U.S. Museum Repatriates Sarcophagus to Egypt

An ancient wooden sarcophagus that was displayed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science has been returned to Egypt after US authorities determined it was looted years ago.

The repatriation was part of Egyptian government efforts to stop the trafficking of its stolen antiquities. In 2021, authorities in Cairo succeeded in getting 5,300 stolen artefacts returned to Egypt from across the world.

Mostafa Waziri, the top official at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the sarcophagus dates back to the late dynastic period of ancient Egypt, an era that spanned the last of the Pharaonic rulers from 664BC until Alexander the Great’s campaign in 332BC.

The sarcophagus, almost 3 metres (9.5 ft) tall with a brightly painted top surface, may have belonged to an ancient priest named Ankhenmaat, though some of the inscription on it has been erased, Waziri said.

It was symbolically handed over at a ceremony on Monday in Cairo by Daniel Rubinstein, the US chargé d’affaires in Egypt.

The handover came more than three months after the Manhattan district attorney’s office determined the sarcophagus was looted from Abu Sir Necropolis, north of Cairo.

It was smuggled through Germany into the US in 2008, according to Manhattan district attorney Alvin L Bragg.

“This stunning coffin was trafficked by a well-organised network that has looted countless antiquities from the region,” Bragg said at the time. “We are pleased that this object will be returned to Egypt, where it rightfully belongs.”

Bragg said the same network had smuggled a gilded coffin out of Egypt that was featured at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.

The Met bought the piece from a Paris art dealer in 2017 for about $4m (£3.35). It was returned to Egypt in 2019.

Researchers identify bird species depicted in ancient, finely detailed Egyptian painting

A masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art found in a palace is so finely detailed that researchers have been able to pinpoint the bird species it depicts. These images of the natural world likely created a space for relaxation and recreation in the palace.

The artwork was discovered at Amarna, the location of the capital city of Pharaoh Akhenaten (1347–1332 BC). Excavations in 1924 uncovered a palace belonging to Meritaten, daughter of the pharaoh and Nefertiti, with several lavishly decorated rooms.

One of these, the so-called Green Room, has a rare depiction of birds in a wild papyrus marsh with no signs of human activity.

“They have since come to be regarded as masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art,” said Dr. Christopher Stimpson and Professor Barry Kemp, “Featured in these paintings are some of the most skilfully rendered and naturalistic images of birds known from Dynastic Egypt.”

Despite the quality of these images, they have received relatively little attention. As such, not all the bird species in the art had been identified in the nearly 100 years since it was found.

“The art of the Green Room has not received as much attention as you would perhaps expect. This may have been because the original plaster panels did not survive well,” said Dr. Stimpson, an honorary associate of Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Attempts at conserving the painting in 1926 accidentally damaged and discolored the artwork.

So Dr. Stimpson and Professor Kemp set out to identify the birds of the Green Room.

The pair consulted modern ornithological data and a high-quality copy of the artwork made in 1924 by Nina de Garis Davies to identify the birds. Their work is published in Antiquity.

The researchers were ultimately able to identify several species, including shrikes and wagtails. These join the kingfishers and pigeons identified by previous work.

They also found that the artists may have included hints for ancient birdwatchers: Migrant birds are annotated with a triangle, perhaps indicating a seasonal element in the art.

The artwork also may show an ancient Egyptian pigeon problem. Rock pigeons are depicted but are not native to the papyrus marshes, instead being associated with nearby desert cliffs.

Perhaps, like in modern cities, pigeons were attracted to the area by human activity.

While the researchers cannot rule this out, they think the artists instead may have included these birds to make the scene seem wilder and untamed—an atmosphere the realistic artwork appears designed to create.

The team suggests these images of the natural world have made the Green Room a relaxing place.

