<p>One of 40 sarcophagi that were discovered in a large cemetery in Egypt's Minya province, just south of Cairo.</p>

One of 40 sarcophagi that were discovered in a large cemetery in Egypt's Minya province, just south of Cairo.

Photograph by Fayed El-Geziry, NurPhoto/Getty

See Inside This Newly Discovered Ancient Egyptian Cemetery

Artifacts found inside the network of tombs suggest it contains a priest of the ancient Egyptian deity Thoth.

"This is only the beginning of a new discovery," Egypt's Antiquities Minister, Khaled al-Anani, said in a statement.

He added that excavators will need at least five years to uncover the large, ancient necropolis whose discovery was announced over the weekend.

The series of eight tombs contain burial shafts that date back to the region's Pharaonic Late Period, which began in 672 B.C., to the Ptolemaic dynasty, which began in 332 B.C. The tombs were found in a city called Minya, just south of Cairo, in a part of the city called Tuna al-Gabal that contains known burials and catacombs.

Several artifacts and human remains were found, but among the most impressive is a mummy decorated with a bronze

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