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.”

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.

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

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.

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

“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

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.

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

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.

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.”

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.”