“No one knows for sure, although the Green Room was most likely a place of rest and relaxation. Illustrations in rock tombs at Amarna possibly show similar settings where women relax, socialize and play music,” said Dr. Stimpson, “In the Green Room, the atmosphere was likely enhanced by the visions of nature.

The calming effects of the natural world were as important then, as they are (more than ever) today.”

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.

“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.

A vast tunnel found beneath an ancient Egyptian temple

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.

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. 

Egypt reveals 59 ancient coffins found near Saqqara pyramids

Egypt’s tourism and antiquities minister said on Saturday archaeologists have unearthed dozens of ancient coffins in a vast necropolis south of Cairo. Khalid el-Anany said at least 59 sealed sarcophagi, with mummies inside most of them, were found that had been buried in three wells more than 2,600 years ago.

“I consider this is the beginning of a big discovery,” el-Anany said, adding that there is an unknown number of coffins that have yet to be unearthed in the same area.

He spoke at a news conference at the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara where the coffins were found. The sarcophagi have been displayed and one of them was opened before reporters to show the mummy inside. Several foreign diplomats attended the announcement ceremony.

The Saqqara plateau hosts at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, along with hundreds of tombs of ancient officials and other sites that range from the 1st Dynasty (2920 B.C.-2770 B.C.) to the Coptic period (395-642).

Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said initial studies show that the decorated coffins were made for priests, top officials and elites from the Pharaonic Late Period (664-525 B.C.).

He said archaeologists also found a total of 28 statuettes of Ptah-Soker the main god of the Saqqara necropolis, and a beautifully carved 35 cm tall bronze statuette of god Nefertum, inlaid with precious stones. The name of its owner, Priest Badi-Amun, is written on its base, he said.

Egyptian antiquities officials had announced the discovery of the first batch coffins last month, when archaeologists found 13 of the containers in a newly discovered 11 meter-deep (36 feet) well.

The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis of Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis that includes the famed Giza Pyramids, as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1970s.

El-Anany said the Saqqara coffins would join 30 ancient wooden coffins that were discovered in October in the southern city of Luxor, and will be showcased at the new Grand Egyptian Museum, which Egypt is building near the Giza Pyramids.

The Saqqara discovery is the latest in a series of archeological finds that Egypt has sought to publicize in an effort to revive its key tourism sector, which was badly hit by the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising.

The sector was also dealt a further blow this year by the global coronavirus pandemic.

Crocodile heads — buried 4,000 years ago — uncovered in tombs in Egypt, photos show

A pair of ancient nobles died thousands of years ago and were buried in nearby tombs in Egypt. Excavations of these graves revealed the first-of-its-kind discovery.

Archaeologists in Luxor excavated two tombs near the temple of Hatshepsut, Science in Poland said in a news release Tuesday, Dec. 20.

One grave belonged to Chancellor Cheti, an important official to the Pharaoh Mentuhotep II, and the other belonged to an anonymous vizier, comparable to the Pharaoh’s Prime Minister.

Inside the 4,000-year-old burial, researchers found nine crocodile heads, the release said. The heads were found wrapped in fabric and discarded in heaps left by earlier researchers.

The skulls came from young and adult crocodiles, archaeologists said. While alive, the crocodiles were anywhere from 6 feet long to 13 feet long.

Although mummified crocodiles have been found in temples, no such crocodiles had been found in ancient Egyptian graves — until now, Patryk Chudzik, head of research at the Center of Mediterranean Archaeology, University of Warsaw told Science in Poland.

These crocodile heads were likely buried to help the deceased on their journey to the afterlife, researchers said.

In tombs with crocodile heads, the soul of the deceased would be protected by the ancient Egyptian god Sobek, a figure commonly depicted as either a crocodile or a man with a crocodile head, Chudzik explained.

Crocodile heads may have been more common in the richest ancient tombs and simply discarded by previous researchers who focused on burial goods such as jewelry, gold, or pottery, experts said.

The temple of Hatshepsut is located in Luxor, about 400 miles south of Cairo.