Category Archives: AFRICA

Excavation of King Khufu’s Second Solar Boat Completed in Egypt

Excavation of King Khufu’s Second Solar Boat Completed in Egypt

Ahram Online reports that the excavation of the second Khufu solar boat discovered in a pit next to the Great Pyramid of Khufu in 1954 has been completed by a joint Japanese and Egyptian team of researchers.

Sakuji Yoshimura, the head of the Egyptian Japanese archaeological mission and president of Higashi Nippon International University, and Professor Emeritus of Waseda University have completed the excavation of the second Khufu Boat from the pit in which it was discovered beside Khufu pyramid in the Giza plateau.

Issa Zidan, the director-general of executive affairs for restoration at the Grand Egyptian Museum and the supervisor of the restoration work of the second Khufu Boat, explained that nearly 1,700 wooden pieces were extracted from 13 layers inside the pit, noting that the registration and documentation of all pieces have been done, as well as the initial restoration of most of these pieces was completed.

Excavation of King Khufu’s Second Solar Boat Completed in Egypt

He also added that, so far, 1,343 pieces were transferred to the Grand Egyptian Museum, where preparations are underway for starting the second phase that includes the final restoration work, as well as conducting the necessary studies for assembling and re-installing the boat that will be displayed next to the first one inside the new building dedicated for King Khufu’s boats, which is now being constructed at the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Omura Yoshifumi, the chief representative of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Egypt Office, said that the JICA will provide a $3 million grant for completion of the final restoration work and reassembly of the boat for its display in the museum, in addition to the $2 million grant that was provided in 2013, which supported the excavation and extracting process of the wooden pieces of the boat from the pit.

The project of restoring and extracting the wooden pieces of the second Khufu Boat is one of the largest restoration projects that represent the aspects of fruitful cooperation between Egypt and Japan, with the support of the JICA.

Cooperation between Egyptians and the Japanese in the Grand Egyptian Museum project started in 2006, when the JICA provided financial support through two soft loans of official development assistance for the construction of the museum at the request of the Egyptian government.

Since 2008, the JICA has been providing technical cooperation through the Egyptian Japanese joint conservation project for the restoration, documentation, packaging, and transfer of 72 artefacts — among which were some of King Tutankhamun’s collection — from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir and other sites to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

About 90 Japanese experts participated in this project, and a number of high-tech technical equipment were provided within the project, such as a digital microscope, a portable X-ray machine, and an electric forklift to carry heavy artefacts safely.

Ambassador Noke expressed his appreciation for the fruitful cooperation with the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities led by Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled El-Enany and the sincere efforts of Major-General Atef Moftah — the general director of the Grand Egyptian Museum project — and the surrounding area to realise all this progress, stressing that the Grand Egyptian Museum is a symbol of Egyptian Japanese friendship.

From his side, Yoshifumi expressed appreciation for the Egyptian government’s strong leadership in making such great progress in the Grand Egyptian Museum’s construction and related works towards its opening, emphasising that he is proud that the JICA takes part in preserving the world’s treasures in Egypt to the future generations through this project.

Farmer Digs Up Stone Egyptian Stele Saluting Sixth Century BC Pharaoh

Farmer Digs Up Stone Egyptian Stele Saluting Sixth Century BC Pharaoh

A farmer living near Ismailia in Egypt has uncovered a 2,600-year-old stela erected by pharaoh Apries, who ruled from about 589 B.C. to 570 B.C., the Egyptian antiquities ministry reported. 

This stela, dating back about 2,600 years, was found in a farmer’s field near the city of Ismailia in Egypt. It contains 15 lines of hieroglyphic writing.

The farmer found this ancient slab of sandstone while preparing his land for cultivation, about 62 miles (100 kilometres) northeast of Cairo; he then contacted the Tourism and Antiquities Police about the discovery, the ministry statement said.

The stela is 91 inches (230 centimetres) long, 41 inches (103 cm) wide and 18 inches (45 cm) thick. 

