Connoisseurs say that the taste of cheese improves with age - but what if it was left to age for 3,200 years? Archaeologists in Egypt now have the chance to find out, but it comes with an unexpected bonus: deadly ancient bacteria. A team from the University of Catania in Italy found the cheese at the tomb of Ptahmes, a 13th-century BC mayor of Memphis in Egypt. The cheese was found wrapped with canvas inside a broken jar. It could be the most ancient cheese ever discovered, according to the team's study, published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. "The archaeologists suspected it was a kind of food left for the owner of the tomb and they decided to ask for chemical analyses," said lead author Enrico Greco, a leader in the new field of ancient food discoveries known as 'archaeofood.' Ancient Egyptians may have dodged a potentially life-threatening bout of illness by not eating the cheese, after researchers found the specimen contained signs of a bacterium known to cause brucellosis,