2,700-year-old golden skeleton found on Crete
Published on September 29th, 2010 | by Admin1
Excavator Nicholas Stampolidis said his team discovered more than 3,000 pieces of gold foil in the 7th-century B.C. twin grave near the ancient town of Eleutherna.
Cemeteries there have produced a wealth of outstanding artifacts in recent years.
The tiny gold ornaments, from 1 to 4 centimetres (0.4 to 1.5 inches) long, had been sewn onto a lavish robe or shroud that initially wrapped the body of a woman and has almost completely rotted away but for a few off-white threads.
“The whole length of the (grave) was covered with small pieces of gold foil — square, circular and lozenge-shaped,” Stampolidis told The Associated Press. “We were literally digging up gold interspersed with earth, not earth with some gold in it.”
The woman, who presumably had a high social or religious status, was buried with a second skeleton in a large jar sealed with a stone slab weighing more than half a ton. It was hidden behind a false wall, to confuse grave robbers.