Get you up to speed: ‘Golden tongues’ discovered in unearthed Egyptian tombs | News World

What remains unclear — The exact number of human skeletons unearthed at the site has not been specified.

Golden tongues and ancient coffins found in Egyptian tombs near Alexandria

The tombs were unearthed in Marina El Alamein, west of Alexandria (Picture: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)

A group of ancient Egyptian cemeteries unearthed along the Mediterranean coast have given new insight into the ancient culture – with artefacts found at the site including golden tongues and coffins.

The excavations at Marina el-Alamein, a site 60 miles west of ancient Egyptian capital Alexandria, revealed about two dozen ‘tongues’, which were customary to place into the mouths of some deceased at the time.

It was thought that they would help the dead communicate in the afterlife.

A statement released by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities explained that one of the objects found is shaped like the Eye Of Horus — a symbol which is commonly associated with healing.

‘Gold tongues are a well-documented feature of some burials dating to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods in Egypt,’ Hesham Hussein, undersecretary for Lower Egypt and Sinai archaeology, told Live Science.

‘They are generally interpreted as symbolic funerary amulets intended to enable the deceased…to communicate and recite sacred formulas in thenext world.’

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Golden tongues were often placed in the mouth of a deceased person before burial (Picture: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)

Golden tongues have also been found in recent years in the Taposiris Magna temple, near Alexandria, and the ancient city of Oxyrhynchusm about 200 miles south-east of the current discovery.

According to Smithsonian magazine, the practice of placing a golden tongue in a dead person’s mouth comes from spell 158 in the Egyptian Book of The Dead which asks for a ‘golden collar…to be set on the throat of the deceased on the day of internment.’

Most of the tombs unearthed in the latest find were in an ‘exceptional’ state of preservation, having been kept closed by stone slabs since they were built.

The tongues formed part of a ritual conducted on the day of internment (Picture: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities)

Experts have said they were likely part of the ancient city of Leukaspis, mentioned by the Greek geographer Strapo.

Leukapsis, founded by the Greeks in the second century, was a thriving commercial hub known for its wine, wheat and olive trade.

However, it was destroyed in July 365 AD by a massive underwater earthquake in Crete.

The tremor – which geologists have estimated had a magnitude of around 8.5 – triggered a tsunami which devastated the southern coast of the Mediterranean, with Alexandria and the Nile Delta also suffering severe damage.

Other items of note in the discovery included a water well and surface burials near the newly discovered tombs, which experts say reflects the social diversity of the city’s occupants as wealthy elites would traditionally have had deeper burials.

Both shallow and deeper burial sites were found, pointing to a diversity of people living in the ancient city (Picture: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities/Cover Images)

The finds point to Egyptian funeral rituals, as well as architectural influences, lasting into the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, according to researchers.

A limestone altar, featuring an incomplete marble statue thought to represent the goddess Aphrodite, had what experts describe as ‘distinctive architecture’ pointing to an ‘imaginary door’ — a gateway between the living and the dead which is a part of Egyptian funeral doctrine.

Another of the cemeteries featured a 2.5 metre granite coffin which contained the remains of a plaster sphinx, while pottery, dishes, camphor and basins were also found at the site of the tombs.

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