Gypsum head of King Akhenaten statue unearthed in Egypt's Minya

Nevine El-Aref , Saturday 30 Sep 2017

A British-Egyptian archaeological mission from Cambridge University has discovered a gypsum head from a statue of King Akhenaten (around 1300 BC) during excavation work in Tel El-Amarna in Egypt’s Minya governorate.

Photo courtesy of Ahram Online

The head – which is 9cm tall, 13.5 cm long and 8 cm wide – was unearthed during excavation work in the first hall of the Great Atun Temple in Tel El-Amarna, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri told Ahram Online.

Waziri says the discovery is important because it sheds more light on the city that was Egypt's capital during the reign of King Akhenaten, the 10th pharaoh of the 18th dynasty whose reign was among the most ‎controversial in ancient Egyptian history.

The Cambridge University mission is led by archaeologist Barry Kemp, who started excavations in Tel El-Amarna in 1977 at several sites including the grand Aten Temple, the Al-Ahgar village, the northern palace, and the Re and Banehsi houses, according to director-general of Antiquities in Middle Egypt Gamal El-Semestawi.

The mission has also carried out restoration works at the Small Atun Temple and the northern palace.

Tel El-Amarna, which lies around 12 kilometers to the southwest of Minya city, holds the ruins of the city constructed by King Akhenaten and ‎his wife Queen Nefertiti to be the home of the cult of the sun god ‎Aten. ‎ ‎
The ruins of this great city include magnificent temples, palaces and tombs.


Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/278025/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Gypsum-head-of-King-Akhenaten-statue-unearthed-in-.aspx

Amun-Re goldsmith tomb uncovered in Draa Abul Naga necropolis on Luxor's west bank

The tomb was discovered along with a number of others by an Egyptian archaeological mission led by Mostafa Waziri

By Nevine El-Aref , Saturday 9 Sep 2017

In a gala ceremony held in Draa Abul-Naga necropolis on Luxor's West Bank on Saturday, Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany announced the discovery of an 18th Dynasty tomb of god Amun-Re’s goldsmith, Amenemhat (Kampp 390), and a Middle Kingdom burial shaft for a family.

Luxor Governor Mohamed Badr attended the ceremony as well as members of parliament, the Greek and Cypriot ambassadors to Egypt, as well as China's cultural attaché and the Swiss head of mission.

The discovery was made by an Egyptian archaeological mission led by Mostafa Waziri. The newly discovered tomb includes an entrance located in the courtyard of another Middle Kingdom tomb, Kampp 150.

The entrance leads to a squared chamber where a niche with a duo statue depicting the tomb owner and his wife is found on one end. The statue shows Amenemhat sitting on a high backed chair beside his wife who wears a long dress and wig.

Meet King Tut’s Father, Egypt’s First Revolutionary

Akhenaten upended the religion, art, and politics of ancient Egypt, and then his legacy was buried. Now he endures as a symbol of change.

By Peter Hessler
Photograph by Rena Effendi

Sometimes the most powerful commentary on a king is made by those who are silent. One morning in Amarna, a village in Upper Egypt about 200 miles south of Cairo, a set of delicate, sparrowlike bones were arranged atop a wooden table. “The clavicle is here, and the upper arm, the ribs, the lower legs,” said Ashley Shidner, an American bioarchaeologist. “This one is about a year and a half to two years old.”

The skeleton belonged to a child who lived at Amarna more than 3,300 years ago, when the site was Egypt’s capital. The city was founded by Akhenaten, a king who, along with his wife Nefertiti and his son, Tutankhamun, has captured the modern imagination as much as any other figure from ancient Egypt. This anonymous skeleton, in contrast, had been excavated from an unmarked grave. But the bones showed evidence of malnutrition, which Shidner and others have observed in the remains of dozens of Amarna children.

“The growth delay starts around seven and a half months,” Shidner said. “That’s when you start transition feeding from breast milk to solid food.” At Amarna this transition seems to have been delayed for many children. “Possibly the mother is making the decision that there’s not enough food.”

