xcavated remains of a warrior slain around 2,200 years ago provide rare, physical evidence of an uprising that’s described on the Rosetta Stone, scientists say.
“Most likely, the warrior we found was a casualty of the ancient Egyptian revolt,” said archaeologist Robert Littman on November 22 at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
A team led by Littman, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and anthropological archaeologist Jay Silverstein of the University of Tyumen in Russia unearthed the man’s skeleton at the ancient city of Thmouis. That city is now buried beneath a mound of earth and debris called Tell Timai in the Nile Delta.
Weaving and knitting were among the most important industries in ancient Egypt. The kenaf was the only material used by the pharaohs to make their clothes. Leather and woven fibers were rarely used in their clothing.
Ancient Egyptian left inscriptions and drawings on their tombs explaining how they grew and harvest linseed and grains, said Dr. Mansour al-Nubi, former dean of the Faculty of Antiquities in the historic city of Luxor, in Upper Egypt.
Praying not to lose my nerve halfway I took my first step into the tunnel. A fleeting sense of surrealism hit me for braving my intense claustrophobia to enter Giza's second-largest — 136-meter tall (446 ft) — Pyramid of Khafre. The air felt thin and the temperature rose significantly in the narrow 54-meter long (177 ft) sloping passageway, which ended in a dimly-lit burial chamber. Taking a quick look at the embedded solid granite sarcophagus while trying not to think about the countless stone blocks above me, I took a deep breath and made the challenging return climb to daylight.
Ancient Egypt intrigues general audiences. Its pyramids, Sphinx, and complex supernatural belief system have often attracted the attention of pseudoscience. Erich von Daniken’s popular and controversial book Chariots of Gods, for instance, speculated that extraterrestrials influenced ancient Egypt’s religion and civilization.
Entertaining as such conjecture may be, scientists provide us with sounder explanations of ancient Egypt, including of its astronomical traditions. They have explained, for instance, why the Great Pyramid is more accurately aligned to True North than the Greenwich Observatory’s Meridian Building: builders aligned pyramids by observing two circumpolar stars.
Egypt on Saturday unveiled a cache of 75 wooden and bronze statues and five lion cub mummies decorated with hieroglyphics at the Saqqara necropolis near the Giza pyramids in Cairo.
Egyptologists are thrilled at the find, which includes mummified cats, cobras, crocodiles and scarabs among the well-preserved mummies and other objects, AFP said.
The Antiquities Ministry announced the find at the foot of the Bastet Temple, dedicated to the worship of cats among ancient Egyptians, in the vast necropolis.
Minister of Antiquities Khaled el-Anani stated that a new archaeological discovery will be announced in December.
The minister stated that December will also witness the inauguration of three archaeological projects, namely the Hurghada Museum, the Baron Palace and the Jewish Temple in Alexandria.
The Ministry of Antiquities conducted scientific studies on three mummies discovered in the cache of El-Assassif in an attempt to unfold their secrets.
The preliminary results of the CT scan performed on the mummies of a man, a woman and a child indicated that they are all preserved in a great way and are in good condition. The mummies of both the adults did not contain any precious findings, unlike the mummy of the child that contained two golden pieces.
The bust of Nefertiti is one of the most famous icons of Ancient Egypt, yet the queen herself is still shrouded in mystery and intrigue. As consort to Pharaoh Akhenaten, the couple ruled from 1353 to 1336 BCE during one of the most contentious periods of Egypt’s cultural history. At this time, Pharaoh Akhenaten remodeled Egypt’s religion around the worship of the sun god Aten and moved the empire’s capital to Amarna.
A team of archaeologists excavating a palace in the ancient city of Avaris, in Egypt, has made a gruesome discovery. The archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of 16 human hands buried in four pits. Two of the pits, located in front of what is believed to be a throne room, hold one hand each. Two other pits, constructed at a slightly later time in an outer space of the palace, contain the 14 remaining hands.
Scientists from the University of Catania and Cairo University found a solidified whitish mass in a jar, left in an Egyptian tomb. The substance turned out to be a 3,200 year old piece of cheese, among the oldest ever discovered.
