Ancient Buddha Statue Discovered in Egypt

A 1,900-year-old statue of the Buddha — discovered at the ancient Egyptian port city of Berenike, on the coast of the Red Sea — likely belonged to a transplant from South Asia, according to archaeologists. 

The Buddha statue depicts Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in South Asia around 2,550 years ago. Born a prince, he would later renounce his worldly wealth and seek out enlightenment, eventually becoming the Buddha, a Sanskrit-derived word that means “the enlightened one,” according to Buddhist tradition. The religion he founded gradually spread around the world. 

The newfound statue dates to between A.D. 90 and 140, said Steven Sidebotham, a history professor at the University of Delaware who is co-director of the Berenike Project, told Live Science in an email. 

The 28-inch-tall (71 centimeters) statue shows the Buddha standing and holding parts of his robes in his left hand, representatives from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement.

A halo is shown behind him, with sunlight radiating downward. In addition to the statue, a separate Sanskrit inscription was found at Berenike, the ministry noted. 

The statue dates to a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt. There was considerable trade between Egypt and India during that time, the ministry noted, adding that ships from India would bring ivory, pepper and textiles, among other products, to Egypt. 

It’s possible that the Buddha statue was made locally by people from South Asia living in Berenike, Sidebotham said. While the Sanskrit inscription is damaged, it appears to be a dedication of some form and dates back to the time of the Roman emperor Marcus Julius Philippus (better known as “Philip the Arab”), who reigned from A.D. 244 to 249, Sidebotham said. 

Sidebotham and his colleagues are now in the process of publishing their finds from Berenike; more information will be released after publication, he noted. 

“The new Sanskrit inscription and associated finds now show clearly that there was a settled Indian merchant community, rather than just traders passing through,” Richard Salomon, professor emeritus of Sanskrit at the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in the finding, told Live Science.

Philip Almond, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Queensland in Australia who is not involved with the discovery, called it “a very exciting find.” Ancient historical records indicate that there were Indians living in Alexandria, Almond noted, and this discovery indicates that some of the Indians living in Egypt were Buddhists. 

The other co-directors of the Berenike Project are Rodney Ast, a researcher at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and Olaf Kaper(opens in new tab), an Egyptology professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

A permit for the project was granted by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities through the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology in Cairo.

An inscription containing 15 headless falcons and unknown ancient rituals found in an ancient Egyptian temple

Archaeologists have discovered a shrine containing previously unknown ancient rituals during excavations at Berenike, a Greco-Roman port in Egypt’s eastern desert.

The discovery was made by archaeologists from the Sikait Project led by Professor Joan Oller Guzman at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The study, which was recently published in the American Journal of Archaeology, describes the Sikait Project’s excavation of a religious complex from the Late Roman Period.

The religious complex, dubbed the “Falcon Shrine” by the researchers, dates from the Late Roman Period, which lasted from the fourth to sixth centuries AD.

During this time, the city was partially occupied and controlled by the Blemmyes, as indicated by the discovery of inscriptions on a stele in a small traditional Egyptian temple, which was adopted by the Blemmyes to their own belief system after the 4th century AD.

The Blemmyes were nomadic Eastern Desert people who appeared in written sources between the 7th and 8th centuries BC. The Greek term first appears in a poem by Theocritus and in Eratosthenes in the third century BC. The Blemmyes, according to Eratosthenes, lived with the Megabaroi in the land between the Nile and the Red Sea north of Mero.

They had occupied Lower Nubia and established a kingdom by the late 4th century. From inscriptions in the temple of Isis at Philae, a considerable amount is known about the structure of the Blemmyan state.

The most remarkable find in the shrine was around 15 falcons, most of them without their heads. Burial of falcons had already been found in the Nile Valley but this was the first time archaeologists discovered falcons buried within a temple and accompanied by eggs.

This discovery the team considers suggests a new previously unknown ancient ritual when compared to falcon burials in the Nile Valley.

Mummified headless falcons found in other areas were always just individuals, not a group, as in the shrine discovered at Berenike.

The shrine contained the following inscription: “It is improper to boil a head in here” which has been interpreted as a message barring people who enter the shrine from boiling the heads of the animals inside the temple.

“From its archaeological context, the stele almost certainly records an injunction associated with the falcon cult. The text forbade boiling the head of a bird within the area in which the stele was set up,” the researchers wrote in the study.

“All of these elements point to intense ritual activities combining Egyptian traditions with contributions from the Blemmyes, sustained by a theological base possibly related to the worshipping of the god Khonsu (the ancient Egyptian god of the Moon)”, said UAB researcher Professor Joan Oller Guzman.

Mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep ‘unwrapped’ for the first time in 3,500 years!

Egyptian scientists have digitally unwrapped the 3,500-year-old mummy of pharaoh Amenhotep I. For the first time, a team in Egypt used CT scans to see inside the burial wrappings of Pharaoh Amenhotep I.

The non-invasive research enabled scientists to reveal Amenhotep’s face and work out his age and health at the time of his death.

The remains of the pharaoh, who ruled approximately between 1525-1504 BC, were discovered in Deir Al Bahari in 1881 and had remained unwrapped until Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Cairo University professor Sahar Saleem launched an in-depth study in 2019.

