Researchers use 21st-century methods to record 2,000 years of ancient graffiti in Egypt

Simon Fraser University researchers are learning more about ancient graffiti—and their intriguing comparisons to modern graffiti—as they produce a state-of-the-art 3D recording of the Temple of Isis in Philae, Egypt.

Working with the University of Ottawa, the researchers published their early findings in Egyptian Archaeology and have returned to Philae to advance the project.

“It’s fascinating because there are similarities with today’s graffiti,” says SFU geography professor Nick Hedley, co-investigator of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)-funded project.

“The iconic architecture of ancient Egypt was built by those in positions of power and wealth, but the graffiti records the voices and activities of everybody else. The building acts like a giant sponge or notepad for generations of people from different cultures for over 2,000 years.”

As an expert in spatial reality capture, Hedley leads the team’s innovative visualization efforts, documenting the graffiti, their architectural context, and the spaces they are found in using advanced methods like photogrammetry, raking light, and laser scanning. “I’m recording reality in three-dimensions — the dimensionality in which it exists,” he explains.

With hundreds if not thousands of graffiti, some carved less than a millimeter deep on the temple’s columns, walls, and roof, precision is essential.

Typically, the graffiti would be recorded through a series of photographs — a step above hand-drawn documents — allowing researchers to take pieces of the site away and continue working.

Sabrina Higgins, an SFU archaeologist and project co-investigator, says photographs and two-dimensional plans do not allow the field site to be viewed as a dynamic, multi-layered, and evolving space.

“The techniques we are applying to the project will completely change how the graffiti, and the temple, can be studied,” she says.

Hedley is moving beyond basic two-dimensional imaging to create a cutting-edge three-dimensional recording of the temple’s entire surface.

This will allow the interior and exterior of the temple, and the graffiti, to be viewed and studied at otherwise impossible viewpoints, from virtually anywhere— without compromising detail.

This three-dimensional visualization will also enable researchers to study the relationship between a figural graffito, any graffiti that surrounds it, and its location in relation to the structure of temple architecture.

While this is transformative for viewing and studying the temple and its inscriptions, Hedley points to the big-picture potential of applying spatial reality capture technology to the field of archaeology, and beyond.

“Though my primary role in this project is to help build the definitive set of digital wall plans for the Mammisi at Philae, I’m also demonstrating how emerging spatial reality capture methods can fundamentally change how we gather and produce data and transform our ability to interpret and analyze these spaces. This is a space to watch!” says Hedley.

Researchers Study Severed Hands Uncovered in Egypt

In 2011, archaeologists excavating a site in northern Egypt known as Tell el-Dab’a came across a grisly scene. As they probed a series of pits outside the city’s palace walls, 12 skeletal hands reached back at them.

The dismembered hands, researchers reported last week in Scientific Reports, are likely a cache of battlefield trophies—prizes lopped from enemies’ bodies and exchanged for gold in a ritual known as the “gold of honor.” Egyptian texts and wall carvings describe the custom, the researchers note, but these hands represent the first physical evidence of it.

“It’s very nice evidence,” says Isabelle Crevecoeur, a physical anthropologist at CNRS, the French national research agency, who was not involved with the study. “From the biological and anthropological evidence, there’s no doubt it was part of a ritual.”

The hands were dated to 1500 B.C.E., when Tell el-Dab’a was known as Avaris and briefly served as the capital of ancient Egypt. When Manfred Bietak, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences who has led digs at Tell el-Dab’a for decades, first saw the remains, he immediately thought of the trophy-taking ritual.

According to ancient accounts, Egyptian warriors presented the hands of slain enemies to the pharaoh, who rewarded them with gold necklaces or golden pendants in the shape of flies.

Some researchers had an alternative explanation: that the severed appendages represented a brutal punishment for criminals, perhaps thieves. There is no written or pictorial evidence of such punishments in ancient Egypt, however, and the new analysis of the Tell el-Dab’a hands supports the trophy-ritual hypothesis. For one, the hands were carefully cut from the arm. Any bones below the wrist had been removed, leaving just the hand and fingers.