A few years ago a team of archaeologists cleaning sand from an ancient Egyptian tomb discovered a group of broken jars, one of them containing a mysterious white substance. The team had guesses as to what the material might be, but a new analysis published in the journal Analytical Chemistry offers an answer: what they found during that excavation was an approximately 3,200 year old piece of cheese, one of the oldest solid specimens discovered
How did a pigment that Vermeer used in the 1600s wind up on Egyptian art from the 6th century BC?
THE PHARAOH APRIES WAS NOT exactly popular. He lost his kingdom to someone who, according to Herodotus, once farted in his face, and in 570 BC was strangled by the Egyptians he once ruled. But he had an excellent palace. Built in the northern part of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, Apries’s palace was a sprawling 524 feet by 354 feet. The Pharaoh would enter the grounds through an enormous gate decorated with seven limestone reliefs, one of which depicted the pharaoh under a star-filled blue sky. Other scenes have been lost to time.
Travel back through 3,000 years of Egyptian history and come face-to-face with the Rosetta Stone and the Statue of Ramesses II.
The objects in the Egyptian sculpture gallery represent three millennia of pharaonic history. The displays have evolved with the field of Egyptology itself.
Modern Egyptology began with a French scientific expedition accompanying Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. After the British defeated the French, they took some of their most important finds, including the Rosetta Stone and the sarcophagus of the last Egyptian pharaoh, both displayed here.
After a three-year freedom of information campaign, everyone can finally see the Egyptian Museum of Berlin’s official scan of the Bust of Nefertiti.
For more than a decade, museums around the world have been making high-quality 3D scans of important sculptures and ancient artifacts. Some institutions, such as the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Denmark, have forward-thinking programs that freely share their 3D scans with the public, allowing us to view, copy, adapt, and experiment with the underlying works in ways that have never before been possible. But many institutions keep their scans out of public view.
The experts utilised modern technology to shine a light on what daily life was like in ancient Egypt in a never before seen study. Using lasers, X-rays and infrared tools, scientists have been able to scrutinise and examine the bones of mummies to better understand our ancestors.
The ancient catacombs of Egypt contain millions of mummified birds of the species Threskiornis aethiopicus—better known as the African sacred ibis. Now researchers have cast new light on how the Egyptians obtained so many of these animals—something that has long puzzled experts.
The Egyptians commonly sacrificed and mummified these birds between 665 B.C. and 250 A.D. in honor of the god Toth—who was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis.
A tomb dating back around 3,400 years has been discovered on Sai Island, on the Nile River in Sudan. The tomb has multiple burial chambers, which contain the remains of more than a dozen, possibly mummified, individuals. The tomb was constructed at a time when there was an Egyptian settlement and gold mine on the island. This picture shows some of the artifacts found in the tomb, including a stone shabti, meant to do the work of the deceased in the afterlife.
Egyptian artist and businessman Essam Elbattal established in Canela in the Serra Gaúcha a museum with a pharaonic setting of Ancient Egypt. Venue features an internal pyramid with sarcophagus and hieroglyphs. Visitors may dress up in tunics, wigs and turbans.
Canela’s Egyptian Museum comprises a 3,000-square-meter plot and over 1,200 square meters of building area, with sculptures, busts, pieces, and mortuary chambers that refer to the history of the great pharaohs, queens and figures of Ancient Egypt, including Tutankhamun, Ramesses II, Akhenaton, Cleopatra, and Nefertiti.
The discovery came after Tony Robinson joined archaeologist Dr Vasko Dobrev who had uncovered more than 60 tombs in his quest to find the missing Pharaoh Userkare, who he believes is buried in an unfinished pyramid below Saqqara. The suspected burial site served as the necropolis for the Ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis and is home to numerous other pyramids including the Step Pyramid of Djoser. Dr Dobrev has spent the last three decades probing the area just 19 miles from the world-famous Giza Plateau and he now thinks he is closer to hitting the jackpot.
