Category Archives: AFRICA

AFRICA, SUDAN, WORLD

Saharan remains may be evidence of first race war 13,000 years ago

Saharan remains may be evidence of first race war 13,000 years ago

Humans’ remains of people killed 13,000 years ago in what scientists believe is the oldest identified race war, are today due to going on display at the British Museum in London.

Two skeletons from a massacre in the Sahara desert in 11,000BC, which killed at least 26 people, will be shown in the new Ancient Egypt gallery, alongside the flint-tipped weapons with which they were killed.

French scientists have been working with the museum to examine dozens of skeletons that were found grouped together in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery – one of the earliest organized burial grounds – on the east bank of the Nile, northern Sudan, in the 1960s.

A pair of skeletons belonging to people who were killed on a massacre 13,000 years ago as the result of climate change is going on show in the British Museum, London. Pencils pinpoint out pieces of weaponry responsible for their demise

They believe the remains of the 60 individuals found – around half of which had cut marks on their bones – represent the first communal violence between groups.

Fighting probably broke out because of the environmental disaster of the Ice Age, which caused the attackers and victims to live together in a smaller area, the experts explained.

Renee Friedman, the museum’s curator of early Egypt, told The Times that the attackers and victims were hunter-gatherers who usually avoided violence by moving on when a certain area became overcrowded.

But she believed that the cold and dry conditions of the Nile valley around that time caused a ‘population crisis’, as more people moved to the same area surrounded by desert.

She said: ‘Things were probably very tight, so we think that people started picking on one another.’

The museum acquired the remains in 2002 when they were donated by Fred Wendorf, an American archaeologist who excavated the site in the 1960s.

At least 60 individuals were found and examined using modern technology. One body was found with 39 pieces of flint from arrows and other flint-tipped weapons, Dr. Friedman said.

The cemetery was discovered in 1965. It contained at least 61 individuals dating back about 13,000 years ago. The graveyard (illustrated showing the position in which the skeletons were found,) is one of the earliest formal cemeteries in the world
French scientists have been working with The British Museum to examine dozens of skeletons that were found grouped together in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery. An image of excavations at Jebel Sahaba
in 1965 is pictured
They believe the remains of the 60 individuals found (a skull is pictured) represent the first communal violence between groups because almost half the remains have cut marks on them

As well as the human remains, the display will include flint arrowhead fragments and a healed forearm fracture, which was most likely sustained by a victim who was trying to defend himself during the conflict.

Over the past two years, anthropologists from Bordeaux University have managed to find dozens of previously undetected conflict marks on the victims’ bones.

The British Museum scientists are now planning to research more about the victims themselves, including their gender, age, and diet.

Meanwhile, according to The Independent, work carried out at Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Alaska, and New Orleans’ Tulane University suggests these humans were part of the general sub-Saharan originating population, who were ancestors of modern Black Africans.

Dr. Daniel Antoine, a curator in the British Museum’s Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department, told the paper: ‘The skeletal material is of great importance – not only because of the evidence for conflict but also because the Jebel Sahaba cemetery is the oldest discovered in the Nile valley so far.’

AFRICA, KENYA, WORLD

People Lived in This Cave for 78,000 Years

People Lived in This Cave for 78,000 Years

A large cave site was identified by an international interdisciplinary group of scholars operating along the east coast of Africa that documented significant activities of hunter-gatherers and later, Iron Age communities.

Detailed environmental research has demonstrated that human occupations occur in a persistent tropical forest-grassland ecotone, adding new information about the habitats exploited by our species, and indicating that populations sought refuge in a relatively stable environment.

Prior to this cave excavation, little information was available about the last 78,000 years from coastal East Africa, with the majority of archaeological research focused on the Rift Valley and in South Africa.

Humans lived in the humid coastal forest

A large-scale interdisciplinary study, including scientific analyses of archaeological plants, animals, and shells from the cave indicates a broad perseverance of forest and grassland environments.

As the cave environment underwent little variation over time, humans found the site attractive for occupation, even during periods of time when other parts of Africa would have been inhospitable.

This suggests that humans exploited the cave environment and landscape over the long term, relying on plant and animal resources when the wider surrounding landscapes dried.

The ecological setting of Panga ya Saidi is consistent with increasing evidence that Homo sapiens could adapt to a variety of environments as they moved across Africa and Eurasia, suggesting that flexibility may be the hallmark of our species.

Shipton et al report a 78,000-year-long archeological record from Panga ya Saidi, a cave in the humid coastal forest of Kenya.

