3,000-Year-Old Mummy Found in Egyptian Tomb

The well-preserved mummy is believed to be the body of a man named Amenrenef, a servant to a royal household.

Spanish archaeologists have unearthed an ancient Egyptian mummy in "very good condition" near Luxor, Egypt's antiquities ministry has announced.

Photo courtesy of Ahram Online

Resting inside a brightly colored wooden sarcophagus, the mummy had been bound with linen stuck together with plaster.

"The tomb was uncovered at the southern enclosure wall of the Temple of Millions of Years," Mahmoud Afifi, head of the ancient Egyptian antiquities department of the ministry, said in a statement.

The temple was built on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor by Pharaoh Thutmosis III (1490-1436 BC), one of Egypt's greatest warrior kings. Also known as the "Napoleon of Egypt," he was the sixth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the best known of all the dynasties of ancient Egypt as it boasted pharaohs such as Hatshepsut, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.

The mummy is believed to be the body of a man named Amenrenef, who held the title of "Servant of the King's House." Amenrenef, however, did not live under Thutmosis III. His tomb likely dates from the Third Intermediate period around 1,000 BC, probably to the 21st Dynasty.

"When the temple was already not functioning, the area was used as a necropolis," Egyptologist Myriam Seco Álvarez, head of the Spanish archaeological team, told Seeker.

"Until now we knew about the necropolis under the temple dated to the Middle Kingdom, but we didn't know about the Late Period tombs and this one of the Third Intermediate Period," she added.

The 3,000-year-old mummy case features "many colorful decorations recalling religious symbols of ancient Egypt," the Egyptologist said.

Álvarez, who has been working at the Temple of Millions of Years since 2008, noted that the inscriptions and decorations include solar symbols, the protective goddesses Isis and Nephthys spreading their wings, the four sons of god Horus, and many other finely painted scenes.

"The mission will now study the tomb and its contents to find out more about its owner," Afifi said.

Source: http://www.seeker.com/3000-year-old-mummy-found-in-egyptian-tomb-2093293939.html

Polish archaeologists studied a unique necropolis in Egypt

Polish scientists studied a cemetery from the times of the reign XXIII and XXV Dynasty (VIII - VII century BC) in Egypt. The royal necropolis is located in the ... temple of Hatshepsut.

Archaeologists have summed up the 10-year study of an unusual cemetery, which was founded in the times of unrest in Egypt - the so-called Third Intermediate Period, when the power in Egypt was taken over by the kings who came from Libya, and then from the Nubian kingdom of Kush, which is today's Sudan. The latter were described as "black pharaohs".

Even before the year 900 BC, Hatshepsut temple was destroyed by great cataclysm. Probably as a result of an earthquake, hundreds of tons of debris fell on the sanctuary from the surrounding hills. The famous temples of Karnak and Luxor located on the east bank of the Nile also sustained serious damage.

"Members of the royal family - XXIII and XXV dynasty - took advantage of the situation. They consciously decided to build tombs on the upper terrace of the ruins of the Temple of Hatshepsut" - told PAP Dr. Zbigniew Szafrański, leader of the Polish-Egyptian restoration and archaeological mission in the temple of the famous queen. According to the researcher, even after its destruction the temple considered a sacred place.

In total, scientists have discovered nearly 20 tombs. The entrance in the form of several meters deep shaft carved into the rock, ending in a single, undecorated burial chamber, was located in the floor of the temple.

Museum Pieces - Wooden Panel on behalf of Pharaoh Sehibra

Wooden panel on behalf of Sehibra

This wooden panel, enriched by including glass paste and / or other valuable material, belonged to a small temple.

The scene that appears, plays a ceremony officiated in a temple by the pharaoh Sehibra, identifiable thanks to the cartouche with his name which is above his knees. The sovereign, protected by the great wings of the goddess Isis, is holding a neb sign in his hands with the udjat eye and the sign nefer, the adjective which means "beautiful" or "good", to be offered to the deity .

