Ancient blocks with hieroglyphic inscriptions were discovered in Sudan.
Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a temple dating back around 2,700 years, to a time when a kingdom called Kush ruled over a vast area, including what is now Sudan, Egypt and parts of the Middle East.
The temple remains were found at a medieval citadel at Old Dongola, a site located between the third and fourth cataracts of the Nile River in modern-day Sudan.
Some of the temple’s stone blocks were decorated with figures and hieroglyphic inscriptions. An analysis of the iconography and script suggest that they were part of a structure dating to the first half of the first millennium B.C.
The discovery was a surprise, since no finds dating as far back as 2,700 years were known from Old Dongola, archaeologists with the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Warsaw said in a statement.
Dawid Wieczorek sits with one of the blocks from the temple.
Inside some of the temple’s remains, the archaeologists found fragments of inscriptions, including one mentioning that the temple is dedicated to Amun-Ra of Kawa, Dawid Wieczorek, an Egyptologist collaborating with the research team, told Live Science in an email.
Amun-Ra was a god worshipped in Kush and Egypt, and Kawa is an archaeological site in Sudan that contains a temple. It’s unclear if the newfound blocks are from this temple or one that no longer exists.
Julia Budka, a professor of archaeology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich who has done extensive work in Sudan but is not involved with this research project, told Live Science in an email that “it is a very important discovery and poses several questions.”
For example, she thinks more research may be needed to determine the temple’s exact date. Another question is whether the temple existed at Old Dongola or whether the remains were transported from Kawa or another site, like Gebel Barkal, a site in Sudan that has a number of temples and pyramids, Budka said.
Although the discovery is “very important” and “very exciting,” it’s “too early to say something precise,” and more research is needed, she said.
Research at Old Dongola is ongoing. The team is led by Artur Obłuski, an archaeologist at the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology.
An Egyptian archaeological mission from Ain Shams University uncovered a smiling sphinx of a Roman emperor and remains of a shrine during excavation work carried out today at the eastern side of Dendara Temple in Qena, where Horus Temple was once located.
Former minister of antiquities and professor of Egyptology at Ain Shams University Mamdouh El-Damaty said the remains of the shrine are carved in limestone and consist of a two-level platform with foundations and a ramp.
In the shrine, a mudbrick Byzantine basin with a ladder covered with plaster was found. During cleaning, a smiling sphinx carved in limestone was uncovered in the basin.
“It is a beautifully and accurately carved sphinx,” said El-Damaty, explaining that it bears royal facial features with a smiling face and two dimples.
The statue wears the names on his head with the cobra-shaped ureas.
“Primary examination of the statue shows that it could belong to the Roman emperor Claudianoius,” El-Damaty said, adding that Roman stelae written in Demotic and Hieroglyphic were also unearthed beneath the statue.
Studies will be carried out to read the stelae which could reveal the identity of the statue or the secrets of the area.
The mission, which started its excavation work in November, will continue its work in the area to uncover more of the Horus Temple blocks.
Archaeologists have discovered sandstone blocks belonging to a pharaoh’s temple covered with hieroglyphs in Sudan
Polish archaeologists have discovered sandstone blocks belonging to a pharaoh’s temple covered with hieroglyphs during excavations at Old Dongola in Sudan.
Recent excavations have uncovered over 100 blocks of white sandstone, inscribed with Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics from the period of the 25th dynasty of Egypt, also known as the Nubian Dynasty.
The blocks found in Old Dongola were originally part of a structure, possibly a temple, built in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, which is the earliest example of human activity on a site identified so far.
Egyptologist Dr. Dawid F. Wieczorek said: “This is a huge discovery, because despite the 60-year Polish archaeological presence in Old Dongola, no evidence of such early construction activity on the site has been identified so far.
It is impossible to say whether this material is local or was brought from some other site. Nevertheless, it is surprising that there are so many of these blocks, and from different parts it seems of the same temple.”
Some of the blocks are from the flooring, outer walls, and from a pylon (a tower flanking the entrance to the temple). “This would push back the known history of this city by over 1000 years,” said Dr. Wieczorek.
Within a radius of more than 100 kilometers from Old Dongola, there are no other known examples of sites with Egyptian-style architecture.
The closest is Gebel Barkal (about 150 km up the Nile), and Kawa (about 120 km down the Nile). Both were leading urban and religious centers established during the New Kingdom in the 16th and 14th centuries BC.
