Egypt’s minister of antiquities posits that the hidden chamber behind Tutankhamun’s tomb’s northern wall could be of his mother Kiya By Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 29 Sep 2015 Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty opposes part of the theory of British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, who claims that a hidden chamber located behind the tomb’s northern wall could be Queen Nefertiti’s resting place. Eldamaty suggests that the chamber could belong to his mother, Queen Kiya, and not his stepmother, Queen Nefertiti, for two reasons. The first reason, according to the minister, is that when Tutankhamun came to the throne, Nefertiti was already deceased. Secondly, when Tutanakhmun restored the cult of Amun and abandoned his father’s monotheistic religion, leaving the Aten capital Akhtaten to Thebes, he certainly would have taken his mother Kiya with him. Eldamaty explained to Ahram Online that Tutankhamun’s unexpected death prompted the Valley of the Kings’ priests to search for an already complete tomb to bury him in, as they only had 70 days to place his mummy in its final resting place. "Kiya’s tomb was an ideal choice," Eldamaty suggested. Eldamaty asserted that they may have selected a completed tomb of one of his family members, such as Kiya’s, taking a section of her tomb and dedicating it to Tutankhamun. He added that an extension was possibly built in order to house the number of shrines made for him, replacing the several antechambers that are normally found in a royal tomb.
Examinations completed on Monday indicate the theory of British archeologist Nicholas Reeves may well be right By Nevine El-Aref , Monday 28 Sep 2015 Antiquities minister Mamdouh Eldamaty announced on Monday that the first examinations carried out by himself and British archeologist Nicholas Reeves in Luxor on Tutankhamun's tomb have revealed that the tomb's northern and western walls both hide chambers. There are scratching and markings on both walls like those found on the entrance gate of Tutankhamun's tomb when it was discovered in 1922, Eldamaty explained. "This indicates that the western and northern walls of Tutankhamun's tomb could hide two burial chambers," Eldamaty told Ahram Online. Nicholas Reeves said their investigations showed the tomb's ceiling extends behind the northern and western walls. He is now almost convinced his theory suggesting the existence of two undiscovered chambers is correct. "After our first examination of the walls we can do nothing more until we receive the all-clear from the radar device to confirm the our findings," Reeves told Ahram Online. Eldamaty has promised that on 4 November, the same day Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered, the radar results of scans on the two walls will be announced.
By Rigault Patricia The coffin cover of Antef Sekhemrê Herouhermaât represents the king as a mummy wrapped in a shroud decorated with two large winged figures. On his head the dead sovereign is wearing the pleated cloth headdress known as a "nemes," adorned with feathers. A broad necklace with fasteners in the shape of falcon heads covers his chest. The relatively rudimentary depiction of the body and face, as well as the brightly colored design, give this royal coffin a rather crude appearance. "Rishi" coffins These mummy-shaped coffins, entirely decorated with feathers and known as "rishi" ("feathered" in Arabic), appeared primarily in the Theban region from the Seventeenth Dynasty. This highly unusual style continued into the Eighteenth Dynasty. Constructed or carved from wood, they were decorated according to the status of the dead person, whether a member of the royal family or merely a private citizen. In general, the latter made do with a crudely carved coffin decorated with a bright, colorful design. Royal coffins, by contrast, were more sophisticated and were sometimes even richly gilded. A modest royal coffin The coffin of King Antef Sekhemrê Herouhermaât is exceptional in that it is more like the coffin of a private individual than that of a sovereign. This may have been due to the brevity of his reign. Royal or not, the head was almost invariably covered with the "nemes," a pleated cloth headdress, while the pharaonic emblem of the cobra was often placed on the forehead. Finally, a large necklace with fasteners in the shape of falcons' heads often adorned the chest. The Antef kings and the Seventeenth Dynasty An inscription painted in a vertical column in the center of the coffin indicates the birth name of the king, Antef, while another inscription on the necklace, added in ink probably at a later date, gives his pharaonic name, also inscribed in a cartouche: Sekhemrê Herouhermaât. This is therefore one of the Antef kings who reigned in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, a troubled time that still has not been fully elucidated. In the Seventeenth Dynasty, for example, the sequence of kings has not been established with certainty, and Sekhemrê Herouhermaât's place in the order of succession is unsure. Was he the direct successor of Antef Oupmaât, whose magnificent gilded coffin, displayed alongside this one in the Louvre, was discovered at the same time? The inscriptions on this second coffin indicate that this was a "gift from his brother, King Antef." Or did he rather accede to the throne after Antef Noubkheperrê, whose beautiful coffin, also gilded, is now in the British Museum? At present, we do not know the answer to these questions. Technical description Couvercle du cercueil d'un roi Antef (Sékhemrê Hérouhermaât) vers 1600 avant J.-C. (17e dynastie) proviendrait de Dra Abou'l Naga bois enduit et peint, yeux incrustés de pierre H. : 1,88 m. ; L. : 0,48 m. E 3020 Source: http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/coffin-cover-king-antef-sekhemre-herouhermaat
By Rossella Lorenzi Researchers in Portugal have found the first radiological outline of a kidney in an ancient Egyptian mummy and the oldest case of renal tuberculosis. Kept at the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon, Portugal, the mummy, of unknown provenance, dates back to some 2,800 years. “It’s a male named Irtieru. We do not know exactly what he did in life, but the quality of his cartonnage links him to an elite family,” professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, told Discovery News. She noted the white cartonnage decorated in polychrome, on which Irtieru's name is painted vertically, is typical of the Twenty-Second Dynasty (about 945–712 BC). X-Rays (radiography and CT scans) revealed Irtieru rests in his coffin with his arms lying alongside his body and with his hands crossed over his body. He was tall for his time, about 5.61 feet, and died between 35 and 45 years of age. The researchers’ attention, however, was drawn by a small, bean-shaped structure at the left lumbar region. To their knowledge, this is the first time a kidney has been depicted in X-Rays.
