From State Information Service (Link to article)
5,000 year old cemetery has been unearthed in Sohag governorate, Upper Egypt, officials said on Saturday 5/7/2008.
The cemetery is believed to be of senior royal staffers or persons who participated in the establishment of the royal tombs. It contains 13 tombs.
The cemetery was discovered by a mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Umm el-Ga’ab area, south of Sohag’s Abydos archaeological city.
The mission also found a group of wooden caskets, containing embalmed remains, as well as a “Senet” game which resembles chess.
This is the second time an ancient Egyptian Senet game is discovered. The first was found in King Tutankhamen’s tomb.
The 5,000 year age given for these discoveries would put them in the Early Dynastic time frame (Dyn. 1 to 3). The Sohag name here applies to the province. The actual discoveries took place in Abydos.
Note that the statement that this is only the second time a senet board has been discovered, is, to the best of my knowledge, incorrect. Other boards have been found, including one belonging to Amunhotep III (Brooklyn Museum), as well as a more modest version from the New Kingdom in the British Museum, and another at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose in the United States, to name a few. None of these were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, as far as I am aware.
