Archaeologists have discovered 16 burials at an ancient Egyptian site in the Taposiris Magna. The mummies were found to have a gold tongue. The team speculates that after the person’s tongue was removed during embalming it was replaced with the object so the deceased could speak to Osiris in the afterlife.
A god called Osiris is the Egyptian “Lord of the Underworld,” and he is one of the most powerful gods of the Ancient Egyptian. In other words, he is a judge of the dead
The burial shafts, dating back some 2,000 years, were popular in ancient Greek and Roman eras, which held remains inside of a mountain or natural rocky formation.
Within the tombs were a number of mummies and although the remains have since deteriorated, the stone funeral masks are still intact – allowing the team to see what each person may have once looked like.
The excavation is being led by the University of Santo Domingo, which has been working at the site for nearly a decade.
This 2,000-year-old mummy was buried with a golden tongue, likely to help the deceased speak in the afterlife.
A female mummy covered with a death mask from Alexandria, Egypt.
The team had previously uncovered several coins inside the Temple of Taposiris Magna etched with the face of Queen Cleopatra VII, which suggests she ruled when many of the individuals were laid to rest in their rock-cut tombs.
Additionally, pieces of statues and temple grounds reveal King Ptolemy IV built this spectacular temple.
Ptolemy IV Philopator reigned over Egypt from 221 to 204BC and due to his interest in lavish celebrations and ceremonies, the decline of the Ptolemaic dynasty is usually traced to him.
The other burials were not as preserved, but Dr. Kathleen Martinez, who is leading the dig, uncovered a number of luxurious trinkets and the statues over the tombs are intact – allowing experts to see who the people were
The skeleton with the gold tongue was found to be well-preserved, as its skull and most of its structure is still intact. Archaeologists dug it out of the rock-cut tomb and were met with the still shining gold object inside of the skeleton’s mouth.
They speculate that the tongue was removed by embalmers, but the gold tongue was put in its place during a funeral ritual. The hope is that this individual would have the ability to speak to the god of the dead, Osiris, upon arriving in the afterlife.
Kathleen Martinez, who is leading the dig, believes the site was strongly associated with the myth of Isis and Osiris – a myth that Cleopatra often tried to imitate during her life
Osiris is said to rule over the underworld and would judge the spirits of those who had died. And by giving the person who died some 2,000 years ago a tongue, may have allowed them to convince Orisis to show mercy on their spirit.
The other burials were not as preserved, but Dr. Kathleen Martinez, who is leading the dig, uncovered a number of luxurious trinkets and the statues over the tombs are intact – allowing experts to see who the people were.
One was found with remains of ‘gilding and bearing gilded decorations showing the god Osiris.’
Another was adorned with a stunning crown when they were laid to rest, which is decorated with horns, and a snake on the forehead that is most likely a cobra.
An additional symbol, depicting the god Horus, was found on the chest of one of the mummies. The symbol was incorporated in a decoration that represented a wide necklace from which a head of a falcon was hanging.
Dr. Khaled Abo El Hamd, the Director-General of The Alexandria Antiquities, said in a statement that ‘during this season the mission discovered a number of archaeological discoveries, the most important of which is a funeral mask for a woman, eight golden flakes representing the leaves of a golden wreath, and eight masks of marble dating back to the Greek and Roman eras.’
The Egyptian official also added that these masks ‘show high craftsmanship in sculpture and depiction of the features of its owners.’
This Yellow Egyptian Glass Was Forged by a Meteorite Impact 29 Million Years Ago
In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the untouched tomb of Tutankhamen, a minor pharaoh who ruled over Egypt almost 3,300 years ago. When Carter entered the tomb for the very first time and asked if he could see anything, he famously responded: ”Yes, wonderful things.” Tutankhamen’s burial chambers were filled with statues made of ivory, items made of gold and precious jewellery.
In a treasure chest, Carter discovered a large pectoral, a breastplate decorated with gold, silver, various precious jewels and a strange gemstone, that the pharao wears across his chest. The breastplate shows the god Ra as a winged scarab, made from a yellow-green gemstone, carrying the celestial bark with the Sun and the Moon into the sky.
Carter identified the gemstone at first as chalcedony, a common variety of the mineral quartz. In 1932 the British geographer Patrick Clayton was exploring the Great Sand Sea along the border of modern Egypt and Libya. Here he discovered some strange pieces of glass in the sand.
Tutankhamun’s breastplate features a scarab carved from Libyan Desert Silica Glass
King Tut’s tomb included an artifact called a pectoral, which incorporated a piece of Libyan Desert Glass as the scarab beetle at its center.
The yellow-green material seemed to be identical to the gemstone found in Tutankhamen’s tomb. Two years later he published a short note, suggesting that the pieces of glass were the quartz-rich deposits of a completely dried up lake.
In 1998, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele analyzed the optical properties of the gemstone in King Tut’s breastplate and confirmed that it was indeed a piece of Libyan Desert Silica Glass, as the material is nowadays called. Libyan Desert Glass consists of almost pure silicon dioxide, like quartz, but its crystal structure is different.
It also contains traces of unusual elements, like iron, nickel, chromium, cobalt and iridium. It is among the rarest minerals on Earth, as it is found only in the Great Sand Sea north of the Gilf Kebir Plateau, one of the most remote and desolate areas in the Libyan Desert.
Piece of Lybian Desert Glass.
The origin of the desert glass has long remained a mystery. Glass forms naturally when molten rock material cools so rapidly that atoms are unable to arrange themselves into a crystalline structure.
Obsidian is a natural glass that forms when lava from a volcano rapidly cools and solidifies. However, no extinct volcano can be found near the site where the desert glass occurs. Tektites are natural glass formed when the debris of a meteorite impact is ejected high into Earth’s atmosphere, where the molten debris will rapidly cool and solidify into glass spherules.
Tektites have been found across Asia, Australia and as far away as Antarctica. However, no impact crater associated with the desert glass is known in the Libyan Desert. In an alternative scenario proposed in 2013 a comet, composed mostly of ice, entering Earth’s atmosphere may have exploded mid-air above the desert.
The generated heat burst, an estimated 2,000°C, would be sufficient to melt the upper layers of the sand dunes, forming the desert glass, but without leaving a crater behind.
A new study published in the journal Geology refutes this scenario, claiming that an airburst alone wouldn’t be sufficient to explain the formation of the desert glass. The researchers analyzed grains of the mineral zircon found in the desert glass, discovering that the supposed zircon grains are actually a very rare mineral called reidite.
Reidite is chemically similar to zircon, however, displays a different, denser crystalline structure. Reidite forms only under very high pressure, es experienced during massive meteorite impacts. Reidite can’t form by the low pressure of an airburst. Airbursts, as the researchers argue, create shock waves in Earth’s atmosphere with pressures of some thousands of pascals.
During a meteorite impact, the shock waves in the ground can reach some billions of pascals, millions of times more powerful than any airburst. Only a meteorite impact on the ground, generating enough pressure to form the reidite and enough heat to melt the sand, can explain the stray field of desert glass fragments found in the Lybian Desert.
However, it remains unclear where the impact crater associated with the Lybian Desert Glass is located, even if radiometric dating suggests that the impact happened around 28 to 26 million years ago.
It’s also unclear how the desert glass became part of Tutankhamen’s treasures. Archaeological evidence suggests that an ancient system of caravan routes existed around the Gilf Kebir Plateau, but it doesn’t seem that the routes were used to search or trade for the desert glass.
It seems that the piece used for the scarab was discovered by chance or maybe an exotic gift. It remains the only known example where an Egyptian artist used this mysterious material.
Fort, Church, and Temple Remains Uncovered in Southern Egypt
Egypt Today reports that researchers from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities have discovered traces of a temple dated to the Ptolemaic dynasty, a Roman fort, and part of a Coptic-period Christian church at the Shiha Fort site in southern Egypt.
Remains of Aswan Roman Fort
The Supreme Council of Antiquities’ Egyptian archaeological mission, operating at the Shiha fort site in Aswan Governorate, has recently discovered the remains of a Roman fort that includes the remains of a church from the early Coptic era, and the remains of a temple from the Ptolemaic period.
Inside the fort, a group of architectural elements of the Ptolemaic temple were discovered; an incomplete sandstone panel, with a model of the temple entrance and a man in the form of a Roman emperor standing next to an altar topped by a part of a deity depicted on it; in addition to four blocks of sandstone with palm fronds engraved on them.
Part of the discovery in Aswan
Also, a clay vase and part of a red brick vault dating back to the Coptic era were found, as well as cartridges of Ptolemaic kings, late hieratic inscriptions and one of the Greek emperors.
The expedition has completed the work of uncovering the remains of the monastery and the church that were built on the ruins of this fort. The German archaeologist Hermann Juncker was able to previously uncover a part of the fort in the period 1920-1922 AD.
Part of the discovery in Aswan
The mission revealed the extension of the remnants of the mud-brick wall surrounding the Shiha church from the western side, reaching a width of approximately 2.10 m.
On the northern side of the church, there are four rooms, a transverse hall, and an ascending staircase. On the southern side, there are ovens for burning pottery.
Stone tiles were also found on two levels located on the eastern side below the church.
Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images
When Egypt was conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798, he took along with his vast army more than 150 scientists and scholars. The scholars fanned out throughout Egypt, explaining the natural and cultural history of the land, mapping archaeological sites from Alexandria to Aswan, and bringing for the first time the scientific world to the attention of places such as the Valley of the Kings.
This week, an American research team announced that it has succeeded in a high-tech follow-on to Bonaparte’s grand survey. By analyzing high-resolution satellite imagery covering all of Egypt, researchers have reportedly discovered up to 17 lost pyramids, nearly 3000 ancient settlements, and 1000 tombs.
The effort was led by archaeologist Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama, Birmingham. The team’s work will be highlighted in a BBC documentary in the United Kingdom and later on the Discovery Channel in the United States.
Satellite imagery reveals a maze of streets and buildings at the ancient Egyptian city of Tanis.
An infra-red satellite image shows a buried pyramid, located in the centre of the highlight box.
The findings are groundbreaking, says Egyptologist Willeke Wendrich of the University of California, Los Angeles, who has followed closely the team’s as-yet-unpublished work. “It gives us the opportunity to get at the settlement of ancient Egypt without digging even a centimetre,” she says.
In the wake of the finds, the Egyptian government reached an agreement this week to work with Parcak and other American researchers to develop a nationwide satellite imagery project to monitor archaeological sites from space and protect them from looting and illegal house construction and other encroachments.
A satellite image shows a field of what may be buried pyramid sites in Egypt.
“We are going to be teaching young Egyptians how to look at the satellite data and analyze it so they can keep an eye on these sites,” Parcak says. She and her colleagues plan to raise funds privately to support the effort.
Parcak began her study 11 years ago, searching for traces of ancient village walls buried under Egypt’s fields and desert sands.
Obtaining images from both NASA and QuickBird satellites, she combined and analyzed data from the visible imagery as well as the infrared and thermal parts of the light spectrum. Through trial and error, she discovered that the most informative images were taken during the relatively wet weeks of late winter.
During this period, buried mud-brick walls absorbed more moisture than usual, producing a subtle chemical signature in the overlying soil that showed up in high-resolution, infrared satellite images. These places became “our hot spots, the places that we could end up exploring on foot,” Parcak says.
Sarah Parcak examines satellite imagery of an Egyptian landscape.
The team found 17 buried pyramid-shaped structures, including one at Saqqara, famed for its numerous pyramids. That sighting was confirmed by a team of Egyptian archaeologists who excavated part of what is now thought to be a late Middle Kingdom pyramid at the site.
The other 16 structures look like pyramids from space but could be elite tombs, Parcak says. “Let’s be honest, we won’t know if those pyramids are pyramids until we excavate,” she says.
To further test some of the most recent satellite finds, Parcak enlisted the help of a French archaeological team already digging at a 3000-year-old site known as Tanis.
The satellite data revealed a warren of mud-brick walls, mazelike streets, and large residences that may have housed the wealthy. So the French team chose a structure from the images and excavated there. Beneath about 30 centimetres of sediments, they discovered mud-brick walls.
“They found an almost 100% correlation between what we see on the imagery and what we see on the ground,” Parcak says. “So this gives a significant amount of credence to what we see in the whole image.”
“It’s really incredible work, particularly the results for Tanis,” says Peter Lacovara, an Egyptologist at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta, who is not a member of Parcak’s team. “You can see the entire city plan under the sands.”
The greatest payoff may become apparent in years to come, adds Lacovara, as the Egyptian government develops a space-based archaeological monitoring system founded on satellite data.
“Ancient sites are all over the place in Egypt,” Lacovara concludes. “And there’s just not enough time and money to monitor them on the ground.”
9,350-Year-Old Stonehenge-Style Monolith Found in the Mediterranean Sea
At least 9,300 years ago, Stone Age hunter-gatherers in a now-submerged area of the Mediterranean Sea accomplished a feat beyond what today’s experts thought possible for the time: they cut a 15-ton limestone pillar with precision, drilled holes in it and transported it nearly 984 feet (300 meters). The monolith is 39 feet (12 meters) long.
Underwater composite photographs taken from divers, showing the discovered monolith and some details. Top: full lateral view. Bottom: full view from above.
Oceanographers studying the Mediterranean seafloor in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily in 2012 found the monolith 131 feet (40 meters) deep.
In a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the researchers say this area became completely submerged about 9,300 years ago, give or take a couple of hundred years. Before that, the area was a shallow sea with an archipelago of several islands about halfway between the island of Sicily and the North African coast.
The area studied, the Pantelleria Vecchia Bank, is now undersea between Sicily and Tunisia.
So it is assumed the pillar was carved at least 9,300 years ago. Researchers were able to date the stone of the monolith by extracting shell fragments from it. They found it has the same composition and age as limestone about 330 yards away, suggesting it was transported this distance.
The researchers say the discovery of this submerged pillar may require scholars to rethink the idea of “technological primitivism” among hunter-gatherers.
Researchers say the discovery of this submerged pillar may require scholars to rethink the idea of “technological primitivism” among hunter-gatherers.
“This discovery provides evidence for a significant Mesolithic human activity in the Sicilian Channel region,” wrote Emanuele Lodolo and Zvi Ben-Abraham in their paper.
Lodolo and Ben-Abraham state that several factors lead them to believe the monolith or stone column was cut by humans and was not shaped by nature.
They write that the monolith has a regular shape and three regular holes of similar diameter. It is composed of limestone of a nature similar to rocks not far away from where it was transported, but it differs from the rocks in the immediate vicinity.
The submerged monolith
Underwater composite photographs taken from divers, showing the discovered monolith and some details. Top: monolith’s end. Middle: partial lateral view. Bottom: partial view from above.
“The presence of the monolith suggests extensive human activity in the [area],” they wrote. “It was cut and extracted as a single stone from the outer rectilinear ridge situated about 300 m [984 feet] to the south, and then transported and possibly erected. From the size of the monolith, we may presume that it weighs about 15 [tons].”
They did not speculate about the function of the monolith. But they assume it was in an important area, which is about halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. Sicily was inhabited possibly between 17,000 and 27,000 years ago, when there was a land bridge from the Italian mainland.
“The discovery of the submerged site in the Sicilian Channel may significantly expand our knowledge of the earliest civilizations in the Mediterranean basin and our views on technological innovation and development achieved by the Mesolithic inhabitants,” the authors wrote.
“The monolith … made of a single, large block, required cutting, extraction, transportation, and installation, which undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering.”
The researchers even went so far as to state that: “The belief that our ancestors lacked the knowledge, skill, and technology to exploit marine resources or make sea crossings, must be progressively abandoned.
The recent findings … have definitively removed the idea of ‘technological primitivism’ often attributed to hunter-gatherer coastal settlers.”
50 ancient coffins uncovered at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis
Egypt recently unearthed a funerary temple and the oldest coffins ever discovered in Saqqara, revealing more mysteries in the ancient burial ground and marking another significant find in the vast necropolis south of Cairo.
A mummy dating back to the New Kingdom found at the funerary temple of Queen Naert.
The country said a mission headed by prominent Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, the former minister of state for antiquities affairs, unearthed the funerary temple of Queen Nearit, the wife of King Teti — the first pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.
The mission also unearthed 52 burial shafts with more than 50 wooden coffins found inside. They date back 3,000 years, the oldest sarcophagi found in Saqqara.
Workers excavate a site during the official announcement of the discovery by an Egyptian archaeological mission of a new trove of treasures at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo, Egypt, Jan. 17, 2021.
Left: Visitors walk past a wooden sarcophagus which is still buried;Right: An adorned wooden sarcophagus is displayed during the official announcement of the discovery.
“These coffins are wooden and anthropoid … many of the gods that were worshiped during this period were represented on the surface of the coffins, in addition to various excerpts from the Book of the Dead that help the deceased pass through the journey of the other world,” the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities said in a statement.
In recent months, Egypt unearthed hundreds of coffins of top officials and priests in Saqqara, all dating back to the more recent Late and Ptolemaic periods.
The new discovery is distinguished because older New Kingdom sarcophagi were found, the ministry has said. The New Kingdom period lasted from the 16th century BC to the 11th century BC, covering the 18th, 19th, and 20th Egyptian dynasties.
“The discovery confirmed that the Saqqara area was not used for burial during the Late Period only, but also during the New Kingdom,” the statement read.
Unearthed adorned wooden sarcophagi are displayed at Egypt’s Saqqara necropolis.
Another “luxurious, mud-brick shrine” was also uncovered at a depth of 24 meters below the ground level, the deepest shaft found yet. Hawass said digging work will continue until the burial chamber is discovered.
“Inside the shafts, the mission discovered large numbers of archaeological artifacts and a large number of statues that represent deities such as the god Osiris and Ptah-Soker-Osiris,” the antiquities ministry added.
Egypt has carried out extensive digging operations in Saqqara in recent years, which resulted in a string of discoveries, including the unearthing of a 4,400-year-old tomb of royal priest Wahtye in 2018 and the discovery of hundreds of mummified animals and statues a year later.
Tourism & Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Enany said in November that Egypt can “find tombs and burial shafts in every single spot in this area,” referring to Saqqara, which is also home to 13 pyramids.
Egypt is hoping the findings can help revive the vital tourism industry, which took a fresh blow because of the COVID-19 pandemic just when it had begun to recover from the aftermath of uprisings and civil unrest in 2011 and 2013.
Hawass said the latest discoveries in the ancient necropolis will “make Saqqara an important tourist and cultural destination.”
“It will also rewrite the history of Saqqara during the New Kingdom,” he added.
An adorned wooden sarcophagus is displayed during the official announcement of the discovery.
Divers Exploring A 2,300-Year-Old Pyramid Have Found The Underwater Tomb Of A Powerful Pharaoh
Have you ever heard of having to use scuba gear to explore an ancient pyramid? we didn’t either until we came across the story of an archaeologist Pearce Paul Creasman. His story involves the study of an ancient race just as advanced as the Egyptians, who shared the same continent with history and culture just as rich and shrouded in mystery.
Get ready as the richest go underwater to explore the tomb of a pharaoh that once ruled the “kingdom of kush“. Before we dive right into our pyramid diving story, let’s back it up a bit and learn a little bit about pyramids first. Enormous architectural wonders were built all over the world, centuries before modern technology.
Pyramids were used by ancient peoples as both places of worship and as monuments and tombs of the dead. It’s estimated that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 pyramids still standing in the world today, they can be found on every continent on earth except for icy Antarctica. The most famous of course is the Great Pyramids of Giza in Cairo, Egypt. The largest stands at 455 feet. The ancient Egyptians built these amazing structures as tombs and monuments for their pharaohs.
Nuri pyramids.
Over in the Americas, many ancient tribes built step pyramids as temples for worshipping their gods. The famous El Castillo pyramid of Chichen Itza for example was built by the Mayans over eleven hundred years ago in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It was built as a temple to the serpent God Kukulkan.
In ancient Greece the Pyramid of hellinikon was built some 100 years earlier than the Great Pyramids of Egypt, its purpose remains unknown. In China there stands the great white pyramid of XI’AN, we know very little about it as the Chinese government has banned access to the structure but rumor has it that it could be twice the height of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
On the Australian continent there are two possible yet unconfirmed pyramid sites, the Gympie pyramid and Walsh’s pyramid, and as previously mentioned exactly zero on Antarctica, despite a recent debunked story about one the images turned out to be snow-covered pyramidal-shaped mountaintops.
A shabti found in the submerged chamber of a Kushite pyramid.
The country that holds the title for the most pyramids still intact is surprisingly not Egypt but its neighbor to the south on the African continent Sudan. Sudan is home to some two hundred and forty pyramids built by the ancient Cushite people. Sudan and the cushites also happen to be at the center of our archaeological story.
