Egypt Archaeologists Discover 18,000 Notes Describing Lives of Ancient Civilisation

Archaeologists from the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Tübingen and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities have unearthed a collection of more than 18,000 ostraca (inscribed pottery fragments) in the ancient Egyptian town of Athribis, near to the modern city of Sohag, Egypt. The artefacts document names, purchases of food and everyday objects, and even writings from a school.

Ostraca (plural for ostracon) are pottery fragments used as surfaces for writing or drawing.

They were used as notepads for private letters, laundry lists, records of purchases, and copies of literary works.

By extension, the term is applied to flakes of limestone which were employed for similar purposes.

“In ancient times, ostraca were used in large quantities as writing material, inscribed with ink and a reed or hollow stick (calamus),” explained Professor Christian Leitz, a researcher with the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the University of Tübingen, and his colleagues from the Athribis Project, an archaeological and philological endeavour investigating the ancient Egyptian town of Athribis.

The archaeologists uncovered a collection of more than 18,000 ostraca in the ruins of Athribis.

“These ostraca provide a variety of insights into the everyday life of Athribis,” they said.

“Around 80% of the potsherds are inscribed in Demotic, the common administrative script in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, which developed from Hieratic after 600 BCE.”

“Among the second most common finds are ostraca with Greek script, but we also came across inscriptions in Hieratic, hieroglyphic and — more rarely — Coptic and Arabic scripts.”

The researchers also found pictorial ostraca with various figurative representations, including animals such as scorpions and swallows, humans, deities from the nearby temple, even geometric figures.

“The contents of the ostraca vary from lists of various names to accounts of different foods and items of daily use,” they said.

“A surprisingly large number of sherds could be assigned to an ancient school.”

“There are lists of months, numbers, arithmetic problems, grammar exercises and a ‘bird alphabet’ — each letter was assigned a bird whose name began with that letter.”

“Several hundreds of ostraca also contain writing exercises that we classified as punishment,” they added.

“They are inscribed with the same one or two characters each time, both on the front and back.”

Autopsy Unmasks King Tut’s True Face, and It Isn’t Pretty

King Tutankhamun was a hobbled, weak teenager with a cleft palate and club foot. And he probably has his parents to blame. The mother and father of the legendary boy pharaoh were actually brother and sister. The startling discovery was revealed today by a team led by Egyptian antiquities expert Dr Zahi Hawass. They identified the mummies of both his parents and both of his grandparents by studying DNA samples over two years.

For a long time, there were strong suspicions that he was murdered because he had a hole in the back of his head. But this is now believed to be due to the mummification process and scientists think the new research points to him dying from complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria.

The revelations are in stark contrast to the popular image of a graceful boy-king as portrayed by the dazzling funerary artefacts in his tomb that later introduced much of the world to the glory of ancient Egypt.

King Tut has fascinated the world ever since his ancient tomb was unearthed by the British archaeologist Dr Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. The treasure in his tomb included a 24.2lb solid gold death mask encrusted with lapis lazuli and semi-precious stones. Rumours of a curse arose after Dr Carter’s benefactor Lord Carnarvon died suddenly a few months after the tomb was opened, even though Dr Carter went on to live another 16 years.

King Tut was known to be the son of the ‘heretic’ pharaoh Akhenaten, who tried to reform the Egyptian religion during his rule. But the identity of his mother had been shrouded in mystery – until now. The fact that his mother and father were brother and sister may seem bizarre today but incest was rife among the boy king’s family because pharaohs were believed to be descended from the gods.

Therefore it was an acceptable way of retaining the sacred bloodline. King Tut’s own wife Ankhesenpaaten, was his half-sister as they shared the same father. They were married when he was just ten. But Dr Hawass’ team found generations of inbreeding took their toll on King Tut – the last of his great dynasty.

The bone disease he suffered runs in families and is more likely to be passed down if two first-degree relatives marry and have children, the study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows.

They described him as: ‘A young but frail king who needed canes to walk.’

This explains the presence of more than 100 canes in his tomb, which he would have needed in the afterlife. A sudden leg fracture possibly introduced by a fall might have resulted in a life-threatening condition when a malaria infection occurred,’ the JAMA article said.

Tut, who became pharaoh at the age of ten in 1333 BC, ruled for just nine years until his death. He was the last of the royal line from the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom. The cause of King Tut’s death has long been disputed among historians, with many speculating that he was murdered.

Theories that he was assassinated stemmed from the fact that he was the last ruler of his dynasty and had a hole in the back of his head. However, in 2005 Dr Hawass announced his team had found no evidence for a blow to the back of the head, and the hole was from the mummification process. King Tut was succeeded by the high priest Ay for four years – who also married his widow Ankhesenpamon.

Ay was followed by the military leader Horemheb who ruled for 26 years until he ceded power to Ramses, founder of the 19th dynasty. The researchers studied 16 mummies from the Valley of the Kings. They revealed that beneath the golden splendour in which they lived, ancient Egypt’s royals were as vulnerable as the lowliest peasant to disease.

