Egyptian Archaeological News - General

[Resource Manager]

Ancient Priest's Tomb Painting Discovered Near Great Pyramid at Giza

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | July 15, 2014 11:49am ET

"A wall painting, dating back over 4,300 years, has been discovered in a tomb located just east of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The painting shows vivid scenes of life, including boats sailing south on the Nile River, a bird hunting trip in a marsh and a man named Perseneb who's shown with his wife and dog.

While Giza is famous for its pyramids, the site also contains fields of tombs that sprawl to the east and west of the Great Pyramid. These tombs were created for private individuals who held varying degrees of rank and power during the Old Kingdom (2649-2150 B.C.), the age when the Giza pyramids were built."
 
Continued

[Resource Manager]

Egyptian Carving Defaced by King Tut's Possible Father Discovered

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | July 24, 2014 08:12am ET

"A newly discovered Egyptian carving, which dates back more than 3,300 years, bears the scars of a religious revolution that upended the ancient civilization.

The panel, carved in Nubian Sandstone, was found recently in a tomb at the site of Sedeinga, in modern-day Sudan. It is about 5.8 feet (1.8 meters) tall by 1.3 feet (0.4 m) wide, and was found in two pieces.

Originally, it adorned the walls of a temple at Sedeinga that was dedicated to Queen Tiye (also spelled Tiyi), who died around 1340 B.C. Several centuries after Tiye's death — and after her temple had fallen into ruin — this panel was reused in a tomb as a bench that held a coffin above the floor."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Egyptologist Sheds Light on Tulane Mummies

August 4, 2014 11:00 AM

Carol Schlueter

"Answers don’t come easily when the mystery is 3,000 years old. Egyptologist Melinda Nelson-Hurst has spent two years researching the Egyptian artifacts that have resided at Tulane University since 1852. Her work is yielding surprising details about two mummies, two intact coffins and funerary materials that reside in Dinwiddie Hall.

Nelson-Hurst, a research associate in the Department of Anthropology, and professor John Verano have written a scholarly paper on the topic for publication soon.

It was not known if the two coffins and two items identified as funerary masks belonged to the two mummies in the Tulane collection. All the items were donated to Tulane by an associate of George Gliddon, an antiquities collector who staged elaborate public unwrappings of mummies 160 years ago in several cities, including New Orleans."

Continued

[Resource Manager]

06052014, Cover Stories, Daily News

Egyptian Mummification Started Much Earlier than Previously Thought, Say Researchers

Wed, Aug 13, 2014

"Researchers from the Universities of York, Macquarie and Oxford have discovered new evidence to suggest that the origins of mummification started in ancient Egypt 1,500 years earlier than previously thought.

Traditional theories on ancient Egyptian mummification suggest that in prehistory -- the Late Neolithic and Predynastic periods between c. 4500 and 3100 B.C. - bodies were desiccated naturally through the action of the hot, dry desert sand. Scientific evidence for the early use of resins in artificial mummification has, until now, been limited to isolated occurrences during the late Old Kingdom (c. 2200 BC). Their use became more apparent during the Middle Kingdom (c. 2000-1600 BC)."

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Study Traces Ecological Collapse Over 6,000 Years of Egyptian History

 

Ancient Egyptian artworks help scientists reconstruct how animal communities changed as climate became drier and human populations grew

 

September 08, 2014

 

By Tim Stephens

 

"Depictions of animals in ancient Egyptian artifacts have helped scientists assemble a detailed record of the large mammals that lived in the Nile Valley over the past 6,000 years. A new analysis of this record shows that species extinctions, probably caused by a drying climate and growing human population in the region, have made the ecosystem progressively less stable.

 

The study, published September 8 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that local extinctions of mammal species led to a steady decline in the stability of the animal communities in the Nile Valley. When there were many species in the community, the loss of any one species had relatively little impact on the functioning of the ecosystem, whereas it is now much more sensitive to perturbations, according to first author Justin Yeakel, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Issue No.1213, 11 September, 2014      

10-09-2014 11:41AM ET

 

Pyramid Restoration Restarts

 

Work on Djoser’s Step Pyramid in Saqqara is continuing despite a contracting controversy, writes Nevine El-Aref

 

"When Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty announced the resumption of work at Djoser’s Step Pyramid in Saqqara this week, after some four years’ delay, the decision was generally applauded. But some archeologists are raising concerns about the company chosen to do the restoration.