“They were all prepared properly to look just like a hand should,” says German Archaeological Institute paleopathologist Julia Gresky, who led the study.

She and colleagues found no cutmarks on the bones, suggesting an almost surgical effort went into preparing them. That makes a convincing case for ritualistic amputation, not barbaric punishment, Crevecouer says. “No signs of cutting is a sign that they did it very carefully, not with an ax or something. It’s delicate work. That, for me, is a good argument they did it for a ritual.”

The care also suggests the hands were removed after death, not hacked from living prisoners. They were probably severed after rigor mortis–a tightening of the tendons in the hours after death–had passed, Gresky argues. Otherwise, it would have been difficult to cut the tendons connecting hand to arm without leaving marks on the bones.

After they were removed and modified, eight of the hands were placed carefully in a shallow pit, with several more hands laid into another pit less than 1 meter away. “If it was punishment, the hand would have just been thrown away,” Gresky says. “But they really took care with them and placed them nicely.” Located just in front of the city’s central palace, the pits would have been visible from the throne room, suggesting the pharaoh prized the hands—and supporting the notion that they were a war trophy, the researchers note.

Fingers are among the first parts of the body to decompose and fall apart, so finding intact hands suggests they were all deposited in a single event or ceremony, rather than one at a time. “Finding articulated bones means the deposits must have been made very quickly, and then protected,” Crevecoeur says. “The hand was still fleshy when it was buried–otherwise it would have fallen apart.”

The “gold of honor” ritual was probably introduced to Egypt by interlopers known as the Hyksos, Bietak says. These invaders–who perhaps came from the eastern Mediterranean–conquered Egypt around 1640 B.C.E. and controlled the region for about a century, ruling from Avaris. They introduced Egyptians to chariots and new types of weapons, such as slings and distinctive battleaxes.

Bietak thinks they also introduced the custom of taking enemies’ hands as trophies. Later in Egypt, the ritual appears to have become standard practice. Ahmose I, the pharaoh who eventually forced the last of the Hyksos out of Egypt, “had a heap of hands depicted on the wall of his temple at Abydos,” Bietak says.

The custom both honored the pharaoh and inflicted punishment beyond the grave. Since the ancient Egyptians believed one’s body had to be intact in order to pass into the next world, severing the right hand would have disfigured their enemies’ souls as well as their bodies, barring them from the afterlife.

Digital Image Depicts 30,000-Year-Old Egyptian

A lifelike facial approximation of a man who lived 30,000 years ago in what is now Egypt may offer clues about human evolution.

In 1980, archaeologists unearthed the man’s skeletal remains at Nazlet Khater 2, an archaeological site in Egypt’s Nile Valley. Anthropological analysis revealed that the man was between 17 and 29 years old when he died, stood approximately 5 feet, 3 inches (160 centimeters) tall and was of African ancestry.

The skeleton is the oldest example of Homo sapiens remains found in Egypt and one of the oldest in the world, according to a study published March 22.

However, little else was known about him other than that he was buried alongside a stone ax.

Now, more than 40 years later, a team of Brazilian researchers has created a facial approximation of the man using dozens of digital images they collected while viewing his skeletal remains, which are part of the collection at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. 

“The skeleton has most of the bones preserved, although there have been some losses, such as the absence of ribs, hands, [the] middle-inferior part of the right tibia [shin bone] and [the] lower part of the left tibia, as well as the feet,” first aut, an archaeologist with the Ciro Flamarion Cardoso Archaeology Museum in Brazil, told Live Science in an email. “But the main structure for facial approximation, the skull, was well preserved.”

One characteristic of the skull that stood out to the researchers was the jaw and how it differed from more modern mandibles. A portion of the skull was also missing, but the team copied and mirrored it using the opposite side of the skull and used data points from computerized tomography (CT) scans from living virtual donors. 