Until recently Akhenaten’s subjects seemed to be the only people who hadn’t weighed in on his legacy. Others have had plenty to say about the king, who ruled from around 1353 B.C. until 1336 B.C. and tried to transform Egyptian religion, art, and governance. Akhenaten’s successors were mostly scathing about his reign. Even Tutankhamun—whose brief reign has been a subject of fascination since his tomb was discovered in 1922—issued a decree criticizing conditions under his father: “The land was in distress; the gods had abandoned this land.” During the next dynasty, Akhenaten was referred to as “the criminal” and “the rebel,” and pharaohs destroyed his statues and images, trying to remove him from history entirely.

Ancient Mummy Has Oldest Case Of Heart Failure

By Rossella Lorenzi

The oldest case of acute decompensated heart failure has been found in 3,500-year-old mummified remains, a research team announced at the international congress of Egyptology in Florence.

Consisting of just a head and canopic jars containing internal organs, the remains were found in a plundered tomb by the Italian Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli in 1904 in the Valley of the Queens, Luxor, and are now housed at the Egyptian Museum in Turin.

They belong to an Egyptian dignitary named Nebiri, a “Chief of Stables” who lived under the reign of 18th Dynasty pharaoh Thutmoses III (1479-1424 BC).

“The head is almost completely unwrapped, but in a good state of preservation. Since the canopic jar inscribed for Hapy, the guardian of the lungs, is partially broken, we were allowed direct access for sampling,” Raffaella Bianucci, an anthropologist in the legal medicine section at the University of Turin, told Discovery News.

She investigated the mummified remains with researchers from the Universities of Turin, Munich and York.

Detailing the findings at the conference, Bianucci reported that Nebiri was middle aged — 45 to 60 years old — when he died and that he was affected by a severe periodontal disease with massive abscesses, as revealed by Multidetector Computed Tomography (MDCT) and three dimensional skull reconstruction.

The scans showed there was a partial attempt at excerebration (removal of the brain), but a considerable amount of dehydrated brain tissue is still preserved. Linen is packed in the inner skull, eyes, nose, ears, mouth and even fill the cheeks.

Looking for Queen Nefertiti

Does the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti rest in the tomb of the Boy King Tutankhamun, as a British Egyptologist has claimed, asks Nevine El-Aref

The beautiful Queen Nefertiti, wife of the monotheistic King Akhenaten and her son-in-law the golden Boy King Tutankhamun, has always perplexed archaeologists.

Nefertiti acquired unprecedented power during the first 12 years of the reign of her husband Akhenaten. She occupied the throne alongside her husband and appeared nearly twice as often in reliefs as Akhenaten during the first five years of his reign. She continued to appear in reliefs even when, in the twelfth year of Akhenaten’s reign, she disappeared from the scene and her name vanished from the pages of history.

Some think she either died from plague or fell out of favour, but recent theories have denied this claim. Four images of Nefertiti adorn Akhenaten’s sarcophagus, not the usual goddesses, indicating that her importance to the pharaoh continued up until his death and disproving the idea that she fell out of favour. It also shows her continuous role as a deity or semi-deity with Akhenaten.

Shortly after her disappearance, Akhenaten took a co-regent to the throne. The identity of this person has created speculation. One theory says it was Nefertiti herself in a new guise as a “female king,” like the female pharaohs Sobkneferu and Hatshepsut who ruled the country for several years.

Another theory introduces the idea of two co-regents, a male one called Smenkhkare and Nefertiti under the name of Neferneferuaten. Some scholars believe that Nefertiti became co-regent with her husband, and that her role as queen consort was taken over by her eldest daughter Meritaten.

Although her iconic bust, now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, was unearthed in an artist’s workshop at Tel Al-Amarna in 1912 by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, neither her tomb nor mummy have yet been unearthed. As for the Boy King Tutankhamun, his mysterious death, lineage and health have seen many controversies and debates.

What lies beneath?

A tantalising clue to the location of a long-sought pharaonic tomb 

 

NOTHING has inspired generations of archaeologists like the discovery in 1922 of the treasure-packed tomb of Tutankhamun. What if another untouched Egyptian trove lies buried, not in a distant patch of desert, nor even nearby amid the overlapping tomb-shafts of Luxor’s Valley of the Kings, but instead just a millimetre’s distance from plain view?

This is the dramatic hypothesis of a just-published paper by Nicholas Reeves, a British Egyptologist who co-discovered an undisturbed Egyptian tomb in 2000, and who is at the University of Arizona. His key evidence is disarmingly simple, and in fact free to see on the internet in the form of photographs published by Factum Arte, a Madrid- and Bologna-based specialist in art replication that recently created a spectacular, life-sized facsimile of Tutankhamun’s tomb, intended for tourists to visit without endangering the original.