The Kushite king Kashta came to Egypt amid political turmoil to run for the office of pharaoh, apparently in Thebes and apparently peacefully.
He was the first of the Nubian line of kings who ruled as the 25th dynasty of Egypt (747–656 BC). Piye, the next king, led the conquest of Egypt into the Nile Delta, reacting dramatically to the threat of a combination of powerful northern dynasty. He created an empire that stretched from the 6th cataract to the Mediterranean Sea.
The Kushite rulers presented themselves as pharaohs who could return Egypt to its former glory. They assimilated into society by reaffirming Ancient Egyptian religious traditions, temples, and artistic forms, while introducing some unique aspects of Kushite culture.
Camera Glimpses Hidden Corridor in Egypt’s Great Pyramid
Video footage from an endoscope showed an empty corridor with a vaulted ceiling
Egyptian antiquities officials say they have confirmed the existence of a hidden internal corridor above the main entrance of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Video from an endoscope showed the inside of the corridor, which is 9m (30ft) long and 2.1m (7ft) wide.
The officials say it could have been created to redistribute the pyramid’s weight around the entrance or another as yet undiscovered chamber.
It was first detected in 2016 using an imaging technique called muography.
The non-invasive technique detected an empty space behind the northern face of the Great Pyramid, about 7m above the main entrance, in an area where there is a stone chevron structure.
Further tests were carried out with radar and ultrasound before a 6mm-wide (0.24in) endoscope was fed through a tiny joint in-between the stones that make up the chevrons.
The endoscope was pushed into the empty space behind a chevron structure on the pyramid’s wall
The footage from the camera was unveiled at a news conference beside the pyramid on Thursday. It showed an empty corridor with walls made out of roughly-hewn stone blocks and a vaulted stone ceiling.
“We’re going to continue our scanning so we will see what we can do… to figure out what we can find out beneath it, or just by the end of this corridor,” said Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The Great Pyramid, which is 146m high, was built on the Giza plateau during the fourth dynasty by the pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops, who reigned from around 2609BC to 2584BC.
Despite being one of the oldest and largest monuments on Earth, there is no consensus about how it was built.
The Great Pyramid, seen in the background, is the largest of the three pyramids located at Giza
Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass said the corridor represented a “major discovery” that would “enter houses and homes of people all over the world for the first time”.
He also said that it might help reveal whether the burial chamber of King Khufu still existed inside the pyramid.
He speculated that there might be “something important” in the space below the corridor, then added: “I’m sure in a few months from now we can see if what I’m saying is correct or not.”
Group Of Persian, Roman and Coptic Tombs Discovered In Egypt
Ancient tombs dating to the Roman, Persian and Coptic eras have been unearthed in Egypt.
Twenty-two tombs dating to Persian, Roman and Coptic eras were uncovered at an archaeological site in Egypt, officials said.
The burial site — which included coffins and pottery — was found at the Al Bahnasa archaeological area about 130 miles south of Cairo, according to a Feb. 24 news release from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Three of the unearthed tombs dated to the Persian period, the earliest of the three eras associated with the site, officials said.
The Persian period lasted from about 500 to 400 BC and was associated with the Persian Empire’s domination of Egypt, according to research from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Shown are several of the tombs uncovered at an the Al-Bahnasa archaeological site in Egypt.
Three other tombs, which were made of limestone, dated to the Roman period, officials said.
The Roman period began with Caesar Augustus’ arrival to Egypt in 30 BC and lasted for about another century, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But the majority of the tombs, 16, dated to the Byzantine or Coptic periods, which followed the Persian and Roman eras and were associated with the spread of Christianity in Egypt, according to University College London research.
The tombs varied in their conditions. Some were lacking funerary objects, indicating they might have been looted, officials said, while others appeared undisturbed and included bodies wrapped in decorated shrouds, according to the Emirates News Agency.
“One of the more notable finds were offerings consisting of two frogs deposited inside two jars,” the agency said. Additionally, ancient texts, written in Greek and Coptic, were found on the walls of the unearthed necropolis, officials said.
Greek was Egypt’s official language for government proceedings until is was replaced by Arabic in the 7th century, according to UCL research.
The entire burial complex has been rendered using 3D imaging, and archaeologists will continue examining it, officials said.
The Al Bahnasa site, located near the Nile River, has been continuously excavated for over a decade, according to the Egyptian Journal of Archaeological and Restoration Studies.