Additional Information

This type of ritual is repeated every morning inside the numerous Egyptian temples, and it was the king, as supreme guarantor in the land of Maat (truth, justice, and cosmic order), as a privileged intermediary between the human world and the divine world, to having to celebrate; unable to perform this function at the same time across the country, the pharaoh was replaced in each sanctuary by the high priest. 
His participation in the rite was guaranteed by the wall reliefs, sculptures, decorative elements, which are present within the sacred , which depicted the presence of divinity.

Origin: Egypt undisclosed location. Collection Palagi (Nizzoli) Date: Third Intermediate Period: Dynasty XXIII, Sehibra reign (823-716 BC) Material: wood Size: 25.5 x 15 x 1 cm Inventory number: KS 289

Source: http://www.comune.bologna.it/archeologico/percorsi/47679/id/50804/oggetto/48622/

Dynasties Of Egypt Part IV: New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period

The New Kingdom, sometimes referred to as the Egyptian Empire, is the period in ancient Egyptian history between the 16th century BC and the 11th century BC, covering the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties of Egypt. 

The New Kingdom (1570–1070 BC) followed the Second Intermediate Period and was succeeded by the Third Intermediate Period. It was Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the zenith of its power.

Possibly as a result of the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, the New Kingdom saw Egypt attempt to create a buffer between the Levant and Egypt, and attained its greatest territorial extent. It expanded far south into Nubia and held wide territories in the Near East. Egyptian armies fought Hittite armies for control of modern-day Syria.

The Eighteenth Dynasty contained some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs including Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amunhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun.

The founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Ahmose I (reign 1550-1525 BC) had a turbulent childhood. At the age of seven, his father Seqenenre Tao II was killed, probably while putting down members of the Asiatic tribe known as Hyskos, who were rebelling against the Thebean Royal House in Lower Egypt. At the age of ten, he saw his brother Kamose die of unknown causes after reigning for only three years. 

Archaeologists unearth five ancient tombs on Luxor's west bank

Collection of tombs from Egypt's turbulent Third Intermediate Period are found in King Amenhotep II's funerary complex by Italian archaeological mission

by Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 10 Jan 2013

An Italian archaeological mission has accidently uncovered a collection of five private rock-hewn Third Intermediate Period tombs while brushing sand from parts of King Amenhotep II’s temple, located on the northern side of the Serapaeum on Luxor's west bank.

Each tomb includes a deep shaft leading to a burial chamber containing a wooden painted sarcophagus. The sarcophagi are decorated with funerary and religious scenes painted in black and red and house skeletons of the deceased.

Mansour Boreik, supervisor of Luxor antiquities, said that 12 very well preserved mud brick and sandstone Canopic jars were also unearthed. These jars, explained Boreik, were used by ancient Egyptians to store and preserve the deceased's bodily organs for use in the afterlife.

They are medium-sized containers covered with lids depicting the heads of the four sons of Horus: Imsety, with a human head to protect the liver; Hapi, with a baboon head for the lungs; Duamutef, with a jackal head for the stomach; and Qebehsenuef, with a falcon head for the Intestines.

The jars are now housed in the area storehouse for restoration and study.

"It's a very important discovery that highlights the importance of King Amenhotep II's temple years after the pharaoh's death," said Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim. He told Ahram Online that King Amenhotep II also had a tomb in the Valley of the Kings that housed a collection of royal mummies discovered in 1882.

King Amenhotep II was the seventh pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty.  He inherited a vast kingdom following the death of his father, Thutmose III, and held it by means of several military campaigns in Syria. His reign witnessed the end of hostilities between Egypt and Mitanni, the two major kingdoms struggling for power in Syria.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/62200/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Archaeologists-unearth-five-ancient-tombs-on-Luxor.aspx

An Egyptian Renaissance: The Kushite 25th Dynasty

An Egyptian Renaissance: The Kushite 25th Dynasty

by Dr. Lisa Swart

Far from being a cultural and geographic backwater, the Kushite 25th Dynasty created one of the largest empires along the Nile in ancient and medieval times. A dynasty of charismatic Kushite kings assumed Egyptian titles and postures for over a century. Their sovereignty over Egypt was acknowledged by the Egyptians, all while retaining their own unique identities. The Kushites not only united a previously fragmented Egypt, which had slid into political and economic decline, but reinvigorated Egyptian material culture with a blend of their own distinctive characteristics with Egyptian prototypes.

