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- Archaeologists in Egypt have announced
the discovery of at least 200 mummies, some of them with golden masks,
in a huge cemetery in the Western Desert.
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- The burial ground, near a desert oasis,
is believed to contain more than 10,000 mummies, making it the biggest
ever uncovered, Egypt's Middle East News Agency said.
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- The area, within the city of Bawiti,
300 kilometres (185 miles) southwest of Cairo, has been renamed "Valley
of the Mummies", it added.
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- Fifty mummies were found in each of four
rooms in the six-mile long cemetery which dates back to the early Graeco-Roman
era 2,000 years ago.
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- They included wealthy people and some
rulers, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities
said.
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- 'Magnificent designs'
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- Cairo and Giza antiquities director Zahi
Hawass said the first 200 mummies were uncovered after a four-year excavation.
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- He told the news agency that some of
the mummies wore golden masks ''with magnificent designs of ancient Egyptian
divinities on their chests''.
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- Others were coated in plaster or covered
with linen and some lay in terracotta sarcophagi bearing representations
of the human head.
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- Mr Hawass said work would continue until
the rest were uncovered.
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