The dead were decorated with gold foil amulets in the shape of tongues to allow them to speak even in the afterlife, in front of the court of the god Osiris .
The remains of a mummy with a golden tongue in its mouth were found by archaeologists in Taposiris Magna , temple located near Alexandria of Egypt , in the North of the country.
The important discovery was made known by the Ministry of Antiquities, the result of a collaboration between a team of Egyptian and Dominican Republic archaeologists and scholars.
A total of 16 burials in rock-cut tombs were found on the site , a technique widely used in Greek and Roman times, just over two thousand years ago. Inside, the mummies were in a bad state of preservation.
The experts explained that, according to the custom of the time, at the time of preparation for the sarcophagus the dead were decorated with gold foil amulets shaped like a tongue to allow them to speak even in the afterlife, in front of the court of the god Osiris , whom the ancient Egyptians believed to be lord of the underworld and judge of the dead.
Always at Taposiris Magna the same archaeological mission made it possible to discover the funerary mask of a woman, eight gold flakes of a gold crown and eight marble masks dating back to Greek and Roman times. Khaled Abo El Hamd , director of the Antiquities Authority of Alexandria , reported that a god was depicted in gilded decorations on the cartonnage - a material consisting of layers of plaster, linen and glue - which partially enclosed one of the mummies.
"On the cartonnage around the head of a second mummy, golden decorations depicted a crown, horns and a cobra snake" explained mission manager Kathleen Martinez, of the University of Santo Domingo. On the chest, the decorations represented a necklace from which hung the head of a hawk, the symbol of the god Horus .
Previously, coins with the name and portrait of Queen Cleopatra VII were found in the same temple. , last queen of the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic dynasty, who reigned from 51 to 30 BC. After her death, Egypt would fall under Roman domination.
(SOURCE AGI)
Kathleen Martinez, lawyer, archaeologist and diplomat from Dominican Republic she, she is best known for having undertaken the search for the tomb of Cleopatra since 2005 , the last ruler of the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt and one of the most famous pharaohs of all time.
The Martinez she has spent years looking for his tomb and is convinced that it is in the ancient site of the temple of Tabosiris Magna.