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Egypt's Antiquities Ministry says archaeologists have uncovered part of an ancient cemetery near the country's famed pyramids on the Giza plateau just outside Cairo.

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Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, says Saturday the cemetery houses burial shafts and tombs of top officials and a fine limestone statue from the Old Kingdom's Fifth Dynasty (2465-2323 B.C.).

Ashraf Mohi, the head of the Giza Plateau archaeological site, says scientists know that the cemetery had been reused extensively in the Late Period (664-332 B.C.), as archeologists found painted and decorated wooden anthropoid coffins, and wooden and clay funerary masks from that period.

Egypt has touted a series of archaeological finds recently, hoping such discoveries will spur tourism, which suffered a major setback during the unrest that followed the 2011 uprising.