Fagg El Gamous (translated ''Way of the Buffalo'') is an ancient Egyptian cemetery located in the

Faiyum Governorate Faiyum Governorate ( ar, محافظة الفيوم ) is one of the governorates of Egypt in the middle of the country. Its capital is the city of Faiyum, located about 81 mi (130 km) south west of Cairo. It has a population of 3,848,70 ...

dating from the 1st to the 7th century AD, the period of Roman rule in Egypt. The cemetery was discovered by a team of archeologists from

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-d ...

in 1980. They were given sole responsibility for the excavation in 1981. The excavations are done under time-pressure due to threat of incursion by local farmers who wish to expand their fields across the cemetery. The skeletons and natural mummies (i.e. not the result of a professional mummification as used for royalty), seem to be common people; "The bodies have been well preserved, so the organs and remains are virtually complete. The preservation results from sealing in the moisture and the atmosphere of the burial spot."BYU Press release
/ref> By 2014, roughly 1,000 bodies had been excavated at the site. In 1988, it was noted by the researchers that the graveyard contained an unexpected number of blondes amongst the naturally mummified bodies, as well as oddities in tooth decay amongst the buried; "Of those whose hair was preserved 54% were blondes or redheads, and the percentage grows to 87% when light-brown hair color is added". In 2014, it was revealed that burials seem to be clustered by hair-colour, those with red-hair are in one area, those with blonde hair in another.

Controversy

In 2014, the BYU team claimed that the cemetery contains over a million

mummies A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay furt ...

. In an e-mail to ''Newsweek'', Kerry Muhlestein explained "In a square that is 5 by 5 meters across and usually just over 2 meters deep, we will typically find about 40 burials. The cemetery is very large and so far seems to maintain that kind of burial density throughout. Thus, the math suggests that there are over a million mummies in the cemetery, though we cannot be certain of this without further exploration and a thorough academic review process." The corpses were found buried in deep shafts cut into the limestone rock. The "million mummies" claim was promptly dismissed by Egyptian authorities, since the data reported to the press by the Brigham Young University team were only an estimate, and furthermore these were referring to burials, not necessarily mummies: indeed, the team has discovered many poorly preserved skeletons, ranging from a person 213 cm tall to an 18-month-old girl's remains, but the only real mummy ever found at Fagg El Gamous was unearthed in 1988. After working things out with Egyptian authorities, the team was granted renewed permission to excavate in mid January 2015.

Publications

Excavating a Christian Cemetery Near Selia, in the Fayum Region of Egypt
Excavations at Seila, Egypt, ed. C. Wilfred Griggs (1988)
Rethinking burial dates at a Graeco-Roman Cemetery: Fagg El Gamous, Fayoum, Egypt
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015)

References

{{coord missing, Egypt Cemeteries in Egypt