A golden tongue would not be uncommon in elite burials during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, said Lorelei H. Corcoran, director of the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archeology at the University of Memphis.
“In an Egyptian funerary context, his reference is Spell 158 from the Book of the Dead, which ensures that the deceased has the ability to breathe and speak, as well as eat and drink, in the afterlife,” added Dr. Corcoran. “This can be confused with the Greek funerary practice of putting a coin in the mouth of the deceased as payment for the boatman, Charon, who transported the deceased across the River Styx to the Underworld.”
The team of archaeologists who found the 16 tombs at Taposiris Magna was led by Kathleen Martinez, a lawyer who became an amateur archaeologist in the Dominican Republic. The team has worked for years to find Cleopatra’s tomb and has focused its efforts on Taposiris Magna.
But the cemetery of the famous queen, who reigned from Alexandria and said she died there, has not yet appeared.
“The stated objective of the Egyptian-Dominican mission is to find Cleopatra’s tomb at Taposiris Magna,” said Dr. Corcoran. “Many scholars believe, however, that Cleopatra’s tomb was inside a royal cemetery, perhaps associated with the palace district, now lost underwater in the port of Alexandria.
Representatives from the Egyptian tourism ministry did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the 16 tombs at Taposiris Magna. Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that two gold languages were found there and would be studied at the National Museum of Alexandria before being displayed in museums across Egypt.
The latest discovery comes at a time when Egypt is making a concerted effort to attract visitors to the country, which depends heavily on tourism. In recent years, archaeologists have unearthed more than 100 delicately painted wooden coffins in the old cemetery in Saqqara, a 4,400-year-old tomb with rare paintings on the walls near Cairo and the remains of a colossal pharaonic statue in the working-class neighborhood of Matariya.