 

They accused the ministry of negligence in awarding the work to the Al-Shorbagi Company, which, they say, was responsible for the earlier collapse of a block of the 4,600-year-old Step Pyramid.

 

Amir Gamal, representative of the Non-Stop Robberies pressure group, accused the company and the ministry of not following international restoration standards because they built a new wall around the pyramid. International rules prevent such new additions being made, he said.

 

Gamal added that the company, hired in 2006, had not finished the work by 2008, as specified in the contract. “Meanwhile, the condition of the pyramid has been going from bad to worse,” he said."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Ancient Egyptian Woman with 70 Hair Extensions Discovered

 

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   September 17, 2014 08:40am ET

 

"More than 3,300 years ago, in a newly built city in Egypt, a woman with an incredibly elaborate hairstyle of lengthy hair extensions was laid to rest.

 

She was not mummified, her body simply being wrapped in a mat. When archaeologists uncovered her remains they found she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head," writes Jolanda Bos, an archaeologist working on the Amarna Project, in an article recently published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Pharaoh-Branded Amulet Found at Ancient Copper Mine in Jordan

 

By Megan Gannon, News Editor   |   September 19, 2014 07:21am ET

 

"While exploring ancient copper factories in southern Jordan, a team of archaeologists picked up an Egyptian amulet that bears the name of the powerful pharaoh Sheshonq I.

 

The tiny artifact could attest to the fabled military campaign that Sheshonq I waged in the region nearly 3,000 years ago, researchers say.

 

The scarab (called that because it's shaped like a scarab beetle) was found at the copper-producing site of Khirbat Hamra Ifdan in the Faynan district, some 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of the Dead Sea. The site, which was discovered during excavations in 2002, was home to intense metal production during the Early Bronze Age, between about 3000 B.C. and 2000 B.C. But there is also evidence of more recent smelting activities at Khirbat Hamra Ifdan during the Iron Age, from about 1000 B.C. to 900 B.C."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Issue No.1215, 25 September, 2014      

 

Al-Alamein site to re-open

 

Following an extensive restoration, an important archaeological site on the Mediterranean coast is to open next April, writes Nevine El-Aref

 

"Holidaymakers to Egypt’s north coast will have more to entertain them than sun, sand and sea next summer: they will also be able to explore the archaeological site of Marina Al-Alamein, known 2,000 years ago as the town of Leucaspis.

 

Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty, following a tour of the archaeological site, this week gave the go-ahead for a resumption of restoration work, suspended in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution. Part of the site will be open to tourists next April.

 

The work is being carried out by a Polish-Egyptian team, led by archaeologist Erysztof Jakubiak from the Institute of Archaeology at Warsaw University. The aim of the project, said Mohamed Al-Sheikha, head of the projects section at the ministry, is not only to preserve the existing site, but also to develop it as a new attraction on the north coast.

 

The Taposiris Magna site, known as Abusir, is already a popular site with tourists. It is located on the shore of Lake Mariout, about 48 km southwest of Alexandria on the Alexandria-Matrouh road. The site includes the ruins of an ancient temple, a small lighthouse and a series of tombs."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Italian-Spanish Archeologists to Launch Dig into Luxor Tomb

 

10 years needed to ready tomb for public viewing

 

26 SEPTEMBER, 14:55

 

(by Claudio Accogli) (ANSAmed) - CAIRO, SEPTEMBER 26 - "An Italian-Spanish archeological team on Friday prepared to launch a dig in an extraordinary tomb whose discovery was announced six months ago.

 

The tomb belongs to May, an important government officer of the XVIII dynasty, an era ruled by pharoahs such as Tutankhamon and the "heretic" pharoah Akhenaton, who established a sun cult dedicated to the sun disk Aton, among others. The tomb dacks back 3500 years and is found on the western side of Luxor, in the necropolis of Thebes. "It will take 10 years of work to open it to the public," explained the Italian and Spanish project leaders, Irene Morfini and Mila Alvarez Sosa. The two, young passionate archeologists head the Min Project, an excavation of the tomb of Min (TT109) and its extension Kampp-327. The project is sponsored by Fiat and Nile Engineering, said Fiat Chrysler Egypt CEO Maciej Ratynski at a ceremony in the Italian embassy in Cairo."