What Mr Reeves found in these ultra-high-resolution images, which reveal the texture of walls beneath layers of paint in the original tomb, was a number of fissures and cracks that suggest the presence of two passages that were blocked and plastered to conceal their existence. One of these would probably lead to a storeroom; its position and small size mirror that of an already-uncovered storeroom inside the multi-chambered tomb. The other, bigger possible doorway in the north wall of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber suggests something much more exciting.

There are several oddities about Tutankhamun’s tomb. It is small compared with others in the valley. The objects found in it, while magnificent, seemed hurriedly placed and were found to be largely second-hand; even the boy-king’s famous gilded funerary mask sports the strangely unmanly feature of pierced ears. The tomb’s main axis is angled to the right of the entrance shaft, an arrangement typical of Egyptian queens rather than kings.

Ancient Egyptian Mummies Embalmed With Unusual Recipes

By Rossella Lorenzi

Unusual embalming recipes have been identified on two ancient Egyptian mummies, according to new international research.

The study investigated the 18th Dynasty mummies of the royal architect Kha and his wife Merit, a couple who were believed to have undergone a short and poor mummification -- if no mummification at all -- despite their relative wealth at death.

Indeed, their internal organs were not removed and placed in canopic jars, as generally occurs in classical royal 18th Dynasty artificial mummification.

Surprisingly, the researchers discovered that all internal organs – brain, thoracic and abdominal organs, eyeballs as well as ocular muscles and nerves -- were in excellent state of preservation after some 3,500 years.

"Both individuals underwent a relatively high quality of mummification, fundamentally contradicting previous understanding," Frank Rühli, Stephen Buckley, Joann Fletcher, Raffaella Bianucci, Michael Habicht, Eleni Vassilika and colleagues wrote in the journal PLOS ONE.

"Elucidated ‘recipes,’ whose components had anti-bacterial and anti-insecticidal properties, were used to treat their bodies," the researchers added.

Museum Pieces - Lady Tjepu

Courtesy of Brooklyn Museum

LADY TJEPU

One of the most remarkable paintings to survive from ancient Egypt, this depiction at the noblewoman Tjepu came from a tomb built for her son Nebamun and a man named lpuky. Egyptian artists usually did not depict individuals as they truly looked, but rather as eternally youthful, lavishly dressed, and in an attitude of repose.

Tjepu was about forty years old when this painting was executed, but she is shown in what was the height of youthful fashion during the reign of Amunhotep III: a perfumed cone on her heavy wig, a delicate side tress, and a semitransparent, fringed linen dress.

Medium: Limestone, gessoed and painted
Place Excavated: Thebes, Egypt
Dates: ca. 1390-1353 B.C.E.
Dynasty: XVIII Dynasty
Period: New Kingdom
Dimensions: 14 13/16 x 9 7/16 in. (37.6 x 24 cm)  (show scale)
Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art
Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Egyptian Orientation Gallery, 3rd Floor
Accession Number: 65.197
Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund

Source: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3743/Lady_Tjepu

News this week

By Rany Mostafa

Tomb of ‘gatekeeper of God Amun’ unearthed in Luxor

A 3,500-year-old tomb of “the gatekeeper of God Amun” has been unearthed in the west bank of Luxor, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty announced Tuesday.

The tomb was accidentally discovered during cleaning and restoration work carried out by the archaeology mission of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) in a nearby tomb in the archaeological site of Sheikh Abd el Qurna on the west bank of Luxor, according to Damaty.

“The gatekeeper of Amun, one of several titles that were found carved at the tomb’s door lintel, is strongly believed to be a job description of an 18th Dynasty (1580 B.C.- 1292 B.C.) high official. Amenhotep is the real name of the tomb owner that was found carved at the walls of the tomb,” he added.

According to Damaty, the tomb measures 5 meters long by 1.5 meters wide and takes a T-shape. A small side chamber of 4 square meters with a burial shaft in the middle is to be found inside the tomb.

Sultan Eid, Director of Upper Egypt Antiquities Department told The Cairo Post Tuesday that some parts of the tombs are well preserved with “dazzling scenes showing Amenhotep, along with his wife, depicted standing making an offering before several ancient Egyptian deities.”

