Emerald Tablets Of Thoth, 50,000-Year-Old Tablets Reportedly From Atlantis
The Thoth Tablets are imperishable, resistant to all elements, acids, and corrosion. According to Bibliotecapleyades, in truth, the atomic and cellular structure is set and no change can take place, thus violating the material law of ionization.
Upon them are engraved characters in the Ancient Atlantean language; characters who respond to the attuned thought waves of the reader and which release much more wisdom and information than the characters do when merely deciphered.
The Tablets are fastened together with hoops of a golden-colored alloy suspended from a rod of the same material. Dr. M. Doreal has translated this Work and has published through the Brotherhood of the White Temple, a translation of ten of these twelve Tablets.
He has divided the ten into thirteen parts for the sake of convenience. The last two Tablets are found in the “Interpretation of The Emerald Tablets”, also by Dr. Doreal.
THOTH, THE ATLANTEAN
When Thoth, the Atlantean and Master raised the people of Khem (Egypt) to a great civilization, and when the time came for him to leave Egypt, he erected The Great Pyramid over the entrance of the Great Halls of Amenti.
In the Pyramid, he posited his records and appointed Guards for his secrets from among the highest of his people. In later times, the descendants of these guards became the Pyramid Priests, while Thoth was deified as the God of Wisdom, the Recorder, by those in the age of darkness which followed his passing.
In legend, the Halls of Amenti became the underworld, the Halls of the Gods, where the soul passed after death for judgment.
During later ages, the ego of Thoth passed into the bodies of men in the manner described in The Emerald Tablets, a Book of Record and Occult Wisdom, which he wrote and left in the Pyramid for those of a future Age of Light.
This is the first episode on the Emerald Tablets and its engravings by Lou Benedetto, written by Thoth, the Atlantean from the Lost city in Time of Atlantis. Thoth is an immortal who was once a very long time ago a regular human being who lived in a time over 50,000 years ago.
Second Video release of the Emerald Tablets by Lou Benedetto. Like all the Tablets they are written by an Atlantean King-Priest who ruled and lived in the Great Lost City in Time of Atlantis, over 50,000 years ago.
Thoth is a Human being that lived in a time long ago during an age now lost to us at present. Atlantis was a great civilization that thrived & flourished for many Tens of Thousands of Years.
Not only were they rulers of the sky and the land around them. But they were beings of peace, wisdom, and most importantly, a people with Great Soul Force.
Originally published in mimeographed form in the 1930s by a mysterious “Dr. M. Doreal,” these writings quickly became an underground sensation among esotericists of the time.
Tablets 1-13 are part of the original work; tablets 14 and 15 are supplemental. No one has ever seen the original tablets mentioned here, and in all likelihood, these writings would be considered channeled material today.
Dr. M. Doreal is a spiritual teacher of a multitude of seekers of light, having founded the metaphysical church and college. Doreal is the author of all of the organization’s writings and teachings and was granted permission for the esoteric wisdom to be remitted in the public forum, by the Great White Lodge and the Elder Brothers of mankind who shape and form the spiritual evolution for mankind.
Dr. M. Dorea
Doreal writes of the secrets of the symbolism of all mystery schools and gives a precisely and beautifully written step by step progression all seekers have searched for in their quest for oneness with God and attainment of the cosmic consciousness.
After traveling the world for knowledge of the light and truth, Doreal began publishing his findings in a spiritual retreat in Colorado named Shamballa.
Doreal studied the ancient teachings of the emerald tablets, the wisdom of the Kabbalah, and the light Jesus brought to mankind.
He has translated many ancient texts into English and other languages for the masses to read in order for all of us to reach atonement within ourselves and the cosmic universe. All his publications are available through the brotherhood of the white temple publication office.
However, the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean are still part of the modern Corpus Hermeticum, for they elaborate and deepen the meaning of the historical Emerald Tablet and writings of Thoth/Hermes.
This 4,500-Year-Old Ramp Contraption May Have Been Used to Build Egypt’s Great Pyramid
In a 4,500-year-old quarry in Egypt, archaeologists have uncovered an ancient ramp structure that could justify how the ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids.
According to researchers from the University of Liverpool and Cairo’s French Institute for Oriental Archaeology, the Daily Mail says, the sloping ramp lined with two staircases and wooden poles may have been the location of a pulley device intended to make it easier to move large blocks of stone.
