Saqqara, Egypt - French and Egyptian archaeologists said on Monday they had found more than 50 mummies buried in deep shafts south of Cairo and dating from the first millennium BC.
Some of the mummies, wrapped in linen and sealed inside stone or wooden sarcophagi, are in an excellent state of preservation for the period, said Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Antiquities Council.
Hawass said Egyptians had used the network of shafts and corridors over several centuries, starting from the 26th dynasty (664-525 BC) and continuing into the Ptolemaic period, which ended with the death of Cleopatra in 30 BC.
"It's a maze of corridors with mummies everywhere, right and left, up and down. When people came, there was no more space so they put the coffins in the wall, or they cut another shaft, or they put a mummy above a mummy," he told Reuters.
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'It's a maze of corridors with mummies everywhere' The shafts are in Saqqara, 25 km (15 miles) south of Cairo and the main cemetery for the nearby city of Memphis.
Guy Lecuyot, an Egyptologist at France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, said one of the Ptolemaic mummies was exceptional for its state of preservation and its style.
"I hope that next week we will have a chance to open other sarcophaguses and find other mummies in this state, and the elements which will enable us to understand Pharaonic civilisation better," he added.
Hawass said: "I have never seen... a mummy from the Ptolemaic period that is so unique, that is well-preserved. The linen is covering it in a beautiful way."
He said some of the mummy wrappings could well contain hundreds of gold amulets, which are typical of the period.
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