CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Archaeologists digging in a 5,600-year-old funeral site in southern Egypt unearthed seven corpses believed to date to the era, as well as an intact figure of a cow's head carved from flint.

The American-Egyptian excavation team made the discoveries in what they described as the largest funerary complex ever found that dates to the elusive five millenia-old Predynastic era, Egypt's Supreme Council of antiquities said Wednesday.

"This is a major discovery, and will add greatly to our knowledge of the period when Egypt was first becoming a nation,'' said Zahi Hawass, Egypt's Chief archaeologist.

In the area of Kom El-Ahmar, known in antiquity as Hierakonpolis, some 370 miles south of Cairo, the team working for five years in the area excavated a complex thought to belong to a ruler of the ancient city who reigned around 3600 B.C.

The find is significant because little is known about the early phase of Predynastic period. That era predates the unification of upper and lower Egypt that triggered the well-known Dynastic era, when ancient Egypt's pharaohs ruled.

Little remains from the Predynastic period. Objects that have survived are either in bad shape or have been smuggled out of the country.

The grave sites at Kom El-Ahmar appear to date to the early Naqada II era, a time when the settlement at Hierakonpolis was at its peak and the city was the largest urban center on the Nile.

The complex, which is enclosed in a well-preserved wall of wooden posts, consists of a large rectangular tomb covered with the earliest known superstructure.

Against the enclosure wall in an ash-laden deposit, excavators came across a complete figurine of a cow head carved from flint. Diggers found a flint figure of an ibex in the same tomb, now on display in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.