Additional Mummies Uncovered Near Vizier’s Tomb in Luxor
A group of Egyptologists from Spain have discovered two tombs that housed almost 60 mummies at site in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor.
An exterior view of the tomb of vizier Amenhotep Huy where almost 60 mummies have been unearthed by Spanish Egyptologists.
“The most important thing this year is the discovery of two tombs, almost six meters deep,” made up of “two chambers each and housing around 60 mummies and remains of mummies,” Francisco J. Martin, the president of the Vizier Amenhotep Huy Project, told Efe.
Martín, who leads a team of 22 Spanish Egyptologists and eight Egyptian experts, said the tombs were dated after Vizier Amenhotep-Huy’s tomb (18th dynasty).
The site is a rich example of the architectural style and “evidence that the vizier’s tomb at some point became a necropolis,” the expert added.
The two secondary tombs are connected via two burial chambers and are characterized by a lack of epigraphs that were found in Vizier Amenhotep Huy’s tomb, which is a chapel that contains 30 columns with epigraphs, according to Martín.
“They began to build other tombs from different dynasties within the vizier’s tomb, since the place was sacred,” Martín continued from the mission’s headquarters in the southern city of Luxor. “It is a very rich site and we are discovering many things.”
Amenhotep Huy was vizier to pharaoh Amenhotep III during the last third of his reign.
He was originally from northern Egypt and was considered the “opposition leader” amid new religious trends promoted by Akhenaten, the Pharaoh’s son and heir.
“He is a very important person,” Martín added.
Teresa Bedman, co-director of the project, told Efe that, so far, all mummies buried in the area “were senior officials of the clergy of Amun of Thebes.”
Because the bodies were mummified, experts can be sure they belonged to “higher social classes,” according to Bedman.
Once the vizier died and was martyred, his burial site became a prestigious one where many others wanted to be buried: “a necropolis inside the vizier’s tomb,” Bedman added.
The Spanish mission has launched an exhibition of the contents of the vizier’s necropolis with the Luxor museum which will continue into 2023.
Hundreds of 4,500-yr-old tombs found in central China
This undated file photo shows a piece of pottery ware excavated at the Suyang relics site in the city of Luoyang, central China’s Henan Province.
Archaeologists have found more than 300 tombs dating back around 4,500 years in central China’s Henan Province, which are of great significance to studying the burial system and social structure of prehistoric China.
Located in the Suyang relics site in the city of Luoyang, the tomb complex covers an area of about 15,000 square meters, and all of the tombs are earth pits in a rectangular shape, according to the Luoyang Municipal Institute of Archaeology.
“The tomb cluster is large in size and can be traced back to the transition period from Yangshao Culture to Longshan Culture. It is extremely rare to see this in Zhongyuan, a region known as the central plain area,” said Ren Guang, head of the excavation project on the Suyang site.
Archaeologists have unearthed nine tombs so far, and the skeletons of 10 people have been found in the tombs. Some of the tombs show evidence of having been seriously damaged by tomb raiders.
Preliminary excavation showed that the tomb complex can be traced back to the early stage of the Longshan Culture, Ren said.
The discovery of the tomb cluster has great academic value, Ren said, adding that it can help researchers better understand the burial system during this period, while also providing important clues for the study of social complexity and the civilization process in the Longshan Culture.
The Suyang relics site spans more than 600,000 square meters. The Luoyang Municipal Institute of Archaeology launched excavation work at the site in early 2021, and it is still in progress.
This undated aerial file photo shows the Suyang relics site in the city of Luoyang, central China’s Henan Province.
This undated file photo shows a piece of jade excavated at the Suyang relics site in the city of Luoyang, central China’s Henan Province.
A pair of lynx-shaped gold earrings have been unearthed near the ruins of Ani, the once great metropolis known as the “city of a thousand and one churches”, on Turkey’s eastern border, across the Akhuryan River from Armenia.
The Medieval earrings, which weigh 22 grams and have engraved star, droplet, and crescent motifs, are now preserved in the Kars Archaeology and Ethnography Museum.
The priceless artifacts, which astounded archaeologists with their exquisite engravings, are scheduled to be displayed briefly at the Kars Archaeology and Ethnography Museum in 2023 after having been carefully stored in a warehouse up until then.
Yavuz Çetin, director of Kars Archaeology and Ethnography Museum, told Anadolu Agency (AA) that Kars has hosted many civilizations throughout history as it is located on the border of countries and is on the historical Silk Road’s route.
A pair of lynx-shaped gold earrings was discovered near the Ani Ruins, in Kars, Türkiye.
