Ancient tomb of a couple unearthed

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 ◆ Ancient tomb of a couple unearthed

Two weeks after their discovery of a 2,000-year-old, well-preserved female corpse, archeologists in the port city of Lianyungang in east China's Jiangsu province, have dug up another tomb -- this time holding the remains of a man and his wife.

Two caskets were found side by side in the newly excavated tomb, said Xiang Jianyun, an archeologist at the Liaoyungang Municipal Museum recently.

An intact jawbone, sword sheaths and a bronze mirror were found in one of the caskets, believed to have held the husband's remains.

After a preliminary study of the jawbone, Xiang was able to tell the man must have been old when he died.

In what was thought to be his wife's casket, archeologists found a little bronze mirror, a broken wooden comb and a string of rusted copper coins.

Several different-sized wooden figurines were also unearthed from the tomb, according to a source at the construction site in Garden Road, Haizhou District, where the tomb was excavated recently.

Archeologists are working to determine whether the tomb is in any way related to the female corpse discovered on July 8 in another tomb just four meters away.

Both tombs are believed to date from the Western Han Dynasty (BC 206 - AD 24).

Earlier reports said that the 2,000-year-old female body still had elastic muscle tissue after being immersed in alkaline fluid in her coffin.