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.
The Statue of Lady Sennuwy of Asyut Emerges from the ground at Kerma Sudan in 1913
The flourishing, wealthy empires of Nubia have lined the nile in Southern Egypt and Sudan more than a thousand years before Jesus.
A century ago, in partnership with Harvard University, the Boston archeologist George Reisner, Made an excavation in the region and brought back to the American public an enduring sight of Nubian artifacts – the largest collection of Nubian artifacts outside East Africa.
This collection was viewed today for the first time as part of a museum theme to reexamine past archeologists’ conclusions and the biases that affected their work.
Kerma: Beads and pendants: faience, amethyst, glazed crystal, carnelian, shell, garnet, granite, August 10, 1914, Giza Camp
The Ancient Nubia Now exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston discusses some of what Reisner, one of their own archaeologists and curators, got wrong in his representation of history.
“He is considered the father of American Egyptology,” said curator Denise Doxey. “As an archaeologist, he was really superb.”
Ancient Nubia Now exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Oct. 13, 2019, to Jan. 20, 2020
But she says that Reisner based many of his assumptions on history that were written by Egyptians who were at war with Nubians for generations and described Nubians as barbarians.
When Reisner came across a beautifully carved, Egyptian stone statue in a tomb in Sudan in 1913, he classified the whole tomb as an Egyptian outpost — even though the statue known as Lady Sennuwy was surrounded by pottery and jewelry that was distinctly Nubian.
“He just couldn’t believe that the Nubians did all this themselves,” Doxey said. “He was a wonderful archaeologist, but he was not a forward-thinking man on social issues at all. So, he brings his own racial biases, which happened to dovetail nicely with the Egyptians’ image of the Nubians. And [it] causes them to completely misinterpret the site.”
Reisner didn’t believe that the Nubians had conquered southern Egypt for a time, and brought Lady Sennuwy back to Nubia as a prize. But Doxey says that’s what actually happened.
“In fact, he had it completely backward,” she said.
Doxey says Reisner contributed to a portrayal of Nubia as a conquered, marginalized culture somehow less important than Egypt, and eventually mostly forgotten by scholars.
“It’s a vicious cycle because people aren’t familiar with Nubia. So, museums are wary about doing exhibitions and [having] nobody come because they don’t know what Nubia is,” Doxey said. “So, it perpetuates this idea that nobody knows what Nubia is, and it helps to keep that imbalance that Egypt is somehow much more important.”
-Denise Doxey, Museum of Fine Arts, curator
“It’s a vicious cycle because people aren’t familiar with Nubia. So, museums are wary about doing exhibitions and [having] nobody come because they don’t know what Nubia is,” Doxey said. “So, it perpetuates this idea that nobody knows what Nubia is, and it helps to keep that imbalance that Egypt is somehow much more important.”
But it’s been clear for some time that Reisner got it wrong. French and Swiss teams did excavations in Sudan in the 1960s and 1970s and discovered that tomb Reisner found with the Lady Sennuwy statue was part of a thriving, Nubian metropolis at the center of a trading network that reached far into Africa.
“It’s a massive, fortified city with suburbs outside and ports and industrial areas and temples,” Doxey said. “So, it was actually a very powerful and important kingdom.”
A kingdom that left behind fine pottery that is eggshell thin and dipped in a distinctive translucent blue glaze; and gold jewelry, and sculptures depicting animals such as rams and lions. Items that were ahead of their time, and are possibly evidence of an advanced culture.
That reminds some people of Wakanda, the fictional, ultra-advanced African country in the movie, “Black Panther.” Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes the “Black Panther” series for Marvel, has said he imagines Wakanda being pretty much where Nubia was.
In a video in the Nubia exhibit, Nicole Aljoe, director of Africana studies at Northeastern University, talks about Pauline Hopkins, an African American writer who, in 1902-1903, wrote a serialized novel, “Of One Blood; Or, The Hidden Self,” in which one of the main characters discovers a secret, advanced society of superhumans in the Nubia region.
“It is fascinating — it’s this weird kind of proto-science fiction, fantastic, but at the same time supernatural presentation that resonated a lot for me and my students with the film [“Black Panther”] after it came out,” Aljoe said. “It’d be really cool if she was prescient in that way.”
Begrawiya: North Cemetery at Meroe, Pyramids N 32 and N 19, April 12, 1921
Aljoe says the book is just one example of how African American artists have used the idea of Nubia as a symbol again and again. There were Nubian references during the Harlem Renaissance, the Black arts movement, and in rap music and the Black Lives Matter movement, she says. Right now, there’s a ballot measure in Boston to rename a historic spot Nubian Square. It’s currently named for Thomas Dudley, a governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony who signed laws that enabled the slave trade.
“So, Nubia as kind of representing a royal African history that folks can use to challenge European and racist colonial ideologies,” Aljoe said.
Egypt: Experts discover pharaoh’s boat in perfect condition
Archeologists of Egypt uncovered a boat claimed to have been “perfectly preserved” by Pharaoh Khufu himself, which led to verified theories of how ancient civilization constructed their wonders.
The boat was discovered near the Great Pyramid
Probably the most famous and well known of Egypt’s many ancient landmarks and includes the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx of Giza.
The Great Pyramid of Giza, or the Pyramid of Khufu, is a spectacle of the three still existing pyramids today, who marvel at how a society over 4,500 years ago managed to build such a colossal structure.
But archeologists were able to slowly combine what this ancient civilization looked like and how ingenious and brilliant people have worked together, thanks to a find made more than half a century ago.
Amazon Prime’s “Secrets of Archaeology revealed some of those secrets. The 2014 series explained: “On this plateau, set on the edge of the desert, the story of the pyramids achieved its finest hour.
“It is here that we best appreciate the grandeur and majesty of these constructions, and the organizational skills and methods used to erect them.
“The workers here were organized into teams that hauled blocks of stones on huge sledges mounted on logs of wood. “Each team was made up of about 1,000 men organized along military lines and led by a master mason and various underlings.
The workers pulled together
“They were not slaves, they earned a regular wage, bed, and board and it is thanks to their work that these immense structures were ever completed.”
The series continued, explaining the clever tactics used by the ancient society to haul together in the building process. It added: “Even today, such imposing buildings would involve complex engineering problems.
“The Great Pyramid of Cheops, which was the first one to be built in Giza around 2500BC, has a base that covers over 12 acres (48,500 square meters). “More than 2,300,000 blocks of stone were needed to build the base and weighed between two and 200 tonnes each.
Evidence showed the workers were skilled, not slaves
“It may sound incredible, but this was once a lush green land, with neither desert nor buildings. “Irrigation canals linked the areas to the Nile, and some of the stones used in buildings were transported on these canals.”
The documentary went on to reveal how evidence of this was discovered more than 50 years ago. It added: “A boat made with cedarwood built almost 5,000 years ago was discovered here in 1954 near the Pyramid of Cheops, still in a perfect state of preservation.
Khufu’s boat was found in this hole
“Archaeologists found it belonged to the pharaoh Cheops himself, 140 feet long, equipped with 12 oars and was probably used by Cheops when he travelled along the Nile. “On those occasions, his subjects could get a glimpse of their Pharaoh and pay homage to him.”
At completion, the Great Pyramid was surfaced with white “casing stones” — slant-faced, but flat-topped, blocks of highly polished white limestone.
However, in 1303, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which were taken away 50 years later to be used in the building of mosques and fortresses in Cairo.
Many other theories have been proposed regarding the pyramid’s construction techniques, disagreeing on whether the blocks were dragged, lifted, or even rolled into place.
The Greeks believed that slave labour was used, but modern discoveries made at nearby workers’ camps associated with construction at Giza suggest it was built instead of thousands of skilled workers.
Czech archaeologist, Miroslav Verner, claimed that the labour was organized into a hierarchy, consisting of two gangs of 100,000 men, divided into five zaa or phyle of 20,000 men each, which may have been further divided according to the skills of the workers.
Small Sphinx Uncovered at Egypt’s Necropolis of Khumun
On Saturday, 14 December in the archeological area of Tuna El-Gebel at Minya, Upper Egypt, a small royal statue of a sphinx was uncovered.
A small royal statue of a sphinx uncovered in Tuna El-Gebel
The recently found sphinx of limestone stone has been revealed by SayedAbdel-Malek’s Egyptian Archeological Team.
Middle Egypt’s Director General of Antiquities Gamal El-Samastawy said the sphinx was about 35 cm tall and 55 cm width on Saturday.
In addition to pottery of different shapes and sizes, the Mission also found collections of ancient amulets.
The area of Tuna el Gebel is part of the archeological sites of the Minya governorate, which contain numerous ancient Egyptian treasures not yet revealed.
