(MENAFN- Daily News Egypt) A team of archaeologists have claimed to have found an ancient cemetery that containing over 1 million mummies, according to the website "Live Science".
The Brigham Young University team from Utah in the US said they have been excavating the Egyptian cemetery, called "Fag El Gamous" and a nearby small pyramid for approximately 30 years.
The cemetery, which contains common rather than royal burials, goes back to when the Romans or Byzantine Empire ruled Egypt.
"The people buried in 'Fag El-Gamous' were often laid to rest without grave goods, and without coffins," said Kerry Muhlestein, Project Director and Associate Professor in the Department of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University.
The contradiction occurred when the facts of the American team opposed the ones of the Egyptian antiquities sector.
"We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery," said Muhlestein. "It's large, and it's dense."
"There's no way that cemetery has a million mummies, there are maximum a few thousand," said Yousef Khalifa, chairman of the Egyptian antiquities sector.
"Even if the cemetery is huge, it would take the bodies to be buried over each other and upon each other to fit in the space," said Khalifa. "Only one mummy was found in that cemetery in 1980, and the rest are just remains of old dead bodies."
"I don't think you would term what happens to these burials as true mummification," Muhlestein said. "If we want to use the term loosely, then they were mummified."
The team has yet to identify where the million mummies came from. Even though the burials are not of royal, quite precious materials were found buried with them, including glass.
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