Egypt Disputes 'Million Mummy' Discovery - Ministry of Antiquities orders work to stop at site, slams US team for making a 'million mummies' announcement. Says claims are false.

  

The Egyptian antiquities ministry has decided to halt its cooperation with an American mission working near Fayoum after accusing the mission of making false statements about the discovery of a necropolis.

According to a ministry statement, the decision comes after the Brigham Young University mission gave false information to a British newspaper about its excavations in Fag Al-Gamous village in Upper Egypt.

    

The BYU mission announced that its excavators were working in an ancient necropolis dating back some 2,000 years which contains an estimated one million burials. Press reports described the burials as mummies.

   

The mission has been working on the site for 28 years.
Head of the ministry's ancient Egyptian antiquities department, Youssef Khalifa, told Ahram Online that the statement made by the American mission is “unfounded.”

      

He said that only one mummy has been unearthed at the site, in 1980, and it is now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. What the mission has discovered, he continued, are thousands of human skeletons and remains of human bones which are very poorly conserved.

   

Khalifa also stated that the mission had failed to respect the ministry’s regulations and had broken the law, which stipulates that no foreign mission is allowed to announce a discovery without the approval of the ministry’s permanent committee.

 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF EGYPT

Prehistoric Egypt pre–3100 BC

Ancient Egypt

Early Dynastic Period 3100–2686 BC

Old Kingdom 2686–2181 BC

1st Intermediate Period 2181–2055 BC

Middle Kingdom 2055–1650 BC

2nd Intermediate Period 1650–1550 BC

New Kingdom* 1550–1069 BC

3rd Intermediate Period 1069–664 BC

Late Period 664–332 BC

Classical Antiquity

Achaemenid Egypt 525–332 BC

Ptolemaic Egypt 332–30 BC

Roman & Byzantine Egypt 30 BC–641 AD

Sassanid Egypt 621–629

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Ayyubid Egypt 1171–1250

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Khedivate of Egypt 1867–1914

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*Time period from which tomb KV 40 is believed to originate.