Mummies With Golden Tongues Found in Egypt

An Egyptian archaeological mission has unearthed a new part of the Quweisna necropolis in Menoufiya governorate that is replete with mummies with golden tongues.

The discovery was made during excavations carried out in the central Nile Delta governorate in the past three months at the necropolis.

The mission also found a collection of clay pots, golden sheets in the shape of scarabs and lotus flowers, as well as a number of funerary stony amulets, scarabs, and vessels from the late ancient Egyptian, Ptolemaic, and Roman periods.
 
“The mummies with golden tongues are in a bad conservation condition,” said Mustafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Waziri added that skeleton remains of mummies covered with golden sheets, wooden anthropoid coffins, and copper traces that were once used in making coffins were also found.
 
Ayman Ashmawi, head of the ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector, said that the newly discovered part of the necropolis has a different architectural style.

Ashmawi explained that this discovered part is made of mudbrick and composed of a main vaulted hall with three vaulted burial chambers and a burial shaft with two side chambers.

“Early studies on the burials, the mummies, and the funerary collection found indicate that this necropolis was used during three different periods: the late ancient Egyptian, the Ptolemaic, and part of the Roman period,” he added.

Quweisna necropolis, which is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Nile Delta, houses a collection of tombs and burial chambers from several archaeological eras. 

This collection reveals the changes in the architectural style of tombs and the burying methods used in the different ages. 

Quweisna is also home to a very distinguished necropolis for sacred birds.

During the past archaeological seasons, the mission has succeeded in uncovering a collection of tombs, remains of buildings, mummies, coffins, and sarcophagi, including a huge anthropoid sarcophagus carved in black granite for one of the senior priests of Atribis (today’s Banha in Qalioubiya governorate north of Cairo).

Colonnaded Hall Discovered in Egypt’s Nile Delta

Remains of the colonnades hall of Butu Temple were uncovered during excavations carried out by an Egyptian archaeological mission at Tel Al-Farayeen, Kafr El-Sheikh in the northern Nile Delta.

A collection of pots used in religious rituals was unearthed along with decorated stone engravings depicting scenes that date back to the 26th Dynasty Saitie period.

The hall, has three aligned columns in ruins with a probable papyrus on the top – emblematic of the of prevailing art forms in that period – could be associated withe deity Wadjet who is the master of Butu Temple.

The mission also unearthed a limestone relief showing a deity with a bird head wearing a white crown surrounded by feathers – possibly Nekhpet or Mut.

“This is a very important discovery,” said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

“It shows a major part of the temple, which sheds light on the original plan of the temple and the architectural design of the surrounding area extending for 11 feddans,” Waziri added.

He noted that the area was surrounded by a huge mud brick wall built during the New Kingdom.

More height was added to the wall during the Saitie period, he explained.

A small limestone shrine, pots, and vessels were also discovered in the temple area.

“The shrine might have been built to preserve small statues sacrificed for the temple,” said Ayman Ashmawi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, adding that excavations will continue to reveal more secrets of the site.

The mission had earlier uncovered a huge stone building with tools used in religious rituals and a collection of distinguished scenes carved in ivory and inlaid with gold and hieroglyphic engravings.

46 Eagles in vivid colour revealed on Ancient Egyptian temple ceiling

A joint German/Egyptian archaeological mission at the Temple of Esna on the west bank of the Nile, 35 miles south of Luxor in Egypt, has revealed some original colours and patterns in the part of the temple complex during restoration work.

Sand dust, filth, salt efflorescence, and bird and bat guano and bones had collected on the walls, ceilings, and columns over the ages, obscuring the inscriptions to the point that they were almost invisible to the human eye.

The construction of the Esna Temple dates from Ptolemaic times, however, most of the parts that survive today are from the Roman period.

The Esna Temple is dedicated to the Ancient Egyptian god, Khnum, and his consorts Menhit and Nebtu, their son, Heka, and the goddess Neith.

The restoration project found the original colours and patterns under the middle ceiling above the entrance to the temple.