At the top of the stela is a carving of a winged sun disk (a disk that was sometimes associated with the sun god Ra) with a cartouche of Pharaoh Apries, with 15 lines of hieroglyphic writing below that, the statement said.

Apries, also known as Wahibre Haaibre, reigned during the 26th dynasty of Egypt (688 B.C. to –525 B.C.), a time when Egypt was independent and its capital was often located at Sais in northern Egypt. 

Efforts are underway to translate the stela.

Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the stela appears to be related to a military campaign that Apries undertook east of Egypt. 

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (lived ca. 484-425 B.C.) claimed that Apries fought a losing war against the Phoenicians that left many Egyptian soldiers dead and sparked a civil war in Egypt that ultimately led to Apries being killed and replaced as pharaoh by a man named Amasis. Whether this stela will shed new light on these events is unclear. 

Dozens of ancient pyramids found at a single site in Sudan

Dozens of ancient pyramids found at a single site in Sudan

Among the discoveries are pyramids with a circle built inside them, cross-braces connecting the circle to the corners of the pyramid. Outside of Sedeinga only one pyramid is known to have been built in this way.

At least 35 small pyramids, along with graves, have been discovered clustered closely together at a site called Sedeinga in Sudan. Discovered between 2009 and 2012, researchers are surprised at how densely the pyramids are concentrated.

In one field season alone, in 2011, the research team discovered 13 pyramids packed into roughly 5,381 square feet (500 square meters), or slightly larger than an NBA basketball court. They date back around 2,000 years to a time when a kingdom named Kush flourished in Sudan. Kush shared a border with Egypt and, later on, the Roman Empire.

The desire of the kingdom’s people to build pyramids was apparently influenced by Egyptian funerary architecture.

At Sedeinga, researchers say, pyramid building continued for centuries. “The density of the pyramids is huge,” said researcher Vincent Francigny, a research associate with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in an interview with LiveScience.

“Because it lasted for hundreds of years they built more, more, more pyramids and after centuries they started to fill all the spaces that were still available in the necropolis.”

This aerial photo shows a series of pyramids and graves that a team of archaeologists has been exploring at Sedeinga in Sudan. Since 2009 they have discovered at least 35 small pyramids at the site, the largest being 22 feet (7 meters) in width.

The biggest pyramids they discovered are about 22 feet (7 meters) wide at their base with the smallest example, likely constructed for the burial of a child, being only 30 inches (750 millimetres) long.

The tops of the pyramids are not attached, as the passage of time and the presence of a camel caravan route resulted in damage to the monuments. Francigny said that the tops would have been decorated with a capstone depicting either a bird or a lotus flower on top of a solar orb.

The building continued until, eventually, they ran out of room to build pyramids. “They reached a point where it was so filled with people and graves that they had to reuse the oldest one,” Francigny said.

Francigny is excavation director of the French Archaeological Mission to Sedeinga, the team that made the discoveries. He and team leader Claude Rilly published an article detailing the results of their 2011 field season in the most recent edition of the journal Sudan and Nubia.

The inner-circle

Among the discoveries were several pyramids designed with an inner cupola (circular structure) connected to the pyramid corners through cross-braces. Rilly and Francigny noted in their paper that the pyramid design resembles a “French Formal Garden.”

Only one pyramid, outside of Sedeinga, is known to have been constructed this way, and it’s a mystery why the people of Sedeinga were fond of the design. It “did not add either to the solidity or to the external aspect [appearance] of the monument,” Rilly and Francigny write.

A discovery made in 2012 may provide a clue, Francigny said in the interview. “What we found this year is very intriguing,” he said.

“A grave of a child and it was covered by only a kind of circle, almost complete, of brick.” It’s possible, he said, that when pyramid building came into fashion at Sedeinga it was combined with a local circle-building tradition called tumulus construction, resulting in pyramids with circles within them.

People were buried beside the pyramids in tomb chambers that often held more than one individual. This image shows a child who was buried with necklaces.