 

Continued

 

[Resource Manager]

Egyptian Mummy's Brain Imprint Preserved in 'Peculiar' Case

 

By Bahar Gholipour, Staff Writer   |   September 29, 2014 07:48am ET

 

 An ancient Egyptian mummy is sparking new questions among archaeologists, because it has one very rare feature: The blood vessels surrounding the mummy's brain left imprints on the inside of the skull.

 

The researchers are trying to find what process could have led to the preservation of these extremely fragile structures.

 

The mummified body is that of a man who probably lived more than 2,000 years ago, sometime between the Late Period and the Ptolemaic Period (550 – 150 B.C.) of Egyptian history, the researchers said."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

New Health Scans Provide Data on Ancient Mummies

 

Oct 15, 2014 by David Hunn, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

 

"A mummy rolled down hospital hallways here on Sunday. Amen-Nestawy-Nakht, a 3,000-year-old Egyptian priest, was getting a CAT scan at Barnes-Jewish. It was probably his second. The lastonewas a couple of decades ago, when technology wasn't what it is now.

A team of art museum officials and university doctors hoped this round could reveal new information: His cause of death. New data on his health. And, perhaps, a few artifacts left inside the cartonnage - that elaborately painted hardened wrapping that often covers a mummy's body - after grave robbers made off with the bulk of the valuables, probably thousands of years ago.

 

The St. Louis Art Museum hired a company of art movers to pick up Amen-Nestawy and two other mummies on Sunday, load them into specially made foam cases, truck them to the Siteman Cancer Center in the city's Central West End, and slide them onto gurneys. A team of Washington University professors, doctors and radiologists donated their time; Barnes donated its space and the 3-D X-ray scanners."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Meidum Pyramid Site Under Restoration in Upper Egypt

 

The Meidum Pyramid’s archaeological site in Beni Suef is being restored by the government in an attempt to attract tourists to Egypt

 

Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 16 Oct 2014

 

"Antiquities minister Mamdouh El-Damaty embarked on Thursday on an inspection tour around the different archaeological sites and monuments in the upper Egyptian city of Beni Suef escorted by the city’s governor Magdi El-Batiti and Youssef Khalifa, head of the ancient Egyptian section.
 

The area of Meidum Pyramid was the first site to be visited. During the tour, El-Damaty announced that a comprehensive restoration project is to begin immediately to make the site more tourist friendly.

 

The development project will include the establishment of a sound and light show on the ancient history of Beni Suef and the construction work of Meidum pyramid."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Issue No.1216, 2 October, 2014      

 

01-10-2014 11:31AM ET

 

Legend of the Sesostris Canal

 

There is no historical evidence for the existence of the ancient Sesostris Canal that was once said to link the Nile to the Red Sea, writes Al-Sayed Mahfouz

 

"During media discussions of the new Suez Canal project that is to be built in parallel to the existing canal in the east of the country, many references were made to an ancient canal that the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Sesostris is said to have dug to link the Nile with the Red Sea. Many take the existence of this canal as a historical fact, when its existence has never been proved, however.

 

According to legend, Sesostris III, the fifth pharoah of the twelfth dynasty, connected the now extinct Pelusiac Branch of the Nile with the Red Sea by a canal. This story is mentioned in many books on the period, and a section of the new Suez Museum has even been set aside to this alleged canal. But the story is false."

 

Continued

 

H/t: BiblePlacesBlog

[Resource Manager]

Arthritis Rediagnosis in Egyptian Pharaohs

 

By Heather Pringle

 

20 October 2014 12:15 am 

 

"Four ancient Egyptian pharaohs, thought to have suffered from a disabling form of arthritis, may have been misdiagnosed. In a paper published online today in Arthritis & Rheumatology, researchers propose that Amenhotep III (portrayed in an ancient relief above) and three other pharaohs had an often asymptomatic form of arthritis known as diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH), rather than the more debilitating ankylosing spondylitis (AS) originally deduced from x-rays taken of their mummies in 1980."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Three Egyptian Mummies Receive CT Scans

 

Washington University Medical Center Welcomes Unusual patients for unconventional screening

 

October 24, 2014

 

By Michael C. Purdy and Liam Otten

"Washington University School of Medicine recently teamed up with the Saint Louis Art Museum and the university’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum to scan some very unusual patients: three Egyptian mummies.