Museum Pieces - Diorite bust of Horemheb

Photocredit: Nicholson Museum

Diorite bust of Horemheb

Collection: Nicholson Museum: Stone Artefacts, Ancient Egyptian
Object Category: Sculpture - Bust
Name/Title: Fragmentary statue of the pharaoh Horemheb as a kneeling scribe
Media: Stone - diorite
Measurements: 45.5 h/l x 40.0 w x 26.0 d cm, 147 kg
Acquisition Credit Line: Donated by Sir Charles Nicholson 1860
Museum Number: NMR. 1138

Production:

Place: Ptah Temple, Memphis, Egypt
Date: 1330-1320 BC

Description:

The figure wears a very fine garment with pleated sleeves and collar at base of the throat. Almost certainly Horemheb from his pre royal career.

History Notes:

Description and Function (Author: Dr Sophie Winlaw)

There are no inscriptions on the surviving section of this statue (including the narrow back pillar - an area which is usually inscribed with the subject's name). However, the identity of this individual can be determined through an examination of his facial features, the distinctive style of sculpture, the clothing and the wig. The long unstructured wavy wig is commonly worn by scribes who are usually represented in statuary as seated figures with crossed legs and in many cases papyrus scrolls on their laps (the fold of skin of our piece below the breast is suggestive of either a seated or squatting figure).

Scribes form a well respected professional class who are literate - unlike the majority of ancient Egyptians - so for this man to be represented as a scribe it reflects his high social status. This is also reflected by the style of wig and the garment he wears - types which were worn by high officials of the late 18th and early 19th dynasties (1550-1213 BC). Scribes are also protected by the god Thoth - the ibis headed god of writing and knowledge.

Many of the scribal statues depict the subject as being bare-chested but in this case he wears a distinctive type of robe which is draped loosely over his upper arms. The facial features are very distinctive, especially the shape of the eyes and the fullness around the jaw line and cheeks (representative of the Amarna Period). This statue has been carved, smoothed and polished with great precision and there would have been few officials who could have afforded a statue of this quality.

The truth about Tutankhamun

Recent speculation about the life of the ancient Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun can be easily disproved by the archaeological evidence, writes Zahi Hawass

Tutankamun: the Truth Revealed” is the title of a TV show produced by a private company in England for the BBC and the Smithsonian Channel in the United States. But the show reveals lies, not the truth.

It quotes scientists whose real intention is to become famous in the media, and one of them, a former member of the Egyptian mummy project, uses the Egyptian team’s CT and DNA analysis without permission to spread lies about Tutankhamun, claiming that the ancient Egyptian boy king was handicapped, born with a club foot.

This golden boy has entered the hearts of people all over the world, and this person wanted to take him out of our hearts. This person and the film producer have made a huge mistake and in so doing they have lost the respect of all reasonable people. Scholars all over the world disagree with them, and, again, instead of revealing the truth all they have done is to propagate lies.

The UK’s Daily Mail newspaper has published an article on the new documentary on Tutankhamun, produced by STV and already aired. The documentary distorts what Tutankhamun looked like: the boy king, whose treasure and tomb still fascinate people across the world, was presented in a completely fantastic way, humiliating not only the Egyptian king but also rewriting the history of the ancient world.

UCLA Egyptologist gives new life to female pharaoh from 15th century B.C.

No usurper, Hatshepsut was just really good at her job, according to new biography

By Meg Sullivan | October 08, 2014

By the time of her death in 1458 B.C., Egypt’s Pharaoh Hatshepsut had presided over her kingdom’s most peaceful and prosperous period in generations. Yet by 25 years later, much of the evidence of her success had been erased or reassigned to her male forebears.

Even after 20th century archaeologists began to unearth traces of the woman who defied tradition to crown herself as king, Hatshepsut still didn’t get her due, a UCLA Egyptologist argues in a forthcoming book. 

“She’s been described as a usurper, and the obliteration of her contributions has been attributed to a backlash against what has been seen as her power-grabbing ways,” said Kara Cooney, the author of “The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt.”

