Book of the Dead: The ancient Egyptian guide to the afterlife

The 'Book of the Dead' guided ancient Egyptians in the underworld.

A section of the "Book of the Dead," a papyrus manuscript with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations. Here we see Ani, Scribe of the Sacred Revenues of all the gods of Thebes, and administrator of the Granaries of the Lords of Abydos, and his wife Tutu before a table of offerings of meat, cakes, fruit, flowers, etc. Hymn in honor of the Sun God Ra at his rising. (Image credit: duncan1890 via Getty Images)

The "Book of the Dead" is a modern-day name given to a series of ancient Egyptian texts that the Egyptians believed would help the dead navigate the underworld, as well as serving other purposes. Copies of these texts were sometimes buried with the dead. 

The "'Book of the Dead' denotes the relatively large corpus of mortuary texts that were typically copied onto papyrus scrolls and deposited in burials of the New Kingdom [circa 1550 B.C. to 1070 B.C.]," wrote Peter Dorman, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, in an article published in the book "Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt(opens in new tab)" (Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 2017). 

The "Book of the Dead" became popular during the New Kingdom, but it was derived from the "Coffin Texts" — so named because they were often written on coffins — and the "Pyramid Texts" that were inscribed on the walls of pyramids, Dorman noted. The Coffin Texts were popular during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2030 B.C. to 1640 B.C.), while the Pyramid Texts first appeared in the Old Kingdom's fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.).

BOOK OF THE DEAD'S SPELLS

The "Book of the Dead" includes individual chapters, or spells. "The ancient Egyptians used the word rꜢ to designate each composition. The word rꜢ is generally translated as 'spell' or 'utterance.' It is written with the hieroglyph of a human mouth because the term was related to speech," Foy Scalf, the head of research archives at the University of Chicago who holds a doctorate in Egyptology, told Live Science in an email. 

There wasn't a standard book found in every tomb. Instead, each copy contained different spells. "No one such 'book' contains all known spells, but only a judicious sampling," Dorman wrote, noting that "no single 'Book of the Dead' scroll is identical to another."

The ancient Egyptians called these texts the "Book of Coming Forth by Day," Dorman wrote, noting that this name reflected "the Egyptians' belief that the spells were provided to assist the deceased in entering the afterlife as a glorified spirit, or akh." 

These texts "prepared the Egyptians for life after death and [had] the power to conjure up all the parts of one's body for the spiritual journey," wrote Barry Kemp, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, in his book "How to Read the Egyptian Book of the Dead(opens in new tab)" (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007). "The Book of the Dead, by means of its spells, conferred on the owner the power to navigate successfully — for eternity — through [the underworld's] various realms" Kemp wrote.

A section of the "Book of the Dead." Here we see judgment of the dead, with the weighing of the heart ritual. (Image credit: Photos.com via Getty Images)

Some spells appear more frequently in copies of the "Book of the Dead" than others, and some were considered almost essential. One of these essential spells is now known as Spell 17, which discusses the importance of the sun-god Re (also called Ra), one of the most important Egyptian gods, Dorman noted. 

The ancient Egyptians believed that the body of the deceased could be renewed in the afterlife leaving a person to navigate a place of "gods, demons, mysterious locations and potential obstacles," wrote Kemp. The chapters of the "Book of the Dead" described some of the things one might encounter — such as the weighing of the heart ceremony in which a person's deeds were weighed against the feather of the goddess Maat, a deity associated with justice. 

The spells were often illustrated. "Pictures [were] of great importance in the New Kingdom collection of funerary texts now called the Egyptian Book of the Dead," wrote Geraldine Pinch, an Egyptologist, in her book "Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction(opens in new tab)" (Oxford University Press, 2004). "Many owners of Books of the Dead would have been unable to read the hieroglyphic texts, but they could understand the complex vignettes that summarized the contents of the spells" Pinch wrote. 

The spells were not gender specific. It didn't have "spells that were used particularly by women" or spells that were used primarily by men, Marissa Stevens, an Egyptologist and assistant director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Live Science in an email.

MULTIPLE PURPOSES

This small papyrus features "Book of the Dead" spells 100 and 129. On the top are the text and vignette for spell 129. At the left of the vignette is the god Osiris holding a was-scepter; behind him stands a large djed-pillar. In front of the god is an offering table with food topped by a large lotus flower. On the right is water with two boats. In the left one is the phoenix, while five deities stand in the right one. The lower part of the papyrus features spell 100. This time, Osiris is depicted on the right side, again with a djed-pillar behind him. In front of the god is the emblem for the east, and to the left of this is a boat being punted by a woman (the deceased) with a long oar. Behind her sits the sun god and then the phoenix. (Image credit: Rogers Fund, 1924/The Met/ CC0 1.0)

The "Book of the Dead" is most famous for its guidance to the deceased, but it likely also served other purposes. "Too often has the 'Book of the Dead' been called a 'guide' to the afterlife; it was so much more than that," Scalf told Live Science. "Probably the most important function of the 'Book of the Dead,' which can only be inferred from indirect evidence, is that it helped to assuage people's fears about the unknowns of death," Scalf said, noting that wealthy ancient Egyptians also arranged to have their bodies mummified and get their coffins decorated with religious texts in an effort to control what happened to them once they died. 

Additionally, the spells in the "Book of the Dead" could be used when a person was still alive. "Most of the spells from the 'Book of the Dead' are not designed to 'navigate' the underworld," Scalf said. "Most of the spells are about transformation and transcendent experience. In the earthly life, a ritualist may use rites and incantations to transcend everyday experience [use the spells in a ceremony to have a religious experience]," said Scalf said, noting that "many of the spells include instructions for how to use them on Earth" — which shows that they were likely used by living people too, Scalf said.

Many of these spells could then also be used in the afterlife, the Egyptians believed. "A person may use these same spells to help transform their existence, but in many ways it is a similar transcendent experience. The spells are largely about elevating to the plane of existence of the gods; only then would the person travel the underworld along with the gods themselves," Scalf said.

COPIES FOR BURIAL

On the left, Osiris-Seker stands in a shrine in mummified form. The name Osiris-Seker represents the fusion of Seker, the god of death, with Osiris, the god of resurrection. The Papyrus of Ani ends with the tomb of Ani, the white building with the pyramidal top, located at the foot of the mountain of Amenta, at Thebes. Emerging from the mountain's slope into a papyrus thicket is the head of Hathor in the form of the divine cow. This goddess, mistress of the necropolis, who welcomes the arrivals of the deceased to the underworld, is also associated with the protection of women. Standing before a lavish presentation of luxuriant offerings is another manifestation of Hathor, known as Tawaret. She has the head and body of a hippopotamus, the legs of a lioness and the tail of a crocodile. (Image credit: Nastasic via Getty Images)

Many copies of the "Book of the Dead" that have been discovered were unearthed in tombs and were likely not read much. And many of the "Book of the Dead" manuscripts that survive today were probably not read much before they were buried with the deceased, Scalf told Live Science.

"The longest of the papyrus manuscripts is over thirty meters [98 feet] in length; it would have been a very difficult manuscript to navigate when reading. These manuscripts [found in tombs] were prestige copies, largely meant for deposition in the grave," Scalf said. 

Additionally, spells from the "Book of the Dead" were not always written down on manuscripts. For instance, Scalf noted that the spells were sometimes written down on the bandages that wrapped a person's mummy. They were also inscribed on the walls of tombs and even on Tutankhamun's golden death mask. 

It's possible that people who couldn't afford a copy of the spells may have had the spells read to them. "If you did not have a scroll in your tomb, hired priests or family members might have recited it for you during the funeral, or when visiting the tomb afterwards," Lara Weiss, a curator of the Egyptian and Nubian collection at the Netherland's National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, told Live Science in an email. 

The last known copies of the "Book of the Dead" were created in the first or second century A.D., Scalf wrote in a study published in the book "Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt." Another series of funerary texts known as the "Books of Breathing" became popular in its place — which was derived, in part, from the "Book of the Dead," Scalf wrote.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• The "Book of the Dead for the Chantress of Amun Nauny" is more than 17 feet [5 meters] long and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art(opens in new tab) in New York City.

• The Google Arts & Culture(opens in new tab) website has high resolution images of copies of the "Book of the Dead" from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.

• The "papyrus of Ani" is another beautiful copy of the "Book of the Dead" in the British Museum(opens in new tab).

Originally published on Live Science.

Archeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb may have stolen treasure, new evidence suggests

Howard Carter stole Tutankhamun’s treasure, new evidence suggests

100 years after the discovery of the tomb of the boy king, a previously unpublished letter backs up long-held suspicions

Harry Burton, Howard Carter examine King Tut's sarcophagus. Photo courtesy the Griffith Institute, colorization by Dynamichrome.

Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, was long suspected by Egyptians of having helped himself to treasures before the vault was officially opened. But while rumours have swirled for generations, proof has been hard to come by.

Now an accusation that Carter handled property “undoubtedly stolen from the tomb” has emerged in a previously unpublished letter sent to him in 1934 by an eminent British scholar within his own excavation team.

It was written by Sir Alan Gardiner, a leading philologist. Carter had enlisted Gardiner to translate hieroglyphs found in the 3,300-year-old tomb, and later gave him a “whm amulet”, used for offerings to the dead, assuring him that it had not come from the tomb.

Gardiner showed the amulet to Rex Engelbach, the then British director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and was dismayed to be told that it had indeed come from the tomb as it matched other examples – all made from the same mould.

Firing off a letter to Carter, he enclosed Engelbach’s damning verdict, which reads: “The whm amulet you showed me has been undoubtedly stolen from the tomb of Tutankhamun.”

The sarcophagus of the boy pharaoh King Tutankhamun is on display in his newly renovated tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt January 31, 2019. (Reuters)

Gardiner told Carter: “I deeply regret having been placed in so awkward a position.”

But he added: “I naturally did not tell Engelbach that I obtained the amulet from you.”

The letters, now in a private collection, will be published in a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press, Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World

Its author, Bob Brier, a leading Egyptologist at Long Island University, told the Observer that suspicions about Carter helping himself to treasures have long been rumoured: “But now there’s no doubt about it.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery by Carter and his financial backer, Lord Carnarvon, of the tomb of the boy king, filled with thrones, chariots and thousands of objects needed in the next world. Over the next decade, Carter supervised their removal and transportation down the Nile to Cairo to be displayed in the Egyptian Museum.

Some Egyptologists have challenged Carter’s claim that the tomb’s treasures had been looted in antique times. In 1947, in an obscure scientific journal in Cairo, Alfred Lucas, one of Carter’s employees, reported that Carter secretly broke open the door to the burial chamber himself, before appearing to reseal it and cover the opening.

Howard Carter at the entrance to an Egyptian archaeological site in 1923. ( Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Brier said: “They were suspected of having broken into the tomb before its official opening, taking out artefacts, including jewellery, sold after their respective deaths. It’s been known that Carter somehow had items, and people have suspected that he might have helped himself, but these letters are dead proof.

“He certainly never admitted it. We don’t have any official denial. But he was locked out of the tomb for a while by the Egyptian government. There was a lot of bad feeling, and they thought he was stealing things.”

