mol
June 17th, 2004, 11:25 AM
Twenty previously unexcavated tombs, which are several hundred years older than the great pyramids of Giza, are shedding light on the first complex societies on Earth.
Archaeologists have found ancient Egyptians up to 5000 years old curled up in the foetal position in what would have been ancient Egypt's first capital city, Memphis.
Dr Christiana Kohler of the Australian Centre for Egyptology at Sydney's Macquarie University and team unearthed the tombs during a recent excavation at Helwan, 25 kilometres south of Cairo.
"It's a veritable city of dead," said Kohler of the Helwan necropolis, which consists of 100 hectares of 10,000 tombs from Egypt's first and second dynasties.
More:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1133289.htm
Archaeologists have found ancient Egyptians up to 5000 years old curled up in the foetal position in what would have been ancient Egypt's first capital city, Memphis.
Dr Christiana Kohler of the Australian Centre for Egyptology at Sydney's Macquarie University and team unearthed the tombs during a recent excavation at Helwan, 25 kilometres south of Cairo.
"It's a veritable city of dead," said Kohler of the Helwan necropolis, which consists of 100 hectares of 10,000 tombs from Egypt's first and second dynasties.
More:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1133289.htm