Tuna el-Gebel in the city of Mallawi was the necropolis of Khmun. It contains monuments from the Greek and Roman eras, as well as the Late Middle Ages.
The area hosts the Boundary Stelae of Akhenaton, catacombs of falcons, baboons and ibises, and the tombs of Petosiris and Isadora.
Tuna el-Gebel village is famous for having many archaeological tombs, which contributed greatly to the revival of archaeological and touristic life and helped drive Arab and foreign tourists to the region once again. It is an archaeological village located in Al Minya Governorate. It has a population of more than 20,000 people.
A unique royal bust of King Ramses II made of red granite was unearthed on a private land in Mit Rahina village in Giza by an Egyptian archaeological mission from the Ministry of Antiquities on Wednesday, December 11.
The newly discovered bust is emblazoned with the “Ka,” a symbol of power, life force and spirit.
King Ramses II bust is carved in red granite and depicts Ramses II wearing a wig with the symbol of the “Ka” over his head. The bust is 105 cm tall, 55 cm wide and 45 cm thick.
The mission discovered this unique bust during excavations on privately owned land in Giza, after the landowner was caught carrying out illegal excavation work at his land.
Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced that the uncovered King Ramses II bust is one of a kind because the only similar bust is one carved in wood and belongs to 13th Dynasty King Hor Awibre, which is now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The mission has also discovered a group of huge red granite and limestone blocks engraved with scenes showing Ramses II during the Heb-Sed religious ritual, which indicates that these blocks could belong to a great temple dedicated to the worship of the deity Ptah.
The bust and the blocks have been transferred to Mit Rahina open air museum for restoration, and excavations will continue at the site.
One of the main achievements of King Ramses II is building Abu Simbel temple to impress Egypt’s southern neighbors, and also to reinforce the status of the Egyptian religion in the area.
Abu Simbel was one of six rock temples erected in Nubia during the ruling period of Ramses II and its construction took 20 years from 1264 BC to 1244 BC.
Abu Simbel is made up of two temples. The smaller one was built for Queen Nefertari and has two statues of her and four pharaohs; each about 33 feet (10 meters) in height.
According to many scholars, this great temple was created to celebrate the victory of Ramses II over the Hittites at the Battle of Qadesh in 1274 BC. This means that the temple was situated on the border of the conquered lands of Nubia after many military campaigns were carried out by the Pharaoh against Nubia.
Buried Christian (and pagan) basilica discovered in Ethiopia’s ‘lost kingdom’
Recently, in an area of Ethiopia that once was home to the Aksumite Empire, Archeologists discovered the oldest known Christian Church in Subsaharan Africa.
Smithsonian magazine reported that the existence of an early basilica, built-in 313 around the time when Constantine legalized the Christian community, leads scholars to believe that this time the faith spreads into Ethiopia. It would become the first Christian kingdom in Aksum Africa.
I understand that this finding is ‘ the earliest physical evidence for a church in Ethiopia, [as well as all of sub-Saharan Africa,]” Aaron Butts, a professor of Semitic and Egyptian languages at Catholic University in Washington, told Smithsonian. Butts was not involved with the excavation.
In Beta Samati, close the modern border with Eritrea, the basilica was found at 70 miles southwest of the Red Sea. The name of the town means “house of the audience” in the local Tigrinya language.
The area is “home to temples built in a southern Arabian style dating back many centuries before the rise of Aksum, a clear sign of ancient ties to the Arabian Peninsula,” the magazine said.
“The temples reflect the influence of Sabaeans, who dominated the lucrative incense trade and whose power reached across the Red Sea in that era.”
The excavators’ biggest discovery was a massive building 60 feet long and 40 feet wide resembling the ancient Roman style of a basilica.
Developed by the Romans for administrative purposes, the basilica was adopted by Christians at the time of Constantine for their places of worship.
They also uncovered a stone pendant carved with a cross and incised with the ancient Ethiopic word “venerable,” as well as incense burners. Near the eastern basilica wall, the team came across an inscription asking “for Christ [to be] favorable to us.”
One of the striking finds from the early Christian church at Beta Samati is this pendant, decorated with a cross and a motto reading “venerable” in Ethiopia’s ancient Ge’ez
According to Ethiopian tradition, Christianity first came to the Aksum Empire in the 4th century, when a Greek-speaking missionary named Frumentius converted King Ezana, Smithsonian said. “Butts, however, doubts the historical reliability of this account, and scholars have disagreed over when and how the new religion reached distant Ethiopia.”