An offering for grandma?

The graves beside the pyramids had largely been plundered, possibly in antiquity, by the time archaeologists excavated them. Researchers did find skeletal remains and, in some cases, artefacts. 

One of the most interesting new finds was an offering table found by the remains of a pyramid. . It appears to depict the goddess Isis and the jackal-headed god Anubis and includes an inscription, written in Meroitic language, dedicated to a woman named “Aba-la,” which may be a nickname for “grandmother,” Rilly writes.

It reads in translation:

Oh, Isis! Oh Osiris!

It is Aba-la.

Make her drink plentiful water;

Make her eat plentiful bread;

Make her be served a good meal.

The offering table with the inscription was a final send-off for a woman, possibly a grandmother, given a pyramid burial nearly 2,000 years ago.

Atlantis found in west Africa the evidence is overwhelming

Atlantis found in west Africa the evidence is overwhelming

You have to give credit to the amateur archaeologist/historian that goes by the name of Bright Insighton YouTube, as he has a knack for assembling highly relevant facts and evidence to demonstrate that history is not always what we think it is or what has been recorded.

He recently crafted, very skillfully I might add, three documentary videos which leave little doubt that the lost city/civilization of Atlantis is not in the places that most have determined it to be, but rather in a seemingly unlikely location – West Africa, or in Mauritania to be precise.

He provides a very thorough list of solid historical, geological, and archaeological evidence that not many experts in these fields can easily deny.

He begins where most historians have – with Plato’s account (the dialogues of the Critias and the Timaeus) which he got from Solon (638 – 558 BC) – a Greek statesman who had visited Sais (in Egypt) around 590 BC and got the information from an Egyptian priest who stressed that it was some 9,000 years old.

Here is one excerpt:

There were alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another, there were two of land, and three of water, which were turned as if with a lathe each having its circumference equidistant every way from the centre.

Artlantis found in west Africa the evidence is overwhelming

The image above illustrates this schematic quite well. And the following image was taken of the site – named the Richat Structure, or the “Eye of the Sahara”, in Mauritania:

This is the closest resemblance to the description offered by Plato of any archaeological site that claims to be that of Atlantis. There is no denying it. Even its size is almost precisely the same as Bright Insight describes in his videos.

In addition to the striking similarities between the description of Atlantis in Plato’s account and the site located in the West African nation, there are many topographical attributes that corroborate it.

Although no formal (or at least pubhttps://visitingatlantis.com/george-s-alexander-answers-faq/licly acknowledged) archaeological excavation has taken place at this very remote site, there has been a team that has explored it in situ, namely George S. Alexander and Natalis Rosen from Visiting Atlantis.

Here are a few pictures from the website which show the location and topographical nature of the site:

Map of Mauritania with the ‘RICHAT’ today

There is a lot of additional evidence presented, but there was one in particular that had caught my attention.

An ancient map by the famous historian Herodotus (484 – 425 BC) from around the same time period had an inscription ”ATLANTES ?” labelled on it with the location that appears to be in the same general vicinity as the site of the Richat Structure in Mauritania. Amazing.

I will leave you with Bright Insight’s three videos along with a few additional resources whereby you can form your own judgement and conclusions about whether this is indeed Atlantis.

It will certainly be interesting to see in the years (or decades) to come with more exploration and archaeological work at the site to see what other evidence may corroborate that this is indeed the lost city of Atlantis.

Bright Insight’s three videos:

FIRST: The Lost City of Atlantis – Hidden in Plain Sight – Advanced Ancient Human Civilization
SECOND: This is How We Know Atlantis Existed…AND Where – Lost Ancient Civilization Hidden in Plain Sight (2)
THIRD: Ancient Map PROVES The Lost City of Atlantis is The Eye of The Sahara – Ancient Civilization

Ancient Egyptian Head Cones Were Real, Grave Excavations Suggest

Ancient Egyptian Head Cones Were Real, Grave Excavations Suggest

Most of the garments depicted in ancient Egyptian art are relatively straightforward to decipher, but there’s a particular wearable article that has baffled archaeologists. In statuary, murals, funerary stelae, coffins and relief sculptures dating between 3,570 and 2,000 years ago, people repeatedly appeared wearing cones on their heads, a bit like party hats.

