London - It is not the first place you would expect to find 2 000-year-old mummies.
But that is exactly what a leading Egyptologist suspects are buried close to Barnsley.
Professor Joann Fletcher said on Sunday that remains dating from Roman times showed the practice of embalming and linen-wrapping the dead had spread from North Africa to Yorkshire.
Now the archaeologist, born in Barnsley, hopes to find a preserved mummy in burial pits in the area.
After Egyptians became part of the Roman Empire following the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra in 31BC, they travelled across Europe – and experts believe they took their burial practices with them.
The most dramatic evidence that they reached Britain is a gypsum cast dug up in York in 1966 which is thought to have covered the mummy of a child who died in about AD300.
Settlers from Egypt are believed to have used gypsum plaster to adapt the custom of mummifying to the damp local climate. While not exactly on a par with Tutankhamun, other discoveries include bronze figurines of Egyptian gods and coins dating back to the Roman conquest. Tests on bones found they originated in North Africa.
Professor Fletcher, the presenter of a BBC documentary on Ancient Egypt this year, said: “There’s evidence that Romans in our part of the world were embalming, mummifying and wrapping in linen their dead, according to Egyptian customs.” She added: “It widens your horizons – in some ways it blows your mind. You don’t think 2 000 years ago that Ancient Egyptians came to Yorkshire, but they did.”
Examples of mummifying techniques have been discovered in Pollington, around 20 miles north-east of Barnsley, York and Castleford.
The gypsum cast and other artefacts have now been brought together at Experience Barnsley museum, revealing links between Yorkshire and Ancient Egypt. Around 40 gypsum casts have been found in the county over the past 200 years but Professor Fletcher, who claimed her team had found the mummy of Queen Nefertiti in 2003, said the holy grail would be to find a complete preserved body.
The hunt is likely to begin in burial pits in Thurnscoe, near Barnsley. - Daily Mail