The foundations of a small pyramid containing a burial chamber have been found at an ancient cemetery in Abydos, Egypt. Inside the chamber, archaeologists found a finely crafted sarcophagus covered in engravings of Egyptian gods and hieroglyphic inscriptions recording spells that helped one reach the afterlife, as well as more than a dozen human remains. Researchers uncovered a rectangular entrance shaft with massive walls during excavations in the sacred city of Abydos, one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt and home to many important ancient temples, including Umm el-Qu’ab, a royal necropolis where early pharaohs were entombed. The entrance shaft served as a base for a pyramid that was estimated to have been 7 metres in height. "Originally, all you probably would have seen would have been the pyramid and maybe a little wall around the structure just to enclose everything," said Kevin Cahail, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, who led excavations at the tomb. Within one of its vaulted burial chambers, archaeologists found a finely crafted sandstone sarcophagus, which was painted red and carved with images of Egyptian gods. It also contained inscriptions containing spells from the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian funerary text used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC. The text consists of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife.
The sarcophagus was painted red and contained hieroglyphics. Photo credit: Kevin Cahail The sarcophagus, which had been looted in antiquity and was empty, was created for a scribe named Horemheb. There are also inscriptions referred to Ramesu, Overseer of the Stable, who may have been the father or older brother of Horemheb. Although Horemheb was missing, other human remains survived the ransacking. Archaeologists found the skeletal remains of 3-4 men, 10-12 women, and at least 2 children. The presence of a disproportionate number of females has led archaeologists to speculate that Horemheb and Ramesu may have had multiple wives. Polygamy was a common practice among the pharaohs, but it is uncertain if it was practiced among non-royalty. Another possibility is that the tomb was used for multiple generations of the same family, or was re-used at a later date. Radiocarbon tests, which have not yet been carried out, may help resolve the speculation. Among the treasures found within the tomb were shabti figurines, funerary figures typically placed in tombs that were intended to act as substitutes for the deceased should he/she be called upon to do manual labour in the afterlife, and a heart amulet made of red and green jasper.
The jasper heart amulet. Photo credit: Kevin Cahail "It's a beautiful object and possibly one of the best carved examples of these very rare type of amulets," Cahail said. "It was probably on the chest of one of the deceased individuals and there probably would have been some sort of necklaces and gold and things like that." Cahail explained that the heart-shaped amulet was probably related to spells from the Book of the Dead that tell the heart of the deceased not to lie. The ancient Egyptians believed that, after death, one’s heard and good deeds would be weighed against the measure of truth. If their heart weighed the same or less they could obtain eternal life, but if it weighed more they were destroyed. Source: AO
An ancient Egyptian burial ground could yield treasures that would make Tutankhamun's tomb look like a "display in Woolworths", according to archaeologists.
John Romer, the Egyptologist and broadcaster, says he believes cliffs on Luxor's west bank contains the burial site of three priest kings: Herihor, Plankh and Menkheperre.
It's also claimed that burial treasures from nearby sites in the Valley of the Kings were placed here for safekeeping.
However, the site is in danger and the race is on to save it from tomb raiders using quad bikes and rope ladders, the Sunday Times reports.
"Last week, three people were arrested by the army security services at Luxor for entering it," said Romer.
The site has remained intact since 1085BC. The only person known to have excavated at the site, the Wadi el-Gharbi, is Howard Carter. He discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922.
The site at Wadi el-Gharbi is being scrutinised by Romer and experts in epigraphy. "Herihor is most likely to be buried in a coffin of gold, like Tutankhamun. There are likely to be canopic chests, objects of alabaster, gold-plated statues and thrones, though possibly not chariots," explained Romer.
The project is the culmination of 40 years' work for Romer. But he may be beaten to the prize as he needs to secure a permit from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities to continue his search.
It's a race against time as there is a rival expedition already excavating in the area.
"I still hope to explore it but the only important thing in my life now is that it is done properly," Romer says.
Watch the video with John Romer explaining his new discoveries
A new tomb is taking shape in Egypt's Valley of the Kings — and this one will look exactly like the famous 3,400-year-old tomb of King Tutankhamun.
The full-scale facsimile of Tut's burial chamber, created by a Spanish art studio called Factum Arte, is based on seven weeks' worth of 3-D scanning and photo documentation of the original in 2009. Panels for the interior were produced in Madrid from plastic resin and huge, wallpaper-like photographs.
