Ramses III against the Sea Peoples

by HistoricalEve

Medinet Habu, the severed hands of the defeated enemies

Usermaatre Meryamun, better known as Ramses III (1184 – 1153 BC), was the second and most important king of the Twentieth Dynasty (1186 – 1069 BC).

The particularities of his extensive reign, the significance of his military victories against the so-called “Sea Peoples”, and the magnificent state of preservation of his funerary temple in Medinet Habu (Western Thebes) made him one of the most important pharaohs of all the period of the Egyptian New Kingdom (approx. 1550 – 1069 BC).

Ramses III, the warrior king

The reign of Ramses III developed in a temporary context in which dangerous threats existed on the Egyptian borders. And this despite the fact that the new king had benefited in his first five-year reign from the peace and stability inherited from his father, Setnakhte (1186 – 1184 BC).

Already in the fifth year of reign he had to face the new advances of the western Libyan tribes, who had taken advantage of the instability and political decomposition of the last kings of the Nineteenth Dynasty to penetrate the western Delta until reaching the main branch of the River Nile.

The battle that took place that year (approx. 1180 BC ) between the two armies marked the first major military success of Ramses III, and was thus represented in a large inscription made on the walls of the second courtyard of the Medinet Habu temple.

However, the euphoria would not last long, as a new Libyan campaign – also victorious and also represented in the temple – occurred six years later, in the year 11 of the reign of Ramses III.

Relief of Ramses III defeating his enemies at Medinet Habu

Ramses III, Egypt and the Sea Peoples

Beyond these Libyan wars, the greatest military challenge Ramses III had to face during his reign was the war waged against the so-called “Sea Peoples” in the eighth year of his reign.

The situation was much more serious if we take into account that it was not just an army invasion, but rather a massive and sudden migration of heterogeneous displaced peoples seeking to settle in the areas they attacked, thus taking their families with them.

Over the last decades, a great deal has been written about the causes and origin of the migratory movement of these ethnic groups from the Aegean and Asia Minor, but even today there are many unanswered questions .

These peoples had not only dismantled the once mighty Hittite Empire, but in their advance they had razed Arzawa, Alalakh, Karkemish, Ugarit, Alashia, Tarsus, and Amurru.

In Egypt, we know that some of these groups – such as the Denen, Lukka, and Sherden – had already appeared during Akhenaten’s reign (1352-1336 BC), and members of the Lukka and Sherden are listed as mercenaries fighting on the side of Ramses II in the famous Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC) against the Hittite empire.

Given the notable historical and archaeological uncertainties surrounding this episode, we can only narrate the succession of events presented by Ramses III.

This scene from the north wall of Medinet Habu is often used to illustrate the Egyptian campaign against the Sea Peoples in what has come to be known as the Battle of the Delta.

Ramses III against the Sea Peoples

Around 1177 BC, the Danauna, Shakalash, Uashasha, Alasa, and Chekker completely encircled Egypt, heading toward it by sea and land, and both East and West.

To face them, Ramses III prepared a war fleet and raised a large army of infantry in arms. Curiously, there was no shortage of mercenaries among the Pharaoh’s forces from the ranks of the Sea Peoples, as had happened in the past.

Judging by the scenes contained in the Medinet Habu reliefs, the war was decided in two major battles, first a land one and then a naval one.

Archeology has not found any evidence that indicates the exact place of these clashes, but we can assume that, if they occurred as indicated, they were at two points close to each other and as far as possible from the Nile valley.

Based on this, it is believed that the land battle could have taken place at some point between the eastern border of the Delta and the southern coast of the Palestinian strip, while the naval combat occurred when an enemy fleet penetrated precisely in the Nile Delta.

It should also be noted that in both encounters the pharaoh would have intervened, although in a different way:

In the land battle he would intervene directly, but in the naval he would support his navy from the coast. On land, Pharaoh’s forces had time to prepare, so they would have mercilessly ambushed the migrant caravan heading towards Egypt.

Despite this overwhelming victory, this enemy could not be defeated so quickly because it was not a political entity and therefore did not act as a coherent group.

In this way, other groups continued to be a threat to Egyptian stability that had to be alleviated.

On this occasion, the scenes in Medinet Habu show us a group of foreign ships that entered a waterway with the clear intention of landing their warriors on the shore.

However, they were unaware that they were being watched and, before the maneuver came to an end, the Egyptian navy would have suddenly emerged to attack them by surprise.

At the same time, from the ground the infantry would finish off those who had managed to disembark and the enemy ships carried towards the coast would be attacked by the Egyptian archers.

The "Fourth Pyramid of Giza": The Inconspicuous "Pyramid of Khentkaus" in Giza Plateau

The tomb, located on the Giza Plateau, was originally believed by some Egyptologists to be a "fourth pyramid of Giza"

The pyramid of Khentkaus I or step tomb of Khentkaus I is a Fourth Dynasty two-stepped tomb built for the Queen Mother Khentkaus I in Giza. The tomb, built in two phases coinciding with its two steps, was originally known as the fourth pyramid of Giza.

The tomb has a two-stepped superstructure, which can not properly be classified either as a mastaba or as a pyramid. Selim Hassan compared it to Djoser's step pyramid, which had a square base in its early development, to favour a pyramid designation.

In the first phase, a nearly square block of bedrock, around which the stone had been quarried for the Giza pyramids, was utilised to construct her tomb and encased with fine white Tura limestone.

In the second phase, most likely in the Fifth Dynasty, her tomb was enlarged with a large limestone structure built on top of the bedrock block. The Egyptologist Miroslav Verner suggests that this may have been intended to convert her tomb into a pyramid, but was abandoned as a result of stability concerns.

Reconstruction of the Giza Necropolis, Artist: Uvo Hölscher, 1910

South-west of the tomb was a long boat pit, which housed the Night boat of Re. A companion day boat has not been found. A chapel was built into the tomb superstructure, with a large granite entrance bearing the queen's name and titles. One of her titles was of particular interest because it had not been known of prior to its discovery at her tomb.

The chapel connected to a three-niched statuary room to its west, and a long hall to its north. The hall to the north housed two pink granite false doors, below one of which was a sloped passage into the tomb substructure comprising an antechamber and a bisected burial chamber. In the east half of the burial chamber were entrances to six storage magazines, and two more pink granite false doors in its west wall.

The west half of the chamber was once occupied by a large alabaster sarcophagus, fragments of which constituted the only significant finds by Selim Hassan. Carved into the north wall was a shelf which once stored the canopic jars of the burial. A small square niche had been cut into the south wall.

Khentkaus I's mortuary complex

A settlement was built around Khentkaus' tomb, and probably occupied by priests of her mortuary cult until the end of the Sixth Dynasty. The settlement was bounded to the north and south by long perimeter walls running east then south.

Along a causeway leading from the chapel through the town, ten carefully planned homes were built, suggesting that the town was designed and not the result of natural urban development. The town was further outfitted with granaries and a large water tank. To the south-west were Menkaure's valley temple, and an annex described by Hassan as Khentkaus' valley temple.

Location and Excavation

The tomb, located on the Giza Plateau, was originally believed by some Egyptologists to be a "fourth pyramid of Giza". It was identified as a pyramid by John Shae Perring and Colonel Howard Vyse who visited the site in 1837–1838. The site was visited the following year by Karl Richard Lepsius, on sponsorship from King Frederick William IV of Prussia.

He believed the tomb was a private one, and designated it 100 on his map. In 1912, Uvo Hölscher identified the structure as "the unfinished pyramid of Shepseskaf". George Andrew Reisner identified it as a king's pyramid, believing it to be an incomplete construction of Shepseskaf, in Mycerinus, the temples of the third pyramid at Giza (1931).

In 1932, Selim Hassan was able to demonstrate that the tomb belonged to Khentkaus I. The name and titles of the queen were found inscribed on blocks of red granite from the doorjambs of the chapel. Hers was the last royal monument built on the plateau.

Who was Khentkaus I?

Khentkaus I, also referred to as Khentkawes, was a royal woman who lived in ancient Egypt during both the Fourth Dynasty and the Fifth Dynasty. She may have been a daughter of king Menkaure, the wife of both king Shepseskaf and king Userkaf (the founder of the Fifth Dynasty), the mother of king Sahure. Some suggest that she was the regent for one of her sons. Perhaps, in her own right, she may have been the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, which aspects of her burial suggest. Her mastaba at Giza – tomb LG100 – is located very close to Menkaure's pyramid complex. This close connection may point to a family relationship. Although the relationship is not clear, the proximity of the pyramid complex of Khentkaus to that of king Menkaure has led to the conjecture that she may have been his daughter.

Khentkaus depicted on her tomb

Khentkaus's burial complex confirms her royal status. Some of her titles are ambiguous and open to interpretation. She appears to have served as regent and may have taken the title of king. On a granite doorway leading into her tomb, Khentkaus I is given titles that may be read either as mother of two kings of upper and lower Egypt, as mother of the king of upper and lower Egypt and the king of upper and lower Egypt, or, as one scholar reads it, the king of upper and lower Egypt and the mother of two kings of upper and lower Egypt. Furthermore, her depiction on this doorway also gives her the full trappings of kingship, including the false beard of the king. This depiction and the title given have led some Egyptologists to suggest that she reigned as king near the end of the fourth dynasty.

 

That she was the daughter of Menkaure is speculated widely. Much evidence supports the idea. Khentkaus may have been married to king Userkaf and may have been the mother of Sahure and Neferirkare Kakai. Egyptologist Miroslav Verner has stated that it is more likely, however, that Sahure was a son of Userkaf and his wife Neferhetepes. He also suggested that Khentkaus was the mother and regent for her son Thamphthis and the mother of Neferirkare Kakai.

Manetho's King List has Menkaure and Thampthis reigning in the Fourth Dynasty, which ties Khentkaus to the end of the Fourth Dynasty, The suggestions of her marriage to Userkaf and having been the mother of Sahure, tie her to the Fifth Dynasty as well.

Egypt restores ancient shrine of Amun-Ra

Egypt has finished restoring one of the seven shrines in the Temple of Seti I in southern Egypt, dedicated to the worship of Amun-Ra about 3,500 years ago.

This picture taken on Jan. 19, 2022, shows a view of the top of the Luxor Obelisk in Egypt's southern city of Luxor, displaying a relief of the obelisk commissioner Pharaoh Ramses II making an offering to the god Amun-Ra. - AMIR MAKAR/AFP via Getty Images

CAIRO — A team of restorers and archaeologists from the Egyptian state-owned Supreme Council of Antiquities has recently completed restoration work on the shrine of the ancient deity Amun-Ra, one of the seven chapels in the Temple of Seti I in Abydos in southern Egypt’s Sohag governorate.

In a press statement released by the Supreme Council of Antiquities on Aug. 21, Muhammad Abdel-Badi, the head of the Central Administration of Upper Egypt Antiquities, explained that in the rear of the shrine, a there is a symbolic door and scenes depicting the boat journey to the underworld as well as religious rituals and offerings to Amun-Ra.

The statement quoted Saadi Zaki, director of restoration for Upper Egypt Antiquities, as saying that the restoration works took about three months and included removing dirt and soot first with brushes by hand and then with a chemical cleaning procedure.

He added that some of the walls and ceiling were rebuilt, the colors were brightened and finally the entire room was insulated.

Hussein Abdel Basir, director of the Antiquities Museum of Bibliotheca Alexandrina, told Al-Monitor, “A shrine in ancient Egypt was tantamount to a mihrab, a holy place where priests used to perform daily and funeral services in the temple.”

“The Temple of Seti I includes seven shrines of the following deities: Horus, Isis, Osiris, Ra-Horakhty, Ptah and Amun-Ra, as well as the chapel of King Seti I, who believed he was a god and designed a shrine for himself,” Abdel Basir explained.

He added, “The Abydos area was a sacred spot for the god Osiris and a site for annual pilgrimages,” and stressed that Amun-Ra was one of the most significant deities in the modern state era, especially in the Thebes area.

“Therefore, Amun-Ra’s shrine is considered one of the most important monuments in the area. The connection between Seti I and the god is evident in the shrine's drawings and inscriptions on the walls,” he said.

The archaeological area of Abydos is one of Egypt’s oldest cities and home to the first Egyptian kings. One of the richest archaeological sites in Egypt it was called “Abju,” meaning the land of the great, of which “Abydos” was derived. The ancient city was a center for the worship of the deity Khenti-Imentiu before it became the same for Osiris.

Seti I (1294-1279 BC) was the second king of the 19th Dynasty after his father, Ramses I. He was the father of the great King Ramses II, who ruled Egypt for at least 21 years.

Abdul Basir explained, “King Seti I was a great warrior and had great military achievements in the Near East. During his era, interest in art emerged. That is why he is considered one of the most important kings of ancient Egypt. Had it not been for the fame of his son, Ramses II, which overshadowed the king’s life story, Seti I would have had a greater reputation historically.”

Before taking up the throne, King Seti I was a military officer. After he was coronated, he led various campaigns in Libya and the Levant. During his reign, battle scenes were extensively depicted across walls of Egyptian temples.

Ahmad Badran, a professor of archeology and ancient Egyptian civilization at Cairo University, told Al-Monitor, “The Temple of Seti I is distinguished from the rest of the Ramesside temples by its L-shaped architectural design. It also has seven shrines, as opposed to only one in other temples.”

“The shrine of Amun-Ra is located opposite the entrance to the temple and is characterized by its colorful inscriptions that show King Seti I performing daily service rituals and worshiping the deities,” he added.

Badran explained, “The temple is known for its bright colors. But over time, dust and dirt settled on the drawings and inscriptions, meaning that work was required to restore the original colors, giving the temple greater luster and splendor and highlighting the ingenuity of ancient Egyptians in using colors from natural sources that were mixed with other products such as egg whites to make them last.

Badran said that the restoration work of shrines will boost tourism, as tourists are interested in shrines in their original condition and original colors as built by ancient Egyptians more than 3,500 years ago.

