By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | August 24, 2017
A series of tombs dating back about 2,000 years, to the time when the Romans controlled Egypt, has been discovered, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced yesterday (Aug. 23).
Excavations at Bir esh-Shaghala in the Dakhla Oasis have uncovered tombs made of mudbrick and some are quite large containing multiple burial chambers. Some of the tombs have vaulted roofs and one tomb has a roof built in the shape of a pyramid.
Five of the tombs were recently discovered while eight more were found within the past six excavation seasons, ministry officials said in a statement.
Artifacts were found in the tombs, including mummy masks and pieces of inscribed pottery known as ostraca. Giant containers were also found that may have held wine or olive oil, although chemical tests will need to be done to confirm this. The discovery of the tombs was made by a team of archaeologists from Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities. The excavations at Bir esh-Shaghala are scheduled to continue.
The Romans took over Egypt in 30 B.C., following Cleopatra VII's suicide after her navy was destroyed by the Roman Emperor Octavian at the Battle of Actium. While the Roman emperors ruled Egypt from Rome, the Egyptians revered the emperors as pharaohs. Their traditional Egyptian funerary customs (including mummification) and religious practices continued until the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its official religion during the fourth century A.D.
Located in the Western Desert, about 217 miles (350 kilometers) west of Luxor, the Dakhla Oasis contains a vast amount of archaeological remains that date from prehistoric to modern times. A number of settlements from the Roman era flourished in the Dakhla Oasis. In 2014, Live Science reported that one of the Roman era settlements in the oasis had yielded the remains of an ancient school covered with writing that included references to drug use.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/60223-2000-year-old-egyptian-tombs-from-roman-period.html
By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor | February 11, 2014
Archaeologists working in the western desert of Egypt have discovered a school dating back about 1,700 years that contains ancient Greek writings on its walls, including a text about ancient drug use that references Homer's "The Odyssey."
The school — which contains benches that students could sit on to read, or stand on and write on the walls — dates back to a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, and Greek was widely spoken.
In use for less than 20 years, the school structure eventually became part of a large house that contained colorful art, including images of the Olympian gods, the researchers said.
The house and school are located in the ancient town of Trimithis (modern-day Amheida), which is in the Dakhla Oasis, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) west of the Nile River. The house, and some of the art, was first discovered in 1979. In 2001, a new exploration project at Amheida, now sponsored primarily by New York University, led to the discovery of the school, its Greek writings and more art scenes from the house.
After a long period of restoration, the Al-Muzawaka necropolis in Dakhla Oasis was officially inaugurated this week. Nevine El-Aref attended the opening ceremony
Within a rocky, table-top mound in the Al-Qasr village in Dakhla Oasis are 300 Roman-period tombs, all of them unpainted except for those belonging to the priests Petosiris and Sadosiris. These tombs are vividly painted with scenes combining the ancient Egyptian and Roman deities of the time.
The tombs and the larger necropolis of which they are a part were originally discovered in 1972 by the Egyptian archaeologist Ahmed Fakhri, who called them Al-Muzawaka due to the vivid paintings they contain.
The walls of Petosiris’s tomb are painted with fair-haired, Roman-nosed figures in Pharaonic poses and curly-haired angels. On the ceiling is a zodiac with a bearded Janus figure. The owner of the tomb is also featured in the rear right-hand corner standing on a turtle and holding aloft a snake and a fish in a curious amalgam of Egyptian and Graeco-Roman symbols.
The wall paintings in Sadorisis’s tomb show the deceased with various deities: before the ancient Egyptian god Anubis while his heart is being weighed after death; before Osiris while he is being judged; and with Janus looking back on his life and forward into the hereafter.
Harvesting scenes are depicted in both tombs, as well as the agricultural products of the Oasis such as grapes and olives. While the other tombs in the necropolis are unpainted, they have been found to contain the remains of poorly embalmed corpses.
by Joseph Castro, LiveScience ContributorDate: 28 May 2013
A 2- to 3-year-old child from a Romano-Christian-period cemetery in Dakhleh Oasis, Egypt, shows evidence of physical child abuse, archaeologists have found. The child, who lived around 2,000 years ago, represents the earliest documented case of child abuse in the archaeological record, and the first case ever found in Egypt, researchers say.
The Dakhleh Oasis is one of seven oases in Egypt's Western Desert. The site has seen continuous human occupation since the Neolithic period, making it the focus of several archaeological investigations, said lead researcher Sandra Wheeler, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Central Florida. Moreover, the cemeteries in the oasis allow scientists to take a unique look at the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt.
In particular, the so-called Kellis 2 cemetery, which is located in the Dakhleh Oasis town of Kellis (southwest of Cairo), reflects Christian mortuary practices. For example, "instead of having children in different places, everyone is put in one place, which is an unusual practice at this time," Wheeler told LiveScience. Dating methods using radioactive carbon from skeletons suggest the cemetery was used between A.D. 50 and A.D. 450.
When the researchers came across the abused toddler — labeled "Burial 519" — in Kellis 2, nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first. But when Wheeler's colleague Tosha Duprasbegan brushing the sand away, she noticed prominent fractures on the child's arms.
"She thought, 'Whoa, this was weird,' and then she found another fracture on the collarbone," Wheeler said. "We have some other kids that show evidence of skeletal trauma, but this is the only one that had these really extreme fracture patterns."
by Owen Jarus, LiveScience ContributorDate: 16 May 2013
The peak period for baby-making sex in ancient Egypt was in July and August, when the weather was at its hottest.
Researchers made this discovery at a cemetery in the Dakhleh Oasis in Egypt whose burials date back around 1,800 years. The oasis is located about 450 miles (720 kilometers) southwest of Cairo. The people buried in the cemetery lived in the ancient town of Kellis, with a population of at least several thousand. These people lived at a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, when Christianity was spreading but also when traditional Egyptian religious beliefs were still strong.
So far, researchers have uncovered 765 graves, including the remains of 124 individuals that date to between 18 weeks and 45 weeks after conception. The excellent preservation let researchers date the age of the remains at death. The researchers could also pinpoint month of death, as the graves were oriented toward the rising sun, something that changes predictably throughout the year.
The results, combined with other information, suggested the peak period for births at the site was in March and April, and the peak period for conceptions was in July and August, when temperatures at the Dakhleh Oasis can easily reach more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius).
