Mummies with Golden Tongues (2021)
Archaeological expeditions in the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus (now El Bahnasa) uncovered two tombs from the later Ptolemaic era. The Ptolemaic era was when Egyptian culture was heavily influenced by Greek rule. The mummies found inside the tomb possessed gold leaf tongues placed in their mouth. The practice was based on an Egyptian belief that the gold tongue would allow the dead to speak to the god of the underworld, Osiris. One of the tombs, containing a woman and a child, contained two such tongues along with jewelry and statuary. The other tomb, that of a man, had never been opened. It held a mummy so well preserved that the tongue was still in his mouth, along with canopic jars, amulets, and roughly 400 pieces of faience.