In the Supreme Council of Antiquities’ Aug. 21 press statement, council head Mostafa Waziri said that the council is planning to restore all the temple’s chapels and that the restoration of the shrine of the god Ra-Horakhty has recently begun.

Why Was Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s Reign Virtually Erased From History?

 Pharaoh Hatshepsut was a remarkable female who was just as successful as strong.

In her new book, The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt, UCLA Egyptologist Kara Cooney provides a clear-eyed perspective on how the young Hatshepsut maneuvered her powerful rise and explains why distrust of strong female leaders caused Hatshepsut's reign to be virtually erased from history.

In an interview with the Good Magazine, Cooney revealed how this powerful female leader came to be "king."

This is what Cooney had to say:

Why should we know about Hatshepsut?

She’s the only woman from all of antiquity to have left her situation better than she found it. Other women who held military power are all associated with crisis or disaster. Hatshepsut does everything right, everything was good in her reign. There were no assassinations, only prosperity. In fact, some accused her of giving too much of that wealth away.

Why isn’t she a household name?

Her success precisely is the reason we don’t remember her. We are still quite ambivalent about a female in power.
A woman who has succeeded is automatically distrusted—we assume she will only care about herself and close family members, instead of being able to make far-reaching political decisions.

An ambitious woman leader is usually maligned in history as a conniving, scheming seductress who foolishly brings down the men around her.

Today, only 5.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are female and about one out of five Congress members are women. These are facts. Women have a very hard time finding political power.

Can you name some of Hatshepsut’s successes?

Her wars in Nubia (also known as Kush) were moneymaking. Nubia means “land of gold” and she quashed insurrections there and made sure those gold mines stayed open.

She built more structures than any king previous to her—and these were stone temple structures. No king had built temples in stone the way she did. She made sure she left a permanent mark with those sacred structures.

And she was a job grower. She was interested in spreading wealth, creating more titles for people so they could have their own income. The amount of wealth she created and redirected back to her elite was impressive. She decentralized her power and this made the country stronger.

Speaking of power, how did Hatshepsut get so much of it?

She cloaked all her of personal decisions in ideology and idealism—this woman was canny, clever, and calculated.

Her husband-brother, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, died young and she was also the daughter of a successful warrior king. She was pulled into a matrix of power; few people could understand how to justify the aberration of becoming a female king. Yet she made sure everyone believed that this was in their best interest. She was a careful thinker politically and she was a very good communicator. Looking at statuary and relics texts, she covered her power plays by saying ‘the gods asked me to do this.’ She never said ‘I want it.’

In fact, as a priestess, she called God her father and said God’s seed was planted into her mother.

An engrossing biography of the longest-reigning female pharaoh in Ancient Egypt and the story of her audacious rise to power.

Hatshepsut—the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne and a mother with ties to the previous dynasty—was born into a privileged position in the royal household, and she was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father’s family. Her failure to produce a male heir was ultimately the twist of fate that paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king.

At just over twenty, Hatshepsut ascended to the rank of pharaoh in an elaborate coronation ceremony that set the tone for her spectacular reign as co-regent with Thutmose III, the infant king whose mother Hatshepsut out-maneuvered for a seat on the throne.

Hatshepsut was a master strategist, cloaking her political power plays in the veil of piety and sexual reinvention. Just as women today face obstacles from a society that equates authority with masculinity, Hatshepsut shrewdly operated the levers of power to emerge as Egypt's second female pharaoh.

Hatshepsut successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt’s most prolific building periods. Scholars have long speculated as to why her monuments were destroyed within a few decades of her death, all but erasing evidence of her unprecedented rule.

Constructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power—and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.

What kind of a mother was she?

A very good mother. She had a daughter named Nefrure, her only offspring, and she fostered her daughter’s power. She made sure Nefrure became a high priestess, with a household and income of her own. We don’t know their emotions but the two must have been close allies.

Did Hatshepsut have a lover?

An outsider named Senenmut was her closest ally. He was in charge of her money, her buildings, and her campaigns. His access to her was closer than any other person. In more than 20 statues, he is shown hugging Hatshepsut’s daughter as a young child, which showed everyone that he had this close connection. But just because they were close doesn’t mean that they had a sexual relationship. And remember, Hatshepsut was the most powerful woman of her time—she could have slept with anyone she wanted. This woman’s sexuality was not controlled by others, she controlled her own.

Sexually, Ancient Egyptian customs seem to break all the rules, with brothers marrying sisters, and daughters marrying fathers. Was this widespread?

This only happened in royal families. Brother-sister marriages were sometimes preferred for political reasons. Incest rules are only broken in cultures around the world that want to hold onto extreme power and wealth. It’s a good technique if you’re trying to keep the money in the family. The problem is the health of the offspring is not guaranteed, so it’s not necessarily a successful breeding scheme. To counter this, daughters were kept inside the palace, and non-family women were brought in to the male kings.

Why did Hatshepsut call herself a king and not a queen?

In Egypt, the word for queen means ‘king’s woman’ so when Hatshepsut took on that highest mantel, she abandoned the title of queen and called herself king—and took on the masculinity that went with it.

Khopesh: The Egyptian Sword that Forged an Empire

A khopesh is a sword or saber with a curved blade, in the shape of a “U” or sickle shape (depending on the period) with the edge in its convex part, used in the ancient Near East and in the Canaan area and which became popular in Ancient Egypt.

Origins of the Khopesh

Its origins can be traced back to Sumer in the third millennium BC. The khopesh was developed from the axes used in warfare, which makes it not a true sword (which evolved from daggers) but a specialized ax.

Unlike this, the khopesh does not produce deep cuts but slashes. Improvement in bronze castinghe evolved the ax to an all-metal variant, to which they reduced weight, leaving only the blade close to the edge. Supposedly, to try to give the cutting power of the ax to the swords used at the time, which were straight.

Bronze Egyptian Khopesh with the name of Pharaoh Ramses II. Louvre Museum

The khopesh in history

The khopesh arose in the Mediterranean Levant, an area that covers the Mediterranean coast of the Middle East from the Sinai to present-day Turkey. And this area, and the peoples who lived there, was historically faced with Ancient Egypt since the third millennium BC.

The khopesh became the most typical weapon of Ancient Egypt along with the light war chariot, and by the deductions of specialists it could well be the first time that a curved blade was used in a war sword.

Therefore we would be talking about the primal form of the saber family. That is why it is said that the ancestry of the Greek kopis is the khopesh.

The khopesh became very popular during the New Kingdom (1570–1070 BC), when it was used as a symbol of royal power. His epitaph begins with the entry of the Ptolemaic Dynasty and the definitive fall of the Egyptian empire at the hands of Rome.

Ramses IV subduing his enemies brandishing a Khopesh in his right hand. Ostracon. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Morphology

The khopesh is a weapon with many variations in its morphology. From the concave blade and outer edge versions to their final versions more recognizable as a short saber, many centuries have passed.

In general, a khopesh is a short sword that measures about 50-60 cm in length (although there are smaller specimens) and is made up of three main parts: a hilt of about 18 cm, a straight section without edge of about 15 and 30 cm and a crescent-shaped end, with a sharp outer edge, measuring between 30-40 cm.

It lacked guards on the hilt and served efficiently in its time, given the type of defensive weapons ( armor and shields ) it faced. However, its value lay in the mass that it used when cutting, and this is a characteristic that every family of sabers in history inherited.

Therefore, the cutting power of these ancient swords was tied, rather than by their edge, by the use of their weight, which was accumulated at the point of percussion of the weapon rather than near the hilt.

The discovery of an Egyptian tomb built with coral

Archaeologists digging at a Red Sea trading port have uncovered a lavish tomb dated between the fourth and fifth centuries. Its walls and floor are made of white coral, highly unusual for Egypt at that period.

In collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, a Polish-American archaeological team led by Steven E. Sidebotham of the University of Delaware, and Mariusz Gwiazda of the Polish Center for Mediterranean Archeology at the University of Warsaw, excavated an ancient port city located on the shores of the Red Sea in 2008.

Located in the eastern desert of Egypt at the Berenice Troglodytica site, it was originally founded by Ptolemy II in the third century BC.

According to the researchers, the project’s objective was to study the community that lived in this settlement after the Roman period, between the fourth and sixth centuries AD.

They were discovered to be the Blemmyes, nomadic people who inhabited the eastern desert from the current border between Egypt and Sudan.

Although the Romans no longer dominated the region, the Blemmyes apparently continued carrying out a great commercial activity over long distances (trade routes connected the Indian Ocean, East Africa, and Byzantium), with which the port of Berenice continued to be important.

Coral walls and floors

At the end of the last archaeological campaign, the researchers made the results public. Among the findings, the discovery of a monumental tomb with walls and floors made of high-quality white coral stands out.

This new discovery is the first explicit example of social differentiation in a little-recognized phase of the City’s occupation in the fourth-fifth centuries of our era.

The equipment and the shape of the burials are unique in all the east of Egypt.

“The use of plaster with corals as a building material is unique in the architecture of this period and was recorded for the first time in Berenice,” says Gwiazda, who also points out that the selection of the coral fragments must have been very carefully placed and would have taken a long time; something that surely increased the cost of construction, suggesting that members of the City’s elite were buried here.

The tomb is a rectangular space that measures five meters long. Inside, several communal burials were found endowed with rich grave goods of more than seven hundred necklace beads (some made with materials from South Asia), rings, silver earrings, and ivory bracelets.

The archaeologists also found wine amphorae, ceramic containers to hold water, incense burners (one of them beautifully made of stone in the shape of a lion’s head), and bowls.

All this is very possibly related to funerary rituals. For their part, the bodies of the people buried there were arranged in stone coffins located next to the walls and placed in a fetal position, possibly to gain space.

One of the aspects that most interests archaeologists excavating in Berenice is studying the different funerary customs that took place here, making the discovery of this tomb of enormous importance.

The team also plans to carry out various paleoanthropological analyzes of the human remains from multiple tombs in the town.

This will allow researchers to better understand the rituals and traditions related to the funerary world, as well as shed light on the diversity of the population of Berenice during the late ancient period.

Source: Carme Mayans, National Geographic

Set of ritual objects found inside the great tomb discovered in Berenice.

Fragments of white corals used in the construction of the tomb floor.

Censer in the form of a lion’s head discovered in the tomb of Berenice.

Strung green colored glass beads found in the excavated tomb at Berenice Troglodytica.

Panoramic view of the monumental tomb excavated by archaeologists at Berenice Troglodytica.

The History of Writing; Tracing the Development of expressing Language by Systems of Markings

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by dimosthenis vasiloudis

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Protowriting, ideographic systems, or early mnemonic symbols came before more advanced writing systems in the evolution of writing in human societies (symbols or letters that make remembering them easier).

A subsequent development is true writing, in which the content of a spoken language is encoded so that another reader may reasonably reconstruct the identical utterance written down. It differs from proto-writing, which frequently forgoes recording grammatical words and affixes, making it harder or even impossible to reassemble the precise meaning intended by the writer unless a substantial amount of context is already known in advance.

Writing innovations

The idea that writing originated in a single civilization and was called "monogenesis" persisted for a long time. According to academics, all writing originated in Mesopotamia's ancient Sumer and spread around the world as a result of cultural diffusion. This argument holds that traders or merchants traveling between geographical locations passed on the idea of representing language by written signs, though perhaps not necessarily the specifics of how such a system operated.

The finding of ancient Mesoamerican scripts, far from Middle Eastern sources, demonstrated, however, that writing had been created more than once. In at least four ancient civilizations, including Mesopotamia (between 3400 and 3100 BCE), Egypt (about 3250 BCE), China (1200 BCE), and lowland portions of southern Mexico and Guatemala, writing may have independently originated (by 500 BCE).

Some academics have suggested that ancient Egypt "The earliest authentic examples of Egyptian writing differ from Mesopotamian writing in both structure and style, indicating that they must have emerged independently. Although there is still a chance that Mesopotamian "stimulus dispersion" occurred, the influence could not have extended beyond the dissemination of an idea."

Because there is no evidence of communication between ancient China and the Near Eastern literate civilizations, as well as because Mesopotamian and Chinese approaches to phonetic representation differ, it is thought that ancient Chinese characters are independent creations.

The Vinča symbols.

The Rongorongo script of Easter Island, the Vina symbols from about 5500 BCE, and the Indus script of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization are all controversial. Since none have been translated, it is unclear if they all represent real writing, protowriting, or something entirely different.

The earliest coherent texts date from around 2600 BCE, and Sumerian archaic (pre-cuneiform) writing and Egyptian hieroglyphs are usually regarded as the earliest authentic writing systems. Both developed out of their ancestors' proto-literate symbol systems between 3400 and 3100 BCE. The Proto-Elamite script belongs to roughly the same time frame.

writing methods

Writing systems are distinct from symbolic communication systems. For most writing systems, reading a text requires some knowledge of the spoken language that goes along with it. In contrast, it's not always necessary to have a prior understanding of a spoken language to use symbolic systems like information signs, paintings, maps, and mathematics. Every human group has its own language, which is thought by many to be a natural and essential aspect of mankind.

Writing system development has been intermittent, uneven, and delayed, and old oral communication systems have only been partially replaced. Writing systems generally develop more slowly after they are formed than their spoken counterparts and frequently preserve traits and idioms that have been lost to the spoken language.

Three writing standards are thought to apply to all writing systems. First, writing must be comprehensive; it must have a meaning or purpose, and it must make a point or be able to convey that message. Second, whether they are physical or digital, all writing systems must include some kind of symbol that can be created on a surface. In order to facilitate communication, the writing system's symbols must resemble spoken words or speech.

The greatest advantage of writing is that it gives society a way to regularly and thoroughly preserve information—something that the spoken word could not previously do as successfully. Writing enables communities to communicate knowledge, transmit information, and

stages of development

Sumer

An ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia, is believed to be the place where written language was first invented around 3200 BCE.

