Egypt Announces New Archaeological Discovery in Aswan

Egypt has unveiled more than thirty archaeological tombs dating back to the late Pharaonic period and the Greek and Roman eras, around the “Aga Khan Mausoleum” in the southern province of Aswan, according to a statement by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities on Monday.

The statement, relayed by Agence France-Presse, reported “the success of the joint Egyptian-Italian archaeological mission working around the Aga Khan Mausoleum west of Aswan, in discovering a number of previously unknown family tombs dating to the late, Greek, and Roman periods.”

The statement quoted Ayman Ashmawy, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt, saying that “the number of discovered tombs is about 33, all from the late period and the Greek and Roman periods.”

The late period began over 2,700 years ago during the reign of the 26th Pharaonic dynasty and lasted more than 400 years, followed by the Greek and Roman periods.

Some of the discovered tombs “still retain parts of mummies and remnants of funerary objects inside,” the statement added, contributing to knowledge “about that period and some diseases prevalent at the time.”

Patrizia Piacentini, a professor of Egyptian archaeology at the University of Milan and the mission director on the Italian side, said in the statement that preliminary studies indicate that among the mummies, “some died at a young age, and some died from infancy to adulthood.”

She added that “some of them suffered from infectious diseases.”