Three other mummies besides tuts showed repeated malaria infections and incestuous marriages only worsened their maladies. However, analysis of King Tut’s family disproved speculation his family suffered from rare disorders that gave them feminine attributes and misshapen bones, including Marfan syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that can result in elongated limbs.

The theories arose from the artistic style and statues of the period, which showed the royal men with prominent breasts, elongated heads and flared hips.

‘It is unlikely that either Tutankhamun or Akhenaten actually displayed a significantly bizarre or feminine physique,’ the team said. One of the most impressive-looking mummies who was studied was King Tut’s grandmother, Queen Tiye.

She was the chief wife of Amenhotep III and mother of King Tut’s father Akhenaten. She was the first queen to figure so prominently beside her husband in statues and temple reliefs. Queen Tiye held much political influence at court and acted as an adviser to her son after the death of her husband. There has been speculation that her eldest son Prince Tuthmose was in fact Moses who led the Israelites into the Promised Land.

A lock of her hair was found in a miniature coffin in King Tut’s tomb. Her tomb was identified by matching the labelled hair in Tut’s tomb with the well-preserved hair on her mummy. The ancient Egyptians were very concerned with maintaining their hair to promote their social status. They devised remedies for baldness and greying and regularly washed and scented their hair. Adults sometimes wore hairpieces and had elaborate styles.

The hairpiece found by Queen Tiye is believed to have been made up of her own hair. It has not disintegrated because of the mummification process and the dry conditions within the tomb. Hair does not continue to grow after death, instead, the skin retracts around the follicles as it dries, making the hair jut out more prominently.

King Tutankhamun has long been big business.

A 1970s Tut exhibit drew millions of visitors to U.S. museums, and a popular revival including artefacts from his tomb and others’ has been travelling around the United States for the past several years and is currently at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum. Egypt’s economy depends a great deal on tourism, which brings in around $10billion a year in revenue. The King Tut exhibit at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum is one of the crown jewels of the country’s ancient past and features a stunning array of treasures including Tut’s most iconic relic – the golden funeral mask.

Another tourist destination is Tut’s tomb tucked in the Valley of the Kings amid Luxor’s desert hills. In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered it and the trove of fabulous gold and precious stones inside, propelling the once-forgotten pharaoh into global stardom. Hundreds of tourists come daily to the tomb to see Tut’s mummy, which has been on display there since 2007.

Though historically Tut was a minor king, the grander image ‘is embedded in our psyche’ and the new revelations won’t change that, said James Phillips, a curator at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History.

‘Reality is reality, but it’s not going to change his place in the folk heroism of popular culture,’ Phillips said. ‘The way he was found, what was found in his grave – even though he was a minor king, it has excited the imagination of people since 1922.’

Ancient Egyptian bird mummy turns out to be human

A group of UK-based researchers discovered the remains of a stillborn human fetus with an unusual condition in a 2,100-year-old Egyptian mummy long thought to be that of a hawk.

The mummy of an ancient bird was found at the Maidstone Museum in the United Kingdom. Its funerary casement featured a gilt-painted hawk’s face and was just the right size for a bird.

Horus, the Egyptian falcon-headed god, was also mentioned in the hieroglyphics on it.

All these decorations combined with the common practice of animal mummification in ancient Egypt led to the misidentification of the mummy.

As a result, it was stored with other animal mummies without conducting CT scans or special attention.

However, the error came to light when the museum decided to scan their resident female mummy as well as a bunch of other animal mummies kept in storage including “EA 493 — Mummified Hawk Ptolemaic Period.”

The images of the scan revealed arms crossed over the chest and suggested that there was something else inside — a human or maybe a monkey — but not a bird for sure.

They called bioarchaeologist Andrew Nelson from Western University, London, to take a closer look.

Nelson and his interdisciplinary team conducted high-resolution micro-CT scans to virtually unwrap the mummy and found that it contains a severely malformed male human fetus, stillborn between 23 and 28 weeks of gestation.

The fetus, as the researchers revealed, suffered from major spinal abnormalities and a rare birth condition called anencephaly, wherein the brain and the skull fail to develop properly.

While the images revealed the mummified fetus had well-formed toes and fingers, the skull bore severe signs of deformities. “The whole top part of his skull isn’t formed,” Nelson said in a statement, noting that the brain of the fetus would not have formed in that scenario.

“The arches of the vertebrae of his spine haven’t closed. His earbones are at the back of his head.”

The work, as the researchers said, makes it the second mummified fetus to have been identified with anencephaly as well as the most studied fetal mummy in history.

“The family’s response was to mummify this individual, which was very rare. In ancient Egypt, fetuses tended to be buried in pots, below house floors, in various ways,” Nelson added.

“There are only about six or eight known to have been mummified. So this was a very special individual.”

