Mysterious, 3,000-year-old footprints of ancient Egyptian children have emerged alongside rare painting fragments, at what appears to be the site of a royal palace or temple.

The prints were uncovered at the remains of a large building in the fabled Pi-Ramesse, a city which was Egypt's capital during the reign of the King Ramses II.

Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities department, described the building complex as "truly monumental."

"It is likely to be a temple or a palace," he said.

As they excavated the structure, a team of archaeologists from the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany, found a mortar pit measuring approximately 8 by 26 feet.

At the bottom of the pit, a layer of mortar was still present, etched with the small prints.

"The children's footprints had a size of 15-17 centimeters (5.9 – 6.6 inches) , thus relating to children between 3 and 5 years of age if one follows charts for modern children," Henning Franzmeier, field director of the Qantir-Piramesse project in Egypt's Nile Delta, told Seeker.

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The archaeologists cannot yet say if there was more than one child.

"The differences in size are not big enough for us to clearly differentiate. And they are also not so well preserved that we could distinguish so far any other features of the feet," Franzmeier said.

Built on an island in the easternmost Nile branch, some 65 miles northeast of Cairo, Pi-Ramesse (modern Qantir) flourished during the 66 years of Ramses II's reign and for more than a century after his death.

"The city had an extension of about 10 square miles, making it the one of the largest settlements of the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East," Franzmeier said.

However, toward the end of the 20th Dynasty the city began to decline, and in the 21st Dynasty (1075–950 BC) the capital was moved about 18 miles north to Tanis.