Skeletal remains of half-cat / half-human now on display in Cairo museum
The remains of what seems to be a half-human / half-cat have been taken from the secret chamber of the great pyramid, recently uncovered, and are now exhibited in the National Museum in Cairo.
Researchers from all around the world have come to study the unusual skeleton in Egypt; many do not believe it can be genuine.
“It’s probably one of their inventions to scare away the thieves that the ancient Egyptians have been achieved as taxidermists.” Dr. Jason Hendeley from Oxford University told us.
Some of the scientists agree with Dr, Hendley while others are less skeptical.
“I find it quite perplexing that the spinal column of the creature is actually attached to the skull.” Dr.Winston Gorjone explained. “If this was the creation of some ancient taxidermist, the attachment of the skull to the spinal column would have been obvious.
There would be wire holding the skull to the spinal column. In this case, there is not.
The bone is fused together naturally which would indicate that this skeleton may indeed be the remains of some long-forgotten species of animal.”
The half-cat/ half-human skeleton that was found in the recently discovered hidden chamber in the great pyramid.
“What we must not forget is that ancient Egyptian lore is filled with half-human/half-animal beings.” Dr. Gorjone said. “The question that now lies before us is whether or not they were imaginary or if they really existed.
The National Reporter – What can you tell us about the mysterious floating orb that was found in the hidden chamber?
Examples of ancient Egyptian half-human/ half-animal Gods.
“I am not at liberty to discuss it.” Dr. Gorjone said. “For now the golden sphere is considered a state secret by the Egyptian government and we are not allowed to discuss it with anyone.”
The National Reporter – How soon do you think the secret of the floating sphere will be uncovered and when it is, will this information be released to the public?
“Right now the sphere is still inside the great pyramid. From what I have been told it can not be moved.
Technicians have tried using hydraulic pistons to force it free from its present position, but the force field it is generating is too powerful. What it is and how it has managed to stay afloat for thousands of years is still a mystery.”
Archaeologist Discover Paintings of Goddess in 3,000-year-old mummy’s coffin
In the coffin of an Egyptian mummy, paintings were found after she was taken out for the first time in over a hundred years.
In the campaign to preserve Ta-Kr-Hb – pronounced “takerheb” – a priestess or princess from Thèbes, a Scottish conservative made this discovery.
Despite having been robbed by serious robbers throughout history, the mummy, almost 3000 years old, was in a fragile state.
The research was done before her remains are exhibited at Perth’s new City Hall Museum, Scotland to ensure that her condition didn’t further deteriorate. The conservatives were shocked that when Ta-Kr-Hb was removed, painted figures from the Egyptian goddess were found on the inner and outer bases of the trough.
Both figures are representations of the Egyptian goddess Amentet or Imentet, known as the ‘She of the West’ or sometimes ‘Lady of the West’.
Conservators at Perth Museum and Gallery cleaning the 3,000 old mummy Ta-Kr-Hb’s coffin
‘It was a great surprise to see these paintings appear,’ Dr. Mark Hall, collections officer at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, told the PA news agency.
‘We had never had a reason to lift the whole thing so high that we could see the underneath of the trough and had never lifted the mummy out before and didn’t expect to see anything there.
Photo issued by Perth Museum and Art Gallery showing paintings of the Egyptian goddess Amentet discovered inside the coffin. Amentet, meaning ‘She of the West’, was a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religion
‘So to get painting on both surfaces is a real bonus and gives us something extra special to share with visitors.’
Further research will be carried out on the paintings to find out more about the history of the mummy, believed to date from somewhere between 760 and 525 BC. The painting on the interior base of the coffin trough was previously hidden by Ta-Kr-Hb and is the best preserved of the two.
The underside of the coffin, which is slightly less well preserved, also shows a portrait of Amentet
It shows Amentet in profile, looking right and wearing her typical red dress. Her arms are slightly outstretched and she is standing on a platform, indicating the depiction is of a holy statue or processional figure.
