Tutankhamun dagger likely made from meteoric iron: study

Scientific analysis of one Tutankhamun's 3,300-year-old daggers found buried with him "strongly supports" a theory it was made of meteoric iron, according to a new study.

"Our study confirms that ancient Egyptians attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of precious objects," said the Italian and Egyptian scientists who performed X-ray analysis of the dagger, which took place at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Tutankhamun died aged 19 in 1324 BC after just nine years on the throne.

His tomb, discovered in 1922 by British Egyptologist Howard Carter, contained artefacts including an 11-kilo (24-pound) gold mask that revived global public interest in Egyptology.

Carter found the dagger on Tutankhamun's right thigh in the wrapping of his mummy, according to the authors of the study. Along with its iron blade, the dagger's fine gold handle "is decorated with cloisonne and granulation work, and ends with a pommel of rock crystal," they said.

The findings match a 2013 scan of a 5,000-year-old cemetery in the Lower Egyptian village of El-Gerzeh which showed the earliest iron artefacts ever found were made from a meteorite, according to a paper published May 20 in the Meteoritics & Planetary Science journal.

As a result, "we suggest that ancient Egyptians attributed great value to meteoritic iron for the production of fine ornamental or ceremonial objects," said the scientists behind the latest study.

The dagger's quality "suggests a significant mastery of ironworking in Tutankhamun's time," said the study.

In addition, a new term used in the 19th dynasty, one dynasty following Akhenaten's, translated literally as "iron of the sky," and was used to describe "all types of iron," according to the study.

"The introduction of the new composite term suggests that the ancient Egyptians... were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky," said the authors of the study.

Mahmoud el-Halwagy, a former director of the Egyptian Museum who took part in the study, said he was unable to confirm whether ancient Egyptians clearly knew that this iron came from a meteor.

"We don't want to go to other angles, to symbolic or religious issues. These were rocks that were available and were used by humans," said Halwagy.

"Whether they had symbolic or religious uses, this is not unlikely. He was a king and royalty held a high status."

Other iron ancient artefacts in other parts of the world have been identified scientifically to be of meteoritic origin, the scientists said.

These included iron tools made by Inuits in Greenland, the ancient "Iron Man" Buddhist sculpture, and two funerary bracelets and an axe excavated in two different Polish archaeological sites.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “Tutankhamun dagger likely made from meteoric iron: study”. Phys.org. Posted: June 2, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-06-geochemical-analysis-reveals-meteoritic-tutankhamun.html

Ancient 'Mad Libs' Papyri Contain Evil Spells of Sex and Subjugation

Ancient, magical spells of love, subjugation and sex: It may sound like a "Game of Thrones" episode, but these evildoings are also found on two recently deciphered papyri from Egypt dating to around 1,700 years ago.

One spell invokes the gods to "burn the heart" of a woman until she loves the spell caster, said Franco Maltomini of the University of Udine in Italy, who translated the two spells. Another spell, targeted at a male, uses a series of magical words to "subject" him, forcing him to do whatever the caster wants.  

The two spells were not targeted at a specific person. Rather, they were written in such a way that the person who cast the spell would only need to insert the name of the person being targeted — sort of like an ancient "Mad Libs."

Researchers date the two spells to the third century A.D., but the names of the ancient spell writers are unknown. The spells are written in Greek, a language widely used in Egypt at the time.

Archaeologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt discovered the spells in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, more than 100 years ago, among a haul of hundreds of thousands of papyri. Over the past century, scientists have gradually studied and translated the papyri. Many of them are now owned by the Egypt Exploration Society and are housed and studied at the University of Oxford in England.

Maltomini is part of a larger group of editors and contributors from multiple institutions who analyzed and translated the most recent batch of these magical texts, which will be published in an upcoming volume of "The Oxyrhynchus Papyri," a series a books devoted to publishing the papyri from Oxyrhynchus.

A love spell

The deciphered love spell invokes several gnostic gods. (Gnosticism was an ancient religion that incorporated elements of Christianity.) It says that the spell caster should burn a series of offerings in the bathhouse (the names of the offerings didn't survive degradation) and write a spell on the bathhouse's walls, which Maltominitranslated as follows:

"I adjure you, earth and waters, by the demon who dwells on you and (I adjure) the fortune of this bath so that, as you blaze and burn and flame, so burn her (the woman targeted)whom (the mother of the woman targeted) bore, until she comes to me…”

Then, the spell names several gods and magical words. It goes on to say, "Holy names, inflame in this way and burn the heart of her…" until she falls in love with the person casting the spell.

Animal droppings and magic

The text of the other deciphered spell calls for the person casting it to engrave onto a small copper plaque a series of magical words, including the phrase translated as "subject to me the (name of the) man, whom (the name of the man's mother) bore…" and then to stitch the plaque onto something the man wears, such as a sandal.

The spell, if successful, was supposed to force the manto do whatever the spell caster wanted,the ancient text says.

On the back of that papyrus is a list of recipes that use droppings from animals to treat a wide range of conditions, including headaches and leprosy. Some of the recipes simply say that they help "promote pleasure." One recipe says that a combination of honey and droppings from a bittern bird, used in a way that isn't specified, will "promote pleasure," according tothe ancient text.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2016. “Ancient 'Mad Libs' Papyri Contain Evil Spells of Sex and Subjugation”. Live Science. Posted: May 20, 2016. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/54819-ancient-egyptian-magic-spells-deciphered.html

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

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.

Early female ruler

The inscriptions carved by a mining expedition show that queen Neith-Hotep stepped up as ruler about 5,000 years ago, millennia beforeHatshepsut or Cleopatra VII ruled the country.

While Egyptologists knew that Neith-Hotep existed, they believed she was married to a pharaoh named Narmer. "The inscriptions demonstrate that she [Neith-Hotep] was not the wife of Narmer, but a regent queen at the beginning of the reign of Djer," Tallet said.

'The White Walls'

An inscription found at Wadi Ameyra shows that Memphis, an ancientcapital of Egypt that was also called "the White Walls," is older than originally believed.

Ancient Greek and Roman writers claimed that Memphis was constructed by a mythical king named Menes, whom Egyptologists often consider to be a real-life pharaoh named Narmer, Tallet explained. The new inscription shows that Memphis actually existed before Narmer was even born.

"We have in Wadi Ameyra an inscription giving for the first time the name of this city, the White Walls,and it is associated to the name of Iry-Hor, a king who ruled Egypt two generations before Narmer," Tallet said. The inscription shows that the ancient capital was around during the time of Iry-Hor and could have been built before even he was pharaoh.

Archaic boats

Among the drawings discovered at Wadi Ameyra are several that show boats. On three of these boats, the archaeologists found a "royal serekh," a pharaonic symbol that looks a bit like the facade of a palace. The serekh looks "as if it were a cabin" on the boats, Tallet said.

In later times, boats were buried beside Egypt's pyramids, including theGiza pyramids. The design of the boats depicted at Wadi Ameyra "are really archaic, much older" than those found beside the pyramids, Tallet said.

The Wadi Ameyra site was first discovered in 2012, and the finds were reported recently in the book "La Zone Minière Pharaonique du Sud-Sinaï II" (Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 2015).
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2016. “Early Egyptian Queen Revealed in 5,000-Year-Old Hieroglyphs”. Live Science. Posted: Available online: http://www.livescience.com/53406-early-egyptian-queen-revealed-in-hieroglyphs.html

Big-Eared Statues Reveal Ancient Egyptian Power Couple

Six ancient statues of Egyptians, some with round faces and big ears, have been found near the Nile River in Upper Egypt.

The statues, which were once sloughed off their original bluff in an earthquake and buried in Nile silt, are of a man named Neferkhewe and his family. Neferkhewe bore the titles of chief of the Medjay (northern Sudan) and overseer of the foreign lands some 3,500 years ago, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III. The statues, and the carved alcove in which they reside, had been open to the elements for at least 1,500 years before being buried, but the carvings are in incredible condition, said John Ward, the assistant director of the Gebel el Silsila Survey Project that uncovered the statues.

"To be there when their faces look back at you after 2,000 years of being covered with silt is an experience that can't be put into words," Ward told Live Science "It's just a pure honor."

Ancient ritual

The newly discovered statues sit inside two cenotaphs, or "false tombs." Thirty-two cenotaphs line the Nile River at the Gebel el Silsila site, which is also where many of the sandstone blocks used to build Egypt's temples were quarried over the centuries.

Such quarrying would have been rough, industrial work, and the Gebel el Silsila cenotaphs are a somewhat mysterious example of elegance and beauty in this environment. These carved alcoves were a bit like memorials for certain elite families, Ward said. No one was buried in them, but family members or well-wishers could come to leave offerings to the dead, to perform rituals and perhaps to grieve.

"We don't know why these 32 families chose Silsila to place their cenotaphs here," Ward said. The two newly discovered cenotaphs contain the most well-preserved statues ever found at the site, he said. In one, the cenotaph owner and his wife sit side by side on a chair, the man wearing a shoulder-length wig and posing with his arms crossed over his chest — a pose known as the "Osirian" position after Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. The man's wife has one arm on her husband's back and the other on her own abdomen.

The second cenotaph holds four statues and carvings identifying the patriarch as Neferkhewe. He is flanked by his wife Ruiuresti and two children, but the couple must have had more kids, Ward said, because other children are depicted in carvings bringing offerings to their parents.

Personal history

For Neferkhewe and his family, the re-discovery of their names would have been an event of great religious significance.

"To preserve one's name, it's pivotal to the religion," Ward said. "Without a name you wouldn't have an identity in the afterlife, so you wouldn't exist."

