Discovery
The mummies were found in the 'Asi-al Hadath cave located in the Kadisha Valley in Lebanon, on July 13, 1990 by a group of speleologists working with the Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches Souterraines du Liban (GERSL). The find was the result of two years of excavation. Initially, the discovery consisted of a single four-month-old infant mummy.
The infant was named Yasmine by her discoverers. The infant was clothed and fully interred only 40 cm below ground, she was laid on her back alone in the grave, her head resting on a smooth stone. Yasmine was carefully wrapped in gauze by the team and transported from the grotto to the laboratory.
Multiple other remains were found following the discovering, include seven bodies (four infants and three adults) as well as skeletal remains of several others.
Read more about this topic: Maronite Mummies
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)