Usually, the platform is supported by a pole or column and one of these can be seen on the underside of the coffin trough. The mummy was donated to Perth Museum by the Alloa Society of Natural Science and Archaeology in 1936.
It was presented to the society by Mr. William Bailey, who bought it from the curator of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. In 2013, Ta-Kr-Hb was transferred temporarily for a ‘check-up’ at Manchester Royal Children’s Hospital, which included a CT scan and X-rays of her coffin.
Radiographic examinations revealed that her skeleton had suffered extensive damage to the chest and pelvis, sometime after the body had been mummified, according to SCBP Perth.
While the skull remains intact, radiography revealed that as part of the mummification process the brain mass was removed through the sinuses.
But the full removal of Ta-Kr-Hb’s remains this year allow today’s researchers to closely observe the paintings beneath. Perth Museum and Art Gallery are now hoping to save ‘Ta-Kr-Hb’ – as written in hieroglyphics on the lid of her coffin – for future generations.
‘The key thing we wanted to achieve was to stabilize the body so it didn’t deteriorate any more so it has been rewrapped and then we wanted to stabilize the trough and upper part of the coffin which we’ve done,’ said Dr. Hall.
‘Doing this means everybody gets to find out a lot more about her.
‘One of the key things is just physically doing the work so we have a better idea of the episodes Ta-Kr-Hb went through in terms of grave robbers and later collectors in the Victorian times so we can explore these matters more fully and we can share that with the public.’
Conservators Helena Jaeschke and Richard Jaeschke have been working closely with Culture Perth and Kinross on the project, which started work in late January. Culture Perth and Kinross are campaigning to raise money for the conservation of Ta-Kr-Hb as she prepares to go on display at the Perth City Hall Museum, which is set to open in 2022.
The Tarkhan Dress Confirmed to Be the World’s Oldest Dress
This tattered V-neck linen shirt, currently on display in the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, is the world’s oldest woven garment.
The Tarkhan Dress likely was worn by a young or slim female member of the royal court, and then placed in the tomb as a funerary object. Although the bottom does not survive, it may once have been full-length.
A recent radiocarbon testing conducted by the University of Oxford has established with 95% accuracy that the dress was made between 3482-3102 BC.
While garments of similar age have survived to the present day, but those were simply wrapped or draped around the body.
The Tarkhan dress, on the other hand, is a tailored piece with long sleeves, V-neck and narrow pleats, that looks surprisingly modern.
The Tarkhan dress was excavated by Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1913 from a First Dynasty tomb at Tarkhan, an Egyptian cemetery located 50 km south of Cairo.
Petrie had found a quantity of linen cloth under the sand alongside other artifacts. Instead of discarding away the linen as worthless, as most archaeologists at that time did, Petrie decided to preserve everything he found as evidence that would someday help throw light on the daily life of the ancient Egyptians.
The bundle of filthy rags Petrie recovered was stored away and forgotten for sixty-five years. It was not until 1977 when conservation experts at the Petrie Museum were sorting through the bundle did they stumble across the garment.
As textile conservator Sheila Landi carefully removed the caked mud from the dress, she was excited to see creases in the sleeves at the elbow and under the arms indicating that the dress had been worn in life.
The garment was also found inside-out, as it would be if one were to pull it out over the head.
The Tarkhan dress is made from three pieces of sturdy hand-woven linen with a natural pale grey stripe, which complements the neatly knife-pleated sleeves and bodice.
The lower part of the dress is missing so it’s difficult to say how the long the dress originally was or whether it was for a man or a woman, but its dimensions indicates that it fitted a young teenager or a slim woman.
At the time of its rediscovery in the late seventies, radiocarbon dating was not carried out as it would have required the destruction of a large piece of the dress fabric.
Instead of dating the fabric itself, the associated artifacts from the Tarkhan site was dated. Results indicated that the dress belonged to the First Dynasty which began in 3100 BC, making it the world’s earliest example of a woven garment.
Advancement in radiocarbon dating has now allowed researchers to date the textile directly by taking a tiny 2.24mg sample of the dress.
The new results not only confirm the dress’s antiquity but also suggest that it may be older than previously thought, pre-dating the First Dynasty.
1.5-Million-Year-Old Footprints Reveal Human Ancestor Walked Like Us
Homo erectus last walked through the Earth for thousands of years, but our fossil ancestors likely had a few behaviours in common with humans today.
In a new study, researchers have examined a set of 1.5-million-year-old footprints discovered in Kenya, revealing new insight on how they moved and interacted.
The international team discovered that Homo erectus was able to go along in the same manner as modern humans and had human-like social behaviour, using innovative analytical techniques.
This 1.5-million-year-old footprint suggests that Homo erectus, an early human ancestor, had feet that were very similar to those of modern humans.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, along with an international team of scientists, investigated ancient hominin footprints discovered in 2009 near the town of Ileret, Kenya.
The continued efforts since the initial discovery revealed an unprecedented set of trace fossils, consisting of 97 tracks from at least 20 different individuals, all thought to be Homo erectus.
These were found over five distinct sites.
The researchers say the footprints are indistinguishable from those of a modern barefoot human, with similar foot anatomies and mechanics.
‘Our analyses of these footprints provide some of the only direct evidence to support the common assumption that at least one of our fossil relatives at 1.5 million years ago walked in much the same way as we do today,’ says Kevin Hatala, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and The George Washington University.
Habitual bipedal locomotion sets modern humans apart from other primates, and researchers have long debated the question of when this giant first emerged among hominins.
Determining these types of answers are difficult using traditional forms of paleoanthropological data, but the findings in Kenya and the use of new experimental techniques have provided a unique look at the locomotion patterns and social structures of Homo erectus.
Homo erectus (skull pictured left, reconstruction pictured right) is thought to have been a key early human ancestor in our own evolution. Although it had a smaller brain than modern humans, Homo erectus is thought to have mastered the use of fire and basic stone tools
The researchers also calculated body mass estimates based on the tracks, allowing them to infer the sexes of multiple individuals.
This revealed that there may have been several adult males at each of the sites, which suggests Homo erectus groups had developed some degree of tolerance and maybe even cooperation.
According to the researchers, this trait also separates modern humans from other primates.
‘It isn’t shocking that we find evidence of mutual tolerance and perhaps cooperation between makes in a hominin that lived 1.5 million years ago,’ says Hatala, ‘especially Homo erectus, but this is our first chance to see what appears to be a direct glimpse of this behavioural dynamic in deep time.’
The 200,000-year-old city found in Southern Africa may rewrite history
In South Africa, about 150 km west of port Maputo, Mozambique, a giant stone city has been discovered. It became possible to determine the age of the site by measuring the erosion rate of the dolerite.
The 1500 square kilometer metropolis was believed to have been built between 160,000 and 200,000 years ago!
The ruins consist of huge stone circles, most of which are buried in the sand and can be seen only from the air or with the help of satellite imagery.
This ancient town is thought to be part of a larger network of 10,000 square kilometers. The organized nature of this ancient community and a road network connecting it to the terraced agriculture suggest that the metropolis was home to a highly advanced civilization.
The geology of the site is quite interesting too because of the numerous gold mines located in the area. According to researchers, this ancient civilization could have practiced gold mining.
What is quite curious, no one has ever wondered about the origin and the age of these stone circles before, despite the fact that local residents have encountered them multiple times.
In 2007, Michael Tellinger, researcher and writer passionate about human origins, and Johan Heine, a local fireman and pilot, decided to explore the site. Later, the results of their research inspired Tellinger to write a book titled Temples Of The African Gods.
According to Tellinger, the evidence they found suggests a completely different perspective on the history of humankind.
According to the conventional version of human history, the first civilization on Earth was Sumer and emerged in southern Mesopotamia about 6000 years ago.
But what if there was another, earlier civilization that was then lost in the mists of time? “The photographs, artifacts and evidence we accumulated, point towards a lost civilization that has never before been and precedes all others – not for a few hundred years, or a few thousand years … but many thousands of years,” he said.
Tellinger believes that this ancient African metropolis is the oldest structure built by the human on Earth. In fact, he thinks that the Sumerians and the Egyptians inherited knowledge from this advanced civilization.
This hypothesis is based on the fact that there are carvings of the Egyptian Ankh on the rocks of the ancient city.
How could there possibly be an image of the Egyptian god thousands of years before the Egyptian civilization emerged? “These discoveries are so staggering that they will not be easily digested by the mainstream historical and archaeological fraternity, as we have already experienced. It will require a complete paradigm shift in how we view our human history,” Tellinger said.
Tellinger’s findings raise more questions than answers, but we can hope that this incredible ancient city will attract more researchers in the future and that one day more light will be shed on this lost civilization and the unknown aspects of human history in general.
In 1990 a strange type bluestone was found in Sierra Leone, West Africa by geologist and archeologist Angelo Pitoni, named the Sky stone (12000 BC).
The enigmatic stone was sent to research laboratories worldwide, The tests were carried out in laboratories of the University of Geneva, Rome, Utrecht, Tokyo, and Freiberg, Germany.
This was discovered in an old village outside of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
All experts agree that the bluestone isn’t similar to any type of rock known in nature so it must be artificial.
The Italian geologist believed that this is an extraordinary object: a strange crystal found in Sierra Leone diamond fields that resembles a pure turquoise similar to some found on the pectorals of Egyptian priests. Analyses performed on this “Stone of Heaven”, as he calls it, revealed that it is different from any other gemstone known to man.
Angelo Pitoni
This story continues with a trip to Asia during a rare gem and mineral sourcing trip by the American artist and designer, Jared Collins.
The dealer replied, “when I received several pieces of the stone, I too was thinking this story has no credibility, so just for the hell of it, I cut off a small sample from my larger piece and sent it over to Dr. Preeti at GRS Swisslabs to see what he had to say about it through testing. Dr. Preeti called me back to ask what this stuff was because he couldn’t determine its composition and ended up returning it as “unidentifiable.” Dr. Preeti only mentioned that he did not believe that the material itself was natural, but the element creating the blue color might be organic. – Jared Coins
In 2007, the National Geographic award-winning fine-art portrait photographer, Jared Collins, relocated his studio from New York City to Ubud, Bali where he set out to create a dramatic series of images documenting the most distinctive Balinese women adorned in ornate ceremonial costumes.
The actual sample of Sky Stone (above) submitted to GRS Swisslabs for testing and analysis.
Intrigued, but highly skeptical of the stone actually being anything it was claimed to be, Collins proposed to buy the small cutaway piece from the dealer so he could study it further, but the dealer just shrugged it off and refused to sell it.
He wouldn’t even name a price for the larger full stone. Collins was somewhat taken back by this as the dealer’s business was solely based on buying and selling stones, not collecting them.
As it turned out that night, Sky Stone was the only thing in the entire room not going to be made available for sale, and the only thing he was interested to take out of there. Collins ended up leaving Hong Kong with a haunting feeling that something important may have just slipped through his fingers and he never forgot about that bluestone.
Its composition was found to be composed of 77% oxygen, along with traces of carbon, silicon, calcium, and sodium.
The composition makes the “Sky Stone” similar to a kind of concrete or stucco and seems to have been artificially colored. The natives living in the area where the stone was found, already knew about its existence because this stone-like artifact used to pop out during the digging in the area.
Another mystery related to the stone of heaven is that this artifact is always found in soil layers dating to at least 12000 BC. The stone was certainly produced by an unknown, highly advanced civilization lost in time.”
Sky Stone material was also claimed to have made a brief appearance at the weekend market in Marakesh, Morroco (where they also specialize in meteorites.) It was going by the name of “kryptonite.”
