Archaeologists carrying out routine excavations at Lahoun in Fayoum last week chanced upon what is believed to be an ancient Egyptian cemetery. The Egyptian team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) found 45 tombs from different times in the Pharaonic era, each tomb containing a painted wooden sarcophagus with the mummy of the deceased still inside it.

SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass said that during the course of the excavation work the mission unearthed a tomb dating from the 18th-Dynasty (1550-1295 BC) containing 12 wooden sarcophagi stacked on top of one another. Each sarcophagus contained a well-preserved mummy. The mummies were covered in cartonnage decorated with religious texts from the Book of the Dead and scenes featuring various ancient Egyptian deities.

The mission also discovered four other cemeteries; the first dating from the First and Second dynasties (ca. 2750-2649 BC), the second from the Middle Kingdom (2030-1660 BC) and the third and fourth from the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC) and The Late Period (724-343 BC). Abdel-Rahman El-Aydi, head of the archaeological mission, pointed out that the First and Second-Dynasty cemeteries contained 14 tombs, one of which was almost completely intact and included all its funerary equipment together with a wooden sarcophagus containing a mummy wrapped in linen.

The Middle and New Kingdom cemeteries contain 31 tombs, most of which date from the 11th and 12th dynasties (2030-1840 BC). Each tomb contains a painted wooden sarcophagus bearing a mummy covered with cartonnage decorated with religious texts that help the deceased to cross through to the other world, as well as scenes of various deities such as Horus, Hathor, Khnum and Amun.

Another find came at each of the four corners of the temple built by King Senusert II of the Middle Kingdom, where the mission located four shafts filled with a large number of clay vessels.

Last year the same mission found 53 stone tombs dating from the Middle and New Kingdoms as well as from the Late Period and the Roman era.