Untouched and Unlooted 4,400-yr-old Tomb of Egyptian High Priest Discovered
Archaeologists in Egypt have made a new tomb discovery — the final resting place of a high priest, untouched for 4,400 years, decorated with hieroglyphics. The secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, described the find as “one of a kind in the last decades.”
The tomb was found buried in a ridge at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara.
It was untouched and unlooted. Officials say they expect more discoveries when archaeologists further excavate the site in the months to come.
The well-preserved tomb is decorated with scenes showing the royal priest alongside his mother, wife and other members of his family, the ministry said in a statement.
The high priest was devoted to his mother, evidence shows. “He mentions the name of his mother almost everywhere here,” said Waziri in an interview, pointing to the dozens of hieroglyphics, statues, and drawings.
“The colour is almost intact even though the tomb is almost 4,400 years old,” he added.
The high priest “Wahtye” served during the Fifth Dynasty reign of King Neferirkare (between 2500-2300 BC), at the Saqqara necropolis in Egypt. In addition to the name of the deceased, hieroglyphs carved into the stone above the tomb’s door reveal his multiple titles.
Saqqara pyramid of Djoser in Egypt.
The grave’s rectangular gallery is said to be covered in painted reliefs, sculptures, and inscriptions, all in excellent shape considering how much time has passed.
The reliefs depict Wahtye himself, his wife Weret Ptah, and his mother Merit Meen, as well as everyday activities that include hunting and sailing and manufacturing goods such as pottery, according to National Geographic.
The team of Egyptian archaeologists found five shafts in the tombs. They had removed a last layer of debris from the tomb on December 13, 2018, and found five shafts inside, Waziri said.
Pyramid of Djoser (Stepped pyramid), an archaeological remaining in the Saqqara necropolis, Egypt.
One of the shafts was unsealed with nothing inside, but the other four were sealed. They are expecting to make discoveries when they excavate those shafts. He was hopeful about one shaft in particular.
“I can imagine that all of the objects can be found in this area,” he said in an interview, pointing at one of the sealed shafts. “This shaft should lead to a coffin or a sarcophagus of the owner of the tomb.”
The tomb is 33 feet long, 9 feet wide, and just under 10 feet high, Waziri said.
This picture taken on December 15, 2018, shows a general view of a newly-discovered tomb belonging to the high priest ‘Wahtye’ who served during the 5th dynasty reign of King Neferirkare (between 2500-2300 BC), at the Saqqara necropolis, 30 kilometres south of the Egyptian capital Cairo.
Various drawings depict “the manufacturing of pottery and wine, making the religious offerings, musical performances, boats sailing, the manufacturing of the funerary furniture, and hunting,” according to the site Egypt Today. Also, NPR is reporting that the Saqqara site is part of a larger complex where archaeologists have discovered art and architecture that yield insight into daily life in ancient Egypt.
The Fifth Dynasty ruled Egypt from about 2500 BC to 2350 BC, not long after the great pyramid of Giza was constructed.
Giza pyramids.
Saqqara served as the necropolis for Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt for over 2 millennia.
Ancient Egyptians mummified humans to preserve their bodies for the afterlife, and animal mummies were used as religious offerings.
The rate of discoveries seems to be increasing. In November 2018, archaeologists unearthed eight new limestone sarcophagi containing mummies at a site that is 25 miles south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Antiquities Ministry said the mummies were dated to the Late Period (664-332 BC) and have an outer layer of cartonnage — papyrus or linen which is covered in plaster — decorated with a painted human form. Three of the mummies are well-preserved.
Images show the sarcophagus painted with the colours deep ochre and blue. Moreover, days before the eight mummies were found, the perfectly-preserved mummy of a woman was found inside a coffin in Egypt dating back more than 3,000 years.
That sarcophagus was opened on November 24th, which was one of two coffins discovered in El-Assasif, Luxor, on the bank of the Nile.
Book of the Dead: The ancient Egyptian guide to the afterlife
A section of the “Book of the Dead,” a papyrus manuscript with cursive hieroglyphs and colour illustrations. Here we see Ani, Scribe of the Sacred Revenues of all the gods of Thebes, 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 honour of the Sun God Ra at his rising.
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 serve 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.
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.
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.
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.
Stone Age discovery shows Homo sapiens survived in the Kalahari
The archaeological site at a rock shelter in South Africa’s Kalahari Desert: More than 100,000 years ago, people used the so-called Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter for spiritual activities.