In the mainstream biography, due Oct. 14 from Crown Publishing, Cooney sets out to rehabilitate the reputation of the 18th dynasty ruler whom she considers to be “the most formidable and successful woman to ever rule in the Western ancient world.” To find a parallel, Cooney argues, one has to look to Empress Lü of third century B.C. China, Elizabeth I or Catherine the Great.

“Hatshepsut’s story needs to be carefully resurrected and her modus operandi needs to be dissected and analyzed in a more fair-minded way,” said Cooney, an associate professor of Near Eastern languages and culture in the UCLA College. “I see her as a person who created her position based on her ability to do the job rather than her desire for it.”

Stolen 18th dynasty relief returns from Germany

A painted limestone relief that was stolen and illegally smuggled to Germany during the last century arrives back in Egypt

By Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 23 Jul 2014

Egypt on Wednesday received from Germany a painted limestone relief that was stolen in the last century from the tomb of 18th dynasty high priest Sobekhotep in the Nobles necropolis on Luxor’s west bank.

Photocredit: Ahram Online

Minister of Antiquities and Heritage Mamdouh El-Damati told Ahram Online that the recovery of the relief started a few months ago when he was Egypt’s cultural attaché in Germany and curators at Bonn University Museum were working hard to organise a temporary exhibition there.

During preparations, a curator at the museum spotted the relief and it was confirmed that it was stolen and had been taken from the 18th dynasty tomb of Sobekhotep, a high priest during the reign of King Tuthmose IV.

The limestone relief is in very good condition. It is 30cm tall and 40cm wide. It depicts two figures of Sobehotep standing and making offerings to deities.

The owners of the relief, a German couple, did not know it was stolen because they brought from a British private collection in 1986 and offered it to Bonn University Museum so it could be displayed at the temporary exhibition.

When they found out it was a stolen and illegally smuggled artefact, said El-Damati, they admitted Egypt’s possession of the relief but asked for it to remain in Germany at the Friderish Museum for Ancient Egyptian Artefacts in Al-Rin area in Bonn. Egypt rejected the demand and said it should be returned under antiquities law 117 of 1983 and its amendment in 2010.

Hence the couple agreed to return the relief after putting it on display for three weeks at the exhibition in Bonn.

Egypt’s embassy in Germany stated on its website that Ambassador Mohamed Hegazy held a celebration on the occasion of returning the artefact and praised the couple for returning it.

Hegazy called on antiquities collectors to return the Egyptian artefacts they own voluntarily to where they belong.

He also called on German authorities to cooperate with Egyptian authorities to protect its cultural and archaeological heritage in accordance with the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing Illicit Import.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/106876/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Stolen-th-dynasty-relief-returns-from-Germany.aspx

Archaeologists Uncover Lost Population of Ancient Amarna

Burial remains shed new light on the "missing 6,000" of ancient Egypt's Amarna period.

It remained a mystery for decades.

Since archaeologist F.Ll. Griffith's excavations in the 1920's at the ancient site of the pharaoh Akhenaten's short-lived new capital city of Akhetaten (modern Amarna), archaeologists have been puzzled about the whereabouts of the remains of the city's commoner population – the people who toiled to build and maintain Akhenaten’s sacred edifices and infrastructure -- and more specifically, the estimated 6,000 people who died during the short 15-year period of the city’s construction and development.

“A will-of-the-wisp, the dream of a rich unplundered cemetery of the middle classes at El-Amarneh, full of choice vases and amulets, beckons to each successive explorer,” wrote Griffith in the report for his 1923 excavation season.*

Many of the elaborate unfinished rock-cut tombs of Akhenaten’s elite courtiers and high officials had already been found. They grace the cliff faces of the northern end of the Amarna city plain and the face of a low escarpment at the southern end of the ancient city. They can be plainly seen today by modern visitors.

But the burials of the deceased of the estimated 30,000 commoners and laborers remained elusive – until 2001, when archaeologist Barry Kemp of the University of Cambridge began to see the first signs. Kemp has directed excavations and surveys at Amarna for the Egypt Exploration Society since 1977.

Long-Lost Mummy of Pharaoh's Foster Brother Found

By Rossella Lorenzi

The mummy of the pharaoh Amenhotep II's foster brother may have been found in a former monastery, according to archival research into 19th-century documents.

The mummy, now reduced to a skeleton, is believed to be that of Qenamun, the chief steward of Amenhotep II (about 1427–1400 B.C.) who was the 7th Pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty and likely Tutankhamun's great-great-grandfather.