Beginning with the Neolithic pottery phase, when clay tokens were used to keep track of particular quantities of animals or other goods, writing first appeared. These tokens were initially imprinted on the exterior of spherical clay envelopes, which were later used to keep them. Afterwards, flat tablets were gradually introduced in place of the tokens, and signs were recorded using a stylus. Towards the end of the fourth millennium BCE, Uruk was where actual writing was first discovered. Other areas of the Near East quickly followed.

The earliest recorded account of the development of writing is found in a poem from ancient Mesopotamia:

The Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and wrote on it like a tablet because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat the message. It has never been possible to write on clay before.

Enmerkar and the King of Aratta, a Sumerian epic written around 1800 BCE

Although there is agreement among scholars as to the difference between prehistory and the history of early writing, there is disagreement as to when proto-writing became "real writing." The criteria are somewhat arbitrary. In the broadest sense, writing is a way of keeping track of information. It is made up of graphemes, which in turn can be made up of glyphs.

Many centuries of shattered inscriptions typically follow the advent of writing in a particular region. The presence of coherent texts in a culture's writing system is how historians determine a culture's "historicity".

Standard reconstruction of the development of writing. There is a possibility that the Egyptian script was invented independently from the Mesopotamian script.

A conventional "proto-writing to true writing" system follows a general series of developmental stages:

Picture writing system: glyphs (simplified pictures) directly represent objects and concepts. In connection with this, the following substages may be distinguished:

• Mnemonic: glyphs primarily as a reminder.

• Pictographic: glyphs directly represent an object or a concept such as (A) chronological, (B) notices, (C) communications, (D) totems, titles, and names, (E) religious, (F) customs, (G) historical, and (H) biographical.

• Ideographic: graphemes are abstract symbols that directly represent an idea or concept.

Pre-cuneiform tags, with drawing of goat or sheep and number (probably "10"): "Ten goats", Al-Hasakah, 3300–3100 BCE, Uruk culture.

Transitional system: graphemes refer not only to the object or idea that it represents but to its name as well.

• Phonetic system: graphemes refer to sounds or spoken symbols, and the form of the grapheme is not related to its meanings. This resolves itself into the following substages:

• Verbal: grapheme (logogram) represents a whole word.

• Syllabic: grapheme represents a syllable.

• Alphabetic: grapheme represents an elementary sound.

Designs on some of the labels or token from Abydos, carbon-dated to circa 3400–3200 BC and among the earliest form of writing in Egypt. They are remarkably similar to contemporary clay tags from Uruk, Mesopotamia.

The best known picture writing system of ideographic or early mnemonic symbols are:

• Jiahu symbols, carved on tortoise shells in Jiahu, c. 6600 BCE

• Vinča symbols (Tărtăria tablets), c. 5300 BCE[24]

• Early Indus script, c. 3100 BCE

In the Old World, true writing systems developed from neolithic writing in the Early Bronze Age (4th millennium BC).

Locations and timeframes

Comparative evolution

from pictograms to abstract shapes, in Mesopotamian cuneiforms, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters

Proto-writing

The first writing systems of the Early Bronze Age were not a sudden invention. Rather, they were a development based on earlier traditions of symbol systems that cannot be classified as proper writing, but have many of the characteristics of writing. These systems may be described as "proto-writing". They used ideographic or early mnemonic symbols to convey information, but it probably directly contained no natural language. These systems emerged in the early Neolithic period, as early as the 7th millennium BC, and include:

• The Jiahu symbols found carved in tortoise shells in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the 7th millennium BCE. Most archaeologists consider these not directly linked to the earliest true writing.

• Vinča symbols, sometimes called the "Danube script", are a set of symbols found on Neolithic era (6th to 5th millennia BCE) artifacts from the Vinča culture of Central Europe and Southeast Europe.

• The Dispilio Tablet of the late 6th millennium may also be an example of proto-writing.

• The Indus script, which from 3500 BCE to 1900 BCE was used for extremely short inscriptions.

The Dispilio Tablet

The Dispilio tablet is a wooden tablet bearing inscribed markings, unearthed during George Hourmouziadis's excavations of Dispilio in Greece, and carbon 14-dated to 5202 (± 123) BC.

It was discovered in 1993 in a Neolithic lakeshore settlement that occupied an artificial island near the modern village of Dispilio on Lake Kastoria in Kastoria, Western Macedonia, Greece.

Even after the Neolithic, a number of societies used proto-writing as a transitional form before adopting formal writing. Such a mechanism might have existed in the quipu of the Incas (15th century CE), often known as "talking knots". Another example is the pictographs created by Uyaquk before the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language developed the Yugtun syllabary around 1900.

Ancient writing

The Bronze Age saw the development of writing in a wide range of cultures. Indus script, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cretan hieroglyphs, Chinese logographs, Sumerian cuneiform writing, and the Olmec script of Mesoamerica are a few examples. Around 1600 BCE, the Chinese script most likely evolved apart from the Middle Eastern scripts. It is also generally accepted that the pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems, which include the Olmec and Maya scripts, had separate origins. In 2000 BCE, it is believed that the first real alphabetic writing was created for Hebrew laborers in the Sinai by assigning Semitic values to mostly Egyptian hieratic characters (see History of the alphabet and Proto-Sinaitic alphabet).

Ethiopia's Geez writing system is regarded as Semitic. With roots in the Meroitic Sudanese ideogram system, it is most likely of semi-independent origin. The majority of alphabets used today are either direct descendants of this one invention, many through the Phoenician alphabet, or were designed in direct response to it. The early Old Italic alphabet and Plautus (c. 750–250 BCE) were separated by around 500 years in Italy, while the Elder Futhark inscriptions and early works like the Abrogans (c. 200–750 CE) are separated by a similar amount of time in the case of the Germanic peoples.

Cuneiform writing

The first Sumerian script was derived from a system of clay tokens used to denote different types of goods. This had developed into a system of keeping accounts by the end of the fourth millennium BC, utilizing a stylus with a circular form that was impressed into soft clay at various angles to record numbers. A pointed stylus was used to gradually add pictographic lettering on this to show what was being counted. Writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the name "cuneiform") began to include phonetic features by the 29th century BCE and gradually replaced writing with a round stylus and a sharp stylus by about 2700–2500 BCE.

Cuneiform first started to represent Sumerian syllables around 2600 BCE. Ultimately, cuneiform writing evolved into a general-purpose system for writing numerals, syllables, and logograms. This alphabet was adapted to the Akkadian language starting in the 26th century BCE, and from there to others like Hurrian and Hittite. This writing system resembles Old Persian and Ugaritic scripts in appearance.

Hieroglyphics from Egypt

Literacy was concentrated among a well-educated elite of scribes, who played a crucial role in upholding the Egyptian empire through writing. To become scribes in the employ of temple, royal (pharaonic), and military authority, one had to come from a certain background.

According to Geoffrey Sampson, the general concept of expressing words from a language in writing was likely transmitted to Egypt via Sumerian Mesopotamia. Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into being a little after Sumerian script, and, possibly [were], invented under the influence of the latter." Despite the significance of early Egypt-Mesopotamia links, "no definitive judgment has been established as to the genesis of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt" due to the lack of direct evidence. However, it is stated and agreed upon that "a very compelling argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt" and that "the evidence for such direct influence remains fragile."

Egyptian writing does suddenly appear at that time, but Mesopotamia has an evolutionary history of sign usage in tokens dating back to around 8000 BCE. Since the 1990s, discoveries of glyphs at Abydos, dated to between 3400 and 3200 BCE, may challenge the conventional idea that the Mesopotamian symbol system predates the Egyptian one. These glyphs were discovered in tomb U-J at Abydos; they were written on ivory and most likely served as labels for other items discovered there.

Even though he acknowledged that Egypt's geographic location made it a receptacle for many influences, Egyptian scholar Gamal Mokhtar maintained that the inventory of hieroglyphic symbols originated from "fauna and flora used in the signs [which] are essentially African" and that in regards to writing, "we have seen that a purely Nilotic, therefore African origin not only is not excluded, but probably reflects the reality."

Elamite writing

The unintelligible Proto-Elamite writing first appears around 3100 BCE. Around the latter third millennium, it is thought to have evolved into Linear Elamite, which was later supplanted by Elamite Cuneiform, which was adapted from Akkadian.

Indus script

Most inscriptions containing these symbols are extremely short, making it difficult to judge whether or not these symbols constituted a writing system used to record the as yet unidentified language(s) of the Indus Valley civilisation.

The Indus script has been assigned to markings and symbols discovered at numerous Indus Valley civilization sites due to the hypothesis that they were used to transcribe the Harappan language. It is disputed whether the script, which was in use from roughly 3500 to 1900 BCE, is a Bronze Age writing script (logographic-syllabic) or merely proto-writing symbols. According to analysis, it was written in boustrophedon or from right to left.

early SEMITIC ALPHABETS

Around 1800 BCE in Ancient Egypt, the first "abjads," which mapped individual symbols to individual phonemes but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol, appeared as a representation of the language created there by Semitic workers. However, by that time, alphabetic principles had only a remote chance of being ingrained into Egyptian hieroglyphs for upwards of a millennium.

Did the Proto-Canaanite alphabet take its symbols independently of the hieroglyphs?

It is only until the end of the Bronze Age that the Proto-Sinaitic script separates into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (c. 1400 BCE), Byblos syllabary, and the South Arabian alphabet (c. 1200 BCE). These early abjads remained of minor significance for several decades. The untranslated Byblos syllabary most likely had some influence on the Proto-Canaanite, which in turn provided inspiration for the Ugaritic alphabet (c. 1300 BCE).

Anatolian hieroglyphs

The Hieroglyphic Luwian language was written down using Anatolian hieroglyphs, a native hieroglyphic script found in western Anatolia. Around the fourteenth century BCE, it initially appeared on royal seals of the Luwians.

Chinese characters

The corpus of inscriptions on oracle bones and brass from the late Shang dynasty is the earliest authenticated example of the Chinese script that has been found so far. The oldest of these is believed to date from about 1200 BCE.

There have been recent finds of tortoise-shell carvings from around 6000 BCE, such as Jiahu Script and Banpo Script, but it is debatable whether or not the carvings are complex enough to be considered writing. 3,172 cliff carvings from the period between 6000 and 5000 BCE have been found near Damaidi in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. They contain 8,453 different characters, including images of the sun, moon, stars, gods, and scenes of grazing or hunting.

Replica

of ancient Chinese script on an oracle turtle shell

These pictographs are thought to resemble the first Chinese characters that have been confirmed to be written. Writing in China would predate Mesopotamian cuneiform, traditionally recognized as the first manifestation of writing, by about 2,000 years if it were to be considered a written language. However, it is more likely that the inscriptions represent a type of proto-writing, comparable to the modern European Vinca script.

Early Greek and Cretan scripts

Cretan relics include hieroglyphic writing (early-to-mid-2nd millennium BCE, MM I to MM III, overlapping with Linear A from MM IIA at the earliest). The Mycenaean Greek writing system, Linear B, has been decoded, but Linear A has not yet been. The three overlapping, but distinct, writing systems can be categorized according to their chronological order and geographic distribution as follows:

• Cretan Hieroglyphic / Crete (eastward from the Knossos-Phaistos axis) / c. 2100−1700 BCE

• Linear A / Crete (except extreme southwest), Aegean Islands (Kea, Kythera, Melos, Thera), Greek mainland (Laconia) and west Minor Asia (Miletus and maybe Troy) / c. 1800−1450 BCE

• Linear B / Crete (Knossos), and mainland (Pylos, Mycenae, Thebes, Tiryns) / c. 1450−1200 BCE

The archaeological finds with signs of pre-alphabetic scripts in the Aegean

(Up) The finds with signs of Linear B script reach about 6,000 and constitute the majority of the pre-alphabetic written monuments of the Aegean.

(Middle) About 1,400 are the finds which imprint Linear A and make up a 11% of all pre-alphabetic inscriptions.

(Down) Cretan hieroglyphics occupies 2% of the available finds with only 400 finds.

Illustration: Dimosthenis Vasiloudis

Mesoamerica

The Cascajal Block, a stone slab with 3,000-year-old writing that predates the first Zapotec writing from around 500 BCE, was found in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It is an example of the oldest script in the Western Hemisphere.

Stela 12 and 13

from the southern end of Building L, in the Zapotec city of Monte Albán, Outside of Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Maya script is one of numerous pre-Columbian scripts found in Mesoamerica, and it appears to have been the most well-developed and extensively deciphered. The earliest clearly identifiable Maya inscriptions date to the third century BCE, and writing continued to be used until just before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century BCE. A combination of logograms and syllabic symbols, utilized in Maya writing, is somewhat reminiscent of current Japanese writing.

IRON AGE WRITING

The Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which was used into the Iron Age, is all that the Phoenician alphabet is (conventionally taken from a cut-off date of 1050 BCE). The Greek and Aramaic alphabets were derived from this alphabet. They eventually gave rise to the writing systems that are currently used everywhere from Western Asia to Africa and Europe. The Greek alphabet, on the other hand, was the first to use specific symbols to represent vowel sounds.

By Matt Baker

In the first centuries of the Common Era, the Greek and Latin alphabets gave rise to a number of European scripts, including the Runes, Gothic, and Cyrillic alphabets, while the Aramaic alphabet developed into the Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac abjads, the latter of which spread as far as Mongolian script. The Ge'ez abugida originated from the South Arabian alphabet. According to some academics, the Indian Brahmic family also descended from the Aramaic alphabet.

GRAKLIANI HILL WRITING

At Georgia's Grakliani Hill, behind a fallen altar from a temple dedicated to a fertility goddess from the seventh century BCE, an obscure script was uncovered in 2015. Grakliani's other temples' inscriptions, which depict animals, people, or decorative features, are different from these ones. Although its letters are rumored to be connected to ancient Greek and Aramaic, the script has no similarities to any known alphabet. In contrast, the earliest Armenian and Georgian letters come from the fifth century CE, right after the respective nations converted to Christianity. The inscription looks to be the oldest local alphabet ever uncovered in the entire Caucasus region. An portion of the inscription measuring 31 by 3 inches had been unearthed by September 2015.