Homo sapiens developed a range of survival strategies to live in diverse habitats, including tropical forests, arid zones, coasts, and the cold environments found at higher latitudes.

Technological innovations occur at 67,000 years ago

Carefully prepared stone tool toolkits of the Middle Stone Age occur in deposits dating back to 78,000 years ago, but a distinct shift in technology to the Later Stone Age is shown by the recovery of small artifacts beginning at 67,000 years ago.

The miniaturization of stone tools may reflect changes in hunting practices and behaviors. The Panga ya Saidi sequence after 67,000, however, has a mix of technologies, and no radical break of behavior can be detected at any time, arguing against the cognitive or cultural ‘revolutions’ theorized by some archaeologists.

Moreover, no notable break in human occupation occurs during the Toba volcanic super-eruption of 74,000 years ago, supporting views that the so-called ‘volcanic winter’ did not lead to the near-extinction of human populations, though hints of increased occupation intensity from 60,000 years ago suggest that populations were increasing in size.

Earliest symbolic and cultural items found at Panga ya Saidi cave

The deep archaeological sequence of Panga ya Saidi cave has produced a remarkable new cultural record indicative of cultural complexity over the long term.

Among the recovered items are worked and incised bones, ostrich eggshell beads, marine shell beads, and worked ochre. Panga ya Saidi has produced the oldest bead in Kenya, dating to ~65,000 years ago.

At about 33,000 years ago, beads were most commonly made of shells acquired from the coast. While this demonstrates contact with the coast, there is no evidence for the regular exploitation of marine resources for subsistence purposes.

Ostrich eggshell beads become more common after 25,000 years ago, and after 10,000 years ago, there is again a shift to coastal shell use.

In the layers dating to between ~48,000 to 25,000 years ago, carved bone, carved tusk, a decorated bone tube, a small bone point, and modified pieces of ochre were found. Though indicative of behavioral complexity and symbolism, their intermittent appearance in the cave sequence argues against a model for a behavioral or cognitive revolution at any specific point in time.

Project Principal Investigator and Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History Dr. Nicole Boivin states, “The East African coastal hinterland and its forests and have been long considered to be marginal to human evolution so the discovery of Panga ya Saidi cave will certainly change archaeologists’ views and perceptions.”

Group Leader of the Stable Isotopes Lab Dr. Patrick Roberts adds, “Occupation in a tropical forest-grassland environment adds to our knowledge that our species lived in a variety of habitats in Africa.”

“The finds at Panga ya Saidi undermine hypotheses about the use of coasts as a kind of ‘superhighway’ that channeled migrating humans out of Africa, and around the Indian Ocean rim,” observes Professor Michael Petraglia.

AFRICA, WORLD

Archaeology reveals how pandemics were handled in ancient African societies

Archaeology shows how ancient African societies managed pandemics

In past cultures, archaeologists have studied diseases for a long time. To do so, they consider a wide array of evidence: settlement layout, burials, funerary remains, and human skeletons.

Studying ancient African societies, like Great Zimbabwe, can reveal how communities dealt with disease and pandemics

We do not know, for example, that the damaging impact of epidemics prompted the abandonment of settlements at Akrokrowa in Ghana during the early 14th century AD. About 76 infant burial sites at an abandoned settlement that now forms part of the Mapungubwe World Heritage site in the Limpopo Valley of South Africa suggest a pandemic hit the people living there after 1000 AD.

Some of the techniques which civilizations have implemented to cope with pandemics are also described in archaeological and literary. These included burning settlements as a disinfectant and shifting settlements to new locations. Social distancing was practised by dispersing settlements.

Archaeologists’ findings at Mwenezi in southern Zimbabwe also show that it was a taboo to touch or interfere with remains of the dead, lest diseases are transmitted in this way. In the late 1960s, some members of an archaeological dig excavating 13th-century house floors in Phalaborwa, South Africa, refused to keep working after encountering burials they believed were sacred. They also worried that the burials were related to a disease outbreak.

Social distancing and isolation have become watchwords during the COVID-19 pandemic. From archaeology, we know that the same practices formed a critical part of managing pandemics in historical African societies.

In what is Zimbabwe today, the Shona people in the 17th and 18th centuries isolated those suffering from infectious diseases – such as leprosy – in temporary residential structures. This meant that very few people could come into contact with the sick. In some cases, corpses were burnt to avoid spreading the contagion.

