Early Egyptian Queen Revealed in 5,000-Year-Old Hieroglyphs

by Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor   |   January 19, 2016

About 60 drawings and hieroglyphic inscriptions, dating back around 5,000 years, have been discovered at a site called Wadi Ameyra in Egypt’s Sinai Desert. Carved in stone, they were created by mining expeditions sent out by early Egyptian pharaohs, archaeologists say.

They reveal new information on the early pharaohs. For instance, one inscription the researchers found tells of a queen named Neith-Hotep who ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago as regent to a young pharaoh named Djer.

Archaeologists estimate that the earliest carvings at Wadi Ameyra date back around 5,200 years, while the most recent date to the reign of a pharaoh named Nebre, who ruled about 4,800 years ago. 

The "inscriptions are probably a way to proclaim that the Egyptian state owned the area," team leader Pierre Tallet, a professor at Université Paris-Sorbonne, told Live Science.

He explained that south of Wadi Ameyra, the ancient expeditions would have mined turquoise and copper. Sometime after Nebre's rule, the route of the expeditions changed, bypassing Wadi Ameyra, he said.

Ruins of Egypt’s most ancient capital of Memphis unearthed

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: Ruins of the 5,200 year-old enclosure wall, once surrounded Egypt’s most ancient capital city of Memphis, has been unearthed, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty said in a statement Saturday.

“Several white limestone fragments of the ancient capital’s wall were discovered during excavation work carried out by an archaeology team of the Russian Institute of Egyptology at Kom Tuman, south of Giza Pyramids,” said Damaty.

Memphis was founded from the end of the fourth millennium B.C. by the first Dynasty Pharaoh Menes, who was the first to unify Upper and Lower Egypt kingdoms into a unified state in ancient Egypt history, Director of the Russian archaeological team Galina A. Belova was quoted by the Antiquities Ministry Friday.

“A number of pottery making ovens and bronze tools were also found. The excavations will continue and we will be working to unearth the rest of the wall, as well as any archaeological elements which could help us to know more about this early period of Egyptian history,” said Belova.

Occupying a strategic position at the mouth of the Nile Delta, Memphis was the capital of ancient Egypt during the Old Kingdom (2,680B.C.-2125B.C.) It once comprised the royal palaces of the Pharaohs alongside the state administrative buildings, Kamal Wahid, director of the central administration of Giza antiquities told The Cairo Post Saturday.

“Unlike royal tombs, pyramids, mortuary and cult-related temples and any other buildings related to the afterlife, ancient Egyptian royal palaces, administrative offices, houses and other life-related buildings were often made of mud brick,” said Wahid, pointing out that the ancient Egyptian belief in life after death made the Egyptians keen to build durable tombs and pyramids.

Memphis is now an open air museum that houses artifacts spanning several periods of the ancient Egyptian civilization; a painted limestone colossus of Ramses II along with the alabaster Sphinx are the most preserved pieces in that museum.

In the 1950s, the Egyptian government decided to transfer a pink granite colossus of Ramses II to Cairo. It was placed before the Cairo’s main train station named after the Pharaoh. However, in 2005, the statue was transferred to the under-construction Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), nearby Giza Pyramids, scheduled to open in 2018.

The move has been criticized for its costs and concerns about pollution in the Giza location.

Source: http://www.thecairopost.com/news/146654/topnews/ruins-of-egypts-most-ancient-capital-of-memphis-unearthed

Ramesside tomb of Egypt's royal ambasador discovered at Saqqara

New Kingdom tomb discovered at Old Kingdom site at Saqqara, a find that officials say will transform the location into an even greater tourist attraction

by Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 8 May 2014

Journalists, photographers and top officials flocked to a site south of Unas Pyramid causeway at Saqqara necropolis on Thursday to admire a newly discovered tomb that, according to experts, "will change the history of the necropolis."

Archaeologists from Cairo University stumbled upon what is believed to be the tomb of Paser – Egypt’s royal ambassador to foreign countries during the late Ramesside period as well as the army archives holder.

The tomb is temple-shaped and consists of a portico entrance, pillars hall and a peristyle court, which contains the main burial shaft in the centre and opens directly onto a sanctuary with three rooms.

"It's a vey important discovery that add more to Egypt’s history and political status with its neighbouring countries," Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online.

He explained that ancient Egyptian tombs are only found in two shapes – mastaba or rock hewn – but that this particular one is temple-shaped and ends with a peramidion, which means that the tomb's designer used a new architect that combined the shapes of both temples and tombs.