Every two months, the Nile Scribes bring you summaries of the latest research and discoveries in Egyptology, both from the field and the archives. We introduce you to the newest archaeological finds or rediscovered artefacts from museum collections, plus other new theories stirring in the Egyptological Zeitgeist. While few excavations take place in Egypt during the heat of the summer, there has nevertheless been a number of exciting discoveries announced at the outset of the cooler, post-summer months. The world’s attention was recently captured by the discovery of a new cache of Twenty-Second Dynasty mummies at Asasif in Luxor.
In the 19th century, women explorers sailed the Nile, sending back vivid accounts of Egypt’s riches. A 21st-century writer travels in their wake.
Huddled on a chaise on the upper deck of the Orient, the dahabiya that I had chosen for a cruise down the Nile, I sipped hibiscus tea to ward off the chill. Late in February, it was just 52 degrees in Aswan, where I had boarded the sailboat, but the scenery slipping past was everything the guidebooks had promised: tall sandbanks, curved palms and the mutable, gray-green river, the spine of Egypt and the throughline in its history.
The Museum of Ancient Wonders opens in Cathedral City with replicas of King Tutankhamun artifacts, African masks, and prehistoric fossils.
A modest strip mall at the corner of Highway 111 and Date Palm Drive is an unlikely place for King Tutankhamun’s golden chariot and the skull of a T-Rex, but Alberto Acosta and Joe McCabe are making it work. The Museum of Ancient Wonders, the Coachella Valley’s newest cultural attraction, opened Oct. 26, showing a portion of Acosta’s extensive collection of replicas of Egyptian antiquities and dinosaur fossils, along with artistic recreations of African masks representing 3,500 years of tribal ritual and mysticism.
The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced recently that an ancient Greek and Roman cemetery has been discovered in Ismailia.
According to reports, the cemetery has multiple levels. The upper levels date back to ancient Greek and Roman times, while the lower are from Egypt’s pre-dynastic eras.
Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities says local archeologists have unearthed the mummy of an unusually large animal, most likely a lion or lioness. The ministry said on Monday the mummy was excavated in Saqqara, a town south of Cairo that was a vast necropolis in antiquity and is home to the famed Step Pyramid.
Here's a more comprehensive article from NBC that came with this photo. This mummified lion was found in the tomb on King Tut's wet nurse. The colored scale has been placed next to it for measurement purposes.
Labor Day is a holiday in the United States, and one most of us look forward to celebrating. (Who doesn't like a day off work?) This link is to a post from Labor Day 2015 about what was it like to be a working man or woman in ancient Egypt.
Throughout this workshop, you will learn about the smells that defined the mummification chambers and tombs, and the scents that the ancient Egyptians themselves wished to be surrounded by in their life after death. In the first hour, Dora will teach you about the olfactory motivation for mummification and the substances employed during the process. In the second hour, she will give you a detailed insight into the materials. You will be able to smell each ingredient and you will learn about their significance for the Egyptians and the reasons behind their use. In the third and last hour, you will recreate the essence of mummification in a bottle by using the very same ingredients the ancient Egyptians employed for embalming their dead. Don’t worry, you will end up with an exceedingly pleasant smell.
On August 30th, National Toasted Marshmallow Day celebrates one of America’s favorite fire-roasted treats. Be sure to stock up on marshmallows so you can celebrate!
Believe it or not, marshmallows date back to Ancient Egypt. The mallow plant provided a sap that the Egyptians used to create a candy with nuts and honey.
Ligonier, Indiana holds an annual Marshmallow Festival (Labor Day Weekend) and is the marshmallow capital of the world.
The new slot game launched by Play’n GO promises to position itself as a favorite of online casino players. This is Rise of Dead, a fun 5-reel game set in Ancient Egypt, which is based on the legendary Book of Thoth, a manuscript through which readers gain infinite knowledge.
The game is loaded with myths, spells and Egyptian traditions related to the pharaohs who ruled Egypt. Each of the symbols and figures of the game, represent real elements and characters found in the history of this ancient civilization.
Intriguing artefacts have been on display at Wisbech and Fenland Museum's Hudson Gallery throughout the summer holidays.
