Archaeologists Stunned by the Discovery of 2,000-Year-Old Mummies With Golden Tongues

Archaeologists working at the temple of Taposiris Magna near Alexandria, Egypt, discovered 16 ancient burial chambers with two golden tongues. These striking tongues were placed in the jawbones of the deceased to help them speak in the afterlife. Other artifacts found included a funeral mask with golden flakes and decorations of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead.

Jennifer Houser Wegner, a curator of Egyptian artifacts at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, shared with The NY Times , "For the Egyptians, gold was a material that had qualities of everlastingness. It was never tarnished. It always shone brilliantly."

The team also discovered two mummies wrapped in gilded cartonnage, a type of plastered papyrus or linen. Knewz.com noted that one mummy had a crown with horns and a cobra on its forehead. It also had a gilded necklace shaped like a falcon's head, representing the god Horus. The other mummy was adorned with gilded images of Osiris.

Kathleen Martinez, the lead archaeologist from the University of Santo Domingo, said to The NY Post , "These two mummies were among the most important discoveries from the excavation." Furthermore, Khaled Abo El Hamd, director general of The Alexandria Antiquities shared, "These masks show high craftsmanship in Sculpture and depiction of the features of its owners."

During the time of these 2,000-year-old mummies, Egypt was ruled by Greek Macedonians and later Romans. Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, told Live Science in an email, "Mummies with gold tongues were popular during the Greco-Roman period." This period lasted from 332 B.C. to A.D. 395 when golden tongues and eyes were used in funerary practices.

Furthermore, other gold-tongued mummies have been found in other places in Egypt, such as Oxyrhynchus. Martinex on the discovery mentioned, "That these mummies have golden tongues is fascinating. She further added, "Very little information has remained about the Greco-Roman period in Alexandria. The discoveries we have found in this necropolis are not only extraordinary, but they also indicate that there are more secrets to reveal."

Other highlights of the excavation included a complete funeral mask of a woman, statues of people buried at the site, and eight marble masks from the Greek and Roman periods. Martinez had led many excavations and found coins with Cleopatra’s image at Taposiris Magna, suggesting that Egyptians used the temples during her reign (51–30 B.C.).

However, the findings did not clearly state the exact period, but researchers believed the mummies were from either the Ptolemaic dynasty (304 B.C. to 30 B.C.) or the early Roman period, starting after Cleopatra died in 30 B.C.

Lorelei H. Corcoran, the director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology at the University of Memphis, mentioned, "The stated goal of the Egyptian-Dominican mission is to find the burial of Cleopatra at Taposiris Magna. Many scholars believe, however, that the burial place of Cleopatra was within a royal burial complex, perhaps associated with the palace district, now lost underwater in the Alexandria harbor."