”
Archaeologists have spent five years digging at a site once located on the hill near the modern Mausoleum of Aga Khan III. The burial grounds reportedly span 270,000 feet and with tombs ascending up to 10 terraces.
More recently, a team of international researchers uncovered 36 new tombs at the site which they estimated had been in use for some 900 years, between the 6th century BC and 9th century AD, with each tomb containing the remains of 30 to 40 people.
According to Ayman Ashmawy, who heads the Supreme Council of Antiquities’ Egyptian Antiquities Division, 30-40% of the remains belonged to infants and adolescents, many of whom died of infectious diseases and other life-threatening disorders, including anemia, tuberculosis and diseased organs.
Patrizia Piacentini, an archaeologist at the University of Milan, is leading a team of researchers to discover more about the ancient city of Aswan, once an important trade hub, granite quarry and military post on the east bank of the Nile River, founded around 4,500 years ago.
“This was a really spectacular find, very unique in Egypt,” Piacentini told the Daily Mail in a statement. [The people of Aswan] covered the hill with tombs. It is kind of a City of the Dead.”
The city now known as Aswan was first dubbed Swenett, and later called Swan — a name that translates to “market” — as the commercial center saw travelers and settlers from the far reaches of Africa and Europe.
“Aswan was a crossing point since forever,” said Piacentini. “People were coming from the east to the west. People came here because it was the border, products from the south arrived in Aswan and then dispersed everywhere else.”
The City of the Dead was first identified in 2019 during the discovery of one tomb containing mummies of two children and, soon after, their presumed mother and father, according to CT scans. Each dig thereafter has uncovered dozens more tombs and provided more clues about an unexplored society that lived more than 2,000 years ago.
Further excavation also revealed that bodies were buried according to class, with the elites, such as the remains of Aswan’s general-in-chief, in tombs at the top of the hill.
Tombs of various social standings frequently contained ceremonial gifts offered to the dead, including pottery and wood carvings.
The most preserved mummies will be sent to museums for long-term preservation and exhibition, while the others will be studied and replaced as found.
“This is their resting place,” Piacentini told Daily Mail. “We uncover their story and then we put them back and close the tomb. For me, it was important from the beginning.”