In his book, he writes that the Egyptians were unable to prove their suspicions and were convinced, for example, that Carter had been planning to steal a wooden head of Tutankhamun found in his possession: “The Egyptian authorities had entered and inspected Tomb No. 4, which Carter and the team had used for storage of antiquities, and discovered a beautiful lifesize wooden head of Tutankhamun as a youth.

“It had been packed in a Fortnum & Mason crate but it had never been mentioned in Carter’s records of the finds, nor in the volume describing the contents of the antechamber…. Carter argued that it had simply been discovered in the rubble in the descending passage.”

Brier said: “Later, we do find objects on the Egyptian antiquities market from his estate that clearly came from the tomb.”

Some entered museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which announced in 2010 that it would send back to Egypt 19 objects it acquired between the 1920s and 1940s as they “can be attributed with certainty to Tutankhamun’s tomb”.

In his 1992 book on Carter, the late Harry James drew on Carter letters in the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford, which refer to a row with Gardiner that led to an amulet’s return to Cairo.

The significance of the previously unpublished correspondence is that the accusation came from a leading expert who was actually involved in the first excavation.

Carter would have struggled to challenge Engelbach, who had “too much authority and really knew his stuff”, Brier said.

'Black' or 'white'? Ancient Egyptian race mystery now solved

A study describes how researchers conducted the first successful DNA sequencing on ancient Egyptian mummies.

• The race of the ancient Egyptians has long been a controversial subject of debate.

• Researchers used genetic information derived from mummies to shed light on the ancestry of the ancient Egyptians.

• The results suggest that the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant.

Egyptologists, writers, scholars, and others, have argued the race of the ancient Egyptians since at least the 1970s. Some today believe they were sub-Saharan Africans. We can see this interpretation portrayed in Michael Jackson’s 1991 music video for Remember the Time from his Dangerous album. The video, a 10-minute mini-film, includes performances by Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson.

Reactionaries, meanwhile, say that there’s never been any significant black civilizations—an utter falsehood, of course. There were several in fact, highly advanced African empires and kingdoms throughout history. Curiously, some extreme Right groups have even used blood group data to proclaim a Nordic origin to King Tutankhamun and his brethren.

The problem, it was thought, is that mummy DNA couldn’t be sequenced. But a group of international researchers, using unique methods, have overcome the barriers to do just that. They found that the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant. This is the Eastern Mediterranean which today includes the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The mummies used were from the New Kingdom and a later period, (a period later than the Middle Kingdom) when Egypt was under Roman rule.

Modern Egyptians share 8% of their genome with central Africans, far more than ancient ones, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. The influx of sub-Saharan genes only occurred within the last 1,500 years. This could be attributed to the trans-Saharan slave trade or just from regular, long distance trade between the two regions. Improved mobility on the Nile during this period increased trade with the interior, researchers claim.

Egypt over the span of antiquity was conquered many times including by Alexander the Great, by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and more. Researchers wanted to know if these constant waves of invaders caused any major genetic changes in the populace over time. Group leader Wolfgang Haak at the Max Planck Institute in Germany said in a press release: “The genetics of the Abusir el-Meleq community did not undergo any major shifts during the 1,300 year timespan we studied, suggesting that the population remained genetically relatively unaffected by foreign conquest and rule.”

The study was led by archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause, also of the Max Planck Institute. Historically, there’s been a problem finding intact DNA from ancient Egyptian mummies. “The hot Egyptian climate, the high humidity levels in many tombs and some of the chemicals used in mummification techniques, contribute to DNA degradation and are thought to make the long-term survival of DNA in Egyptian mummies unlikely,” the study noted.

It was also thought that, even if genetic material were recovered, it may not be reliable. Despite this, Krause and colleagues have been able to introduce robust DNA sequencing and verification techniques, and completed the first successful genomic testing on ancient Egyptian mummies.

Each came from Abusir el-Meleq, an archaeological site situated along the Nile, 70 miles (115 km) south of Cairo. This necropolis there houses mummies which display aspects revealing a dedication to the cult of Osiris, the green-skinned god of the afterlife.

First, the mitochondrial genomes from 90 of mummies were taken. From these, Krause and colleagues found that they could get the entire genomes from just three of the mummies in all. For this study, scientists took teeth, bone, and soft tissue samples. The teeth and bones offered the most DNA. They were protected by the soft tissue which has been preserved through the embalming process.

Researchers took these samples back to a lab in Germany. They began by sterilizing the room. Then they put the samples under UV radiation for an hour to sterilize them. From there, they were able to perform DNA sequencing.

Scientists also gathered data on Egyptian history and archaeological data of northern Africa, to give their discoveries some context. They wanted to know what changes had occurred over time. To find out, they compared the mummies’ genomes to that of 100 modern Egyptians and 125 Ethiopians. “For 1,300 years, we see complete genetic continuity,” Krause said.

The oldest mummy sequenced was from the New Kingdom, 1,388 BCE, when Egypt was at the height of its power and glory. The youngest was from 426 CE, when the country was ruled from Rome. The ability to acquire genomic data on ancient Egyptians is a dramatic achievement, which opens up new avenues of research.

One limitation according to their report, “all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt.” In southern Egypt they say, the genetic makeup of the people may have been different, being closer to the interior of the continent.

Researchers in future want to determine exactly when sub-Saharan African genes seeped into the Egyptian genome and why. They’ll also want to know where ancient Egyptians themselves came from. To do so, they’ll have to identify older DNA from, as Krause said, “Back further in time, in prehistory.”

Using high-throughput DNA sequencing and cutting-edge authentication techniques, researchers proved they could retrieve reliable DNA from mummies, despite the unforgiving climate and damaging embalming techniques.

Further testing will likely contribute much knowledge to our understanding of the ancient Egyptians and perhaps even those from other places as well, helping to fill in the gaps in humanity’s collective memory.

To learn about the latest Egyptian archaeological find, click here:

The Secret 'Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids': A Restricted Site That Turned into a Military Base

---

BY DIMOSTHENIS VASILOUDIS

---

Unfinished Wonders: In Zawyet el-Aryan, there are remains of two unfinished Egyptian pyramids (around 2700–2600 BC), the Layer Pyramid and the Unfinished Northern Pyramid.

The ancient wonders of Egypt have always captivated the imaginations of historians, archaeologists, and adventurers alike. While the iconic Giza Pyramids, like the Great Pyramid of Khufu, stand tall and well-preserved, there are lesser-known monuments that hold secrets hidden beneath their enigmatic structures. Among these mysteries are the Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids, comprising the Layer Pyramid and the Unfinished Northern Pyramid, standing as silent witnesses to Egypt's distant past.

The Layer Pyramid

The Layer Pyramid, believed to have been constructed during the reign of Pharaoh Khaba in the Third Dynasty, dates back to approximately 2670 BC. While its core remains largely unexplored, the surrounding area boasts large mastabas, which are believed to have served as dwellings for high-ranking officials. This indicates the royal significance of Zawyet el-Aryan in ancient Egypt.

The Unfinished Northern Pyramid

The Unfinished Northern Pyramid, sometimes referred to as the Pyramid of Baka or Bikheris, is a testament to the remarkable architectural prowess of the Old Kingdom period. Archaeologists and Egyptologists suggest that this pyramid, a colossal structure, belongs to the early or mid-4th Dynasty, dating from 2613–2494 BC. Yet the identity of its builder remains a subject of debate among scholars.

One of the intriguing aspects of the Unfinished Pyramid is the presence of numerous inscriptions within its chamber and descending stairway, written in black and red ink. These inscriptions hold clues to the pyramid's owner, but the correct reading of the cartouche name presents a challenge. Various interpretations have been proposed, from Nebka to Seth-Ka, leaving us with a tantalizing mystery.

Egyptologists and historians continue to debate the dating of the pyramid of Baka. They point to several pieces of graffiti made of black and red ink, which were found in the chamber and in the descending stairway. Alessandro Barsanti recorded at least 67 inscriptions.

The main problem is the correct reading of the cartouche name found within at least six ink inscriptions. While the lower and therefore second hieroglyphic sign is certainly a Ka-symbol, the first sign is illegible. Unfortunately, the excavator, Alessandro Barsanti, made no facsimiles of the inscriptions and made rather slipshod handdrawings instead, so that the first hieroglyph remains indecipherable.

As a consequence, there are several alternative readings of the cartouche name: Kurt Sethe reads Nebka ("His Ka is the lord"), Jean-Philippe Lauer reads Bik-Ka ("His Ka is divine"), Peter Kaplony reads Schena-Ka ("His Ka is forceful"), and Gaston Maspero reads Nefer-Ka ("His Ka is beautiful or flawless"). Wolfhart Westendorf even proposes the depiction of a giraffe, an animal that was seen as wise and a bedizen with shamanistic powers.

Jürgen von Beckerath and George Reisner instead think that the pyramid was planned as the tomb for a well-attested prince of the 4th Dynasty named Baka, a son of King Djedefre. Aidan Dodson instead sees a sitting Seth-animal and therefore reads the name found in the pyramid as Seth-Ka ("Seth is my Ka").

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

Research history

The Unfinished Pyramid of Zawyet El-Aryan first garnered attention in the mid-19th century when German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius documented it as "Pyramid XIII." Subsequent explorations by Italian archaeologist Alessandro Barsanti in the early 20th century uncovered the monumental scale of this structure, leaving an indelible impression on Egyptologists like Gaston Maspero.

The pyramid shaft was examined more closely in 1904–1905 by the Italian archaeologist Alessandro Barsanti. Gaston Maspero, then director-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, visited Barsanti's excavations and was struck by the monumental size of the construction. He writes:

... I hope that the best informed amongst the tourists will come to admire the monument: the pleasure they will experience during this trip is worth the two or three hours it will take. At first, the immensity of the task undertaken by the Egyptians will not appear to them, it is only at the bottom of the stairway, when they will walk upon the granite pavement that it will become obvious. It is not that anything in particular when examined in details is remarkable or out of the ordinary, but the general feeling is one of those one never forgets. The size and richness of the materials, the perfection of the cuts and joints, the peerless finish of the granit sarcophagus, the boldness of structure and the sheer height of the walls, everything comes together to compose this so far unique ensemble. It is an awe inspiring shock and nowhere is the power and mastery of the old Egyptian architects so suddenly and strongly obvious as here.

---

Drawing Parallels: Assassin's Creed Origins And The Unfinished Northern Pyramid Of Zawyet El Aryan

---

Unfortunately, World War I and Barsanti's untimely death in 1917 halted further excavations, consigning the pyramid to obscurity until 1954. It was then that the pyramid's striking landscape was chosen as a backdrop for the film "Land of the Pharaohs," prompting the clearance of sand and rubble that had concealed the site.

The landscape of Zawyet El Aryan seemed to be the perfect place, and the pyramid of Baka was chosen as a backdrop for the movie. Consequentially, the shaft and its surroundings were cleared of the sand and rubble that had covered the area since Barsanti's excavations.

