Letters written by Ancient Roman generals have been found in a pet cemetery in Egypt

An ancient pet cemetery in Egypt is becoming a goldmine for rare Roman history. Along with the carefully constructed graves of more than 200 beloved cats, dogs and monkeys, archaeologists have uncovered letters handwritten 1,900 years ago by nearby Roman centurions.

Despite the fact that Rome controlled Egypt for many centuries - from the 30th to the mid-600s - few Roman burials have survived in the region, lead researcher Marta Osipińska, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Wrocław in Poland, tells Science in Poland correspondent Ewelina Krajczyńska. The burial ground, dating from the first and second centuries, is located in Berenike, a Red Sea port in southern Egypt built by the Roman emperor Tiberius.

Osipińska's team first discovered the cemetery in 2011 and has been slowly excavating it ever since. Among the burials of cats, dogs and exotic monkeys, the researchers found pottery, Roman coins and now several letters written on papyrus by military officers who commanded units of the Roman legions.

According to a statement from the University of Wrocław, these "invaluable sources of knowledge about the ancient inhabitants of Berenike" date back to the era of Emperor Nero, a brutal Roman ruler in the mid-first century. During his reign, Berenike was a center of intercontinental trade, through which goods from India, Arabia and East Africa passed, Osipińska said in a statement. The port was home to regional merchants, Roman high officials in charge of trade and, as historians have long speculated but never proved, to the Roman military.

The recently discovered correspondence includes several names of alleged Roman centurions: In one of the letters, Petronius asks Lucinius, who served at Berenice, about the prices of some exclusive goods, Osypińska tells Science in Poland. Petronius writes that he sends money through the "dromedarii," a unit of Roman soldiers traveling on camels, and asks Lucinius to supply the soldiers with veal and tenpoles.

Researchers believe ancient Romans likely stored the papyri in a nearby office that was later destroyed and accidentally spread its contents around a pet cemetery, writes McClatchy correspondent Aspen Pflughoft. The excavators found the papyrus in rolled-up fragments, which they showed to Rodney Asta, an expert on ancient inscriptions, who pieced together a page about a foot and a half long and a foot wide, Osypińska tells Science in Poland. Among the animal graves, researchers found countless ostracones - pieces of pottery with writing etched on them - but the papyri are the first paper texts found at the site.

The letters are the latest evidence of advanced Roman trade found in the cemetery, the statement said: The skeletons of several buried monkeys, recently identified as macaques native to India, show that the Romans imported non-utilitarian animals across oceans. These primates, along with long-haired cats and miniature dogs, were "elite pets" and many were buried with toys, pottery or other companion animals.

As Osipińska notes in her statement, it may seem difficult to reconcile the image of ancient foreign legion commanders with such animals, which were "treated like family members."

"However, our results clearly indicate that the military elite surrounded themselves with elite pets and led exclusive lifestyles," she adds.