Another City of the Dead

This one lies in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Complete with mummies (of course!). It's not a new discovery--this is a travel article. What better way to spend your next holiday or vacation by digging up old friends! CNN's Paul Sussman gives a great first-person account of his own expedition.

FTA:

A few years back, when I was working as part of an archaeological mission in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, I unearthed a slab of white limestone covered in ancient paint smears. More of that later. First, however, I should tell you about the 3,000 year-old gold jewelry.

I found the jewelry in a tomb known as KV56 (all burials in the Valley of the Kings are designated with a KV number, the most famous being KV62 -- Tutankhamun).

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Among other objects, we pulled out a series of lotus-shaped gold necklace pendants, a miniature beaten-gold head of the goddess Hathor and a rectangular gold pectoral (chest-plate) link stamped with the cartouche, or royal name, of the pharaoh Seti ll (Davis had found 13 similar links which can now be viewed in the Cairo Museum). Exquisitely worked and perfectly preserved, these objects were the first, and to date only items of jewelry to have been found in the Valley since Howard Carter unearthed Tutankhamun in 1922.

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Necropolis Unearthed!

This is a page right out of the Mummy. A veritable "city of the dead" was discovered recently. From the Boston Globe:

ROME - Workers renovating a rugby stadium have uncovered a vast complex of tombs beneath Rome that mimic the houses, blocks and streets of a real city, officials said yesterday as they unveiled a series of new finds here.

Culture Ministry officials said that medieval pottery shards in the city of the dead, or necropolis, show the area may have been inhabited by the living during the Dark Ages after being used for centuries for burials during the Roman period.

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Archeologists restoring the imperial residences on the Palatine Hill, the heart of ancient Rome, believe they have discovered the underground passageway in which the despotic Emperor Caligula was murdered by his own guards.

The hill, which is honeycombed with ruins of palaces and villas, has also yielded frescoes and black-and-white mosaics in the first century BC home of a patrician, the ministry said in a statement.

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BBC has their take...