and overseers lived in larger houses up the hill. A major feature of the town was the so-called "acropolis" building. This was an important building, as indicated by the presence of column bases. Petrie suggested that this may have been the King’s residence whilst he was visiting construction work. The building seems to have been out of use and derelict before the end of occupation. Other records show that there were a large number of Semitic slaves in Egypt during the Twelfth Dynasty. It is interesting that some of the villas were constructed of layers of mudbrick separated by layers of reed matting, a technique used in Mesopotamia. Furthermore, burial beneath the living quarters of a house was a custom noted at Ur by Woolley. It is possible that the workers who were so carefully guarded by the village wall and separated from the overseers by an equally strong wall were Semitic (Asiatic) slaves not trusted by their overseers. Discoveries It was announced by the Supreme Council of Antiquities on 26 April 2009 that an anthology of pharaonic-era mummies in vividly painted wooden coffins were uncovered near the Lahun pyramid in Egypt. The sarcophagi were decorated with bright hues of green, red and white bearing images of their occupants. Archaeologists unearthed dozens of mummies, thirty of which were very well preserved with prayers purposed to help the deceased in the afterlife inscribed upon them. The site, once enveloped in slabs of white limestone, revealed that it could possibly be thousands of years older than previously thought. Experts think that a new understanding of Egyptian funerary architecture and customs of the Middle Kingdom all the way to the Roman era could be learned from the exploration of the dozens of tombs encompassing the site near the Lahun, Egypt’s southernmost pyramid. "The tombs were cut on the rock itself, and they vary in architectural designs," said archaeologist Abdel Rahman El-Aydi, head of excavations at the site. Some of the tombs were erected on top of gravesites from earlier eras. Ayedi told reporters: "The prevailing idea was that this site has been established by Senusret II, the fourth king of the 12th Dynasty. But in light of our discovery, I think we are going to change this theory, and soon we will announce another discovery." He said that teams had made a discovery of an artefact that was dated earlier than the 12th