In a statement, Yannis Gourdon, co-director of the project, said This system is composed of a central ramp flanked by two staircases with numerous post holes.”
“Using a sleds which carried a stone block and were attached with ropes to these wooden posts, ancient Egyptians were able to pull up the alabaster blocks out of the quarry on very steep slopes of 20 per cent or more.”
The ancient ramps, which are located in the Hatnub quarry, are steeper than archaeologists expected.
This 4,500-year-old system used to pull alabaster stones up a steep slope was discovered at Hatnub, an ancient quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Two staircases with numerous postholes are located next to this ramp. An alabaster block would have been placed on a sled, which was tied by ropes to the wooden poles.
Previous calculations had suggested that ramps could not have been steeper than a 10 per cent grade in order to raise the blocks to the necessary height, which would have required ramps of absurdly long distances.
But by using the post holes, workers would have been able to move the stones with more force, and without dragging the massive blocks behind them.
The world has long marvelled at the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, the last of the Seven Wonders of the World that still exists.
Many archaeologists favour the theory that ramps were used to move the massive stone blocks that comprise the pyramids, but the exact nature of such a system has long remained a mystery.
“Since this ramp dates to the reign of Khufu (builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the World), our research offers the exciting possibility for offering further insights into the logistics and technologies used in constructing that astonishing building,” said Roland Enmarch, an Egyptologist who worked on the project, in a statement.
A new graphic reveals the complex system of ramps and pulleys that may have been used by the Egyptians to construct the ancient pyramids. The system raised stone blocks weighing several tonnes hundreds of feet into the air via enormous sleds, archaeologists believe
Other experts, however, aren’t so sure. Although the blocks removed from the quarry would have been about the size of those used to construct the pyramids, the site’s alabaster is much softer than the pyramids’ hard granite stone.
“It’s a stretch to take an alabaster quarry and say this is how the pyramids were built because the pyramids weren’t built out of alabaster,” Kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptian art and architecture at the Los Angeles’s University of California, told the History Channel.
“The way that the ancient Egyptians cut and moved stone is still very mysterious.”
2,000 Years old Colourful Artworks Revealed in Egypt’s Temple of Esna
According to a statement released by the University of Tübingen, a team of Egyptian and German researchers has removed layers of soot and bird excrement from the 2,000-year-old decorations in the surviving pronaos, or vestibule, at the Temple of Esna.
The temple of Esna, seen from the east.
Reliefs and inscriptions are now freed from dark soot and soil deposits in bright colours. The project led by Egyptologist Professor Christian Leitz also discovered new inscriptions that reveal the ancient Egyptian names of constellations for the first time.
The restoration work is a cooperation between the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
The temple is in Esna, 60 kilometres south of Luxor in Egypt. Only the vestibule (called the pronaos) remains, but it is complete. At 37 meters long, 20 meters wide and 15 meters high, the sandstone structure was placed in front of the actual temple building under the Roman Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) and probably eclipsed it.
The roof is supported by 24 columns, the capitals of the 18 free-standing columns are decorated with different plant motifs. “In Egyptian temple architecture this is an absolute exception,” says Tübingen Egyptologist Daniel von Recklinghausen.
The work on the elaborate decorations probably took up to 200 years. The temple of Esna is famous for its astronomical ceiling and especially for the hieroglyphic inscriptions.
They are considered to be the most recent coherent hieroglyphic text corpus that has been preserved today and which de-scribes the religious ideas of the time and the cult events at the site.
Its location in the middle of the city centre probably contributed to the fact that the vestibule was preserved and was not used as a quarry for building materials as other ancient edifices were during the industrialization of Egypt. Indeed, the temple had become part of the modern city.
Houses and shacks were built directly against some of its walls, in other places, it protruded from a mountain of rubble, as can be seen on postcards from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the first half of the 19th century, the hall served temporarily as a warehouse for cotton.
A restored column capital (spring 2019) shows the decoration in color.
Detail of a frieze (autumn 2019). The cartouche contains the name of Hadrian, framed by the local god Khnum (left) and the solar god Behedeti (right).
A column abacus before restoration.
As early as in Napoleon’s time, the pronaos attracted attention in expert circles, as it was considered an ideal example of ancient Egyptian temple architecture.
The real wealth, the inscriptions, was recognized by the French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron (1927-1976), who pushed ahead with the excavation of the temple and published the inscriptions in full. But without the original colours—Sauneron could not recognize them under the layers of soot and bird excrement.
Now the layers have been removed and the temple looks in part as it may have done some 2,000 years ago. In addition, it now offers new approaches for Egyptology research, says Christian Leitz, “The hieroglyphics that Sauneron explored were often only very roughly chiselled out, the details only applied by painting them in colour.
This means that only preliminary versions of the inscriptions had been researched. Only now do we get a picture of the final version.” In the area of the astronomical ceiling, many inscriptions were not executed in relief but only painted in ink.
A column abacus after restoration.
The restoration work shows that under many layers the original colours are preserved.
Representation of a constellation in form of a mummy.
“They were previously undetected under the soot and are now being exposed piece by piece. Here we have found, for example, the names of ancient Egyptian constellations, which were previously completely unknown,” says Leitz.
Since 2018, the two Tübingen researchers have been working with Egyptian authorities to uncover, preserve and document the paint layers.
Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the work is being continued by an Egyptian team of 15 restorers and a chief conservator from the Egyptian Ministry.
At regular intervals, the results are documented photographically in documentation campaigns. At the University of Tübingen, the finds are evaluated in terms of content and made available to the public via publications.
Cooperation partners on the Egyptian side are Dr Hisham El-Leithy, Mohamed Saad, Ahmed Amin, Mustafa Ahmed, Ahmed Emam. The project is supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Ancient Egypt Foundation and the Santander Bank.
Nearly 100 coffins buried over 2,500 years ago found in Egypt
On 14 November, Egyptian antiquities officials declared the discovery. Some of the coffins had mummies inside them, the officials said.
Archaeologists discovered as many as 13 coffins from a burial ground in Egypt back in September that was believed to have been sealed for 2,500 years.
The large burial complex was buried deep in the desert necropolis of Saqqara, according to sources. The site is situated 30 km south of Cairo. Many scholars celebrated the finding because the coffins, which are considered to be over 2,500 years old, are well preserved.
An ancient coffin is seen on the site of the discovery in Giza province, Egypt, on Nov. 14, 2020.
About a few weeks later, the archaeologists unsealed one of the 2,500-year-old coffins in front of a live audience in Egypt. The mummy was wrapped in an ornate burial cloth, which had been decorated to resemble the deceased priest’s face.
According to a press release by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, initially, three burial wells at different depths between 10 and 12 metres, with 13 coffins, were discovered in Saqqara. Then another 14 coffins were revealed until the total number of coffins reached 59.
The discovery dates back to the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years from around 320BC to about 30BC.
Now, another ancient haul of more than 100 coffins and around 40 glided statues have been unearthed for the first time in 2,500 years in Egypt.
According to reports, Egyptian antiquities officials announced the discovery on 14 November. The officials added that many of the coffins had mummies inside them.
The massive hail was found in a vast necropolis south of Cairo. Recently, they were opened for the first time since they were buried nearly 2,500 years ago.
The officials said the coffins belonged to top officials of the Late Period of the Ptolemaic period of ancient Egypt. The discovery was made as deep as 40 feet below the surface in three burial shafts.
The coffins and other recovered artefacts are now being displayed at a makeshift exhibition in Saqqara.
Like last month, an archaeologist opened one of the coffins to reveal a well-preserved mummy.
“Saqqara has yet to reveal all of its contents. It is a treasure.
Excavations are still underway. Whenever we empty a burial shaft of sarcophagi, we find an entrance to another,” Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anany said at the event.
Skull of two-million-year-old human ‘cousin’ unearthed in South Africa
In an archaeological excavation deep in a South African cave system led by Australian, a 2-million-year-old cranium from a big dented remote human cousin was discovered.
The finding is the oldest known and best-preserved case of Paranthropus robustus, a small-brained hominine called Paranthropus robustus, La Trobe University researchers say.
The almost complete male skull, found in the Drimolen cave system near Johannesburg in 2018, may also lead to a new understanding of human microevolution.
Paranthropus robustus walked the Earth at roughly the same time as our direct ancestor Homo erectus, palaeoanthropologist Angeline Leece said, referring to hominins, a small-brained member of the human family tree.
“But these two vastly different species — Homo erectus with their relatively large brains and small teeth, and Paranthropus robustus with their relatively large teeth and small brains — represent divergent evolutionary experiments,” she said.
“While we were the lineage that won out in the end, two million years ago the fossil record suggests that Paranthropus robustus was much more common than Homo erectus on the landscape.”
Until recently, scientists believed Paranthropus robustus existed in social structures similar to gorillas, with large dominant males living in a group of smaller Paranthropus robustus females.
This rare male fossil is closer in size to female specimens previously found at the site, providing the first high-resolution evidence for microevolution within early hominin species.
Researchers argue this discovery could lead to a revised system for classifying and understanding the palaeobiology of human ancestors — a significant development for their field.
The face of the skull is put back together for the first time
Archaeologist Andy Herries said the skull, which was painstakingly reconstructed from hundreds of bone pieces, represented the start of a very successful Paranthropus robustus lineage that existed in South Africa for a million years.
“Like all other creatures on Earth, to remain successful our ancestors adapted and evolved in accordance with the landscape and environment around them,” he said.
“We believe these changes took place during a time when South Africa was drying out, leading to the extinction of a number of contemporaneous mammal species.
“It is likely that climate change produced environmental stressors that drove evolution within Paranthropus robustus.”
Findings from the new discovery in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind were published in Nature Ecology and Evolution on Tuesday.
An Ancient Papyrus Reveals How The Great Pyramid of Giza Was Built
Stones of up to fifteen tonnes were shipped to a man-made port on wooden boats across the Nile. It has been one of the major enigmas of the world for centuries: how did a simple culture with no sophistication build Giza’s Great Pyramid.
The earliest and only survivor of the Ancient World’s Seven Wonders? It was the tallest man-made building on Earth for almost 4,000 years, at 146 metres high.
Archaeologists also discovered the diary of Merer, an official involved in the building of Giza’s great pyramid, in what is regarded by some to be one of the greatest discoveries in Egypt in the 21st century.
The 4,500-year-old papyrus is the oldest in the world and describes how wooden boats and ingenious system of waterworks transported blocks of limestones and granite weighing up to 15 tonnes from 13 kilometres away. In it, Merer (which means beloved) describes how he and a crew of 40 elite workmen shipped the stones downstream from Tura to Giza along the Nile River.
In the last few years, the papyrus and other archaeological excavations have revealed new information about how the pyramids were constructed. Here are some of the findings uncovered in Nature of Things documentary Lost Secrets of the Pyramid.
A papyrus Tallet found at Wadi al-Jarf from 2,600 B.C., the world’s oldest, refers to the “horizon of Khufu,” or the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Water was harnessed to transport huge stones.
Every summer, when the Nile flooded, giant dykes were opened to divert water from the river and channel it to the pyramid through a manmade canal system creating an inland port which allowed boats to dock very close to the worksite — just a few hundred metres away from the growing pyramid.
A recreation of the port from the documentary Lost Secrets of the Pyramid
The construction of artificial ports was a huge turning point for Egyptians, opening up trade and new relationships with people from distant lands.
Wooden boats built with rope instead of nails.
The limestone was carried along the River Nile in wooden boats built with planks and rope that were capable of hauling two-and-a-half tonne stones.
Using ancient tomb carvings and the remains of an ancient dismantled ship as a guide, archaeologist Mohamed Abd El-Maguid has recreated one Egyptian boat from scratch.
3D scans of the ship planks revealed that the boats were full of holes that lined up perfectly with each other. Instead of nails or wood pegs, these boats were sewn together with rope like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
With 1,000 holes and five kilometres of rope the new boat was assembled and Abd El-Maguid and in Secrets of the Pyramid, attempts to re-create every step of Merer’s journey down the Nile with two-tonne limestone rock.
These boats were rowed carefully with the current down the Nile to the worksite. Once the rocks were unloaded, the wind helped propel the vessel back to the quarry.
Workers were valued and lived nearby in a huge settlement
Archaeologist Mark Lehner has uncovered artefacts that provide evidence of a vast settlement that held as many as 20,000 people. Average workers lived in huge dormitories, but team leaders like Merer lived in relative luxury with homes of their own.
Thousands of tiny bits of detritus of everyday life reveal that these hungry workers were well taken care of. An entire city was formed near the pyramid site to provide food and drink.
