Ammon News - Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered two human and animal embalming workshops, as well as two tombs, in the Saqqara Necropolis south of Cairo, the government said on Saturday.

Located at the ancient Egyptian capital Memphis, the vast burial site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to more than a dozen pyramids, animal graves and old Coptic Christian monasteries.

Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters the embalming workshops, where humans and animals were mummified, “date back to the 30th dynasty” which reigned about 2,400 years ago.

Researchers “found several rooms equipped with stony beds where the deceased lay down for mummification”, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said.

Each bed ended in gutters to facilitate the mummification process, with a collection of clay pots nearby to hold entrails and organs, as well as a collection of instruments and ritual vessels.

Early studies of one workshop suggest it was used for the “mummification of sacred animals”.

The discovery also includes the tombs of two priests dating back to the 24th and 14th centuries BC, respectively.

The first belonged to Ne Hesut Ba, who served the Fifth Dynasty as the head of scribes and priest of the Gods Horus and Maat.

The tomb walls are decorated with depictions of “daily life, agriculture and hunting scenes”, said Mohamed Youssef, director of the Saqqara archaeological site.

The second tomb, that of a priest named Men Kheber, was carved in rock and features depictions of the deceased himself on the tomb walls, as well as in a 1 metre-long (3-foot) alabaster statue, Youssef told reporters.

Aljazeera