Now the pieces are being put together in a structure next to the Howard Carter House at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings, with the backing of Egypt's
A worker involved in construction of a facsimile of King Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings installs the first panel of the east wall of the burial chamber.
When the "rematerialized" tomb is finished and opened to the public in late April, it will offer a faithful representation of the burial chamber in its current state, "down to the dust coating that was there in the weeks that we recorded," said Adam Lowe, Factum Arte's founder.
"We're hoping that we can set something up where visitors can start to say the experience of the facsimile is better than the original," Lowe told NBC News.
The original tomb of Tutankhamun is still open to visitors willing to pay about $15 (100 Egyptian pounds) for a tour. But the tomb's condition has suffered from environmental exposure in the decades since Carter unearthed the site in 1923.
Lowe hopes the facsimile will boost Egypt tourism in the wake of the past few years' political turmoil. He also hopes it will spark a debate over the resilience — and fragility — of the world's cultural heritage.
Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim and other officials visit the construction site for a facsimile of King Tut's burial chamber, next to the Howard Carter House in the Valley of the Kings.
"The aim is to make visitors aware of the exceedingly complicated task of preserving a site that was meant to last for eternity, but was not meant to be visited," he said. "For 3,300 years, the tomb was in perfect condition, but in the last 91 years it has suffered terribly. We don't want people to stop going. We want them to become aware of the contract that's necessary to sustain heritage sites like this."
After Tut, Lowe said Factum Arte plans to rematerialize the tombs of Nefertari andSeti I — archaeological sites that have been almost completely closed to the public.
SERRA DA CAPIVARA
NATIONAL PARK, Brazil — Niede Guidon still remembers her astonishment when she
glimpsed the paintings.
Preserved amid the bromeliad-encrusted
plateaus that tower over the thorn forests of northeast Brazil, the ancient
rock art depicts fierce battles among tribesmen, orgiastic scenes of
prehistoric revelry and hunters pursuing their game, spears in hand.
“These were stunning compositions,
people and animals together, not just figures alone,” said Dr. Guidon, 81,
remembering what first lured her and other archaeologists in the 1970s to this
remote site where jaguars still prowl.
Hidden in the rock shelters where
prehistoric humans once lived, the paintings number in the thousands. Some are
thought to be more than 9,000 years old and perhaps even far more ancient.
Painted in red ocher, they rank among the most revealing testaments anywhere in
the Americas to what life was like millenniums before the European conquest
began a mere five centuries ago.
But it is what excavators found when
they started digging in the shadows of the rock art that is contributing to a
pivotal re-evaluation of human history in the hemisphere.
Humans’ First
Appearance in the Americas
In PiauÃ, Brazil, archaeologists say stone tools prove
that humans reached what is now Brazil as early as 22,000 years ago, upending a
belief that people first arrived about 13,000 years ago.
Researchers here say they have
unearthed stone tools proving that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil
as early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery adds to the growing body of research upending a
prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States known as the
Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the Americas from Asia
about 13,000 years ago.
“If they’re right, and there’s
a great possibility that they are, that will change everything we know about
the settlement of the Americas,” said Walter Neves, an evolutionary
anthropologist at the University of São Paulo whose own analysis of an 11,000-year-old skull in Brazil implies that
some ancient Americans resembled aboriginal Australians more than they did
Asians.
Up and down the Americas,
scholars say that the peopling of lands empty of humankind may have been far
more complex than long believed. The radiocarbon dating of spear points found
in the 1920s near Clovis, N.M., placed the arrival of big-game hunters across
the Bering Strait about 13,000 years ago, long forming the basis of when humans
were believed to have arrived in the Americas.
More recently, numerous
findings have challenged that narrative. In Texas,archaeologists said in 2011 that they had found projectile points
showing that hunter-gatherers had reached another site, known as Buttermilk
Creek, as early as 15,500 years ago. Similarly, analysis of human DNA found at an Oregon cave
determined that humans were there 14,000 years ago.
But it is in South America,
thousands of miles from the New Mexico site where the Clovis spear points were
discovered, where archaeologists are putting forward some of the most profound
challenges to the Clovis-first theory.
Paleontologists in Uruguay
published findings in November suggesting that humans hunted giant sloths there about 30,000 years ago. All the way in southern
Chile, Tom D. Dillehay, an anthropologist at Vanderbilt University, has shown
that humans lived at a coastal site called Monte Verde as early as 14,800 years
ago.
