18 ancient Egyptian tombs with dozens of gold 'tongues' discovered along the Mediterranean coast

Archaeologists have discovered 18 ancient tombs in an Egyptian town along the Mediterranean Sea.
The tombs ‪—‬ which were unearthed in Marina el-Alamein (also spelled Alamin), about 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of Alexandria ‪—‬ date to the Ptolemaic (322 to 30 B.C.) or Roman (30 B.C. to A.D. 395) period, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a translated statement announcing the find.
During the Ptolemaic period, Egypt was ruled by the descendants of one of Alexander the Great's generals, while the Roman period started with the death of Cleopatra VII, when Egypt became incorporated into the Roman Empire as a province.

The team noted that 11 of the tombs had been carved deep into the ground, while the seven others were located closer to the ground's surface. The tombs held many artifacts ‪—‬ most notably, 24 "gold tongues" that were likely put into the mouths of mummies, and an offering altar with a base designed to look like a false door.

"The false door is one of the oldest and most recognizable elements of ancient Egyptian funerary architecture. In traditional Egyptian belief, it symbolized the interface between the worlds of the living and the dead, through which the deceased could spiritually receive offerings presented by the living," Hesham Hussein, the undersecretary for Lower Egypt and Sinai archaeology at Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, told Live Science in an email.