Archaeologists have uncovered predynastic tombs that date back to before the times of Egypt’s pharaohs.
The tombs are over 5,000-years-old and were discovered where the Nile River drains into the Mediterranean Sea, the Jerusalem Post reported.
An excavation team was working in the Dakahlia province when the graves were unearthed from two different eras. Sixty-eighttombs were from 3300 B.C. during the Buto period and five were from around 3100 B.C. during the Naqada III period, according to Arab News.
“This is an extremely interesting cemetery because it combines some of the earliest periods of Egyptian history with another important era, the time of the Hyksos,” Egyptologist Salima Ikram told Arab News.
Thirty-seven of the 110 tombs are from the Hyksos period when Palestinian immigrants traveled to Egypt during the 18th century B.C.
“Egyptologists are working to understand how the Egyptians and the Hyksos lived together and to what degree the former took on Egyptian traditions,” Ikram said.