Reassessing Human History in
the Americas
Researchers at Serra da Capivara National Park unearthed stone tools last
year that they say prove that humans reached what is now northeast Brazil as
early as 22,000 years ago. Their discovery adds to the growing body of research
upending a prevailing belief of 20th-century archaeology in the United States
known as the Clovis model, which holds that people first arrived in the
Americas from Asia about 13,000 years ago.
And here in Brazil’s caatinga,
a semi-arid region of mesas and canyons, European and Brazilian archaeologists
building on decades of earlier excavations said last year that they had found
artifacts at a rock shelter showing that humans had arrived in South America
almost 10,000 years before Clovis hunters began appearing in North America.
“The Clovis paradigm is
finally buried,” said Eric Boëda, the French archaeologist leading the
excavations here.
Exposing the tension over
competing claims about where and when humans first arrived in the Americas,
some scholars in the dwindling Clovis-first camp in the United States quickly
rejected the findings.
Gary Haynes, an archaeologist
at the University of Nevada, Reno, argued that the stones found here were not
tools made by humans, but instead could have become chipped and broken
naturally, by rockfall. Stuart Fiedel, an archaeologist with the Louis Berger
Group, an environmental consulting company, said that monkeys might have made
the tools instead of humans.
“Monkeys, including large
extinct forms, have been in South America for 35 million years,” Dr. Fiedel
said. He added that the Clovis model was recently bolstered by new DNA analysis ancestrally connecting indigenous peoples in
Central and South America to a boy from the Clovis culture whose
12,700-year-old remains were found in 1968 at a site in Montana.
Such dismissive positions have
invited equally sharp responses from scholars like Dr. Dillehay, the American
archaeologist who discovered Monte Verde. “Fiedel does not know what he is
talking about,” he said, explaining that similarities existed between the stone
tools found here and at the site across South America in Chile. “To say monkeys
produced the tools is stupid.”
Having their findings disputed
is nothing new for the archaeologists working at Serra da Capivara. Dr. Guidon,
the Brazilian archaeologist who pioneered the excavations, asserted more than
two decades ago that her team had found evidence in the form of charcoal from
hearth fires that humans had lived here about 48,000 years ago.
While scholars in the United
States generally viewed Dr. Guidon’s work with skepticism, she pressed on,
obtaining the permission of Brazilian authorities to preserve the archaeological
sites near the town of São Raimundo Nonato in a national park that now gets
thousands of visitors a year despite its remote location in PiauÃ, one of
Brazil’s poorest states.
Dr. Guidon remains defiant
about her findings. At her home on the grounds of a museum she founded to focus
on the discoveries in Serra da Capivara, she said she believed that humans had
reached these plateaus even earlier, around 100,000 years ago, and might have
come not overland from Asia but by boat from Africa.
Professor Boëda, who succeeded
Dr. Guidon in leading the excavations, said that such early dates may have been
possible but that more research was needed. His team is using
thermoluminescence, a technique that measures the exposure of sediments to
sunlight, to determine their age.
At the same time, discoveries
elsewhere in Brazil are adding to the mystery of how the Americas were settled.
In what may be another blow to
the Clovis model of humans’ coming from northeast Asia, molecular geneticists
showed last year that the Botocudo indigenous people living in southeastern
Brazil in the late 1800s shared gene sequences commonly found among
Pacific Islanders from Polynesia.
How could Polynesians have
made it to Brazil? Or aboriginal Australians? Or, if the archaeologists here
are correct, how could a population arrive in this hinterland long before
Clovis hunters began appearing in the Americas? The array of new discoveries
has scholars on a quest for answers.
Reflecting how researchers are
increasingly accepting older dates of human migration to the Americas, Michael
R. Waters, a geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University’s Center for the
Study of the First Americans, said that a “single migration” into the Americas
about 15,000 years ago may have given rise to the Clovis people. But he added
that if the results obtained here in Serra da Capivara are accurate, they will
raise even more questions about how the Americas were settled.
“If so, then whoever lived
there never passed on their genetic material to living populations,” said Dr.
Waters, explaining how the genetic history of indigenous peoples links them to
the Clovis child found in Montana. “We must think long and hard about these
early sites and how they fit into the picture of the peopling of the Americas.”
The diet and journeys taken by those who lived in the Sahara Desert thousands of years ago are being analysed through their teeth and bones.
Our knowledge of past civilisations is gleaned from what is left behind – the shards of pots, traces of dwellings and goods from graves. And just as these are clues to the everyday behaviours of individuals long gone, so too are their bodily remains. Locked in their teeth and bones is information that scientists can use to reveal how they lived, such as the food they ate and the distances they travelled.