Speaking Neferkhewe's name out loud for the first time in at least 2,000 years "gives him the immortality that he dreamed of," Ward said.

"We bring them to life again," said Maria Nilsson, the survey project's mission director.

The discovery helps personalize Silsila in other ways. The statues hint at what the family may have looked like, with their round-cheeked faces and large ears. With further work, it may be possible to find the actual tombs of the family or their relatives in Luxor or Thebes, Ward said.

"It's like a window into their life," he said.

Ritual was important at Silsila, which also boasts a stunning rock-cut temple called a "speos," constructed with solar and lunar alignment in mind, Ward said. An annual Nile festival once celebrated at the site would have involved thrusting the book of the Nile god Hapi into the river to bring the nutrient-rich floodwaters to Egypt. While excavatingmummies and pyramids is "very exciting," Ward said, day-to-day life is closer to the surface at Silsila. 

The researchers said they plan to continue cleaning and translating the reliefs carved into the two new cenotaphs. They said they're hoping to learn the names of Neferkhewe's other children. The excavations are funded in part by the nonprofit Friends of Silsila.
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Reference:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2016. “Big-Eared Statues Reveal Ancient Egyptian Power Couple”. Live Science. Posted: January 7, 2016. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/53296-statues-reveal-ancient-egyptian-power-couple.html

The Cult of Amun

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

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.

The cult of Amun remained central to religion—and politics—in Nubia for centuries to come. This has been illustrated by the findings of an excavation in Dangeil, a royal Kushite town on the banks of the Nile south of Napata. The excavation, which has been carried out since 2000 with support from Sudan’s National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, the British Museum, and the Nubian Archaeological Development Organization (Qatar-Sudan), has turned up evidence of what may have been a series of temples to Amun that stood on the same location for around a thousand years in all—from the period when Kushite pharaohs ruled Egypt to the first few centuries A.D., when Kushite civilization entered a new golden age and Egypt served as a Roman colony.

Continue reading the article here
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Reference:

Weiss, Daniel. 2015. “The Cult of Amun”. Archaeology. Posted: April 17, 2015. Available online: http://www.archaeology.org/issues/174-1505/features/3146-sudan-nubia-dangeil-cult-of-amun-ra

Ancient Receipt Proves Egyptian Taxes Were Worse Than Yours

Image credit: Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University LIbrary and Archives

Tax day is nearing in the United States, and people are scrambling to file their returns before the April 15 deadline. While this is never fun, people can take solace in a new finding: A recently translated ancient Egyptian tax receipt shows a bill that is (literally) heavier than any American taxpayer will pay this year — more than 220 lbs. (100 kilograms) of coins. 

Written in Greek on a piece of pottery, the receipt states that a person (the name is unreadable) and his friends paid a land-transfer tax that came to 75 "talents" (a unit of currency), with a 15-talent charge added on. The tax was paid in coins and was delivered to a public bank in a city called Diospolis Magna (also known as Luxor or Thebes).

But just how much was 90 talents worth in ancient Egypt?

"It's an incredibly large sum of money," said Brice Jones, a Ph.D. student at Concordia University in Montreal, who translated the text. "These Egyptians were most likely very wealthy."

The receipt has a date on it that corresponds to July 22, 98 B.C. Paper money didn't exist at that time, and no coin was worth anywhere near one talent, the researchers said. Instead people made up the sum using coins that were worth varying amounts of drachma.

One talent equaled 6,000 drachma, so 90 talents totaled 540,000 drachma, researchers say. For comparison, an unskilled worker at that time would have made only about 18,000 drachmaa year said Catharine Lorber, an independent scholar who has published numerous journal articleson Egyptian coins.

In 98 B.C., the highest-denomination coin was probably worth only 40 drachms Lorber said. This made for a truly back-breaking tax load.

It "would have taken 150 of these coins to make a talent, and 13,500 of them to equal 90 talents," Lorber told Live Science in an email. "The coins in question weigh, on average, 8 grams [0.3 ounces], so the total payment of 90 talents probably had a weight in excess of 100 kilograms [220 lbs.]."

What likely happened is that one or more tax farmers (people charged with collecting certain types of taxes) got 90 talents' worth of coins from the individuals paying this tax, the researchers said. These tax farmers then would have had to physically bring the cash into the bank. Lorber noted that the Ptolemies (the ruling dynasty in Egypt at the time) required tax farmers to absorb the cost of transport and handling. In cases where tax farmers had to bring in a big load, "it was packed in baskets and carried by donkeys," Lorber said.

The 15-talent surcharge, which was added on to the 75-talent tax bill, suggests that the people paying this land-transfer tax were penalized for not paying part of the bill in silver — a charge that was called the "allage," Lorber said.

"This was an exchange fee imposed on bronze currency when it was used to pay an obligation that legally should have been paid in silver," Lorber said. "This system was maintained even in periods when silver coinage was scarcely available."

Egyptian infighting

Today, people often complain about political gridlock and conflict on Capitol Hill, but this is likely nothing compared to the drama and infighting among Egypt's rulers around the time this newly translated bill was paid. 

Around 98 B.C., Egypt's politics were volatile, to say the least. At the time, Egypt was ruled by Ptolemy X, a pharaoh who fought against his own brother for the throne. Some ancient writers even say he killed his own mother in 101 B.C. so he wouldn't have to share power with her.

Ptolemy X was part of a dynasty of pharaohs of Macedonian descent who ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great.

Modern-day historians cast doubt on the ancient claim that Ptolemy X murdered his own mom, but in any event, he eventually lost power. In 89 B.C., his own army turned against him, and he was killed the following year. His brother Ptolemy IX then took over the country.

The ancient tax receipt is located at McGill University Library and Archives in Montreal. Jones is studying and translating several texts from the library and is set to publish his findings in an upcoming issue of the journal Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2015. “Ancient Receipt Proves Egyptian Taxes Were Worse Than Yours”. Live Science. Posted: March 14, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/50139-ancient-egyptian-tax-receipt.html

Karnak: Excavation yields 38 artifacts

The Centre franco-égyptien d'étude des temples de Karnak (CNRS/Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities) has just completed the excavation of a favissa, a pit discovered in early December 2014 near the temple of the god Ptah. The dig has unearthed 38 statues, statuettes and precious objects, making this an exceptional find, both for the quantity and quality of the religious artifacts brought to light. Furthermore, a completely new recording method was used during the dig that makes it possible to virtually reconstruct each step of the discovery with millimeter accuracy.

The Centre franco-égyptien d'étude des temples de Karnak (French-Egyptian Center for the Study of the Temples of Karnak -- Cfeetk) was founded by the CNRS and the Egyptian Ministry for Antiquities to study and restore the Amun-Re precinct at Karnak (Luxor). Since October 2008, an interdisciplinary program has been dedicated to the temple of Ptah, located at the northern end of the temple of Amun-Re. Built during the reign of Thutmose III (c.1479 -- c.1424 BC), the temple of Ptah was restored, enlarged and adapted throughout the period before the reign of Emperor Tiberius (14-37 AD). It is dedicated to the god Ptah, a divinity associated with the Egyptian town of Memphis.

The program has entered its second phase1, which focuses on archaeology, and the excavations recently uncovered a favissa (repository pit for cultic objects) two meters behind the temple. Here, Cfeetk archaeologists found 38 statues, statuettes and precious objects made of limestone, greywacke2, copper alloy and Egyptian frit3, sometimes covered in gold. These religious objects had been placed around the lower part of a seated statue of the god Ptah. The find notably included:

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• 14 statues, statuettes and figurines of Osiris,
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• 3 statuettes of baboons,
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• 2 statuettes representing the goddess Mut, including one covered in hieroglyphics,
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• 1 head and fragments of a cat statuette (Bastet),
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• 2 unidentified statuette bases,
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• 1 small plaque and the upper part of a small stele marked with the name of the god Ptah,
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• Several inlays (iris, cornea, beards, headdresses, etc.)

A sphinx statue and a small statue head probably representing the god Imhotep were also discovered in the upper part of the pit and fragments of a stele were found at the edge. According to the ceramic material found in the pit and the epigraphic4 data, this collection of statues dates back to the 8th-7th century BC, which marked the beginning of the 25th Egyptian dynasty.

This discovery is exceptional in Egypt in terms of both size and quality. Another aspect that makes it special is the recording method used during the dig. The excavation of the objects was recorded by a topographer specialized in archaeology who made a series of photogrammetric reconstructions by high-density image correlation, from the discovery of the first object until the complete removal of the statues from the pit. This technique consists in compiling hundreds of photographs taken during the fieldwork to make a virtual 3-D reconstruction of each step of the excavation. By linking these photogrammetric reconstructions with very precise topographical reference points -- to within a few millimeters -- this method makes it possible to locate all the objects after they have been removed and study their layout in detail. It also enabled the scientists to assemble a video of the whole removal operation, which needed to be completed rapidly due to the objects' value, while preserving the data collected on the site as it was discovered.

All the artifacts brought to light are being restored in the Cfeetk laboratory. The excavation is ongoing and could shed light on the organization of the surroundings of the Temple of Ptah -- as well as explain the digging of this outstanding favissa.
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Reference:

Science Daily. 2015. “Karnak: Excavation yields 38 artifacts”. Science Daily. Posted: March 6, 2015. Available online: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150306073818.htm

Learn to Count like an Egyptian

Last semester, I began my math history class with some Babylonian arithmetic. The mathematics we were doing was easy—multiplying and adding numbers, solving quadratic equations by completing the square—but the base 60 system and the lack of a true zero made those basic operations challenging for my students. I was glad that the different system shook them up a little, and got them thinking about things we take for granted, but some students seemed to draw the conclusion that Babylonian mathematics was awkward and silly. The class spent a lot of time thinking about the differences between the two systems but not as much thinking about the Babylonian system on its own terms. As children, we spend several years learning how to do arithmetic; it’s not really fair to judge an unfamiliar number system based on a few days of working with it.

