Scientists Analyze Ancient Egyptian Ink containing lead were likely used as drier on ancient Egyptian papyri
Cosmos Magazine reports that a team of chemists, physicists, and Egyptologists from the University of Copenhagen and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility used advanced X-ray microscopy equipment to analyze the chemical composition of the ink markings found on papyrus fragments from Egypt’s ancient Tebtunis temple library.
Detail of a medical treatise from the Tebtunis temple library.
The studies, published in the Journal PNAS, not only illuminate how writing practices developed in Egypt and around the Mediterranean, it could help with the conservation of many famous manuscripts.
In this study, the focus was on a dozen papyrus fragments from the only large-scale institutional library known to have survived from ancient Egypt: the Tebtunis temple library.
And the team of chemists, physicists and Egyptologists called in the big guns, using the advanced X-ray microscopy equipment at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble to examine them.
The work was led by the ESRF and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
They combined several synchrotron techniques to probe the chemical composition from the millimetre to the sub-micrometre scale to provide information not only on the elemental but also on the molecular and structural composition of the inks.
They concluded that the lead was used as a dryer because they did not find any other type of lead, such as lead white or minimum, which should be present if the lead was used as a pigment.
This also suggests that the ink had quite a complex recipe and “could not be made by just anyone”, says Egyptologist Thomas Christiansen from the University of Copenhagen, co-corresponding author of a paper in.
“Judging from the amount of raw materials needed to supply a temple library like the one in Tebtunis, we propose that the priests must have acquired them or overseen their production at specialised workshops much like the Master Painters from the Renaissance,” he says.
The ancient Egyptians have been using inks for writing since at least 3200 BCE, with black used for the primary body of text and red to highlight headings and keywords.
The researchers discovered that red pigment is present as coarse particles, while the lead compounds are diffused into papyrus cells, at the micrometre scale, wrapping the cell walls, and creating, at the letter scale, a coffee-ring effect around the iron particles, as if the letters were outlined.
“We think that lead must have been present in a finely ground and maybe in a soluble state and that when applied, big particles stayed in place, whilst the smaller ones diffused around them”, says co-corresponding author Marine Cotte, from the ESRF.
Ruins of the city Tebtunis, discovered in the 1930s. Credit: Kim Ryholt, University of Copenhagen.
Mysterious Ancient Structures Hidden Under The Sand In The Sahara Desert
Hundreds of stone structures dating back thousands of years have been discovered in Western Sahara, a territory in Africa little explored by archaeologists.
The structures seem to come in all sizes and shapes, and archaeologists aren’t sure what many of then were used for or when they were created, archaeologists report in the book “The Archaeology of Western Sahara: A Synthesis of Fieldwork, 2002 to 2009” (Oxbow Books, 2018).
About 75 per cent of the Western Saharan territory, including most of the coastline, is controlled by Morocco, while 25 per cent is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Before 1991, the two governments were in a state of war.
The structures come in various shapes and sizes, including one that curves off into the horizon (shown here).
Between 2002 and 2009, archaeologists worked in the field surveying the landscape and doing a small amount of excavation in the part of Western Sahara that is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. They also investigated satellite images on Google Earth, they wrote in the book.
“Due to its history of conflict, detailed archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research in Western Sahara has been extremely limited,” wrote Joanne Clarke, a senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia, and Nick Brooks, an independent researcher.
“The archaeological map of Western Sahara remains literally and figuratively almost blank as far as the wider international archaeological research community is concerned, particularly away from the Atlantic coast,” wrote Clarke and Brooks, noting that people living in the area know of the stone structures, and some work has been done by Spanish researchers on rock art in Western Sahara.
Mysterious structures
The stone structures are designed in a wide variety of ways. Some are shaped like crescents, others form circles, some are in straight lines, some in rectangular shapes that look like a platform; some structures consist of rocks that have been piled up into a heap.
And some of the structures use a combination of these designs. For instance, one structure has a mix of straight lines, stone circles, a platform and rock piles that altogether form a complex about 2,066 feet (630 meters) long, the archaeologists noted in the book.
Here, a type of stone structure known as a “dolmen.”
Though the archaeologists are unsure of the purpose of many of the structures, they said some of them may mark the location of graves.
Little excavation has been done on the structures, and archaeologists have found few artefacts that can be dated using a radiocarbon method. Among the few excavated sites are two “tumuli” (heaps of rock) that contain human burials dating back around 1,500 years.
