CAIRO — The Egyptian-Dominican mission of the University of Santo Domingo headed by archaeologist Kathleen Martinez, working at the Taposiris Magna Temple to the west of Alexandria, has discovered 16 burial chambers in stone-carved tombs, which are wall burial holes that were popular in the Greco-Roman era.

The mission also discovered several tombs that contained mummies in poor preservation condition, which is characteristic of mummification in the Greco-Roman era. Remains of gilded cartonnage were found in addition to tongue-shaped gold foil amulets that were placed in the mouths of the dead, a ritual that would allow them to speak in the afterlife before the Osirian court, according to ancient beliefs.

Two of these mummies were particularly important as they still had some bandages and parts of the cartonnage layer; the first mummy still had remains of gilding and bore gilded drawings of Osiris, the god of the underworld, while the other mummy wore the Atef crown, adorned with horns and a cobra snake at the forehead, as well as gilded drawings on the chest area showing a wide necklace with a falcon head, the symbol of the deity Horus.

The Egyptian-Dominican mission has had quite a number of archaeological finds since it started its excavation works 10 years ago, including a funeral mask of a woman, eight gold foil leaves from a wreath, and eight marble masks dating back to the Greco-Roman era, depicting the features of their owners in detail.