Spectacular 2,000-year-old treasures found in Axum, Tigrai State

Tigrai Online, June 7, 2015

Archaeologists found spectacular ancient 2,000-year-old treasures in Axum, Tigrai State northern Ethiopia.

Louise Schofield, a former British Museum curator, headed a major six-week excavation of the ancient city of Aksum where her team of 11 uncovered graves with “extraordinary” artefacts dating from the first and second centuries. They offer evidence that the Romans were trading there hundreds of years earlier than previously thought.

Schofield told the Observer: “Every day we had shed-loads of treasure coming out of all the graves. I was blown away: I’d been confident we’d find something, but not on this scale.”

She was particularly excited about the grave of a woman she has named “Sleeping Beauty”. The way the body and its grave goods had been positioned suggest that she had been beautiful and much-loved.

Source: The guardian - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/07/ancient-ethiopia-gravesite-treasure-rome