A careful process of cleaning revealed a painting that depicts 46 eagles in a row, 20 of which have an eagle head (representing Upper Egypt), whilst the remainder is the head of a cobra (representing Lower Egypt).

The murals on the middle ceiling over the entry hall are particularly noteworthy. The ceiling is more than 45 feet high and decorated with 46 eagles in two rows.

The goddess Nekhbet and Upper Egypt are represented by twenty-four of them, which have eagle heads. Wajit, the goddess of Lower Egypt, is represented with twenty-two cobra heads. Between 1963 and 1975, French Egyptologist Serge Soniron studied and photographed the temple inscriptions, but the ceiling with the 46 eagles was never recorded or published.

Dr. Hisham El-Lithy, head of the Central Administration for Egyptian Archaeology Registration and Head of the Egyptian Archaeological Mission said: “The colourful inscriptions have suffered over the past centuries from the accumulation of thick layers and impurities.”

Researchers also discovered Greek inscriptions written in red ink while cleaning the western wall of the temple.

It was discovered in the temple axis’ western wall frieze, totally buried in layers of black soot.

The inscription specifies the date and month, Epiphi 5, which corresponds to late June or early July during Emperor Domitian’s reign (81-96 A.D.) Archaeologists think that this is the date when the Esna Temple was finished.

Pyramid and Hundreds of New Kingdom Coffins Found in Egypt

Just a stone’s throw from King Tut’s tomb, archaeologists have unearthed the pyramid of a never-before-known ancient Egyptian queen; a cache of coffins, mummies and artefacts; and a series of interconnected tunnels.

For the past two years, archaeologists have been working at Saqqara, an archaeological site in Giza, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) south of Cairo. Recently, they discovered a trove of coffins and mummies, which may belong to some of King Tut’s closest generals and advisors during his reign (1333 B.C. until his death in 1323 B.C.).

Archaeologists also focused their attention on a nearby pyramid, which belonged to Teti, the first king of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.

“Teti was worshipped as a god in the New Kingdom period, and so people wanted to be buried near him,” Zahi Hawass(opens in new tab), an Egyptologist who is working on the dig and who formerly served as Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities, told Live Science in an email.

“However, most burials known in Saqqara previously were either from the Old Kingdom or the Late Period. Now we have found 22 [interconnected] shafts, ranging from 30 to 60 feet [9 to 18 meters deep], all with New Kingdom burials.” (Also known as the Egyptian Empire, the New Kingdom period lasted from the sixth century B.C. to the 11th century B.C.)

Buried within these shafts, archaeologists found a “huge limestone sarcophagus” along with “300 beautiful coffins from the New Kingdom period,” Hawass said.

“Burials from the New Kingdom were not known to be common in the area before, so this is entirely unique to the site,” Hawass said. “The coffins have individual faces, each one unique, distinguishing between men and women, and are decorated with scenes from the Book of the Dead [an ancient Egypt funerary text]. Each coffin also has the name of the deceased and often shows the Four Sons of Horus, who protected the organs of the deceased.”

If discovering the coffins wasn’t astonishing enough when the researchers lifted the coffins’ lids they were surprised to find the mummies in good condition, even after all these centuries. 

“This shows that mummification reached its peak in the New Kingdom,” Hawass said. “Some coffins have two lids, and the most amazing coffin so far has a mask of a woman made completely of solid gold.”

He added, “Inside the coffins and tomb shafts are also various artefacts, including games such as the ancient game of Senet, shabtis [small figurines], statues of the god Ptah-Sokar and even a metal axe found in the hand of an army soldier.

In addition, researchers found a pyramid commemorating a queen whose identity was previously unknown.

“We have since discovered that her name was Neith and she had never before been known from the historical record,” Hawass said. “It is amazing to literally rewrite what we know of history, adding a new queen to our records.”

A selection of the coffins and antiquities found at the excavation site will be on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza, which is slated to open next year.

New Thoughts on Egypt’s Ancient Branding Irons

Small branding irons from ancient Egypt were likely used to mark the skin of human slaves, a new study suggests. Several ancient texts and illustrations, as well as 10 branding irons dating to 3,000 years ago, suggest that ancient Egyptians branded slaves.