Grakliani script on the basement of altar of goddess of fertility (XI-X c. BC)

Vakhtang Licheli, director of the State University's Institute of Archaeology, claims that "The writings on the temple's two altars have been kept in remarkably good condition. While the pedestal of the second altar is entirely covered with writings, the first altar has few clay letters carved into it." Unpaid students made the discovery. Inscriptions from Grakliani Hill were sent to Miami Laboratory in 2016 for beta analytic radiocarbon dating, which revealed that they were created between c. 1005 and c. 950 BCE.

WRITING IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD

When the Greeks adopted the Phoenician script for use with their own language in the early eighth century BCE, the history of the Greek alphabet officially began. The Greek and Phoenician alphabets share a lot of similarities in terms of their characters, and both alphabets nowadays are written in the same order. The Phoenician system's adapter(s) added three letters to the conclusion of the series, known as the "supplementals." The Greek alphabet evolved into a number of different forms.

Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens

One was utilized in southern Italy and west of Athens and is known as Western Greek or Chalcidian. The other variant, known as Eastern Greek, was spoken by the Athenians and in modern-day Turkey before spreading over the rest of the Greek-speaking world. The Greeks initially elected to write like the Phoenicians, from right to left, but subsequently switched to left to right. The lines would then alternately read from left to right, then from right to left, and so on. On occasion, though, the writer would begin the next line where the preceding one ended. Up until the sixth century, this style of writing, called "boustrophedon," mirrored the course of an ox-drawn plough.

Italic scripts and Latin

Cippus Perusinus

Etruscan writing near Perugia, Italy, the precursor of the Latin alphabet

All of the contemporary European scripts have their roots in Greek. The Latin alphabet, named after the Latins, a central Italian people who came to rule Europe with the emergence of Rome, is the most widely used descendant of the Greek script. Around the fifth century BCE, the Etruscan civilization, which employed a multitude of Italic scripts descended from the western Greeks, taught the Romans how to write. The other Old Italic scripts have not survived in very large quantities due to the cultural hegemony of the Roman state, and the Etruscan language is largely extinct.

WRITING DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

Roman rule in Western Europe fell apart, and the Persian Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire became the main centers of literary development. Latin, which was never a major literary language, lost prominence quickly (except within the Roman Catholic Church). Greek and Persian were the two main literary languages, but Syriac and Coptic were also significant.

Arabic quickly became a significant literary language in the area as a result of the development of Islam in the 7th century. Greek's status as a scholarly language soon lost ground to Arabic and Persian. The Turkish and Persian languages now use Arabic script as their principal writing system. The development of the cursive scripts for Greek, the Slavic languages, Latin, and other languages was also greatly inspired by this script.

The Hindu-Arabic numeral system was also extended throughout Europe thanks to the Arabic language. The modern Spanish city of Cordoba had emerged as one of the world's leading intellectual hubs by the start of the second millennium and was home to the largest library at the time. Its location at the meeting point of the Islamic and Western Christian worlds encouraged intellectual growth and written exchange between the two cultures.

THE MODERN ERA AND THE RENAISSANCE

By the 14th century, Western Europe had experienced a renaissance, which had temporarily increased the significance of Greek while slowly restoring Latin's status as an important literary language. In Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, a comparable but smaller emergence took place. As the Islamic Golden Era came to an end, Arabic and Persian also started to slowly lose ground. In order to codify the phonologies of the various languages, the Latin alphabet underwent several alterations as a result of the rebirth of literary development in Western Europe.

Writing has undergone steady change throughout history, in large part because of the emergence of new technologies. Technology advancements such as the printing press, computer, mobile phone, and pen have all changed how and what is written as well as the medium in which it is generated. Characters can now be generated with a button press rather than a hand motion, especially with the development of digital technology like the computer and the smartphone.

A Hidden Landscape We Can No Longer See May Explain The Mystery of The Pyramids

Seeing the famed pyramids of Giza as they stand today – immovable, impenetrable fortresses surrounded by windswept sands and a sprawling metropolis – it's hard to imagine the day they were built.

These stone labyrinths, constructed to honor the dead and carry them into the afterlife, were erected around 4,500 years ago without modern technology and with astounding precision.

But Egyptians needed a whole lot more than a few primitive ramps to ferry the hugely heavy stone blocks into position.

A new study suggests favorable environmental conditions enabled the construction of the pyramids of Giza, with an ancient arm of the Nile River serving as a navigable conduit for freight transport.

"To edify the plateau's pyramids, tombs, and temples, it now seems that ancient Egyptian engineers took advantage of the Nile and its annual floods, using an ingenious system of canals and basins that formed a port complex at the foot of the Giza plateau," physical geographer Hader Sheisha of Aix-Marseille University in France and colleagues write in their paper.

"However, there is a paucity of environmental evidence regarding when, where, and how these ancient landscapes evolved."

Archeologists have thought for some time that Egyptian pyramid builders might have dredged waterways from the Nile River to form canals and harbors, harnessing annual floods that would act like a hydraulic lift to transport building materials.

The port complex that archeologists hypothesize serviced the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure currently lies more than 7 kilometers (or 4.3 miles) west of the present-day Nile River. The inlets also had to be deep enough to keep barges laden with stones afloat.

Core drillings taken during urban engineering works around modern-day Giza have yielded stratigraphic evidence of rock layers that are consistent with an ancient branch of the Nile extending towards the base of the pyramids.

But questions linger about how Egyptians engineered water access to the pyramids of Giza. At the time they were being built, northern Egypt was in the throes of some extreme climatic changes, with flash flooding repeatedly ravaging the Lost City of the Pyramids, Heit el-Ghurab, which housed seasonal workers.

In this study, the researchers turned to fossilized pollen grains to paint a more detailed picture of the river system as it ran millennia ago. Pollen grains can be preserved in ancient sediments and have, in other studies, been used to reconstruct past climates and vegetated landscapes that look wildly different today.

Extracting pollen grains from five cores drilled on the present-day Giza floodplain east of the pyramid complex, the team identified an abundance of grass-like flowering plants which line the banks of the Nile River and marsh plants that grow in lake-edge environments.

This, they say, reveals the presence of a permanent waterbody that cut through the Giza floodplain and swelled thousands of years ago.

From there, they traced the rise and fall of water levels in the Khufu branch of the Nile River over 8,000 years of Egyptian dynastic history, relating their results to other historical records.

"Our 8,000-y reconstruction of Khufu-branch levels improves understanding of fluvial landscapes at the time of the construction of the Giza Pyramid Complex," Sheisha and colleagues write.

"The Khufu branch remained at a high-water level… during the reigns of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, facilitating the transportation of construction materials to the Giza pyramid complex."

Location of the cores (red dots) on the Giza floodplain. (Sheisha et al., PNAS, 2022)

But after the reign of king Tutankhamun, who ascended around 1349 to 1338 BC, the Khufu branch of the Nile gradually declined until it reached its lowest documented levels in the last 8,000 years towards the end of the dynastic period.

That fall correlates with chemical markers in the teeth and bones of Egyptian mummies that similarly suggest an arid environment, along with other historical records.

Like with all archaeological studies, however, chronological date ranges – of pharaohs' reigns and environmental change – can vary widely, so we should take these results with a grain of salt.

But by linking environmental and historical data, the study provides much more direct evidence than when archaeologists looked for missing fractals – exquisite, self-repeating patterns found often in nature – to deduce that ancient Egyptians might have carved out river channels when building the Dahshur pyramids, further south of Giza.

"It is difficult to believe the gigantic footprint the Egyptians have left," University of Innsbruck geologist Arne Ramisch told New Scientist at the time.

The researchers behind this latest study suggest similar approaches could be used to reconstruct ancient waterscapes that lapped other Egyptian pyramid complexes, including the Dahshur necropolis, when these monumental edifices were built.

The research was published in PNAS.

US authorities seize 3000-year-old Egyptian artefact

A potentially 3,000-year-old canopic jar was found as it was being smuggled through the city.

[Getty]

While Memphis, TN has plenty of landmarks paying homage to its ancient Egyptian namesake, federal officials were likely not expecting to find a potentially 3,000-year-old ancient Egyptian artifact being smuggled through the city.

The artifact, an Egyptian canopic jar lid of the funeral deity named Imsety, had been declared as an antique stone sculpture over 100 years old and had been sent from a dealer in Europe to a private buyer in the US. Canopic jars were used to hold the internal organs of mummies, with Imsety specifically protecting the deceased's liver.

In ancient Egyptian theology, Imsety was one of the four sons of Horus and was represented with a human-headed figure.

An ancient Imsety canopic jar lid seized by US Customs and Border Protection.

(photo credit: US Customs and Border Protection)

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) worked with subject matter experts at the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology to determine that the artifact was authentic and is likely from the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, 1069 BC to 653 BC.

The artifact is protected by bilateral treaties and falls under the category of archaeological materials of cultural property imported into the US that is subject to seizure and forfeiture (CPIA 19 USC 2609). The CPIA (Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983) restricts the import of some archaeological and ethnological materials into the US.

The Pyramid of Memphis, Tennessee (credit: Joel יוֹאֵל/Wikimedia Commons)

The dealer who shipped the item made contradictory statements about its declared value, and CBP seized it and turned it over to Homeland Security Investigation for further examination.

Memphis's Egypt connection

Memphis, TN is named for the ancient capital of Egypt and is home to the 10th largest pyramid in the world. One of the entrances to the University of Memphis hosts a large replica of the Colossus of Ramesses and the city's zoo features a grand entrance modeled after an Egyptian temple.

Book of the Dead: The ancient Egyptian guide to the afterlife

The 'Book of the Dead' guided ancient Egyptians in the underworld.

A section of the "Book of the Dead," a papyrus manuscript with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations. Here we see Ani, Scribe of the Sacred Revenues of all the gods of Thebes, and administrator of the Granaries of the Lords of Abydos, and his wife Tutu before a table of offerings of meat, cakes, fruit, flowers, etc. Hymn in honor of the Sun God Ra at his rising. (Image credit: duncan1890 via Getty Images)

The "Book of the Dead" is a modern-day name given to a series of ancient Egyptian texts that the Egyptians believed would help the dead navigate the underworld, as well as serving other purposes. Copies of these texts were sometimes buried with the dead. 

The "'Book of the Dead' denotes the relatively large corpus of mortuary texts that were typically copied onto papyrus scrolls and deposited in burials of the New Kingdom [circa 1550 B.C. to 1070 B.C.]," wrote Peter Dorman, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Chicago, in an article published in the book "Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt(opens in new tab)" (Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 2017). 

The "Book of the Dead" became popular during the New Kingdom, but it was derived from the "Coffin Texts" — so named because they were often written on coffins — and the "Pyramid Texts" that were inscribed on the walls of pyramids, Dorman noted. The Coffin Texts were popular during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2030 B.C. to 1640 B.C.), while the Pyramid Texts first appeared in the Old Kingdom's fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.).

BOOK OF THE DEAD'S SPELLS

The "Book of the Dead" includes individual chapters, or spells. "The ancient Egyptians used the word rꜢ to designate each composition. The word rꜢ is generally translated as 'spell' or 'utterance.' It is written with the hieroglyph of a human mouth because the term was related to speech," Foy Scalf, the head of research archives at the University of Chicago who holds a doctorate in Egyptology, told Live Science in an email. 

There wasn't a standard book found in every tomb. Instead, each copy contained different spells. "No one such 'book' contains all known spells, but only a judicious sampling," Dorman wrote, noting that "no single 'Book of the Dead' scroll is identical to another."

The ancient Egyptians called these texts the "Book of Coming Forth by Day," Dorman wrote, noting that this name reflected "the Egyptians' belief that the spells were provided to assist the deceased in entering the afterlife as a glorified spirit, or akh." 

These texts "prepared the Egyptians for life after death and [had] the power to conjure up all the parts of one's body for the spiritual journey," wrote Barry Kemp, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, in his book "How to Read the Egyptian Book of the Dead(opens in new tab)" (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007). "The Book of the Dead, by means of its spells, conferred on the owner the power to navigate successfully — for eternity — through [the underworld's] various realms" Kemp wrote.

A section of the "Book of the Dead." Here we see judgment of the dead, with the weighing of the heart ritual. (Image credit: Photos.com via Getty Images)

Some spells appear more frequently in copies of the "Book of the Dead" than others, and some were considered almost essential. One of these essential spells is now known as Spell 17, which discusses the importance of the sun-god Re (also called Ra), one of the most important Egyptian gods, Dorman noted. 

The ancient Egyptians believed that the body of the deceased could be renewed in the afterlife leaving a person to navigate a place of "gods, demons, mysterious locations and potential obstacles," wrote Kemp. The chapters of the "Book of the Dead" described some of the things one might encounter — such as the weighing of the heart ceremony in which a person's deeds were weighed against the feather of the goddess Maat, a deity associated with justice. 

The spells were often illustrated. "Pictures [were] of great importance in the New Kingdom collection of funerary texts now called the Egyptian Book of the Dead," wrote Geraldine Pinch, an Egyptologist, in her book "Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction(opens in new tab)" (Oxford University Press, 2004). "Many owners of Books of the Dead would have been unable to read the hieroglyphic texts, but they could understand the complex vignettes that summarized the contents of the spells" Pinch wrote. 

The spells were not gender specific. It didn't have "spells that were used particularly by women" or spells that were used primarily by men, Marissa Stevens, an Egyptologist and assistant director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Live Science in an email.