Introduction

Extending south, along the Nile River from the First Cataract to the Shubaluqa Gorge (Sixth Cataract), is the land of Nubia. Today, this region is mostly located within the borders of modern Sudan, with a small portion crossing into southern Egypt. Known as Kush by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Hebrews and Persians; and Ethiopia by the Greeks, Romans and 19th and early 20th century writers, it is one of only two African civilizations so far to have produced significant archaeological or written records from before 1000 CE (Depuydt, 1996: 531), However, even with rich Kushite archaeological remains along the course of the Nile Valley, compared with other great civilizations of the ancient world, relatively little is known about Nubia. Previously considered a geographical backwater, Nubia has been traditionally viewed with the flawed perception by scholars from within the shadow of the monolithic Egyptian empire. This opinion has its roots in the preconceptions of early African societies prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Confounding matters further, unlike Egypt, there is not an excess of textual artifacts, and of those found, many have been written in the undeciphered Meroitic language.

As ancient as its neighbour in the north, the history of Nubia is deeply interwoven with that of Egypt, a long-time rival, trading partner, colonial master, and subsequent colony. From obscure origins, the Kushite kings conquered and establised their domination over Egypt as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty during the mid-eighth century BCE. They ruled Egypt for over a century, until they were ousted by the Assyrians in the 650s BCE.

Tomb of the Chantress

by Julian Smith


A newly discovered burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings provides a rare glimpse into the life of an ancient Egyptian singer

On January 25, 2011, tens of thousands of protestors flooded Cairo’s Tahrir Square, demanding the end of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. As the “day of revolt” filled the streets of Cairo and other cities with tear gas and flying stones, a team of archaeologists led by Susanne Bickel of the University of Basel in Switzerland was about to make one of the most significant discoveries in the Valley of the Kings in almost a century.

The valley lies on the west bank of the Nile, opposite what was once Egypt’s spiritual center—the city of Thebes, now known as Luxor. The valley was the final resting place of the pharaohs and aristocracy beginning in the New Kingdom period (1539–1069 B.C.), when Egyptian wealth and power were at a high point. Dozens of tombs were cut into the valley’s walls, but most of them were eventually looted. It was in this place that the Basel team came across what they initially believed to be an unremarkable find.

At the southeastern end of the valley they discovered three sides of a man-made stone rim surrounding an area of about three-and-a-half by five feet. The archaeologists suspected that it was just the top of an abandoned shaft. But, because of the uncertainty created by Egypt’s political revolution, they covered the stone rim with an iron door while they informed the authorities and applied for an official permit to excavate.

A year later, just before the first anniversary of the revolution, Bickel returned with a team of two dozen people, including field director Elina Paulin-Grothe of the University of Basel, Egyptian inspector Ali Reda, and local workmen. They started clearing the sand and gravel out of the shaft. Eight feet down, they came upon the upper edge of a door blocked by large stones. At the bottom of the shaft they found fragments of pottery made from Nile silt and pieces of plaster, a material commonly used to seal tomb entrances. Those plaster pieces, together with the age of other nearby sites, were the first sign that the shaft might actually be a tomb dating to between 1539 and 1292 B.C., Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty. The large stones appeared to have been added later.

Egypt: The End of a Civilisation

By Dr Aidan Dodson

Defining the end point

The civilisation of ancient Egypt can be traced back in recognisable form to around 3000 BC. It was to endure for over three millennia and it is perhaps the most instantly recognisable of all ancient cultures today. The question of how it came to an end is a perennially popular one, but actually quite difficult to answer, as it is by no means agreed as to what constitutes 'the end' of Egypt as an ancient civilisation.

...the demise of the hieroglyphs was a manifestation of the decline and fall of the ancient religion...

Is it the definitive end of native Egyptian rule (at least until the 20th century)? In this case the answer would be the flight of King Nectanebo II in 342 BC. Is it Egypt's absorption into the Roman Empire in 30 BC? Or the last appearance of the ancient hieroglyphic script just before AD 400? Or the closure of the last pagan temples in the sixth century?