‘Little Foot’ skull reveals how this more than 3 million-year-old human ancestor lived
High-resolution micro-CT scanning of the skull of the fossil specimen known as “Little Foot” has revealed some aspects of how this Australopithecus species used to live more than 3 million years ago.
Comparison of the nearly intact first cervical vertebra of ‘Little Foot’ and two other Australopithecus from Sterkfontein in South Africa and from Hadar in Ethiopia showing how to complete ‘Little Foot’ is as compared to the rest of the fossil record.
The ~3.67 million-year-old fossil specimen’s meticulous excavation cleaning and testing of the skull showed the most complete Australopithecus adult first cervical vertebra yet found.
A description of the vertebra by Wits University researchers Dr. Amélie Beaudet and the Sterkfontein team was published in the Scientific Reports.
Little Foot’s skeleton was first revealed in 2017.
The Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences, the International Palaeontological Trust, the National Research Foundation the University of the Witwatersrand and the French National Center for Scientific Research, through the French Institute of South Africa, support this research program.
The first cervical vertebra (or atlas) plays a crucial role in vertebrate biology. Besides acting as the connection between the head and the neck, the atlas also plays a role in how blood is supplied to the brain via the vertebral arteries.
By comparing the atlas of “Little Foot” with other fossils from South and East Africa as well as living humans and chimpanzees, the Wits University team shows that Australopithecus was capable of head movements that differ from modern humans.
“The morphology of the first cervical vertebra, or atlas, reflects multiple aspects of an organism’s life,” says Beaudet, the lead author of the study.
“In particular, the nearly complete atlas of ‘Little Foot’ has the potential to provide new insights into the evolution of head mobility and the arterial supply to the brain in the human lineage.”
The shape of the atlas determines the range of head motions while the size of the arteries passing through the vertebrae to the skull is useful for estimating blood flow supplying the brain.
“Our study shows that Australopithecus was capable of head movements that differ from us. This could be explained by the greater ability of Australopithecus to climb and move in the trees.
However, a southern African Australopithecus specimen younger than ‘Little Foot’ (probably younger by about 1 million years) may have partially lost this capacity and spent more time on the ground, like us today.”
The overall dimensions and shape of the atlas of “Little Foot” are similar to living chimpanzees. More specifically, the ligament insertions (that could be inferred from the presence and configuration of bony tubercles) and the morphology of the facet joints linking the head and the neck all suggest that “Little Foot” was moving regularly in trees.
Because “Little Foot” is so well-preserved, blood flow supply to the brain could also be estimated for the first time, using evidence from the skull and vertebrae.
These estimations demonstrate that blood flow, and thus the utilization of glucose by the brain was about three times lower than in living humans and closer to those of living chimpanzees.
“The low investment of energy into the brain of Australopithecus could be tentatively explained by a relatively small brain of the specimen (around 408cm3), a low-quality diet (low proportion of animal products) or high costs of other aspects of the biology of Australopithecus (such as upright walking). In any case, this might suggest that the human brain’s vascular system emerged much later in our history.”
The Lost City Of Heracleion Discovered Deep Underwater After 1,200 Years
For centuries, the ‘ lost city of Atlantis has eluded explorers and is almost certainly the stuff of myth. Staggeringly, though, an ancient city that is Atlantis in all but name has emerged from under the sea near Alexandria — and now the lost world of Heracleion is giving up its treasures.
Like in the classical tale, Heracleion was once a wealthy, prosperous place, around 1500 years before it was swallowed up by the sea. It was grand enough to be mentioned by the Greek writer Herodotus, the 5th-century BC historian.
He told the fabulous story of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world — she of the face that launched a thousand ships — travelling to Heracleion, then a port of ‘great wealth’, with her glamorous Trojan lover, Paris.