Archaeological evidence in a rock shelter at the edge of the Kalahari Desert, South Africa, is challenging the idea that the origins of our species were linked to coastal environments.
“Our findings from this rock shelter show that overly simplified models for the origins of our species are no longer acceptable. Evidence suggests many regions across the African continent were involved, the Kalahari being just one,” Dr. Wilkins said.
“Archaeological evidence for early Homo sapiens has been largely discovered at coastal sites in South Africa, supporting the idea that our origins were linked to coastal environments. There have been very few well-preserved, datable archaeological sites in the interior of southern Africa that can tell us about Homo sapiens’ origins away from the coast.
“A rock shelter on Ga-Mohana Hill that stands above an expansive savannah in the Kalahari is one such site.”
Archaeological excavations at Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter where early evidence for complex Homo sapiens behaviours was recovered.
Used as a place of spiritual activities today by some of the local community, archaeological research in the rock shelter has revealed a long history as a place of spiritual significance.
The researchers excavated 22 white calcite crystals and fragments of ostrich eggshells thought to be used as water containers, from deposits dated to 105,000 years ago at Ga-Mohana Hill North Rockshelter when the environment was much wetter than today. The researchers were delighted to discover that the assemblage of human-collected crystals and ostrich eggshell fragments at Ga-Mohana Hill was significantly older than that reported in interior environments elsewhere.
“Our analysis indicates that the crystals were not introduced into the deposits via natural processes, but were deliberately collected objects likely linked to spiritual beliefs and ritual,” Dr. Wilkins said.
“The crystals point towards spiritual or cultural use of the shelter 105,000 years ago,” said Dr. Sechaba Maape from the University of the Witwatersrand. “This is remarkable considering that site continues to be used to practice ritual activities today.”
The age of the archaeological layers was constrained via Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating in the OSL laboratory at the Department of Geology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
“This technique measures natural light signals that accumulate over time in sedimentary quartz and feldspar grains,” said Dr. Michael Meyer, head of the OSL Laboratory. “You can think about each grain as a miniaturized clock, from which we can read out this natural light or luminescence signal, giving us the age of the archaeological sediment layers.”
Crystals were collected by early Homo sapiens in southern Kalahari 105,000 years ago.
The name Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning ‘great thirst’. And today the climate at Ga-Mohana is semi-arid, with little, very seasonal rainfall.
However, ancient proof of abundant water on the landscape is evident from the abundant tufa formations around the shelter. These were aged using the uranium-thorium dating method between 110,000 and 100,000 years ago — exactly the same time period as the people were living there.
“This is a story of water in what we know now as a dry landscape, and of adaptable people who exploited the landscape to not only survive but to thrive,” says Dr. Robyn Pickering, who is director of the Human Evolution Research Institute (HERI) at the University of Cape Town.
Due to the ongoing spiritual significance of Ga-Mohana Hill, the researchers are conscious to minimize their impact on the local communities’ use of the rock shelter after each season.
“Leaving no visible trace and working with the local community is critical for the sustainability of the project,” Dr. Wilkins said. “So that Ga-Mohana Hill can continue to provide new insights about the origins and evolution of Homo sapiens in the Kalahari.”
The mummified face of Pharaoh Seti I hailed for its superior preservation
The mummified face of Menmaatre Seti I known as Sety I of the New Kingdom’s Nineteenth Dynasty pleasantly surprised Egyptologists with its superior preservation. His face is regarded as one of the best preserved in the world as well as in Ancient Egypt’s annals.
The mummified face of Pharoah Seti I.
Dying about 3,298 years ago, Seti I is reckoned to have ruled when Egypt was at one of its most affluent peaks from 1290 to 1279 BCE. He was the father to perhaps ancient Egypt’s most beloved pharaoh Ramesses II. His father, Ramses I, reigned for only two years.
The tomb of this extremely powerful and handsome ruler was brought to the world’s attention by the rebellious researcher Giovanni Battista Belzoni on October 16, 1817.
The tomb located in the Valley of the Kings, known as KV17, is the longest tomb in the entire necropolis. It’s about 137 meters (449 ft.).
Seti’s mummified body was neatly prepared and covered with a yellow shroud. However, tomb looters had messed with his bandages and smashed his abdomen. Worse still, Seti’s head was separated from the rest of his battered body.
Fortunately, his face remained untouched. Now, the remains of Seti I rest among other royal mummies in the Cairo museum.
In the early years of his reign, Seti led his army northward to restore Egyptian prestige, which had been partly lost during the troubled years of the late 18th dynasty under Akhenaton.