The mummy of ancient Egypt’s former king is the only royal mummy in contemporary history that has not been opened by scientists or tomb thieves.

This isn’t due to some old curse frightening people away, but rather to Egyptologists’ refusal to damage the well-preserved decorations covering Amenhotep’s mummy.

Decorated with flower garlands and a wooden face mask, Amenhotep’s mummy was so fragile that archaeologists had never dared to expose the remains before.

The remains of the pharaoh, who ruled approximately between 1525-1504 BC, were discovered in Deir Al Bahari in 1881 and had remained unwrapped until Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Cairo University professor Sahar Saleem launched an in-depth study in 2019.

Hawass and Saleem used advanced X-ray technology, computed tomography scans, and digital software to map out the mummy in great detail, without stripping it of any of its strips.

The team also discovered that the king had been the first ruler to be embalmed with his forearms crossed in the so-called Osiris position.

In addition, they found amulets and a girdle festooned with gold beads under the mummy’s wrapping.

To continue the tradition of leaving pharaoh Amenhotep I undisturbed, scientists turned to three-dimensional CT (computed tomography) scanning to “digitally unwrap” his tomb.

“This fact that Amenhotep I’s mummy had never been unwrapped in modern times gave us a unique opportunity: not just to study how he had originally been mummified and buried, but also how he had been treated and reburied twice, centuries after his death, by High Priests of Amun,” says Dr. Sahar Saleem, professor of radiology at Cairo University and the radiologist of the Egyptian Mummy Project, in a media release.

The scans reveal the pharaoh was a relatively young man at the time of his death, being only 35 years old. He stood between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-7 and the team believes he was in good physical health when he died, apparently of natural causes.

Advanced imaging techniques reveal secrets of sealed ancient Egyptian animal coffins

Researchers from the British Museum have gained valuable insight into the contents of six sealed ancient Egyptian animal coffins using cutting-edge neutron tomography.

Lead researcher Daniel O’Flynn and his colleagues present the findings of their examination of six sealed ancient Egyptian animal coffins, all of which were dated between 650 and 250 BC, in a new article published in Scientific Reports.

It is thought that animals were sacrificed and mummified to honor the gods, some serving as offerings or even participating in rituals, while others served as physical manifestations of the gods.

The researchers examined the coffins’ interiors using the non-invasive neutron tomography technique to check for any signs of the animals that had been interred there.

They were able to detect actual biological materials in the coffins, which could be linked to specific animals known to have existed in Egypt during the first millennium BC, much to their delight.

This study’s findings were significant for two reasons. First, the study demonstrated that the animal coffins were just that—coffins—real coffins used to bury actual animals. As had been suspected but previously unprovable, the animal images engraved on the top of the boxes actually did represent the animals sealed inside.

Daniel O’Flynn of the British Museum, who led the study published in Scientific Reports, said: “The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of neutron tomography for the study of mummified remains inside sealed metal containers, providing evidence linking the animal figures on top of votive boxes to the concealed remains.”

The coffins, made of copper compounds, were discovered in various locations, including the ancient cities of Naucratis and Tell El Yehudiyeh. Respectively, the coffins bore figures of lizards, eels, and part-eel, part-cobra creatures with human heads.

The authors note that it is rare for such coffins to still be sealed. Inside the coffins, researchers found intact skulls similar to North African wall lizard species, broken-down bones, and textile fragments believed to be linen.

“Linen was commonly used in ancient Egyptian mummification, and we suspect it was wrapped around the animals before they were placed in the coffins,” explained Dr O’Flynn.

The authors found lead within the three coffins without loops, which they suggest may have been used to aid weight distribution within two of them and to repair a hole found in the other.

They speculate that lead may have been selected due to its status in ancient Egypt as a magical material, as previous research has proposed that lead was used in love charms and curses.

The study also posited that loops found on the exterior of three coffins may have been used to hang them from shrine or temple walls, statues or boats during religious processions, indicating the deep importance animals played in religious practices. While the heavier lead-containing coffins without loops may have been used for different purposes.

Cover Photo: An animal coffin, surmounted by a human-headed part-eel, part-cobra creature wearing a double crown, is one of six sealed ancient Egyptian animal coffins researchers have studied.

Tomb of Amun Temple Steward Discovered in Saqqara

An archaeological mission from the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden (RMO) and the Egyptian Museum in Turin (Museo Egizio) uncovered the remains of Panehsy’s tomb, the steward of Amun Temple in the early Ramesside period, along with a collection of smaller chapels in the Saqqara Necropolis.

“The new discovery sheds new light on the development of Saqqara Necropolis during the Ramesside period and introduces new individuals that were yet unknown in the historical sources,” said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. 

The tomb of Panehsy, which has the form of a freestanding temple with a gate entrance, an inner courtyard with columned porticoes, and a shaft to the underground burial chambers, is situated north to the tomb of the famous Maya, the high-ranking official from the time of Tutankhamun.

The mud brick walls of the upper structure are 1.5 metres high and embellished with decorated limestone revetment slabs.