Superstructure and Substructure

The knowledge surrounding the superstructure of this pyramid remains exceptionally limited. Only the square base, hewn from natural bedrock, has been completed, measuring an impressive 200 meters by 200 meters (660 feet by 660 feet). There are faint remnants suggesting the presence of a surrounding pedestal, likely intended to support a limestone covering. Unfortunately, the exact dimensions and planned slope of the pyramid remain elusive due to the absence of covering blocks or the pyramidion, and it is worth noting that pyramid pedestals were consistently larger than the pyramid's base itself. This leaves room for speculation that the original design may have intended a notably smaller structure.

The substructure of the pyramid, on the other hand, presents a more detailed picture. It comprises a T-shaped shaft, with the corridor oriented from south to north and the chamber extending from east to west. Intriguingly, the entire shaft lacks any remaining ceiling, raising the possibility that it was never roofed. A steep stairway descends to the chamber, yet midway along its length, it encounters a horizontal surface of unknown purpose. The walls of the shaft are remarkably smooth but have never been adorned with stones, and regrettably, the chamber itself was left incomplete. Only the chamber's floor was fully realized and paved with massive granite blocks, each measuring 4.5 meters (15 feet) in length, 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in thickness, and weighing up to an astonishing 9 tons each.

Within close proximity to the western extremity of the chamber, an unusual vat was unearthed. Sporting an oval shape, it was embedded into one of the stone blocks constituting the chamber's floor. The intriguing aspect is that this vat appears to have been brought into the chamber during the foundation's construction, as its dimensions render it impossible to pass through the passageway leading to the chamber. The presence of an intact oval lid suggests that the vat was sealed at some point. Although it's been reported by Barsanti that traces of a substance were discovered within the vat, regrettably, these substances were never subjected to closer examination and have since been lost to time. Furthermore, Barsanti claimed to have come across a damaged dedication tablet bearing the name of King Djedefre.

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

The alignment of the pyramid complex, intriguingly, bears a striking resemblance to that of the pyramid of Djedefre. It encompasses a vast enclosure wall measuring 465 meters by 420 meters (1,526 feet by 1,378 feet), within which one would expect to find a mortuary temple. However, the absence of any progress beyond the initial layer of the pyramid's construction has resulted in the surrounding complex remaining equally unfinished. As a consequence, there are no discernible traces of a mortuary temple, a causeway, a valley temple, or any other structures associated with ancient Egyptian religious and funerary practices.

Access to the Military Restricted Area of Zawyet el-Aryan Pyramids

 

Since 1964, the Unfinished Pyramid of Zawyet El-Aryan has been within a restricted military zone, prohibiting further excavations and leading to the unfortunate overbuilding of the surrounding necropolis with military structures. The shaft has even been misused as a local dump, casting uncertainty on its present condition.

Although Zawyet el Aryan is not an easy place to get to, some bespoke tour operators may offer guided visits. Only an 18 minute drive from the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Zawyet el Aryan Pyramids are a half hour drive out of Giza via the ring road and Route 75M.

The Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids, particularly the enigmatic Unfinished Northern Pyramid, continue to baffle historians and archaeologists alike. While we may never decipher the true identity of its builder or unravel all its mysteries, these ancient structures stand as testaments to the enduring allure of Egypt's past.

In the shadow of the iconic Giza Pyramids, the Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids remind us that the mysteries of history and archaeology are not limited to well-known sites but extend to the lesser-known, enigmatic gems that still hold secrets beneath the sands of time.

The 'Ramesseum Onomasticon'; Maybe the Earliest Record of a Knowledge Organization System

The Ramessum Onomasticon, which dates from the end of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt, no earlier than the reign of Ramesses IX, may be the earliest surviving record of a knowledge organization system.

"Papyrus Ramesseum D (P. Berlin 10495). Frame 6. Papyrus written on the recto in hieratic script. The recto contains an onomasticon. The text is written in numbered horizontal lines with the item's determinatives arranged in a separate sub-column. This frame contains three pages, with lines 249-278. These lines contain bread and cakes, grain and body-parts. The papyrus was originally a half-height roll.

"The papyrus is part of the collection of papyri found with a bundle of pens in a chest from a plundered late 13th dynasty tomb under the Ramesseum, apparently belonging to someone like a lector priest. Two of the papyri from the chest are in the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection Berlin (P. Ramesseum A and D); the rest are in the British Museum. The objects found with the papyri are in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge and the Manchester Museum"

Image Source: www.britishmuseum.org

This document is preserved in papyri called the Onomasticon of Amenope, an onomastics compilation that began in the Middle Kingdom. The Ramessum Onomasticon is an administrative/literary categorization of 610 entities organized hierarchically, rather than a list of words (glossary). It is known from ten fragments including versions on papyrus, board, leather, and pottery. Of the nine surviving copies, that preserved in the Golénischeff papyrus is the most complete.

"The first copy of the Onomasticon of Amenope was discovered in 1890 at al-Hibah, Egypt. It was subsequently purchased in 1891 in Cairo by the Russian Egyptologist Vladimir Golenishchev. It was found in a jar together with the Report of Wenamun and the Tale of Woe.A partial copy was found on the back side of the EA10474 papyrus available at the British Museum. It was analysed by Herbin.

"Its content includes many groupings, including heavenly objects, towns, peoples, offices, buildings, types of land, agricultural produce, beverages and oxen parts. It lists several different groups of 'Sea Peoples' and Libyans, including the Danuna, Kehek, Libu, Lukka, Meshwesh, Nubians, and Sherden.

"The Onomasticon of Amenope is an important resource for scholars studying ancient Egyptian life, the pharaonic administration and court, the priesthood,[6] the history of the Sea Peoples, the geography and political organization of the Levant during the late New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, early Bible studies, etc." (Wikipedia article on Onomasticon of Amenope, accessed 01-16-2018). 

• Alan H. Gardiner, The Ramesseum Papyri. Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1955.

• Alan H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947.

• Thanks to Claudio Gnoli for suggesting this entry.

3 Mysteries Archaeologists Still Haven’t Figured Out About Ancient Egypt’s Pyramids

The world’s fascination with ancient Egypt has a long history; Greek rulers often portrayed themselves as pharaohs and Romans dragged obelisks out of Egypt to adorn their cities, including Istanbul and Rome. Following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, Egyptomania gripped Europe and amateur archaeologists began flocking to the country, unearthing massive temples and statues and excavating untold numbers of tombs, including the famous tomb of Tutankhamun, discovered by Howard Carter in 1915. But of all the impressive sites and artifacts found, the pyramids of ancient Egypt are unmatched in grandeur.

Pyramids were built as funerary tombs for pharaohs and high-ranking officials from 2600 BCE to 1550 BCE. These massive monuments displayed a person’s power and wealth and served as a place of ascension into the afterlife. Over 100 pyramids have been found in Egypt, mostly in clusters along the west bank of the Nile. The pyramids come in all shapes in sizes, from the early stepped pyramid of Djoser to the uniquely shaped Bent Pyramid, where the pyramid angle was changed mid-way through construction, to the three iconic Pyramids of Giza, which have been dominating Cairo’s horizon since 2550 BCE.

Research on the pyramids have been taking place since the early 19th century, with early archaeologists clearing sand from the complexes and exploring the interior chambers (sometimes, unfortunately, for the pyramid’s preservation, with the help of dynamite) and later archaeologists scanning and restoring the monuments. However, for all the centuries of excavation and research many pyramid mysteries remain.

Pyramid mystery #1: How were the pyramids of Egypt built?

The Pyramid of Khufu. Photo: ImAAm/Shutterstock

The Pyramid of Khufu (sometimes called Cheops), the largest Egyptian pyramid, is made of 2.3 million stone blocks, each weighing anywhere from 2.5 to 16 tons. Some of the blocks, particularly the ones used in the inner chambers, came as far as Aswan, 500 miles from Giza where the pyramid stands. But how did ancient Egyptians build such massive pyramids without using simple machines such as the wheel, which, while used by Egyptians for pottery making, was not used for carts or chariots until 1500 BCE, likely because wheels weren’t much use in the thick sand that covered the country? It’s an age-old mystery and one that continues to be an enigma for ancient monumental complexes across the world. While there are numerous theories, there is a lack of hard, archaeological evidence to fully support any one of them.

One theory about how the blocks were moved involves sleds and wet sand. A painting in the tomb of Djehutihotep shows men dragging a colossal statue on a sled. In front of them, a person pours water onto the sand. While initially thought to be a ceremonial gesture, physicist Daniel Bonn recently discovered that the right amount of water, about two to five percent of the volume of sand, increased the stiffness of the sand and reduced the friction between the object being dragged and the ground, making the object much easier to move. The same technique may have been used to drag stone blocks to pyramid construction sites.

Once the blocks were at the pyramid’s construction site, however, how were they lifted into place without the use of mechanical advantage? A ramp found in a quarry dating to the construction of the Pyramid of Khufu indicates that ancient Egyptians were able to pull stone blocks out of the quarry on a steep upward slope. It’s possible that similar ramps were used to haul stones up the pyramid’s sides to be placed. However, the exact system is unknown. The ramps could have been on the outside of the pyramid, spiraling up like a mountain road, or straight and long, or built within the pyramid. How a 16-ton block could have been moved up a ramp is also unknown, with theories ranging from sleds to wooden rollers to wooden posts tied to each side of a block, changing the shape from square to polygon and allowing them to be rolled like a keg of beer.

Pyramid mystery #2: What’s inside the mysterious cavities inside the Pyramid of Khufu?

In 2017, ScanPyramids made a massive discovery inside the Pyramid of Khufu. With the aid of muon-tomography, a non-invasive scanning technique that uses cosmic rays to produce 3D images of spaces and can penetrate much more deeply than X Rays, researchers discovered two previously unknown voids inside the pyramid, the first new spaces found inside the pyramid since the 19th century.

A small void was detected on the pyramid’s north face, approximately 15 feet long. Horizontal and sloping upwards, this could be a passageway. More significantly, a 100-foot-long void was found above the Grand Gallery, itself a magnificent passageway that provides access to the burial chambers towards the center of the pyramid.
Not much is known about this larger chamber. It could be either horizontal or at a slope and may actually be made up of several smaller rooms. While it is unlikely to be a burial chamber, it could be a second Grand Gallery, or, more intriguingly, hold some of the secrets to the engineering and construction behind the pyramid. The Bent Pyramid, built by Snefru, Khufu’s father, has a similar chamber above the main burial chamber. The space is believed to help reduce the weight of masonry pressing down from above.

ScanPyramids has plans to scan more pyramids, including the Pyramid of Khafre, Egypt’s second largest. What other secrets could muon-tomography reveal about ancient Egypt’s monuments? Time will tell.

Pyramid mystery #3: Why did the Egyptians stop building pyramids?

Photo: Gurgen Bakhshetyan/Shutterstock

The last royal pyramid was built around 1500 BCE. Afterward, while wealthy individuals were occasionally buried in or near pyramids, pharaohs were buried in the Valley of Kings, near Thebes (modern-day Luxor), the new capital of ancient Egypt. What exactly caused the rulers of Egypt to abandon the practice of pyramid burials is unknown, though many theories exist.