Qenamun was effectively Amenhotep II's foster brother, as his mother, Amenemipet, was the chief royal nurse of the future king. The two grew up together and the bond endured in adult life, with Qenamun enjoying a high and powerful status.

But the whereabouts of Qenamun's afterlife journey had remained a mystery -- no coffin nor mummy was found in his large and beautifully decorated tomb in Thebes.

"Identifying Qenamun has been like fitting together long-lost puzzle pieces," Marilina Betrò, professor of Egyptology at Pisa University, told Discovery News.

It all began two years ago when a skeleton resting in a cardboard box was found in a store room of a 14th-century monastery. Located in Calci, a village near Pisa, the monastery now houses one of the world's oldest natural history museums.

"Intriguingly, the skull bore an inscription in black ink stating it was one of the mummies brought from Egypt by Ippolito Rosellini, Europe's first Egyptology professor," Marilina Betrò told Discovery News. She holds the same chair at Pisa University that Rosellini did.

Funeral relics of pharaonic singer unearthed at Saqqara necropolis

Three painted sarcophagi belonging to an Ancient Egyptian singer have been unearthed at Saqqara

by Nevine El-Aref , Saturday 17 May 2014

During excavation works carried out in Bastet cemetery at the Saqqara necropolis just outside Cairo, French archaeologists stumbled upon three wooden sarcophagi belonging to Ta-Ekht, a singer in a sacred choir in the 18th dynasty period (1543–1292 BC).

Mohamed Ibrahim, the antiquities minister, said that the sarcophagi were found inside each other. The outer sarcophagus is a little deteriorated while the middle and inner ones are well-preserved.

(Photocredit: Ahram Online)

Ibrahim told Ahram Online on Saturday that the sarcophagi were unearthed during excavation works at the tomb of the daughter of 18th dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten, Maya, who was known as Meritee Atun.

Ali El-Asfar, head of the ancient Egyptian antiquities department at the ministry told Ahram Online that the sarcophagi depict the facial features of Ta-Ekht and are decorated with paintings of foliage.

Some elements of Ta-Ekht's funerary collection were also found inside the middle sarcophagus, including two wooden headrests and a rectangular wooden box inlaid with ivory.

The box contained a collection of beauty tools were found, including a spoon with a gazelle-shaped handle, two eye liner containers, a collection of faience beads, and a faience amulet in the famous “eye of Horus” shape.

El-Asfar said that studies are now being conducted to find out why the singer’s sarcophagi were located inside Maya tomb.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/101518/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Funeral-relics-of-pharaonic-singer-unearthed-at-Sa.aspx

Basel Egyptologists identify tomb of royal children

Who had the privilege to spend eternal life next to the pharaoh? Close to the royal tombs in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, excavations by Egyptologists from the University of Basel have identified the burial place of several children as well as other family members of two pharaohs.

Basel Egyptologists of the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project have been working on tomb KV 40 in the Valley of the Kings close to the city of Luxor for three years. From the outside, only a depression in the ground indicated the presence of a subterranean tomb. Up to now, nothing was known about the layout of tomb KV 40 nor for whom it was build and who was buried there.

The Egyptologists assumed that it was a non-royal tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty. They first cleared the six meter deep shaft which gives access to five subterranean chambers and then recovered the countless remains and fragments of funerary equipment.

Mummified royal children

The scientists discovered mummified remains of at least 50 people in the center chamber and in three side chambers. Based on inscriptions on storage jars, Egyptologists were able to identify and name over 30 people during this year's field season. Titles such as "Prince" and "Princess" distinguish the buried as members of the families of the two pharaohs Thutmosis IV and Amenhotep III who are also buried in the Valley of Kings. Both pharaohs belonged to the 18th dynasty (New Kingdom) and ruled in the 14th century BC.

Almost 60 royal mummies discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings

Swiss archaeological mission finds cachet of 18th dynasty royal mummies on Luxor's West Bank

by Nevine El-Aref , Monday 28 Apr 2014

A cachet of royal mummies has been unearthed inside a rock-hewn tomb in the Valley of the Kings on Luxor's West Bank, Egypt's antiquities ministry announced on Monday.
The tomb contains almost 60 ancient Egyptian royal mummies from the 18th dynasty along with the remains of wooden sarcophagi and cartonnage mummy masks depicting the facial features of the deceased, Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online.