Count like an Egyptian by David Reimer, published in 2014 by Princeton University Press, thoughtfully avoids that pitfall. The Egyptian number system, which has some profound differences from our own, is not presented as a sideshow or tourist attraction. In addition to explaining how the numbers were written and the basic arithmetic operations carried out, Reimer analyzes the logic behind the operations that seem unusual to us. He compares learning Egyptian math to learning a new language. “Spanish is stupid,” he told a junior high Spanish teacher after a run-in with an irregular verb. Irregular verbs can make a language seem arbitrary to an outsider. But of course English has more than its fair share of linguistic idiosyncrasies. Native speakers just don’t notice them until they’re pointed out. Reimer writes,

Egyptian mathematics has an alien feel to it. Most math historians refer to it as primitive or awkward. Even worse, many simply ignore it except for a passing reference. They look at this system and feel uncomfortable because it’s so different. They perceive apparent “flaws” and move on. They don’t understand Egyptian mathematics simply because they don’t do it enough to truly appreciate it. To someone who’s mastered it, Egyptian mathematics is beautiful. It scorns memorization and rote algorithms while it favors insight and creativity. Each problem is a puzzle that can be solved in many ways. Frequently, solutions will be surprising, something that never happens in the step-by-step drudgery that is modern computation.

Consider fractions. One of the first things you learn if you read a little bit about Egyptian mathematics is that with the exception of 2/3 and occasionally 3/4, Egyptians only used fractions with 1 in the numerator: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and so on. They would write other fractions as sums of unit fractions. For example, 7/24 could be written 1/4+1/24 or 1/6+1/8. (The Egyptians didn’t actually write their fractions with numerators and denominators; if your only numerator is one, it’s redundant to write it down every time. Instead, an Egyptian fraction would consist of a “mouth” symbol on top of the symbol of an integer. So 1/7 would be a mouth over a 7. To write a sum of two fractions, they would just write the second one after the first one.)

When I first read about Egyptian fractions, I dismissed them as awkward and inefficient. But Reimer points out that they aren’t so different from our decimal system. When we write the number 0.572, we’re just writing 5/10+7/100+2/1000 in a slightly different way. The denominators of those fractions follow a predictable pattern, unlike the Egyptian one, but we are still writing numbers as the sum of fractions with increasing denominators. One nice thing about our decimal system is that if we cut the number off after a few places, we have a pretty good idea of how big it is. The number 0.572 is pretty close to 0.5 and 0.57. Likewise in the Egyptian fraction system, 7/24 is pretty close to 1/4, the first term in one of the possible ways to write 7/24.

Egyptian fractions also have some advantages over decimals. For one, they will always terminate. We can’t even write 1/3 as a terminating decimal. Sticking rigidly to powers of ten in our denominators limits the numbers we can represent easily. Like our fractions, Egyptian fractions are exact but use only a finite number of terms. Reimer sees Egyptian fractions as a compromise between the best qualities of our fraction and decimal systems. They are just as precise as our fractions, but like our decimals, they also make approximation easy.

But Egyptian fractions can throw some curveballs. There isn’t necessarily just one way to write a number as an Egyptian fraction. For example, above I wrote 7/24=1/4+1/24 or 1/6+1/8. In that case, it is pretty clear that 1/4+1/24 is a better way to write it: 1/4 is a good approximation, while 1/6 is not. But in other cases, it isn’t so clear. In the book, Reimer gives the example of 4/15, which can be written as either 1/6+1/10 or 1/5+1/15. 1/5 is a better approximation than 1/6, but there may be other reasons to choose 1/6+1/10. Egyptians used doubling a lot when multiplying, and it’s easier to double fractions with even denominators than odd ones. So depending on the specific circumstance, 1/6+1/10 might be a better choice for computation. This is what Reimer is talking about when he says the system “scorns memorization and rote algorithms while it favors insight and creativity.” It seems strange to have so much leeway in how to represent numbers, but it shows that creativity can have a place even in simple arithmetic.

With insights like this, Reimer not only explains the logic of the Egyptian system but also encourage us to think about the whats, hows, and whys of our own mathematics techniques. “This book is a thinly disguised critique of modern mathematics,” Reimer writes. The last chapter, Judgment Day, is a “battle” between Egyptian and modern methods, but it’s not just about a winner and a loser. “We will consider which system is better and what exactly ‘better’ means.” As you might guess, it’s complicated.

Reimer sprinkles vignettes about Egyptian mythology and society throughout the book, and he also includes some historical information about the few Egyptian mathematical artifacts that still survive. (Papyrus generally doesn’t hold up very well for 3,000 years.) He also makes it clear when his mathematical commentary is backed by evidence from Egyptian papyri and when it is his own conjecture based on his mathematical intuition. Because I’m interested in the book from the perspective of a math history teacher, I do wish there had been a little bit more about exactly what mathematics is in what papyrus, but the book is not a scholarly history of Egyptian mathematics, and that information may have distracted from the mission of getting people to try Egyptian mathematics for themselves.

Count Like an Egyptian would make an excellent addition to math classrooms at many different levels. Reimer includes problems in the text and solutions in the back of the book, so the reader can practice techniques and get a feel for exactly how the system works as they go through the book. The mathematics is basic enough to be helpful for children learning fractions or multiplication for the first time, but it’s also different enough from the methods most of us know that adults will get a lot out of it as well. I used Egyptian multiplication and fractions on the first day of this semester’s math history class as a way to push students out of their comfort zone and get them thinking about some of the most basic building blocks of math in a new way. With more background on the rationale behind the system, I think it was an effective way to open the class up with some interesting discussion about what numbers should do for us.
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Lamb, Evelyn. 2015. “Learn to Count like an Egyptian”. Scientific American Blogs. Posted: January 26, 2015. Available online: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2015/01/26/count-like-an-egyptian-book-review/

Learn to Count like an Egyptian

Last semester, I began my math history class with some Babylonian arithmetic. The mathematics we were doing was easy—multiplying and adding numbers, solving quadratic equations by completing the square—but the base 60 system and the lack of a true zero made those basic operations challenging for my students. I was glad that the different system shook them up a little, and got them thinking about things we take for granted, but some students seemed to draw the conclusion that Babylonian mathematics was awkward and silly. The class spent a lot of time thinking about the differences between the two systems but not as much thinking about the Babylonian system on its own terms. As children, we spend several years learning how to do arithmetic; it’s not really fair to judge an unfamiliar number system based on a few days of working with it.

Count like an Egyptian by David Reimer, published in 2014 by Princeton University Press, thoughtfully avoids that pitfall. The Egyptian number system, which has some profound differences from our own, is not presented as a sideshow or tourist attraction. In addition to explaining how the numbers were written and the basic arithmetic operations carried out, Reimer analyzes the logic behind the operations that seem unusual to us. He compares learning Egyptian math to learning a new language. “Spanish is stupid,” he told a junior high Spanish teacher after a run-in with an irregular verb. Irregular verbs can make a language seem arbitrary to an outsider. But of course English has more than its fair share of linguistic idiosyncrasies. Native speakers just don’t notice them until they’re pointed out. Reimer writes,

Egyptian mathematics has an alien feel to it. Most math historians refer to it as primitive or awkward. Even worse, many simply ignore it except for a passing reference. They look at this system and feel uncomfortable because it’s so different. They perceive apparent “flaws” and move on. They don’t understand Egyptian mathematics simply because they don’t do it enough to truly appreciate it. To someone who’s mastered it, Egyptian mathematics is beautiful. It scorns memorization and rote algorithms while it favors insight and creativity. Each problem is a puzzle that can be solved in many ways. Frequently, solutions will be surprising, something that never happens in the step-by-step drudgery that is modern computation.

Consider fractions. One of the first things you learn if you read a little bit about Egyptian mathematics is that with the exception of 2/3 and occasionally 3/4, Egyptians only used fractions with 1 in the numerator: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and so on. They would write other fractions as sums of unit fractions. For example, 7/24 could be written 1/4+1/24 or 1/6+1/8. (The Egyptians didn’t actually write their fractions with numerators and denominators; if your only numerator is one, it’s redundant to write it down every time. Instead, an Egyptian fraction would consist of a “mouth” symbol on top of the symbol of an integer. So 1/7 would be a mouth over a 7. To write a sum of two fractions, they would just write the second one after the first one.)

When I first read about Egyptian fractions, I dismissed them as awkward and inefficient. But Reimer points out that they aren’t so different from our decimal system. When we write the number 0.572, we’re just writing 5/10+7/100+2/1000 in a slightly different way. The denominators of those fractions follow a predictable pattern, unlike the Egyptian one, but we are still writing numbers as the sum of fractions with increasing denominators. One nice thing about our decimal system is that if we cut the number off after a few places, we have a pretty good idea of how big it is. The number 0.572 is pretty close to 0.5 and 0.57. Likewise in the Egyptian fraction system, 7/24 is pretty close to 1/4, the first term in one of the possible ways to write 7/24.

