Mystery coffins opened in 2,500-year-old tomb

Chinese archaeologists are to excavate a 2,500-year-old tomb containing 47 coffins made of a kind of rare wood called nanmu in Lijia village in Jing'an county, east China's Jiangxi Province on July 1, 2007. The tomb, which is 16 meters long, about 11.5 meters wide and 3 meters deep and believed to date back to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770 B.C.-221 B.C.), is the largest group of coffins ever discovered in a single one.

Chinese archaeologists clean the mud of one of 47 coffins in a 2,500-year-old tomb in Lijia village in Jing'an county, east China's Jiangxi Province on July 1, 2007.

Chinese archaeologists excavate a 2,500-year-old tomb containing 47 coffins made of a kind of rare wood called nanmu in Lijia village in Jing'an county, east China's Jiangxi Province on July 1, 2007.

Chinese archaeologists clean the mud of one of 47 coffins of a 2,500-year-old tomb in Lijia village in Jing'an county, east China's Jiangxi Province on July 1, 2007.