One theory is that religious changes around 1500 BCE began emphasizing building tombs underground, in the bedrock, rather than interring bodies in pyramids. Thebes, unlike the previous Egyptian capital, Memphis, had far less open space and what little there was was rocky and rugged, hardly the ideal landscape to build massive monuments.

Tomb robbing was also an issue, and there was far less chance that burials would be looted if they weren’t placed in such conspicuous settings as horizon-dominating pyramids. The Valley of the Kings is a cliffy, complex landscape that was easy to hide royal burials and rock-cut tombs in. Tuthmosis, the first pharaoh to be buried in the Valley of Kings, hired a man named Ineni to inspect the excavation of his tomb. In his autobiography, Tuthmosis wrote, “I inspected the excavation of the cliff tomb of his Majesty alone, no one seeing, no one hearing.” Entrances were kept secret and necropolis guards patrolled the area for looters.

A more recent theory about why pyramid construction stopped comes from Peter James, an engineer tasked with examining the outer casing of the Bent Pyramid, built in 2600 BCE. While better preserved than other pyramids, which all have lost their outer casings of limestone and marble, the Bent Pyramid’s casing has also been breaking apart. Peter James discovered that the extreme temperature fluctuations of the Egyptian desert were causing the limestone to expand and contract, moving the stone blocks to the edges of the pyramid and forcing them to detach or break, taking the outer casing with them. Oddly enough, the Bent Pyramid’s unusual construction made it the best preserved pyramid; the gaps between the stone blocks have allowed them to shift with thermal expansion without breaking the casing. On the other hand, the more perfectly aligned and placed blocks of the Pyramids of Giza had no gaps between them. Any shifting of the blocks caused them to push against each other, causing the casing to disintegrate rapidly. This disintegration likely happened while pyramid building was still occurring. After spending so much time, money, and energy creating perfect monuments, this visible and rapid destruction of their perfection could have been one reason pharaohs abandoned them as burial monuments.

The largest embalming cache ever found in Egypt

For more than three decades, the Czech Institute of Egyptology has been excavating at the Abusir necropolis, a site several kilometers north of Saqqara, in an area that contains a group of large shaft tombs dating to the late 26th dynasty. (664-525 BC) and early 27th (525-404 BC).

The team of archaeologists led by Miroslav Bárta has just made an important discovery at this site: A deposit of embalming materials practically intact.

The “cache” contains a total of 370 large ceramic storage jars and a number of smaller containers, and is probably the largest find of its kind in Egypt, according to experts.

Multitude of vessels

Some of the vessels that contained embalming materials.

According to Bárta, “Abusir’s shaft tombs, built in a similar way to the famous burial of Pharaoh Djoser under his stepped pyramid, played an important role as a form of cultural expression of the Egyptian elites in that late era.”

All the vessels, which contained the remains of various materials and utensils that were used during the mummification process, were located inside a huge pit measuring 5.3 x 5.3 meters and more than 14 meters deep located next to a large funerary structure that still remains unexcavated.

The vessels were placed in a total of 14 groups, situated at different depths, ranging from 4 to 12 meters, and attached to the sides of the pit in a spiral pattern. The number of containers that made up each of these groups varied from 7 to 52.

Unused canopic jars

Canopic jars belonging to a man named Wahibre-mery-Neith.

In the highest part of the well, four canopic jars (containers used to store the mummified viscera of the deceased) made of limestone and with inscriptions were also found.

They were all empty and clearly unused. According to the texts inscribed on them, these vessels belonged to a certain Wahibre-mery-Neith, son of the Lady Irturu.

“Although several dignitaries with this same name are known at this time, none of them can be clearly identified as the owner of these canopic vessels.

A heart-shaped vessel located in the cache of Abusir.

Judging by the size of the embalming deposit and, mainly, by the dimensions and layout of the tomb nearby, the owner of the tomb (and we assume that also the deposit) he must have been a high dignitary, just like his famous closest neighbors in the cemetery (and who lived in the same period): Udjahorresnet and General Menekhibnekau,” explains Professor Ladislav Bareš, one of the leading experts.

In 2022, the excavation of the funerary structure associated with the deposit of mummification materials by the archaeological team is planned.

At the same time, the vessels and the context in which they were found will be thoroughly analyzed and studied using the most modern scientific methodologies applied to archeology to try to reveal their ancient mysteries.

By HISTORICAL EVE

Archaeologists unearths Unique Tomb of 6th Century BC Egyptian Commander at the archaeological area of ​​Abu Sir

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced on July 15 that a team of Czech archaeologists, while excavating near the Giza Plateau, discovered a tomb belonging to a powerful Egyptian military commander who lived 2,500 years ago.

The ancient commander’s tomb was discovered by Czech researchers about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from the Pyramids of Giza, near the Old Kingdom cemetery and the Abusir archaeological site. Notably, the tomb was located near Wah-Ib-Ra Meri Nate’s embalming stash, which was discovered four months earlier. The finding of the latter suggested that the commander was buried nearby, so the archaeologists were not shocked to find this burial site where they did.

In a press release, the ministry said that the discovery is “unique of its kind” and provides new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of the Persian domination of ancient Egypt and puts forward the first evidence of true globalization in the ancient world. [The tomb also] offers a new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of the Persian domination of ancient Egypt.

The ancient Egyptian commander’s tomb is 7.5 miles from the Giza Pyramids. Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

The cemetery documents a period when the ancient Egyptians lived in the 6th century BC. During this period, the Egyptians greatly expanded their sphere of influence. therefore, the kings of the 26th dynasty [664-525 BC] brought in foreign mercenaries and united them in many parts of the country, including the army.

Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated in a ministry statement that the design of this good tomb was unsurpassed in ancient Egypt.

Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

Wah-Ib-Ra Meri Nate was buried in a large, square tomb with two levels that were excavated especially to house the revered commander’s bones. The main shaft was around 45 feet by 45 feet (14 meters by 14 meters) in size and was nearly 20 feet (six meters) deep. Below it, a smaller shaft, rectangular in shape, 11 feet by 21 feet long, was dug into the bedrock (6.5 meters by 3.3 meters).

At the bottom of this second tunnel, some 52 feet underground, the commander’s mummified body was placed (16 meters). He was interred in a complex double sarcophagus with an inner and an outer part. The inside coffin was fashioned from basalt and sculpted into the shape of a human body, while the exterior sarcophagus was built from two massive slabs of white limestone. The basalt sarcophagus’ overall dimensions were 7.5 by 6.5 feet (2.3 by 1.98 meters).

Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

The archaeologists were disappointed to see that this great discovery was defeated by the tomb thieves and the sarcophagus was smashed open and the mummy of Wah-Ib-Ra Meri Nate was removed. Based on the finding of two pottery objects left within the tomb that belonged to the fourth or fifth century AD, they determined that tomb robbers had broken in and taken it more than 1,000 years ago.

In addition to the absence of a mummy, the area inside the basalt sarcophagus was devoid of grave goods. Only a scarab delicately carved into the shape of a heart and an amulet supposed to be worn on the head was discovered.

Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

However, the mission found on the eastern side of the necropolis many intact archaeological relics that were part of the funerary belongings, including 402 Ushabti statues made of faience.

Ushabtis, which are little figurines that were placed in ancient Egyptian tombs along with mummies that often had writing from the Book of the Dead, was thought to represent the departed and carry out tasks for them in the hereafter.

The discovery of unique tomb in Egypt’s Giza

The archaeological discovery provides new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of Persian domination of ancient Egypt and puts forward the first evidence of true globalization in the ancient world.

Sarcophaguses found in a cache dating to the Egyptian Late Period (around the fifth century B.C.) are displayed after their discovery by a mission headed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, at the Bubastian cemetery at the Saqqara necropolis, southwest of Cairo, Egypt, May 30, 2022. - Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images

CAIRO — The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced July 15 that an archaeological mission of Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague found the sarcophagus of Wahipra Merinit, who was the “commander of foreign soldiers” during the late 26th dynasty and the beginning of the 27th dynasty, in the archaeological area of ​​Abu Sir, Giza.

In a press release, the ministry said that the discovery is “unique of its kind” and provides the first evidence of a real globalization era in the ancient world.

Mohamed Youssef, director of Saqqara Antiquities, explained that the cemetery documents a period in which the ancient Egyptians lived in the sixth century B.C., and was a model for the concept of political and economic globalization.

“The influence of the ancient Egyptians extended outside the country throughout the Mediterranean, which was why the kings of the 26th dynasty [664-525 B.C.] brought in foreign mercenaries and integrated them in many parts of the country, including the army, until the fall of Egypt under Persian occupation,” he told Al-Monitor.

The discovery is all the more significant because it reflects the architectural development on the construction of the well-pit tomb cemetery, according to Youssef.

In the ministry statement, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri said that the design of this well tomb was unparalleled in ancient Egypt.

He explained, “The tomb is designed based on a well. It consists of the main well that is 6 meters [20 feet] deep, with dimensions of approximately 14 meters by 14 meters [46 feet], divided into several parts separated by bridges carved in the natural rock of the area.”

Waziri continued, “In the middle of the main well another smaller and deeper well was dug. It was used as the main burial well for the tomb owner."

According to the press release, Marslav Barta, head of the Czech mission, said that at the bottom of the main burial well, at a depth of about 16 meters (52 feet), a double coffin was found, slightly damaged and completely covered with sand.

He noted that the outer sarcophagus of Wahipra Merinit was made of two huge blocks of white limestone, and inside its cavity lies another basalt human-shaped tomb, with writings from Chapter 72 of the Book of Dead inscribed on its upper part, describing the revival of the deceased and his journey to the other world.

The basalt sarcophagus is 2.30 meters (7.54 feet) long and 1.98 meters (6.5 feet) wide.

Barta explained that the mission found on the eastern side of the necropolis many intact archaeological relics that were part of the funerary belongings, including 402 Ushabti statues made of faience.

Ushabtis are small figures deposited in an ancient Egyptian tomb with the mummy generally bearing inscriptions from the Book of Dead, and were believed to represent the deceased and perform services on their behalf in the afterlife.

Two vases made of alabaster were also found, in addition to a model of faience for an offering table, 10 cups bearing symbols and an ostracon made of limestone engraved with hieratic religious texts written in black ink.

Barta noted, “Due to the small size of the ostracon, the author of the text decided to cover it with brief excerpts from the spells of the Book of the Dead, which also formed parts of the passing ritual, thus ensuring the existence of another life for the tomb owner in the other world.”

He added, “Initial studies conducted on the well cemetery revealed that it was looted toward the end of the old eras, probably around the fourth and fifth centuries."

The archaeological area of ​​Abu Sir is located in the south of Giza governorate, 4.5 kilometers (15 feet) north of the archaeological area of ​​Saqqara. Its name is derived from “Bar Osiris,” meaning the seat of the god Osiris, and includes a series of tombs of the kings of the fifth dynasty, in addition to the temples of the sun, including the Sun Temple of King UserKaf.

