The joint Egyptian-Italian mission working in the vicinity of the Mausoleum of Aga Khan, west of Aswan, unearthed a rock-cut tomb dating back to the Greco-Roman era during the mission’s work in the last excavation season.
The tomb consists of two parts, the first part is above the ground and the second is carved into the rock.
Abdel Moneim Said Mahmoud, the General Director of Aswan and Nubia Antiquities and the Head of the Mission from the Egyptian side, explained that the first part is a rectangular building containing an entrance built above ground from sandstone blocks covered by a vault of mud bricks.
As for the second part, Mahmoud said that it is carved out of rock, and the entrance leads to a rectangular courtyard where four burial chambers were carved, in which nearly 20 mummies were found, most of them in a good state of preservation. Preliminary studies have indicated that this crypt contains more than one family.
Patricia Biasentini, a professor of Egyptology at the University of Milan and the Head of the Mission from the Italian side, indicated that the mission found many archaeological artifacts inside the cemetery that date back to the Greco-Roman era, including offering tables, stone panels with texts in hieroglyphic script, and a copper necklace decorated with Greek writings and the name (Nicostratus), in addition to a number of wooden statues of the Ba bird and parts of coloured cartonnage.
It is worth noting that coloured cartonnage is the material used in funerary masks.
During the archaeological survey of the area, a number of coffins were found in a well-preserved condition, some of which were made of pottery and others of sandstone.