Now, for the first time, archaeologists have actually identified two such cones, crafted out of wax and adorning the heads of skeletons dating back some 3,300 years. The finds were excavated from the cemeteries of the city of Akhetaten, also known as Amarna.

This discovery may finally help to resolve several hypotheses over the meaning of these head cones, and what their function may have been back in the day.

“The excavation of two cones from the Amarna cemeteries confirms that three-dimensional, wax-based head cones were sometimes worn by the dead in ancient Egypt, and that access to these objects was not restricted to the upper elite,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

“The Amarna discovery supports the idea that head cones were also worn by the living, although it remains difficult to ascertain how often and why.”

Two figures wear head cones in a wall painting from the archaeological site of Amarna, Egypt, dating to roughly 3,300 years ago

Akhetaten itself is a curiosity. The city was set up by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, who famously went religiously rogue, setting up his own cult to the sun-god Aten. He established Akhetaten as his capital city in around 1346 BCE, but his attempt to steer Egypt to a new religion was not popular, and Akhetaten was abandoned not long after the Pharaoh’s death in 1332 BCE.

In art discovered in the city, as well as Egypt at large, the head cone makes a not-infrequent appearance. It’s often depicted on the heads of guests at a banquet, or tomb owners participating in funerary rituals or being rewarded by a king.

The cones are also found in depictions of people fishing and hunting in the afterlife and playing music. And the somewhat unusual headgear seems to have a particular association with childbirth, fertility and healing.

The two skeletons found wearing the cones at Akhetaten belonged to a woman around 29 years of age, and an individual whose sex has not been determined, aged between 15 and 20 years.

The woman, excavated in 2010, was in good condition, still intact as she had been laid to rest. She still retained her hair; tangled up in it was the cone, broken apart and burrowed through by insects, but recognisable.

Interestingly, a pattern imprinted on the inside of the cone seemed consistent with fabric weave, as though the interior of the wax structure had been lined.

The grave of the second individual, excavated in 2015, had been robbed, leaving the skeleton jumbled together at the foot of the grave. However, it too had retained hair; and in this hair, the researchers identified a second cone.

Although these discoveries don’t reveal the purpose of the cones, they do narrow things down a bit. For instance, both burials were simple and uninscribed, from a cemetery interpreted as belonging primarily to labourers.

This could mean that either the head cones were not just for high-status members of society but for everyone; or, as also inferred from a recently discovered burial, that the workers copied what they saw the nobility doing.

It also casts some light on hypotheses regarding the purpose of these cones. One idea suggests that the cones were symbolic – like the halos that appear around the heads of Western saints – and not actually a real object. Obviously, this discovery of two actual cones puts that one to bed.

Another hypothesis considered the cones to be solid lumps of scented unguent, or filled with scented fat, which would melt and leak down out of the cone, scenting the wearer’s hair and body in a ritual purification practice. Careful analysis of the cones, however, found no traces of either fat or perfume, nor was there any melted stuff in the wearers’ hair.

Ancient Egyptian Head Cones Were Real, Grave Excavations Suggest
In 2010, researchers excavating this young woman’s grave discovered a waxy cone atop her head.

Rather, the cones seemed to have been a hollow shell, shaped around or reinforced by fabric. It is possible that they were “dummy” cones created just for burial purposes, and that hats worn by the living were constructed differently, but it also seems possible that the cones could have been a type of formal ritual hat.

“There is no reason to assume .. that hollow – or perhaps textile-lined/-stuffed – cones of wax were not also worn in life. Even if scented, they may not have been intended to melt en masse and moisturise, serving more to mark the wearer as someone who was in a purified, protected or otherwise ‘special’ state,” the researchers write.