Research suggests that Western Sahara was once a wetter place that could sustain more animal life than it does today.
Archaeologists documented rock art showing images of cattle, giraffe, oryx and Barbary sheep while environmental researchers found evidence for lakes and other water sources that dried up thousands of years ago.
Security problems
At present, security problems in the region mean that fieldwork has stopped, Clarke and Brooks told Live Science.
The terrorist group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operates in the desert regions near Western Sahara, and in 2013 they kidnapped two Spanish aid workers at a refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria, just across the border from Western Sahara.
While the Sahrawi people and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic strongly oppose the terrorist group, it’s extremely difficult for authorities to effectively patrol the vast desert areas where the stone structures are located, Clarke and Brooks said.
This means archaeologists can’t work there safely right now. This problem is not unique to Western Sahara, as the security risks posed by terrorist and extremist groups in the region mean that archaeologists can’t work in much of North Africa right now, they said.
This 3.3-Million-Year-Old Hominin Toddler Was Kind of Like Us
In a fragment of sandstone sticking from the soil in the sparkling flatlands of Northeast Ethiopia, a fossil fragment of the cheekbone has been detected. Zeresenay Alemseged almost instinctively realised that he had come across something important.
Zeresenay Alemseged holds the skull of a three-year-old Australopithecus afarensis at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The discovery sheds light on the contentious debate about how well the species walked and climbed.
The skinbone brought a jaw, parts of a skull and eventually collar bones, shoulder blades, ribs and — perhaps most important — the most complete spinal column of any early human relative ever found.
Nearly 17 years later, the 3.3-million-year-old fossilized skeleton known as the “Dikika Baby” remains one of the most important discoveries in archaeological history, one that is filling in the timeline of human evolution.
“When you put all the bones together, you have over 60 per cent of a skeleton of a child dating back to 3.3 million years ago, which is more complete than the famous australopithecine fossil known as ‘Lucy,’ ” Alemseged, a 47-year-old professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, told The Washington Post.
“We never had the chance to recover the face of Lucy, but the Dikika child is an almost complete skeleton, which gives you an impression of how children looked 3.3 million years ago.”
The fossil, also called “Selam” — “peace” in the Ethiopian Amharic language — has revealed numerous insights into our early human relatives. But Alemseged said one of the most startling findings comes from the toddler’s spine, which had an adaptation for walking upright that had not been seen in such an old skeleton.
The result, he said, is a creature whose upper body was apelike, but whose pelvis, legs and feet had familiar, humanlike adaptations.
“If you had a time machine and saw a group of these early human relatives, what you would have said right away is, ‘What is that chimpanzee doing walking on two legs?’ ” Alemseged said.
The Dikika foot is one part of a partial skeleton of a 3.32 million-year-old skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis child
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show for the first time the spinal column was humanlike in its numbering and segmentation. Though scientists know that even older species were bipedal, researchers said Selam’s fossilized vertebrae is the only hard evidence of bipedal adaptations in an ancient hominid spine.
“Yes, there were other bipedal species before, but what is making this unique is the preservation of the spine, which simply is unprecedented,” Alemseged said. “Not only is it exquisitely preserved, but it also tells us that the human-type of segmentation emerged at least 3.3 million years ago. Could there have been other species with a similar structure, yes, but we don’t know for sure?”
Human beings share many of the same spinal structures as other primates, but the human spine — which has more vertebrae in the lower back, for example — is adapted for efficient upright motion, such as walking and running on two feet.
Among the larger questions researchers like Alemseged are trying to answer include: When did our ancestors evolve the ability to be bipedal? When did we become more bipedal than arboreal, or tree-dwelling? And when did our ancestors abandon an arboreal lifestyle to become the runners and walkers that eventually populated Africa and then the world?
One of the significant barriers to answering those questions is that complete sets of vertebrae are rarely preserved in the fossil record.
“For many years we have known of fragmentary remains of early fossil species that suggest that the shift from rib-bearing, or thoracic, vertebrae to the lumbar, or lower back, vertebrae were positioned higher in the spinal column than in living humans, but we have not been able to determine how many vertebrae our early ancestors had,” said Carol Ward, a curator’s distinguished professor of pathology and anatomical sciences in the University of Missouri School of Medicine, and lead author on the study.
“Selam has provided us the first glimpse into how our early ancestors’ spines were organized.” Unpacking the intricacies of Selam’s spinal structure would not have been possible without the assistance of cutting-edge technology, researchers said.