The statement quoted Muhammad Mujahid, deputy director of the Czech mission, as saying, “Although the archaeological excavations of Wahipra Merinit  tomb did not provide us with many important archaeological findings or elaborate funerary items, this cemetery is considered unique and important.”

He said that both the architectural design of the tomb and its contents provide valuable information about the significance and meaning of funerary baggage items and the tomb inscriptions accompanying the deceased in the other world.

"[The tomb also] offers a new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of the Persian domination of ancient Egypt,” Mujahid added. 

Youssef explained that the discovered tomb is relatively poor and incomplete, which indicates a period of turmoil and lack of economic capabilities that Egypt went through before it fell into the hands of the Persians for about 100 years.

He added that the Egyptians, kings of the 28th dynasty, were able to expel the Persians and regained power until Alexander the Great invaded Egypt in 332 B.C.

Commenting on the next steps, Youssef said that small artifacts, such as Ushabti statues, were transferred to the ministry’s stores for restoration and display in archaeological museums, while the cemetery remains a site for researchers to make comparisons about the architectural development of archaeological tomb design.

Hussein Abdel Basir, director of the Antiquities Museum at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, told Al-Monitor that the archaeological discovery provides more information on the history of the Egyptian military and its foreign relations.

He said that the discovery reveals the period when the Egyptian army began to rely on mercenary soldiers among its ranks from the Greeks and the Mediterranean islands.

“The discovery shows that these foreign soldiers were led by the Egyptian military commander Wahipra Merinit — the owner of the tomb — to consolidate Egypt’s influence on the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East,” Abdel Basir concluded.

Mycenaean Echoes in El-Amarna: Aegean Warriors in the Egyptian Army of 18th Dynasty?

---

BY DIMOSTHENIS VASILOUDIS

---

An Enigmatic Papyrus from El-Amarna: A possible Egyptian representation of Mycenaean warriors

Egypt, the cradle of ancient civilizations, has provided a constant stream of archaeological riches that never fail to bewilder us. The city of El-Amarna, the short-lived capital established by the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, is a prime source of these treasures. The latest discovery is a rare papyrus that has captured the attention of scholars worldwide. The papyrus could possibly represent Mycenaean warriors, providing an intriguing new perspective on Bronze Age Mediterranean connections.

An Unusual Discovery

Unearthed during a recent dig at El-Amarna, the papyrus was found to be remarkably well preserved, thanks to Egypt's dry climate. The intricate hieroglyphics and vivid colors attest to the craftsmanship and sophistication of Egyptian scribes during the Amarna period (1353–1336 BC). Yet the true fascination lies not in the artistry but in the content: the papyrus depicts warriors bearing an uncanny resemblance to those from the Mycenaean civilization.

Those papyrus fragments, dated to the second half of the 14th century BC and currently being exposed in the British Museum, depict battle scenes between Egyptian and Libyan soldiers. In one of those fragments, we can see warriors bearing the typical Mycenaean Boar-tusk helmet and Egyptian or Aegean-style short-cropped oxhide tunics running on the battle front.

These can be paralleled in representations from the Aegean, suggesting that the painting may show figures wearing boar's tusk helmets and Mycenaean-style tunics. This interpretation of the battle scene argues that the Egyptian iconographic repertoire also included depictions of Mycenean features and adds to the evidence for direct, rather than indirect, contacts between the two cultures.

Fragments of two scenes of the painted papyrus, without text. One shows a fallen Egyptian overcome by a Libyan, while other Libyan archers rush on. The second shows registers of Egyptian infantrymen, some wearing helmets and/or short ox-hide tunics. Other unplaced fragments show parts of further infantrymen, and a tree. The scene includes other indications of landscape. The British Museum.

A Mycenaean Connection?

The Mycenaean civilization, centered in the Peloponnese of modern-day Greece, thrived during the Late Bronze Age (1600–1100 BC). Their warrior-centric society, chariot warfare, and iconic "boar’s tusk" helmets were immortalized by Homer's epic poems.

In the papyrus from El-Amarna, the warriors are illustrated with short, wavy hair, round shields, long spears, and distinctive helmets. The physical attributes and weaponry closely resemble Mycenaean depictions, particularly those found in frescoes from Pylos and Mycenae. Intriguingly, the possible representation of "boar's tusk" helmets, a Mycenaean hallmark, raises questions about the nature of the interaction between the two civilizations.

Cultural Interactions in the Bronze Age

During the Bronze Age, civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea, including the Egyptian and Mycenaean, established complex networks of interaction. This era saw significant trading, diplomatic exchanges, and, inevitably, warfare. Excavations have found Mycenaean pottery in Egypt and vice versa, proving the existence of trade relations.

Moreover, the Amarna Letters—a cache of clay tablets from the 14th century BC—provide evidence of diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and states in the Aegean, possibly including the Mycenaeans. But depictions of Mycenaean individuals in Egyptian artifacts are rare, making this papyrus potentially ground-breaking.

Illustration of a Mycenaean Greek warrior with the distinctive boar-tusk helmet at the fall of Troy

Implications of the Papyrus

If the interpretation of the papyrus holds true, it could signify that the Mycenaeans had a more substantial presence or influence in Egypt than previously thought. The warriors could represent mercenaries, allies, enemies, or simply a demonstration of cultural knowledge. The pictorial representation suggests a more direct interaction, implying that the Mycenaeans were not just abstract entities in Egyptian perception but had a tangible presence.

This discovery could be a step towards recognizing a previously unknown degree of interconnectedness between the Bronze Age civilizations of Egypt and Mycenae. As scholars continue to investigate, this enigmatic papyrus will serve as a tantalizing puzzle piece in the vibrant mosaic of Bronze Age history.

The Mycenaean boar-tusk helmet

The distinctive Boar-tusk helmet of the Mycenaean warrior elite could be a strong evidence of the presence of those fearsome Aegean warriors in the plains of Egypt, supported also by the large quantities of Mycenaean pottery that have been also found in El-Amarna, in the same period. Both evidence suggest some degree of cultural contact between the Mycenaeans and the Egyptians of the Late 18th Dynasty.

Mycenaean helmet with wild boar teeth

The so-called ‘odontophracto’ helmet is considered a Mycenaean invention and was a basic part of the armor, at least until the 13th century.

According to the Homeric description, the helmet consists of the "kynei", a dog's skin leather cap with a wool lining, which is protected by superimposed rows of specially worked boar's teeth.

Mycenaeans seem not to have been included amongst the Egyptians' repertoire of depictions of foreigners, although Minoans clearly identified on many Egyptian frescoes, such as those on many tombs and temples (tombs of Anen, Rekhmire, Puimre, Senenmut, Menkheperrasoneb, Abydos Temple of Rameses II).

We also know about the close involvement of Minoan Crete in international relations and cultural exchanges with the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt either through marriage, art, technology or exchange of gifts (Minoan frescoes at Tell El-Dab'a).

Distant theaters of royal action in the Bronze Age: The international policy of the pharaohs and the ‘Aegean List’

The usage of professional warriors from the Bronze Age (some of them of Hellenic origin) can be safely assumed as the complete retails of the organization and structure of the period armies are not quite clear to us. The employment of mercenaries cannot be excluded in the early Bronze Age but it becomes certain in the later stages. It is also known that earlier Aegean armies and navies, such as the Minoans, used mercenaries from Africa.

We do know that after the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II (r. 1279–1213 BC, about one century after the El-Amarna papyrus) defeated the Sherden sea pirates at the beginning of his reign, he hired many of them to serve as his bodyguard. It has been suggested that some of them were from Ionia. In the reign (1213–1203 BC) of his successor Merneptah, Egypt was attacked by their Libyan neighbors, and some experts believe that the Libyan army included mercenaries from Europe’s mainland. Among them were people termed ‘Ekwash, and it has been proposed that this meant Achaeans (Mycenaeans), but there is no certainty of that as other evidence points to an attempted encroachment by Libyans only upon neighboring territory.

The fresco ‘Captain of the Blacks’ at Knossos, thought to represent a Minoan officer with two spears, leading a troop of Nubian mercenaries, Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete, Greece.

Another important indication of the developed relations between Egypt and the Aegean is the famous "Aegean List" of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, an inscription of toponyms found at the base of a statue in the northern half of the West Portico of the great Peristyle Court in Kom el-Hettân, which seems to refer to areas and nations of the Aegean that were probably visited by an Egyptian merchant or diplomatic mission.

Each statue base bears a different series of toponyms written within “fortified” or “crenellated” ovals and superimposed on bound captives—a standard Egyptian way of denoting foreign places. Together, they represent roughly half of the known outside world.

The order in which the toponyms are to be read is crucial. In the center of the front side, two bound prisoners support Amenhotep III’s prenomen and nomen. The two place names to the right should be read first, since they face the same direction as these cartouches; they are kftiw, i.e., Keftiu, identified as Crete, and tny (ti-nA-y-w), i.e., Tanaja (Danaia, the Danaoi-Land, meaning the land of Danaans, the homeric Achaeans), identified as mainland Greece. Both are known from other Egyptian sources from the time of Thutmose III onward, and their identification is accepted by most scholars.

The Aegean List’s other toponyms are unique; not one of them appears in any other Egyptian source, either before or after Amenhotep III’s reign. All scholars agree that these names denote sites and regions in the Bronze Age Aegean, but their identification is sometimes challenging. Some of them are translated as Amnisos, Phaistos, Knossos, Lyktos, Kydonia, Mycenae, Pisaia, Kythera, Methara, or Messana(?), Thebes, Tegea, or Dikte(? ), and Eleia, or Ilios (Troy)(?).

The Aegean List remains of critical importance as a clear indication that the Egyptians had substantial knowledge of specific Minoan and Mycenaean sites during Amenhotep III’s reign.

The extroverted and aggressive Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt

The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt is classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. The Eighteenth Dynasty spanned the period from 1550/1549 to 1292 BC. This dynasty is also known as the Thutmosid Dynasty after the four pharaohs named Thutmose.

The Eighteenth Dynasty empire conquered all of Lower Nubia under Thutmose I. By the reign of Thutmose III, the Egyptians had directly controlled Nubia up to the Nile River, the 4th cataract, With Egyptian influence and tributaries extending beyond this point. The Egyptians referred to the area as Kush, and it was administered by the Viceroy of Kush. The 18th dynasty obtained Nubian gold, animal skins, ivory, ebony, cattle, and horses, which were of exceptional quality. The Egyptians built temples throughout Nubia.

After the end of the Hyksos period of foreign rule, the Eighteenth Dynasty engaged in a vigorous phase of expansionism, conquering vast areas of the Near East, with Pharaoh Thutmose III submitting the "Shasu" Bedouins of northern Canaan and the land of Retjenu, as far as Syria and Mittani, in numerous military campaigns circa 1450 BC.

The El-Amarna papyrus presents a captivating glimpse into the cross-cultural encounters of the ancient world. As the world waits for more comprehensive analyses and potential verification of the Mycenaean representation, the papyrus holds its secrets close, reminding us that history often reveals itself in fragments and whispers rather than in complete narratives or loud declarations. Its tantalizing hints of an interlinked Mediterranean world make the papyrus an invaluable addition to our understanding of the vast tapestry of human history.

