New discovery in Matariya points to a King Ramses II temple

New discoveries at the Matariya archaeological site near Heliopolis suggest the existence of a temple from the 19th dynasty of Ramses II

By Ahram Online , Tuesday 27 Sep 2016

The Egyptian-German Archaeological Mission at Matariya archaeological site discovered new evidence that may lead to a temple of King Ramses II.

Dr Mahmoud Afifi, the head of the Ancient Egyptian Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities, stated that this evidence was found about 450 metres to the west of the obelisk of King Senusret I in Matariya. It was discovered when the mission stumbled upon a number of blocks from the temple courtyards and fragments of the temple statuary.

Afifi explained that a new group of large blocks was yielded in the southern part of the area.

They show King Ramses II anointing a divinity. His name is rendered by a rather rare variant “Paramessu.”

Dr. Aymen Ashmawi, the co-director of the mission, said that the recent find was part of the decoration of the innermost rooms of the temple. Further groups of relief fragments attest that King Ramses II was the builder of this temple.

"It confirms the hypothesis that Ramses II showed special interest in Heliopolis in the later decades of his long reign of almost 70 years," Dr Ashmawi said.

In addition, Dr. Dietrich Raue, the co-director of the mission, reported that in the second area of excavations – located in the southeast of the innermost enclosure of the temple – houses and workshops from a mid-Ptolemaic stratum are under excavation.

Other discoveries in the area include faience amulets and metals, Dr. Raue reported. 

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/244730/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/New-discovery-in-Matariya-points-to-a-King-Ramses-.aspx

Polish archaeologists discovered an unknown temple of Hatshepsut

Cut in the rock and consisting of two rooms, the walls of which are covered with poorly preserved decoration and hieroglyphic inscriptions: a team of archaeologists working under the auspices of the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw started research in the ancient temple at Gebelein in Upper Egypt.

This place was already known to the local authorities, but so far no archaeologist has studied it. Previous researchers could have been discouraged by the poor condition of the decorations. This year's results of Polish research were surprising.

"This temple was dedicated to two gods. There is no doubt that one of them was Hathor, with the cult epithet Lady of Gebelein. The other deity could be Amun-Ra. Unfortunately, his depictions are not preserved and further studies are needed to verify this idea" - explained Daniel Takács, a member of the expedition.

Images of many deities were destroyed in antiquity. Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled in the fourteenth century BC, promoted the worship of one god, whose symbol was the solar disk. Depictions of other gods who did not have solar aspects were destroyed during his rule. The Goddess Hathor was associated with the sun, so her depictions ware spared.

"The most puzzling was the lack of royal names in the temple. Rulers of ancient Egypt loved to put their names on the walls of temples exposed to the public view . Sometimes they would destroy the names of previous kings to put their own in these places" - added Wojciech Ejsmond, director of the expedition.

Ruins of ancient Egyptian temple unearthed under modern Cairo

By Rany Mostafa

CAIRO: Ruins of a 2,400 year-old shrine were unearthed from beneath Cairo’s modern district of Mataria, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty announced Monday.

“The finds were discovered during the ongoing excavation work carried out by an Egyptian-German archaeology mission. The shrine belonged to the 30th Dynasty Pharaoh Nectanebo I (379 B.C.-360 B.C.,)” said Damaty.

The mission also unearthed remains of limestone colonnade and a “well-preserved” ceiling that are strongly believed to have been a part of an ancient Egyptian temple, Damaty said, adding that ruins of the mud brick outer enclosure wall surrounded the temple, along with royal bust belonged to the New Kingdom (1580 B.C.-1080 B.C.) Pharaoh Merenptah, were also excavated in the area.

Nectanebo I was the founder of the 30th Dynasty: the last native Egyptian royal family to rule ancient Egypt before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., Archaeologist Sherif el-Sabban told The Cairo Post.

Archeology surveys carried out in Heliopolis have previously revealed prehistoric human settlements under this part of the modern city of Cairo, said Damaty.