Stating that it is possible to see the cultural assets of many civilizations in Kars, Çetin said that there are many historical immovable pieces of cultural heritage such as the Köşevenk and Mağazberk archaeological sites in and around the Ani Ruins.
Çetin noted that people have benefited from animals throughout history and attributed physical or characteristic meanings to them.
“The lynx from the feline family is one of these animals. People were influenced by the ferocity and power of this animal and used it in artistic elements,” he said.
“The existence of the lynx is also known in our Kars region. A couple of lynx-shaped earrings in our museum were found in the village of Subatan, about 16 kilometers (9.9 miles) north of Ani, and brought to us in 1994.”
Çetin said that they would exhibit the earrings next year.
A pair of lynx-shaped gold earrings was discovered near the Ani Ruins, in Kars, Türkiye.
“Our earrings are kept in the warehouse. We plan to temporarily display them to our public in 2023. I invite everyone to see this magnificent work. Our earrings are lynx-shaped, highly decorated earrings … The motifs on them show the artistic elegance of the earrings.”
Ani, which was founded more than 1,600 years ago, was located on several trade routes and grew to become a walled city with over 100,000 residents by the 11th century.
Ani was in steep decline by the 1300s, and it was completely abandoned by the 1700s.
Stone Points Found in Idaho Dated to 15,700 Years Ago
Stone projectile points discovered buried inside and outside of pit features at the Cooper’s Ferry site, Area B. Credit: Loren Davis
Oregon State University archaeologists have uncovered projectile points in Idaho that are thousands of years older than any previously found in the Americas, helping to fill in the history of how early humans crafted and used stone weapons.
The 13 full and fragmentary projectile points, razor sharp and ranging from about half an inch to 2 inches long, are from roughly 15,700 years ago, according to carbon-14 dating. That’s about 3,000 years older than the Clovis fluted points found throughout North America, and 2,300 years older than the points previously found at the same Cooper’s Ferry site along the Salmon River in present-day Idaho.
The findings were published today in the journal Science Advances.
“From a scientific point of view, these discoveries add very important details about what the archaeological record of the earliest peoples of the Americas looks like,” said Loren Davis, an anthropology professor at OSU and head of the group that found the points. “It’s one thing to say, ‘We think that people were here in the Americas 16,000 years ago’; it’s another thing to measure it by finding well-made artifacts they left behind.”
Previously, Davis and other researchers working the Cooper’s Ferry site had found simple flakes and pieces of bone that indicated human presence about 16,000 years ago. But the discovery of projectile points reveals new insights into the way the first Americans expressed complex thoughts through technology at that time, Davis said.
The Salmon River site where the points were found is on traditional Nez Perce land, known to the tribe as the ancient village of Nipéhe. The land is currently held in public ownership by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
The points are revelatory not just in their age, but in their similarity to projectile points found in Hokkaido, Japan, dating to 16,000–20,000 years ago, Davis said.
Their presence in Idaho adds more detail to the hypothesis that there are early genetic and cultural connections between the ice age peoples of Northeast Asia and North America.
“The earliest peoples of North America possessed cultural knowledge that they used to survive and thrive over time. Some of this knowledge can be seen in the way people made stone tools, such as the projectile points found at the Cooper’s Ferry site,” Davis said. “By comparing these points with other sites of the same age and older, we can infer the spatial extents of social networks where this technological knowledge was shared between peoples.”
Overview of the Area B excavations at the Cooper’s Ferry site in 2017. Credit: Loren Davis
Excavator at work recording artifacts excavated from a pit feature at the Cooper’s Ferry site. Credit: Loren Davis
These slender projectile points are characterized by two distinct ends, one sharpened and one stemmed, as well as a symmetrical beveled shape if looked at head-on. They were likely attached to darts, rather than arrows or spears, and despite the small size, they were deadly weapons, Davis said.
“There’s an assumption that early projectile points had to be big to kill large game; however, smaller projectile points mounted on darts will penetrate deeply and cause tremendous internal damage,” he said. “You can hunt any animal we know about with weapons like these.”
These discoveries add to the emerging picture of early human life in the Pacific Northwest, Davis said. “Finding a site where people made pits and stored complete and broken projectile points nearly 16,000 years ago gives us valuable details about the lives of our region’s earliest inhabitants.”
Overview of the Cooper’s Ferry site in the lower Salmon River canyon of western Idaho, USA.
Overview of pit feature 78 during the process of excavation.