Why did people start eating Egyptian mummies? The weird and wild ways mummy fever swept through Europe

Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies.

Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by the macabre ideas Victorian people had about after-dinner entertainment, the bandaged corpses of ancient Egyptians were the subject of fascination from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Mummy mania

Faith that mummies could cure illness drove people for centuries to ingest something that tasted awful.

Mumia, the product created from mummified bodies, was a medicinal substance consumed for centuries by rich and poor, available in apothecaries' shops, and created from the remains of mummies brought from Egyptian tombs back to Europe.

By the 12th century apothecaries were using ground up mummies for their otherworldly medicinal properties. Mummies were a prescribed medicine for the next 500 years.

In a world without antibiotics, physicians prescribed ground up skulls, bones and flesh to treat illnesses from headaches to reducing swelling or curing the plague.

Not everyone was convinced. Guy de la Fontaine, a royal doctor, doubted mumia was a useful medicine and saw forged mummies made from dead peasants in Alexandria in 1564. He realised people could be conned. They were not always consuming genuine ancient mummies.

But the forgeries illustrate an important point: there was constant demand for dead flesh to be used in medicine and the supply of real Egyptian mummies could not meet this.

Apothecaries and herbalists were still dispensing mummy medicines into the 18th century.

Mummy's medicine

Not all doctors thought dry, old mummies made the best medicine. Some doctors believed that fresh meat and blood had a vitality the long-dead lacked.

The claim that fresh was best convinced even the noblest of nobles. England's King Charles II took medication made from human skulls after suffering a seizure, and, until 1909, physicians commonly used human skulls to treat neurological conditions.

For the royal and social elite, eating mummies seemed a royally appropriate medicine , as doctors claimed mumia was made from pharaohs. Royalty ate royalty.

A jar used for storing mumia, a medicine made from the ground up remains of mummified humans. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Dinner, drinks, and a show

By the 19th century, people were no longer consuming mummies to cure illness but Victorians were hosting "unwrapping parties" where Egyptian corpses would be unwrapped for entertainment at private parties.

Napoleon's first expedition into Egypt in 1798 piqued European curiosity and allowed 19th century travellers to Egypt to bring whole mummies back to Europe bought off the street in Egypt.

Victorians held private parties dedicated to unwrapping the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies.

Early unwrapping events had at least a veneer of medical respectability. In 1834 the surgeon Thomas Pettigrew unwrapped a mummy at the Royal College of Surgeons. In his time, autopsies and operations took place in public and this unwrapping was just another public medical event.

Soon, even the pretence of medical research was lost. By now mummies were no longer medicinal but thrilling. A dinner host who could entertain an audience while unwrapping was rich enough to own an actual mummy.

The thrill of seeing dried flesh and bones appearing as bandages came off meant people flocked to these unwrappings, whether in a private home or the theatre of a learned society. Strong drink meantaudiences were loud and appreciative.

The mummy's curse

Mummy unwrapping parties ended as the 20th century began. The macabre thrills seemed in bad taste and the inevitable destruction of archaeological remains seemed regrettable.

Then the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb fuelled a craze that shaped art deco design in everything from the motifs of doors in the Chrysler Building to the shape of clocks designed by Cartier. The sudden death in 1923 of Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the Tutankhamen expedition, was from natural causes but soon attributed to a new superstition—"the mummy's curse".

Modern mummies

In 2016 Egyptologist John J. Johnston hosted the first public unwrapping of a mummy since 1908. Part art, part science, and part show, Johnston created a an immersive recreation of what it was like to be present at a Victorian unwrapping.

It was as tasteless as possible, with everything from the Bangles' Walk Like an Egyptian playing on loud speaker to the plying of attendees with straight gin.

The mummy was only an actor wrapped in bandages but the event was a heady sensory mix. The fact it took place at St Bart's Hospital in London was a modern reminder that mummies cross many realms of experience from the medical to the macabre.

Today, the black market of antiquity smuggling—including mummies—is worth about US$3 billion.

No serious archaeologist would unwrap a mummy and no physician suggest eating one. But the lure of the mummy remains strong. They are still for sale, still exploited, and still a commodity.

Source: https://phys.org

1978: Japanese Researchers Trying to Find How the Pyramids Were Actually Built

In 1978, Japanese researchers conducted several studies with the aim of proving that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids by the primitive method of construction, which consisted of cutting stones with chisels and stacking them by lifting ropes and other manual means.

With direct funding from Japanese TV, the Japanese decided to go through the experiment and rebuild a new pyramid in Giza through primitive means. The research team began its work, where the two parties agreed that the entire experiment would be transformed into a documentary film for Japanese TV, in agreement with the Egyptian government, provided that The small "experiment" pyramid is removed after it is completed and the area is completely cleaned up and returned to what it was.

The initial planning of the experiment stipulated that a 20-meter-long pyramid would be built using terraces, with each stone weighing 4 tons. Now - and to involve 100 Egyptian workers to implement the experiment.

Despite all the technological progress available at the time of implementing the Japanese experiment in 1978 compared to what was available thousands of years ago when building the Great Pyramid, and despite the brilliant minds that participated in the study and implementation of the experiment from scientists in several fields, the team was exposed to several confusing shocks during the experiment.

In the beginning, the team found that the issue of cutting stones each weighing 4 tons using primitive tools such as chisels and others is very difficult, and requires a huge cost and a very long time, so they only had to reduce the height of the pyramid to be implemented from 20 to 10 meters only, and reduce the weight of the stone From 4 to 1 ton only, and the use of electric saws in the process of cutting stones, which was the first use by them of modern technological means in violation of the main objective of the experiment, which is to prove the ability of primitive tools to build a pyramid the size of the Great Pyramid.

Then the team discovered the failure of all means, the beginning of transporting stones from Tora to the Giza plateau via the Nile, such as the idea of ​​floating on wooden rafts or even boats, so they used the technology for the second time through the use of flat ships that carry the weight of the stones and move them in the waters of the Nile.

When the stones reached the shores near the pyramid, about 50 workers could not move one stone but several centimeters, which means that the experiment could have taken several years only to be able to transport the stones from the Nile River to the place of construction, so they had to extend a railway Small iron carts pass by, each carrying one stone.

After these difficulties as a result of the huge weight of the stones, they naturally expected the difficulty of the next step of lifting the stones and placing them in the allotted place inside the floor of the pyramid, which prompted them to use large cranes and cranes to stack the stones, and even the matter came to them to use a helicopter To set the stones precisely in their places!

Although the team eventually managed to build a 10-meter pyramid in the exact location next to the Giza pyramids, the experiment proved to be a failure by all standards, after the team had to use more than one technological means to complete the construction process.

Which means, by extension, the incorrectness of most of the traditional theories that were said in the construction of the pyramids, which depended in the construction process on the old primitive traditional tools, after practical experience proved the impossibility of that. 

Tuna el-Gebel: Egypt's Largest Animal Necropolis

Among the many archeological treasures of Tuna el-Gebel in Upper Egypt is a large cemetery for sacred animals.

Tuna el-Gebel, a village in the center of Egypt, is known as the necropolis of Hermopolis. The “City of the Dead” is famous for a large cemetery of mummified animals established two millennia ago.

Magdy Shaker, chief archeologist at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, told Al-Monitor, “The excavations and research in the Tuna el-Gebel area began nearly 100 years ago by German archeologist [Gunther] Roeder and renowned Egyptian archeologist Sami Gabra. Gabra was the first to discover the monuments of Tuna el-Gebel with the support of Cairo University and then-dean of Arabic literature Taha Hussein during excavation works from 1931 to 1954. Later on, a joint mission of the Universities of Cairo and Munich carried out works that led to the discovery of the largest human cemetery in Graeco-Roman Egypt.”

Shaker explained, “The village of Tuna el-Gebel is located to the west of the city of Malawi and west of Hermopolis. It was the capital of the 15th Upper Egyptian Nome, and was originally named ‘Towns’ in the Pharaonic era and ‘Tahnet’ in the Roman era. The two names mean ‘blessing.’”

Shaker added that Tuna el-Gebel features funerary chambers decorated with a mixture of ancient Greek and Egyptian art. “The area is becoming more famous with new discoveries and the villageof Tuna el-Gebel has not yet revealed all of its secrets.” 

Shaker said the animal burial site is believed to be the largest ever to be discovered. “It includes four large catacombs with huge galleries carved in the rock. Ancient Egyptians would bury the mummified remains of sacred ibises and apes inside those galleries.”

He added, “The cemetery is divided into four parts, the most ancient one dating back to the 26th Dynasty. Inside the cemetery, there are two main roads and other smaller passages with large halls on each side where the birds’ owners would be received. At the entrance was a temple with a small stone altar that was used during funerary rituals specific to ibis and baboons.”

Sabah Abdel Razek, director of the Egyptian Museum, told Al-Monitor that the Tuna el-Gebel area offers a historical record of ancient architecture, sarcophagi, statues of deities and human figurines, pottery, stone and glass vessels, jewelry, mummies, papyri, lamps, surgical instruments, a water clock and other artifacts. “All these show the richness and diversity of the site" and the archeological research done there makes it "one of the major archeological sites in Egypt,” she said.

Abdel Razek pointed out that the cemetery for sacred animals consists of catacombs and lower passages that extend for a distance of more than 10 kilometers (six miles). She said, “Thousands of mummified ibises and baboons, symbolic of the god Thoth, were found in it. The site also includes the ruins of the great Thoth temple and the dwellings that were inhabited by the priests responsible for the funeral and ritual service in this temple. Another temple was dedicated to the baboon god near the entrance to the cemetery of sacred animals.”

Abdel Razek explained, “Animals in ancient Egypt were revered as tribal deities, and [their burial] was an important religious ritual during that historical era. Perhaps one of the most distinctive characteristics of the Egyptian deities were their depiction with the heads of birds and other animals." Around 800 BC and thereafter, she said, "many sacred animals were mummified and buried in cemeteries dedicated to them in sacred places in different parts of the country.”

She continued, “In certain cases a specific animal, such as the calf Apis, which was sanctified by the god Ptah, was considered sacred. Sometimes the sanctified animals included all other members of a species. For example, the baboon and the ibis were two animals sacred to the god Thoth, while cats were the sacred animal of the god Bastet.”

Salima Ikram, a professor of archeology at the American University in Cairo, explained, “There are four different types of animal mummies. The first type were pampered animals that were buried with their owners, and the second were mummified animals that were placed whole or in pieces in the cemetery as a symbolic feeding of the deceased in eternal life. The third were sacred animals, and the fourth were animals offered as sacrifices.”

Ikram told Al-Monitor, “The animals were mummified in the same way as human mummies, with modifications. Mummification mainly relies on drying the body to prevent the spread of bacteria that lead to mold. Ancient Egyptians usually emptied the body by making an opening in its left side or along its stomach. To mummify humans, the guts were also mummified after they were removed from the body and were placed in special containers called canopic pots. Only birds’ guts were returned to the body after drying them in Natron salt. The drying process usually took 40 days and the complete mummification process took 70. This period probably varied in the case of smaller animals. And after drying, the animal was rubbed with different oils to restore softness to its limbs before wrapping it in linen and preparing it for burial.”