In many ways the last suggestion is perhaps the most appropriate, as in all the other cases, the core religious and artistic values of the country continued on, albeit increasingly debased and under pressure. However, the demise of the hieroglyphs was a manifestation of the decline and fall of the ancient religion in the face of Christianity, itself ultimately to be supplanted by Islam.

Facebook page to save ancient Egypt's El-Hibeh site

Following a year's worth of looting, well-known American archeologist Carol Redmount has launched a social media campaign to rescue the archaeological site of El-Hibeh next to the Egyptian city of Beni Suef

by Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 25 Mar 2012

Early this week, eminent University of California archaeologist Carol Redmount launched an appeal to rescue the El-Hibeh archaeological site in Beni Suef, almost 300km south of Cairo, through creating a Facebook group page.

El-Hibeh site is key to understanding ancient Egyptian history, as it is the least disturbed city mounds of the Third Intermediate Period (1070BC - 664BC) .

El-Hibeh is the modern name of the ancient Egyptian city of Tayu-djayet which means "their walls", referring to the massive enclosure walls built on the site by the high priests of Amun at Thebes to separate them from the kings of Egypt at Tanis. This shows the country's division during the period between the 20^thdynasty and the 22^nddynasty.

In the Graeco-Roman time, El-Hibeh was known as Ankyronpolis and during the Coptic era it was called Teudjo. The city is estimated to have been built in 1070 BC by the high priest of Amun and lasted for over 1,700 years. It includes remains from ancient Egyptian, Ptolemaic, Roman, Coptic and early Islamic eras.

On the Facebook group page, Redmount posted the story behind the creation of the account. She wrote that after the January 25 Revolution she contacted people in Egypt in order to ensure that El-Hibeh was not subjected to looting like other archaeological sites in Egypt. The lack of security in the aftermath of the revolution had led robbers to raid the ancient necropolis and museums.
Redmount continued that photos sent to her in May, June and December 2011 and January 2012 confirmed that the site had in fact been looted.

She also heard that there were raids going on at night by an unknown person from El-Ogra, the village north of the site, and that no one could catch the person.
“That is where things stood when I came to Egypt in February,” Redmount wrote. When she arrived to Egypt to resume excavation works, which had stopped in 2009, she registered with the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA).

“The day before we were supposed to start work I received a phone call telling me that local Beni Suef security had yanked our permission to work. The upshot was that a local "gangster" from El Ogra… had formed a sort of mafia focused on looting the site,” Redmount wrote. His "gang" has continued to steal from the site on a “massive scale.”

On her way back to Cairo through the eastern desert highway, Redmount saw about ten men openly looting the mound and desert behind. She succeeded in photographing them.
The American archeologist also pointed out that one of the team’s drivers took the same road last Friday and reported that again numerous men were busy with wholesale looting of the site in broad daylight.

“This is an on-going crisis. They are destroying the site,” Redmount asserted. She went on to explain that the MSA officials have tried everything they could to get the looting to stop but nothing appears to have had an effect.

“This is something police and security seem to be ignoring, turning a blind eye to or worse. We started the Save Hibeh Facebook page because we are at our wits end as to what else to do,” Redmount concluded.

“Hibeh is vitally important to understanding the character of ancient Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period, a very confusing and confused historical era for which only limited archaeological resources exist. Archaeology is controlled destruction, but looting is obliteration. It destroys an irreplaceable, nonrenewable cultural resource that belongs to humanity,” asserted Redmount.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/37656/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Facebook-page-to-save-ancient-Egypts-ElHibeh-site.aspx

The 25th Dynasty

by Timothy Kendall

The Nubian Conquest of Egypt: 1080-650 BC

Egyptian control over Nubia lapsed after the death of Ramesses II (ca. 1224 BC), just as the pharaoh's control over Egypt itself began to wane. In the early eleventh century BC Egypt split into two semi-autonomous domains: Lower Egypt was governed by the pharaoh, and the much larger tract of Upper Egypt was governed in the name of the god Amun by his high priest at Thebes. Nubia's last imperial viceroy, Panehesy ("The Nubian") became a renegade by waging war against the Theban high priests who were themselves military commanders seeking to extend their authority southward. By early Dynasty 21, most of Lower Nubia had become a no-man's land. Upper Nubia (the northern Sudan) became independent under authorities unknown.