Stolen Ancient Egyptian shrine recovered

Limestone Ancient Egyptian shrine (or naos) found in residential home in Mit Rahina town

by Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 3 Nov 2013

Tourism and Antiquities Police have recovered a stolen limestone naos (shrine) hidden inside a residential home in Mit-Rahina town in Al-Badrasheen city, south of Cairo.

Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim said the ministry's archaeological committee had confirmed the naos is authentic and dates from the Old Kingdom.

It includes four statues of persons fixed on four bases engraved with hieroglyphic verses from The Pyramid Texts. The first statue is 16 cm tall and depicts a standing figure wearing a black wig. The second is 19.2 cm tall and features a person wearing a coloured wig, while the third statue is 9.2 cm in height and may be of a child wearing a coloured wig. On his chest is engraved line of hieroglyphics. The fourth statue is 16.4 cm tall and depicts a person with a black wig.

Aly El-Asfar, deputy head of the Ancient Egyptian department at the ministry, said the statues could be of the same person different during stages of life. The naos is now under investigation to discover its original location and whether it was dug illegally.

The possessor of the naos is now being held in custody and is being investigated, he said.

Out of the sea

Jenny Jobbins looks at the regional myths that ancient Egyptians associated with the creation of the world and finds an uncanny parallel with what science teaches us today


The Egyptians believed that the various ramifications of the sun god — Horus, the rising sun; Ra and Ra-Harakhte, the full sun; and Osiris, the setting sun — governed their lives and the lives of all living animals and plants. But how did they explain the creation of that world?
Their theory of creation depended on where — and, to some extent, when — they lived, and was woven around the cults of the different regional divinities. The main cult centres were in Hermopolis, Heliopolis, Memphis and Thebes.
To some extent there were common factors in these regional myths. In the beginning was chaos, envisaged as a vast ocean called Nu. From these waters rose a primaeval land mound, the pyramid-shaped benben, and at the same time life emerged from the benben’s rich, alluvial soil.

THE ENNEAD OF HELIOPOLIS: If you were born during the Old Kingdom in the area around Heliopolis, just to the northeast of modern Cairo, you would have grown up in the midst of a spiritually and politically charged atmosphere in the shade of the temple at the centre of the cult of Ra-Harakhte. Only one remnant remains today of this temple, Egypt’s first known temple to the sun god: the obelisk of Senusert I.
The people of Heliopolis (ancient Iwnw) attributed the creation to Atum, a deity who was associated with the sun-god Ra. Atum was the first god: he created himself, emerging on the primaeval mound from the water, Nu. According to the Heliopolitan myth, Atum single-handedly created his progeny, each with an element linked to the physical world. First he sneezed the air god with the onomatopoeic name of Shu, and spat out Shu’s sister, Tefnut. Shu and Tefnut were the parents of Geb, the Earth god, and Nut, the sky goddess. Despite being separated by their father, Shu, Geb and Nut nevertheless produced Isis, goddess of motherhood; Osiris, god of vegetation and resurrection; Set, god of the desert and of storms; and the protector goddess Nephtys. These nine gods, the family of the omnipotent Atum, formed the Ennead of Heliopolis. The hierarchy was perpetuated through the Pyramid Texts, which accompanied the deceased pharaoh and instructed him on how to conduct himself on his passage to the afterlife.
Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, and Anubis, son of Set and Nephtys, were the offspring of the last four members of the original Ennead.

Dynasties of Egypt Part I: Pre-Dynastic and Early Dynastic Period

Predynastic Period

The Predynastic Period of Ancient Egypt (prior to 3100 BC) is traditionally the period between the Early Neolithic and the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy starting with King Narmer. However, the dates of the Predynastic period were first defined before widespread archaeological excavation of Egypt had taken place, and recent finds which show the course of Predynastic development to have been very gradual have caused scholars to argue about when exactly the Predynastic period ended. Thus, the term Protodynastic Period, sometimes called Dynasty 0, has been used by scholars to name the part of the period which might be characterized as Predynastic by some and Dynastic by others.

The Predynastic Period is generally divided into cultural periods named after the places where a certain type of Egyptian settlement was first located. However, the same gradual development that characterizes the Protodynastic Period is present throughout the entire Predynastic Period, and individual "cultures" must not be interpreted as separate entities but as largely subjective divisions used to facilitate easier study of the entire period.

The Protodynastic Period of Egypt (generally dated 3100 - 3000 BC) refers to the period of time at the very end of the Predynastic Period, equivalent to the archaeological phase known as Naqada III. During the Protodynastic Period, Egypt took the first steps toward political unification, leading to a truly unified state during the Early Dynastic Period. Also during this time, we see the Egyptian language first being recorded in hieroglyphs. 