The kingdom of kush also referred to as Nubia was located in northeast Africa just south of ancient Egypt in modern-day Sudan and it had close ties to ancient Egypt. Its main cities were situated along the Nile River and two of its main tributaries the White Nile and the Blue Nile. If not for the formation of these waterways and their proximity to gold and iron ore deposits it’s likely humans would not have settled in this dry desert region.
The kingdom of kush lasted for over 1,400 years. First established circa 1070 BCE when it gained its independence from Egypt. In 727 BCE kush took control of ancient Egypt, ruling it until the Assyrians arrived in the next century.
Once the Roman Empire conquered Egypt, the kingdom of kush began to weaken and eventually collapsed sometime in the 4th century CE. The Cushite was very similar to the ancient Egyptians in many ways, sharing a religion, a form of government, and many aspects of culture.
They worshiped Egyptian gods and mummified their dead and entombed them in pyramids. Aside from the Pharaoh and other rulers the highest class in kush were the religious leaders the priests. Much like their Egyptian neighbor’s religion and a strong belief in the afterlife played an important role in the life of the Cushite people.
The pyramids that the Cushite people built to entomb their pharaohs and other important figures looked very similar to the ancient Egyptian structures. They did have a few key differences though for one they differed in size with the average cushite pyramid standing roughly 6 to 30 meters or 20 to 98 feet high while the average Egyptian pyramid was much taller at roughly 138 meters or 453 feet. There was also one other major difference while the Egyptians burial chambers were located inside the pyramidal structure itself the kush burial chambers were located underneath the pyramids buried below the structure.
One such leader buried in this matter was the Pharaoh Nastasen. He ruled the kingdom of kush from 335 to 310 BCE. The little that we do know about this Nubian King is from writings on stone tablets and a more few artifacts. The writings tell us that the highlight of his reign came when the Pharaoh Nastasen defeated an invasion from Upper Egypt and gained many spoils in his victory.
Once Nastasen crossed into the afterlife he became the last cushites, King, to be buried in the royal cemetery and necropolis at nepata. A glorious graveyard spanning more than seven and a half million square feet.
The site of the royal cemetery in the ancient city of nepata is now Karima, Sudan, located about one mile west of the Nile river bank. Seen from the sky one of its most commanding features is an arc of some twenty pyramids built between 650 BCE and 300 BCE. National Geographics Kristin Romy describes this arc of pyramids as a quote “strung together like gems on a delicate necklace”.
There are more than twenty pyramids at the site overall though. At least 60 Nubian kings and queens are buried there among hundreds of other individuals. The most famous resident is Pharaoh taharqa who ruled all of Egypt during the seventh century BCE. The Pharaoh Nastasen’s twenty-three hundred-year-old pyramid tomb the last of its kind stands at roughly thirty feet or 9.1 meters and was erected at one of the lowest points of elevation at the royal necropolis.
This is one of the reasons why Nastasen’s burial chambers are completely underwater. Why exactly? the pyramid’s proximity to the Nile River combined with both natural and man-made climate change has caused the groundwater levels to rise over the centuries. Submerging the tombs that are cut into the bedrock underneath the pyramids. Due to its low elevation nastasen’s tomb is among the most submerged.
Gold leaf found in the tomb.
Enter archaeologists Pearce Paul Creaseman. Creaseman holds the dual-title of both Egyptologist and underwater archaeologist yes indeed that is a thing, when Creasman first visited the royal cemetery back in 2018 he saw his unique skill set as an opportunity to explore the watery tombs and discover more than what was ever uncovered when the site was first explored nearly a century ago. Back then the water was only knee-deep now the water reached the ceiling of the tomb chambers.
After Creaseman and his team spent the better part of a year digging the staircases leading to nestasen’s tomb out from under sand they put on their scuba gear and headed into the murky waters. Creaseman had to make his way through a series of three chambers. While navigating in water thick with muddy sediment and making vision close to impossible.
When they reached the third and final chamber they discovered a treasure trove of artifacts including gold foil, shabti dolls, funerary figures whom the ancient Nubians believed would accompany the deceased into the afterlife. Also in the chamber the sarcophagus of the pharaoh Nastasen himself. The only problem that ceiling-high muddy water makes excavation and study of these artifacts highly problematic. Creaseman is optimistic though and now packed with experiences and knowing what to expect.