Humans have a propensity to relax and shift priorities once calamities are over. Data collected by archaeologists, that show how indigenous knowledge systems helped ancient societies in Africa deal with the shock of illness and pandemics, can help remind policymakers of different ways to prepare modern societies for the same issues.

Social distancing and isolation

Research at the early urban settlement of K2, part of the Mapungubwe World Heritage site, has thrown significant light on ancient pandemics.

The inhabitants of K2 (which dates back to between AD1,000 and AD1,200) thrived on crop agriculture, cattle raising, metallurgy, hunting and collecting food from the forest. They had well developed local and regional economies that fed into international networks of exchange with the Indian Ocean rim. Swahili towns of East Africa acted as conduits.

Archaeological work at K2 uncovered an unusually high number of burials (94), 76 of which belonged to infants in the 0-4 age category. This translated into a mortality rate of 5%. The evidence from the site shows that the settlement was abruptly abandoned around the same time as these burials. That means a pandemic prompted the community’s decision to shift to another settlement.

Shifting to another region of Africa, archaeological work at early urban settlements in central and southern Ghana identified the impact of pandemics at places such Akrokrowa (AD950 – 1300) and Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa in the central district of Ghana.

These settlements, like others in the Birim Valley of southern Ghana, were bounded by intricate systems of trenches and banks of earth. Evidence shows that after a couple of centuries of continuous and stable occupation, settlements were abruptly abandoned. The period of abandonment appears to coincide with the devastation of the Black Death in Europe.

Post-pandemic, houses were not rebuilt; nor did any rubbish accumulate from daily activities. Instead, the disrupted communities went to live elsewhere. Because there are no signs of long term effects – in the form of long periods of hardship, deaths or drastic socioeconomic or political changes – archaeologists believe that these communities were able to manage and adapt to the pandemic. This is different to how society has handled illness and pandemics ever since. Modern-day life allows us to accommodate to those who are in need of recovery, such as by being able to access a disability insurance guide or help from the NHS. People back then adapted in the way of fleeing the post-pandemic locations and starting again – there was no help available to let areas fight the pandemic. Instead, they found their own way.

Analysis of archaeological evidence reveals that these ancient African communities adopted various strategies to manage pandemics. These include burning settlements as a disinfectant before either reoccupying them or shifting homesteads to new locations. African indigenous knowledge systems make it clear that burning settlements or forests was an established way of managing diseases.

The layout of settlements was also important. In areas such as Zimbabwe and parts of Mozambique, for instance, settlements were dispersed to house one or two families in a space. This allowed people to stay at a distance from each other – but not too far apart to engage in daily care, support and cooperation.

While social coherence was the glue that held society together, social distancing was inbuilt, in a supportive way. Communities knew that outbreaks were unpredictable but possible, so they built their settlements in a dispersed fashion to plan ahead.

These behaviours were also augmented by diversified diets that included fruits, roots, and other things that provided nutrients and strengthened the immune system.

Africa’s past and the future of pandemics

There were multiple long-term implications of pandemics in these communities. Perhaps the most important was that people organised themselves in ways that made it easier to live with diseases, managing them and at the same time sticking to the basics such as good hygiene, sanitation and environmental control. Life did not stop because of pandemics: populations made decisions and choices to live with them.

Some of these lessons may be applied to COVID-19, guiding decisions and choices to buffer the vulnerable from the pandemic while allowing economic activity and other aspects of life to continue. There will also be more modern technologies and strategies used, such as requiring citizens to wear N95 masks. A mixture of the two seems the most sensible approach. As evidence from the past shows, social behaviour is the first line of defence against pandemics: it’s essential this be considered when planning for the latest post-pandemic future.

AFRICA, SUDAN, WORLD

Looters destroy 2,000-year-old Sudan archaeological site in search for gold

Looters destroy 2,000-year-old Sudan archaeological site in search for gold

When last month a team of archeologists deep in Sudan’s deserts arrived at Jabal Maragha’s ancient site, they thought they’d been lost. The site had vanished. But they hadn’t made a mistake. In fact, gold-hunters with giant diggers had destroyed almost all sign of the two millennia-old sites.

Archaeologist, Habab Idris Ahmed, who painstakingly excavated the historic site in 1999, told us that they had only one intention to search here — to find gold.

“They did something crazy; to save time, they used heavy machinery.”

In the baking-hot desert of Bayouda, some 270 kilometers (170 miles) north of the capital Khartoum, the team discovered two mechanical diggers and five men at work.