Ancient Egyptians leveraged a massive shipping, mining and farming economy to propel their civilization forward By Alexander Stille for SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE Following notes written by an English traveler in the early 19th century and two French pilots in the 1950s, Pierre Tallet made a stunning discovery: a set of 30 caves honeycombed into limestone hills but sealed up and hidden from view in a remote part of the Egyptian desert, a few miles inland from the Red Sea, far from any city, ancient or modern. During his first digging season, in 2011, he established that the caves had served as a kind of boat storage depot during the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, about 4,600 years ago. Then, in 2013, during his third digging season, he came upon something quite unexpected: entire rolls of papyrus, some a few feet long and still relatively intact, written in hieroglyphics as well as hieratic, the cursive script the ancient Egyptians used for everyday communication. Tallet realized that he was dealing with the oldest known papyri in the world. Astonishingly, the papyri were written by men who participated in the building of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and largest of the three colossal pyramids at Giza just outside modern Cairo. Among the papyri was the journal of a previously unknown official named Merer, who led a crew of some 200 men who traveled from one end of Egypt to the other picking up and delivering goods of one kind or another. Merer, who accounted for his time in half-day increments, mentions stopping at Tura, a town along the Nile famous for its limestone quarry, filling his boat with stone and taking it up the Nile River to Giza. In fact, Merer mentions reporting to “the noble Ankh-haf,” who was known to be the half-brother of the Pharaoh Khufu and now, for the first time, was definitively identified as overseeing some of the construction of the Great Pyramid. And since the pharaohs used the Tura limestone for the pyramids’ outer casing, and Merer’s journal chronicles the last known year of Khufu’s reign, the entries provide a never-before-seen snapshot of the ancients putting finishing touches on the Great Pyramid.
Archaeologist Nicholas Reeves is to arrive to Luxor, 28 September, in the hope of confirming his theory on the location of Nefertiti's final resting place in Tutankhamun's tomb By Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 20 Sep 2015 On 28 September, Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty and British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves, along with a group of Egyptian and foreign scientists, are to embark on an investigation trip to Luxor to prove Reeves' theory that Queen Nefertiti's remains lay in Tutankhamun's tomb. Via state-of-the-art equipment, Reeves is to examine Tutankhamun's northern wall, in order to inspect behind it and possibly locate the existence of the final resting place of Queen Nefertiti. Early August, Reeves published a theory suggesting that the west and north painted walls inside King Tutankhamun’s tomb have two secret passageways that lead to two chambers, one of them containing the remains of Nefertiti — queen of Egypt and the chief consort and wife of the monotheistic King Akhenaten, Tutankhamun's father. The remaining chamber could be another gallery for Tutankhamun. A press conference is to be organised in Cairo upon their arrival from Luxor to announce the results of the investigation. In a telephone call with Reeves, he told Ahram Online he would not be able to release any statement until the scientific work and examination are carried out. Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/141972/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Field-trip-to-search-for-Nefertitis-resting-place-.aspx
by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | September 16, 2015 The remains of 16 pyramids with tombs underneath have been discovered in a cemetery near the ancient town of Gematon in Sudan. They date back around 2,000 years, to a time when a kingdom called "Kush" flourished in Sudan. Pyramid building was popular among the Kushites. They built them until their kingdom collapsed in the fourth century AD. Derek Welsby, a curator at the British Museum in London, and his team have been excavating at Gematon since 1998, uncovering the 16 pyramids, among many other finds, in that time. "So far, we've excavated six made out of stone and 10 made out of mud brick," Welsby said. The largest pyramid found at Gematon was 10.6 meters (about 35 feet) long on each side and would have risen around 13 m (43 feet) off the ground. Wealthy and powerful individuals built some of the pyramids, while people of more modest means built the others, Welsby said. "They're not just the upper-elite burials," he said. In fact, not all the tombs in the cemetery have pyramids: Some are buried beneath simple rectangular structures called "mastaba," whereas others are topped with piles of rocks called "tumuli." Meanwhile, other tombs have no surviving burial markers at all.
