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Ancient Mummies Discovered Floating In Egyptian Canal

Ancient Mummies Discovered Floating In Egyptian Canal

The world's canals can attract all sorts of old indestructable items, from plastic bags to styrofoam cups. But if you're in Egypt that can apparently include your occasional floating sarcophagus.

Madr Masr reports that Egypt's Antiquities Ministry has launched an investigation into the mysterious discovery last Friday of three ancient wooden coffins carrying sarcophagi drifting down an irrigation canal in the Egyptian village of Auda Basha.

Government officials have dated the artifacts to Egypt's Greco-Roman period, from 332 BC to AD 395.

How the coffins carrying the mummified remains came to be floating down the canal is still thoroughly unclear, though Youssef Khalifa, the ministry's chief of Egyptian artifacts, told Madr Masr that they may have been unearthed in an illegal excavation, and then tossed into the canal by treasure hunters who feared being caught.

"The robbers may have resorted to dumping these sarcophagi in the irrigation canal when they felt that authorities were closing in on them, or perhaps when they were approaching a security checkpoint," Khalifa told Madr Masr.

An Egyptian mummy in the Vatican Museums — Photo: Joshua Sherurcij

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

Ukrainians In Occupied Territories Are Being Forced To Get Russian Passports

Reports have emerged of children, retirees, and workers being forced by the Russian military and occupying administration to obtain Russian Federation passports, or face prison, beating or loss of public benefits.

Image of a hand holding a red Russian passport.

Russian passport

Iryna Gamaliy

It's referred to as: "forced passportization." Reports are accumulating of police and local authorities in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine requiring that locals obtain Russian passports. Now new evidence has emerged that Ukrainians are indeed being coerced into changing their citizenship, or risk retribution from occupying authorities.

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Ever since late September, when President Vladimir Putin announced Russia hadd unilaterally annexed four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson), Moscow has been seeking ways to legitimize the unrecognized annexation. The spreading of Russian passports is seen as an attempt to demonstrate that there is support among the Ukrainian population to be part of Russia.

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