The exhibition will now continue to run until October 26.
In 1864 a group of men including the Barclay brothers took Lord Alexander Peckover on a tour of Egypt to ease his broken heart after the death of his young wife.
They boarded the riverboat Zuleika at Cairo to visit Luxor, Karnac, Thebes, Edfu and the Valley of the Kings.
The new game features an Egyptian theme, transporting gamers to an ancient pyramid where expeditions are underway. As an ALLPAY slot, the game does not have win lines but uses symbols combinations to provide 243 ways to win on 5 reels!
On Aug. 27, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly presided the first meeting of the Higher Committee, formed under the supervision of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to set scenarios of the opening ceremony of the Grand Egyptian Museum.
The meeting was attended by Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anani, Minister of Culture Inas Abdel Dayem, Minister of Tourism Rania al-Mashat, Governor of Giza Ahmed Rashed, and officials of a number of concerned authorities.
A group of scientists from the University of Hawaii made international headlines last week when they claimed to have recreated the perfume of Cleopatra, Egypt’s legendary queen known for her allure. In Egypt, the local beauty sector has also been banking on “Pharaonic recipes” to compete with pricey international beauty brands.
The ancient Egyptian queens whose faces are seen on murals or well-known statues were not simply natural beauties — Cleopatra, Nefertari and Nefertiti had complex beauty routines that included honey, mud or goat's milk, and modern versions have been growing in popularity in Egypt over the last decade.
How Medical Technology Reveals the Secrets Of Ancient Egyptian Mummies Media make images of the Egyptian mummy Nestawedjat, which dates to approximately 700 BC, at a press preview at the Museum of Fine Arts Wednesday, August 28, 2019 in Montreal. The museum will be showing the exhibition Egyptian Mummies: Exploring Ancient Lives this fall and winter. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Nestawedjat, a wealthy, married “lady of the house,” died in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes sometime around 700 BC.
Some 2,700 years too late to save her, she was brought to a British hospital to undergo a thoroughly modern medical procedure: a CT scan.
In recent years, medical technology has allowed researchers to learn intimate details of the lives of ancient Egyptian mummies that go far beyond the biographical details gleaned from their tombs.
In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter would make one of the most important discoveries of the 20th century. . . In King Tut’s tomb, Carter and his team also discovered a pair of ancient trumpets, one of sterling silver and one of bronze or copper, which hadn’t seen the light of day for over 3,000 years.
Papyrus Part of an Ancient Puzzle A piece of papyrus fragment found at The Catholic University of American in Washington is a small piece of a larger scroll. COURTESY
Jacco Dieleman, a research associate professor in the department of Semitic and Egyptian languages, recently made a startling discovery while examining artifacts housed in The Catholic University of American in Washington’s Semitics/Institute of Christian Oriental Research collections. Dieleman identified a papyrus fragment from the university’s collection as a small piece of a larger papyrus scroll from the Tebtunis Temple Library, an important collection of ancient manuscripts that is shedding new light on the world of ancient Egypt.
In the spring term of 2018, a group of Drexel University students created a video game, Sons of Ra, for a group project. Exactly a year later, that same game won the E3 College Game Competition, one of the biggest game contest for college-level game designers.
The Ministry of Antiquities uncovered an ancient winding wall that extends about 60 meters to the east of Amenemhat II pyramid. This wall is considered an important architectural element that dates back to the Middle kingdom era.
A number of stone, pottery and wooden coffins were also found, some of which had mummies which were uncovered in good condition, in addition to a number of wooden masks some of them are incomplete and a set of tools that were used in cutting and polishing.
Every year in August, the constellation Orion returns to northern hemisphere skies at dawn, bearing with him the brightest star in our sky after the Sun ~ the star Sirius.
Sirius played a significant role in every aspect of Ancient Egypt culture, a role that carried on well into the 20th century, because its heliacal rising in mid-August each year was the signal from the natural world that the mighty river Nile was about to flood. At the heliacal rising of Sirius, people would move off the flood plain to make way for the river, which would rise up to 46 feet in some places!