He battled in northern Palestine and Syria and fought at least one battle with the Hittite king Muwatallis; he subsequently concluded a peace treaty that may have established the frontier at Kadesh on the Orontes River between the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains.
Mummy of Pharaoh Seti I.
Seti in his 11 or 15-year rule did much to promote the prosperity of Egypt. He fortified the frontier, opened mines and quarries, dug wells, and rebuilt temples and shrines that had fallen into decay or been damaged; and he continued the work begun by his father on the construction of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak, which is one of the most impressive monuments of Egyptian architecture.
Another important work is his memorial temple at Abydos, which he dedicated to Osiris and six other deities of which much of the original colour remains.
The study used novel computational approaches and linguistic data from more than 400 Bantu languages to reconstruct the historic migration routes. The project was a collaboration between scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Bantu men and women working the fields near Kismayo in Somalia.
The Bantu Expansion transformed sub-Saharan Africa’s linguistic, economic, and cultural composition. Today, more than 240 million people speak one of the more than 500 Bantu languages. It is generally accepted that the ancestors of current Bantu speakers lived around 5,000 to 6,000 years before present in a region by the current border of Nigeria and Cameroon. However, until recently, it was not known how and when they succeeded in crossing southward through or around the dense Central African Rainforest to finally settle in their current locations, covering about half of the African continent.
In their current study, researchers analyzed linguistic data from more than 400 Bantu and other closely related languages. From this data, using novel methods, they built a dated language family tree and reconstructed the geographic spread of Bantu speakers.
In contrast to previous claims, the southwards expansion happened approximately 4,000 years ago – a long time before the savanna corridor through the dense rainforest opened. It had previously been thought that agriculturalist populations, such as the early Bantu speakers, would not have been able to maintain their agricultural traditions in a dense rainforest environment.
Linguistic data tells us a story of migrations
Bantu migrations were reconstructed from linguistic data. The homeland is marked with a star, the main nodes are numbered (1-3), and the origins of the main clades (0-23) are marked with their respective colours.
The authors used a novel method, borrowed from genetics, to account for possible geographic biases in the reconstruction: “It turns out that there are actually more than 600 Bantu and other related documented languages, but there is not enough lexical data available for about one-third of them.
Therefore, we implemented a so-called sequence-free sampling – a way to overcome this bias and build a more robust geographic reconstruction, including all documented Bantu languages”, comments Ezequiel Koile, lead author of this research. “It’s really exciting to be able to use these methods to provide the most comprehensive analysis of the Bantu languages to date. These methods give us real power to resolve these long-standing debates about major human population expansions”, adds Simon Greenhill, co-author of the study.
Besides the sequence-free sampling approach, an important methodological improvement in the reconstruction of past migration routes was the use of a “break-away” model.
“According to this model, at every split in the language tree, one of the populations stays in the same place, while the other migrates. This seems more realistic than other diffusion-based methods, where both populations are forced to migrate,” explains Remco Bouckaert, developer of this geographic model.
Agriculturalists can adapt to a dense rainforest
It was previously thought that for a human group characterized by its agricultural practices, such as the early Bantu populations, it would have been hard, if not impossible, to cross the Central African rainforest.
“The idea was that the dense rainforest made it very difficult to transport and maintain the crops and cattle that characterized the Bantu expansion. While changes in the type of subsistence are attested in history, they tend to be relatively rare,” comments Damián Blasi, one of the article’s co-authors.
This is why it had generally been accepted that these populations migrated through the Sangha River Interval – a savanna corridor that opened as a north-south strip along the rainforest around 2,500 years ago – and not directly through the rainforest. This study’s findings fit with recent anthropological results demonstrating the adaptability of humans to tropical forests.
“Our results highlight the importance of niche construction in human population expansions. Of course ecology matters, but it isn’t destiny,” concludes Russell Gray, senior author of the publication.
Temple Dedicated to the Sun God Unearthed in Egypt
Part of the uncovered sun temple is seen in this image.
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 4,500-year-old temple dedicated to the Egyptian sun god Ra at the site of Abu Ghurab, about 12 miles (20 kilometres) south of Cairo.
The temple was built sometime during ancient Egypt’s fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.) — a “period in which the cult of the sun reached its apex with the construction of a new type of monument specifically devoted to the sun god, commonly known as ‘Sun Temple,'” said Massimiliano Nuzzolo, co-director of the archaeological dig and a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. He co-directs it with Rosanna Pirelli of the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in Italy.