Ikram added, “Different mummies of animals revealed different aspects of the ancient Egyptian civilization and environment. The animal wealth was much more varied and wider in ancient Egypt compared to now. For instance, the cattle egret species that was sanctified in ancient Egypt and was quite prolific at the time is now extinct, just like other types of deer and raptors.”

Medicine in Ancient Egypt

Of all the branches of science pursued in ancient Egypt, none achieved such popularity as medicine as it was based on an integrated scientific methodology and a system of medical schools. Under this system, the first of its kind in human history, the first school of medicine dated back to the first Dynasty followed by other reputed schools such as Per Bastet in the New Kingdom and at Abydos and Sais in the late period.

Medical Training
Physicians learnt their profession at schools called Houses of Life. They were no doubt given some practical experience, but chiefly they had to study what was already written. They used to administer their treatments in accordance with a written law composed by earlier famous physicians. Medical texts were used not only as a source of professional knowledge but also as a safeguard against possible failure.

Categories of Physicians
Priests were the first to practice medicine and some doctors belonged to the priesthood and others were counted among the scribes, as shown in such titles as “chief doctor and scribe of the word of God”.
Many enjoyed ecclesiastical as well as lay titles. Like other professions, doctors had their own hierarchy. Besides ordinary doctors there were senior doctors, inspectors, overseers and masters of physicians and the Chief of Physicians of the South and the North, a kind of minister of health. Royal and palace doctors had special hierarchy and titles especially important if treating a Pharaoh!

There was even a degree of specialization quite remarkable for the time. Each physician used to treat one disease, and no more. There were plenty of physicians everywhere. Some were eye-doctors, some dealt with the head, others with teeth or the abdomen, and some with hidden maladies. Only members of the high strata of society were allowed to learn and practice this honourable profession. Moreover, a physician had to learn the science of drugs especially botany. Ancient Egyptians held physicians in so much high esteem that they raised Imhotep, the great physician (2700 BC) after his death to a sacred status as the god of medicine.

Historical Glimpse
According to the ancient historian Biliny, Egyptians used to examine bodies of the dead to know the cause of death. This should not look strange for such people, traditionally accustomed, as they were, to an intense pursuit of knowledge. According to the American historian Breasted, an authority on ancient Egyptian history, ancient Egyptian surgeons were highly skilled as shown in inscriptions. Clean wounds were treated by stitching and adhesive bandages. Other wounds were treated by trimming wounded edges and pulling them together and treating them with honey and astringent herbs.

Moreover, fractures were successfully treated with splints. They used many methods to diagnose pregnancy and to know the gender of the baby before birth. They were the first to use Arabian gum in birth control. They were the first to use a delivery stool and special attention was paid to paediatrics and the patient’s nutrition. It also appears that for some people, at least, there was a system of free medical aid. Inscriptions and hieroglyphs on the walls of the temple of Kom Ombo show medical instruments such as forceps and clamps still used to aid birthing today.

Ancient Egyptian chemists equally excelled in preparing and extracting drugs from mineral, botanical and animal substances. However ancient Egyptian medicine was mainly based on herbs especially vegetables and other foods. Drugs were used in pills and ointment form and drops. Dressings and deodorant preparations were also used. This is clearly shown in the Ebers papyrus which includes names of medical herbs of great medical benefit.

Diagnosis Methods
It is both interesting and surprising to know that the diagnosis methods currently used in the medical profession are no much different than those used by ancient Egyptian physicians several centuries ago.
According to the Berlin Papyrus No. 154, an ancient report reads as follows:
“The patient suffers a great epigastric pain. He feels a heavy, hot and inflamed body. He complains of being unable to tolerate his clothes and feels they do not warm him. He feels thirsty during the night. His saliva has the taste of unripe fruits. His muscles pain him as if he walked for a long distance”.

Conception of Human Body
The Egyptians conception of the human body, then, was as a network of interconnecting channels and was likened to the branches of the Nile and the artificial canals seen around them. Notions of physiology and disease were all focussed in the concept of the heart as the centre of the person. The heart was one’s partner: it spoke to a person in his or her solitude. It was at the same time the engine of all the bodily functions, not just for circulation and of course modern science has revealed this since. From the heart proceeded channels (metu) linking all parts of the body together.

Medical instruments on display at Coptic Museum in Cairo

These channels, the Egyptians believed, conveyed not only the blood, but also air (reaching the heart from the nose, they thought), tears, saliva, mucus, sperm, urine, nutriment and faeces, as well as harmful substances conceived to be the agents of pain and illness. The learning and practises of medicine from the Ancient Egyptian times has passed through the generations and provided a platform for continued learning and medicinal discoveries right through to today.

The story of King Tutankhamun’s Dagger forged from a Meteorite just got a whole lot more interesting!

Researchers have uncovered new details about the origin of King Tut's iron dagger forged from a meteorite.

Most iron objects from this era are heavily corroded, but the dry conditions in Tutankhamun’s tomb kept the dagger rust-free. Credit: Daniela Comelli.

King Tutankhamun, or King Tut for short, became ruler of Ancient Egypt more than 3,300 years ago when he was just nine years old. He died just a decade later, ending a rather unmemorable rule. In fact, the only remarkable thing about the Boy King is his death itself — specifically his burial. After years of excavation, British archaeologists found King Tut’s tomb in 1922, and nothing could have prepared them for the “wonderful things” they found there.

Tutankhamun’s tomb had been filled with precious objects to aid the Pharaoh on his journey into the afterlife. These included numerous exquisite artifacts such a crook and flail (the fundamental symbols of royal power in Ancient Egypt) made of gold and colored glass, elaborate pieces of jewelry, musical instruments, and even board games. This sensational trove of artifacts instantly turned King Tut into the most famous pharaoh on the planet.

Among these unprecedented riches, archaeologists also uncovered two beautiful daggers: one made almost entirely of gold, the other from iron with a hilt and sheath made of gold. While the gold blade is fitting for a man of King Tut’s status, the dagger made of iron seems rather perplexing at first glance since this was still the Bronze Age, a time when craftsmen had yet to perfect their metallurgical methods required to work with iron ore’s high melting point (over 1,500° C or 2,700 ° F).

But later investigations performed with modern analytical tools showed that the iron dagger was actually forged from a meteorite rather than from inaccessible iron ore deposits. This makes sense, considering the historical context. In 2017, Albert Jambon from the Institut de minéralogie, de physique des matériaux et de cosmochimie in France showed that all iron used during the Bronze Age was meteoric. Space artifacts, as it turns out, aren’t as rare as we might think.

In other words, the Boy King’s blade was literally extraterrestrial — the most fitting final parting gift for a royalty who was thought to descend from divinity.

The length of the dagger is ~35.2 cm (~21.8 cm for the blade and ~13.4 cm for the hilt) and that of the sheath is ~22.5 cm.

In 2016, researchers from the Polytechnic University of Milan, in Italy, confirmed Tut’s dagger was truly made of a meteorite, which contained a ratio of nickel and cobalt that matched well with the composition of 11 iron-bearing meteorites analyzed in the same way. However, while this study answered what the original meteorite must have looked like, it didn’t tell us where it came from.

A 70-lb. iron meteorite found in the Arizona desert was bought at an online auction for $237,500. (Image credit: Christie's)

To better understand the origin of King Tut’s dagger, researchers from the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan conducted a non-invasive chemical analysis of the premised artifact by shining X-rays onto it. The analysis revealed elements like iron, nickel, manganese, and cobalt, with sulfur, chlorine, calcium, and zinc found in greater abundance in the blackened spots on the blade, Gizmodo reported.

A similar elemental composition was reported by previous studies, but this time around the researchers also reported a cross-hatched texture, known as a Widmanstätten pattern, on both sides of the dagger. The Widmanstätten pattern has a chemical structure typical of an octahedrite, the largest and most common group of iron meteorites. Most originate from the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.

To investigate if their hunch was correct, the Japanese researchers compared the results of the chemical analysis with the pattern on Shirihagi, a 22-kg octahedrite that was found in Japan in 1890, whose iron was used to forge a number of premium katanas acquired by the Taisho Emperor. Apparently, weapons made from meteorites were in great demand by royalty the world over.

The Widmanstätten pattern also hints at how the meteorite was processed by the ancient Egyptians. The cross-hatched texture, along with the presence of iron sulfide, hints that the dagger was forged at low heat, likely under 950 °C (1,742° F).

Most intriguing, the extraterrestrial dagger wasn’t forged specifically for King Tut or his burial. After some digging around, the Japanese researchers found mentions of an iron dagger in a gold sheath that was gifted to Pharaoh Amenhotep III, Tutankhamun’s grandfather, by the king of Mitanni, an ancient kingdom in the region of Anatolia, with the occasion of the pharaoh’s wedding. Since iron tools were exceedingly rare during the Bronze Age, let alone a dagger meant for a pharaoh, there’s a good chance Tut’s meteorite dagger was passed down to him as a family heirloom.

King Tut’s dagger is now on display at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.

The findings were reported in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

Source: zmescience

A 28-week-old Fetus was kept inside an Egyptian Mummy for about 2,000 years!

The fetus was discovered during a scan by researchers led by the University of Warsaw in April 2021. The finding suggests that there may be other mummies in museums that are currently "hiding" unidentified fetuses.

An embryo found in the belly of an Egyptian mummy last year was preserved for more than 2,000 years due to the acidification (lowering of the pH) of the woman's body as it disintegrated. Without oxygen entering the body, the chemical reactions that take place produce acidic compounds, such as formic acid. "The pH of the blood in the corpses, including the contents of the uterus, drops significantly, it becomes more acidic," the researchers wrote.

This is the conclusion of a team of researchers from the University of Warsaw, who discovered the presence of the remains of the unborn child using a combination of computed tomography and X-ray in April last year.

The mummy of the Mysterious Lady. [Credit: Warsaw Mummy Project]

Researchers said that the acidification process is more serious in mummies because sodium, a natural salt that accumulates in and around the body during the mummification process, creates a barrier that traps acid in certain places, such as the uterus. "The end result is an almost hermetically sealed uterus that contains the fetus," the researchers wrote.

The acidic conditions inside the mummy's uterus would not be strong enough to disintegrate the fully formed human bones. However, they could have disintegrated the fetal bones because "the [bone] metallization is very weak during the first two trimesters of pregnancy and accelerates later," the researchers wrote. However, the remaining soft tissues that make up the fetus would have remained largely intact.

The fetus remained in the untouched uterus. In the photo: two volumetric yields of the fetus from the CT data. The labels on the right represent the head (A), the right hand (B), the left hand (C), and the right foot (D). [Credit: Warsaw Mummy Project]

The mummy is believed to be the first embryonic specimen known to contain an embryo and was removed from Egypt by Jan Wężyk-Rudzki, who donated the specimen to the University of Warsaw in December 1826.

A great deal of uncertainty surrounds the adult mummy - dubbed the "Mysterious Lady" - with experts still unsure of who she was and what exactly caused her death at the age of 20 in the 1st century BC.

