Ancient Egyptian ‘city of the dead’ discovery reveals ‘elite’ mummies, jars filled with organs and mystery snake cult

A new burial chamber on the bottom of a communal burial shaft was unearthed in 2018, during exhilaration work carried out by the Egyptian-German team of the University of Tübingen, operating in Saqqara with a 30-meter deep connection to the mummification workshop discovered along with a large tomb complex with five burial chambers in 2018.

The project uncovered the sixth burial chamber behind a 2,600-year-old stone wall after more than a year of research and documentation

The new-discovered chamber had four wooden coffins in a poor state of preservation said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The Minister of State for Antiquities, Dr. Ramadan Badri Hussein, said that one of the coffins belongs to a woman called Didibastett.

She was buried with six canopic jars, which contradicts the custom in ancient Egypt which was to embalm the lungs, stomach, intestines, and liver of the deceased, and then to store them in four jars under the protection of four gods, known as the Four Sons of Horus.

The mission examined the content of Didibastett’s two extra canopic jars using computerized tomography (CT) scan. Preliminary analysis of the images indicates that the two jars contain human tissue.

Based on this result, there is a possibility that Didibastett had received a special form of mummification that preserved six organs of her body. The mission’s radiologist is currently conducting a thorough study of the images in order to identify the two extra organs.

After studying texts on the coffins and sarcophagi in the burial chambers, the mission identified priests and priestesses of a mysterious snake goddess, known as Niut-shaes. Indications are that the priests of Niut-shaes were buried together and that she became a prominent goddess during the 26th Dynasty.

A priestess and a priest of Niut-shaes, who were buried in the same burial chamber, were possibly Egyptianised immigrants.

Their names, Ayput and Tjanimit, were common to the Libyan community that settled in Egypt from the 22nd Dynasty (ca. 943-716 BC) onward. Ancient Egypt was a multicultural society that received immigrants from different parts of the ancient world, including Greeks, Libyans, and Phoenicians among others.

Hussein said that the mission conducted non-invasive testing, called X-ray fluorescence, on the gilded silver mask that was discovered on the face of the mummy of a priestess of the goddess Niut-shaes. This test determined the purity of the mask’s silver at 99.07 percent, higher than Sterling Silver at 93.5 percent. This gilded silver mask is the first discovered in Egypt since 1939, and the third such mask to ever be found in Egypt.

An international team of archaeologists and chemists from the University of Tübingen, the University of Munich, and the Egyptian National Research Centre in Cairo carried out chemical testing on the residue of oils and resins preserved in cups, bowls, and pots found in the mummification workshop.

Early results of these tests give a list of mummification substances, including bitumen (tar), cedar oil, cedar resin, pistachio resin, beeswax, animal fat, and possibly olive oil and juniper oil, among others. The team is finalizing a report for scientific publication.

In July 2018, Khaled El-Enany, minister of tourism and antiquities, announced to the world the unprecedented discovery of a mummification workshop complex at Saqqara from the 26th Dynasty (ca. 664-525 BC). It included an embalmer’s cachette of pottery and a communal burial shaft.
This shaft is 30 m. deep and has six tombs.

The tombs contained around 54 mummies and skeletons, five large sarcophagi, a dozen calcite (Egyptian alabaster) canopic jars, thousands of shawabtis figurines, and a rare gilded silver mummy mask.

This discovery was rated among the top 10 archaeological discoveries of 2018 by Archaeology Magazine and Heritage Daily.

The mission of the University of Tübingen will resume its full investigation of the 26th Dynasty cemetery at Saqqara in the winter of 2020.

The amazing unfinished & abandoned 1,000-ton Egyptian Obelisk

The greatest famous Egyptian obelisk is the “unfinished obelisk” that is found exactly where it was once semi-carved from the solid bedrock.

The block was intended as an obelisk with a height of 120 ft / 36 mt.  It is estimated that a block of granite this size would easily weigh more than a 1000 tons, some geologists have suggested a figure in the region of 1100 tons – 1150 tons.

This obelisk has, however, never been completed because during the process to remove the block of stone from its mother bedrock, a huge crack appeared that made the stone unusable.

The stone had no residual value apart from its planned use, to the stonemasons of that day, and this resulted in the stone being totally abandoned (perhaps under the reign of Queen Hatshepsut-18th Dynasty). Now take a minute to think of how many man-hours were wasted in getting the unfinished obelisk to the state at which it was abandoned.