They had dug a vast trench 17 metres (55 feet) deep, and 20 meters long. The rust-coloured sand was scarred with tyre tracks, some cut deep into the ground, from the trucks that transported the equipment. The site, dating from the Meroitic period between 350 BC and 350 AD, was either a small settlement or a checkpoint. Since the diggers came, hardly anything remains.

“They had completely excavated it, because the ground is composed of layers of sandstone and pyrite,” said Hatem al-Nour, Sudan’s director of antiquities and museums.

“And as this rock is metallic their detector would start ringing. So they thought there was gold.”

Archeologists in Sudan assess the damage done by gold hunters digging up ancient sites looking for buried treasure

Escape justice

Archeologists in Sudan assess the damage done by gold hunters digging up ancient sites looking for buried treasure. Archeologists in Sudan assess the damage done by gold hunters digging up ancient sites looking for buried treasure. Next to the huge gash in the ground, the diggers had piled up ancient cylindrical stones on top of each other to prop up a roof for their dining room. The archaeologists were accompanied by a police escort, who took the treasure-hunters to a police station — but they were freed within hours.

“They should have been put in jail and their machines confiscated. There are laws,” said Mahmoud al-Tayeb, a former expert from Sudan’s antiquities department.

Instead, the men left without charge, and their diggers were released too.

“It is the saddest thing,” said Tayeb, who is also a professor of archaeology at the University of Warsaw.

Tayeb believes that the real culprit is the workers’ employer, someone who can pull strings and circumvent justice. Sudan’s archaeologists warn that this was not a unique case, but part of a systematic looting of ancient sites. At Sai, a 12-kilometre-long river island in the Nile, hundreds of graves have been ransacked and destroyed by looters. Some of them date back to the times of the pharaohs. Sudan’s ancient civilisations built more pyramids than the Egyptians, but many are still unexplored.

Now, in hundreds of remote places ranging from cemeteries to temples, desperate diggers are hunting for anything to improve their daily lives.

Sudanese treasure hunters use mechanical diggers to cut deep trenches at ancient sites looking for gold.

Gold fever

Sudanese treasure hunters use mechanical diggers to cut deep trenches at ancient sites looking for gold Sudan is Africa’s third-largest producer of gold, after South Africa and Ghana, with commercial mining bringing in $1.22 billion to the government last year.

Prof Muhammad suggests that teaching students about Sudan’s history could encourage them to protect the sites

In the past, people also tried their luck by panning for gold at the city of Omdurman, across the river from Khartoum, where the waters of the White and Blue Niles meet.

“We used to see older people with small sieves like the ones women use for sifting flour at home,” Tayeb said, recalling times when he was a boy. “They used them to look for gold.”

But the gold they found was in tiny quantities.

Then in the late 1990s, people saw archaeologists using metal detectors for their scientific research.

“When people saw archeologists digging and finding things, they were convinced there was gold.”

Reason for pride

A team of archaeologist inspects stones stacked up on top of each other to prop up a roof for a dining room to be used by gold hunters

Remote archaeological sites in Sudan are being targeted by people believing they can find buried gold beneath the sand Remote archaeological sites in Sudan are being targeted by people believing they can find buried gold beneath the sand. Even worse, local authorities have encouraged the young and unemployed to hunt for treasures while wealthy businessmen bring in mechanical diggers alongside.

“Out of a thousand more or less well-known sites in Sudan, at least a hundred have been destroyed or damaged,” said Nour. “There is one policeman for 30 sites… and he has no communication equipment or adequate means of transport.”

For Tayeb, the root problem is not a lack of security, but rather the government’s priorities.

“It’s not a question of policemen,” he said. “It is a serious matter of how do you treat your history, your heritage? This is the main problem. But heritage is not a high priority for the government, so what can one do?”

The destruction of the sites is an extra tragedy for a country long riven by civil war between rival ethnic groups, destroying a common cultural identity of a nation.

“This heritage is vital for the unity of the Sudanese,” Nour said. “Their history gives them a reason for pride.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies Viewed with High-Tech Tools

Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies Viewed with High-Tech Tools

Science News reports that Richard Johnston of Swansea University and his colleagues used a micro-CT scanner to create highly detailed 3-D models of mummies held in the university’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities for virtual examination.

Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies Viewed with High-Tech Tools
Three-dimensional scans of three animal mummies from Swansea University’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (a snake (left), bird (top right), and cat (bottom right)) have revealed the mummies’ identities and other secrets. The mummies have not been radiocarbon dated, but are likely at least 2,000 years old.

Egyptian animal mummies can look like little more than bundles of cloth. Now high-tech X-rays have unveiled the mysterious life histories of three of these mummies — a cat, a bird, and a snake.