Dr Ronika Power and Dr Marta Mirazon Lahr from Cambridge’s Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies (LCHES) with Dr Tamsin O’Connell from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research are reading these ‘biographies in bone’ in the skeletons and skulls of people who lived up to 8,000 years ago in the Sahara Desert and across the African continent.
The remains are among those of 18,000 individuals housed in the University of Cambridge’s Duckworth Laboratory – one of the world’s largest repositories of skulls, skeletons, death masks, mummies, hair bundles and blood samples, including a jawbone tens of thousands of years old. Bones from 19th-century plague pits sit alongside axe-cleaved skulls from Iron Age battles, together with the cast of fossil of an early hominin who lived around 3 million years ago, and medically important skeletons distorted by diseases that, with today’s drugs, would never have the chance to run their course.
To describe the ancient Saharan diets, the researchers are measuring the levels of chemical entities called isotopes in the remains. Biological tissues are reservoirs for elements such as carbon and oxygen, which arrive in the body through the food we eat and the environment we live in, and which have variants (isotopes) that can be measured.
“Tooth enamel is formed in the very early years of life and the chemical fingerprints within it don’t change throughout life,” explained O’Connell. “So whatever isotope signals the teeth contain are a result of the geographical area where individuals spent their childhood and the food and drink they consumed there.”
Bone, on the other hand, is ‘remodelled’ throughout life – most of a healthy adult’s skeleton is made in the last ten years of their life. “Isotopes in bone therefore tell you where the person was living in the years leading up to their death.”
Isotope ‘signatures’, together with the geographic distribution of the shape and size of skulls, can therefore be used to look for evidence of migration in ancient populations. “Discontinuities between what the teeth tell us and what the bones tell us may provide evidence that the individual migrated. This in turn opens up questions about the interconnectedness of peoples – the movement of individuals, ideas, knowledge and material culture at very early stages of civilisation,” said Power.
Their work has focused on a group of 120 individuals who lived in pre-Dynastic Egypt around 5,000 BC, two-and-a-half millennia before the pyramids of Giza were built. Tiny scrapings of tooth enamel have been taken from the remains and are currently being analysed for their isotopic content.
These analyses run parallel to those of samples from skeletons of the Garamantes civilisation, who lived in the central Sahara from 1000 BC until AD 1500. The Garamantes samples are being analysed as part of the Trans-Sahara project, which is led by Professor David Mattingly (University of Leicester) and is funded by the European Research Council.
“The little we know about the Garamantes is that they developed sophisticated irrigation systems to cultivate the desert and also that they were traders. There seems to have been an astonishing degree of commercial activity – trade routes across the Sahara linked settlements that were like islands in a sea of sand, and with these came gold, Roman wares, olive oil, ebony, textiles and probably slaves,” said Power.
“Our analysis of this population will identify those individuals who migrated into the central Sahara during their own lifetimes compared with others of potentially diverse ethnic composition who lived in the region all their lives.”
Working with Dr Nick Ray from the University of Leicester, Power will link the biological evidence to the archaeological: “we want to examine how migrants within these Saharan communities expressed their identity through material culture, burial ritual and funerary structures. Did they adopt the customs of their hosts or did they maintain their immigrant identity?”
As the research extends to the analysis of other skeletons in the Duckworth Laboratory and in museums worldwide, the researchers hope to arrive at a better idea of regional mobility over thousands of years in Africa. “No other study has ever comprehensively tested the pre-Dynastic Egyptians with the sort of scientific protocols we are applying here. Without these biological testimonies, we have little to no idea about the extent to which mobility characterised the processes of state formation,” explained Power. “Classical ideas that kingdoms were formed from indigenous people are increasingly being questioned – we are now more aware that culture comprises many elements that come together and that the past was not as homogenous as once thought.”
“Studies such as this highlight the critical role that human remains play in the study of our past – from the life of individuals, to the composition of societies, to cultural aspects. Alongside archaeological and ethnographic artefacts, they provide the basic evidence of life in the past,” added Mirazon Lahr, who is Director of the Duckworth Laboratory.
“New technology is exposing information preserved within the remains as never before – whether it’s genome mapping of humans and their ancestors, or using CT scans to determine differences in the thickness of skull bones – scientific techniques are transforming the nature and extent of the information we can obtain from human remains. And it is now even possible to look for the evolution of disease-resistant genes that are pertinent to modern medicine.
“The scientific importance of these studies can’t be underestimated – many of the remains represent our only means for deriving information on the life, growth and health of past people.”
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