Excavators Examining Ancient Egyptian Tombs Found That Even the Super-rich Suffered from Disease and Malnutrition

• Hundreds of ancient tombs in Aswan, Egypt, contain mummified remains and artifacts.

• Archaeologists have recently found evidence of the diseases the inhabitants suffered from when they died.

• Experts have excavated only a fraction of the necropolis; hundreds of tombs remain undiscovered.

Egyptians were mummifying their dead long before the pyramids. And some of those tombs are still there, filled with food, art, treasures and bodies that are still well-preserved, more than 2,000 years later.

A hilltop cemetery in Aswan, Egypt, is one such place. Not far from the Nile, the ancient necropolis offers a place to "get to know better our ancestors and the people of the past who are not so different from us," Egyptologist Patrizia Piacentini told Business Insider.

Piacentini is part of an excavation team that has been studying the tombs in recent years as part of a joint project between Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Italy's University of Milan.

The team made many astonishing finds, including a stretcher that may have been used to carry bodies to the graves and jars of bitumen, a tar-like substance sometimes used in mummification.

Recently, the excavators have focused on the mummified remains. Using X-rays and CT scans of the bodies, they have discovered how some likely died. Even among the wealthy elite, anemia, malnutrition and other diseases were common, the team found.

Photos from the site show the team excavating the ancient graves and some of the artifacts and mummified bodies they found.

The necropolis is located near the modern mausoleum of the Aga Khan.

Thousands of years ago, locals carved the tombs out of the hillside rock. They used the area as a burial ground for almost a millennium, starting in the 6th century BC, centuries before the construction of the pyramids of Egypt.

The necropolis is vast, covering over 90,000 square meters, about the size of 17 American football fields. However, scientists have only searched 33 of the estimated 300 to 400 graves.

The necropolis was built for the upper classes.

The mound contains eight to ten terraces or levels, and the wealthiest people in society are buried on top of the mound.

"We have, for example, a general of the army of Aswan and the custodian of temples," Piacentini said. "So very, very high positions." The burial equipment in these tombs also tends to be more valuable, she said.

The graves show no evidence of the poorer classes, Piacentini said. They would likely have been buried in simpler graves in the desert.

Thieves plundered the graves and stole many valuables.

The team of excavators is not the first to discover this ancient site. These upper-class graves were likely once filled with precious metal objects and other valuable items, but researchers rarely find anything like them. Centuries ago, grave robbers likely took them, Piacentini said.

However, there are still plenty of artifacts left for Piacentini and her team to discover, including wooden statues, clay figurines, oil lamps and other objects.

A common item in many of the tombs is cartonnage, a type of plaster made from papyrus. Ancient Egyptians often covered bodies in casts made from the plaster and decorated them. This image shows a cartonnage coffin cover found in the tomb.

Today, there is a market for stolen cardboard boxes, and illegal excavators were searching for the tombs before the Egyptian government took over the site, Ahram Online reported in 2015.

Objects left behind in the graves provide valuable insights about the dead.

In addition to the cartonnage masks depicted here, the people of Aswan also filled the graves of their relatives with figs or dates in vases.

"These were the offerings made to the dead," Piacentini said.

To dig up a grave, you need a team of researchers.

Chemists, paleobotanists and bioarchaeologists are examining all aspects of the graves, from mummy wrappings to plant remains and animal bones.

"Our mission is an interdisciplinary mission," Piacentini said, adding that there is much more to learn.

The process is so slow and careful that the team can study only a handful of graves each year, Piacentini said.

Experts use technology to virtually unpack mummified remains.

In the past, excavators would remove the wrappings from bodies to examine them. Now, experts use CT scans and X-ray machines to "virtually unwrap" mummified remains.

This could help researchers gain new information about mummification techniques. For example, two children had rods between their vertebrae to keep their bodies perfectly straight after death, Piacentini said.

Even the rich and privileged could not escape a great many diseases.

Initial research findings from several experts indicated that between 30% and 40% of the people in the graves were children, ranging from newborns to teenagers.

Many people, including the wealthy, showed signs of anemia, malnutrition and other diseases. According to the researchers, entire families may have died from tuberculosis.

Besides disease, childbirth was a common cause of death, for both mother and child, across all social classes.

The necropolis is a city for eternity.

While some call the Aswan necropolis a "city of the dead," Piacentini prefers to see it as a city for eternity. "They wanted to live forever," she said. "And they did it because we discovered them. We studied them."

And there is still plenty of the necropolis unexplored, so the excavations will continue. "It will last forever," she said.

Read the original article on Business Insider