For most of the workers, building the pyramids was a source of prestige; these people have valued servants of the state.
Workers belonged to teams
Ankhhaf, Pharoah Khufu’s half-brother is mentioned in Merer’s diary and is thought to have been in charge of the operation. He divided the workforce into ‘phyles’ teams of 40 men — of which someone like Merer oversaw.
Artefacts with team names on them have been discovered by archaeologist Pierre Tallet at a remote desert outpost in Wadi Al-Jarf about 250 kilometres away. Merer’s phyle was called “The Followers of the Boat named after the Snake on its Figurehead.”
Four phyles formed a gang of elite labourers. Each team has specific roles in the construction of the pyramid or the transportation of materials to the worksite.
Thousands of men, working together for over 20 years, succeeded in building the tallest, heaviest structure on earth. They transformed the landscape, and in doing so, also created a new society which archaeologist Mark Lehner says is the real achievement, “Once they had put all these systems and all this infrastructure in place there was no going back. They became more important than the pyramid itself and set Egyptian civilization off on a course for the next two or three millennia.”
Archaeologists discover 35 burial chambers in the Sudan desert with fascinating links to Ancient Egypt
Archaeologists excavating a site in Sudan have discovered 35 pyramids revealing fascinating links between the bygone Kingdom of Kush that once existed there and ancient Egypt.
The pyramids, which date back around 2,000 years, are smaller than most Egyptian examples with the largest being 22 feet in width and the smallest, likely constructed for the burial of a child, being just 30 inches.
The site in Sedeinga, northern Sudan, was part of the ancient kingdom of Kush which shared a border with Egypt and, later on, the Roman Empire.
Discovery: The skeleton of a child buried with necklaces around its neck was unearthed amid a complex of 35 pyramids discovered in Sudan
Find: Some of the pyramids discovered in the dig in Sedeinga in northern Sudan. Unusually some had a circle built inside them with cross-braces connecting the circle to the corners of the pyramid
Treasures: An amulet of the Egyptian god Bes who was often associated with children and pregnant mothers (left) and archaeologist Vincent Francigny shows with a steal, a stone slab used to keep records (right)
One factor that has surprised the team was how densely concentrated the pyramids were. In a single area of 5,381 square feet, roughly the size of a basketball court, they found 13 pyramids.
Sadly the condition of the pyramids has suffered from the presence of a camel caravan route and the long passage of time and none of the top sections remains intact.
Capstones, depicting either a bird or a lotus flower on top of a solar orb, who have originally been placed at the top of the pyramids. Graves were discovered beside the pyramids in tomb chambers which were often found to have held more than one body.
Packed: One feature that surprised the team was how densely concentrated the pyramids were. In a single area of 5,381 square feet, roughly the size of a basketball court, they found 13 pyramids
Treasures: An offering table discovered at the site inscribed with ancient Meroitic writing (left) and a capstone which would have sat on the top of a pyramids shaped like a lotus flower above a solar orb (right)
Sadly these graves had all been plundered, possibly many hundreds of years ago, however, the archaeologists did find skeletal remains and some artefacts.
The archaeological team believes building of pyramids at Sedeinga continued for centuries and was strongly influenced by Egyptian funerary architecture.
Vincent Francigny, a research associate with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, told LiveScience: ‘The density of the pyramids is huge.
‘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.
‘They reached a point where it was so filled with people and graves that they had to reuse the oldest one.’
Some of the pyramids were found to have been built with cross-braces connecting the corners to an inner circle. Interestingly only one pyramid outside of Sedeinga is known to have been built in this way.
Mr Francigny believes that when pyramid building came into fashion at Sedeinga it could have been combined with a local circle-building tradition called tumulus construction, resulting in pyramids with circles within them.
He added: ‘What we found this year is very intriguing. A grave of a child and it was covered by only a kind of circle, almost complete, of brick.’
A copper alloy bowl was found in the tomb holding this skeleton (left).Sedeinga, in Sudan, sits near the River Nile which flows up into Egypt (right)
Among the artefacts discovered were depictions of Egyptian gods including Bes who is associated with children and pregnant mothers. One of the most interesting finds was an offering table depicting the jackal-headed god Anubis and a goddess believed to be Isis.