Freud famously related the interpretation of dreams to the translation of hieroglyphs.
He provided an account of one of his own ‘hieroglyphic’ dreams in which nightmarish bird-headed figures are sexually-threatening hieroglyphic characters come to life. Freud’s willingness to address the sexual nature of Egyptian iconography was notably at odds with most contemporary Egyptologists.
Zahi Hawass describes the discovery of the mummy of the ancient Egyptian queen Hatshepsut in the Valley of the Kings.
This article describes the adventure of the discovery of the mummy of queen Hatshepsut, who was from the same dynasty as our Egyptian star Tutankhamun.
She ruled before Tutankhamun was born, along with a young boy called Thutmose III who was her stepson from her husband Thutmose II. After the death of Thutmose II, his son became the king of Egypt, but Hatshepsut took over the throne and ruled the country for almost 20 years.
She built a beautiful temple on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, which was designed by her architect Senenmut.
Former government archaeology official and world-renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawwas is known for his passion for ancient Egypt and his eagerness to attract more tourists to his country.
However, Hawwas is also interested in the bridging of civilizations. So, it was no surprise to see Japan, another nation with a great ancient civilization, at the forefront of his endeavors while promoting tourism in Egypt.
Note: I could not find the film mentioned in the article, but I found a decidedly strange trailer for an animated Cleopatra film that is quite infamous (on the internet at least). Warning: it's x-rated!
The pyramids of ancient Egypt are one of the many wonders of the world. The architectural achievements they managed to pull off were astounding for the era and their prowess shows as they continue to stand to this day. The pyramid of Giza is the only one of the seven great wonders of the world that are still standing, which is a feat of its own accord.
There is so much we still don't know about the pyramids, but we have come a long way in our discoveries since the first time modern man laid eyes on them. Investigations are still ongoing inside of these monstrosities and we cannot wait to see what is to be found in the years to come. Keep reading to learn about ten things you didn't know about the pyramids!
A slew of mysterious deaths following the opening of King Tut’s tomb prompted one epidemiologist to investigate.
Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s gold-covered sarcophagus is undergoing its first restoration work since its 1922 discovery. The conservation initiative at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo is addressing the cracks and other deterioration on the delicate coffin of gilded wood. It was just one of the many treasures found in the Valley of the Kings tomb that caused global Egyptomania.
The fascination propelled by the extensive media coverage of the finds in the burial vault of “King Tut” lingers to this day, including the rumors of a supposed curse inflicted on the archaeological team that disturbed the grave.
Papyrus Westcar Image of Thoth, from the Book of the Dead (2016 Book of the Dead).
Continuing the theme of Egyptian literature, today we’re going to be talking about another ‘classic’ Egyptian story; the Tale of Khufu and the Magicians, also known as Papyrus Westcar.
The Westcar Papyrus (P. Berlin 3033) was (supposedly) found by Henry Westcar, a British antiquarian, in 1823-4. In 1838-9 it was (supposedly) bequeathed to Karl Lepsius, but was found in his attic after his death; there’s a deal of speculation about whether Lepsius did ‘inherit’ the papyrus, or whether it was stolen! The papyrus was viewed as a curiosity, until it was translated into German by Adolf Erman in 1890; since then, it has been re-translated numerous times.
Prague’s National Museum, in association with Civita Mostre e Musei, will open a new exhibit on August 21st, as part of a project to commemorate 100 years of Czech Egyptology. Tutankhamun RealExperience offers visitors a unique opportunity to learn more about the famed pharaoh by combining original artifacts with innovative multimedia technologies.
The largest collection of real mummies and related artifacts ever assembled is headed to Carnegie Science Center in October.
“Mummies of the World: The Exhibition” features 125 real mummies and related artifacts from across the globe, and will open Oct. 5 in the science center’s PPG Science Pavilion.
The exhibition will provide a window into the lives of ancient people from Europe, South America and ancient Egypt, offering unprecedented insights into past cultures and civilizations. Guests will see dramatic displays of the mummies and their personal stories, as well as state-of-the-art multimedia stations presenting a 4,500-year journey to explore the mummies’ history and origins as well as how they were created.