Egyptian fractions also have some advantages over decimals. For one, they will always terminate. We can’t even write 1/3 as a terminating decimal. Sticking rigidly to powers of ten in our denominators limits the numbers we can represent easily. Like our fractions, Egyptian fractions are exact but use only a finite number of terms. Reimer sees Egyptian fractions as a compromise between the best qualities of our fraction and decimal systems. They are just as precise as our fractions, but like our decimals, they also make approximation easy.

But Egyptian fractions can throw some curveballs. There isn’t necessarily just one way to write a number as an Egyptian fraction. For example, above I wrote 7/24=1/4+1/24 or 1/6+1/8. In that case, it is pretty clear that 1/4+1/24 is a better way to write it: 1/4 is a good approximation, while 1/6 is not. But in other cases, it isn’t so clear. In the book, Reimer gives the example of 4/15, which can be written as either 1/6+1/10 or 1/5+1/15. 1/5 is a better approximation than 1/6, but there may be other reasons to choose 1/6+1/10. Egyptians used doubling a lot when multiplying, and it’s easier to double fractions with even denominators than odd ones. So depending on the specific circumstance, 1/6+1/10 might be a better choice for computation. This is what Reimer is talking about when he says the system “scorns memorization and rote algorithms while it favors insight and creativity.” It seems strange to have so much leeway in how to represent numbers, but it shows that creativity can have a place even in simple arithmetic.

With insights like this, Reimer not only explains the logic of the Egyptian system but also encourage us to think about the whats, hows, and whys of our own mathematics techniques. “This book is a thinly disguised critique of modern mathematics,” Reimer writes. The last chapter, Judgment Day, is a “battle” between Egyptian and modern methods, but it’s not just about a winner and a loser. “We will consider which system is better and what exactly ‘better’ means.” As you might guess, it’s complicated.

Reimer sprinkles vignettes about Egyptian mythology and society throughout the book, and he also includes some historical information about the few Egyptian mathematical artifacts that still survive. (Papyrus generally doesn’t hold up very well for 3,000 years.) He also makes it clear when his mathematical commentary is backed by evidence from Egyptian papyri and when it is his own conjecture based on his mathematical intuition. Because I’m interested in the book from the perspective of a math history teacher, I do wish there had been a little bit more about exactly what mathematics is in what papyrus, but the book is not a scholarly history of Egyptian mathematics, and that information may have distracted from the mission of getting people to try Egyptian mathematics for themselves.

Count Like an Egyptian would make an excellent addition to math classrooms at many different levels. Reimer includes problems in the text and solutions in the back of the book, so the reader can practice techniques and get a feel for exactly how the system works as they go through the book. The mathematics is basic enough to be helpful for children learning fractions or multiplication for the first time, but it’s also different enough from the methods most of us know that adults will get a lot out of it as well. I used Egyptian multiplication and fractions on the first day of this semester’s math history class as a way to push students out of their comfort zone and get them thinking about some of the most basic building blocks of math in a new way. With more background on the rationale behind the system, I think it was an effective way to open the class up with some interesting discussion about what numbers should do for us.
_________________
Lamb, Evelyn. 2015. “Learn to Count like an Egyptian”. Scientific American Blogs. Posted: January 26, 2015. Available online: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2015/01/26/count-like-an-egyptian-book-review/

First detailed study of Ancient Egyptians at Deir el-Medina

Ancient Egyptian workers in a village that’s now called Deir el-Medina were beneficiaries of what Stanford Egyptologist Anne Austin calls “the earliest documented governmental health care plan.”

The craftsmen who built Egyptian Pharaohs’ royal tombs across the Nile from the modern city of Luxor worked under gruelling conditions, but they could also take a paid sick day or visit a “clinic” for a free check-up.

For decades, Egyptologists have seen evidence of these health care benefits in the well preserved written records from the site, but Austin, a specialist in osteo-archaeology, led the first detailed study of human remains at the site.

A postdoctoral scholar in the Department of History, Austin compared Deir el-Medina’s well-known textual artefacts to physical evidence of health and disease to create a newly comprehensive picture of how Egyptian workers lived. Austin is continuing her research during her tenure as a fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities.

In skeletal remains that she found in the village’s cemeteries, Austin saw “evidence for state-subsidised health care among these workers, but also significant occupational stress fuelled by pressure from the state to work.”

Daily work and payment records corroborate the physical evidence: Deir el-Medina’s men had uniquely comprehensive health care, but sometimes could not take advantage of it.

For example, Austin saw in one mummy evidence of osteomyelitis – inflammation in the bone due to blood-borne infection; the man clearly had been working while this infection was ravaging his body. “The remains suggest that he would have been working during the development of this infection,” Austin said. “Rather than take time off, for whatever reason, he kept going.”

The workers received paid sick leave, as we know from the written records, but they “nonetheless felt pressure to work through illness, perhaps to fulfil tacit obligations to the state to which they owed so much.”

“The more I learn about Egypt, the more similar I think ancient Egyptian society is to modern American society,” Austin said. “Things we consider creations of the modern condition, such as health care and labour strikes, are also visible so far in the past.”

Evidence in the bones

Deir el-Medina, an hour’s climb across the mountainside that looms above Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, housed workers primarily in the 19th and 20th dynasties (1292-1077 BCE). Its heyday is later than the valley’s best-known occupant, Tutankhamun, but contemporaneous with the Pharaoh who was arguably Egypt’s greatest, Ramesses II, and his long line of successors. Deir el-Medina’s skilled workers had considerable engineering knowledge and an uncommon degree of literacy. They left tens of thousands of written records – bills, personal letters, lawsuits and prayers, on shards of clay, stone flakes and scraps of papyrus. Burial sites at Deir el-Medina were excavated from 1922 to 1951 by the French Egyptologist Bernard Bruyère, but the science of osteology was then in its infancy, and Bruyère left many of the bodies unstudied in their tombs.

Austin visited these tombs in 2012 for her UCLA dissertation research, where she found them “crowded with bats, rats and mummies.” Many of the mummies were little more than skeletons, allowing Austin to clearly see the state of the people’s health as evidenced in their bones.

In many bodies Austin saw evidence of stress from the hard climb – today it’s a thousand stone steps – from Deir el-Medina to the Valley of the Kings and back again. As Austin found, incidence of arthritis in the knees and ankles of the men at Deir el-Medina was significantly higher than for working populations from other Egyptian cemeteries.

The bones also revealed clues that corroborate other scholars’ findings that severely disabled Egyptians were well cared for. “I found the remains of a man who died at the age of 19 or 20 and was born without a useful right leg, presumably because of polio or another neuromuscular disorder,” Austin said.

“To work in the royal tombs, which was the entire purpose of the village, he would have had to climb,” Austin said. But in examination of the young man’s skeleton, she saw “no signs of other health issues, or of having lived a hard life. That suggests to me that they found a role for him in this community even though the predominant role, of working in the tombs, could not be met.”

Relating to ancient ideas

Austin’s research into the history of social health care invites larger discussion about how ancient peoples viewed health and disease, as well as the link between affluence and social responsibility.

“A woman named Naunakhte had eight children,” Austin said. “In her will, she chastised and disinherited four of them for neglecting her in her old age.”

“At Deir el-Medina, we see two health care networks happening,” Austin said. “There’s a professional, state-subsidised network so the state can get what it wants – a nice tomb for the king. Parallel to this, there’s a private network of families and friends. And this network has pressure to take care of its members, for fear of public shaming, such as being divorced for neglect or even disinherited.”

Austin finds Egyptians’ ideas about health care particularly compelling and fruitful for discussion because, she argues, their ideas about disease were much like ours.

While the Greeks believed that disease stemmed from an imbalance of bodily fluids, she said, “Egyptians thought about it as a kind of contamination of the body. To get better, instead of balancing yourself, you had to purge yourself of the contaminant.”

For example, a doctor in the medical text known as the Edwin Smith Papyrus treats a patient with an open wound over a broken arm by placing ground ostrich-egg shell in the wound and pronouncing, “Repelled is the enemy that is in the wound; cast out is the evil that is in the blood.”

“It’s very similar to modern germ theory,” Austin said. “It shows an awareness of disease as being external.”

In March, she will return to Deir el-Medina in collaboration with Egyptologist Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo to study more remains in hope of identifying specific diseases.

“Egypt has a complex civilisation, a written tradition and a long history of study,” Austin said. “The further away Egypt is and the more we learn, the more relatable it is and thus the more fascinating it is to me.” Austin and her students will be exploring our broader fascination with Egypt in her winter quarter course, Egyptomania! The Allure of Egypt over the Past 3,500 years.
_________________
Wilcox, Barbara. 2015. “First detailed study of Ancient Egyptians at Deir el-Medina”. Past Horizons. Posted: November 19, 2014. Available online: http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/11/2014/first-detailed-study-of-ancient-egyptians-at-deir-el-medina

Ancient Egyptian Woman with 70 Hair Extensions Discovered

See more pictures here. More than 3,300 years ago, in a newly built city in Egypt, a woman with an incredibly elaborate hairstyle of lengthy hair extensions was laid to rest. She was not mummified, her body simply being wrapped in a mat. When archaeologists uncovered her remains they found she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head," writes Jolanda Bos, an archaeologist working on the Amarna Project, in an article recently published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.

Researchers don't know her name, age or occupation, but she is one of hundreds of people, including many others whose hairstyles are still intact, who were buried in a cemetery near an ancient city now called Amarna.

This city was constructed as a new capital of Egypt by Akhenaten (reign ca. 1353-1335 B.C.), a pharaoh who unleashed a religious revolution that saw the Aten, a deity shaped as a sun disk, assume supremacy in Egyptian religion. Akhenaten ordered that Amarna be constructed in the desert and that images of some of Egypt's other gods be destroyed. Amarna was abandoned shortly after Akhenaten's death, and today archaeologists supported by the Amarna Trust are investigating all aspects of the ancient city, including the hairstyles its people wore.