Ibrahim explained that the excavation work was carried out in collaboration with Basel University in Switzerland.

Early studies reveal that the Heratic texts engraved on some of the clay pots found inside the tomb identify the names and titles of 30 deceased, among them the names of princesses mentioned for the first time – Ta-Im-Wag-Is and Neferonebo.

Anthropological studies and scientific examination of the found clay fragments will be carried out to identify all the mummies and determine the tomb's owner and his respective mummy, said Ali El-Asfar, head of the ministry's ancient Egyptian antiquities section.

The head of the Swiss archaeological mission – Swiss Egyptologist Helena Ballin – said that among the finds were well-preserved mummies of infant children as well as a large collection of funerary objects.  

She said that remains of wooden sarcophagi were also unearthed, proving that the tomb was reused by priests as a cemetery.

Early examinations of the tomb reveal that it has been subjected to theft several times since antiquity,  said Ballin.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/100031/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Almost--royal-mummies-discovered-in-Egypts-Valley-.aspx

World’s oldest weather report could revise Bronze Age chronology

By Susie Allen and William Harms
APRIL 1, 2014

An inscription on a 3,500-year-old stone block from Egypt may be one of the world’s oldest weather reports—and could provide new evidence about the chronology of events in the ancient Middle East.

A new translation of a 40-line inscription on the 6-foot-tall calcite block called the Tempest Stela describes rain, darkness and “the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses.”

Two scholars at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute believe the unusual weather patterns described on the slab were the result of a massive volcano explosion at Thera—the present-day island of Santorini in the Mediterranean Sea. Because volcano eruptions can have a widespread impact on weather, the Thera explosion likely would have caused significant disruptions in Egypt. 

The new translation suggests the Egyptian pharaoh Ahmose ruled at a time closer to the Thera eruption than previously thought—a finding that could change scholars’ understanding of a critical juncture in human history as Bronze Age empires realigned. The research from the Oriental Institute’s Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner appears in the spring issue of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

The Tempest Stela dates back to the reign of the pharaoh Ahmose, the first pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty. His rule marked the beginning of the New Kingdom, a time when Egypt’s power reached its height. The block was found in pieces in Thebes, modern Luxor, where Ahmose ruled.

Museum Pieces - Nefertiti offering flowers to Aten

Caption: Nefertiti, ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E. Limestone, painted, 9 1/4 x 15 3/16 in. (23.5 x 38.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 71.89. Creative Commons-BY

Occasionally we can identify one of the members of the Amarna royal family by a unique characteristic. The woman on this column drum has a tall, flat-topped crown worn exclusively by Nefertiti. This same headdress appears on the famous bust of the queen that is in the Berlin Museum.

Limestone sunk relief which, to judge from the convex curve of the decorated surface, once formed part of a column. To the left is Nefertiti, facing right, wearing the crown peculiar to her and Queen Tiy. She offers a formal bouquet to the Aten, three of whose rays reach to receive it. In front of her stands Akhenaton wearing a Blue Crown with streamers. Only the rear third of his body is preserved. Nefertiti is preserved from the waist up. 

Inscription: one line above the offering scene: “given life forever eternally”. Above “given life” are the bottom portions of two cartouches. 

Condition: Lower left corner broken off and replaced. Chips out of Nefertiti's crown, her right arm and elbow, her left hand and wrist, and the base of her neck. Traces of blue paint in hieroglyphs, flowers, and both crowns. Traces of red paint in both bodies, hands of the Aten and the base of the bouquet.

Medium: Limestone, painted
Possible Place Made: El Amarna, Egypt
Dates: ca. 1352-1336 B.C.E.
Dynasty: late XVIII Dynasty
Period: New Kingdom, Amarna Period
Dimensions: 9 1/4 x 15 3/16 in. (23.5 x 38.5 cm)  (show scale)
Collections:Egyptian, Classical, Ancient Near Eastern Art
Museum Location: This item is on view in Egypt Reborn: Art for Eternity, Amarna Period, Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Gallery, 3rd Floor
Accession Number: 71.89
Credit Line: Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund
Rights Statement: Creative Commons-BY

Source: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/3805/Nefertiti#