While 2-D X-rays of each specimen existed, little information existed beyond generic animal labels.

So, Richard Johnston, an engineer at Swansea University in Wales, and his colleagues used a microCT scanner to see what lies beneath the wraps of animal mummies at the university’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

The bone scans of three of those specimens provided such detail that researchers could identify the cat as a domestic kitten (Felis catus), the bird as a Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) and the snake as an Egyptian cobra (Naja haje), the team reports August 20 in Scientific Reports.

The mummified cat’s head (seen in this 3-D model created from microCT data) was separated from the body after death. The skull may also have been dropped at some point, creating more fractures postmortem.

The cause of death was clear in two of the cases: The kitten was strangled, and the snake had its neck broken.

The snake also suffered from kidney damage, possibly a result of water deprivation near the end of its life. Like many of Egypt’s mummified animals, these three may have served as offerings to Egyptian gods.

Focusing on sections instead of just scanning the whole mummy at once allowed the team to get increased detail and create models of the mummified remains that could be 3-D printed and investigated through virtual reality.

“With VR, I can effectively make the cat skull as big as my house and wander around it,” Johnston says. That’s how the team found the kitten’s unerupted molars, a clue that the animal was under five months old.

That novel approach to microCT scanning mummies definitely has potential, says Lidija McKnight, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester in England who was not affiliated with the study.

“These advanced techniques are extremely powerful tools to improve our understanding of this ancient practice.”

Scans hint at Egyptian ritual in the snake, which had rock structures in its open mouth, possibly the mineral natron used by ancient Egyptians to slow decomposition.

Ancient embalmers often opened the mouths and eyes of mummies so the dead could see and communicate with the living, but previously this kind of procedure had primarily been seen in human mummies. Snakes, it appears, may have also whispered beyond the grave, serving as a messenger between the gods and a worshipper.

AFRICA, SOUTH AFRICA, WORLD

200,000-Year-Old Beds Analyzed in South Africa

200,000-Year-Old Mattress Analyzed in South Africa

Around 200,000 years ago people from Southern Africa not only slept on grass bedding but occasionally burned it, apparently to keep from going buggy. There was no tog rating on the duvet and an electric blanket was definitely out of the question.

But Stone Age mattresses were far comfier than the era’s name might suggest – and they were even designed to keep the bedbugs at bay.

Archaeologists have uncovered traces in a cave of ancient bedding from 200,000 years ago, made with a mixture of grasses and ash. Until now, the oldest known use of humans using plants to sleep on had dated back to around 77,000 years ago.

The cave where the discovery was made is near the border between South Africa and Swaziland, and is home to a well preserved record of on-off human occupation spanning 230,000 years
Archaeologists have uncovered traces in a cave of ancient bedding from 200,000 years ago. Pictured: Archaeologists work at the site of the discovery in the caves

The cave, near the border between South Africa and Swaziland, contains a well-preserved record of on-off human occupation spanning nearly 230,000 years, researchers said.

They found that the real-life Flintstones used a variety of leaved grasses for beds, including the Panicum maximum tufted grass which is still growing in front of the cave. 

The researchers also found charred remains of camphor bush, an aromatic plant that is still used in East Africa to repel creepy-crawlies.

They said: ‘Ash was possibly raked from hearths to create a clean, odor-controlling base for bedding.

‘Ash repels crawling insects, which cannot easily move through fine powder because it blocks their breathing and biting apparatus and eventually leaves them dehydrated.’

Dr. Lyn Wadley, an archaeologist at the Wits University’s Evolutionary Studies Institute in Johannesburg, said that as well as Stone Age man’s bedding, they found ‘stone tools and, possibly, ground red and orange ochre to colour objects and perhaps their skin’.

The scientists used a range of techniques, which involved microscopic and chemical analysis, to examine the fossilized grass samples from the Border Cave site.

Dr. Wadley added: ‘People also used medicinal plants to repel insects. Sometimes they burned their grass bedding and this would have killed pests and cleaned the site.’

The researchers say that the findings suggest ‘an early potential for the cognitive, behavioral, and social complexity’ of Stone Age humans that became more apparent from around 100,000 years ago.

Dr. Wadley said: ‘Before 200,000 years ago, close to the origin of our species, people could produce fire at will.

‘They used fire ash and medicinal plants to maintain clean, pest-free camps.

‘The simple strategies we have seen at the Border Cave give us a glimpse into the lifeways of people in the deep past.’