Bos is leading the hairstyle research, and the woman with 70 extensions leaves her puzzled.

"Whether or not the woman had her hair styled like this for her burial only is one of our main research questions," said Bos in an email to Live Science. "The hair was most likely styled after death, before a person was buried. It is also likely, however, that these hairstyles were used in everyday life as well and that the people in Amarna used hair extensions in their daily life."

Many of the other skulls Bos analyzed also had hair extensions. One skull had extensions made of gray and dark black hair suggesting multiple people donated their hair to create extensions.

Hairy discoveries

As Bos analyzed a selection of 100 recently excavated skulls (of which 28 still had hair) from the Armana cemetery, she noticed the people who lived in the ancient city had a wide variety of hair types. They range "from very curly black hair, to middle brown straight," she noted in the journal article, something "that might reflect a degree of ethnic variation."

Those skulls with brown hair often had rings or coils around their ears, a style that was popular at Amarna, she found. Why people in this city liked it is unknown. "We still have no idea. This is of course one of the answers we are still trying to find from the record," said Bos in the email.

People in the city also seemed to be fond of braids. "All braids found in the coiffures were simple and of three strands, mostly 1 cm [0.4 inches] wide, with strands of approximately 0.5 cm [0.2 inches] when tightly braided," Bos writes in the journal article.

People at Amarna also liked to keep their hair short. "Braids were often not more than 20 cm [7.9 inches] long, leaving the hair at shoulder length approximately," Bos added. "The longest hair that was found consisted of multilayered extensions to a length of approximately 30 cm [11.8 inches]."

Fat was used to help create all the hairstyles Bos found, something that would have helped keep the hair in one piece after death. More research is needed to determine whether the fat was from animals. A textile found on each of the skulls may have been used to cover part of the head.

Hide the gray?

In one case a woman has an orange-red color on her graying hair. It appears that that she dyed her hair, possibly with henna (a flowering plant).

"We are still not completely sure if and what kind of hair coloring was used on this hair, it only seems that way macroscopically," said Bos in the email. "At present we are analyzing the hairs in order to find out whether or not some kind of coloring was used. On other sites dyed hair was found from ancient Egypt."

This woman, among other ancient Egyptians, may have dyed her hair "for the same reason as why people dye their hair today, in order not to show the gray color," Bos said.
_________________
Jarus, Owen. 2014. “Ancient Egyptian Woman with 70 Hair Extensions Discovered”. Live Science. Posted: September 17, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/47875-ancient-egyptian-woman-with-hair-extensions.html

Climate and Civilization Killed Egypt's Animals

If you took a cruise along the northern stretch of the Nile some 6,000 years ago, you wouldn't have seen any pyramids, but you might have spotted a giraffe or an elephant taking a drink at the bank of the river.

At that time, the Nile wasn't surrounded by desert; rather, the warmer, wetter landscape resembled the current scenery of sub-Saharan East Africa.

Today, Egypt's elephants and giraffes are extinct. So are its cheetahs and aurochs and wildebeests. But animal bones and images of animals on ancient artifacts reveal what creatures once roamed the region. A team of researchers looked at Egypt's rich archaeological record and found that most mammal extinctions over the last six millennia were linked to periods of big change in terms of climate and human civilization.

Justin Yeakel — a researcher out of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico — said the work was first inspired by a trip with a colleague to see a traveling exhibit on King Tutankhamun while it was in San Francisco a few years ago.

"We were just amazed at the diversity of animals in the artifacts," Yeakel told Live Science. "It got us thinking about how we could use representations of animals in the historical record to understand how animal communities have changed."

Egypt turned out to be a good area for a case study, because the area has been occupied continuously for thousands of years and has an extensive archaeological record. There are rock art drawings of hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses from the early Holocene. The tombs of Egyptian pharaohs are decorated with hunting scenes that show which creatures would have been prized prey. Import records of cheetahs and lions reveal when certain animals might have been considered exotic after disappearing locally.

The researchers found that Egypt was home to 37 large-bodied mammals (those over 8.8 lbs., or 4 kilograms) during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Today, just eight of those creatures remain: the golden jackal, the ibex, the Barbary goat, the Egyptian fox, the Dorcas gazelle, the wild ass, the striped hyena and the slender-horned gazelle, which is on the verge of extinction.

"Our simplest observation was that the community changed in a very nonrandom way," Yeakel said.

The stability of the ecosystem tended to unravel during periods of major climate change and socio-political turnover, the scientists found. When the so-called African Humid Period ended about 5,000 years ago, Egypt's landscape switched to a drier, desertlike climate; around the same time, humans started farming and ancient Egypt's Dynastic Period began. Another aridification period occurred about 4,170 years ago and has been linked to the collapse of Egypt's Old Kingdom, the period that saw the first pyramids. A third drying period has been linked to the fall of the New Kingdom in Egypt about 3,000 years ago.

Yeakel said he and his fellow researchers can't really tease apart the possible causes that led to these ecological changes. But the scientists have identified the potential drivers. During the first big change after the African Humid Period, for example, human populations grew and overhunting might have driven the decline of large herbivores — such as elephants, giraffes and native camels — which then indirectly affected the populations of the predators that ate the herbivores. Agriculture was also on the rise during this period. Most of the region's nutrients were concentrated in the Nile floodplain, and competition with farmers might have also hurt herbivore populations. A third possible driver could have been the climate; the drier environment might have limited the availability of plants at the bottom of the food chain.

The changes humans are inducing in the environment now are probably fundamentally different from the factors that drove ecological changes in the past, Yeakel said. Nonetheless, studying past changes is the only way scientists can predict what will happen in the future.

"We have to look at ecosystems as a continuum," Yeakel said. "We can't just look at the modern ecosystem. We have to look at how it has functioned in the past and how has it changed over time to establish a baseline for how the system will change in future."

The findings were published today (Sept. 8) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
_________________
Gannon, Megan. 2014. “Climate and Civilization Killed Egypt's Animals”. Live Science. Posted: September 8, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/47729-egypt-animal-extinction-change.html

Solved! How ancient Egyptians moved massive pyramid stones

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study.

Physicists at the University of Amsterdam investigated the forces needed to pull weighty objects on a giant sled over desert sand, and discovered that dampening the sand in front of the primitive device reduces friction on the sled, making it easier to operate. The findings help answer one of the most enduring historical mysteries: how the Egyptians were able to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of constructing the famous pyramids.

To make their discovery, the researchers picked up on clues from the ancient Egyptians themselves. A wall painting discovered in the ancient tomb of Djehutihotep, which dates back to about 1900 B.C., depicts 172 men hauling an immense statue using ropes attached to a sledge. In the drawing, a person can be seen standing on the front of the sledge, pouring water over the sand, said study lead author Daniel Bonn, a physics professor at the University of Amsterdam.

"Egyptologists thought it was a purely ceremonial act," Bonn told Live Science. "The question was: Why did they do it?"

Bonn and his colleagues constructed miniature sleds and experimented with pulling heavy objects through trays of sand.

When the researchers dragged the sleds over dry sand, they noticed clumps would build up in front of the contraptions, requiring more force to pull them across.

Adding water to the sand, however, increased its stiffness, and the sleds were able to glide more easily across the surface. This is because droplets of water create bridges between the grains of sand, which helps them stick together, the scientists said. It is also the same reason why using wet sand to build a sandcastle is easier than using dry sand, Bonn said.

But, there is a delicate balance,the researchers found.

"If you use dry sand, it won't work as well, but if the sand is too wet, it won't work either," Bonn said. "There's an optimum stiffness."

The amount of water necessary depends on the type of sand, he added, but typically the optimal amount falls between 2 percent and 5 percent of the volume of sand.

"It turns out that wetting Egyptian desert sand can reduce the friction by quite a bit, which implies you need only half of the people to pull a sledge on wet sand, compared to dry sand," Bonn said.

The study, published April 29 in the journal Physical Review Letters, may explain how the ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids, but the research also has modern-day applications, the scientists said. The findings could help researchers understand the behavior of other granular materials, such as asphalt, concrete or coal, which could lead to more efficient ways to transport these resources.
_________________ References:

Chow, Denise. 2014. “Solved! How ancient Egyptians moved massive pyramid stones”. Live Science. Posted: May 1, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/45285-how-egyptians-moved-pyramid-stones.html

Basel Egyptologists identify tomb of royal children

Who had the privilege to spend eternal life next to the pharaoh? Close to the royal tombs in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings, excavations by Egyptologists from the University of Basel have identified the burial place of several children as well as other family members of two pharaohs.

Basel Egyptologists of the University of Basel Kings' Valley Project have been working on tomb KV 40 in the Valley of the Kings close to the city of Luxor for three years. From the outside, only a depression in the ground indicated the presence of a subterranean tomb. Up to now, nothing was known about the layout of tomb KV 40 nor for whom it was build and who was buried there.

The Egyptologists assumed that it was a non-royal tomb dating back to the 18th dynasty. They first cleared the six meter deep shaft which gives access to five subterranean chambers and then recovered the countless remains and fragments of funerary equipment.

Mummified royal children

The scientists discovered mummified remains of at least 50 people in the center chamber and in three side chambers. Based on inscriptions on storage jars, Egyptologists were able to identify and name over 30 people during this year's field season. Titles such as "Prince" and "Princess" distinguish the buried as members of the families of the two pharaohs Thutmosis IV and Amenhotep III who are also buried in the Valley of Kings. Both pharaohs belonged to the 18th dynasty (New Kingdom) and ruled in the 14th century BC.

The analysis of the hieratic inscriptions (related to hieroglyphics) revealed that tomb KV 40 contains the mummified remains of at least 8 hitherto unknown royal daughters, four princes and several foreign ladies. Most of them were adults, however, mummified children were also found: "We discovered a remarkable number of carefully mummified new-borns and infants that would have normally been buried much simpler", describes Egyptologist Prof. Susanne Bickel the findings. "We believe that the family members of the royal court were buried in this tomb for a period of several decades."

The identification of people buried in the proximity of the royal tombs gives the team of researchers important insight into who had the privilege to spend eternal life close to the pharaoh. "Roughly two thirds of the tombs in the Kings' Valley are non-royal. Because the tombs do not have inscriptions and have been heavily plundered we so far have only been able to speculate on who lies buried in them", explains Susanne Bickel in regard to the importance of the findings for the field of Egyptology.

Remains of later burials

Even though the tomb was looted several times in Antiquity as well as at the end of the 19th century, the researchers found countless fragments of funerary equipment, such as fragments of coffins and textiles. "The remains and the walls have been heavily affected by a fire that was most likely ignited by the torches of the tomb raiders", suspects Susanne Bickel. The fragments of various wooden and cartonnage coffins indicate that tomb KV 40 was used a second time as a burial ground: long after the abandonment of the valley as royal necropolis, members of priestly families of the 9th century BC were interred here.

Anthropological analyses as well as further examination on the burial goods will deliver important insight into the composition of the pharaonic court of the 18th dynasty as well as the conditions of life and the burial customs of its members.
________________
References:

EurekAlert. 2014. “Basel Egyptologists identify tomb of royal children”. EurekAlert. Posted: April 28, 2014. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uob-bei042814.php

Ancient Egyptian Soldier's Letter Home Deciphered

A newly deciphered letter home dating back around 1,800 years reveals the pleas of a young Egyptian soldier named Aurelius Polion who was serving, probably as a volunteer, in a Roman legion in Europe.

In the letter, written mainly in Greek, Polion tells his family that he is desperate to hear from them and that he is going to request leave to make the long journey home to see them.

Addressed to his mother (a bread seller), sister and brother, part of it reads: "I pray that you are in good health night and day, and I always make obeisance before all the gods on your behalf. I do not cease writing to you, but you do not have me in mind," it reads.

"I am worried about you because although you received letters from me often, you never wrote back to me so that I may know how you ..." (Part of the letter hasn't survived.)

Polion says he has written six letters to his family without response, suggesting some sort of family tensions.

"While away in Pannonia I sent (letters) to you, but you treat me so as a stranger," he writes. "I shall obtain leave from the consular (commander), and I shall come to you so that you may know that I am your brother …"

Found in an ancient Egyptian town

The letter was found outside a temple in the Egyptian town of Tebtunis more than a century ago by an archaeological expedition led by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt. They found numerous papyri in the town and did not have time to translate all of them.

Recently Grant Adamson, a doctoral candidate at Rice University, took up the task of translating the papyrus, using infrared images of it, a technology that makes part of the text more legible. His translation was published recently in the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists.

Adamson isn't sure if the soldier's family responded to his pleas, or if Polion got leave to see them (it's unlikely), but it appears this letter did arrive home.

"I tend to think so. The letter was addressed to and mentions Egyptians, and it was found outside the temple of the Roman-period town of Tebtunis in the Fayyum not far from the Nile River," Adamson wrote in an email to Live Science.

Polion, who lived at a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, was part of the legio II Adiutrix legion stationed in Pannonia Inferior (around modern-day Hungary)

He may have volunteered for the pay and food legions got. However, that doesn't mean Polion knew that he was going to be posted so far away from home.

"He may have volunteered and left Egypt without knowing where he would be assigned," writes Adamson in the journal article. According to the translation, Polion sent the letter to a military veteran who could forward it to his family.

An ancient soldier, a modern problem

The situation seen in this letter, a young man serving as a volunteer in a military unit far away from home, facing tensions with his family and seeking leave to see them sounds like something that happens in modern-day armed forces.

Although soldiers today have an easier time communicating and traveling back home (Polion would have had to travel for a month or more to reach Tebtunis from his posting in Europe), there are some themes that connect both ancient and modern soldiers, Adamson said.

"I think that some aspects of military service belong to a common experience across ancient and modern civilizations — part of our human experience in general really. Things like worry and homesickness."

The letter is now in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.
________________
References:

Jarus, Owen. 2014. “Ancient Egyptian Soldier's Letter Home Deciphered”. Live Science. Posted: March 5, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/43900-ancient-egyptian-soldier-letter-deciphered.html

Sarcophagus leads Penn Museum team in Egypt to the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh

Discovery provides evidence of a forgotten Egyptian dynasty from 3,600 years ago

Archaeologists working at the southern Egyptian site of Abydos have discovered the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh: Woseribre Senebkay—and the first material proof of a forgotten Abydos Dynasty, ca. 1650-1600 BC. Working in cooperation with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, a team from the Penn Museum, University of Pennsylvania, discovered king Senebkay's tomb close to a larger royal tomb, recently identified as belonging to a king Sobekhotep (probably Sobekhotep I, ca. 1780 BC) of the 13th Dynasty.

The discovery of pharaoh Senebkay's tomb is the culmination of work that began during the summer of 2013 when the Penn Museum team, led by Dr. Josef Wegner, Egyptian Section Associate Curator of the Penn Museum, discovered a huge 60-ton royal sarcophagus chamber at South Abydos. The sarcophagus chamber, of red quartzite quarried and transported to Abydos from Gebel Ahmar (near modern Cairo), could be dated to the late Middle Kingdom, but its owner remained unidentified. Mysteriously, the sarcophagus had been extracted from its original tomb and reused in a later tomb—but the original royal owner remained unknown when the summer season ended.

In the last few weeks of excavations, fascinating details of a series of kings' tombs and a lost dynasty at Abydos have emerged. Archaeologists now know that the giant quartzite sarcophagus chamber derives from a royal tomb built originally for a pharaoh Sobekhotep—probably Sobekhotep I, the first king of Egypt's 13th Dynasty. Fragments of that king's funerary stela were found just recently in front of his huge, badly robbed tomb. A group of later pharaohs (reigning about a century and a half later during Egypt's Second Intermediate Period) were reusing elements from Sobekhotep's tomb for building and equipping their own tombs. One of these kings (whose name is still unknown) had extracted and reused the quartzite sarcophagus chamber. Another king's tomb found just last week is that of the previously unknown pharaoh: Woseribre-Senebkay.

A Lost Pharaoh and a Forgotten Dynasty

The newly discovered tomb of pharaoh Senebkay dates to ca. 1650 BC during Egypt's Second Intermediate Period. The identification was made by Dr. Wegner and Kevin Cahail, Ph.D. student, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania. The tomb of Senebkay consists of four chambers with a decorated limestone burial chamber. The burial chamber is painted with images of the goddesses Nut, Nephthys, Selket, and Isis flanking the king's canopic shrine. Other texts name the sons of Horus and record the king's titulary and identify him as the "king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Woseribre, the son of Re, Senebkay."

Senebkay's tomb was badly plundered by ancient tomb robbers who had ripped apart the king's mummy as well as stripped the pharaoh's tomb equipment of its gilded surfaces. Nevertheless, the Penn Museum archaeologists recovered the remains of king Senebkay amidst debris of his fragmentary coffin, funerary mask, and canopic chest. Preliminary work on the king's skeleton of Senebkay by Penn graduate students Paul Verhelst and Matthew Olson (of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) indicates he was a man of moderate height, ca. 1.75 m (5'10), and died in his mid to late 40s.

The discovery provides significant new evidence on the political and social history of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period. The existence of an independent "Abydos Dynasty," contemporary with the 15th (Hyksos) and 16th (Theban) Dynasties, was first hypothesized by Egyptologist K. Ryholt in 1997. The discovery of pharaoh Senebkay now proves the existence of this Abydos dynasty and identifies the location of their royal necropolis at South Abydos in an area anciently called Anubis-Mountain. The kings of the Abydos Dynasty placed their burial ground adjacent to the tombs of earlier Middle Kingdom pharaohs including Senwosret III (Dynasty 12, ca. 1880-1840 BC), and Sobekhotep I (ca. 1780 BC). There is evidence for about 16 royal tombs spanning the period ca. 1650-1600 BC. Senebkay appears to be one of the earliest kings of the "Abydos Dynasty." His name may have appeared in a broken section of the famous Turin King List (a papyrus document dating to the reign of Ramses II,ca. 1200 BC) where two kings with the throne name "Woser...re" are recorded at the head of a group of more than a dozen kings, most of whose names are entirely lost.

The tomb of pharaoh Senebkay is modest in scale. An important discovery was the badly decayed remains of Senebkay's canopic chest. This chest was made of cedar wood that had been reused from the nearby tomb of Sobekhotep I and still bore the name of that earlier king, covered over by gilding. Such reuse of objects from the nearby Sobekhotep tomb by Senebkay, like the reused sarcophagus chamber found during the summer, provides evidence that suggests the limited resources and isolated economic situation of the Abydos Kingdom which lay in the southern part of Middle Egypt between the larger kingdoms of Thebes (Dynasties 16-17) and the Hyksos (Dynasty 15) in northern Egypt. Unlike these numbered dynasties, the pharaohs of the Abydos Dynasty were forgotten to history and their royal necropolis unknown until this discovery of Senebkay's tomb.

