It is not a mass grave, but it is both a very large cemetery and an extraordinary mummy repository. The ancient site is Fag el-Gamous in Egypt, and the occupants were not mummified on purpose. Researchers have been digging in the site for the past three decades to unearth what they estimate to be more than one million mummified bodies. They have a long way to go before the site is completely excavated.

Fag el-Gamous translates to mean “Way of the Water Buffalo,” a name that is derived from a nearby roadway. Brigham Young University archaeologists have determined that the many of the mummies at the site date to around the time of when the Roman or Byzantine Empire occupied Egypt, perhaps anywhere from the first to the seventh century A.D.

“We are fairly certain we have over a million burials within this cemetery,” said project director Kerry Muhlestein, associate professor in BYU’s Department of Ancient Scripture. “It’s large, and it’s dense.”

Muhlestein presented work accomplished under the project at the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities Scholars Colloquium held last month in Toronto. Muhlestein indicated that the people buried at the site were not mummified the way ancient Egyptian rulers were mummified. Rather, it was likely the region’s arid conditions that led to the excellent preservation of the corpses.

“I don’t think you would term what happens to these burials as true mummification,” Muhlestein said. “If we want to use the term loosely, then they were mummified.”

One peculiarity found at the site is that there are clusters of bodies that have similar hair colors. Blond-haired mummies were buried together, red-haired mummies were buried together elsewhere, and so on. Muhlestein and colleagues can only speculate as to why.

The research team also found a mummy of a man who originally stood over seven feet tall, which is considered an extreme rarity for the time period. To date, more than 1,000 individual mummies have been excavated, and the archaeologists are now faced with a huge publishing backlog.

Muhlestein lamented, “We have a large publishing backlog; we’re trying to catch up on making our colleagues and the public aware.”