MULTIPLE PURPOSES

This small papyrus features "Book of the Dead" spells 100 and 129. On the top are the text and vignette for spell 129. At the left of the vignette is the god Osiris holding a was-scepter; behind him stands a large djed-pillar. In front of the god is an offering table with food topped by a large lotus flower. On the right is water with two boats. In the left one is the phoenix, while five deities stand in the right one. The lower part of the papyrus features spell 100. This time, Osiris is depicted on the right side, again with a djed-pillar behind him. In front of the god is the emblem for the east, and to the left of this is a boat being punted by a woman (the deceased) with a long oar. Behind her sits the sun god and then the phoenix. (Image credit: Rogers Fund, 1924/The Met/ CC0 1.0)

The "Book of the Dead" is most famous for its guidance to the deceased, but it likely also served other purposes. "Too often has the 'Book of the Dead' been called a 'guide' to the afterlife; it was so much more than that," Scalf told Live Science. "Probably the most important function of the 'Book of the Dead,' which can only be inferred from indirect evidence, is that it helped to assuage people's fears about the unknowns of death," Scalf said, noting that wealthy ancient Egyptians also arranged to have their bodies mummified and get their coffins decorated with religious texts in an effort to control what happened to them once they died. 

Additionally, the spells in the "Book of the Dead" could be used when a person was still alive. "Most of the spells from the 'Book of the Dead' are not designed to 'navigate' the underworld," Scalf said. "Most of the spells are about transformation and transcendent experience. In the earthly life, a ritualist may use rites and incantations to transcend everyday experience [use the spells in a ceremony to have a religious experience]," said Scalf said, noting that "many of the spells include instructions for how to use them on Earth" — which shows that they were likely used by living people too, Scalf said.

Many of these spells could then also be used in the afterlife, the Egyptians believed. "A person may use these same spells to help transform their existence, but in many ways it is a similar transcendent experience. The spells are largely about elevating to the plane of existence of the gods; only then would the person travel the underworld along with the gods themselves," Scalf said.

COPIES FOR BURIAL

On the left, Osiris-Seker stands in a shrine in mummified form. The name Osiris-Seker represents the fusion of Seker, the god of death, with Osiris, the god of resurrection. The Papyrus of Ani ends with the tomb of Ani, the white building with the pyramidal top, located at the foot of the mountain of Amenta, at Thebes. Emerging from the mountain's slope into a papyrus thicket is the head of Hathor in the form of the divine cow. This goddess, mistress of the necropolis, who welcomes the arrivals of the deceased to the underworld, is also associated with the protection of women. Standing before a lavish presentation of luxuriant offerings is another manifestation of Hathor, known as Tawaret. She has the head and body of a hippopotamus, the legs of a lioness and the tail of a crocodile. (Image credit: Nastasic via Getty Images)

Many copies of the "Book of the Dead" that have been discovered were unearthed in tombs and were likely not read much. And many of the "Book of the Dead" manuscripts that survive today were probably not read much before they were buried with the deceased, Scalf told Live Science.

"The longest of the papyrus manuscripts is over thirty meters [98 feet] in length; it would have been a very difficult manuscript to navigate when reading. These manuscripts [found in tombs] were prestige copies, largely meant for deposition in the grave," Scalf said. 

Additionally, spells from the "Book of the Dead" were not always written down on manuscripts. For instance, Scalf noted that the spells were sometimes written down on the bandages that wrapped a person's mummy. They were also inscribed on the walls of tombs and even on Tutankhamun's golden death mask. 

It's possible that people who couldn't afford a copy of the spells may have had the spells read to them. "If you did not have a scroll in your tomb, hired priests or family members might have recited it for you during the funeral, or when visiting the tomb afterwards," Lara Weiss, a curator of the Egyptian and Nubian collection at the Netherland's National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, told Live Science in an email. 

The last known copies of the "Book of the Dead" were created in the first or second century A.D., Scalf wrote in a study published in the book "Book of the Dead: Becoming God in Ancient Egypt." Another series of funerary texts known as the "Books of Breathing" became popular in its place — which was derived, in part, from the "Book of the Dead," Scalf wrote.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• The "Book of the Dead for the Chantress of Amun Nauny" is more than 17 feet [5 meters] long and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art(opens in new tab) in New York City.

• The Google Arts & Culture(opens in new tab) website has high resolution images of copies of the "Book of the Dead" from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.

• The "papyrus of Ani" is another beautiful copy of the "Book of the Dead" in the British Museum(opens in new tab).

Originally published on Live Science.

Archeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb may have stolen treasure, new evidence suggests

Howard Carter stole Tutankhamun’s treasure, new evidence suggests

100 years after the discovery of the tomb of the boy king, a previously unpublished letter backs up long-held suspicions

Harry Burton, Howard Carter examine King Tut's sarcophagus. Photo courtesy the Griffith Institute, colorization by Dynamichrome.

Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, was long suspected by Egyptians of having helped himself to treasures before the vault was officially opened. But while rumours have swirled for generations, proof has been hard to come by.

Now an accusation that Carter handled property “undoubtedly stolen from the tomb” has emerged in a previously unpublished letter sent to him in 1934 by an eminent British scholar within his own excavation team.

It was written by Sir Alan Gardiner, a leading philologist. Carter had enlisted Gardiner to translate hieroglyphs found in the 3,300-year-old tomb, and later gave him a “whm amulet”, used for offerings to the dead, assuring him that it had not come from the tomb.

Gardiner showed the amulet to Rex Engelbach, the then British director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and was dismayed to be told that it had indeed come from the tomb as it matched other examples – all made from the same mould.

Firing off a letter to Carter, he enclosed Engelbach’s damning verdict, which reads: “The whm amulet you showed me has been undoubtedly stolen from the tomb of Tutankhamun.”

The sarcophagus of the boy pharaoh King Tutankhamun is on display in his newly renovated tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt January 31, 2019. (Reuters)

Gardiner told Carter: “I deeply regret having been placed in so awkward a position.”

But he added: “I naturally did not tell Engelbach that I obtained the amulet from you.”

The letters, now in a private collection, will be published in a forthcoming book from Oxford University Press, Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World

Its author, Bob Brier, a leading Egyptologist at Long Island University, told the Observer that suspicions about Carter helping himself to treasures have long been rumoured: “But now there’s no doubt about it.”

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery by Carter and his financial backer, Lord Carnarvon, of the tomb of the boy king, filled with thrones, chariots and thousands of objects needed in the next world. Over the next decade, Carter supervised their removal and transportation down the Nile to Cairo to be displayed in the Egyptian Museum.

Some Egyptologists have challenged Carter’s claim that the tomb’s treasures had been looted in antique times. In 1947, in an obscure scientific journal in Cairo, Alfred Lucas, one of Carter’s employees, reported that Carter secretly broke open the door to the burial chamber himself, before appearing to reseal it and cover the opening.

Howard Carter at the entrance to an Egyptian archaeological site in 1923. ( Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Brier said: “They were suspected of having broken into the tomb before its official opening, taking out artefacts, including jewellery, sold after their respective deaths. It’s been known that Carter somehow had items, and people have suspected that he might have helped himself, but these letters are dead proof.

“He certainly never admitted it. We don’t have any official denial. But he was locked out of the tomb for a while by the Egyptian government. There was a lot of bad feeling, and they thought he was stealing things.”

In his book, he writes that the Egyptians were unable to prove their suspicions and were convinced, for example, that Carter had been planning to steal a wooden head of Tutankhamun found in his possession: “The Egyptian authorities had entered and inspected Tomb No. 4, which Carter and the team had used for storage of antiquities, and discovered a beautiful lifesize wooden head of Tutankhamun as a youth.

“It had been packed in a Fortnum & Mason crate but it had never been mentioned in Carter’s records of the finds, nor in the volume describing the contents of the antechamber…. Carter argued that it had simply been discovered in the rubble in the descending passage.”

Brier said: “Later, we do find objects on the Egyptian antiquities market from his estate that clearly came from the tomb.”

Some entered museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which announced in 2010 that it would send back to Egypt 19 objects it acquired between the 1920s and 1940s as they “can be attributed with certainty to Tutankhamun’s tomb”.

In his 1992 book on Carter, the late Harry James drew on Carter letters in the Griffith Institute at the University of Oxford, which refer to a row with Gardiner that led to an amulet’s return to Cairo.

The significance of the previously unpublished correspondence is that the accusation came from a leading expert who was actually involved in the first excavation.

Carter would have struggled to challenge Engelbach, who had “too much authority and really knew his stuff”, Brier said.

'Black' or 'white'? Ancient Egyptian race mystery now solved

A study describes how researchers conducted the first successful DNA sequencing on ancient Egyptian mummies.

• The race of the ancient Egyptians has long been a controversial subject of debate.

• Researchers used genetic information derived from mummies to shed light on the ancestry of the ancient Egyptians.

• The results suggest that the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant.

Egyptologists, writers, scholars, and others, have argued the race of the ancient Egyptians since at least the 1970s. Some today believe they were sub-Saharan Africans. We can see this interpretation portrayed in Michael Jackson’s 1991 music video for Remember the Time from his Dangerous album. The video, a 10-minute mini-film, includes performances by Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson.

Reactionaries, meanwhile, say that there’s never been any significant black civilizations—an utter falsehood, of course. There were several in fact, highly advanced African empires and kingdoms throughout history. Curiously, some extreme Right groups have even used blood group data to proclaim a Nordic origin to King Tutankhamun and his brethren.

The problem, it was thought, is that mummy DNA couldn’t be sequenced. But a group of international researchers, using unique methods, have overcome the barriers to do just that. They found that the ancient Egyptians were most closely related to the peoples of the Near East, particularly from the Levant. This is the Eastern Mediterranean which today includes the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. The mummies used were from the New Kingdom and a later period, (a period later than the Middle Kingdom) when Egypt was under Roman rule.

Modern Egyptians share 8% of their genome with central Africans, far more than ancient ones, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications. The influx of sub-Saharan genes only occurred within the last 1,500 years. This could be attributed to the trans-Saharan slave trade or just from regular, long distance trade between the two regions. Improved mobility on the Nile during this period increased trade with the interior, researchers claim.

Egypt over the span of antiquity was conquered many times including by Alexander the Great, by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and more. Researchers wanted to know if these constant waves of invaders caused any major genetic changes in the populace over time. Group leader Wolfgang Haak at the Max Planck Institute in Germany said in a press release: “The genetics of the Abusir el-Meleq community did not undergo any major shifts during the 1,300 year timespan we studied, suggesting that the population remained genetically relatively unaffected by foreign conquest and rule.”

The study was led by archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause, also of the Max Planck Institute. Historically, there’s been a problem finding intact DNA from ancient Egyptian mummies. “The hot Egyptian climate, the high humidity levels in many tombs and some of the chemicals used in mummification techniques, contribute to DNA degradation and are thought to make the long-term survival of DNA in Egyptian mummies unlikely,” the study noted.

It was also thought that, even if genetic material were recovered, it may not be reliable. Despite this, Krause and colleagues have been able to introduce robust DNA sequencing and verification techniques, and completed the first successful genomic testing on ancient Egyptian mummies.

Each came from Abusir el-Meleq, an archaeological site situated along the Nile, 70 miles (115 km) south of Cairo. This necropolis there houses mummies which display aspects revealing a dedication to the cult of Osiris, the green-skinned god of the afterlife.

First, the mitochondrial genomes from 90 of mummies were taken. From these, Krause and colleagues found that they could get the entire genomes from just three of the mummies in all. For this study, scientists took teeth, bone, and soft tissue samples. The teeth and bones offered the most DNA. They were protected by the soft tissue which has been preserved through the embalming process.

Researchers took these samples back to a lab in Germany. They began by sterilizing the room. Then they put the samples under UV radiation for an hour to sterilize them. From there, they were able to perform DNA sequencing.

Scientists also gathered data on Egyptian history and archaeological data of northern Africa, to give their discoveries some context. They wanted to know what changes had occurred over time. To find out, they compared the mummies’ genomes to that of 100 modern Egyptians and 125 Ethiopians. “For 1,300 years, we see complete genetic continuity,” Krause said.

The oldest mummy sequenced was from the New Kingdom, 1,388 BCE, when Egypt was at the height of its power and glory. The youngest was from 426 CE, when the country was ruled from Rome. The ability to acquire genomic data on ancient Egyptians is a dramatic achievement, which opens up new avenues of research.

One limitation according to their report, “all our genetic data were obtained from a single site in Middle Egypt and may not be representative for all of ancient Egypt.” In southern Egypt they say, the genetic makeup of the people may have been different, being closer to the interior of the continent.

Researchers in future want to determine exactly when sub-Saharan African genes seeped into the Egyptian genome and why. They’ll also want to know where ancient Egyptians themselves came from. To do so, they’ll have to identify older DNA from, as Krause said, “Back further in time, in prehistory.”

Using high-throughput DNA sequencing and cutting-edge authentication techniques, researchers proved they could retrieve reliable DNA from mummies, despite the unforgiving climate and damaging embalming techniques.

Further testing will likely contribute much knowledge to our understanding of the ancient Egyptians and perhaps even those from other places as well, helping to fill in the gaps in humanity’s collective memory.

To learn about the latest Egyptian archaeological find, click here:

The Secret 'Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids': A Restricted Site That Turned into a Military Base

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BY DIMOSTHENIS VASILOUDIS

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Unfinished Wonders: In Zawyet el-Aryan, there are remains of two unfinished Egyptian pyramids (around 2700–2600 BC), the Layer Pyramid and the Unfinished Northern Pyramid.

The ancient wonders of Egypt have always captivated the imaginations of historians, archaeologists, and adventurers alike. While the iconic Giza Pyramids, like the Great Pyramid of Khufu, stand tall and well-preserved, there are lesser-known monuments that hold secrets hidden beneath their enigmatic structures. Among these mysteries are the Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids, comprising the Layer Pyramid and the Unfinished Northern Pyramid, standing as silent witnesses to Egypt's distant past.

The Layer Pyramid

The Layer Pyramid, believed to have been constructed during the reign of Pharaoh Khaba in the Third Dynasty, dates back to approximately 2670 BC. While its core remains largely unexplored, the surrounding area boasts large mastabas, which are believed to have served as dwellings for high-ranking officials. This indicates the royal significance of Zawyet el-Aryan in ancient Egypt.