 

The scanning took place Sunday, Oct. 12, at the Center for Advanced Medicine on the Medical Campus. The mummies, two of which are on long-term loan to the Saint Louis Art Museum from the Kemper Art Museum, were carefully transported across Forest Park and scanned one by one in a state-of-the-art computerized tomography (CT) scanner.

 

Among the early findings: One of the mummies already was known to have a brain, but scans revealed she also still has lungs. In many mummies, lungs typically were removed prior to burial."

Continued 

 

http://youtu.be/gujkk_bqr5Y

[Resource Manager]

Issue No.1219, 30 October, 2014 | 29-10-2014 06:08PM ET

 

Slandering Tutankhamun?

 

The results of a virtual autopsy on the mummy of the boy king Tutankhamun have triggered the anger of Egyptian Egyptologists, writes Nevine El-Aref

 

"Some 90 years after the British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered his intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank at Luxor, the ancient Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun continues to hold the world’s attention.

 

This has not only been because of his intact funerary collection, unearthed inside his tomb despite his early death and short reign, but also because of the mystery that has surrounded his life, death, and lineage.

Archaeologists are still perplexed by questions like who the real Tutankhamun was. Was he the son or the brother of the monotheistic Pharaoh Akhenaten? Why did his tomb contain such treasures, despite his having died so young? How, in any case, did he die? Was he killed at 18 years of age, or did he suffer from some fatal disease?"

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

King Thutmosis III's Temple Found by Accident

 

3,400-year-old pharaonic temple found under a house in southern Cairo

 

AFP Published: 02:46 October 30, 2014

 

Cairo: "A group of men discovered a 3,400-year-old pharaonic temple from the reign of warrior king Thutmosis III under their house in a city south of Cairo, Egyptian officials said Wednesday.

 

Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty said the seven men made the find during an illegal excavation in Al-Badrashin, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the capital.

 

The men, using diving equipment, had come across the temple in ground water after digging for nine metres (yards).

 

A team of experts from the ministry took over the excavation work, while the seven men were detained but later released because the area was not a heritage site."

 

Continued

 

[Resource Manager]

2000-year-old Youth Organization

 

By Camilla Chausse, Communications Officer

 

Published Nov 5, 2014 11:42 AM - Last modified Nov 5, 2014 01:21 PM

 

"In Roman Egypt, 14-year-old boys were enrolled in a youth organization in order to learn to be good citizens.

 

So says social historian and historian of ideas Ville Vuolanto, University of Oslo, who has joined forces with Dr April Pudsey of the University of Newcastle to dive deep into a mass of material of around 7,500 ancient documents written on papyrus. The texts comprise literary texts, personal letters and administrative documents. Never before has childhood been researched so systematically in this type of material.

 

The documents originate from Oxyrhynchos in Egypt, which in the first five hundred years CE was a large town of more than 25,000 inhabitants. Oxyrhynchos had Egypt’s most important weaving industry, and was also the Roman administrative centre for the area. Researchers possess a great deal of documentation precisely from this area because archaeologists digging one hundred years ago discovered thousands of papyri in what had once been the town’s rubbish dumps."

Continued

 

also see:

Tiny Voices From the Past: New Perspectives on Childhood in Early Europe

 

"The project (2013-2016) studies the lives of children and attitudes to childhood at a culturally formative stage of European culture: Antiquity and the Early/High Middle Ages. The project covers the period from the fifth century BC to the twelfth century AD, but with an emphasis on the period from the first to the eight century."

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Archaeologist leads the first detailed study of human remains at the ancient Egyptian site of Deir el-Medina

 

14 hours ago by Barbara Wilcox

 

"Ancient Egyptian workers in a village that's now called Deir el-Medina were beneficiaries of what Stanford Egyptologist Anne Austin calls "the earliest documented governmental health care plan."

 

The craftsmen who built Egyptian pharaohs' royal tombs across the Nile from the modern city of Luxor worked under grueling conditions, but they could also take a paid sick day or visit a "clinic" for a free checkup.

 

For decades, Egyptologists have seen evidence of these health care benefits in the well preserved written records from the site, but Austin, a specialist in osteo-archaeology (the study of ancient bones), led the first detailed study of human remains at the site.