“The skull, in general terms, has a modern structure, but part of it has archaic elements, such as the jaw, which is much more robust than that of modern men,” study co-researcher Cícero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert, told Live Science in an email. “When I observed the skull for the first time, I was impressed with that structure and at the same time curious to know how it would look after approaching the face.”

By digitally stitching together the images in a process known as photogrammetry, the researchers created two virtual 3D models of the man.

The first was a black-and-white image with his eyes closed in a neutral state, and the second was a more artistic approach featuring a young man with tousled dark hair and a trimmed beard.

“In general, people think that facial approximation works like in Hollywood movies, where the end result is 100% compatible with the person in life,” Moraes said. “In reality, it’s not quite like that. What we do is approximate what could be the face, with available statistical data and the resulting work is a very simple structure.

“However, it is always important to humanize the individual’s face when working with historical characters, since, by complementing the structure with hair and colors, the identification with the public will be greater, arousing interest and — who knows — a desire to study more about the specific subject or archeology [and] history as a whole,” he added.

The researchers hope that providing a look at this ancient man could help archaeologists better understand how humans have evolved over time.

“The fact that this individual is over 30,000 years old makes it important for understanding human evolution,” Santos said.

Thousands of Mummified Ram’s Heads Uncovered in Abydos

Excavation work carried out by an American mission from New York University at the temple of Ramses II in Abydos has stumbled upon a menagerie of mummified animals that provides previously undocumented evidence of cultic worship through the ages.

The most significant find at the site is over 2,000 mummified heads of rams from the Ptolemaic period along with other mummified ewes, dogs, wild goats, cows, gazelles and mongooses, said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The mummified remains, some still in their linen wrappings, were found stored in one of the recently discovered magazines within the temple’s northern precinct, Waziri added.

Sameh Iskander, head of the mission, noted that the discovery of this large number of mummified rams, presumably as votive offerings, placed inside the temple points to an unprecedented rams’ cultic practice in Abydos during the Ptolemaic period. It indicates that the memory of Ramses II was still revered in Abydos a thousand years after his time (1303-1213 BC).

The mission also discovered a large palatial structure with an unusual architectural layout with walls about five metres thick, which appears for the first time in Abydos, and dates to the end of the Sixth Dynasty (c.2181 BC) of the Old Kingdom.

“This structure will provide important, multifaceted and spectacular information on the activities of the Old Kingdom in Abydos, opening up major new perspectives that will contribute to reestablish the sense of the ancient landscape of Abydos before the construction of the Ramses II temple,” Iskander said.

Mohamed Abdel-Badei, head of the central department of Upper Egypt Antiquities, said that the mission was also able to clear the temple’s northern enclosure walls and its various structures, which clearly defines the boundary of the temple’s domain and helps us better understand the daily life in the precinct, its administration and cultic activities.

This will lead to reconsidering the image of the temple and its details as perceived by earlier research since the temple’s discovery over 150 years ago.

The mission also recovered a number of statues, papyri, remains of ancient trees, leather garments and shoes.

The new discoveries contain a wealth of information that drastically expands our knowledge of the temple’s site, located along the Nile more than 400 kilometres south of Cairo, to a period spanning over two millennia, from the Sixth Dynasty to the Ptolemaic period.

Ancient Egyptian pharaoh-sphinx statues unearthed at sun temple

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered broken statues of ancient royalty at a sun temple in Heliopolis, an archaeological site that was once a major city near what is now Cairo. 

The stone-carved fragments include depictions of Ramesses II (reign circa 1279 B.C. to 1213 B.C.), Ramesses IX (reign circa 1126 B.C. to 1108 B.C), Horemheb (reign circa 1323 B.C. to 1295 B.C.) and Psamtik II (reign 595 B.C. to 589 B.C.), the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement released March 20. 