Even the location of her tomb has disappeared from history, with some records showing that it was found in the "Royal Tombs of Thebes" and others in the Pyramid of Giza.

A great deal of uncertainty surrounds the mummy of the "Mysterious Lady" - with experts not yet sure who she was and what exactly caused her death at the age of 20 in the 1st century BC. In the photo: computed tomography of the pelvic area of ​​the "Mysterious Lady". The head of the fetus is marked as "A", while his hand is marked "B". [Credit: Warsaw Mummy Project]

Egypt: King Thutmose II Huge Statue in Luxor to be Inaugurated soon after Restoration

The statue of King Thutmose II, sitting on the southern side of the Karnak Temple, was undergoing restoration work, said Director of Karnak Temples Salah al-Masikh.

The restored statue will be inaugurated within a few weeks to tourists and the public, he added.

Masikh, who is supervising the project to restore the statue of King Thutmose II, added that work on the restoration of the statue began in 2021 and is expected to be finalized soon. The statue is the largest of King Thutmose II in the southern facade of Karnak.

Masikh said that the statue is one of three statues for the same king around Egypt, one in the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, the second in Aswan, and the third being restored at Karnak,  The statue is about 11 meters high and weighs 65 tons. It is a seated statue of the king, with more than 75 pieces destroyed before starting restoration, Masikh added.

The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the start of restoration work on the statue of King Thutmose II, one of the kings of ancient Egypt, after it was left in ruins in the Karnak Temple in Luxor Governorate for more than a thousand years.

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziry confirmed that work is currently underway on a new statue belonging to King Thutmose II in the Karnak temples in front of the eighth pylon in the temple.

He stressed that Egyptian archaeologists working on the project were in a challenge to restore the great statues of many pharaonic kings in the temples of Karnak and Luxor after a careful study of all the statues.

Egypt digitally ‘unwraps’ mummy of Pharaoh Amenhotep I

Researchers unearth new mummification techniques used for Pharaoh Amenhotep I whose rule dates back to the 1500s BC.

A 3D reconstruction of Amenhotep I’s head, done using CT [Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities/Handout via AFP]

Egypt has digitally “unwrapped” the mummy of famed Pharaoh Amenhotep I, revealing its secrets for the first time since it was discovered in 1881 without disturbing his funerary mask.

Thanks to the advanced digital 3D imagery, researchers unearthed new mummification techniques used for the pharaoh, who ruled from 1525 to 1504 BC.

The research was led by Sahar Saleem, a professor of radiology at Cairo University, and renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, a former antiquities minister, the tourism and antiquities ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Saleem and Hawass used advanced X-ray technology, CT [computed tomography] scanning, as well as advanced computer software programs to digitally unwrap the mummy of Amenhotep I in a safe non-invasive method without the need to touch the mummy,” it added.

“The Egyptian study revealed for the first time the face of King Amenhotep I, his age, health condition, in addition to many secrets about the mummy’s unique mummification and reburial.”

Analysis showed Amenhotep I was the first pharaoh to be mummified with arms crossed and the last not to have had his brain removed from the skull.

The tomography scan also revealed that the pharaoh, who conducted several military campaigns during his 21-year rule, had died at the age of 35, apparently of injury or illness.

The mummy, discovered in Luxor, southern Egypt, is the only one not to have had its tight bands unrolled by archaeologists, in order to preserve the mask and garlands of flowers that surround it like hair.

SOURCE: AFP

City of Kerma: Center of the Nubian 'Kerma Culture'

Kerma was located in present-day Sudan at least 5500 years ago. It is one of the largest archaeological sites in ancient Nubia. Around 3000 BC, a peculiar culture began around Kerma. It was a large urban center that was built around a large adobe temple known as the Western Deffufa.

Model of the city of Kerma c. 2000 BC, National Museum of Sudan

By 1700 BC, Kerma had a population of at least 10,000 people. Different to those of ancient Egypt in theme and composition, Kerma's artefacts are characterized by extensive amounts of blue faience, which the Kermans developed techniques to work with independently of Egypt, and by their work with glazed quartzite and architectural inlays.

The ceremonial palace A, © B.-N. Chagny. Swiss-French-Sudanese mission of Kerma-Doukki Gel

Influence from Egypt may be observed in numerous burials, especially with regards to material evidence such as pottery and grave goods. Kerma contains a cemetery with over 30,000 graves. The cemetery shows a general pattern of larger graves ringed by smaller ones, suggesting social stratification. The site includes at its southern boundary burial mounds, with four extending upwards of 90 metres (300 feet) in diameter. These are believed to be the graves of the city's final kings, some of which contain motifs and artwork reflecting Egyptian deities such as Horus. Artifacts such as scarab seals and amulets are prolific, indicating extensive trade with ancient Egypt as well as an exchange of cultural ideas. After the sacking of Kerma, the cemetery was used to host the kings of the 25th or "Napatan" dynasty of the Kingdom of Kush from Upper (Southern) Nubia.

Tumulus from Kerma c. 2450 BC, National Museum of Sudan

The Kerma culture or Kerma kingdom was the early civilization centered in Kerma. It flourished from around 2500 BC to 1500 BC. The Kerma culture was based in the southern part of Nubia, or "Upper Nubia", and later extended its reach northward into Lower Nubia and the border of Egypt. The polity seems to have been one of a number of Nile Valley states during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. In the Kingdom of Kerma's latest phase, lasting from about 1700–1500 BC, it absorbed the Sudanese kingdom of Sai and became a sizable, populous empire rivaling Egypt. Around 1500 BC, it was absorbed into the New Kingdom of Egypt, but rebellions continued for centuries. By the eleventh century BC, the more-Egyptianized Kingdom of Kush emerged, possibly from Kerma, and regained the region's independence from Egypt.

The linguistic affiliation of the Kerma culture is currently unknown, and membership to both the Nilo-Saharan and Afro-Asiatic language families has been proposed.

Daggers of bone and copper, 1750-1450 BC, Kerma, British Museum

Kerma was evidently a sizable political entity - Egyptian records speak of its rich and populous agricultural regions. Unlike Egypt, Kerma seems to have been highly centralized. It controlled the 1st to 4th Cataracts, which meant its domain was as extensive as ancient Egypt.

The Western Deffufa

Numerous village communities scattered alongside fields of crops made up the bulk of the realm, but there also seems to have been districts where pastoralism (goat, sheep and cattle) and gold processing were important industries. Certain Kerma towns served to centralize agricultural products and direct trade. Analysis of the skulls of thousands of cattle interred in royal Kerma tombs suggest that stock were sometimes brought vast distances, from far districts, presumably as a type of tribute from rural communities on the death of Kerma's monarchs. This parallels the importance of cattle as royal property in other parts of Africa at later times.

Only the centres of Kerma and Sai island seem to have had contained sizable urban populations.

Soknopaiou Nesos: A Mysterious Ancient City in the Desert of Fayum

---

BY DIMOSTHENIS VASILOUDIS

---

Exploring the Mysteries of Soknopaiou Nesos: An Ancient Oasis Enigma

In the heart of the Egyptian desert, nestled just a few kilometers north of the enchanting Lake Qarun, lies the enigmatic ancient settlement of Soknopaiou Nesos. The name itself carries a sense of mystique, with roots in both ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology. Translated as "the island of Soknopaios," it harks back to a time when gods and mortals coexisted in harmony.

Unraveling the Past

Soknopaiou Nesos, also known as Dimeh es-Seba in Arabic, possibly meaning "Dimeh of the Lions," was not merely a settlement; it was a religious epicenter. At its heart stood a magnificent temple dedicated to Soknopaios, an oracular deity taking the form of a crocodile with a falcon's head. This unique god was a local variation of Sobek, the principal deity of the Faiyum region.

The temenos walls from South East

According to historical evidence, the ambitious land reclamation project that the early Ptolemies spearheaded resulted in the establishment of Soknopaiou Nesos during the third century BCE. However, its fate took a different turn in the mid-3rd century CE, when it was seemingly abandoned. Yet, archaeological revelations tell a different tale. Recent findings hint at a late resurgence of activity within the town, particularly within the precincts of the main temple, spanning from the 4th to the 5th centuries and reaching into the Byzantine era.

A Walk Through the Ages

A grand paved dromos, a ceremonial road that stretched an impressive 400 meters, crisscrosses the archaeological layout of Soknopaiou Nesos to create an oval-shaped picture. This monumental pathway connected the southern entrance of the temple with a grand staircase, effectively dividing the town into an eastern and western quarter. Along its length, statues of lions and possibly two kiosks once stood, bearing witness to the splendid processions that graced this thoroughfare during more than 150 days of annual festivities. As the settlement expanded during the Roman period, the dromos extended southward, leaving behind an enduring legacy of ancient grandeur.

the Hellenistic dromos leading to the temple area (courtesy of Soknopaiou Nesos Project, University of Salento, Italy, photo by B. Bazzani)

The Heart of the Mystery

The most striking archaeological feature is undoubtedly the colossal light-grey mud-brick temenos in the north-western corner. Here, walls reach staggering heights of up to 15 meters, forming an irregular rectangular plan. Inside this enclosure, several structures, constructed predominantly from mud bricks and occasionally stone masonry, remain discernible.

General plan of the city

At the heart of this temenos lies the primary temple, housing not only Soknopaios but also the synnaoi theoi, including Isis Nepherses and Soknopiais. This temple, comprising two interconnected sanctuaries aligned with the dromos, stood as a religious focal point. The southern sanctuary, built with brown limestone and mud bricks, is remarkably well-preserved and believed to be the earliest temple, dating back to the Hellenistic period. In contrast, the northern sanctuary, constructed with regular yellow limestone blocks, likely dates to the late Ptolemaic or early Roman period, eventually becoming the sanctuary for divine worship.

Legacy of Ages

Soknopaiou Nesos holds even more surprises within its ancient embrace. A monumental contra-temple, initially constructed in the 1st century CE and later refurbished in the 2nd century, adds a layer of intrigue. An architectural marvel, a 1:20 scale model of the contratemple, was discovered within its confines.

The temple area and houses in 2014 (courtesy of Soknopaiou Nesos Project, University of Salento, Italy, photo by B. Bazzani)

Beyond the temenos, numerous mud-brick structures, including priests' residences, workshops, administrative buildings, small temples, and chapels, offer a glimpse into the daily life and rituals of the inhabitants. Moreover, scattered outside the temenos to the north, east, and west, more buildings constructed from mud bricks and local stones bear witness to a complex and vibrant ancient community.

Soknopaiou Nesos from Assasin’s Creed Origins

In Conclusion

Soknopaiou Nesos, with its rich history and intriguing archaeological remains, stands as a testament to the enduring allure of the past. It beckons to us from across the ages, inviting historians and archaeologists alike to continue their quest for answers within its enigmatic embrace. As we delve deeper into its mysteries, we gain a greater understanding of the ancient world, its beliefs, and its connection to the gods who once watched over this desert oasis.

References:

• Soknopaiou Nesos Project, University of Salento, Italy

• B. Bazzani, Photo Archives

• Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities