Sunday, July 11, 2010

BYU team digs up ancient Egyptian mummies

Universe (Angela Berrett)

BYU students and professors have been excavating a cemetery near the Seila pyramid in Egypt, containing more than one million mummies, most of which are likely Christian, according to BYU professor C. Wilfred Griggs.

"[The team has] been digging there for 30 years and we could dig there for a hundred more and still have only done a small percentage," BYU professor Kerry Muhlestein said.

The pyramid, built on a hill by Pharaoh Snefru 4,600 years ago, is part of the BYU team’s land concession, but no burials have been discovered there, Griggs said. The cemetery, with a million or more mummies, is about a mile and a half north of the pyramid and covers roughly 300 acres.

There are about two mummies per square yard, buried in shafts five or more mummies deep.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember reading during my program at the U of PA's Archaeology museum, about mummies being so plentiful they used to stack them up near the ovens that would keep the steam train moving across the country-to be used as fuel! Imagine that as a natural resource! One million.