Little remains of what was once one of the ancient Egyptians’ most sacred cities, since much of the stones used in the construction of the temples were later plundered and reused in building modern buildings, according to Sabban.

Heliopolis, known in ancient Egypt as Iunu, was Egypt’s most ancient capital city.

“The area was first excavated in the early 20th Century and most of the finds ended up in private collections. The obelisk of the Middle Kingdom Pharaoh Senusert I, probably the oldest standing obelisk in Egypt, is among the most significant excavations at the area,” according to Sabban.

Source: http://www.thecairopost.com/news/170167/topnews/ruins-of-ancient-egyptian-temple-unearthed-under-modern-cairo

Long-Lost Egyptian Temple Found

By Rossella Lorenzi

Remains of the long lost temple of Kheny have been unearthed at Gebel el Silsila, north of Aswan, Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities announced today.

Revealing the foundations and blockwork of the temple, the ruins are one of the few remnants of the settlement of Kheny or Khenu, which is the ancient Egyptian name — meaning “Rowing Place” — for Gebel el-Silsila.

The site, located on both banks of the Nile between Edfu and Kom Ombo, was extensively used as a quarry from the New Kingdom until Roman times.

“We know that huge quantities of sandstone for temple building were quarried there,” Lund University archaeologist Maria Nilsson, director of the Gebel el Silsila Survey Project, told Discovery News.

Indeed, virtually all of Egypt’s great temples, including those at Karnak and Luxor, were built with sandstone from Gebel el Silsila.

“Now this finding changes the history of the site, and it firmly establishes Gebel el Silsila as not only a quarry, but also a sacred location,” she added.

While cult activities at the site were mainly associated with the Nile and its inundation, the principal deity was Sobek, the god of crocodiles who controlled the waters.

The Cult of Amun

In the epic rivalry between ancient Egypt and Nubia, one god had enduring appeal

By Daniel Weiss

In its 3,000-year history as a state, ancient Egypt had a complicated, constantly changing set of relations with neighboring powers. With the Libyans to the west and the Babylonians, Hittites, Assyrians, and Persians to the northeast, Egypt by turns waged war, forged treaties, and engaged in mutually beneficial trade. But Egypt’s most important and enduring relationship was, arguably, with its neighbor to the south, Nubia, which occupied a region that is now in Sudan. The two cultures were connected by the Nile River, whose annual flooding made civilization possible in an otherwise harsh desert environment. Through their shared history, Egyptians and Nubians also came to worship the same chief god, Amun, who was closely allied with kingship and played an important role as the two civilizations vied for supremacy.

During its Middle and New Kingdoms, which spanned the second millennium B.C., Egypt pushed its way into Nubia, ultimately conquering and making it a colonial province. The Egyptians were drawn by the land’s rich store of natural resources, including ebony, ivory, animal skins, and, most importantly, gold. As they expanded their control of Nubia, the Egyptians built a number of temples to Amun, the largest of which stood at the foot of a holy mountain called Jebel Barkal. This the Egyptians declared to be the god’s southern home, thereby conceptualizing Egypt and Nubia as a unified whole and justifying their rule of both. After Egypt’s New Kingdom collapsed around 1069 B.C., the kingdom of Kush rose in Nubia, with its court based in Napata, the town adjacent to Jebel Barkal. The Egyptian colonizers may have been gone, but their religious legacy lived on, as the Kushite rulers were by this time fervently devoted to Amun. Just as the Egyptians had used the god to validate their conquest of Nubia, the Kushites now returned the favor. During a period of discord in Egypt, the Kushite king Piye first secured Amun’s northern home, in Karnak, Egypt. Then, claiming to act on the god’s behalf to restore unified control of Nubia and Egypt, he conquered the rest of Egypt and, in 728 B.C., became the first in a line of Kushite pharaohs who ruled Egypt for around 70 years.

