New York: Researchers have found a cemetery in Egypt which contains the remains of more than one million mummies.
The team of archaeologists from Brigham Young University in the US found the mummified remains in an area that they have named Faj Al Jamous, (Way of the Water Buffalo) after a road close to the site.
Archaeologists have been excavating the Faj Al Jamous site and pyramid close by for almost 30 years, Livescience reported.
Most of the mummies have been dated to a time when Roman Empire ruled Egypt from the 1st to the 7th century AD.
“We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery. It’s large, and it’s dense,” Kerry Muhlestein from Brigham Young University, said in a paper presented at the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Scholars Colloquium, in Toronto.
The people buried here were often laid to rest without personal memorabilia in their graves and without coffins, the researchers said.
The bodies were mummified by the naturally dry environment, with internal organs rarely removed, unlike traditional “mummies”.
“I don’t think you would term what happens to these burials as true mummification,” Muhlestein said. “If we want to use the term loosely, then they were mummified.”
The researchers have found mummies of infant children, blonde and red haired humans and one of a seven-feet tall man who was bent to half before burial.
The team has excavated more than 1,000 of mummies over the past 30 years.