"It's exciting to find not just the tomb of one previously unknown pharaoh, but the necropolis of an entire forgotten dynasty," noted Dr. Wegner. "Continued work in the royal tombs of the Abydos Dynasty promises to shed new light on the political history and society of an important but poorly understood era of Ancient Egypt."
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References:

EurekAlert. 2014. “Sarcophagus leads Penn Museum team in Egypt to the tomb of a previously unknown pharaoh”. EurekAlert. Posted: January 16, 2014. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-01/uop-slp011614.php

Ancient Dogs Found Buried in Pots in Egypt

Archaeologists have found some of the most curious canine burials ever unearthed in Egypt — two well preserved dogs buried in pots some 3,000 years ago.

Nicknamed Houdini and Chewie, the dog pots were discovered at Shunet ez Zebib, a large mud-brick structure located at Abydos — one of Egypt’s oldest standing royal monuments. The site was built around 2750 B.C and was dedicated to Khasekhemwy, a second dynasty king.

It is also known for the the thousands of ibis burials in jars that had been recovered in the dunes nearby, and for the interments of other animals, mostly raptors and canines.

“The site provided a very secure structure, with conveniently soft, sandy fill that was easy for quick burials within a sacred space,” Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, wrote in a recently published Festschrift in honor of Dieter Kessler, a renowned scholar in the field of animal cults and Egyptian religion.

A leading expert on animal mummies, Ikram analyzed the results of a 2009 excavation led by David O’Connor and Matthew Adams, respectively director and field director of the North Abydos Project at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Digging in the Shunet ez-Zebib’s southeast corner, the archaeologists unearthed several jars containing animal burials.

“Of the many jars that were recovered, only 13 have thus far been properly investigated. Of these, four were empty, three contained ibises, and five were filled with dogs,” Ikram said.

While three pots contained skeletonized remains of dogs, the last two housed Houdini and Chewie, two animals with their fur largely intact.

“Although it is common to find birds in pots, it is rare to find other animals buried in this way,” Ikram told Discovery News.

In particular, no canine burials in pots have been recorded in the many dog cemeteries scattered throughout Egypt.

“These jars were probably made and used for some sort of storage, and then re-used as coffins for the dogs. They are quite charming as the dogs are curled up in the pots,” Ikra said.

Houdini was found in a large two-handled pot, and was buried without any wrappings.

“We could not figure out how such a large animal was fit into the pot, so we named him after the magician, Houdini,” Ikram said.

The animal’s fur was brown to auburn-coppery, with portions darker and stiffer, as if they had been anointed by some substance such as oil or even resin.

“It seems as if he were put into the pot, hind limbs first, then adjusted and the rest of the body pushed in so that he was curled around,” Ikram said.

Although it is likely that Houdini is a dog, certain identification of the species is impossible as the animal could not be removed from the jar without compromising its integrity.

“The color of his almost auburn fur is unusual in a dog, as is the length of the hairs, which tend to be shorter in Egyptian dogs than the 3.5 inches found in the case of Houdini,” Ikram said.

“The only other viable identification would be a fox, but the fur’s color is not in keeping with the foxes found in Egypt today,” she added.

Not as well preserved as Houdini, Chewie was found in a large jar filled with the broken pieces of another large pot, which was used as a packing material to keep the dog in situ.

“Once the broken bits of pottery were removed, the dog contained within the pot was completely visible,” Ikram said.

The lack of evidence of any textile in the jar suggests Chewie was buried without bandages.

“The bones from his right foreleg were pushing through the skin and yellow fur,” Ikram added.

According to the researcher, both animals were mature, probably around five years of age.

“They were probably votive offerings unless they held the position of sacred animals — perhaps the pot burials are indicative of their being Sacred rather than just Votive,”Ikram said.

How the two animals were pushed into pots from which they cannot be extracted now remains a mystery.

“Without further examination and chemical testing it is not possible to understand the process by which these two animals were preserved,” Ikram said.

Among the possible embalming scenarios, the most likely treatment would include evisceration, dessication and defatting with natron salt.

Oiled and resined, the animals were then pushed into the jars.

“Sealed and buried in layers of protective sand, and cocooned in their jars, the animals’ bodies were well preserved so that they could serve as vehicles for their spirits, or kas, for eternity,” Ikram said.
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References:

Lorenzi, Rossella. 2014. “Ancient Dogs Found Buried in Pots in Egypt”. Discovery News. Posted: December 5, 2013. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/dog-pots-found-in-egypt-131205.htm

Mummy Mystery: Multiple Tombs Hidden in Egypt's Valley of Kings

Multiple tombs lay hidden in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, where royalty were buried more than 3,000 years ago, awaiting discovery, say researchers working on the most extensive exploration of the area in nearly a century.

The hidden treasure may include several small tombs, with the possibility of a big-time tomb holding a royal individual, the archaeologists say.

Egyptian archaeologists excavated the valley, where royalty were buried during the New Kingdom (1550–1070 B.C.), between 2007 and 2010 and worked with the Glen Dash Foundation for Archaeological Research to conduct ground- penetrating radar studies.

The team has already made a number of discoveries in the valley, including a flood control system that the ancient Egyptians created but, mysteriously, failed to maintain. The system was falling apart by the time of King Tutankhamun, which damaged many tombs but appears to have helped protect the famous boy-king's treasures from robbers by sealing his tomb.

The team collected a huge amount of data that will take a long time to analyze properly, wrote Afifi Ghonim, who was the field director of the project, in an email to LiveScience. "The corpus was so extensive it will take years, maybe decades, to fully study and report on," wrote Ghonim, an archaeologist with the Ministry of State for Antiquities in Egypt who is now chief inspector of Giza.

The project is part of "the most extensive exploration in the Valley of the Kings since Howard Carter's time," he said, referring to the Egyptologist whose team discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922.

The search for undiscovered tombs

"The consensus is that there are probably several smaller tombs like the recently found KV 63 and 64 yet to be found. But there is still the possibility of finding a royal tomb," wrote Ghonim in the email. "The queens of the late Eighteenth Dynasty are missing, as are some pharaohs of the New Kingdom, such as Ramesses VIII."

That sentiment was echoed by the famous, and at times controversial, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass at a lecture in Toronto this past summer. Hawass was the leader of the Valley of the Kings team.

"The tomb of Thutmose II, not found yet, the tomb of Ramesses VIII is not found yet, all the queens of dynasty 18 [1550-1292 B.C.] were buried in the valley and their tombs not found yet," said Hawass, former minister for antiquities, during the lecture. "This could be another era for archaeology," he added in an interview.

Ghonim said that it is hard to say how many tombs remain undiscovered but it is "more than just a couple."

Locating tombs in the Valley of the Kings is difficult to do even with ground-penetrating radar, a non-destructive technique in which scientists bounce high-frequency radio waves off the ground and measure the reflected signals to find buried structures.

Radar instruments and related computing power have vastly improved in the last couple of decades, scientists say. Even so, it "is difficult to avoid false positives in a place like the Valley of the Kings. There (are) many faults and natural features that can look like walls and tombs. Our work did help refine the technology for use here and it does have a place."

In one instance, radar work carried out by a previous team suggested that tombs dating from the Amarna period (the period within the New Kingdom in which Tutankhamun lived) could be found in a certain area of the main valley. The team excavated the spot but didn't find any tombs.

When the undiscovered tombs — those that do exist — are unearthed, they may not hold their original occupants. For instance, KV 64, a small tomb discovered in 2011by a University of Basel team, was found to hold a female singer named Nehmes Bastet who lived around 2,800 years ago. She apparently re-used a tomb that was created for an earlier, unknown, occupant.

Still, Ghonim said they could indeed find a tomb whose original occupants are  buried within. "It is not impossible however for one or more to be intact," he said. And if they do find such pharaohs, they may also find their brains, as work by Hawass and Dr. Sahar Saleem of Cairo Universitysuggests the Egyptians didn't remove the brains of their dead pharaohs in the mummification process.

An ancient flood control system

While the prospect of new tombs is tantalizing, they are but one of many things the researchers looked for in the valley. Last spring, the researchers gave a taste of what was to come at the Current Research in Egyptology conference at the University of Cambridge.

We "made a number of finds, which we believe will change our understanding of how the ancient Egyptians managed and utilized the site," Ghonim wrote in the email.

The researchers discovered, for instance, the ancient Egyptians created a flood control system in the valley that, for a time, prevented the tombs from being damaged by water and debris.

They detected a deep channel that would have run through the valley about 32 feet (10 meters) below the modern-day surface. As part of their anti-flood measures the Egyptians would have emptied this channel of debris and built side channels that diverted water into it, allowing water and debris to pass through the valley without causing damage.

Strangely enough, the ancient Egyptians "for some reason after building it, they let it fall into disrepair rather quickly. By (the) time Tutankhamun was buried, flooding events had become a problem again," Ghonim said.

"That was bad for most tombs, but good for Tutankhamun since, at least according to one theory, flooding events effectively sealed the tomb and made it inaccessible to later tomb robbers."

Today flood control is still a problem in the Valley of the Kings, and scientists are looking at ways to protect the tombs.

 "There have been many studies recommending what to do, but the need to keep the valley open and the costs involved remain a problem. There's also the need to develop a consensus on such an important thing," Ghonim said.

More discoveries and challenges

Many more finds will be detailed in scientific publications in the future, including the excavation of huts used by the workers who built the tombs and the documentation of graffiti left throughout the valley's history.