Egyptian temple south of Luxor jeopardized by groundwater

By Rany Mostafa:

CAIRO: The 4,000-year-old Kom Mer temple south of Luxor is being threatened by rising groundwater and wastewater, a guard at the temple, who asked to remain anonymous over fears of repercussion, told The Cairo Post Friday.

“The foundation of the temple has been suffering from groundwater issues during the past decade, but there has been a notable increase in the groundwater levels, especially at the northern and western parts of the temple, during the last year. It is mainly because of the random drainage system installed in several unlicensed buildings in the neighboring villages,” the guard said.

Kom Mer temple, located in the town of Esna, 45 kilometers south of Luxor, was built during the New Kingdom (1580 B.C.-1080 B.C.) and was dedicated to Khnum, Esna’s local god of creation, Ancient Egyptian History Professor Sherif el-Sabban told The Cairo Post Friday.

The temple was excavated in 1830 by an Italian archaeology mission, Sabban added.

“In addition to the groundwater problem, the neighborhood of the temple has become a breeding ground for rats and mosquitoes due to the piles of garbage and stinking sewage dumped by the residents near the temple,” the guard said.

The deteriorating conditions at Kom Mer temple have raised fears among archaeologists that the saline groundwater could erode the bedrock under the temple and lead to its collapse.

Groundwater flow around the temple, which has caused the groundwater to rise in the area of the temple, is from newly irrigated areas nearby the Nile, Archaeologist Ayman Abd el-Rahman told The Cairo Post Friday.

“The groundwater, with a high salt content, would cause an exfoliation of stones, dissolution of building materials, and crystallization of salts in its walls,” said Abdel-Rahman. Kom Mer temple, like many other temples of ancient Egypt—including Karnak—was built nearby the Nile, and water collected in canals and ditches from the river is used to irrigate crops.

“Pumping groundwater from beneath the monuments, improving sanitation systems and re-digging the canals surrounding the temple will lower the underground water level and solve a considerable part of the groundwater problem,” said Abdel-Rahman, who called on involved parties to ban dumping garbage in the vicinity of the temple.

Source: http://thecairopost.com/news/124770/travel-antiquities/egyptian-temple-south-of-luxor-jeopardized-by-groundwater

Ptolemy in Beni Sweif

The recently discovered temple of Ptolemy II in Beni Sweif is set to rewrite the ancient history of the area, writes Nevine El-Aref

Late last week, Egyptian excavators working at the Gabal Al-Nour archaeological site in Beni Sweif stumbled upon what is believed to be the first ever temple to be found dating from the reign of the Pharaoh Ptolemy II (282-246 BC).

The temple is a two-storey building made of sandstone 25 metres in height and 16.5 metres wide. The excavators have unearthed the temple’s first floor and part of the ground floor, the rest being still buried in sand.

Mansour Breik, head of the Central Administration of Middle Egypt Antiquities, told Al-Ahram Weekly that only two metres of the temple had been unearthed but that it was in a very good state of preservation. The temple’s ground floor consisted of several rooms that had not yet been excavated, he said.

The eastern wall of the temple had been revealed, showing it to be decorated with engravings featuring Ptolemy II wearing a white crown and presenting offerings to the goddess Isis who was worshipped in the temple with the Nile god Hapy.

A collection of sandstone blocks engraved with Ptolemy II’s cartouche has also been found, along with clay pots and a large limestone head of a cobra. Breik said that he expected the excavations would soon lead to the western wall of the temple, which may be engraved with the provinces of Lower and Upper Egypt.

“It is a very important discovery that could rewrite the ancient history of Beni Sweif and that of Ptolemy II’s reign. We know little about this although he ruled Egypt for 32 years,” Breik told the Weekly.

He said that the newly discovered temple was the first ever monument from the reign of Ptolemy II to be found in Beni Sweif. The 20 architectural monuments from his reign that have been found are spread across different provinces, such as Fayoum, Dendara and Kom Ombo, but never Beni Sweif. Most of these monuments consist of rooms and a portico but never a complete temple.