The Unfinished Northern Pyramid

The Unfinished Northern Pyramid, sometimes referred to as the Pyramid of Baka or Bikheris, is a testament to the remarkable architectural prowess of the Old Kingdom period. Archaeologists and Egyptologists suggest that this pyramid, a colossal structure, belongs to the early or mid-4th Dynasty, dating from 2613–2494 BC. Yet the identity of its builder remains a subject of debate among scholars.

One of the intriguing aspects of the Unfinished Pyramid is the presence of numerous inscriptions within its chamber and descending stairway, written in black and red ink. These inscriptions hold clues to the pyramid's owner, but the correct reading of the cartouche name presents a challenge. Various interpretations have been proposed, from Nebka to Seth-Ka, leaving us with a tantalizing mystery.

Egyptologists and historians continue to debate the dating of the pyramid of Baka. They point to several pieces of graffiti made of black and red ink, which were found in the chamber and in the descending stairway. Alessandro Barsanti recorded at least 67 inscriptions.

The main problem is the correct reading of the cartouche name found within at least six ink inscriptions. While the lower and therefore second hieroglyphic sign is certainly a Ka-symbol, the first sign is illegible. Unfortunately, the excavator, Alessandro Barsanti, made no facsimiles of the inscriptions and made rather slipshod handdrawings instead, so that the first hieroglyph remains indecipherable.

As a consequence, there are several alternative readings of the cartouche name: Kurt Sethe reads Nebka ("His Ka is the lord"), Jean-Philippe Lauer reads Bik-Ka ("His Ka is divine"), Peter Kaplony reads Schena-Ka ("His Ka is forceful"), and Gaston Maspero reads Nefer-Ka ("His Ka is beautiful or flawless"). Wolfhart Westendorf even proposes the depiction of a giraffe, an animal that was seen as wise and a bedizen with shamanistic powers.

Jürgen von Beckerath and George Reisner instead think that the pyramid was planned as the tomb for a well-attested prince of the 4th Dynasty named Baka, a son of King Djedefre. Aidan Dodson instead sees a sitting Seth-animal and therefore reads the name found in the pyramid as Seth-Ka ("Seth is my Ka").

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Research history

The Unfinished Pyramid of Zawyet El-Aryan first garnered attention in the mid-19th century when German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius documented it as "Pyramid XIII." Subsequent explorations by Italian archaeologist Alessandro Barsanti in the early 20th century uncovered the monumental scale of this structure, leaving an indelible impression on Egyptologists like Gaston Maspero.

The pyramid shaft was examined more closely in 1904–1905 by the Italian archaeologist Alessandro Barsanti. Gaston Maspero, then director-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, visited Barsanti's excavations and was struck by the monumental size of the construction. He writes:

... I hope that the best informed amongst the tourists will come to admire the monument: the pleasure they will experience during this trip is worth the two or three hours it will take. At first, the immensity of the task undertaken by the Egyptians will not appear to them, it is only at the bottom of the stairway, when they will walk upon the granite pavement that it will become obvious. It is not that anything in particular when examined in details is remarkable or out of the ordinary, but the general feeling is one of those one never forgets. The size and richness of the materials, the perfection of the cuts and joints, the peerless finish of the granit sarcophagus, the boldness of structure and the sheer height of the walls, everything comes together to compose this so far unique ensemble. It is an awe inspiring shock and nowhere is the power and mastery of the old Egyptian architects so suddenly and strongly obvious as here.

Unfortunately, World War I and Barsanti's untimely death in 1917 halted further excavations, consigning the pyramid to obscurity until 1954. It was then that the pyramid's striking landscape was chosen as a backdrop for the film "Land of the Pharaohs," prompting the clearance of sand and rubble that had concealed the site.

The landscape of Zawyet El Aryan seemed to be the perfect place, and the pyramid of Baka was chosen as a backdrop for the movie. Consequentially, the shaft and its surroundings were cleared of the sand and rubble that had covered the area since Barsanti's excavations.

Superstructure and Substructure

The knowledge surrounding the superstructure of this pyramid remains exceptionally limited. Only the square base, hewn from natural bedrock, has been completed, measuring an impressive 200 meters by 200 meters (660 feet by 660 feet). There are faint remnants suggesting the presence of a surrounding pedestal, likely intended to support a limestone covering. Unfortunately, the exact dimensions and planned slope of the pyramid remain elusive due to the absence of covering blocks or the pyramidion, and it is worth noting that pyramid pedestals were consistently larger than the pyramid's base itself. This leaves room for speculation that the original design may have intended a notably smaller structure.

The substructure of the pyramid, on the other hand, presents a more detailed picture. It comprises a T-shaped shaft, with the corridor oriented from south to north and the chamber extending from east to west. Intriguingly, the entire shaft lacks any remaining ceiling, raising the possibility that it was never roofed. A steep stairway descends to the chamber, yet midway along its length, it encounters a horizontal surface of unknown purpose. The walls of the shaft are remarkably smooth but have never been adorned with stones, and regrettably, the chamber itself was left incomplete. Only the chamber's floor was fully realized and paved with massive granite blocks, each measuring 4.5 meters (15 feet) in length, 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in thickness, and weighing up to an astonishing 9 tons each.

Within close proximity to the western extremity of the chamber, an unusual vat was unearthed. Sporting an oval shape, it was embedded into one of the stone blocks constituting the chamber's floor. The intriguing aspect is that this vat appears to have been brought into the chamber during the foundation's construction, as its dimensions render it impossible to pass through the passageway leading to the chamber. The presence of an intact oval lid suggests that the vat was sealed at some point. Although it's been reported by Barsanti that traces of a substance were discovered within the vat, regrettably, these substances were never subjected to closer examination and have since been lost to time. Furthermore, Barsanti claimed to have come across a damaged dedication tablet bearing the name of King Djedefre.

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The alignment of the pyramid complex, intriguingly, bears a striking resemblance to that of the pyramid of Djedefre. It encompasses a vast enclosure wall measuring 465 meters by 420 meters (1,526 feet by 1,378 feet), within which one would expect to find a mortuary temple. However, the absence of any progress beyond the initial layer of the pyramid's construction has resulted in the surrounding complex remaining equally unfinished. As a consequence, there are no discernible traces of a mortuary temple, a causeway, a valley temple, or any other structures associated with ancient Egyptian religious and funerary practices.

Access to the Military Restricted Area of Zawyet el-Aryan Pyramids

 

Since 1964, the Unfinished Pyramid of Zawyet El-Aryan has been within a restricted military zone, prohibiting further excavations and leading to the unfortunate overbuilding of the surrounding necropolis with military structures. The shaft has even been misused as a local dump, casting uncertainty on its present condition.

Although Zawyet el Aryan is not an easy place to get to, some bespoke tour operators may offer guided visits. Only an 18 minute drive from the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Zawyet el Aryan Pyramids are a half hour drive out of Giza via the ring road and Route 75M.

The Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids, particularly the enigmatic Unfinished Northern Pyramid, continue to baffle historians and archaeologists alike. While we may never decipher the true identity of its builder or unravel all its mysteries, these ancient structures stand as testaments to the enduring allure of Egypt's past.

In the shadow of the iconic Giza Pyramids, the Zawyet El-Aryan Pyramids remind us that the mysteries of history and archaeology are not limited to well-known sites but extend to the lesser-known, enigmatic gems that still hold secrets beneath the sands of time.

The 'Ramesseum Onomasticon'; Maybe the Earliest Record of a Knowledge Organization System

The Ramessum Onomasticon, which dates from the end of the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt, no earlier than the reign of Ramesses IX, may be the earliest surviving record of a knowledge organization system.

"Papyrus Ramesseum D (P. Berlin 10495). Frame 6. Papyrus written on the recto in hieratic script. The recto contains an onomasticon. The text is written in numbered horizontal lines with the item's determinatives arranged in a separate sub-column. This frame contains three pages, with lines 249-278. These lines contain bread and cakes, grain and body-parts. The papyrus was originally a half-height roll.

"The papyrus is part of the collection of papyri found with a bundle of pens in a chest from a plundered late 13th dynasty tomb under the Ramesseum, apparently belonging to someone like a lector priest. Two of the papyri from the chest are in the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection Berlin (P. Ramesseum A and D); the rest are in the British Museum. The objects found with the papyri are in the Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge and the Manchester Museum"

Image Source: www.britishmuseum.org

This document is preserved in papyri called the Onomasticon of Amenope, an onomastics compilation that began in the Middle Kingdom. The Ramessum Onomasticon is an administrative/literary categorization of 610 entities organized hierarchically, rather than a list of words (glossary). It is known from ten fragments including versions on papyrus, board, leather, and pottery. Of the nine surviving copies, that preserved in the Golénischeff papyrus is the most complete.

"The first copy of the Onomasticon of Amenope was discovered in 1890 at al-Hibah, Egypt. It was subsequently purchased in 1891 in Cairo by the Russian Egyptologist Vladimir Golenishchev. It was found in a jar together with the Report of Wenamun and the Tale of Woe.A partial copy was found on the back side of the EA10474 papyrus available at the British Museum. It was analysed by Herbin.

"Its content includes many groupings, including heavenly objects, towns, peoples, offices, buildings, types of land, agricultural produce, beverages and oxen parts. It lists several different groups of 'Sea Peoples' and Libyans, including the Danuna, Kehek, Libu, Lukka, Meshwesh, Nubians, and Sherden.

"The Onomasticon of Amenope is an important resource for scholars studying ancient Egyptian life, the pharaonic administration and court, the priesthood,[6] the history of the Sea Peoples, the geography and political organization of the Levant during the late New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, early Bible studies, etc." (Wikipedia article on Onomasticon of Amenope, accessed 01-16-2018). 

• Alan H. Gardiner, The Ramesseum Papyri. Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1955.

• Alan H. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947.

• Thanks to Claudio Gnoli for suggesting this entry.

3 Mysteries Archaeologists Still Haven’t Figured Out About Ancient Egypt’s Pyramids

The world’s fascination with ancient Egypt has a long history; Greek rulers often portrayed themselves as pharaohs and Romans dragged obelisks out of Egypt to adorn their cities, including Istanbul and Rome. Following Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, Egyptomania gripped Europe and amateur archaeologists began flocking to the country, unearthing massive temples and statues and excavating untold numbers of tombs, including the famous tomb of Tutankhamun, discovered by Howard Carter in 1915. But of all the impressive sites and artifacts found, the pyramids of ancient Egypt are unmatched in grandeur.

Pyramids were built as funerary tombs for pharaohs and high-ranking officials from 2600 BCE to 1550 BCE. These massive monuments displayed a person’s power and wealth and served as a place of ascension into the afterlife. Over 100 pyramids have been found in Egypt, mostly in clusters along the west bank of the Nile. The pyramids come in all shapes in sizes, from the early stepped pyramid of Djoser to the uniquely shaped Bent Pyramid, where the pyramid angle was changed mid-way through construction, to the three iconic Pyramids of Giza, which have been dominating Cairo’s horizon since 2550 BCE.

Research on the pyramids have been taking place since the early 19th century, with early archaeologists clearing sand from the complexes and exploring the interior chambers (sometimes, unfortunately, for the pyramid’s preservation, with the help of dynamite) and later archaeologists scanning and restoring the monuments. However, for all the centuries of excavation and research many pyramid mysteries remain.

Pyramid mystery #1: How were the pyramids of Egypt built?

The Pyramid of Khufu. Photo: ImAAm/Shutterstock

The Pyramid of Khufu (sometimes called Cheops), the largest Egyptian pyramid, is made of 2.3 million stone blocks, each weighing anywhere from 2.5 to 16 tons. Some of the blocks, particularly the ones used in the inner chambers, came as far as Aswan, 500 miles from Giza where the pyramid stands. But how did ancient Egyptians build such massive pyramids without using simple machines such as the wheel, which, while used by Egyptians for pottery making, was not used for carts or chariots until 1500 BCE, likely because wheels weren’t much use in the thick sand that covered the country? It’s an age-old mystery and one that continues to be an enigma for ancient monumental complexes across the world. While there are numerous theories, there is a lack of hard, archaeological evidence to fully support any one of them.

One theory about how the blocks were moved involves sleds and wet sand. A painting in the tomb of Djehutihotep shows men dragging a colossal statue on a sled. In front of them, a person pours water onto the sand. While initially thought to be a ceremonial gesture, physicist Daniel Bonn recently discovered that the right amount of water, about two to five percent of the volume of sand, increased the stiffness of the sand and reduced the friction between the object being dragged and the ground, making the object much easier to move. The same technique may have been used to drag stone blocks to pyramid construction sites.

Once the blocks were at the pyramid’s construction site, however, how were they lifted into place without the use of mechanical advantage? A ramp found in a quarry dating to the construction of the Pyramid of Khufu indicates that ancient Egyptians were able to pull stone blocks out of the quarry on a steep upward slope. It’s possible that similar ramps were used to haul stones up the pyramid’s sides to be placed. However, the exact system is unknown. The ramps could have been on the outside of the pyramid, spiraling up like a mountain road, or straight and long, or built within the pyramid. How a 16-ton block could have been moved up a ramp is also unknown, with theories ranging from sleds to wooden rollers to wooden posts tied to each side of a block, changing the shape from square to polygon and allowing them to be rolled like a keg of beer.

Pyramid mystery #2: What’s inside the mysterious cavities inside the Pyramid of Khufu?

In 2017, ScanPyramids made a massive discovery inside the Pyramid of Khufu. With the aid of muon-tomography, a non-invasive scanning technique that uses cosmic rays to produce 3D images of spaces and can penetrate much more deeply than X Rays, researchers discovered two previously unknown voids inside the pyramid, the first new spaces found inside the pyramid since the 19th century.