One important challenge that Egyptian antiquities in general face is the need to bring tourists back to Egypt. In June, at a lecture at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, Hawass explained such tourist money not only helps Egypt's economy but also provides much needed funds for excavation and conservation.

The flow of tourists has been disrupted at times since the 2011 revolution as the political turmoil has kept many foreign visitors away. The lecture by Hawass was given a few weeks before the ouster of  Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2014. “Mummy Mystery: Multiple Tombs Hidden in Egypt's Valley of Kings”. Live Science. Posted: December 4, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/41675-tombs-hidden-in-valley-of-kings.html

Far Out: Ancient Egyptian Jewelry Came from Outer Space

Ancient Egyptian beads found in a 5,000-year-old tomb were made from iron meteorites that fell to Earth from space, according to a new study. The beads, which are the oldest known iron artifacts in the world, were crafted roughly 2,000 years before Egypt's Iron Age.

In 1911, nine tube-shaped beads were excavated from an ancient cemetery near the village of el-Gerzeh, which is located south of Cairo, said study lead author Thilo Rehren, a professor at UCL Qatar, a Western Asian outpost of the University College London's Institute of Archaeology. The tomb dates back to approximately 3200 B.C., the researchers said.

Inside the tomb, which belonged to a teenage boy, the iron beads were strung together into a necklace alongside other exotic materials, including gold and gemstones. Early tests of the beads' composition revealed curiously high concentrations of nickel, a telltale signature of iron meteorites.

"Even 100 years ago, [the beads] attracted attention as being something strange," Rehren told LiveScience.

But without definitive proof of the beads' cosmic origins, questions persisted over whether similar amounts of nickel could be present in human-made iron. By scanning the iron beads with beams of neutrons and gamma rays, the researchers found high concentrations of cobalt, phosphorous and germanium; these elements were present at levels that only occur in iron meteorites.

"It's really exciting, because we were able to detect sufficient cobalt and germanium in these beads to confirm they're meteoritic," Rehren said. "We had assumed this was the case for 100 years, but it's nice to be able to put an exclamation mark on the label, rather than a question mark."

The X-ray technology also revealed that the beads had been hammered into thin sheets before being meticulously rolled into tubes.

"This meteoritic iron, it's very hard material that you find in lumps, and yet here we see it in thin beads," Rehren said. "The real question is, how were they made?"

Unlike softer and more pliable metals like gold and copper, working with solid iron required the invention of blacksmithing, which involves repeatedly heating metals to red-hot temperatures and hammering them into shape.

"It's a much more elaborate operation and one that we assumed was only invented and developed in the Iron Age, which started maybe 3,000 years ago — not 5,000 years ago," Rehren said.

The researchers suggest the iron meteorites were heated and hammered into thin sheets, and then woven around wooden sticks to create 0.8-inch-long (2 centimeters), tube-shaped beads. Other stones found in the same tomb displayed more traditional stone-working techniques, such as carving and drilling.

"This shows that these people, at this early age, were capable of blacksmithing," Rehren said. "It shows a pretty advanced skill with this difficult material. It might not have been on large scales, but by the time of the Iron Age, they had about 2,000 years of experience working with meteoritic iron."

This is not the first time beads from this Egyptian tomb have been linked to the cosmos. Earlier this year, in May, researchers at the Open University and University of Manchester published a paper in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science about the celestial origins of the ancient beads.

Other researchers have identified different artifacts that also have space origins. Last year, German scientists discovered a Buddha statue that was carved from a meteorite between the eighth and 10th centuries.

The detailed findings of the new study were published online today (Aug. 19) in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
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References:

Chow, Denise. 2013. “Far Out: Ancient Egyptian Jewelry Came from Outer Space”. Live Science. Posted: August 19, 2013. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/38995-egyptian-beads-made-from-meteorites.html

Long-Lost Pyramids Found?

Mysterious, pyramid-like structures spotted in the Egyptian desert by an amateur satellite archaeologist might be long-lost pyramids after all, according to a new investigation into the enigmatic mounds.

Angela Micol, who last year found the structures using Google Earth 5,000 miles away in North Carolina, says puzzling features have been uncovered during a preliminary ground proofing expedition, revealing cavities and shafts.

"Moreover, it has emerged these formations are labeled as pyramids on several old and rare maps," Micol told Discovery News.

Located about 90 miles apart, the two possible pyramid complexes appeared as groupings of mounds in curious positions.

One site in Upper Egypt, just 12 miles from the city of Abu Sidhum along the Nile, featured four mounds with an unusual footprint.

Some 90 miles north near the Fayum oasis, the second possible pyramid complex revealed a four-sided, truncated mound approximately 150 feet wide and three smaller mounds in a diagonal alignment.

"The images speak for themselves," Micol said when she first announced her findings. "It's very obvious what the sites may contain, but field research is needed to verify they are, in fact, pyramids,"

First reported by Discovery News, her claim gained widespread media attention and much criticism. Authoritative geologists and geo-archaeologists were largely skeptical and dismissed what Micol called "Google Earth anomalies" as windswept natural rock formations -- buttes quite common in the Egyptian desert.

"After the buzz simmered down, I was contacted by an Egyptian couple who claimed to have important historical references for both sites," Micol said.

The couple, Medhat Kamal El-Kady, former ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman, and his wife Haidy Farouk Abdel-Hamid, a lawyer, former counselor at the Egyptian presidency and adviser of border issues and international issues of sovereignty, are top collectors of maps, old documents, books and rare political and historical manuscripts.

El-Kady and Farouk have made important donations to the Egyptian state and the U.S. Library of Congress. Their various gifts to the Library of Alexandria include Al-Sharif Al-Idrissi's map of the Earth drawn for King Roger II of Sicily in 1154.

According to the couple, the formations spotted by Micol in the Fayum and near Abu Sidhum were both labeled as pyramid complex sites in several old maps and documents.

"For this case only, we have more than 34 maps and 12 old documents, mostly by scientists and senior officials of irrigation," El-Kady and Farouk told Discovery News.

For the site near the Fayum, they cited three maps in particular -- a map by Robert de Vaugoudy, dating from 1753, a rare map by the engineers of Napoleon Bonaparte, and a map and documents by Major Brown, general of irrigation for Lower Egypt in the late 1880s.

The documents would point to the existence of two buried pyramids which add to the known Fayum pyramids of Lahoun and Hawara.

"They would be the greatest pyramids known to mankind," the couple said. "We would not exaggerate if we said the finding can overshadow the Pyramids of Giza."

Their sources would indicate the pyramids at the Fayum site were intentionally buried in a "damnatio memoriae" -- an attempt to intentionally strike them from memory.

While the site in the Fayum has not been investigated yet, a preliminary on-the-ground expedition has already occurred at the site near Abu Sidhum, providing intriguing data to compare with El-Kady and Farouk’s maps and documents.

"Those mounds are definitely hiding an ancient site below them," Mohamed Aly Soliman, who led the preliminary expedition near Abu Sidhum, told Discovery News.

"First of all, the land around them is just a normal flat land. It is just desert -- sand and stones," he said.

"The mounds are different: You will find pottery everywhere, seashells and transported layers. These are different layers, not belonging to the place, and were used by the Egyptians to hide and protect their buried sites," he said.

"Describing himself as "one of the many Egyptians obsessed with the pharaohs’ civilization," Aly has a background as a private investigator and has been studying to identify archaeological sites in Egypt.

"If we look back in history we will find that pharaohs were using seashells in building their tombs and pyramids for ventilation purpose," Aly said.

"Even the rocks used in building pyramids contained up to 40 percent seashells."

He cited the work of Ioannis Liritzis, a professor of archaeometry at the University of the Aegean and colleagues at the University of Athens.

According to the amateur geo-archaeologist, the local people living near the mounds had long suspected the formations were ancient in origin. They had tried to dig on one of the small mounds years ago, but the excavation failed due to striking very hard stone that Aly and Micol believe may be granite.

"What made us sure those mounds are hiding pyramids was a special cavity and metal detector we used over the mounds," Aly Soliman said. "The detector we used showed an underground tunnel heading north on both the big mounds."

"It also signaled metal was present in the mounds," he said. "Most Egyptian pyramids have north facing entrance tunnels, so this is another promising piece of evidence we have found."

According to Micol, the Egyptian team believes they have identified a temple or habitation site near the site and a row of what may be mastaba tombs adjacent to the mounds.

So, has a bunch of amateur archaeologists made a discovery that will dwarf the Pyramids of Giza? Or are their pyramids just naturally occurring rock outcrops filled with wishful thinking and vivid imagination?

"Whether they prove to be anything more than nature must be verified on the ground, but this location seems promising and is the result of research beyond simply pointing out the first sand dune noticed on Google Earth," archaeologist Patrick Rohrer told Discovery News.

To further research the pyramid puzzle and examine other sites, Micol's set up the Satellite Archaeology Foundation, Inc. a pending non-profit -- and launched a crowdfunding campaign.

"Due to unrest and economic distress in Egypt, life is not easy for archaeologists" Micol said. "We found no one from the Egyptian academic community who is interested in finding out about these sites at this time."

"Now that we have ground proof and historical evidence," she added, "my goal is to go to Egypt with a team of U.S. scientists and videographers to help validate the evidence found by the expedition team and to prove if these sites are lost pyramid complexes."
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References:

Lorenzi, Rossella. 2013. “Long-Lost Pyramids Found?”. Discovery News. Posted: July 16, 2013. Available online: http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/long-lost-pyramids-found-130715.htm