French marine archaeologist Frank Goddio explains text on the stele of Heracleion
Franck Goddio and divers from his team inspect the statue of a pharaoh
But no physical evidence of such a grand settlement appeared until 2001 when a group led by French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio stumbled upon some relics that led them to one of the greatest finds of the 21st century.
Goddio was in search of Napoleon’s warships from the 1798 Battle of the Nile, when he was defeated by Nelson in these very waters, but came upon this much more significant discovery. Goddio’s team has since been joined by the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology and the Department of Antiquities of Egypt to produce a wealth of dazzling finds.
The archaeologists first faced the mammoth task of reassembling massive stone fragments on the seabed before they could haul them to the surface. Twelve years on, their fabulous finds have been exposed to public view for the first time after more than a millennium spent beneath the silt and water of Aboukir Bay, 20 miles north-east of Alexandria.
Among the discoveries are colossal statues of the Egyptian goddess Isis, the god Hapi, and an unidentified Egyptian pharaoh — all preserved in immaculate condition by their muddy burial shroud. Along with these 16ft statues, there are hundreds of smaller statues of Egyptian gods — among them the figures that guarded the temple where Cleopatra was inaugurated as Queen of the Nile.
It seems the Amun-Gereb temple at Heracleion was the Egyptian equivalent of Westminster Abbey, where our own Queen was crowned 60 years ago. Dozens of sarcophagi have been found, containing the bodies of mummified animals sacrificed to Amun-Gereb, the supreme god of the Egyptians. Many amulets, or religious charms, have been unearthed, too, showing gods such as Isis, Osiris and Horus.
These were made not just for the Egyptians but for visiting traders, who incorporated them into their own religions and also, one imagines, kept them as trinkets to remind them of their far-flung journeys. The importance of Heracleion has been further proved by the discovery of 64 ships — the largest number of ancient vessels ever found in one place — and a mind-boggling 700 anchors.
Other finds illustrate how crucial Heracleion was to the economy of the ancient world. Gold coins and lead, bronze and stone weights from Athens (used to measure the value of goods and to calculate the tax owed) show that Heracleion was a lucrative Mediterranean trading post.
In the ancient world, the Mediterranean Sea was their equivalent of a superfast motorway. All their greatest cities, including Constantinople, Rome and Athens, were either on the coast or on rivers with easy access to it.
And now Heracleion can be added to their number as Egypt’s most important port during the time of the later pharaohs. It was, if you like, a major motorway junction — the spot where the Nile, Egypt’s lifeline, met the Med. Archaeologists have determined that as well as having a naturally navigable channel next to its ancient harbour, a further artificial channel appears to have been dug to expedite trade.
The Heracleion finds will add tremendous depth to our understanding of the ancient world — not least because, among the discoveries, there are perfectly preserved steles (inscribed pillars) decorated with hieroglyphics. Translated, they will reveal much about the religious and political life in this corner of ancient Egypt.
It was a similar inscription on the Rosetta Stone — discovered in the Nile Delta town of Rosetta in 1799 by a French soldier, and now in the British Museum — that cracked the code of hieroglyphics in the first place.
And like the Rosetta Stone, those steles found beneath the waters of Aboukir Bay are inscribed in Greek and Egyptian, too. Who knows how many more archaeological gems will be uncovered at Heracleion?
The very name of the city is taken from that most famous of Greek heroes, Heracles — aka Hercules — whose 12 labours, from killing the Hydra to capturing Cerberus, the multi-headed hellhound that guarded the gates of the Underworld, captivated the ancient world.
Heraklion, Crete’s capital and largest city, is also named after Heracles, as was Herculaneum, the ancient Roman town that was buried under ash when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.
It appears that Heracleion faded in importance in the later classical period, eclipsed by its neighbouring city of Alexandria, which became the capital of Egypt in 312BC.
Still, Heracleion lingered on, later under Roman control, until it slipped into its watery grave some time in the 6th or 7th century AD. What a thrilling discovery we have on our hands now that the sea has, 1,500 years later, giving up one of its greatest secrets.
