Egypt's Sealed Tombs Held a Strange Gift for the Dead: Gold Tongues to Speak to the Gods
Before the dead could pass into the underworld, they needed to speak. That is the belief encoded in one of the more striking finds to emerge from a newly announced excavation at Marina el-Alamein, on Egypt's Mediterranean coast: 24 small gold amulets, each cut into the shape of a tongue and placed in the mouths of the deceased. The idea, practiced widely across Hellenistic and Roman-era Egypt, was practical in its own way — the dead needed a voice to answer the gods of the underworld and, above all, to address Osiris himself, lord of the afterlife and judge of souls. A sheet of gold, tucked between the lips, was thought to grant that voice.
Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery this week, crediting mission chief Eman Abdel-Khaliq and unveiled by Minister Sherif Fathy. The excavation uncovered 18 tombs at Marina el-Alamein, roughly 100 kilometers west of Alexandria — a site built on the ruins of the ancient city of Leukaspis. Eleven of the tombs are rock-cut, some reaching depths of nearly 8 meters, while seven more are surface tombs constructed of limestone. Several burial chambers were found still sealed since antiquity, offering archaeologists a rare, undisturbed look at how the city's residents prepared their dead for the journey beyond.
Art Institute of Chicago, CC0 (Public Domain) — Egyptian funerary mask (cartonnage, gold leaf, pigment), Late Ptolemaic–early Roman Period
That preparation tells a layered story. Marina el-Alamein flourished during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, when Greek and Roman rulers governed Egypt but its funerary customs remained stubbornly, unmistakably pharaonic. The gold tongues found in these tombs belong to a tradition stretching back millennia, in which small amulets — tongues, hearts, scarabs, eyes — were fashioned to protect and empower specific parts of the body in the afterlife. That Egyptians living under Greek and later Roman rule, centuries after Alexander's conquest, continued to bury their dead with these ancient charms speaks to how deeply the old religion persisted beneath a veneer of Hellenistic culture. Grave goods, mask styles, and burial architecture from this era often show the same fusion: a Greco-Roman sensibility layered over the older machinery of Egyptian belief in judgment, resurrection, and the power of the spoken word before the gods.
Art Institute of Chicago, CC0 (Public Domain) — Egyptian funerary mask flanked by Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, Late Ptolemaic–early Roman Period
That duality is visible, too, in funerary masks from the period, like those crafted from cartonnage and gilded to give the dead what one Egyptological tradition calls "the golden skin of a god." Such masks, sometimes flanked by images of Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, transformed the deceased into a divine likeness for the crossing — golden skin for a golden voice, in effect, since both were tools for meeting the gods on more equal footing.
Leukaspis itself did not survive antiquity. Historical and geological research has tied the city's destruction to a catastrophic tsunami in 365 CE, triggered by the great earthquake centered near Crete that devastated coastlines across the eastern Mediterranean. The city that once buried its dead with such careful ritual was, centuries later, swallowed by the same sea its residents had watched over from the coast.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0/Public Domain — ancient Egyptian gold-sheet funerary amulet, Late Period
For now, the tombs at Marina el-Alamein remain under study, with further excavation expected to continue revealing how the people of Leukaspis lived — and how carefully they equipped themselves to be heard in death.
Sources : ARTnews /Ahram Online