(A) map showing the location of the Cooper’s Ferry site in the context of Pacific Northwest environments at 16,000 years ago; (B) aerial image (from Google Earth) showing the Cooper’s Ferry excavations; (C) site map showing the locations of excavation Area A and Area B.
The newly discovered pits are part of the larger Cooper’s Ferry record, where Davis and colleagues have previously reported a 14,200-year-old fire pit and a food-processing area containing the remains of an extinct horse. All told, they found and mapped more than 65,000 items, recording their locations to the millimeter for precise documentation.
The projectile points were uncovered over multiple summers between 2012 and 2017, with work supported by a partnership held between OSU and the BLM. All excavation work has been completed and the site is now covered. The BLM installed interpretive panels and a kiosk at the site to describe the work.
Stratigraphic model of the Cooper’s Ferry site, showing the distribution of cultural features (e.g., fire hearths, pits), radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence ages, sediment layers and buried soils as exposed by excavations in Area A and Area B.
Davis has been studying the Cooper’s Ferry site since the 1990s when he was an archaeologist with the BLM. Now, he partners with the BLM to bring undergraduate and graduate students from OSU to work the site in the summer.
The team also works closely with the Nez Perce tribe to provide field opportunities for tribal youth and to communicate all findings.
Possible Funerary Structures Uncovered at Peru’s Huaca Bandera
Culture Ministry’s researchers digging at Huaca Bandera —located in the district of Pacora in Lambayeque region— have found architectural structures of the Mochica elite, as well as human remains linked to important ancestral iconography.
These resources created 95 jobs for professional and working-class people, mostly people from the aforementioned Lambayeque’s district.
According to Fernandez, the work at Huaca Bandera included archaeological research studies —both field and desktop— preventive conservation practices, archaeometry research, and dating using radiocarbon techniques.
Walled Complex
Archaeologist Manuel Curo, the project’s director, commented that at this stage the team continued to study Walled Complex 2 —one of the areas used by ruling elites in the lower valley of La Leche-Motupe in 850 B.C. during the transition from the Mochica to Lambayeque periods.
Moreover, the specialist explained that it has been possible to document the design of the pyramidal platform at Walled Complex 2 and its main architectural elements, particularly those found in its upper platform.
“Here, we have found a red and cream-colored ceremonial bench, a wall pierced with rows of niches —with the same colors— in reverse order, and a burial place located in the central part of these structures,” he noted.
These elements were also present in a Mochica vessel, whose iconography consists of a burial ceremony for an elite person, in a coffin that is placed into a grave by means of ropes, led by two mythological figures.
The scene takes place in settings similar to those of Huaca Bandera.
Thus, the researchers believe that this could confirm that said structures were a symbol of power, as they would be the environments where Huaca Bandera leaders operated, as well as the place where they met death.
‘Complete lack of sunlight’ killed a Renaissance-era toddler, CT scan reveals
The child mummy, a member of the Austrian aristocracy, was found wrapped in a silk-hooded coat.
A “virtual autopsy” of the mummified remains of a toddler buried inside a family crypt in Austria reveals that the child died from a lack of sunlight, a new study finds.
Believed to be Reichard Wilhelm, the first-born son of a Count of Starhemberg, a prominent member of the Austrian aristocracy, the young boy lived during the Renaissance (between the 14th and 17th centuries) and died when he was just 10 to 18 months old.
Yet despite his privileged upbringing, a team of scientists from Germany concluded that he experienced “extreme nutritional deficiency and a tragically early death from pneumonia,” according to a statement.
Scientists made the discovery while performing a CT scan and radiocarbon dating of the mummy, which was found wrapped in a hooded silk coat, his left hand draped across his abdomen.
The scans showed malformations on his ribs, classic signs of malnutrition, which “points to rickets,” according to the study, published on Oct. 26 in the journal Frontiers in Medicine.
Known as a rachitic rosary, those malformations occur when knobs of rib bone begin to resemble rosary beads due to a vitamin D deficiency.
The boy’s remaining soft tissues showed that he was also overweight when he died, eliminating the possibility that he was underfed.
Detail of the mummy, his left hand placed on his abdomen.
“The combination of obesity along with a severe vitamin deficiency can only be explained by a generally ‘good’ nutritional status along with an almost complete lack of sunlight exposure,” Andreas Nerlich, the study’s lead author and a pathologist from the Academic Clinic Munich-Bogenhausen in Germany, said in the statement. “We have to reconsider the living conditions of high aristocratic infants of previous populations.”
Researchers found the child buried inside a wooden coffin that proved to be too small for him, based on a deformation of his skull.
