2000-year-old mummy with a gold tongue unearthed in Egypt

Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a 2000-year-old mummy bearing a tongue made of gold along with 15 other burials in rock-cut tombs at an ancient Egyptian site called Taposiris Magna.

The team led by Dr. Kathleen Martinez surmise that the person's tongue may have been removed during embalming while replacing it with a golden tongue so that the deceased could talk to Osiris - The god of the dead - in their afterlife.

Osiris is said to rule over the underworld and would judge the spirits of those who had died. According to beliefs, the individual with the gold tongue would have the ability to speak to Osiris upon arriving in the afterlife.

A team of archaeologists and the University of Santo Domingo are conducting the excavation and have been working on the site for almost a decade.

Dating back to some 2000 years, burial shafts were famous in ancient Greek and Roman civilisation, holding remains inside of a mountain or natural rocky mountain.

Although the remains of the mummies in the tombs have since deteriorated, the stone funeral masks are still undamaged, allowing the excavation team to see what each person may have once looked like. 

The skeleton with the gold tongue was found to be well-preserved, as its skull and most of its structure are still intact.

The other burials were not as preserved, but Dr. Martinez uncovered a number of statues and luxurious trinkets which are still unharmed, allowing experts to know more about the people of that era. The statues are so well-preserved that the individual's hairstyles and headdresses can be noticed.

In one of the 15 burials, a female mummy is seen wearing a death mask that covers much of her body which depicts her with a headdress while smiling.  

Previously, the team had unearthed several coins etched with the face of Queen Cleopatra VII inside the Temple of Taposiris Magna, which hints that she ruled when many of the individuals were laid to rest in their rock-cut tombs.