Out of Egypt comes word of a very exciting discovery. The office of Zahi Hawass blogs it with great photos.

A mission from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of Warsaw University unearthed a decorated clay vessel from a room in a monastic building at the Deir Malak Gubrail monastery in Naqlun, a site in the Fayum.

The vessel is of Aswan production and contained a hoard of coins, Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s Minister of Culture, announced today.

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the hoard consists of 18 gold coins and 62 fragments of coins, all of them provisionally dated to the Abbasid period (AD 750-1258). Under the charred remains of a collapsed wall, archaeologists also uncovered a chandelier and a well-preserved oil lamp, both made of bronze.

Wlodzimierz Godlewski, the head of the Polish mission, said that the monastic complex of Naqlun was built in the early 6th century AD. The area excavated this season dated to the 7th century AD, and was destroyed by a massive fire around the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 9th century AD.