Persians in Egypt in the Achaemenid period

The last pharaoh of the Twenty-Sixth dynasty, Psamtik (Psammetichus) III, was defeated by Cambyses II (q.v.; 530-22 B.C.E.) in the battle of Pelusium in the eastern Nile delta in 525 B.C.E.; Egypt was then joined with Cyprus and Phoenicia in the sixth satrapy of the Achaemenid empire (Cook, p. 214; Bresciani, Camb. Hist. Iran, pp. 502-03; Briant, 1987; idem, 1992, p. 67). The “first Persian domination” over Egypt (or Twenty-Seventh dynasty) ended around 402 B.C.E. After an interval of independence, during which three indigenous dynasties reigned (the Twenty-Eighth, Twenty-Ninth, and Thirtieth; for the probable last ruler, Khababash, see Ritner; cf. Bresciani, 1990, pp. 637-41), Artaxerxes III (q.v.; 359-38 B.C.E.) reconquered the Nile valley for a brief period (342-32 B.C.E.), usually called the “second Persian domination.”

The first Persian domination. Cambyses led three unsuccessful military campaigns in Africa: against Carthage, the oases of the Libyan desert, and Nubia. He remained in Egypt until 522 B.C.E. and died on the way back to Persia. In contrast to the hostile tradition transmitted by Herodotus (3.64-66) and Diodorus Siculus (1.95), who described Cambyses’ conduct in Egypt as mad, ungodly, and cruel, contemporary Egyptian documents offer a different perspective on this sovereign’s “atrocities” (Posener, pp. 171 ff.; Klasens; Bresciani, Camb. Hist. Iran, pp. 504-05), even though violence and abuses perpetrated by the occupation troops can be taken for granted. Herodotus may have drawn on an indigenous tradition that reflected the Egyptian clergy’s resentment of Cambyses’ decree (known from a text in Demotic script on the back of papyrus no. 215 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) curtailing royal grants made to Egyptian temples under Amasis (Bresciani, 1981).

Ptah the god from Memphis

The preeminent God of the city of Memphis, one of the earliest administrative centers of the unified Egyptian nation, Ptah apparently lent his name to the nation itself, at least in the Greek tongue. The Egyptians called their nation Kemi, or something approximating to this, but the Greek name which we have inherited to refer to this land, Aiguptos, appears to be a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian name for the city of Memphis, He[t]-ka-Ptah, ‘House of the spirit of Ptah’. Due to its position at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, Memphis is described as “the Balance of the Two Lands, in which Upper and Lower Egypt had been weighed” in the conflict between Horus and Seth, representing Lower and Upper Egypt respectively (Lichtheim vol. 1, 53). Ptah, a God of life, intelligence, speech (especially the word of command) and craftsmanship, is depicted as a standing mummiform man, wearing a skullcap and a broad collar with a large tassel at the back and holding a sceptre combining the ankh, djed, and was (uas) symbols. Ptah is mummiform, not because he has funerary associations, but to symbolize his participation in the state of changeless perfection with which mummification is associated. Ptah’s consort is Sekhmet and Nefertum is his son. The Apis bull was regarded as Ptah’s mortal representative and the deified vizier Imhotep came to be regarded as Ptah’s son as well. In addition, some late depictions of Ptah in magical contexts depict him as a beardless dwarf—fully humanoid, unlike Bes—in most cases holding snakes in his hands; in one instance, this image is labelled “Ptah endowed with life,” (Holmberg, 182). This image is apparently also commonly intended to depict the triune fusion deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Ptah is also so frequently allied withTatenen in the fusion deity Ptah-Tatenen that in many cases ‘Tatenen’ seems simply to have become an epithet of Ptah’s, but it is always safer to assume, given Egyptian conservatism with respect to theological formulae, that references to ‘Tatenen’ in texts embed a reference to Tatenen himself.

Menes, The First Pharaoh?

There is considerable confusion amongst scholars as to who the first Egyptian Pharaoh was, who ruled over all of Egypt from his capital at Memphis. According to the kings list made a thousand years after his time, his name was Men, Meni or Mena. The reason for using different vowels is because in Egyptian writing vowels are not written (as at times in Arabic) and these have to be guessed. The Greek historian Manetho of 200 BC who was known for developing meticulous historical records, called him Menes in Greek. That is the most popular way Mene is mentioned in modern literature. This pharaoh is the legendary king that came from the town of Tinis in Upper Egypt and took over Lower Egypt (the North) by force. He then became the first king over the whole country and founded a new capital for united Egypt - Memphis, just where the two states bordered on each other. According to archaeological dating this was around 3200 BC. For thousands of years, King Menes was thought to be the first king of Egypt. Ancient Egyptian records clearly identify him as the first king of the first dynasty.