The rituals, the mummy wrappings, the hieroglyphs and the partly animal deities was like a thesaurus of the unconscious mind, as this new show at the Freud Museum demonstrates.
Ancient Egypt is one of the founding civilizations of the world as we know it. Going back 5,000 years, it is also one of the most mysterious, with a complex belief structure that involved a strange mixture of the scientific and supernatural. It’s a civilization that made incredible steps forward in scientific discovery – so great that some believe the Ancient Egyptians must have had a little outside assistance.
That alone sounds like the basis of a great movie. However, the big surprise is that unlike in the world of gaming, where gamers play Book of Dead and dozens of other Egyptian-themed slots, the movie world does not boast as many titles on this enthralling era as you might expect. Nonetheless, in the spirit of scientific and cinematographic research and advancement, we have narrowed down a handful that you really shouldn’t miss. How many of these classics have you seen?
Tourism trails are allowing tourists to discover Egypt in a new light. Visitors can now follow the footsteps of the ancient Egyptians.
British explorer Ben Hoffler, who was responsible for creating the first long-distance trail in mainland Egypt five years ago, shows off the route to Red Sea Mountains on CNN’s Travel Trends: Egypt. Known as an ancient heritage site for numerous ancient Egyptian civilisations, Hoffler said that the main challenge is translating the route for modern times whilst not compromising their cultural importance.
“The Red Sea Mountains have always been a really key area for Egypt. Many civilisations came here, and they made ways through these mountains. From the pharaohs to the Ptolemies to the Romans to the civilizations that followed.
Akhenaton Museum- that is currently being renovated- is the third largest museum in Egypt and the largest in Upper Egypt. Modern showcases have been installed and interior work of the museum is almost completed.
Egypt Today brings the readers everything they want to know about the museum, which has been under construction for 15 years, stopped for several years and has recently resumed again …
We know how important was the decoration on the corpse in Ancient Egypt.
The egyptian artist selected the most effective iconography for the benefit of the deceased. Among the most requested images were those of the two mourners Isis and Nephthys. Because, in their role of mourners of Osiris, guaranteed the mummy’s resurrection.
We have already seen that Artemidora selected images of Isis, Nephthys, the two mourners, and Osiris at their feet and at both sides od her corpse. In both cases, the decoration was very concise and minimalist, but highly effective.
New research indicates that Plato and Aristotle were right: Philosophy and the term “love of wisdom” hail from Egypt.
A remarkable example of classical Egyptian philosophy is found in a 3,200-year-old text named “The Immortality of Writers.” This skeptical, rationalistic, and revolutionary manuscript was discovered during excavations in the 1920s, in the ancient scribal village of Deir El-Medina, across the Nile from Luxor, some 400 miles up the river from Cairo. Fittingly, this intellectual village was originally known as Set Maat: “Place of Truth.”
In ancient Egypt, men inherited the throne. So, when Hatshepsut, who was often depicted as a man, found herself in charge after the untimely death of her husband, the remarkable woman realised the only way to rule Egypt was to be better than any king.
New secrets of Egyptian pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut’s tomb have been revealed to viewers in a fascinating documentary that offers a glimpse into usually off-limits parts of the temple.
Historical facial reconstructions provide us with a glimpse into the past in a manner that we can visually connect to our ancient predecessors. However, it should be noted that most of these reconstructions, while guided by empirical evidence, are based on educated appraisements, thereby presenting approximations of the facial structure of the individual. Taking this into consideration, let us take a gander at six facial reconstructions of ancient Egyptians, from the period between circa 15th century BC to the 1st century BC.
In mid July, the It’s Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection opened at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum. Featuring original film posters from the 1920s to 1970s, the exhibition not only celebrates the creativity and popularity of many of the films on displays, but also takes a look at the collector, Kirk Hammett, himself. The Nile Scribes visited It’s Alive! looking for Egypt’s appearance in several posters from classic Hollywood films.
Photo of the Week: A bit of Egyptomania
Camelbeach Waterpark from the Instagram account of tomes_and_tombs.