A small void was detected on the pyramid’s north face, approximately 15 feet long. Horizontal and sloping upwards, this could be a passageway. More significantly, a 100-foot-long void was found above the Grand Gallery, itself a magnificent passageway that provides access to the burial chambers towards the center of the pyramid.
Not much is known about this larger chamber. It could be either horizontal or at a slope and may actually be made up of several smaller rooms. While it is unlikely to be a burial chamber, it could be a second Grand Gallery, or, more intriguingly, hold some of the secrets to the engineering and construction behind the pyramid. The Bent Pyramid, built by Snefru, Khufu’s father, has a similar chamber above the main burial chamber. The space is believed to help reduce the weight of masonry pressing down from above.

ScanPyramids has plans to scan more pyramids, including the Pyramid of Khafre, Egypt’s second largest. What other secrets could muon-tomography reveal about ancient Egypt’s monuments? Time will tell.

Pyramid mystery #3: Why did the Egyptians stop building pyramids?

Photo: Gurgen Bakhshetyan/Shutterstock

The last royal pyramid was built around 1500 BCE. Afterward, while wealthy individuals were occasionally buried in or near pyramids, pharaohs were buried in the Valley of Kings, near Thebes (modern-day Luxor), the new capital of ancient Egypt. What exactly caused the rulers of Egypt to abandon the practice of pyramid burials is unknown, though many theories exist.

One theory is that religious changes around 1500 BCE began emphasizing building tombs underground, in the bedrock, rather than interring bodies in pyramids. Thebes, unlike the previous Egyptian capital, Memphis, had far less open space and what little there was was rocky and rugged, hardly the ideal landscape to build massive monuments.

Tomb robbing was also an issue, and there was far less chance that burials would be looted if they weren’t placed in such conspicuous settings as horizon-dominating pyramids. The Valley of the Kings is a cliffy, complex landscape that was easy to hide royal burials and rock-cut tombs in. Tuthmosis, the first pharaoh to be buried in the Valley of Kings, hired a man named Ineni to inspect the excavation of his tomb. In his autobiography, Tuthmosis wrote, “I inspected the excavation of the cliff tomb of his Majesty alone, no one seeing, no one hearing.” Entrances were kept secret and necropolis guards patrolled the area for looters.

A more recent theory about why pyramid construction stopped comes from Peter James, an engineer tasked with examining the outer casing of the Bent Pyramid, built in 2600 BCE. While better preserved than other pyramids, which all have lost their outer casings of limestone and marble, the Bent Pyramid’s casing has also been breaking apart. Peter James discovered that the extreme temperature fluctuations of the Egyptian desert were causing the limestone to expand and contract, moving the stone blocks to the edges of the pyramid and forcing them to detach or break, taking the outer casing with them. Oddly enough, the Bent Pyramid’s unusual construction made it the best preserved pyramid; the gaps between the stone blocks have allowed them to shift with thermal expansion without breaking the casing. On the other hand, the more perfectly aligned and placed blocks of the Pyramids of Giza had no gaps between them. Any shifting of the blocks caused them to push against each other, causing the casing to disintegrate rapidly. This disintegration likely happened while pyramid building was still occurring. After spending so much time, money, and energy creating perfect monuments, this visible and rapid destruction of their perfection could have been one reason pharaohs abandoned them as burial monuments.

The largest embalming cache ever found in Egypt

For more than three decades, the Czech Institute of Egyptology has been excavating at the Abusir necropolis, a site several kilometers north of Saqqara, in an area that contains a group of large shaft tombs dating to the late 26th dynasty. (664-525 BC) and early 27th (525-404 BC).

The team of archaeologists led by Miroslav Bárta has just made an important discovery at this site: A deposit of embalming materials practically intact.

The “cache” contains a total of 370 large ceramic storage jars and a number of smaller containers, and is probably the largest find of its kind in Egypt, according to experts.

Multitude of vessels

Some of the vessels that contained embalming materials.

According to Bárta, “Abusir’s shaft tombs, built in a similar way to the famous burial of Pharaoh Djoser under his stepped pyramid, played an important role as a form of cultural expression of the Egyptian elites in that late era.”

All the vessels, which contained the remains of various materials and utensils that were used during the mummification process, were located inside a huge pit measuring 5.3 x 5.3 meters and more than 14 meters deep located next to a large funerary structure that still remains unexcavated.

The vessels were placed in a total of 14 groups, situated at different depths, ranging from 4 to 12 meters, and attached to the sides of the pit in a spiral pattern. The number of containers that made up each of these groups varied from 7 to 52.

Unused canopic jars

Canopic jars belonging to a man named Wahibre-mery-Neith.

In the highest part of the well, four canopic jars (containers used to store the mummified viscera of the deceased) made of limestone and with inscriptions were also found.

They were all empty and clearly unused. According to the texts inscribed on them, these vessels belonged to a certain Wahibre-mery-Neith, son of the Lady Irturu.

“Although several dignitaries with this same name are known at this time, none of them can be clearly identified as the owner of these canopic vessels.

A heart-shaped vessel located in the cache of Abusir.

Judging by the size of the embalming deposit and, mainly, by the dimensions and layout of the tomb nearby, the owner of the tomb (and we assume that also the deposit) he must have been a high dignitary, just like his famous closest neighbors in the cemetery (and who lived in the same period): Udjahorresnet and General Menekhibnekau,” explains Professor Ladislav Bareš, one of the leading experts.

In 2022, the excavation of the funerary structure associated with the deposit of mummification materials by the archaeological team is planned.

At the same time, the vessels and the context in which they were found will be thoroughly analyzed and studied using the most modern scientific methodologies applied to archeology to try to reveal their ancient mysteries.

By HISTORICAL EVE

Archaeologists unearths Unique Tomb of 6th Century BC Egyptian Commander at the archaeological area of ​​Abu Sir

The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced on July 15 that a team of Czech archaeologists, while excavating near the Giza Plateau, discovered a tomb belonging to a powerful Egyptian military commander who lived 2,500 years ago.

The ancient commander’s tomb was discovered by Czech researchers about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from the Pyramids of Giza, near the Old Kingdom cemetery and the Abusir archaeological site. Notably, the tomb was located near Wah-Ib-Ra Meri Nate’s embalming stash, which was discovered four months earlier. The finding of the latter suggested that the commander was buried nearby, so the archaeologists were not shocked to find this burial site where they did.

In a press release, the ministry said that the discovery is “unique of its kind” and provides new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of the Persian domination of ancient Egypt and puts forward the first evidence of true globalization in the ancient world. [The tomb also] offers a new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of the Persian domination of ancient Egypt.

The ancient Egyptian commander’s tomb is 7.5 miles from the Giza Pyramids. Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

The cemetery documents a period when the ancient Egyptians lived in the 6th century BC. During this period, the Egyptians greatly expanded their sphere of influence. therefore, the kings of the 26th dynasty [664-525 BC] brought in foreign mercenaries and united them in many parts of the country, including the army.

Mostafa Waziri, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated in a ministry statement that the design of this good tomb was unsurpassed in ancient Egypt.

Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

Wah-Ib-Ra Meri Nate was buried in a large, square tomb with two levels that were excavated especially to house the revered commander’s bones. The main shaft was around 45 feet by 45 feet (14 meters by 14 meters) in size and was nearly 20 feet (six meters) deep. Below it, a smaller shaft, rectangular in shape, 11 feet by 21 feet long, was dug into the bedrock (6.5 meters by 3.3 meters).

At the bottom of this second tunnel, some 52 feet underground, the commander’s mummified body was placed (16 meters). He was interred in a complex double sarcophagus with an inner and an outer part. The inside coffin was fashioned from basalt and sculpted into the shape of a human body, while the exterior sarcophagus was built from two massive slabs of white limestone. The basalt sarcophagus’ overall dimensions were 7.5 by 6.5 feet (2.3 by 1.98 meters).

Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

The archaeologists were disappointed to see that this great discovery was defeated by the tomb thieves and the sarcophagus was smashed open and the mummy of Wah-Ib-Ra Meri Nate was removed. Based on the finding of two pottery objects left within the tomb that belonged to the fourth or fifth century AD, they determined that tomb robbers had broken in and taken it more than 1,000 years ago.

In addition to the absence of a mummy, the area inside the basalt sarcophagus was devoid of grave goods. Only a scarab delicately carved into the shape of a heart and an amulet supposed to be worn on the head was discovered.

Photo: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

However, the mission found on the eastern side of the necropolis many intact archaeological relics that were part of the funerary belongings, including 402 Ushabti statues made of faience.

Ushabtis, which are little figurines that were placed in ancient Egyptian tombs along with mummies that often had writing from the Book of the Dead, was thought to represent the departed and carry out tasks for them in the hereafter.

The discovery of unique tomb in Egypt’s Giza

The archaeological discovery provides new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of Persian domination of ancient Egypt and puts forward the first evidence of true globalization in the ancient world.

Sarcophaguses found in a cache dating to the Egyptian Late Period (around the fifth century B.C.) are displayed after their discovery by a mission headed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, at the Bubastian cemetery at the Saqqara necropolis, southwest of Cairo, Egypt, May 30, 2022. - Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images

CAIRO — The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced July 15 that an archaeological mission of Czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague found the sarcophagus of Wahipra Merinit, who was the “commander of foreign soldiers” during the late 26th dynasty and the beginning of the 27th dynasty, in the archaeological area of ​​Abu Sir, Giza.

In a press release, the ministry said that the discovery is “unique of its kind” and provides the first evidence of a real globalization era in the ancient world.

Mohamed Youssef, director of Saqqara Antiquities, explained that the cemetery documents a period in which the ancient Egyptians lived in the sixth century B.C., and was a model for the concept of political and economic globalization.

“The influence of the ancient Egyptians extended outside the country throughout the Mediterranean, which was why the kings of the 26th dynasty [664-525 B.C.] brought in foreign mercenaries and integrated them in many parts of the country, including the army, until the fall of Egypt under Persian occupation,” he told Al-Monitor.

The discovery is all the more significant because it reflects the architectural development on the construction of the well-pit tomb cemetery, according to Youssef.

In the ministry statement, Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri said that the design of this well tomb was unparalleled in ancient Egypt.

He explained, “The tomb is designed based on a well. It consists of the main well that is 6 meters [20 feet] deep, with dimensions of approximately 14 meters by 14 meters [46 feet], divided into several parts separated by bridges carved in the natural rock of the area.”

Waziri continued, “In the middle of the main well another smaller and deeper well was dug. It was used as the main burial well for the tomb owner."

According to the press release, Marslav Barta, head of the Czech mission, said that at the bottom of the main burial well, at a depth of about 16 meters (52 feet), a double coffin was found, slightly damaged and completely covered with sand.

He noted that the outer sarcophagus of Wahipra Merinit was made of two huge blocks of white limestone, and inside its cavity lies another basalt human-shaped tomb, with writings from Chapter 72 of the Book of Dead inscribed on its upper part, describing the revival of the deceased and his journey to the other world.

The basalt sarcophagus is 2.30 meters (7.54 feet) long and 1.98 meters (6.5 feet) wide.

Barta explained that the mission found on the eastern side of the necropolis many intact archaeological relics that were part of the funerary belongings, including 402 Ushabti statues made of faience.

Ushabtis are small figures deposited in an ancient Egyptian tomb with the mummy generally bearing inscriptions from the Book of Dead, and were believed to represent the deceased and perform services on their behalf in the afterlife.

Two vases made of alabaster were also found, in addition to a model of faience for an offering table, 10 cups bearing symbols and an ostracon made of limestone engraved with hieratic religious texts written in black ink.

Barta noted, “Due to the small size of the ostracon, the author of the text decided to cover it with brief excerpts from the spells of the Book of the Dead, which also formed parts of the passing ritual, thus ensuring the existence of another life for the tomb owner in the other world.”

He added, “Initial studies conducted on the well cemetery revealed that it was looted toward the end of the old eras, probably around the fourth and fifth centuries."

The archaeological area of ​​Abu Sir is located in the south of Giza governorate, 4.5 kilometers (15 feet) north of the archaeological area of ​​Saqqara. Its name is derived from “Bar Osiris,” meaning the seat of the god Osiris, and includes a series of tombs of the kings of the fifth dynasty, in addition to the temples of the sun, including the Sun Temple of King UserKaf.

The statement quoted Muhammad Mujahid, deputy director of the Czech mission, as saying, “Although the archaeological excavations of Wahipra Merinit  tomb did not provide us with many important archaeological findings or elaborate funerary items, this cemetery is considered unique and important.”

He said that both the architectural design of the tomb and its contents provide valuable information about the significance and meaning of funerary baggage items and the tomb inscriptions accompanying the deceased in the other world.

"[The tomb also] offers a new insight into the turbulent period of the beginning of the era of the Persian domination of ancient Egypt,” Mujahid added. 

Youssef explained that the discovered tomb is relatively poor and incomplete, which indicates a period of turmoil and lack of economic capabilities that Egypt went through before it fell into the hands of the Persians for about 100 years.

He added that the Egyptians, kings of the 28th dynasty, were able to expel the Persians and regained power until Alexander the Great invaded Egypt in 332 B.C.

Commenting on the next steps, Youssef said that small artifacts, such as Ushabti statues, were transferred to the ministry’s stores for restoration and display in archaeological museums, while the cemetery remains a site for researchers to make comparisons about the architectural development of archaeological tomb design.

Hussein Abdel Basir, director of the Antiquities Museum at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, told Al-Monitor that the archaeological discovery provides more information on the history of the Egyptian military and its foreign relations.

He said that the discovery reveals the period when the Egyptian army began to rely on mercenary soldiers among its ranks from the Greeks and the Mediterranean islands.

“The discovery shows that these foreign soldiers were led by the Egyptian military commander Wahipra Merinit — the owner of the tomb — to consolidate Egypt’s influence on the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East,” Abdel Basir concluded.

Mycenaean Echoes in El-Amarna: Aegean Warriors in the Egyptian Army of 18th Dynasty?

