In February 2021 a mummy with a golden tongue was found by a team of Egyptian and Dominican antiquities experts from the University of Santo Domingo led by Kathleen Martinez digging at Alexandria’s Taposiris Magna temple. They discovered 16 burials in rock-cut tombs in western Alexandria. The researchers said they are not sure why the tongue was made out of gold specifically, though.
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| Image Credit: BBC.com |
The tombs in which the golden-tongued mummies were found are thought to date back 2,000 years and were popular in ancient Greek and Roman eras, also the skeleton was found to be well-preserved, as its skull and most of its structure is still intact. Archaeologists dug it out of the rock-cut tomb and were met with the still shining gold object inside of the skeleton's mouth.
While the 16 mummies that were found were not well preserved, they still featured a number of distinctions, despite being around 2,000 years old or possible older.
Within the tombs were a number of mummies and although the remains have since deteriorated, the stone funeral masks are still intact - allowing the team to see what each person may have once looked like.
The archaeologists team speculates that after the person's tongue was removed during embalming it was replaced with the object so the deceased could speak to Osiris in the afterlife.
Osiris is the Egyptian 'Lord of the Underworld' and judge of the dead - one of the most important gods of ancient Egypt.
The god was also pictured in gilded decorations on the cartonnage - a material made of layers of plaster, linen and glue - that was partially encasing one of the mummies, lead archaeologist Kathleen Martinez of the University of Santo Domingo was cited by the antiquities ministry as saying.
The gilded decorations on the cartonnage around a second mummy's head depicted a crown, horns and a cobra snake, she added. On the chest, the decorations depicted a necklace from which hung the head of a falcon - the symbol of the god Horus.
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