During the Roman age it was a prominent city known as Okserynekos. The recent excavations were undertaken by a team of Egyptian and Spanish archaeologists affiliated with the University of Barcelona, officials said.
The excavation site in Nyayanga where hundreds of stone tools dating to roughly 2.9 million years ago were found
Archaeologists in Kenya have dug up some of the oldest stone tools ever used by ancient humans, dating back around 2.9 million years.
It is evidence that the tools were used by other branches of early humans, not just the ancestors of Homo Sapiens.
The tools were used to butcher hippos and pound plant materials like tubers and fruit, the researchers said.
Two big fossil teeth found at the site belong to an extinct human cousin, known as Paranthropus.
Scientists had previously thought that Oldowan tools, a kind of simple stone implement, were only used by ancestors of Homo Sapiens, a grouping that includes our species and our closest relatives.
However, no Homo Sapien fossils were found at the excavation site in Nyayanga on the Homa Peninsula in western Kenya.
Instead, there were two teeth – stout molars – from the Paranthropus genus that had combined ape-like and human-like traits, along with 330 stone tools.
The two Paranthropus teeth that were recovered from the Nyayanga site in Kenya. The left upper molar (top) was found on the surface, the left lower molar (bottom) was excavated
“Oldowan technology was like suddenly evolving a brand new set of teeth outside your body, and it opened up a new variety of foods on the African savannah to our ancestors.”
“The association of these Nyayanga tools with Paranthropus may reopen the case as to who made the oldest Oldowan tools. Perhaps not only Homo, but other kinds of hominins were processing food with Oldowan technology,” said anthropologist Thomas Plummer of Queens College in New York City, lead author of the research published in the journal Science.
The latest find of the Oldowan tools show that they were a significant upgrade in sophistication compared to earlier crude stone tools dated to as early as 3.3 million years old, before the emergence of the Homo genus, researchers said.
Other hominins existing at the time included the genus Australopithecus, known for the famous even-older fossil “Lucy” which was found in 1974 in northern Ethiopia.
The analysis of wear patterns on 30 of the stone tools found at the site showed that they had been used to cut, scrape and pound both animals and plants
Vessels from an ancient Egyptian embalming workshop, including these, provided scientists with clues to the ingredients used in various mixtures for preparing the dead for mummification.
Scientists have unwrapped long-sought details of embalming practices that ancient Egyptians used to preserve dead bodies.
“Ancient Egyptian embalmers had extensive chemical knowledge and knew what substances to put on the skin to preserve it, even without knowing about bacteria and other microorganisms,” Philipp Stockhammer, an archaeologist at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, said at a January 31 news conference.
The findings come courtesy of chemical residue inside 31 vessels found in an Egyptian embalming workshop and four vessels discovered in an adjacent pair of burial chambers. Writing on workshop vessels named embalming substances, provided embalming instructions (such as “to put on his head”) or both. All the artifacts — dating from Egypt’s 26th dynasty which rose to power between 664 B.C. and 525 B.C. — were excavated at a cemetery site called Saqqara in 2016. Archaeologist and study coauthor Ramadan Hussein, who died in 2022, led that project.
Newfound mummy embalming mixtures
Five of the vessels had the label antiu. The substance was thought to have been a fragrant resin called myrrh. The antiu at Saqqara, however, consisted of oil or tar from cedar and juniper or cypress trees mixed with animal fats. Writing on these jars indicates that antiu could have been used alone or combined with another substance called sefet.
Three vessels from the embalming workshop bore the label sefet, which researchers have usually described as an unidentified oil. At Saqqara, sefet was a scented, fat-based ointment with added ingredients from plants. Two sefet pots contained animal fats mixed with oil or tar from juniper or cypress trees. A third container held animal fats and elemi, a fragrant resin from tropical trees.
Clarification of the ingredients in antiu and sefet at Saqqara “takes mummification studies further than before,” says Egyptologist Bob Brier of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y., who was not part of the research.
Egyptians may have started mummifying their dead as early as 6,330 years ago (SN: 8/18/14). Mummification procedures and rituals focused on keeping the body fresh so the deceased could enter what was believed to be an eternal afterlife.
Embalming and mummification procedures likely changed over time, says team member Maxime Rageot, a biomolecular archaeologist also at Ludwig Maximilians University. Embalmers’ mixtures at Saqqara may not correspond, say, to those used around 700 years earlier for King Tutankhamun (SN: 11/2/22).