The crypt was reserved exclusively for descendants of the Counts of Starhemberg, specifically their first-born sons who would have been titleholders, as well as the men’s wives.
Radiocarbon dating of a skin sample suggested he was buried between 1550 and 1635, however, building records indicate that the crypt underwent a renovation around 1600, so he likely was buried after that date. He was the youngest person buried in the crypt, according to the statement.
A vast tunnel found beneath an ancient Egyptian temple
The tunnel is about 6.6 feet (2 meters) high and is similar to another ancient tunnel built at Samos in Greece.
Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a vast tunnel beneath a temple in the ancient city of Taposiris Magna, west of Alexandria.
The 4,281-foot-long (1,305 meters) tunnel, which brought water to thousands of people in its heyday, was discovered by an Egyptian-Dominican Republic archaeological team, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement.
Ancient Egyptian builders constructed the 6.6-foot-high (2 m) tunnel at a depth of about 65 feet (20 m) beneath the ground, Kathleen Martínez, a Dominican archaeologist and director of the team that discovered the tunnel, told Live Science in an email. “
It is an exact replica of the Eupalinos Tunnel in Greece, which is considered one of the most important engineering achievements of antiquity,” Martinez said.
The Eupalinos tunnel, in Samos, a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, also carried water.
Archaeologists found two alabaster heads in the tunnel.
The archaeology of the Taposiris Magna temple is complex. Parts of it are submerged under water and the temple has been hit by numerous earthquakes over the history of its existence, causing extensive damage. The tunnel at Taposiris Magna dates to the Ptolemaic period (304 B.C. to 30 B.C.), a time when Egypt was ruled by a dynasty of kings descended from one of Alexander the Great’s generals.
Finds within the tunnel included two alabaster heads: one of which likely depicts a king, and the other represents another high-ranking person, Martinez said.
Their exact identities are unknown. Coins and the remains of statues of Egyptian deities were also found in the tunnel, Martinez said.
At the time the tunnel was built, Taposiris Magna had a population of between 15,000 and 20,000 people, Martinez said.
The tunnel was built beneath a temple that honored Osiris, an ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, and Isis, an Egyptian goddess who was Osiris’s wife.
Previous work in the temple uncovered a hoard of coins minted with the face of Cleopatra VII. Excavations at Taposiris Magna and analysis of artifacts from the site are ongoing.
During the ongoing archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Aizanoi in the Çavdarhisar district of the western province of Kütahya, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, the heads of the Greek mythology gods Eros and Dionysus and the demigod Herakles have come to light.
Another find was the statue of a man with a height of 2 meters and 10 centimeters.
The statues date back 2,000 years ago, stated Gökhan Coşkun, a professor from Kütahya Dumlupınar University and also the excavation director. “Only half of its pedestal and one foot is missing in the male statue, while other parts are completely preserved.”
Excavations in the ancient city of Aizanoi have been carried out particularly in the Penkalas Stream, with a team of 80 workers and 20 technical staff.
The ancient city, which dates back to 3,000 B.C., is believed to be one of the metropolises of the period with its historical structures, such as theater, stadium, agora and Zeus Temple.
Noting that the restoration of the Roman-era marble bridge, called No: 2, was completed during the excavations in Penkalas Stream, Coşkun said that works have been continuing on the completely ruined bridge, called No: 3.
Stating that new artifacts are found every day, Coşkun said, “This year, we found surprising finds that made us very excited during our work in the area where the bridge is located.
Since the previous season, we have been finding many large and small pieces of marble sculptures in this area, some of which, if complete, would reach 3 to 3.5 meters in height. This season, we uncovered many blocks of bridge No: 3. Also, we found a sundial and many marble statue pieces.”
Expressing that they were very excited about the statue they found in the recent excavations, Coşkun said, “This statue is almost the only intact statue we have found so far.
It is a statue of a man with a height of 2 meters and 10 centimeters, missing only half of its pedestal and one foot. Other parts are completely preserved. I hope that we will find this missing piece in 2023.”
As for the other statue heads belonging to Greek mythology, Coskun said, “Among these is a Dionysus head with a height of approximately 40 centimeters. We also found a Herakles head.
In 2020, we found the body of a Herakles statue. But this head does not belong to this body.
Apart from this, there are also statue heads of various gods and goddesses of the Ancient Greek pantheon. One of the prominent examples is the Eros head, which is about 20 centimeters high.
The artifacts we found in this area are from different periods, but we can say that the statue pieces date back 1,800-2,000 years ago.”
