The BBC's Daniela Relph: Magnificent designs

The burial ground, near a desert oasis, is believed to contain more than 10,000 mummies, making it the biggest ever uncovered, Egypt's Middle East News Agency said.

The area, within the city of Bawiti, 300 kilometres (185 miles) southwest of Cairo, has been renamed "Valley of the Mummies", it added.

Fifty mummies were found in each of four rooms in the six-mile long cemetery which dates back to the early Graeco-Roman era 2,000 years ago.

They included wealthy people and some rulers, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said.

'Magnificent designs'

Cairo and Giza antiquities director Zahi Hawass said the first 200 mummies were uncovered after a four-year excavation.

Barbara Plett: "Egypt has so many mummies, the antiquities department sometimes can't keep up"

He told the news agency that some of the mummies wore golden masks ''with magnificent designs of ancient Egyptian divinities on their chests''.

Others were coated in plaster or covered with linen and some lay in terracotta sarcophagi bearing representations of the human head.

Mr Hawass said work would continue until the rest were uncovered.