These branding irons, actually made of bronze, are now in the collections of the British Museum and the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London.

The branding irons are thought to date roughly to Egypt’s 19th dynasty, from around 1292 B.C. until the 25th dynasty, which ended in 656 B.C., according to a study published Oct. 15 in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.

Until now, most Egyptologists had assumed that they were used to brand cattle — a practice seen in ancient Egyptian paintings — or perhaps horses. But the brands in the museums are too small for that purpose, said Ella Karev, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago and the study’s author.

“They are so small that it precludes them from being used on cattle or horses,” she told Live Science. “I’m not excluding the possibility, but we have no evidence of small animals like goats being branded, and there is so much other evidence of humans being branded.”

Modern cattle-branding guidelines call for a brand that’s larger than at least 4 inches (10.6 centimetres) long so the scar it leaves won’t become illegible as a calf grows — an issue that the ancient Egyptians likely knew about, too. 

But the brands in the British Museum and the Petrie Museum are typically a third of that size — far too small for cattle, Karev wrote. The cattle brands in ancient Egyptian paintings are also square or rectangular, and look larger than the brands in the museums. 

Branding people

Some of the ancient Egyptian branding irons are almost exactly the same size as branding irons used by Europeans on African enslaved people during the trans-Atlantic slave trade many centuries later, Karev said. “Human branding-irons from the mid-and late 19th century parallel the size and shape of the smaller branding irons discussed here,” she wrote in the study.

Ancient Egyptian writings also talk about “marking” slaves, which was assumed to be a reference to the practice of tattooing, Karev told Live Science. For instance, branding is seen in a depiction of prisoners of war in a carving at Medinet Habu near Luxor in Upper (southern) Egypt dated to the 20th dynasty, perhaps around 1185 B.C.

But research shows that tattooing in ancient Egypt was almost exclusively performed on women and for religious purposes, she said, and the marking of prisoners of war in the Medinet Habu carving is unlikely to be tattooing.

“Practically speaking, ‘hand-poking’ a tattoo [without a tattoo machine] takes quite a lot of time and skill — and if you’re doing that on a large scale, it’s not easily replicable,” Karev said. “It would make much more sense for this to be branding.”

Moreover, the tools used to mark the prisoners in the Medinet Habu carving look different from the cattle brands used in ancient Egyptian paintings. It’s been suggested that’s because they were needles for tattooing, and that the carving shows them placed in a bowl of pigment. But Karev argues that the depiction instead shows small brands being heated to red hot in a portable heater known as a brazier.

Egyptian slavery

The practice of slavery in Egypt was very different from the modern conception of slavery informed by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Karev said. 

“The way that we define slavery, serfdom, indentured servitude, debt bondage — all of these are modern classifications and categorizations,” she said. “The ancient Egyptians did not have these classifications, and so it is up to historians to figure out what, in context, is actually going on.”

While ancient writings state that people were sometimes bought and sold as property, and perhaps with the land they subsisted on — what are called “serfs” today — there’s also evidence that the dowry for the marriage of a slave might be paid by their owner and that many slaves were adopted into families.

In addition, there is evidence that people were often manumitted, or freed from slavery, and became regular members of Egyptian society, she said.

In such cases, the brand of a slave might be a “permanent marker of an impermanent status,” Karev said. “They clearly had no issue with an ex-slave adopting a new name, becoming fully Egyptian, marrying an Egyptian free person and moving up the ranks.”

Antonio Loprieno, an Egyptologist at the University of Basel in Switzerland who wasn’t involved in the study, said the paper was a “fantastic piece of scholarship.”

Only foreigners, rather than native Egyptians, seem to have been marked in this way, so “assuming that the branding-bronzes were used for humans … is empirically more probable at this time, where the number of foreign workers and soldiers in Egypt was at its peak,” he told Live Science in an email.

Loprieno, too, noted that modern ideas of slavery did not apply in Egypt at this time and that further evidence is needed of the “moral connotations” of slavery in ancient Egypt.

