Category Archives: AFRICA

Beads Found in 3,400-year-old Nordic Graves Were Made by King Tut’s Glassmaker

Beads Found in 3,400-year-old Nordic Graves Were Made by King Tut’s Glassmaker

The burial sites from the Danish Bronze Age dated from 3,400 years ago provided beautiful glass beads as a special treat. They aren’t just any old beads though.

They have actually turned out to have come from ancient Egypt, from the workshop that made the blue beads buried with the famous boy-king Tutankhamun.

This is not only a remarkable find, but also shows that trade routes between the far North and the Levant were established as early as the 13th Century BCE, which is an amazing discovery.

King Tut was nicknamed the boy king as he began ruling just at the age of nine.

The stunning blue beads aren’t the only evidence of trade between ancient Denmark and the region in question. Altogether, 271 glass beads have been found at 51 burials sites across Denmark with the majority originating from Nippur, Mesopotamia, which is about 50 km southeast of today’s Baghdad in Iraq.

Out of all the beads which were unearthed, twenty-three of them were blue, which was a rare color back in ancient times. In the late Nordic Bronze Age, Lapis lazuli was the most precious gemstone and blue glass was the next best thing, according to Jeanette Varberg, who is associated with the research.

One of the blue glass beads was found with a Bronze Age woman buried in Olby, Denmark, in a hollowed oak coffin.

The woman was wearing a sun disc, a smart string skirt decorated with tinkling, small bronze tubes, and an overarm bracelet made of amber beads. Clearly, she had been quite a smart and potentially wealthy woman. Another one of the beads was found as part of a necklace in a separate burial site for another woman.

One of the blue glass beads was found with a Bronze Age woman buried in Olby, Denmark.

All 23 of the blue beads were analyzed using plasma-spectrometry, which is a technique that enables comparison of trace elements in the beads without damaging or destroying them but while still offering plenty of information.

A glass bead found in a 3400-year old Danish grave turns out to have come from ancient Egypt.

The results of the analysis showed that the blue beads buried with the women actually originated from the same glass workshop in Amarna that adorned King Tutankhamun at his funeral in 1323 BCE.

King Tuts’ golden deathmask contains stripes of blue glass in the headdress, as well as in the inlay of his false beard. This proves that there was some sort of trade link between the two areas at that time.

In ancient Egypt, Glass beads were a bit of a luxury adornment and were not prevalent, except in the graves of the elite where the selection was choice but limited in quantity. So, how did cobalt beads designed for Kings and Queens end up in Nordic burial sites? Well, there is some speculation that the two ancient lands traded the luxury glass beads for amber, an element that Denmark is rich in.

Both the Egyptian and Mesopotamian glass beads which were found in the graves in Denmark suggest that there were trade routes already established 3,000 years ago.

It works the other way around too – Nordic amber has also been found as far south as in Mycenae, Greece and at Qatna, near Homs in Syria, suggesting that they were trading for one another’s precious stones and beads.

Amber was associated with the Sun God – in both ancient Egypt and the Nordic areas.

Couple this with other finds such as Cypriot copper found in Sweden and picture of an elaborate trade system begins to form. In addition to this, Nordic amber beads, as well as beads made of Egyptian glass and copper ingots, formed part of the precious cargo of the ship which was wrecked at Uluburun, outside the coast of Turkey.

There’s a Valley of Whales in the Middle of Egypt’s Desert and its Millions of Years old

There’s a Valley of Whales in the Middle of Egypt’s Desert and its Millions of Years old

This is one of the driest areas in the world, with only a few centimeters of rain a year, but the bodies of whales are emerging from the shifting sands of the Egyptian Sahara Desert. The fossilized remains are helping to reveal how much of Egypt was once covered by a vast ancient ocean around 50 million years ago.

It is known as Wadi al-Hitan, or Valley of the whales. This area contains the fossilized bones of an ancestor of modern whales that have fascinated tourists and paleontologists alike since they were first discovered in 1902.

It is now being set up like an open-air museum to show off the beasts that once swam over the area, 93 miles (150 km) southwest of Cairo. The Valley of the Whales in Egypt is home to some of the most remarkable paleontological sites on Earth due to its unusual history.

Wadi al-Hitan, or the Valley of the Whales, boasts a fascinating collection of fossils of ancient sea creatures because the area was underwater 50 million years ago at the bottom of an ocean called the Tethys Sea, which occupied the space in between Africa and Asia

Around 50 million years ago the area was at the bottom of an ocean called the Tethys Sea, which occupied the space in between Africa and Asia before India joined with the continent, pushing up the Himalayas

The whale skeletons in the region offer a glimpse into the past, as the species of whale that once called this desert valley home is now extinct. The Archaeoceti – which means ‘ancient wales’ – found in Wadi al-Hitan are some of the earliest forms of whales to emerge.

Cetaceans evolved from a land-based creature with legs, which is why many species of whale and dolphin have a phantom hip bone where the legs once attached to the body.

The whale skeletons in the region offer a glimpse into the past, as the species of whale that once called this desert valley home, the Archaeoceti, is now extinct 
Tourists walk around the rocks in the natural reserve area of Wadi AL-Hitan and can see the whale fossils as they pass

Over millions of years of evolution, legs became redundant for the seafaring creatures, but some of the Archaeoceti skeletons found in Wadi al-Hitan still have their legs, complete with toes, intact.

This offers a glimpse into the evolutionary past of the whale to a time when it was still adapting to its ocean environment.

Despite whale fossils being discovered in the area over one hundred years ago, it was only made into a conservation area in the 80s, and it now acts as an open-air museum, such as the rich variety of its fossils.

Fossilized sharks, whales, and plants have allowed paleontologists to build a picture of the ancient ecology of the lost Tethys sea.

The geology of the area combines sandstone and limestone deposited by the ancient ocean with a desert landscape of sand dunes.

Over the years erosion from wind and sand has slowly revealed the fossilised skeletons trapped and preserved in the sandstone formations.

Two types of whale have been uncovered in Wadi al-Hitan, the basilosaurus, measuring up to 20 meters, and the smaller dorudon.

The Valley of the Whales is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Tombs of High Priests Discovered in Upper Egypt

Egyptian archaeologists unveil ancient tombs, 2,500-year-old artifacts

Khaled El-Enano, Minister of Tourism and Antiquity, Egypt announced discovered the discovery of the communal tombs for high priests in the Tuna el-Gabal district of Minya, marking the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities ‘ first archaeological find in 2020.

The communal tombs were dedicated to high priests of the god Djehuty and senior officials in the fifteenth nome of Upper Egypt and its capital, Ashmunin.

Minister El-Enany said that since 2018, several discoveries have been made in Minya governorate, including a cachette of mummies, as well as several tombs full of sarcophagi and funerary collections including jewellery, ushabti figurines, and funerary masks.

“Minya is set to be put on Egypt’s tourist’s map for its distinguished archaeological sites,” El-Enany said.

The discovery was made by an archaeological mission headed by Mustafa Waziri, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Waziri explained that the ongoing work by the archaeological mission has uncovered 16 tombs with about 20 sarcophagi and coffins of various shapes and sizes, including five anthropoid sarcophagi made of limestone and engraved with hieroglyphic texts, and five well-preserved wooden coffins.

Some of the coffins are decorated with the names and titles of their owners and were discovered alongside more than 10,000 ushabti figurines made of blue and green faience, most of which are engraved with the titles of the deceased.

The mission also found more than 700 amulets of various shapes, sizes, and materials, including heart scarabs, amulets of the gods, and amulets made of pure gold, such as the “Ba” and an amulet in the shape of a winged cobra.

Many pottery vessels of different shapes and sizes, which were used for funerary and religious purposes, were also unearthed along with tools for cutting stones and moving coffins, such as wooden hammers and baskets made of palm fronds.  

The discovery also includes eight groups of painted canopic jars made of limestone with inscriptions showing the titles of their owner, who bore the title of the singer of the God Thoth.

Two collections of four canopic jars made of alabaster for a woman and a man were also unearthed, as well as stone dough without any inscriptions representing the four sons of Horus.

Waziri said that one of the stone sarcophagi belongs to the son of Psamtik, who took the title of the head of the royal treasury. He bore many titles, the most important of which were the priest of Osiris and Nut.

The second sarcophagus belongs to Horus and has a scene depicting the goddess Nut spreading her wings above the chest, and below it is inscriptions revealing the deceased’s titles, including the title of royal treasurer. Also discovered was a sarcophagus of Epy with three vertical lines of hieroglyphic inscriptions showing the names and titles of the deceased.

The sarcophagus of the Djed of Djehuty Iuf ankh, which is made of well-polished limestone, is considered one of the most important coffins discovered during this season due to the titles inscribed on the sarcophagus lid – that of royal treasurer and bearer of seals of Lower Egypt and the sole companion of the king.

The fifth sarcophagus has hieroglyphic inscriptions showing the surnames of the deceased, the most important of which is the title of “the assistant.”

It is worth mentioning that during its previous works, the mission discovered 19 tombs containing 70 stone coffins of various sizes and shapes.

Modern Africans and Europeans may have more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought

Modern Africans and Europeans may have more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought

Modern Africans and Europeans may have more Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought
Ancient Europeans, represented by a roughly 30,000-year-old French Homo sapiens skull shown at left, interbred with Neandertals, represented by a 70,000- to 50,000-year-old French skull on the right, before spreading Neandertal genes into Africa, a new study finds.

It has been revealed for the first time that African populations share Neanderthal ancestry, in findings that add a new twist to the tale of ancient humans and our closest known relatives.

It was previously believed that Neanderthal genes were transmitted by only non-African populations due to interbreeding that took place after a major human migration out of Africa and across the globe about 60,000 years ago.

The most recent findings indicate that Neanderthal lineages are more closely intertwined than once thought and point to far earlier interbreeding events, about 200,000 years ago.

“Our results show this history was much more interesting and there were many waves of dispersal out of Africa, some of which led to admixture between modern humans and Neanderthals that we see in the genomes of all living individuals today,” said Joshua Akey, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University and senior author of the research.

The study suggests living Europeans and Asians carry about 1% Neanderthal DNA, compared with on average 0.3% for those of African ancestry.

A Neanderthal skull. Previously it was believe that only non-African populations carried Neanderthal genes.

Akey and colleagues believe that this Neanderthal DNA arrived in Africa with ancient Europeans whose ancestors – over many generations – had left Africa, met and mated with Neanderthals and then returned to Africa and mixed with local populations.

“An important aspect of our study is that it highlights humans, and hominins, were moving in and out of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years and occasionally admixing,” said Akey. “These back-to-Africa migrations, largely from ancestors of contemporary Europeans, carried Neanderthal sequences with them, and through admixture, contributed to the Neanderthal ancestry we detect in African individuals today.”

The increasingly fine-grained details of our ancestors’ migration patterns and intimate encounters with other types of humans are coming into focus thanks to the advent of sophisticated computational genetics techniques.

These statistical methods allow scientists to line up the Neanderthal genome side by side with that of ancient modern humans and DNA from different living populations and figure out whether the different lineages have been steadily diverging or whether there are blips where large chunks of DNA were exchanged at certain time points.

The latest comparison highlights previously unnoticed ancient human genes in the Neanderthal genome apparently acquired from interbreeding events dating to about 200,000 years ago.

This suggests an early group of humans travelled from Africa to Europe or Asia, where they encountered Neanderthal populations and left a faint imprint on their genome that could still be detected more than 100,000 years later.

The paper also highlights the relative lack of genetics research in African populations, despite modern humans having first emerged on the continent and despite African populations today being more diverse genetically than the inhabitants of the rest of the world combined.

“To more fully understand human genomic variation and human evolutionary history, it is imperative to comprehensively sample individuals from all regions of the world, and Africa remains one of the most understudied regions,” said Akey.

It is not known whether all African populations, some of whose roots stretch into the deep past, share this Neanderthal heritage. KhoeSan (bushmen) and Mbuti (central African pygmy) populations, for instance, appear to have split off from other groups more than 100,000 years ago.

Ancient Cave Filled With 10,000-Year-Old Cave Paintings Accidentally Discovered By Egyptologists In Sinai

Art Before the Pharaohs: 10,000 BC Paintings Found in Egypt

A newly discovered cave in Sinai, Egypt, is the first of its kind in the region to be found decorated from floor to ceiling with colorful ancient paintings – and it was all by chance. It is estimated that some of the images could be 12,000 years old. The find is providing insights into the prehistoric past of the region.

The inscriptions were found by a person who was exploring some caves in the deserts of South Sinai and who notified the relevant authorities.

Egypt Today states that the site is “about 40 miles southeast of Sarabit El Khadem and about 30 kilometers north of St. Catherine.” The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities sent a team to document the discoveries.

The inscriptions were found, according to Mostafa al-Waziri, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in a cavern “located in a difficult region called al-Zaranij” reports Egypt Independent.

They were found in a large sandstone rock shelter that is 10 feet (3 meters) high and 20 feet (6 meters) wide. It appears that the cave was at one time used by nomadic Bedouin as shelter.

The cavern where the rock art was found had been used as a shelter.

A large number of images were found in the cave. Some of them were engraved onto the roof of the cave. Others were found on blocks of stone that had fallen onto the floor of the cavern.

Hisham Hussein, head of the archaeological mission, is quoted by Egypt Today as saying that the “discovered inscriptions depict many different scenes dating back to different eras”.

The inscriptions and images were inscribed onto the rock and then painted. They are all a dark reddish color but many have faded and are quite hard to make out. The experts have divided the rock art into three broad categories based on the images that they represent and their styles.

All of the rock art was a dark red color but had faded.

The first type of rock art is the oldest and date back some 7,000 to 12,000 years ago and was made thousands of years before the pyramids were built.

They are primarily found on the ceiling of the cavern. These are “mainly of animals such as donkeys and mules” reports Egypt Today. These are drawn in a realistic way and they are in proportion.

The first type of rock art in the caverns was of animals.

Their handprints also to be found all over the cave from the same era. Somewhat similar handprints have also been found in the Western Desert of Egypt.

However, Newsweek quotes Professor John Darnell of Yale University, “the hands from the Sinai site appear to be of a different style, and possibly later in date” than these examples.

Rock art of handprints was all over the cave.

The second category of rock art probably comes from the Chalcolithic or Copper Age 3,500 to 2,300 BC. These are mostly stick-like red images of females and animals.

Professor Darnell told Newsweek, the “red-painted imagery is not as commonly found as incised images and text”. They were not made in a naturalistic way and the proportions of their bodies are not in harmony.

The third type of rock carvings is different from the previous two. They show people on a howdah. This is a type of bed or carriage that is carried by a camel and was used to transport members of the elite in the Middle East, until relatively recently. These images probably are no older than the first millennium BC.

Egypt has a long history of rock art. Professor Darnell stated that they often reveal the “complex tradition of human interactions with the landscape” according to Newsweek.

The different types of images and inscriptions can help researchers to better understand the history of the Sinai.

The recently documented caves and rock art.

A crystal mountain in Egypt near an Oasis

A crystal mountain in Egypt near an Oasis which dates to 33 million years ago.

“Crystal Mountain”. Located within the white desert, 120 km from the Farafra Oasis and 160 km from the Bahariya Oases is one of the rarest mountains in the world, it is a mountain full of different crystal, where there are more than 12 types Crystal, clustered with each other in a huge mountain mass.

The hill is a subvolcanic vault, which emerged during the Oligocene age, 33 million years ago.

Crystal Mountain, which is often called the Jewel of the Desert is formed by the quartzite crystals and looks amazing in the sun’s rays.

A few decades ago, that natural feature has been found quite by accident. Local residents for several years used the minerals to build the road.

When researchers realized the uniqueness of this place, Crystal Mountain has been taken under protection. Today, it is an unmissable destination for all desert tours.

One of the most beautiful mountains of the world, a small arch of rock, shining brightly in the sun, making it look like a crown decorated with thousands of colored gems in the desert, making it like a treasure hunting behind every seeker of wealth, and this is what attracts many tourists and locals, His jewels are scattered in a unique landscape.

“Crystal Mountain”. Located within the White Desert, 120 km from the Farafra Oasis and 160 km from the Bahariya Oases is one of the rarest mountains in the world, it is a mountain full of different crystal, where there are more than 12 types Crystal, clustered with each other in a huge mountain mass. 

Crystal Mountain is usually thought to be a giant mountain that rises above the surface of the desert, but they are shocked when they visit it.

The presence of this treasure in a place open to all led to its destruction, most of the tourists and even local people, insist on going to the Crystal Mountain, to collect some pieces of calcite crystals scattered, and thought “Alkhirtia”, who are working as “guides” and “guides” desert, Imagine that tourists collect it as a hobby to collect colored stones, which threatened to disappear

Crystal Mountain is located between the Bahariya and Farafra areas. It is not close to any city. You cannot expect to walk to the area on foot. In fact, the mountain is really only reachable by specialty tours.

2,500 Years Ago, Herodotus Described a Weird Ship. Now, Archaeologists Have Found it.

2,500 Years Ago, Herodotus Described a Weird Ship. Now, Archaeologists Have Found it.

Herodotus may be considered the father of history, but he is not specifically proven to be accurate. Still, Dalya Alberge reports for the Guardian, the discovery of an ancient vessel that matches one described in the chronicler’s Histories adds weight to a fragment of his lengthy account.

The hull of the ancient vessel

Archaeologists chanced upon the boat in question—officially dubbed ship 17—while excavating the sunken Egyptian port city of Thonis-Heracleion. First unearthed in 2000, Live Science’s Laura Geggel writes, the site has since yielded more than 70 vessels dating from the 8th to 2nd century B.C.