A dedication to a woman named ‘Aba-la,’ which researchers believe may be a nickname for ‘grandmother,’ was inscribed with ancient Meroitic writing – a script derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Archaeologists Diving Under a 2,300-Year-Old Pyramid Find Ancient Treasure
Somewhere Below the surface of the kiddie-pool sized patch of brown water is the entrance to the 2,300-year-old tomb of a pharaoh named Nastasen. If I crane my neck back far enough, I can just make out the eastern flank of his pyramid rising nearly three stories above me.
In order to access the tomb of pharaoh Nastasen, archaeologists had to excavate the processional staircase that leads to the burial chambers deep below his pyramid at Nuri.
It’s a sweltering morning in the desert of northern Sudan, the land of Nubia in the time of the pharaohs. Sweat drips into the dive mask hung around my neck as I negotiate my way down a narrow, ancient staircase cut deep into the bedrock. Waterproof flashlights clank from each wrist, and a 20-pound weight belt is slung commando-style across my chest. An emergency container of air, no bigger than a can of hairspray, is secured uncomfortably in the small of my back.
At the bottom of the stairs, archaeologist and National Geographic grantee Pearce Paul Creasman are standing chest-deep in the muddy water. “It’s really deep today,” he warns. “There’s not going to be any headroom in the first chamber.”
Creasman and I both trained as underwater archaeologists, so when I heard that he had the grant to explore submerged ancient tombs, I gave him a call and asked to tag along. Just a few weeks before I arrived, he entered Nastasen’s tomb for the first time, swimming through the first chamber, then a second, then into a third and final room, where, beneath several feet of water, he saw what looked like a royal sarcophagus. The stone coffin appeared to be unopened and undisturbed. Now, Creasman disappears into the water and resurfaces with a steel grate used to seal the tomb entrance. It looks no bigger than a large television set.
“This is how big the chute is,” he announces. “That’s your only space to get in and out of the tomb.” Back-mounted scuba tanks are too unwieldy in such tight confines, so we clip into 150-foot-long hoses that will supply us with air from a noisy, gasoline-fed pump.
“I’ll go first and pull my hose in,” Creasman says. “If I don’t see you in five minutes, I’ll come to find you.”
I nod and turn back to look up the ancient staircase, where Fakhri Hassan Abdallah, an inspector with Sudan’s National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, stands silhouetted against the rising sun. He gives me a thumbs up and smiles. I shove the diving regulator into my mouth. It’s time to go pyramid diving.
The pyramids of Nuri
Nastasen’s watery tomb is located at the ancient site of Nuri, which sprawls across more than 170 acres of sand near the east bank of the Nile River in northern Sudan. Seen from the sky, its most commanding feature is an arc of some 20 pyramids built between 650 B.C. and 300 B.C. that appear strung together like gems on a delicate necklace.
Local excavation helper at the entrance to a pyramid in Sudan below the groundwater table laying a compressed air line for diving archaeologists. Shutterstock.
These pyramids mark the burials of Kushite royals, the “black pharaohs” who operated as vassals on the gold-rich southern edges of the Egyptian empire, but who emerged as a force of their own during the political chaos that followed the demise of the New Kingdom. From about 760 B.C. to 650 B.C., five Kushite pharaohs ruled all of Egypt from Nubia to the Mediterranean Sea, embarking on ambitious building programs up and down the Nile and reviving the religious practices of a much earlier Egyptian empire—including the construction of pyramids, which they buried their kings under.
The largest and oldest pyramid at Nuri belongs to its most famous resident: the pharaoh Taharqa, a Kushite king who in the seventh century B.C. rallied his troops to the northern edges of his empire to defend Jerusalem from the Assyrians, earning him a mention in the Old Testament. George Reisner, a Harvard Egyptologist, visited Nuri a century ago to excavate the burial chambers beneath Taharqa’s massive pyramid.
Reisner’s team also mapped Nuri’s funerary monuments, which include more than 80 royal Kushite burials—roughly a quarter of which are topped with their sandstone pyramids. His field notes show that many of the tombs he encountered were already inundated with groundwater percolating from the nearby Nile, making traditional dirt excavation unsafe or impossible.
Reisner never published the results of his work (an associate cobbled what little was documented into a report published in 1955), and for almost a century Nuri was ignored. The Harvard archaeologist had offhandedly—and inaccurately—dismissed the Kushite kings as racially inferior and their accomplishments as an inheritance of older Egyptian traditions.