It is dumbfounding to think that the main tools used to shape this excessively huge granite block were not chisels as most people would assume.

The early Egyptian stonemasons used small hand-sized balls of the mineral Dolerite to pound against the surfaces of the roughly hewn obelisks until all the superfluous knobs and excrescences were flattened. Dolerite is one of the few substances on Planet Earth that is harder than granite, most other rocks would simply crumble if they were repeatedly banged against granite.

It has always puzzled me why the Egyptians chose to carve building blocks & statues from Granite when there were much softer and easier stones to work with? …and if you are thinking that it might be because the granite was locally sourced, stop! …the granite blocks used in & on the great pyramid of Giza were transported approx.

500 miles from quarry to the building site, Aswan to Cairo, so this would suggest that distance wasn’t a factor and that the stonemasons chose to work with granite, possibly for its durability or maybe simply because of its colour?

When planning the creation of an obelisk the quarry men would look for a suitable length of bedrock that had no visible flaws or cracks. Then they would make a series of small holes with probably copper tools in a line at regular intervals, similar to a row of hyphens (- – – – – -). Next they would hammer sun-dried wooden wedges into these holes.

These wooden wedges were then repeatedly soaked with water and would gradually expand over time, and yes, believe it or not, the power generated by wet wood expanding is strong enough to break a granite block free from a granite bedrock, a process which I find absolutely amazing.

How did our early ancestors discover such a method? It is interesting to note that the same technique for separating a block of stone from its mother bedrock appears to have been used by many cultures across the ancient world. Nobody ever devised a better method or technique.

Even today modern-day quarries use a very similar method involving making a line of holes in the rock, and instead of ramming wet wooden wedges into the holes which takes quite a long time to achieve the desired effect of splitting the rock face, modern quarrymen simply hammer metal wedges into the holes which achieves the same result, except much quicker. In larger quarries whole rock faces are loosened by putting sticks of dynamite into a sequence of drilled holes, which are then detonated by a remote-controlled device.

When the block of rock was finally freed from the bedrock and seen to be in one sturdy piece, the surfaces of the obelisks were leveled by repeatedly pounding them with hand-sized Dolerite stones as described above.

Finally the scribes and hieroglyphic artists would decorate all four faces with the religious beliefs and monarchial achievements of the day. There is no denying that Egypt was one of the most powerful empires ever to exist in human history and its monumental architectural achievements are testimony to that fact, but every old dog has its day and eventually has to give way to a younger stronger puppy, and the mighty civilization of ancient Egypt was not immune to the laws that govern the universe we live in, it too was eventually conquered by foreign visitors/armies.

Everybody knows that tourists can’t resist a souvenir of their travels, and unfortunately most conquerors are just big egotistic tourists at heart. The conquering nation usually takes a memento from the conquered nation to commemorate the victory, something to show the folks back home.

Over the centuries many nations have conquered Egypt, and many nations have been guilty of plundering souvenirs from the sands of this mesmerizing country, but some nations have taken utter liberties.

In various cities around the world, Istanbul, Rome, London, Paris & New York, you can find what at first sight appear to be replica Egyptian obelisks, but upon closer inspection, you will see that these obelisks are not replicas, they are actually authentic Egyptian obelisks, re-erected many miles from their original installation points in Egypt.

So far, only 28 giant Egyptian obelisks have ever been discovered, both erect & fallen. Of these 28 monolithic statements of ancient Egyptian achievement & ability, only 8 remain in Egypt.

70 million animal mummies: Egypt’s dark secret

In what is described as Egypt’s “dark secret,” a staggering 70 million mummified animals have been found in underground catacombs across Egypt, including cats, birds, rodents, and even crocodiles. But surprises awaited a research team when they scanned the animal-shaped mummies and found many of them empty!

Radiographers and Egyptologists from the University of Manchester have used the latest medical imaging technology to scan hundreds of elaborately-prepared animal mummies which were collected from over thirty sites across Egypt during the 19 th and 20 th centuries, reports BBC News.

The University of Manchester program used CT scans and X-rays to look into 800 mummies, dating between 1000 B.C. and 400 A.D.

BBC program will investigate the huge animal mummification industry of ancient Egypt, and why many of the carefully prepared, elaborately wrapped mummies were found to have no bodies inside.

In a press release by the University of Manchester, research leader Dr Lidija Mcknight said, “We always knew that not all animal mummies contained what we expected them to contain, but we found around a third don’t contain any animal material at all – so no skeletal remains.”

Many gods in animal form were worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. The mummified animals were considered sacred gifts and were used as offerings. Because this was such a popular religious practice, and demand was so high, some animals are thought to have suffered near or total extinction locally.

McKnight told The Washington Post , “You’d get one of these mummies and you’d ask it to take a message on your behalf to the gods and then wait for the gods to do something in return.

That’s kind of their place in the religious belief system of ancient Egypt, and that’s why we think there were so many of them. It was almost sort of an industry that sprang up at the time and continued for more than a 1,000 years.”

Various animal mummies were examined during the study, including wading birds, cats, falcons and shrews, and a five-foot-long crocodile. Scans revealed that the mummified crocodile contained eight baby crocodiles that had been carefully prepared and bound together, and wrapped with the mother in one big crocodile-shaped mummy.

One cat-shaped mummy held only a few pieces of cat bone, and some artifacts contained no animal parts whatsoever, but instead held fillers like mud, sticks, reeds and eggshells, writes news site HNGN. The filler items were considered special as they had a connection to the animals and are thought to have served as symbolic remains.

One of the catacombs contained around two million mummified ibis birds alone, and a network of tombs housed up to eight million mummified dogs.

These incredible numbers and the surprising way in which the bodies were preserved suggest that the animal mummification industry of ancient Egypt was huge.

The BBC reports, “some experts suggest animal mummies were being made to be sold to Egyptian pilgrims and so the ancient embalmers could make more profit by selling ‘fake’ mummies, others like Lidija believe its evidence the ancient embalmers considered even the smallest parts of the animals to be sacred [and] went to just as much efforts to mummify them correctly.”

The temple complex in Saqqara holds millions of animal mummies to this day, yet to be excavated and catalogued by experts. Molecular biologist Sally Wasef from Griffith University, Australia has collected samples of bones from these mummies in order to analyze their DNA and determine if they had been ‘farmed’ or intensely bred. It is thought that millions of animals were required for such a massive industry, described as a “national obsession.”

In 2011, Smithsonian curator Melinda Zeder spoke of the phenomenally large animal offering industry to the BBC, saying: “The ancient Egyptians weren’t obsessed with death – they were obsessed with life. And everything they did to prepare for mummification was really looking at life after death and a way of perpetuating oneself forever.”

“The priests would sacrifice the animal for you, mummify it and then place it in a catacomb in your name. So this was a way of obtaining good standing in the eyes of whatever god it was,” she noted.

Though the University of Manchester research raises many questions about the mummification industry, McKnight says the preserved offerings serve as tiny time capsules, allowing modern science a peek into the ancient techniques and rituals associated with religion, life and death.

3500-year-old Ancient Egyptian stone chest could lead archaeologists to a royal tomb

The stone artifact also contains a wooden chest engraved with the name of Thutmose II, a famous boy Pharaoh who took the throne aged just 13.

Discovered at the ancient site of Deir el-Bahari, the extraordinary find indicates an untouched royal tomb may be hidden nearby.

Several packages wrapped in linen canvas were found inside the box. One contained the goose and another held the egg of a bird known as an ibis.

Professor Andrzej Niwiński, from Warsaw University, told the Polish Press Agency: “The chest itself is about 40 cm long, with a slight smaller height.

“It was perfectly camouflaged, looked like an ordinary stone block. Only after a closer look did it turn out to be a chest.”

Encased inside the stone chest was a wooden box wrapped in four layers of canvas.

Within this box was a second box in the shape of a chapel. It featured one of the names of Pharaoh Thutmose II.

Thutmose II was married to the famous Queen Hatshepsut. It’s thought he took the throne in his early teens and reigned for just three years before his death aged 16.

Archaeologists made the extraordinary find at the famous Egyptian site of Deir el-Bahari. It’s not clear how or why the goose was sacrificed.

It’s a vast complex of temples and tombs located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the city of Luxor, Egypt.

Based on the artefacts’ symbolism and engravings, Professor Niwiński said he had high hopes of finding a hidden royal tomb somewhere nearby the burial.

“The royal deposit implies that a temple or a tomb was erected for the king here,” he said.

“And because we are in the middle of a royal cemetery, there is no doubt that it must be a tomb.

“The discovery of this deposit suggests that we are in the process of finding a tomb.”

The stone chest discovery was made in March last year but only made public this month.

Archaeologists continued their work in October 2019 but are yet to find an entrance to a secret tomb.

38 centimeter long finger found in Egypt left researchers clueless

Researchers are traveling with photographs of a massive finger which are said to be 38 centimeters long, as they believe it is impossible and can not exist.

Although science suggests it’s impossible the finger found in Egypt is said to be true, and it has been X-rayed and comes with a certificate of authenticity.

The photographs of the large finger were captured in 1988, and at the time they were published in one of the leading newspapers in Europe.

The finger seems to suggest that it is evidence of giants having walked on the Earth in the past. The Bible even refers to Nephilim.

The remains of the finger are quite impressive, and the finger is a mummified humanoid finger that is 38 centimeters.

Egyptian researchers have said that the finger must have belonged to a creature that was more than 5 meters tall and in 1988 only a very few people were allowed to take photographs of what has been called an artifact that is incredible.

A grave robber was said to have discovered the huge finger when he was searching a tomb in Egypt that has not been disclosed. Entrepreneur Gregor Sporri wanted to buy the finger from the owner and made a good offer, but the owner said that he would not sell it.

Sporri said that the grave robber has a certificate to say that the finger was authentic and he also had an X-ray of the finger.

Sporri said that the finger was in a package that was oblong and it had a very musty smell to it. When he told the story about the finger in 2012, he said that he been very surprised when he had been shown the dark brown, huge finger.

He went on to say that he had been allowed to pick it up and that he was also allowed to take photographs of the giant finger.

Sporri said that a bill had been placed at the side of the finger so that comparison in size could be got and the finger was bent and split open, and it had been covered in mold that had dried.

Once Sporri left Egypt he decided that he would like to find out more about the giant finger and he set about trying to find where the body belonging to the finger was located.

He made his way back to Egypt in 2009 and went looking for the man who owned the finger, but he could not find him and it left scientists along with researchers scratching their heads.

All that remains of the giant finger are photographs that were taken of the finger along with stories of the huge creature that walked among humans, which the finger must have belonged to. Scientists and researchers have many mixed feelings about the relic.

One of the issues they have with the finger is that it does not fit in with conventional theories that have come from historians and archaeologists.

In fact, many have said that the finger could not possibly exist. But is the photographs proof that giant creatures did walk on planet Earth in Egypt or was the finger no more than a hoax?

Tutankhamun’s dagger of space origin, research suggests

Thousands of years later Pharaoh Tutankhamun, the king of a boy who ruled Egypt around 1332-1323 BC, has known his share of fame in a world thousands of years after his life. And the fame is sure to grow as an exciting new discovery set the international media on fire.

An Egyptian and Italian research team has just published a paper that reveals that King Tut’s beautiful dagger, already an object of admiration and wonder, turns out to have been made from a meteorite.

Yes, he had a space dagger.

The paper, with the immediately intriguing title “The meteoritic origin of Tutankhamun’s iron dagger blade,” reveals that X-ray analysis showed the dagger to be made mostly of iron, with small amounts of nickel and cobalt.

This particular combination of elements was the key to tracing the dagger’s origins to a meteorite.

“The introduction of the new composite term suggests that the ancient Egyptians… were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already in the 13th century BCE, anticipating Western culture by more than two millennia,” write the researchers, led by Daniela Comelli, an associate professor at the Department of Physics of Milan Polytechnic.

This is remarkable in that it proves that Egyptians were well-versed in adopting iron, while the rest of humanity was still living in the Bronze Age.

In fact, the researchers see the quality of the dagger’s blade as indicative of Egyptian mastery of iron work.

The dagger, which was found in the wrapping of the mummified pharaoh in 1925, was analyzed utilizing X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, a technique that energetically excites various compounds within the object to compare different radiation wavelengths.

This allows researchers to figure out which elements are present without damaging the object.

Once they figured out the iron in the compound came from a meteorite, researchers looked back through historical records to pinpoint which meteorite it was.

They concluded it was the Kharga meteorite, which was found 150 miles west of the city of Alexandria, near the seaport city of Mersa Matruh (known as Amunia at the time of Alexander the Great).

Researchers also think that this finding adds special meaning to the term “iron from the sky” which was a hieroglyph found in ancient Egyptian texts.

Indeed, this discovery proves that even such famous historical finds as King Tut’s tomb can still reveal groundbreaking secrets about the life of the ancients.