The sun cult was a powerful cult in ancient Egyptian religion. In later times, Ra merged with Amun — the chief god of Thebes (Luxor) — to form Amun-Ra who was regarded, at least by some Egyptians, as being the most powerful of the Egyptian gods.
He was worshipped until around 1,500 years ago when Egyptian polytheism became extinct.
Here we see the excavated Sun Temple from ancient Egypt.
The newly uncovered sun temple was made from mud bricks and measured at least 197 feet long and 66 feet wide (60 meters by 20 m). It contained an L-shaped entrance portico, a courtyard, storage rooms and rooms that may have been used for cultic purposes, Nuzzolo told Live Science in an email.
“The walls of this building were all plastered in black and white and often also show traces of painting in red and blue,” Nuzzolo said.
The entrance portico was partially made of white limestone and had two limestone columns.
The temple was ritually demolished, possibly before it was even finished, so a new sun temple could be made from stone at the site for a pharaoh named Niuserre (reign circa. 2420 B.C. to 2389 B.C.). Niuserre “reused part of the structure as a platform or sub-foundation for his new temple,” Nuzzolo said.
The archaeologists found two deposits of artefacts, one of which has dozens of intact beer jars and a few finely made and red-slipped vessels, while the other contains seal impressions, including the seals of pharaohs who ruled during the fifth and sixth dynasties.
One of the earliest seals belongs to Shepseskare, an “enigmatic” pharaoh who ruled Egypt before Niuserre, Nuzzolo said.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art(opens in new tab) in New York City lists Shepseskare as reigning from circa 2438 B.C to 2431 B.C., and Raneferef (also known as Neferefre) ruling from circa 2431 B.C. to 2420 B.C.
These artifacts were found in the same deposit and include jars used to store beer.
This artefact contains the seal of Shepseskare, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt in the fifth dynasty.
Archaeologists aren’t sure which pharaoh began construction of the mud brick sun temple, but it was likely either Shepseskare or Raneferef, Nuzzolo said.
Neolithic Watermelons May Have Been Valued for Their Seeds
The oldest known seeds from a watermelon relative, dating back 6,000 years to the Neolithic period, were found during an archaeological dig in Libya.
An investigation of these seeds led by biologist Susanne S. Renner at Washington University in St. Louis reveals some surprises about how our ancestors used a predecessor of today’s watermelon.
Scientists generally agree that watermelons came from Africa, but exactly where and when watermelons with red, sweet flesh were first domesticated from their wild form is debatable.
However, the very old seeds discovered at Uan Muhuggiag, a rock shelter in what is now the Sahara Desert in Libya, seemed at odds with this explanation. There was no way to be certain of their identity prior to this investigation.
“The oldest seeds of watermelons cannot be securely identified as either belonging to a sweet-pulped domesticated form, or instead to one of the bitter-pulped wild forms,” said Renner, an honorary professor of biology in Arts & Sciences. “The seeds of the seven species of Citrullus are basically undistinguishable.”
“Now, having a chromosome-level genome, we can be sure that Neolithic Libyans were using a bitter-fleshed watermelon,” she said. “We suspect they used the fruits to get at the (numerous!) seeds, which even today are eaten air-dried or roasted or also boiled in soups or stews.”
Co-senior author Guillaume Chomicki, a National Environmental Research Council fellow at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, collected dozens of samples of watermelon and watermelon relatives from herbarium specimens in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as part of the quest to trace the path of watermelon’s domestication.
He and Renner also obtained much older samples: the 6,000-year-old Libyan seeds and another set of 3,300-year-old Sudanese seeds.
An unexpected new insight from this study is that Citrullus appears to have initially been collected or cultivated for its seeds, not its sweet flesh, consistent with seed damage patterns induced by human teeth in the oldest Libyan material.
“These seeds were a riddle because they were thought to be the oldest true watermelon seeds,” Chomicki said. “Yet they were from Libya, which was never thought to be the cradle of watermelon domestication.”
The scientists generated genome sequences from the seeds from Libya and Sudan and from the herbarium collections and analyzed these data together with resequenced genomes from important germplasm collections.
They discovered that the oldest seeds came from a plant known as an egusi melon, a watermelon relative that is currently restricted to western Africa.
“Both plant ‘fossils’ were C-14 dated and, as far as we know, are among the oldest plant genomes ever obtained,” Renner said.