These show the colourful reliefs of the tomb owner and his wife Baia, who was the singer of Amun, along with several priests and offering bearers.

Christian Greco, director of the Museo Egizio in Turin, said the most beautiful representation depicts Panehsy worshipping the cow goddess Hathor. Beneath it, Panehsy and Baia sit together before an offering table.

A bald man with leopard skin around his shoulders stands opposite the couple. This was the priest who took care of their mortuary cult, pouring out water.

Lara Weiss, a curator of Leiden’s Egyptian and Nubian collection, pointed out that during excavation work, the mission stumbled upon four smaller tomb chapels located to the east of Panehsy’s tomb, one of which is of the gold foil-maker of the treasury of the Pharaoh Yuyu.

The tombs are very well preserved, and their walls bear high-quality, detailed, and stunning decorations. Although it is a relatively small tomb chapel, four generations of Yuyu’s family were venerated in beautiful colourful reliefs showing Yuyu’s funerary procession and the reviving of his mummy to live in the afterlife as well as the veneration of the Hathor cow and the barque of the local Saqqara god Sokar.

Another notable find was made at the eastern side of Panehsy’s tomb, where a yet anonymous chapel with a very rare sculptured representation of the tomb’s owner and his family was discovered.

The artistic style of the representation might have been inspired by the statues neighbouring the tomb of Maya and Merit.

The archaeological mission aims to understand the history of Saqqara, one of the most important burial sites of ancient Egypt.

The Leiden Museum conducted research in Saqqara together with the Egypt Exploration Society of London from 1975 to 1998. Since 1999, Leiden University has been a partner in the project, and in 2015 the Museo Egizio in Turin joined the mission.

Ancient Wooden Tags Offer Clues to Egypt’s Climate

Swiss scientists are reconstructing the climate of the ancient world using small wooden artefacts hung on mummified remains.

Throughout history, the earth’s climate has undergone natural fluctuations. Although insignificant compared with the current crisis, these fluctuations would nevertheless have been enough to make and unmake empires.

According to recent studies, they would have contributed first to the rise of the Roman Empire and then to its fall. Basel- and Geneva-based scientists funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) are endeavouring to reconstruct the climate of Roman-governed ancient Egypt in a bid to better understand the effects it had on the history of a region or empire.

The team is aided in its tasks by remarkable “Rosetta stones” in the form of wooden labels attached to Roman-era mummies. Before sending their deceased loved one to the embalmer, families would attach a label bearing the dead person’s name, the names of their parents and sometimes a short religious message to the body.

The labels were a way of identifying the deceased, who would no longer be recognisable once wrapped in their bandages, and ensuring that embalmers did not mix bodies up.

A wealth of information in museums

The wooden labels provide more information than just the identity of Pkyris, the defunct son of Besis and Senpnouth, or the late Tsenpetese, daughter of Panahib. They also contain precious information about the climate at the time because, like all wooden artefacts, they have growth rings.

Each ring marks the passing of one year. Good years are indicated by broad rings, since the tree grew faster. Narrower rings can be evidence of years of drought.

A few pieces of wood are obviously not enough in themselves to reconstruct the climate of the time. It would be necessary to observe the same pattern in several dozen samples at least.

The greater the number of overlaps, the more reliable the conclusions. In addition, to recreate the subtleties of climate fluctuation, it is essential to compare the growth rings of several tree species with different responses to climatic conditions such as drought or extreme heat.

“That’s why mummy labels are ideal for our purposes”, explains François Blondel, an archaeologist at the University of Geneva. “Not only are there thousands of them in museums around the world, they’re made from lots of different tree species, such as pine, cypress, cedar and juniper”.

Dating climate events

In the International Journal of Wood Culture, the researcher analysed the ring sequences of over 300 labels. He then identified the overlaps – in other words, the cases where ring sequences match up with each other.

These overlaps provide an initial outline of what the climate used to be like in the eastern Mediterranean, in modern-day Lebanon, the Greek islands or the mouth of the Nile – the areas where the trees were harvested.

There are a few good years here and an unfortunate succession of droughts there, but the actual dates are still unclear, François Blondel explains. “We can’t yet assign a precise date to the rings and the events they record”.

The next step going forward will therefore be to locate these events in history. With luck, the scientists will find a datable specimen. Then, by looking for overlaps with other labels from the same tree species and region, they should be able to pinpoint the exact date. If not, they will have to resort to radiocarbon dating.

By combining several samples of wood taken along the rings of the same specimen, it is possible to statistically reduce dating uncertainty – to virtually zero in the best-case scenario.

The scientists still have to find the right specimens and, above all, obtain permission from museums for invasive radiocarbon analysis.

The search has only just started, explains Sabine Huebner. As leader of the SNSF project that is trying to reconstruct the climate of Roman Egypt, the Professor of Ancient History at the University of Basel coordinates the work of historians, archaeologists and climatologists.

“Mummy labels are just a proxy tool that we are using to reconstruct the climate of Roman Egypt, the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, and understand how climate fluctuations influenced changes in society, government and the economy”. It is a perfect example of how questions raised by ancient history can be of pressing importance to the modern-day world.