The ancient water-way was a key transport link for the 26th Dynasty and was lost to silt around two millennia ago By Nevine El-Aref , Monday 14 Sep 2015 Excavations by an Egyptian mission at the Tel Al-Dafna archaeological site in Qantara have uncovered a 200 metre section of the long-lost Pelusiac branch of the Nile. The Pelusiac branch was the major navigational byway into the delta from Sinai which once divided the ancient Qantara city into east and west. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, head of the mission, told Ahram Online that the first ever complete industrial city was uncovered at Qantara. It includes a collection of kilns used to melt iron and bronze in weapon-making for Egyptian army during the 26th dynasty (664-525 AD). He said the antiquities minister has ordered more archaeologists and excavators to work at the site in order to reveal more of the Pelusiac branch and of the industrial city. The course of the Pelusiac branch has been traced on a deltaic plain east of the Suez Canal, between the El Baqar Canal and Tell El-Farama (ancient Pelusium). Two minor distributaries branched northward. The critical stage in the process of the silting of the lower reaches of the Pelusiac branch, due to beach accretion, occurred around 25 AD. Ancient ruins in the area are closely associated with the waterway. Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/141504/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Part-of-longlost-Pelusiac-branch-of-Nile-uncovered.aspx
Planetarium software, among other things, shows how ancient Egyptians planned to navigate the sky after death By Christine Gorman | Sep 15, 2015 Ancient Egyptians expected to be very busy in the afterlife. Thousands of years ago they painted big beautiful eyes on the outside of their coffins so that they could see what was going on in the world. Some of the nobility around the upper Egyptian city of Asyut even had detailed tables of star movements drawn on the inside of their coffins. The depictions look like timetables or spreadsheets of when various stars first appear (or disappear) over the horizon at different times of the year—only a lot more beautiful. Scholars have long believed that the star charts represented a very early type of clock, for telling time at night, which might be important for certain religious rituals. But Sarah Symons of McMaster University in Ontario thinks it more likely that the tables represent a kind of map for the dead to properly navigate the sky, where they would live forevermore as stars. Her conclusions are based on years of research into ancient Egyptian beliefs, extensive surveys of the 27 known star tables or fragments of tables in the world and, using planetarium software, the ability to easily recreate the nighttime sky as it appeared more than 4000-odd years ago along the Nile. Symons and co-author Elizabeth Tasker of Hokkaido University in Japan describe the work in the October issue of Scientific American. The basic layout of the star charts has, of course, been known for decades, as Symons and Tasker write in "Stars of the Dead." A complete table "is divided into quarters by a horizontal and a vertical strip. The horizontal strip contains a line from a religious text making an offering to a number of Egyptian gods, and the vertical strip pictures four images of the gods themselves. . ."
The oldest Egyptian leather manuscript has been found in the shelves
of the Egyptian museum in Cairo, where it was stored and forgotten for
more than 70 years. Dating from the late Old Kingdom to the early Middle Kingdom
(2300-2000 B.C.), the roll measures about 2.5 meters(8.2 feet) and is
filled with texts and colorful drawings of the finest quality. “Taking into account that it was written on both sides, we have
more than 5 meters (16.4 feet) of texts and drawings, making this the
longest leather roll from ancient Egypt,” Wael Sherbiny, the
Belgium-based independent scholar who made the finding, told Discovery
News. The first Egyptian to obtain his PhD in Egyptology in 2008 from the
Leuven University in Belgium, Sherbiny specializes in the ancient
Egyptian religious texts and is preparing the full publication of the
unique leather roll. He announced the finding at the recent International Congress of Egyptologists in Florence. Nothing is known about the manuscript’s origins. The French
Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo bought it from a local
antiquities dealer sometime after the WWI. Later it was donated to the
Cairo Museum, where it was unrolled shortly before the outbreak of the
WWII. “Since then it was stored in the museum and fell completely into oblivion,” Sherbiny said.
Basically a portable religious manuscript, the more than
4,000-year-old roll, contains depictions of divine and supernatural
beings which predate the famous drawings found in the Book of the Dead
manuscripts and the so-called Netherworld Books from the New Kingdom
onwards (1550 B.C. onwards).
By Megan Gannon, Live Science Contributor | September 09, 2015
Its last meal wasn't pleasant.
A mouse tail was lodged in its throat when it died. Semi-digested flesh
and fur still remained in its stomach when it was wrapped in mummy
bandages. A new autopsy reveals that overeating choked and killed this
unfortunate raptor from ancient Egypt. Scientists suspect that Egyptians
force-fed the bird so they could offer it to the sun god Ra as a votive mummy.
Mummification wasn't reserved for people in Egypt. The archaeological record is full of examples of cats, dogs,
crocodiles and birds that were mummified and used as religious
offerings to their corresponding animal gods, a practice that was
popular from about 600 B.C. until around A.D. 250, well into the Roman
period. Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American
University in Cairo, has made a living studying these animal mummies,
and for her latest research, she examined the ancient remains of a
European kestrel from the Iziko Museums of South Africa in Cape Town.
New imaging technologies have made it possible to see through mummies
without butchering ancient corpses: Ikram and her colleagues used an
X-ray computed tomography scanner at Stellenbosch University in South
Africa to see the insides of the kestrel in 3D. The images revealed the
bird's stomach was stuffed with bones and teeth from at least two mice
—one with its tail inside the raptor's esophagus —and a partially
digested sparrow.
