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Gold tongues, nails found in Ptolemaic tombs
A joint Spanish and Egyptian archaeological mission excavating the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus near Al-Bahansa, 100 miles south of Cairo, has unearthed 52 Ptolemaic-era mummies, 13 of which had gold tongues still in their mouths, and one of which also had gold fingernails. The gold tongues and nails were meant to enhance their speech and gestures to appeal to Osiris and the other gods adjudicating their entry into the afterlife. These are the first golden tongues and nails discovered at the Al-Bahansa site.
Archaeologists from the University of Barcelona and the Institute of the Ancient Middle East have been excavating ancient Oxyrhynchus since 1992. Some of the ritual texts and deities in some of the wall paintings unearthed in this season’s excavation are the first examples of their kind found in the Bahansa Archaeological Region. They are a major new source of information about the religious practices in the area during the Ptolemaic period (305–30 B.C.).
The team discovered a rectangular stone burial shaft that led to a tomb with a vaulted ceiling and three chambers. Some 300 mummies were found side by side in the chambers, evidence of communal burial. Another group of funerary chambers were found in an adjacent burial shaft, one of which was decorated with brightly colored hieroglyphic inscriptions and wall paintings identifying the tomb’s owner as a man named Wen Nefer. The paintings depict Wen Nefer and his family making offerings to deities Anubis, Osiris, Atum, Horus and Thoth. The ceiling is painted with a celestial scene of a white, topless goddess Nut against a blue background surrounded by stars. Sacred boats carry deities including Ra, Khepri and Atum. The chamber also contained four limestone sarcophagi.
A particularly important painted scene features the deceased being embalmed by Anubis. The face of the mummy is coated in a thin but completely opaque layer of shiny gold. The faces of Osiris, Isis and Nephthys in front of and behind the deceased are also painted in gold. Gold-painted faces like these have never been found before at Oxyrhynchus.
One tomb contained the remains of an adult female. It was looted in antiquity shortly after she was buried, but the thieves missed some of the portable treasure. Archaeologists found beads, a headrest amulet, a figurine of the god Horus and two more gold tongues.
Another tomb was still sealed when archaeologists discovered it. It contained a sarcophagus with the mummified remains of an adult male with a gold tongue. The team also found a heart scarab amulet still in situ — a very rare discovery — four canopic jars holding his embalmed organs and 400 pieces of funerary pottery, including amulets, Djed pillars, Wadjet eyes and figurines of deities. The inscriptions on the canopic vessels are currently being studied and translated. They will likely identify the deceased.
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