 

A postdoctoral scholar in the Department of History, Austin compared Deir el-Medina's well-known textual artifacts to physical evidence of health and disease to create a newly comprehensive picture of how Egyptian workers lived. Austin is continuing her research during her tenure as a fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Ancient Egyptian Mummy Wearing Jewels Found

 

NOV 21, 2014 03:47 PM ET // BY ROSSELLA LORENZI

 

"Spanish archaeologists digging in Egypt have unearthed a female mummy still wearing her jewels.

 

The mummy was discovered in the necropolis below the temple of Pharaoh Thutmosis III (1490-1436 B.C.), on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor (southern Egypt). The find dates to the Middle Kingdom (2137-1781 B.C.).

 

For nearly four millennia, the “Lady of the Jewels,” as the mummy was nicknamed, eluded tomb raiders, her sarcophagus trapped under a collapsed roof.

 

Stonehenge Treasures Reveal Worshippers’ Sophistication

 

The archaeologists were cleaning and restoring several tombs in the necropolis that had been already looted in antiquity when they realized that in one of the chambers of tomb XIV, part of the roof had already collapsed before robbers entered it.

 

“A large boulder, which had fallen down before the tomb was looted, had crushed and buried a previously untouched coffin with all its content,” Egyptologists Myriam Seco, director of the Thutmosis III Temple Project, said in a statement."

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Why Pharaohs Worshipped Dung Beetles

 

By Deborah Sullivan Brennan7:42 A.M.NOV. 29, 2014

"As the sun rose and set in the skies of long-ago Egypt, it rolled across the horizon courtesy of the sun god Khepri, a scarab.

 

The humble dung beetle, the ancients believed, was responsible for the transition from day to night. In the era of modern astronomy, it seems a stretch.

 

To Egyptians who watched the beetles roll manure balls into holes and then saw hatchlings emerge from the earth, however, the insect was an apt symbol for cycles of nature, said entomologist Michael Wall.

 

So important was the beetle to Egyptian belief that it formed a part of King Tut’s throne name, and was one of the most distinctive motifs in the culture’s religious art."

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Huy Tomb Open to Public Soon
 

Tomb of Nubia Viceroy during the reign of King Tutankhamun is to be opened in mid-December at Qurnet Marei on Luxor’s west bank

Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 2 Dec 2014

"After three years of restoration, the tomb of Huy, Nubia Viceroy during the reign of King Tutankhamun, is to be opened to the public for the first time.
 

The tomb is located at Qurnet Marei on Luxor's west bank, and it includes a court and a burial chamber.

 

“Although it is a small tomb it has very distinguished wall paintings,” Aly El-Asfar, head of the central administration of Upper Egypt, told Ahram Online.

 

He explains that the images depict figures painted in Nubian attire walking behind a chariot driven by a light brown figure, a black rider painted in traditional Nubian garb, and pulled by a cow. Walking before the chariot are more Nubian figures.

 

Hunting scenes similar to those found in Tutankhamun’s tomb are also depicted on walls as well as scenes showing Huy being greeted by high priests and among his family."

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

Chicago Museum Lifts Lid on Egyptian Mummy Coffin

 

Dec 08, 2014 by By Caryn Rousseau

 

Not until the lid was off the wood coffin—exposing the 2,500-year-old mummified remains of a 14-year-old Egyptian boy—could J.P. Brown relax.

 

The conservator at Chicago's Field Museum and three other scientists had just employed specially created clamps as a cradle to raise the fragile coffin lid. Wearing blue surgical gloves, they lifted the contraption and delicately walked it to safe spot on a table in a humidity-controlled lab.

 

Continued

[Resource Manager]

2,400-Year-Old Coffin's 'Odd' Art Hints at Ancient Egypt's Brain Drain

 

by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   December 09, 2014 09:42am ET

 

TORONTO — "An ancient Egyptian coffin with strange and amateurish decorations has been revealed, shedding light on a tumultuous period in Egyptian history when the Persian Empire was in control of the region.

 

In 525 B.C., Persian King Cambyses marched into Memphis, the Egyptian capital, inaugurating a period of Persian rule that would last for more than a century. The Persian Empire was a vast entity that stretched from modern-day Afghanistan to the west coast of Turkey. Ancient texts say that the Persian kings deported Egyptian artists and used them for building projects in Persia."

 

Continued