Mummy embalming instructions
Outside surfaces of other vessels from the Saqqara embalming workshop and burial chambers sported labels and, in some cases, instructions for treatment of the head, preparation of linen mummy bandages, washing the body and treating the liver and stomach. Inscriptions on one jar referred to an administrator who performed embalming procedures, mainly on the head.
Chemical residue inside these pots consisted of mixtures specific to each embalming procedure. Ingredients included oils or tars of cedar and juniper or cypress trees, pistachio resin, castor oil, animal fats, heated beeswax, bitumen (a dense, oily substance), elemi and a resin called dammar.
Most of those substances have been identified in earlier studies of chemical residues from Egyptian mummies and embalming vessels in individual tombs, says Egyptologist Margaret Serpico of University College London. But elemi and dammar resins have not previously been linked to ancient Egyptian embalming practices and are “highly unexpected,” notes Serpico, who did not participate in the new study.
Elemi was an ingredient in the workshop mixtures used to treat the head, the liver and bandages wrapped around the body. Chemical signs of dammar appeared in a vessel from one of the burial chambers that included remnants of a range of substances, indicating that the container had been used to blend several different mixtures, the researchers say.
Specific properties of elemi and dammar that aided in preserving dead bodies have yet to be investigated, Stockhammer said.
A far-flung trade network for mummy embalming ingredients
Elemi resin reached Egypt from tropical parts of Africa or Southeast Asia, while dammar originated in Southeast Asia or Indonesia, Rageot says. Other embalming substances detected at Saqqara came from Southwest Asia and parts of southern Europe and northern Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea. These findings provide the first evidence that ancient Egyptian embalmers depended on substances transported across vast trade networks.
It’s no surprise that ancient Egyptians imported embalming ingredients from distant lands, Brier says. “They were great traders, had limited [local] wood products and really wanted these substances to achieve immortality.”
Egypt’s “Great Revolt”, which happened from 207 to 184 BC, is detailed on the Rosetta Stone
Rare evidence of a decades-long rebellion against Greek-Macedonian rule, mentioned in the Rosetta Stone, has been found in an ancient Egyptian city.
Excavations at Tell Timai, ancient Thmouis, 102km north of Cairo, revealed extensive destruction that occurred during the Great Revolt, which happened from 207 to 184 BC.
A map of Egypt’s Delta, showing the location of ancient Thmuis, modern Tell Timai
“Archaeological evidence from the [revolt] is quite rare,” says Jay Silverstein of Nottingham Trent University, UK, one of the lead authors of the paper published in the Journal of Field Archaeology.
“There are of course a number of decrees and inscriptions, like the Rosetta Stone, some historical accounts, and a few papyri with indirect references, but when it comes to finding the locations where the sword meets the bone, as far as I can tell, this is the first that has been recognized.”
Weapons found at Tell Timai: Ballista stones, a sling pellet, and an arrowhead
Over the course of several years, the team uncovered the remains of burned buildings, weapons, stones thrown by a siege engine, coins hidden beneath the floor of a house, a broken divine statue near a temple, and unburied bodies strewn among the ruins or dumped in mounds of rubble and refuse.
The skeleton of one young man was discovered with his legs sticking out of a large kiln, where he had perhaps hoped to hide from his attackers.
A man in his 50s, whose body displayed earlier healed wounds, appears to have died defending himself. He may have decomposed sitting upright.
Coins and pottery discovered in a destroyed room during the excavations at Tell Timai
By examining the pottery and coins, the team dated the destruction to the Great Revolt, when the Egyptians tried, but failed, to liberate themselves from Ptolemaic rule—the line of Greek-Macedonian kings that began after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and ended with the famous Cleopatra VII.
“We have opened a new door into our understanding of Hellenistic colonialism, indigenous resistance, and the mechanisms of control including the brutality of the Macedonian dynasty’s rule of Egypt,” says Silverstein.
“Many other cities suffered a similar fate to that of Thmouis and I hope that this discovery will help broaden the scope of our archaeological understanding of these events.”
A view of the archaeological site of Tell Timai
The discovery made Silverstein reconsider how decisive the events of the rebellion were in the development of the Western world.
“Hellenistic Egypt played a crucial role in the trajectory of history including its role as a crucible of Christianity and a bulwark of Roman imperial power. Had the Egyptians retaken their land from the Greek occupiers, I suspect the world would look significantly different today.”