“This is what makes the discovery of this basilica so important,” he adds. “It is reliable evidence for a Christian presence slightly northeast of Aksum at a very early date.”
While the story of Frumentius may be apocryphal, other finds at the site underline how the spread of Christianity was intertwined with the machinations of commerce.
Stamp seals and tokens used for economic transactions uncovered by the archaeologists point to the cosmopolitan nature of the settlement.
A glass bead from the eastern Mediterranean and large amounts of pottery from Aqaba, in today’s Jordan, attest to long-distance trading.
Woldekiros added that the discoveries show that “long-distance trade routes played a significant role in the introduction of Christianity in Ethiopia.”
On Wednesday, December 11, an Egyptian archeological expedition from the Ministry of Antiquities revealed an unusual royal bust of King Ramses II made of red granite in a private area in the village of Mit Rahina, Giza.
The bust that has recently been discovered is emblazoned with the “Ka,” a symbol of strength, life force and spirit.
The King Ramses II bust is sculptured with red granite and shows Ramses II carrying the symbol of “Ka.” The bust has a length of 105 cm, a width of 55, and a thickness of 45 cm.
After the landowner was caught carrying out unlawfully excavating on his land, the mission team discovered this rare bust during excavations on private land in Giza.
The Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, announced that the uncovered King Ramses II bust is one of a kind because the only similar bust is one carved in wood and belongs to 13th Dynasty King Hor Awibre, which is now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The mission has also discovered a group of huge red granite and limestone blocks engraved with scenes showing Ramses II during the Heb-Sed religious ritual, which indicates that these blocks could belong to a great temple dedicated to the worship of the deity Ptah.
The bust and the blocks have been transferred to Mit Rahina open-air museum for restoration, and excavations will continue at the site.
One of the main achievements of King Ramses II is building Abu Simbel temple to impress Egypt’s southern neighbors, and also to reinforce the status of the Egyptian religion in the area.
Abu Simbel was one of six rock temples erected in Nubia during the ruling period of Ramses II and its construction took 20 years from 1264 BC to 1244 BC.
Abu Simbel is made up of two temples. The smaller one was built for Queen Nefertari and has two statues of her and four pharaohs; each about 33 feet (10 meters) in height.
According to many scholars, this great temple was created to celebrate the victory of Ramses II over the Hittites at the Battle of Qadesh in 1274 BC.
This means that the temple was situated on the border of the conquered lands of Nubia after many military campaigns were carried out by the Pharaoh against Nubia.
Archaeologists have finally found ancient Egyptian wax head cones
Many men with cone-shaped headgear were depicted in ancient Egyptian paintings but no actual representations are identified for a long time. Now, an international team of archaeologists reports the discovery of the first actual head cones at the city of Amarna.
Pharaoh Akhenaten rendered Amarna and it was only 15 years occupied (1347 – 1332 BC). But despite this brief existence, the city contains thousands of graves, including those of many non-elites.
The Amarna Project archeologists collaborate with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities to investigate them, shedding light on the ordinary people of ancient Egypt.
Their discovery in 2010 was unexpected: a grave with a head cone. Another was found in 2015. This finally confirmed the objects actually existed, which some researchers had been skeptical of.
Wherever the reasons are unknown, these cones are included in the burials, the Amarna cones have provided the first opportunity to investigate an important ancient Egyptian tradition that, until now, we weren’t even sure existed.
Ancient Egyptian art frequently depicted people wearing a cone-shaped headgear. For around 1,500 years (c. 1549-30 BC), paintings and carvings showed individuals wearing cones on their heads at banquets, at worship, and in the afterlife.
Despite this abundance of visual evidence, however, archaeologists had never found an actual head cone. This lack of material evidence even prompted some researchers to suggest that the cones never existed and that they were instead purely symbolic, like the halos given to religious figures in Christian art.
A selection of depictions of head cones in Ancient Egyptian art from Amarna
Now, an international team of archaeologists publishing in the latest issue of Antiquity, report the discovery of two head cones from cemeteries at the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna, confirming for the first time the physical existence of this unusual headwear.
The head cones were discovered in the cemeteries at the city of Amarna (called Akhetaten by the ancient Egyptians). This city was built by the pharaoh Akhenaten as a home for the cult of the sun god Aten, whose exclusive worship Akhenaten promoted instead of traditional Egyptian polytheism.
