13 mummies with golden tongues found in Egypt
Archaeologists have discovered mummies with 13 golden tongues in Oxyrhynchus. Moreover, one of them had two golden tongues at once.
Archaeologists have discovered 13 mummies with golden tongues and fingernails at a cemetery in the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. The human remains date back to the Ptolemaic period (c. 304-30 B.C.), Live Science reports.
In total, archaeologists discovered 52 mummies and 13 golden tongues. Remarkably, one mummy had two golden tongues, and another had nails covered with gold plates.
Archaeologists had previously found 16 golden tongues at Oxyrhynchus. Gold was believed to be the “flesh of the gods,” so ancient Egyptians placed such tongues in mummies to help the dead speak in the afterlife.
Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, does not rule out that golden tongues “could have been fashionable for an embalming house in the area.”
During the excavations, archaeologists also found 29 amulets. Some of them are shaped like scarab beetles, as well as Egyptian deities, including Horus, Thoth, and Isis. Some of them are shaped like several deities together.
The excavations also uncovered wall paintings, including one depicting the tomb’s owner, named “Wen-Nefer”, who is accompanied by several Egyptian deities.
Another ceiling painting depicts the sky goddess Nut surrounded by stars. There is also a painting of a boat on which several deities are depicted.
As for the paintings, their quality is truly superb and the freshness of the colours is simply astonishing,” commented Francesco Tiradritti, an Egyptologist at the D’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara in Italy, on the find.