“It wasn’t until we discovered this wreck that we realized Herodotus was right,” Damian Robinson, director of the Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology, which published a recent monograph detailing the find, tells Alberge. “What Herodotus described was what we were looking at.”

Herodotus dedicates 23 lines of his Histories to the construction of a Nile cargo boat known by locals as a baris. This fragment, penned around 450 B.C., stems from the historian’s travels to Egypt and, according to Science Alert’s Michelle Starr, tells of a papyrus-sailed ship crafted in the style of brickwork with a rudder running through a hole in its keel.

In his account, Herodotus documents the creation of “thorny acacia” boats that “cannot sail up the river unless there be a very fresh wind blowing, but are towed from the shore.”

He continues, “They have a door-shaped crate made of tamarisk wood and reed mats sewn together, and also a stone of about two talents weight bored with a hole.” As the crate floats in front of the boat, the stone grounds it from behind; together, these opposing forces keep the vessel moving swiftly on a straight course.

Artist’s rendering of the shipwrecked vessel

Writing in a 2013 study, Alexander Belov, an archaeologist at the Center for Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and author of the new Ship 17: A Baris From Thonis-Heracleion monograph, notes that the acacia planks evident in ship 17 “are staggered in a way that gives it the appearance of ‘courses of bricks,’ as described by Herodotus.”

The Guardian’s Alberge adds that the crescent-shaped hull’s pattern of thick planks connected with pegs and tenons, or smaller adjoining pieces of wood, aligns closely with the historian’s description of the baris’ “internal ribs.”

Prior to ship 17’s discovery, contemporary archaeologists had never encountered this architectural style. But upon examining the hull’s well-preserved remains, which constitute some 70 percent of the original structure, researchers found a singular feat of design.

An archaeologist examines how the ancient vessel's keel was put together.
An archaeologist examines how the ancient vessel’s keel was put together.

At the peak of its maritime career, ship 17 likely measured up to 92 feet—significantly longer than the baris described by Herodotus, as Science Alert’s Starr points out, making it differ slightly from the one detailed in Histories: Whereas Herodotus’ vessel had shorter tenons and no reinforcing frames, the recovered boat has longer tenons and several reinforcing frames.

Although ship 17 is believed to have sunk during the first half of the 5th century B.C., Robinson tells Live Science’s Geggel that it probably dates to the 6th century B.C. and was “reused as a … floating jetty at the end of its working life as a ship.”

Archaeologists believe the Thonis-Heracleion baris were used to move goods to and from emporiums along the Nile River. In addition to transporting imports from the Greek and Persian worlds to cities across the Nile valley, the ship and others like it would have brought Egyptian goods including grain and salt to the harbor for export.

Huge Statue of God Horus Found in Egyptian Temple

Huge Statue of God Horus Found in Egyptian Temple

Throughout excavations at the site of remains of The House of Millions of Years Temple for Amenhotep III, the Egyptian-German Joint Archeological Mission in the Koam-al-Hetan area of Luxor’s West Bank discovered an “enormous” statue of Horus.

The newly-discovered Horus statue. 

In a statement issued on Thursday, the statue, which shows the god Horus in the shape of a falcon, consists of black granite and measures 1.85 meters in length, said the Director-General of West Luxor Antiquities Mr. Fathy Yassin.

The statue is without legs and has broken arms as well, he added.

The find is part of a long-term restoration project of the Memnon statue and the Temple of King Amenhotep III, which began in 1998 under the supervision of the Ministry of Antiquities and the German Archaeological Institute.

The aim of the project is to preserve the remains of the temple and rebuild it again, said co-head of the Egyptian-German mission Horig Sorosyan.

Two statues of Amenhotep III (Memnon’s pillars) at the entrance to his temple

She stressed that the discovered statue was in good condition and of an important artistic, scientific and archaeological value, as it would contribute to presenting the full image of the temple, especially after its collapse after a devastating earthquake in the twenty-eighth century BC.

Stones were used to building temples and other royal statues in the Ramesside era, she pointed out, adding that the statue in question is currently undergoing restoration.

The mission, meanwhile, will continue to search for the missing legs of the statue.

The Egyptian-German archaeological expedition previously discovered a number of large statues depicting deities, Amenhotep III, and his wife Queen T, in addition to a significant number of statues of the goddess Sekhmet.

Amenhotep III accumulated various Sekhmet statues in his temple The House of Millions of Years in order to protect it from danger.