Bathhouse Dated to Third Century B.C. Uncovered in Egypt

The ruins of a 2,200-year-old bathhouse dating to the second half of the third century B.C. have been discovered at Berenike, a town in Egypt by the Red Sea. 

The giant bathhouse has two tholoi (circular structures) with 14 bathtubs in each that would have had cold or lukewarm water, as well as a separate room for hot baths.

The water entered the building from two large water reservoirs fed by a single well. It’s possible that a gymnasium may have been built to the west of it, Marek Woźniak, an assistant professor at the Polish Academy of Science’s Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, told Live Science in an email. 

Woźniak is in charge of researching remains from Berenike that date to ancient Egypt’s Hellenistic period (circa 323 B.C. to 30 B.C.), the time between the death of Alexander the Great and the death of Cleopatra VII. During this time, Greek culture, including architectural styles, flourished in the Middle East. 

At the time that the bathhouse’s waters were flowing, Berenike had a sizable military presence and was a hub for imported goods and war elephants from East Africa said Woźniak.

This bathhouse likely would have been used by people involved in these operations, such as ship crews, said Woźniak.

The heavy military involvement means that most of the people living at Berenike at this time were probably men, Woźniak said.

This bathhouse likely would have been used as a place to relax by the military personnel posted there. Bathhouses in Hellenistic times often “served as places to meet and relax after work or sporting exercise, hence they were often combined with gymnasia [gyms]” Wozniak said. 

No writing was found at the bathhouse, but archaeologists unearthed coins and pieces of pottery, finds which helped archaeologists date the bathhouse’s active years, Woźniak said. 

The excavations at Berenike are led by Mariusz Gwiazda, an assistant professor of archaeology at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, and Steven Sidebotha, a history professor at the University of Delaware who specializes in the ancient global economy. 

The team has made many finds at Berenike over the past few years, including a 2,300-year-old fort and a 1,700-year-old falcon shrine with a stele inscribed with a cryptic message. Excavations and analysis of remains at Berenike are ongoing.

Scientists Reconstruct Face Of ‘world’s First Pregnant’ Egyptian Mummy, Died 2000 Yrs Ago

With an aim to re-humanize mummified individuals, Forensic scientists have reconstructed the face of the world’s first pregnant ancient Egyptian mummy more than 2,000 years after her death, using 2D and 3D techniques.

The Mummy known as ‘The Mystery Lady’ is believed to have died 28 weeks into her pregnancy between the ages around 20 and 30.

The embalmed woman was analyzed last year by a team of Polish researchers, who discovered evidence of a fetus inside her stomach.

Forensic experts have used her skull and other remains to produce two images showing what she may have looked like when alive in the first century BC.

Chantal Milani, an Italian forensic anthropologist and member of the Warsaw Mummy Project said, “Our bones and the skull, in particular, give a lot of information about the face of an individual.”

“Although it cannot be considered an exact portrait, the skull like many anatomical parts is unique and shows a set of shapes and proportions that will appear in the final face,” Chantal Milani further said.

The fetus was located in the lower part of the lesser pelvis: Warsaw Mummy Project

The Warsaw Mummy Project on Facebook wrote, “The face that covers the bone structure follows different anatomic rules, thus standard procedures can be applied to reconstruct it, for example, to establish the shape of the nose.”

As per reports, the fetus, which had been ‘pickled like a gherkin’, was located in the lower part of the lesser pelvis and partly in the lower part of the greater pelvis and was mummified together with its mother. 

Its head circumference was 9.8 inches, which the forensic team used to determine it was between the 26th and 30th week of life.

Forensic artist Hew Morrison said, “Facial reconstruction is mainly used in forensics to help determine the identity of a body when more common means of identification such as fingerprint identification or DNA analysis have drawn a blank.

Reconstructing an individual’s face from their skull is often considered a last resort in an attempt to establish who they were.”

Notably, the mummy was taken out of Egypt and into Warsaw in December 1826, around the time of some of the most important discoveries from the Egyptian Valley of the Kings. Her body had been carefully wrapped in fabrics and left with a rich set of amulets to see her into the afterlife.

Here are some pictures of the facial reconstruction of ‘The Mysterious Lady’