After 13 years of using dental tools to painstakingly remove portions of the fossil from sandstone — which risked destroying the fossil — Alemseged packed up Selam in his suitcase and took the fossil from Ethiopia to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, in 2010. Alemseged and the research team spent nearly two weeks there using high-resolution imaging technology to visualize the bones.
Left block of images shows the 3.32 million-year-old foot from an Australopithecus afarensis toddler from different angles. The right block of images compares the child’s foot with the fossil remains of an adult Australopithecus foot (top).
The fossil had undergone a medical CT scan in 2002 in Nairobi, Alemseged said, but that scanner was unable to distinguish objects with the same density, meaning that penetrating bones encased in sandstone was impossible. Once in France, that was no longer a problem, and the results, he said, “were mind-blowing.”
“We were able to separate, virtually, the different elements of the vertebrae and were able to do it, of course, without any damage to the fossil,” Alemseged said. “We are now able to see this very detailed anatomy of the vertebrae of this exceptionally preserved fossil.”
The scans revealed that the child possessed the thoracic-to-lumbar joint transition found in other fossil human relatives, but they also showed that Selam had a smaller number of vertebrae and ribs than most apes have.
For researchers, the skeleton is a window into the transition between rib-bearing vertebrae and lower back vertebrae, which allowed our early human ancestors to extend at the waist and begin moving upright, eventually becoming highly efficient walkers and runners. Though he has been studying Selam for nearly two decades, Alemseged thinks the fossil has more secrets to share with the modern world.
“I don’t think she will stop surprising us as the analysis continues,” he said. “Science and tech are evolving so much that I’m sure in a few years we’ll be able to extract even more information that we’re not able to extract today.”
Archaeologists find Rome-era tombs in Egypt’s the Western Desert
Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered two ancient tombs dating back to the Roman period in the country’s the Western Desert. The team discovered structures of two different architectural styles at the Beir Al-Shaghala site in the Dakhla Oasis, though both were built from mud-brick.
Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered two ancient tombs dating back to the Roman period in the country’s Western Desert. Colorful funeral paintings in one of the ancient tombs is shown above
Inside the colourfully-painted tombs, they also found several human skeletons, clay lamps, and a number of pottery vessels. Each of the tombs is decorated in vibrant funeral paintings, though much of the artwork has been lost to time.
According to Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, the paintings once illustrated the process of mummifying the deceased.
Archaeologists have been excavating the site since 2002 over the course of five archaeological seasons.
Overall, they’ve discovered more than 10 incomplete sandstone tombs at the site.
The latest finds include one sandstone tomb with a 20-step staircase and a mud-brick tomb located on the east side of the first.
In recent years, Egypt has heavily promoted new archaeological finds to international media and diplomats in the hope of attracting more visitors to the country.
The vital tourism sector has suffered from the years of political turmoil since the 2011 uprising.
The latest finds include one sandstone tomb with a 20-step staircase and a mud-brick tomb located on the east side of the first
Archaeologists revealed another Roman-era discovery earlier this month from the Egyptian west coast.
Recent excavations uncovered the ruins of a sprawling Hellenistic fortress constructed more than 2,000 years ago.
Researchers say the ancient fortress was built to defend a port on the Red Sea coast, with three large courtyards and numerous structures that housed workshops and stores.
Inside, the team also found trash heaps filled with terracotta figures, coins, and even a fragment of an elephant skull.
The ruins of the Roman city, called Berenike Trogodytika, were first discovered in 1818, though it wasn’t until 2012 that excavations finally began.
Work at the site uncovered a ‘multi-phased’ building measuring about 160 meters long and 80 meters wide.
The team also found a line of defences along the north and north-east side.
According to the researchers, the findings at Berenike represent the first known Hellenistic urban site in the region.
Egypt finds 59 ancient coffins buried more than 2,600 years ago
The Egyptian Minister of Tourism and Antiquities said on Saturday, dozens of ancient coffins were discovered by archaeologists in a large Necropolis south of Cairo.
Khalid el-Anany, Egypt’s tourism and antiquities minister, right, and Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, left, stand over a sarcophagus at the Saqqara archaeological site, 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of Cairo, Egypt on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020. El-Anany says at least 59 sealed sarcophagi with mummies inside were found in three wells at the vast necropolis, believed to have been buried there more than 2,600 years ago.
Khalid el-Anany said that 59 sealed sarcophagi, most of them mummies, have been discovered to have buried more than 2,600 years ago in three wells.
“I consider this is the beginning of a big discovery,” el-Anany said, adding that there is an unknown number of coffins that have yet to be unearthed in the same area.
He spoke at a news conference at the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara where the coffins were found.
The sarcophagi have been displayed and one of them was opened before reporters to show the mummy inside. Several foreign diplomats attended the announcement ceremony.
A sarcophagus that is around 2500 years old is shown at the Saqqara archaeological site, 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020.
The Saqqara plateau hosts at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, along with hundreds of tombs of ancient officials and other sites that range from the 1st Dynasty (2920 B.C.-2770 B.C.) to the Coptic period (395-642).
Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said initial studies show that the decorated coffins were made for priests, top officials and elites from the Pharaonic Late Period (664-525 B.C.).
He said archaeologists also found a total of 28 statuettes of Ptah-Soker the main god of the Saqqara necropolis, and a beautifully carved 35 cm tall bronze statuette of god Nefertum, inlaid with precious stones. The name of its owner, Priest Badi-Amun, is written on its base, he said.
Egyptian antiquities officials had announced the discovery of the first batch coffins last month when archaeologists found 13 of the containers in a newly discovered 11 meter-deep (36 feet) well.
One of the discovered tombs at the Saqqara archaeological site is shown, 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, Oct. 3, 2020.
The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis of Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis that includes the famed Giza Pyramids, as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis have designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 1970s.
El-Anany said the Saqqara coffins would join 30 ancient wooden coffins that were discovered in October in the southern city of Luxor and will be showcased at the new Grand Egyptian Museum, which Egypt is building near the Giza Pyramids.
The Saqqara discovery is the latest in a series of archaeological finds that Egypt has sought to publicize in an effort to revive its key tourism sector, which was badly hit by the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. The sector was also dealt a further blow this year by the global coronavirus pandemic.
2 billion-year-old African nuclear reactor proves that Mother Nature still has a few tricks up her sleeve
In Gabon, Africa, the Oklo-Reactor is one of the most intriguing geologic formations on the Earth. In two billion-year-old rocks, natural fissile materials have sustained a slow nuclear fission reaction, as found in a modern nuclear reactor.
With a half-life of 700 million years, uranium-235 is a radioactive element. Traces of it are found in almost all rocks, especially magmatic rocks, and its decay is believed to be one of the sources of Earth’s inner heat. Because it decays over time at a constant rate, its concentration in the Earth’s crust is almost everywhere the same – except in Oklo.
A succession of sandstone and siltstone, the Oklo-Formation, was deposited by a large river two billion years ago. Microbial activity of the first lifeforms caused the element uranium, derived from weathered magmatic rocks, to become concentrated in certain layers of the sediments. Later tectonic movements buried the layers deep underground.
Simplified geology of the Oklo-Okèlobondo natural nuclear reactors.
In 1972, chemical analysis showed an unusually low concentration of uranium-235 in the ore mined in the Oklo open pit mine. However, there were high concentrations of elements like cesium, curium, americium and even plutonium to be found. Such elements are formed today only in nuclear reactors, as the uranium decays during controlled nuclear fission.
When uranium-235 decays, it will emit three neutrons. If one of the emitted neutrons hits another uranium atom, this atom will also decay and a chain reaction will begin. In most rocks, there is either not enough uranium to sustain nuclear fission or it decays too fast to cause a chain reaction.
In the Oklo-reactor, two factors came together to sustain slow nuclear fission for hundreds of thousands of years. Weathering of magmatic rocks and bacterial activity concentrated the uranium enough to start a nuclear chain reaction.
Then the water that infiltrated the formation along faults slowed down the emitted neutrons enough to sustain slow and stable nuclear fission. As the uranium decays, it forms other radioactive elements fueling the reactor.
A worker stands next to a deposit of, among other things, naturally depleted uranium.
Over time the Oklo-reactor has produced large quantities of toxic plutonium and cesium-isotopes, which have since decayed into stable and harmless barium. During this process, however, no harmful radioactivity has leaked into the environment.
As the planet warms due to our carbon emissions, burning oil and coal is no longer a sustainable way to meet humanity’s hunger for energy. Many experts believe that nuclear energy could be a temporary solution until renewable energy sources are ready to meet the demand.