Then, in 1922, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb shifted the public’s attention to the Valley of the Kings, nearly 500 miles up the Nile in Luxor. In the decades that followed, Nuri seemed too big and challenging a site to tackle. Many of its tombs were likely underwater, and no one had ever before attempted underwater archaeology in Sudan. Besides, northern Sudan—ancient Nubia—had plenty of other stunning sites to keep archaeologists busy for years to come.
Watery tombs
Pearce Paul Creasman first visited Nuri in 2018. An unusual hybrid of Egyptologist and underwater archaeologist (as well as an associate professor in the dendrochronology laboratory at the University of Arizona), Creasman saw a rare opportunity to explore the watery tombs that Reisner was unable to tackle a century ago.
Funded in part by a grant from the National Geographic Society, Creasman zeroed in on the pyramid of Nastasen, a minor pharaoh who ruled Kush from 335 B.C. to 315 B.C. Because he was the last king buried at Nuri, his pyramid was built on the worst piece of real estate in the lowest elevations of the royal necropolis. If Reisner’s reports about the flooded tombs were true, Creasman reasoned, an exploration of pharaoh Nastasen’s final resting place would be the best way to gauge how inundated these monuments might be in the 21st century.
According to Reisner’s century-old field notes, his team located and excavated the rock-hewn stairwell that led down to the burial chambers deep beneath Nastasen’s pyramid. One of Reisner’s workers entered the tomb and, likely unnerved by the knee-deep water, hastily made his way to the third and final chamber. There he dug a small pit in the corner and collected a handful of shabtis—small magical figurines tasked with tending to the deceased’s needs in the afterlife. The research team left Nuri, and over the decades Nastasen’s tomb, and the staircase leading to it, were again buried under the desert sands.
Creasman’s team spent the 2018 field season and part of the 2019 season digging out the staircase. They reached the opening of the tomb this January and discovered that the entrance was now completely underwater, most likely due to rising groundwater caused by natural and human-induced climate change, intensive agriculture near the site, and the construction of modern dams along the Nile.
Tantalizing clues
By the time I arrive at Nuri, Creasman has reinforced the narrow tomb opening with a steel chute to prevent a rock collapse that would trap divers in the chambers beneath the pyramid. I pull myself through the chute and into the first chamber. As Creasman had warned, the water reaches to the ceiling. Every movement kicks up a cloud of ultra-fine sediment that makes it almost impossible to see what’s directly in front of me.
I feel my way around the bus-sized chamber, swimming in circles until I eventually surface in the second chamber. There, the ceiling has collapsed, creating space for a large air pocket. I find Creasman hoisting bags of gear onto a pile of dry rubble and placing flashlights into plastic jerry cans that gently bob in the water and illuminate the darkness. Empty Red Bull cans serve as floats for a safety line that runs from the back of the tomb to the entrance.
Swimming through a low, rounded, rock-cut doorway, we enter the third chamber. The stone sarcophagus is dimly visible below us—a thrilling sight—and we spot the pit that was hastily dug by Reisner’s nervous worker a century ago. At this early phase of the project, Creasman’s objectives are to demonstrate the safety of the air-supply system, gather basic measurements, and thoroughly excavate “Reisner’s pit” to see what was overlooked. Peering inside the stone coffin will have to wait until next year.
But there are tantalizing clues that the rising groundwater kept grave robbers from looting Nastasen’s tomb. As we excavate Reisner’s pit—filling plastic buckets with sediment, swimming them out into the air-filled second chamber, dumping the sediment onto a screen and sifting for artefacts—we discover paper-thin foils of pure gold that likely once covered precious figurines that long ago dissolved in the water. Those gilded figurines would have been easy pickings for looters, and their remains are a sure sign that Nastasen’s tomb has been essentially untouched.
On our final dive, Creasman and I float silently in water in the back chamber of the tomb, hovering above what may very well be Nastasen’s undisturbed sarcophagus. We talk about the team’s goal for 2020: to excavate the pharaoh’s 2,300-year-old submerged royal burial chambers. It’s an audacious aim and a huge logistical challenge, but Creasman is optimistic.
“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,” he says. “It’s a remarkable point in history that so few know about. It’s a story that deserves to be told.”