Sun temples are found at a number of sites in Egypt and are dedicated to Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god, but the sun temple at Heliopolis was of particular importance. (Heliopolis is a Greek name; the Egyptian name was Iunu.) 

According to ancient Egyptian belief, Heliopolis is where “the world was created, with the first sunrise,” excavation dig leader Dietrich Raue, the director of the Cairo department of the German Archaeological Institute, told Live Science in an email.

“Here the connection of kingship to the creator and sun god was celebrated,” Raue said, noting that pharaohs constructed statues, obelisks, and other structures at Heliopolis to legitimize their rule and honor the sun god. 

“Serving the gods was one of the major duties of ancient Egyptian kings, and dedicating statues is a part of this,” Raue explained. “Ideally, no ruler of Egypt should be in office without the blessing of the sun god.” 

The newly discovered statue fragments, which show the heads of the pharaohs on sphinxes, would have been placed in front of gates or beside obelisks at the sun temple, Raue said. At some point in antiquity, the statues were destroyed and reused as building materials, he added.

Live Science contacted scholars not involved with the excavation to get their thoughts. “The abundant statuary material found by the mission testify of the long-lasting importance of the site in pharaonic [times],” Massimiliano Nuzzolo, an Egyptologist with the Polish Academy of Sciences who is studying a sun temple at Abu Ghurab in Egypt, told Live Science in an email.

The pharaoh-sphinx findings also reveal “the wish of the kings of the second and first millennium [B.C.] to leave a tangible sign of their worship for the sun god Ra in one of the main places of Egyptian civilization,” Nuzzolo added.

Peter Brand, a history professor who specializes in Egyptology at the University of Memphis, said that there is much we still don’t know about Heliopolis. For instance, while Ramesses II was a prominent pharaoh who expanded Egypt’s empire, it’s not clear if he rebuilt parts of this sun temple or continued using an older one.

“Archeologists have only scratched the surface of this area,” Brand told Live Science in an email. “Much of its rich and complex history over the course of three millennia of pharaonic history patiently await[s] discovery beneath the desert sands.”

Scientists reveal new discovery inside the Pyramid of Khufu

An Egyptian pyramid for 4,500 years is still spilling secrets. After a years-long project using modern technology to reveal the secrets inside the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that is still standing, a once-hidden corridor inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Great Pyramid of Giza) has been identified.

An international research team used a cosmic ray imaging method to analyze a cavity discovered behind the pyramid’s north face in 2016. Their findings were announced at a news conference with Egyptian officials.

“This discovery, in my opinion, is the most important discovery of the 21st Century,” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s former minister of antiquities, told reporters outside the pyramid.

The corridor – on the northern side of the Pyramid of Khufu – was discovered using modern scanning technology.

It measures 9 meters (nearly 30 feet) in length and is 2 meters (over 6 feet) wide, perched above the main entrance of the pyramid.

Archaeologists have not yet ascertained the function of the chamber, which is not accessible from the outside. In 2017, scientists announced the discovery of another sealed-off corridor, a 30-meter chamber – or about 98 feet – also inside the Pyramid of Khufu.

The corridor, officials said, adding that it was most likely designed to help relieve the weight of the vast structure, which was built as royal burial chambers around 2560 B.C.

The pyramid, also known as Khufu’s Pyramid, was built by Khufu, a 4th Dynasty pharaoh who ruled from 2509 to 2483 B.C., on the Giza plateau outside of Cairo.

“The discovery today tells us there is something important to be discovered soon under that tunnel, which could be the real burial chamber of Khufu,” Hawass said.

The most recent find is a part of the global “ScanPyramids” project, which was initiated by Egypt’s antiquities ministry in October 2015 and aims to peer inside the enormous structures without using invasive drilling techniques.

Since there is disagreement among experts regarding how the pyramids were built, even relatively small discoveries are of great interest. To increase tourism, a key source of foreign currency for the cash-strapped Middle Eastern nation, authorities frequently publicly tout discoveries.