Unfortunately, nuclear energy comes with radioactive waste. A permanent repository for nuclear waste must contain toxic elements and radioactivity for at least 100,000 years. The problem is that we don’t know what materials to use for the containers to store the waste.
Steel will rust, concrete can leak and even glass is damaged by the emitted radiation. By studying the Oklo-reactor, scientists hope to find a way to safely dispose of nuclear waste as produced by modern reactors.
Research by a team of scientists of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D. C. and published in the journal PNAS has investigated how the Oklo-reactor was able to work so long and yet not pollute the environment.
In rocks recovered from the Oklo mine, barium (the ‘trace’ left by the former radioactive elements) is not found evenly distributed but rather found in nests surrounded by a thin layer of ruthenium-compounds.
One of the Oklo nuclear reactors. Doesn’t look like much, eh?
Native ruthenium is a rare and inert metal often associated with ore of other elements. The scientists believe that the radioactive plutonium and cesium were encapsulated and safely isolated from the environment by a shell of ruthenium-compounds. If so, containers made of ruthenium alloys could be used to safely store radioactive waste for a very long time.
As the Oklo-reactor demonstrates, the ruthenium-compounds remain stable even if exposed to radioactivity and corrosion by water over vast geological periods.
An Ancient Egyptian Village Just Found in The Nile Delta Predates The Pyramids by 2,500 Years
An extremely rare treasure has been found by Egyptian archaeologists in the delta of the Nile: remnants of an ancient settlement dated back to around 5,000 BC. It’s one of the oldest ever discovered in the region, predating the pyramids at Giza by 2,500 years.
This undated photo released by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities shows one of the oldest villages ever found in the Nile Delta, with remains dating back to before the pharaohs in Tell el-Samara, about 140 kilometres (87 miles) north of Cairo, Egypt. Chief archaeologist Frederic Gio says his team found silos containing animal bones and food, indicating human habitation as early as 5,000 B.C.
According to the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquity, the Neolithic site, at the fertile, Tell el-Samara, about 140 kilometres (87 miles) north of Cairo, is around 7,000 years old.
The joint French-Egyptian excavation team found several storage silos, containing organic matter — animal bones and plant residues — that allowed them to date the site. They also found pottery and stone tools, indicating a stable community.
These discoveries open up an opportunity to identify and learn more about the prehistoric communities that occupied the Nile Delta thousands of years before the legendary King Menes united upper and lower Egypt, founding the first Pharaonic dynasty.
“Analyzing the biological material that has been discovered will present us with a clearer view of the first communities that settled in the Delta and the origins of agriculture and farming in Egypt,” said Nadia Khedr of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
The researchers believe that the farming practices in the village could have been heavily reliant on rain. This could help shed some light on the development of irrigation-based farming later practised in the Nile Delta for thousands of years.
In another recent discovery, archaeologists revealed that the ancient Egyptians were deliberately mummifying their dead much earlier than thought.
The team found evidence of early mummification up to 5,600 years old — also before the time of the Pharaohs.
While there was no mention of mummification found at the Tell el-Samara site, it is potentially an invaluable resource for learning more about the early settlement of ancient Egypt.
Excavations at the site will be completed in the next season, followed by a full analysis of the discoveries.
Sarcophagus of 26th-Dynasty Priest Found in Upper Egypt
Ahram Online reports that a sarcophagus dated to the 26th Dynasty (688–525 B.C.) and a collection of ushabti statuettes were found in a 16-foot-deep shaft at the archaeological site of Al-Ghoreifa, which is located in Upper Egypt.
An Egyptian archaeological mission has unveiled a new collection of amulets and scarabs found inside a coffin unearthed in January in the Minya Governorate’s Al-Ghoreifa area, near the Tuna el-Gebel necropolis.
The mission determined that the sarcophagus, which dates back to Egypt’s 26th dynasty, belongs to the Ancient Egyptian God Thoth’s (Djehuty in Egyptian) High Priest, according to a statement released by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Thoth was the Egyptian god of writing, magic, wisdom, and the moon. His followers primarily resided in the ancient city of Hermopolis, located near the modern town of Al Ashmunin.
The Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, said that the mission discovered in its third season hundreds of relics, including heart-shaped scarabs, winged scarabs, and amulets representing different deities.
On September 21, the mission unearthed from a burial well a limestone coffin decorated with images of the four children of Horus, as well as a collection of Ushabti statues made of vines. The mission began in the area in 2018 and has since unearthed dozens of tombs and antiquities.