The city was abandoned around a decade after the pharaoh’s death, meaning the settlement was occupied for only 15 years, from 1347 to 1332 BC. Despite this short occupation, the city is extensive, spanning several square kilometers and featuring thousands of graves.
A reconstruction of a burial at the southern Amarna cemetery
The ruins of a pharaoh’s abandoned city attracted ancient looters, who ravaged all four cemeteries at the site. This left archaeologists with the difficult task of piecing together the disturbed burials.
Archaeologists from the Amarna Project, working with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, have been exploring this wealth of evidence since 2005. These excavations are helping to fill in gaps in knowledge created by the rapid excavations during the early days of Egyptology. The work is especially important for helping us to understand the lives of ordinary Egyptians, beyond the ruling elite.
Amongst these individuals were two people buried with head cones. One was a female, aged 20-29 years old at death, whilst the other was a 15-20-year-old of indeterminate sex.
Individual 150 in situ with a head cone
Archaeologists have long discussed the significance of head cones. Before this new discovery, some scholars argued that the cones did not exist as real objects but rather were symbols used in artistic representations. Others, however, suggested that they did exist but were made of materials that did not survive in the archaeological record. One popular hypothesis was that they were an unguent – pieces of fat or wax perfumed, perhaps with myrrh.
As the cone melted, the scent was released, with some ancient Egyptian literature suggesting that this process would purify the wearer.
The Amarna head cones were discovered in fragments, but archaeologists have been able to reconstruct their overall shape. Specialists were also able to use portable equipment to carry out several kinds of non-destructive spectroscopy on the cones.
This analysis reveals the cones were hollow and made of wax, most likely beeswax. However, contrary to expectations, there is little evidence they contained unguent.
Why the cones were included in these two burials is difficult to know. They may have been thought to purify the wearer, enhancing their spiritual powers to allow them to engage with the rituals and deities encountered in the afterlife. Another possibility is that they were connected with ideas of fertility and resurrection. Whatever their purpose and significance, the Amarna cones provide the first opportunity to investigate an important ancient Egyptian tradition that, until now, we weren’t even sure existed.
A reconstruction of the two cones, revealing they are hollow
1,700-Year-Old Sock Reveals The Height Of Fashion In The Days Of Ancient Egypt
All know how hard it is to try to find the lost sock. Just think about discovering a 1,700 years later. This is precisely what happened when this ancient Egyptian sock was first plucked in the early 1900s out of the trash dump.
The sock today helps researchers to learn about the mysteries of Egyptian fashion, development, and trade during the Late Antique period. How fitting that its match is still at large.
The colorful, vibrant sock dates from 300 A.D. And it is thought that it was meant for the left foot of a child.
It features the traditional Egyptian style of one compartment for the big toe and a larger one for the other four, which allowed the ancient Egyptians to wear their socks with their sandals.
The sock was first discovered in the 1913-1914 excavation of a landfill in the Egyptian city of Antinooupolis.
It is now in the hands of researchers at the British Museum of London where with the help of new, non-invasive technology, they can better unravel the sock’s history.
The researchers, who published their findings in PLOS One, used multispectral imaging (MSI), a technique which scans artifacts and detects small hints of colors, to analyze the sock.
MSI allowed the team to discover that the colorful, striped sock was created using only three dyes: madder (red), woad (blue), and weld (yellow).
One of the multispectral images of the sock.
Because the sock was only created with a few dyes, the scientists could determine just how innovative the ancient Egyptians were with their scarce resources and weaving processes.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the research is that it could be done so non-invasively, and consequently better preserve the delicate find.
“Previously, you would have to take a small piece of the material, from different areas,” Dr. Joanne Dyer, a scientist at the British Museum and lead author of the PLOS One study, reported.
“And this sock is from 300 A.D. It’s tiny, it’s fragile, and you would have to physically destroy part of this object. Whereas with both the [multispectral] imaging and other techniques, you have a very good preliminary indication of what these could be.”
Beyond the insight into Egyptian trends, the sock also told scientists about Egypt during the Late Antique period which lasted from 250 A.D. to 800 A.D and saw such events as the Arab conquest of the country.
“These events affect the economy, trade, access to materials, which is all reflected in the technical makeup of what people were wearing and how they were making these objects,” Dyer said.
It seems our fashion choices of old could tell us more than just the personal tastes of the wearer, but also about the everyday life of an ancient civilization.
This discovery perhaps also marks the first time in history when someone was happy to find just a single sock.