“In the case of ancient Akhetaten, we can probably interpret head cones as part of a suite of personal accoutrements deemed appropriate for use in a range of celebrations and rituals for, and involving, the living, the dead, the Aten and other deities.”

Italian hospital uses CT scan to unveil secrets of an Egyptian mummy

Italian hospital uses CT scan to unveil secrets of an Egyptian mummy

Researchers believe they can reconstruct the life and death of the Egyptian priest and understand which kinds of products were used to mummify the body.

Italian hospital uses CT scan to unveil secrets of an Egyptian mummy
Medical radiology technicians prepare a CT scan to do a radiological examination of an Egyptian mummy in order to investigate its history at the Policlinico hospital in Milan, Italy.

Ancient Egypt met modern medical technology when a mummy underwent a CT scan at an Italian hospital as part of a research project to discover its secrets.

The mummy of Ankhekhonsu, an ancient Egyptian priest, was transferred from Bergamo’s Civic Archaeological Museum to Milan’s Policlinico hospital, where experts will shed light on his life and the burial customs of almost 3,000 years ago.

“The mummies are practically a biological museum, they are like a time capsule,” said Sabina Malgora, the director of the Mummy Project Research.

Malgora said information on the mummy’s name comes from the sarcophagus dated between 900 and 800 BC, where Ankhekhonsu – which means ‘the god Khonsu is alive’ – is written five times.

Researchers prepare to move an Egyptian mummy from the Civic Archaeological Museum of Bergamo to Milan’s Policlinico hospital to undergo a CT scan in order to investigate its history, in Bergamo.

Researchers believe they can reconstruct the life and death of the Egyptian priest and understand which kinds of products were used to mummify the body.

Researchers prepare to move an Egyptian mummy from the Civic Archaeological Museum of Bergamo to Milan’s Policlinico hospital to undergo a CT scan in order to investigate its history, in Bergamo, Italy.

“Studying ancient diseases and wounds is important for modern medical research … we can study cancer or the arteriosclerosis of the past and this can be useful for modern research,” she said.

Remains of a 7,000-Year-Old Lost City Discovered in Egypt

Remains of a 7,000-Year-Old Lost City Discovered in Egypt

Egypt has announced the discovery of the ruins of a long-lost city in the Upper Egypt province of Sohag, which are believed to be over 7,000 years old.

The 5,316 BC residential city, discovered alongside a nearby cemetery, is being hailed as a major archaeological find that predates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period, which lasted about 5 millennia.

During a dig 400 meters south of the mortuary temple of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled thousands of years later from 1290 to 1279 BC, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities discovered the remains of ancient huts and graves.

Remains of a 7,000-Year-Old Lost City Discovered in Egypt

Seti I’s temple is located in Abydos – one of the oldest known cities of ancient Egypt and the historic capital of Upper Egypt – and the newly found dwellings and graves could be parts of the long-gone capital now resurfaced, or a separate village that was swallowed by it.

“This discovery can shed light on a lot of information on the history of Abydos,” antiquities minister Mahmoud Afifi said in a press statement.

The recently unearthed structures are thought to have been home to high-ranking officials and grave builders.

In addition to the foundations of ancient huts, the archaeologists found iron tools and pottery, plus 15 giant tombs – the capacious size of which means their intended inhabitants must have been well-established individuals.

“The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the first dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.

It’s possible that these officials oversaw the construction of royal tombs in nearby Abydos, but the size of their own resting places outside the capital suggests they didn’t want to slum it in eternity either.

“About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings,” Egyptologist Chris Eyre from the University of Liverpool in the UK, who wasn’t involved with the excavation, told the BBC.

“So, this appears to be the town, the capital at the very beginning of Egyptian history.”

According to the researchers, the ancient tools and pottery are the leftover traces of a once giant labour force that was engaged in the considerable feat of constructing these royal tombs – and if you’ve seen the kinds of structures we’re talking about, you’ll understand they had a pretty epic responsibility:

The nearby cemetery is made up of 15 mastabas, an ancient Egyptian tomb that takes a rectangular shape, made with sloping walls and a flat roof.