“An unexpected new insight is that Citrullus appears to have initially been collected or cultivated for its seeds, not its sweet flesh, consistent with seed damage patterns induced by human teeth in the oldest Libyan material,” Chomicki said.
“This study documents the use of the seeds (rather than the fruit) of a watermelon relative more than 6,000 years ago, prior to the domestication of the watermelon.”
“Watermelons — the wild species, as well as the domesticated form — have very numerous seeds that are tasty and oil-rich,” Renner said.
“Different from the pulp, the seeds never contain the extremely bitter cucurbitacin chemical. Snacking on those easily available nutritious seeds may have been a good thing.”
The Legendary Emerald Tablet and its Secrets of the Universe
The origins of Western alchemy can be traced back to Hellenistic Egypt, in particular to the city of Alexandria. One of the most important characters in the mythology of alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice-Great). The name of this figure is derived from the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, and his Greek counterpart, Hermes.
The Hermetica, which is said to be written by Hermes Trismegistus, is generally regarded as the basis of Western alchemical philosophy and practice. In addition, Hermes Trismegistus is also believed to be the author of the Emerald Tablet.
Legends of the Emerald Tablet
The Emerald Tablet is said to be a tablet of emerald or green stone inscribed with the secrets of the universe. The source of the original Emerald Tablet is unclear; hence it is surrounded by legends.
The most common story claims that the tablet was found in a caved tomb under the statue of Hermes in Tyana, clutched in the hands of the corpse of Hermes Trismegistus himself.
Hermes Trismegistus.
And the creator of the Emerald Tablet has been provided in myth as the Egyptian god Thoth, who Armando Mei writes “divided his knowledge into 42 plates of emerald, codifying the great scientific principles ruling the Universe.
The legend tells that after the gods’ fall, the Hermetic tablets were cleverly hidden so that no human being might find them. Only Thoth, on his return to that dimension, was able to recover the mysterious book.
Thoth
Another legend suggests that it was the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth, who originally wrote it. Others believed that the tablet was once held within the Ark of the Covenant. Some even claim that the original source of the Emerald Tablet is none other than the fabled city of Atlantis.
Spreading Stories of the Emerald Tablet
While various claims have been made regarding the origins of the Emerald Tablet, as yet no verifiable evidence has been found to support them.
The oldest documentable source of the Emerald Tablet’s text is the Kitab sirr al-haliqi (Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature), which was itself a composite of earlier works.
This was an Arabic work written in the 8th century AD and attributed to ‘Balinas’ or Pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana. It is Balinas who provides us with the story of how he discovered the Emerald Tablet in the caved tomb. Based on this Arabic work, some believe that the Emerald Tablet was also an Arabic text and written between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, rather than a piece of work from Antiquity, as many have claimed.
While Balinas claimed that the Emerald Tablet was written originally in Greek, the original document that he purportedly possessed no longer exists, if indeed it existed at all. Some say the text burned up in the Library of Alexandria. Nevertheless, Balinas’ version of the text itself quickly became well-known and has been translated by various people over the centuries.
For instance, an early version of the Emerald Tablet also appeared in a work called the Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani (Second Book of the Elements of the Foundation), which is attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan. It would, however, take several more centuries before the text was accessible to Europeans. In the 12th century AD, the Emerald Tablet was translated into Latin by Hugo von Santalla.
A reconstruction of what the Emerald Tablet is believed to have looked like.
What’s Written on the Emerald Tablet?
The Emerald Tablet would become one of the pillars of Western alchemy. It was a highly influential text in medieval and Renaissance alchemy, and probably still is today. In addition to translations of the Emerald Tablet, numerous commentaries have also been written regarding its contents.
For instance, a translation by Isaac Newton was discovered among his alchemical papers. This translation is currently being held in King’s College Library in Cambridge University. Other notable researchers of the Emerald Tablet include Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, John Dee, and Aleister Crowley. And today knowledge of the legendary Emerald Tablet (at least one interpretation of it ) is reaching new audiences with its presence in the surreal German-language series Dark.
An imaginative 17th-century depiction of the Emerald Tablet from the work of Heinrich Khunrath, 1606.
The interpretation of the Emerald Text is not a straightforward matter, as it is after all a piece of esoteric text. One interpretation, for instance, suggests that the text describes seven stages of alchemical transformation – calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation and coagulation. Yet, despite the various interpretations available, it seems that none of their authors claims to possess knowledge of the whole truth. Furthermore, readers are encouraged to read the text and try to interpret and find the hidden truths themselves.