Their aim is to return to the site later in 2020 an attempt to excavate the burial chamber in what they themselves argue is an audacious and logistical challenge. Only then will we know the extent and value of the treasures inside this pyramid and perhaps eventually the dozens of others. Says Christman ” I think we finally have the technology to be able to tell the story of Nuri, to fill in the blanks of what happened here. it’s a remarkable point in history that’s so few know about it. it’s a story that deserves to be told.” So how about you would you take the plunge into those muddy waters to uncover ancient treasures?
Fossil Discovery Suggests the Pyramids and Sphinx Were Submerged Under Water
The entire region of the Giza Necropolis, including the pyramids and the Sphinx, shows erosion that some say suggests the area was once submerged by seawater. A unique fossil amplifies this theory.
For over two decades, archaeologist Sherif El Morsi has worked extensively on the Giza Plateau, and in 2013, he collaborated with founder and fellow scholar Antoine Gigal of Giza for Humanity to publish his controversial discovery of this fossil.
One of the first scientists to actually discuss the issue of plateau systems being older than previously thought was Dr Robert M. Schloch. In the early 1990s, based on water erosion patterns found both on the statue and the surrounding soil, he indicated the Sphinx was thousands of years older than usually thought, dating back to 5000-9000 B.C.
Morsi has been digging deeper into the mystery ever since. During one of his photo shoots documenting the erosion patterns of many of the megaliths in the area, he made a discovery that further suggests the area was submerged at one time.
“During my photoshoot of this ancient seashore line, I nearly tripped off a second level temple block,” said Mr Morsi in an article published on the Gigal Research website.
“To my surprise, the bulge on the top surface of the block that nearly made me the trip was a petrified exoskeleton of what seems to be an echinoid (sea urchin), which is a shallow sea marine creature.”
Morsi believes the Giza Plateau was once inundated by a sea surge. The Menkara temple site, in particular, may have once been an ancient lagoon when the high sea covered the Necropolis, the Sphinx, the temple complexes, and other sites.
Other scientists have suggested the echinoid in the limestone was exposed by erosion and the creature was part of the original limestone that formed 30 million years ago.
But, Morsi countered those claims and suggested that the creature was cemented, or petrified, in a relatively more recent time, citing evidence that the creature is lying gravitationally flat, that it’s in pristine condition, that it is within the intertidal range of the lagoon, and that it is a large specimen unlike the tiny specimens typically found in limestone blocks.
“We can clearly see the pristine condition and minute details of the exoskeleton perforation,” continued Morsi, “which means that this marine creature must have petrified from recent times. It is not a body fossil as most fossils are that date back to 30 million years, but petrified by the sediment deposits that have filled its hollow.”
The fossil was discovered at the Giza plateau. El Morsi and Gigal write: “We can clearly see the pristine condition and minute details of the exoskeleton perforation, which means that this marine creature must have petrified from recent times.”
The inundation, Morsi believes, was rather significant, reaching a maximum of about 245 feet (75 meters) over the current sea level and creating a shoreline spanning the Khafra enclosure near the Sphinx to the Menkara temple.
A rare, ancient photograph of the Sphinx before it was completely excavated.
Pitting and tidal notches due to waves and tidal ebbing pepper the stones in this area showing a 6.5-foot (2-meter) intertidal range, according to Morsi.
Moreover, at sites such as the Sphinx, the Sphinx temple, and the first 20 courses of the Great Pyramid, the stones are said to exhibit erosion due to deeper water saturation.
A Village and the pyramids during the flood-time, circa 1890.
On temple blocks, there are sediment and alluvial, or material, deposits seen in shallow sea beds and lagoons. As the water recedes, it creates an oozing spongy effect in the rock.
For an echinoid to reach 3 inches (8 centimeters), the size of the fossil, it would take about 15 years. Furthermore, the amount of sediments and alluvium deposits, as well as the intertidal erosion on the shallower areas, would takes centuries, suggesting the area was flooded for quite some time.
However, it’s difficult to determine the exact year of the flooding. Over the past 140,000 years, the sea levels have fluctuated by more than 400 feet (120 meters), as major ice sheets have grown and receded during glacial cycles, according to CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research.