According to lead researcher Yasser Mahmoud Hussein, these mastabas are now the oldest such tombs we know about, pre-dating the previous record holders in Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for another ancient Egyptian city, Memphis.

We’ll have to wait for these new findings to be verified by other scientists, but we’re excited to see what new insights further excavations will bring.

13-foot-long ‘Book of the Dead’ scroll found in burial shaft in Egypt

13-foot-long ‘Book of the Dead’ scroll found in burial shaft in Egypt

Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a cache of treasures—including more than 50 wooden sarcophagi, a funerary temple dedicated to an Old Kingdom queen and a 13-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll—at the Saqqara necropolis, a vast burial ground south of Cairo, according to a statement from the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiques.

A 13-foot-long (4 meters) copy of chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead was found in the burial shafts. The name of the papyrus’s owner Pwkhaef is written on it. The Book of the Dead helped guide the deceased through the afterlife.

As first reported by Al-Ahram, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and his colleagues discovered the coffins, which appear to date back to the New Kingdom era (1570–1069 B.C.), in 52 burial shafts measuring 33 to 40 feet deep. Paintings of ancient gods and excerpts from the Book of the Dead, which was thought to help the deceased navigate the afterlife, adorn the sarcophagi.

Hawass tells CBS News’ Ahmed Shawkat that researchers first started excavating the site, which stands next to the pyramid of King Teti, first of the Sixth Dynasty rulers of the Old Kingdom (2680–2180 B.C.), in 2010.

“[B]ut we didn’t find a name inside the pyramid to tell us who the pyramid belonged to,” he adds.

Now, reports Agence France-Presse, experts have finally identified the complex—which boasts a stone temple and three mud-brick warehouses that housed offerings and tools—as the tomb of Teti’s wife, Queen Naert.

Around a month ago, the team found Naert’s name etched onto a wall in the temple and written on a felled obelisk near the entrance of the burial, per CBS News.

“I’d never heard of this queen before,” Hawass says to CBS News. “Therefore, we add an important piece to Egyptian history, about this queen.”

A mummy mask worn by the deceased is seen here.
Board games were also found in the burial shafts. This particular game appears to be Senet, a game that was popular in ancient Egypt.
Among the goods found in the burial shafts is this boat with rowers.

According to the statement, this is the first time archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old coffins at Saqqara—one of Egypt’s “richest archaeological sites,” as Jo Marchant wrote for Smithsonian magazine last year. In recent months, excavations at the necropolis have yielded an array of exciting, albeit newer, finds, from sealed sarcophagi to ancient statues.

“Actually, this morning we found another shaft,” Hawass told CBS News on Monday. “Inside the shaft, we found a large limestone sarcophagus. This is the first time we’ve discovered a limestone sarcophagus inside the shafts. We found another one that we’re going to open a week from now.”

The coffins found in the burial shafts probably hold the remains of followers of a Teti-worshipping cult formed after the pharaoh’s death writes Owen Jarus for Live Science.

Experts think that the cult operated for more than 1,000 years; members would have considered it an honour to be entombed near the king.

Other highlights of the discovery include a set of wooden masks; a shrine to the god Anubis; bird-shaped artefacts; games including Senet, which was believed to offer players a glimpse into the afterlife; a bronze axe; paintings; hieroglyphic writings; and fragments of a 13-foot-long, 3-foot-wide papyrus containing Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead.

The name of the scroll’s owner, Pwkhaef, is inscribed on the papyrus, as well as on one sarcophagus and four sculptures, according to Live Science.

These finds, notes the statement, as translated by CNN’s Amy Woodyatt, “will rewrite the history of this region, especially during the 18th and 19th dynasties of the New Kingdom, during which King Teti was worshipped, and the citizens at that time were buried around his pyramid.”