From the meager data available, it would appear that those who ultimately gained control in Upper Nubia were people who had been little influenced by Egyptian culture. The old centers of the New Kingdom show poor continuity of occupation, and their temples became derelict.

Not until Dynasty 22 are African products again listed among gifts dedicated to Amun of Karnak by an Egyptian king. The donor, Sheshonq I (ca. 945-924 BC), and his successor Osorkon I (ca. 924-889 BC) are also said in the Bible to have employed Kushite mercenaries and officers in their campaigns against Judah. Assyrian texts of the later ninth century further note that the pharaohs were sending African products to the Assyrian kings. Such evidence suggests that the Egyptians during this period had re-established trade relations with the far south, but they never reveal with whom they were dealing. One can only assume that from the tenth century on one or more dominant chiefdoms had emerged in Nubia - again, as in the case of Kerma centuries before, beginning a process of material, cultural, and political enrichment through commerce with Egypt.

Egyptian tomb holds singer Nehmes Bastet’s remains

Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered the tomb of a female singer in the Valley of the Kings.

The tomb was found by a team from the University of Basel in Switzerland who came across it by chance.

The woman, Nehmes Bastet, was a temple singer during Egypt's 22nd Dynasty (approximately 945 - 712BC), according to an inscription in the tomb.

The coffin found in the tomb contains an intact mummy from almost 3,000 years ago.

Professor Susanne Bickel of the University of Basel told the BBC that the coffin was opened on Monday and she was able to see the "nicely wrapped" mummy of the woman who was buried in the tomb.

The opening of the coffin was carried out by Prof Bickel and her Basel colleague, field director Elina Paulin-Grothe, together with the Chief Inspector of Antiquities of Upper Egypt, Dr Mohammed el-Bialy and inspector Ali Reda.

Prof Bickel said that the upper edge of the tomb was found on the first day of Egypt's revolution, on 25 January 2011. The opening was sealed with an iron cover and the discovery was kept quiet.

Last week, after the start of this year's field season, the feature was identified as a tomb - and one of the very few tombs in the Valley of the Kings which have not been looted.

'Painted black'

Elina Paulin-Grothe said that the tomb was not built for the female singer, but was re-used for her 400 years after the original burial, according to AP.

There are other non-royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Prof Bickel said, which mostly date from the 18th Dynasty (1500 - 1400BC).

The woman in the coffin was the daughter of the high priest of Amon, Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim told AFP.

The discovery was important because "it shows that the Valley of the Kings was also used for the burial of ordinary individuals and priests of the 22nd Dynasty", he added.

Egyptian news site Ahram reports that the wooden sarcophagus was painted black and decorated with hieroglyphic texts.

This tomb is only the second found in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of Tutankhamun in 1922, and is referred to as KV64 in the naming system used to label tombs in the valley. It is one of a cluster of tombs without any wall decoration found near the royal tomb of Thutmoses III.

A tomb found in 2006, known as KV63, had seven coffins in it but none of them contained any mummies - it seems to have been used as a burial cache.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16576265

New archaeological discovery at the Valley of the Kings

The tomb of Amun Re singer Ni Hms Bastet was discovered in the Valley of the Kings on Luxor’s West Bank

by Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 15 Jan 2012

A deep burial well was found during a routine cleaning carried out by a Swiss archaeological mission on the path leading to King Tuthmosis III’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The well leads to a burial chamber filled with a treasured collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts.

Mohamed Ibrahim, Minister of State for Antiquities, said that further inside the chamber, excavators stumbled upon a wooden sarcophagus painted black and decorated with hieroglyphic texts, and a wooden stelae engraved with the names and different titles of the deceased.

Early studies carried out by the Swiss team revealed that the tomb dates back to the 22nd Dynasty (945-712 BC) and it belongs to the daughter of Amun Re, lecture priest in Karnak temples and also the singer of the God Amun Re.

Excavations are now in full swing in order to reveal more of the tomb’s treasured collection.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/31799/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/New-archaeological-discovery-at-the-Valley-of-the-.aspx