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BY DIMOSTHENIS VASILOUDIS

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An Enigmatic Papyrus from El-Amarna: A possible Egyptian representation of Mycenaean warriors

Egypt, the cradle of ancient civilizations, has provided a constant stream of archaeological riches that never fail to bewilder us. The city of El-Amarna, the short-lived capital established by the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten, is a prime source of these treasures. The latest discovery is a rare papyrus that has captured the attention of scholars worldwide. The papyrus could possibly represent Mycenaean warriors, providing an intriguing new perspective on Bronze Age Mediterranean connections.

An Unusual Discovery

Unearthed during a recent dig at El-Amarna, the papyrus was found to be remarkably well preserved, thanks to Egypt's dry climate. The intricate hieroglyphics and vivid colors attest to the craftsmanship and sophistication of Egyptian scribes during the Amarna period (1353–1336 BC). Yet the true fascination lies not in the artistry but in the content: the papyrus depicts warriors bearing an uncanny resemblance to those from the Mycenaean civilization.

Those papyrus fragments, dated to the second half of the 14th century BC and currently being exposed in the British Museum, depict battle scenes between Egyptian and Libyan soldiers. In one of those fragments, we can see warriors bearing the typical Mycenaean Boar-tusk helmet and Egyptian or Aegean-style short-cropped oxhide tunics running on the battle front.

These can be paralleled in representations from the Aegean, suggesting that the painting may show figures wearing boar's tusk helmets and Mycenaean-style tunics. This interpretation of the battle scene argues that the Egyptian iconographic repertoire also included depictions of Mycenean features and adds to the evidence for direct, rather than indirect, contacts between the two cultures.

Fragments of two scenes of the painted papyrus, without text. One shows a fallen Egyptian overcome by a Libyan, while other Libyan archers rush on. The second shows registers of Egyptian infantrymen, some wearing helmets and/or short ox-hide tunics. Other unplaced fragments show parts of further infantrymen, and a tree. The scene includes other indications of landscape. The British Museum.

A Mycenaean Connection?

The Mycenaean civilization, centered in the Peloponnese of modern-day Greece, thrived during the Late Bronze Age (1600–1100 BC). Their warrior-centric society, chariot warfare, and iconic "boar’s tusk" helmets were immortalized by Homer's epic poems.

In the papyrus from El-Amarna, the warriors are illustrated with short, wavy hair, round shields, long spears, and distinctive helmets. The physical attributes and weaponry closely resemble Mycenaean depictions, particularly those found in frescoes from Pylos and Mycenae. Intriguingly, the possible representation of "boar's tusk" helmets, a Mycenaean hallmark, raises questions about the nature of the interaction between the two civilizations.

Cultural Interactions in the Bronze Age

During the Bronze Age, civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea, including the Egyptian and Mycenaean, established complex networks of interaction. This era saw significant trading, diplomatic exchanges, and, inevitably, warfare. Excavations have found Mycenaean pottery in Egypt and vice versa, proving the existence of trade relations.

Moreover, the Amarna Letters—a cache of clay tablets from the 14th century BC—provide evidence of diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and states in the Aegean, possibly including the Mycenaeans. But depictions of Mycenaean individuals in Egyptian artifacts are rare, making this papyrus potentially ground-breaking.

Illustration of a Mycenaean Greek warrior with the distinctive boar-tusk helmet at the fall of Troy

Implications of the Papyrus

If the interpretation of the papyrus holds true, it could signify that the Mycenaeans had a more substantial presence or influence in Egypt than previously thought. The warriors could represent mercenaries, allies, enemies, or simply a demonstration of cultural knowledge. The pictorial representation suggests a more direct interaction, implying that the Mycenaeans were not just abstract entities in Egyptian perception but had a tangible presence.

This discovery could be a step towards recognizing a previously unknown degree of interconnectedness between the Bronze Age civilizations of Egypt and Mycenae. As scholars continue to investigate, this enigmatic papyrus will serve as a tantalizing puzzle piece in the vibrant mosaic of Bronze Age history.

The Mycenaean boar-tusk helmet

The distinctive Boar-tusk helmet of the Mycenaean warrior elite could be a strong evidence of the presence of those fearsome Aegean warriors in the plains of Egypt, supported also by the large quantities of Mycenaean pottery that have been also found in El-Amarna, in the same period. Both evidence suggest some degree of cultural contact between the Mycenaeans and the Egyptians of the Late 18th Dynasty.

Mycenaean helmet with wild boar teeth

The so-called ‘odontophracto’ helmet is considered a Mycenaean invention and was a basic part of the armor, at least until the 13th century.

According to the Homeric description, the helmet consists of the "kynei", a dog's skin leather cap with a wool lining, which is protected by superimposed rows of specially worked boar's teeth.

Mycenaeans seem not to have been included amongst the Egyptians' repertoire of depictions of foreigners, although Minoans clearly identified on many Egyptian frescoes, such as those on many tombs and temples (tombs of Anen, Rekhmire, Puimre, Senenmut, Menkheperrasoneb, Abydos Temple of Rameses II).

We also know about the close involvement of Minoan Crete in international relations and cultural exchanges with the Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt either through marriage, art, technology or exchange of gifts (Minoan frescoes at Tell El-Dab'a).

Distant theaters of royal action in the Bronze Age: The international policy of the pharaohs and the ‘Aegean List’

The usage of professional warriors from the Bronze Age (some of them of Hellenic origin) can be safely assumed as the complete retails of the organization and structure of the period armies are not quite clear to us. The employment of mercenaries cannot be excluded in the early Bronze Age but it becomes certain in the later stages. It is also known that earlier Aegean armies and navies, such as the Minoans, used mercenaries from Africa.

We do know that after the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses II (r. 1279–1213 BC, about one century after the El-Amarna papyrus) defeated the Sherden sea pirates at the beginning of his reign, he hired many of them to serve as his bodyguard. It has been suggested that some of them were from Ionia. In the reign (1213–1203 BC) of his successor Merneptah, Egypt was attacked by their Libyan neighbors, and some experts believe that the Libyan army included mercenaries from Europe’s mainland. Among them were people termed ‘Ekwash, and it has been proposed that this meant Achaeans (Mycenaeans), but there is no certainty of that as other evidence points to an attempted encroachment by Libyans only upon neighboring territory.

The fresco ‘Captain of the Blacks’ at Knossos, thought to represent a Minoan officer with two spears, leading a troop of Nubian mercenaries, Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete, Greece.

Another important indication of the developed relations between Egypt and the Aegean is the famous "Aegean List" of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, an inscription of toponyms found at the base of a statue in the northern half of the West Portico of the great Peristyle Court in Kom el-Hettân, which seems to refer to areas and nations of the Aegean that were probably visited by an Egyptian merchant or diplomatic mission.

Each statue base bears a different series of toponyms written within “fortified” or “crenellated” ovals and superimposed on bound captives—a standard Egyptian way of denoting foreign places. Together, they represent roughly half of the known outside world.

The order in which the toponyms are to be read is crucial. In the center of the front side, two bound prisoners support Amenhotep III’s prenomen and nomen. The two place names to the right should be read first, since they face the same direction as these cartouches; they are kftiw, i.e., Keftiu, identified as Crete, and tny (ti-nA-y-w), i.e., Tanaja (Danaia, the Danaoi-Land, meaning the land of Danaans, the homeric Achaeans), identified as mainland Greece. Both are known from other Egyptian sources from the time of Thutmose III onward, and their identification is accepted by most scholars.

The Aegean List’s other toponyms are unique; not one of them appears in any other Egyptian source, either before or after Amenhotep III’s reign. All scholars agree that these names denote sites and regions in the Bronze Age Aegean, but their identification is sometimes challenging. Some of them are translated as Amnisos, Phaistos, Knossos, Lyktos, Kydonia, Mycenae, Pisaia, Kythera, Methara, or Messana(?), Thebes, Tegea, or Dikte(? ), and Eleia, or Ilios (Troy)(?).

The Aegean List remains of critical importance as a clear indication that the Egyptians had substantial knowledge of specific Minoan and Mycenaean sites during Amenhotep III’s reign.

The extroverted and aggressive Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt

The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt is classified as the first dynasty of the New Kingdom of Egypt, the era in which ancient Egypt achieved the peak of its power. The Eighteenth Dynasty spanned the period from 1550/1549 to 1292 BC. This dynasty is also known as the Thutmosid Dynasty after the four pharaohs named Thutmose.

The Eighteenth Dynasty empire conquered all of Lower Nubia under Thutmose I. By the reign of Thutmose III, the Egyptians had directly controlled Nubia up to the Nile River, the 4th cataract, With Egyptian influence and tributaries extending beyond this point. The Egyptians referred to the area as Kush, and it was administered by the Viceroy of Kush. The 18th dynasty obtained Nubian gold, animal skins, ivory, ebony, cattle, and horses, which were of exceptional quality. The Egyptians built temples throughout Nubia.

After the end of the Hyksos period of foreign rule, the Eighteenth Dynasty engaged in a vigorous phase of expansionism, conquering vast areas of the Near East, with Pharaoh Thutmose III submitting the "Shasu" Bedouins of northern Canaan and the land of Retjenu, as far as Syria and Mittani, in numerous military campaigns circa 1450 BC.

The El-Amarna papyrus presents a captivating glimpse into the cross-cultural encounters of the ancient world. As the world waits for more comprehensive analyses and potential verification of the Mycenaean representation, the papyrus holds its secrets close, reminding us that history often reveals itself in fragments and whispers rather than in complete narratives or loud declarations. Its tantalizing hints of an interlinked Mediterranean world make the papyrus an invaluable addition to our understanding of the vast tapestry of human history.

Why did people start eating Egyptian mummies? The weird and wild ways mummy fever swept through Europe

Why did people think cannibalism was good for their health? The answer offers a glimpse into the zaniest crannies of European history, at a time when Europeans were obsessed with Egyptian mummies.

Driven first by the belief that ground-up and tinctured human remains could cure anything from bubonic plague to a headache, and then by the macabre ideas Victorian people had about after-dinner entertainment, the bandaged corpses of ancient Egyptians were the subject of fascination from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

Mummy mania

Faith that mummies could cure illness drove people for centuries to ingest something that tasted awful.

Mumia, the product created from mummified bodies, was a medicinal substance consumed for centuries by rich and poor, available in apothecaries' shops, and created from the remains of mummies brought from Egyptian tombs back to Europe.

By the 12th century apothecaries were using ground up mummies for their otherworldly medicinal properties. Mummies were a prescribed medicine for the next 500 years.

In a world without antibiotics, physicians prescribed ground up skulls, bones and flesh to treat illnesses from headaches to reducing swelling or curing the plague.

Not everyone was convinced. Guy de la Fontaine, a royal doctor, doubted mumia was a useful medicine and saw forged mummies made from dead peasants in Alexandria in 1564. He realised people could be conned. They were not always consuming genuine ancient mummies.

But the forgeries illustrate an important point: there was constant demand for dead flesh to be used in medicine and the supply of real Egyptian mummies could not meet this.

Apothecaries and herbalists were still dispensing mummy medicines into the 18th century.

Mummy's medicine

Not all doctors thought dry, old mummies made the best medicine. Some doctors believed that fresh meat and blood had a vitality the long-dead lacked.

The claim that fresh was best convinced even the noblest of nobles. England's King Charles II took medication made from human skulls after suffering a seizure, and, until 1909, physicians commonly used human skulls to treat neurological conditions.

For the royal and social elite, eating mummies seemed a royally appropriate medicine , as doctors claimed mumia was made from pharaohs. Royalty ate royalty.

A jar used for storing mumia, a medicine made from the ground up remains of mummified humans. Credit: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Dinner, drinks, and a show

By the 19th century, people were no longer consuming mummies to cure illness but Victorians were hosting "unwrapping parties" where Egyptian corpses would be unwrapped for entertainment at private parties.

Napoleon's first expedition into Egypt in 1798 piqued European curiosity and allowed 19th century travellers to Egypt to bring whole mummies back to Europe bought off the street in Egypt.

Victorians held private parties dedicated to unwrapping the remains of ancient Egyptian mummies.

Early unwrapping events had at least a veneer of medical respectability. In 1834 the surgeon Thomas Pettigrew unwrapped a mummy at the Royal College of Surgeons. In his time, autopsies and operations took place in public and this unwrapping was just another public medical event.

Soon, even the pretence of medical research was lost. By now mummies were no longer medicinal but thrilling. A dinner host who could entertain an audience while unwrapping was rich enough to own an actual mummy.

The thrill of seeing dried flesh and bones appearing as bandages came off meant people flocked to these unwrappings, whether in a private home or the theatre of a learned society. Strong drink meantaudiences were loud and appreciative.

The mummy's curse

Mummy unwrapping parties ended as the 20th century began. The macabre thrills seemed in bad taste and the inevitable destruction of archaeological remains seemed regrettable.

Then the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb fuelled a craze that shaped art deco design in everything from the motifs of doors in the Chrysler Building to the shape of clocks designed by Cartier. The sudden death in 1923 of Lord Carnarvon, sponsor of the Tutankhamen expedition, was from natural causes but soon attributed to a new superstition—"the mummy's curse".

Modern mummies

In 2016 Egyptologist John J. Johnston hosted the first public unwrapping of a mummy since 1908. Part art, part science, and part show, Johnston created a an immersive recreation of what it was like to be present at a Victorian unwrapping.

It was as tasteless as possible, with everything from the Bangles' Walk Like an Egyptian playing on loud speaker to the plying of attendees with straight gin.

The mummy was only an actor wrapped in bandages but the event was a heady sensory mix. The fact it took place at St Bart's Hospital in London was a modern reminder that mummies cross many realms of experience from the medical to the macabre.

Today, the black market of antiquity smuggling—including mummies—is worth about US$3 billion.

No serious archaeologist would unwrap a mummy and no physician suggest eating one. But the lure of the mummy remains strong. They are still for sale, still exploited, and still a commodity.

Source: https://phys.org