Preserved grass fragments uncovered in a South African cave, left, are by far the oldest known examples of grass bedding, researchers say. Close-up images of those fragments taken by a scanning electron microscope, such as the one shown at right, helped to narrow down what type of grasses were used for bedding.
AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Egypt unearths 7,000-year-old lost city

Egypt unearths 7,000-year-old lost city

In the Upper Egyptian province of Sohag, Egypt announced the discovery of the ruins of a forgotten city believed to be more than 7,000 years old.

The ancient residential city, found alongside a nearby cemetery, dates back to 5,316 BC and is being heralded as a major archaeological discovery that pre-dates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period that began about 5 millennia ago.

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

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

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

Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

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

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

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

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

Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

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

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

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

Gérard Ducher

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

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

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

Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities
AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

CT Scans Reveal Contents of Small Ancient Egyptian Mummies

CT Scans Reveal Contents of Small Ancient Egyptian Mummies

As scientists peered under the wrappings of two small ancient Egyptian mummies who believed they were carrying human hearts, they were taken aback: Not only were there no noticeable hearts inside, but the remains were not even human. 

Instead of one mummy is packed tightly with grain and mud – a so-called grain mummy, while the other one holds the remains of a bird, possibly a falcon, that is missing a body part and several organs, the researchers found.

“It’s missing its left leg, nobody knows why,” said Dr. Marcia Javitt, chairperson of radiology at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, and an adjunct professor of radiology at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who helped scan the mummies with computed tomography (CT) on June 29. 

The two mummies, both interred in sarcophagi, have been housed at Haifa Museum for about 50 years. However, “records were not kept as diligently as they are now,” so not much is known about them except that they’re more than 2,000 years old, Ron Hillel, registrar, and head of collection management of Haifa Museums told BBC News. 

Over the past few years, the National Maritime Museum in Haifa has been going through its collection and determining the best way to preserve each artifact. When curators came across the two mummies, they realized they didn’t know what was inside.

The records noted they contained mummified hearts, but “we did the research and it didn’t make sense,” Hillel said. Often, (but not always) “the hearts were left in the body,” of Egyptian mummies, Hillel said because the ancient Egyptians thought that when people died, their hearts would be weighed against a feather representing ma’at, an Egyptian concept that includes truth and justice, BBC News previously reported. If the heart weighed the same or less than the feather, these people would earn eternal life; if not, they would be destroyed.

CT scans of the Osiris (left) and Horus (right) mummies.
The “corn mummy” of the ancient Egyptian deity Osiris.

The CT scans done at Rambam Hospital revealed that the mummies had very different insides from one another. The roughly 18-inch-long (45 centimeters) human-shaped mummy — designed to look like Osiris, the god of the afterlife, the dead, life, and vegetation — contained mud and grains. 

“During Osiris festivals that were held, [the ancient Egyptians] would produce these,” Hillel said. “It would be a mixture of clay or sand with these grains, and then they would dip it in water and the grains would germinate.” In effect, this act would tie Osirus to death, life, and Earth’s fertility.

Or, as Javitt put it, “they’re not real mummies; they’re artifacts.”

The other mummy, a roughly 10-inch-long (25 cm) bird-shaped mummy, represented the god Horus. According to Egypt mythology, Horus was the falcon-headed son of Osiris and Isis; a deity associated with the sky and pharaohs. 

The mummy of the falcon-headed deity Horus.

Over time, the bird mummy had desiccated, meaning that the tissue got more dense, like beef jerky. Meanwhile, the marrow in the bones had dried out, leaving nothing but delicate bone tubes.

So Javitt and her colleagues used a dual-energy CT, which uses both normal X-rays and less powerful X-rays, a technique that can reveal properties of the tissues that a regular CT scan can’t, Javitt said. 

“In order to differentiate the soft tissues from one another and the bones and so on, it can be very helpful to use a dual-energy CT,” Javitt said.

Now, her team is identifying the bird’s various tissues and bones. Javitt noted that the bird’s neck is broken, but that this injury likely happened after the bird was dead. That’s because the skin is broken too, and in most cases of broken bones, “you don’t usually crack open the skin from one edge to the opposite side, you just break the bone,” Javitt said. 

Moreover, the bird appears to be missing some of its abdominal organs, but more study is needed to determine which ones aren’t there, she said. For instance, the heart appears to be present, as is the trachea.

Going forward, Hillel said the museum may make a special exhibit centered around these two mummies. He also hopes to have them dated with radiocarbon 14, so the museum can determine their age.