Russian archeologists discover golden-masked mummies in Egypt

RIA Novosti

Russian archaeologists working at Egypt's Fayoum Oasis have uncovered a number of mummies wearing golden masks, as well as other artifacts of historical value, a Russian Egyptologist said on Wednesday.

A group of Russian archaeologists has been working in the Fayoum province, some 80km southwest of Cairo, since 2003. It has been carrying out excavations at the Deir Al-Banat necropolis for the past two years.

"It is a huge necropolis," said Alexei Krol, deputy chief of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Egyptology center. "Despite the fact that the site was badly robbed in the early Christian period, the Coptic era and in the 1960s-1970s, we are still managing to find mummies with golden masks," he said.