The findings also provide important clues into the diet of the baby’s mother and hint at a lack of foods containing folic acid, which plays a critical role in the development of the neural tube and can lead to anencephaly, if not provided sufficiently.

“It would have been a tragic moment for the family to lose their infant and to give birth to a very strange-looking fetus, not a normal-looking fetus at all,” the researcher concluded.

An Archaeologist Found The Ancient Tomb of The God Osiris?! – Right Under The Sphinx

Every culture has its legends and its myths. Most of us are familiar with the legend of King Arthur, the greatest king in British legends, and his queen Guinevere. Likewise, the mythology surrounding Osiris is one of the most prominent tales to come out of Egypt.

Osiris is the ancient Egyptian god of the dead and the ruler of the underworld. As is true of many religions, the myths surrounding this figure are complex and varied.

He was the god of immortality; he was supposed to judge the dead, only allowing the morally worth into his afterlife; he was seen as a god of regeneration and rebirth, and he held a number of other roles that varied according to the cult.

But regardless of how he was seen, he was widely regarded as one of the more powerful Gods. And now, archaeologists have discovered an ancient tomb that appears to be directly modelled according to the mythical Tomb of Osiris.

This find was made by a Spanish-Italian archaeological team, in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.

This tomb was described by Egyptian lore in the necropolis of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, a  funerary complex that is part of the Deir el-Bahari (the Northern Monastery) that is located on the West Bank at Thebes.

The tomb was initially uncovered back in 1887 by Philippe Virey. And in the 20th century there were some cursory efforts to map the main structure; however, Tomb Kampp -327, which you can see marked in red below, was never outlined.

The newly identified Osiris complex includes a shaft that connects to multiple chambers that hold a number of interesting artefacts.

One such area has a wall relief that shows a series of demons holding knives, which were placed there in order to protect the bodies of the dead.

Another chamber (the central vaulted chapel) has an emerald skinned deity sitting and facing a staircase with a 29.5-foot (9-meter) shaft in it.

The shaft connects to another room with a second shaft that goes down for 19.6 feet (6 meters) into two rooms. It’s a little bit like a maze, as you can see below.

The exact date of this structure’s creation is not known; however, researchers believe the tomb complex dates back to the 25th dynasty (760 – 656 BC) or the 26th dynasty (672 – 525 BC), based on a comparison to similar tombs that contain Osirian elements.

Ancient Egypt archaeologists find 30 mummies in a fire-scorched sacrificial chamber

Hidden within a fire-scorched structure near the Nile River in Aswan, Egypt, archaeologists discovered the entrance to a 2,000-year-old family tomb. Inside, they found 30 mummies of various ages, including several arthritis-ridden elderly people, as well as children and a newborn.

Though the archaeologists have yet to date the tomb, they suspect a single family buried their dead in it over generations spanning the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (the first century B.C. to the second or third century A.D.)

According to Patrizia Piacentini, a professor of Egyptology and Egyptian Archaeology at the University of Milan, who was co-director of the excavation.

This new tomb is one of more than 300 recently discovered surrounding the Mausoleum of the Aga Khan, a pink granite structure built in the 20th century that sits on top of a slight hill along the Nile River.

But while most of the other tombs were found underground or dug into rocky hills, this particular tomb was unique in that it was found inside a larger above-ground structure, which the researchers think was likely used as a place of sacrifice.

“It seems that, due to its position along a valley of access to the necropolis, this building was used as a sacred enclosure where sacrifices were offered to the god Khnum in the form of Aries, creator god and protector of the fertile floods of the Nile, particularly revered in Aswan,” Piacentini told Live Science. “Who better than he could have propitiated the eternal life of those who rested in this necropolis?”

Further supporting its use as a place of sacrifice, Piacentini and the team discovered signs of fire on the structure walls possibly from offering ceremonies; but some of the fire marks may have also been made by grave robbers, she added. Either way, inside that burned structure, they discovered animal bones, plant remains and offering tables.

Also hidden inside was a mummy of a man next to a copper necklace engraved with his name “Nikostratos.”

At the bottom of a staircase leading to the tomb entrance — which had been dug out of the rock —, they found a broken offering vase that still contained small fruits. The tomb, which was made up of four deeply-excavated chambers, contained the remains of around 30 mummies. 

Some of the mummies were very well preserved, such as the remains of a child tucked inside a terracotta sarcophagus, while others had their bandages and cartonnage, a material ancient Egyptians used to wrap mummies, cut by ancient robbers.

The researchers also discovered a knife with an iron blade and wooden handle that may have been used by the plunderers. The researchers also say that Nikostratos was likely once inside the tomb with the other 30 mummies, but was taken out by the robbers. 

The excavation was a joint venture between the Aswan and Nubian Antiquities Zone in Egypt and by the University of Milan in Italy; the researchers are continuing to analyze and date the finds.

“The study of the newly discovered structure is just beginning,” Piacentini said.

Archaeologists Unearth Colossal Pair of Sphinxes in Egypt During Restoration of Landmark Temple

A pair of giant limestone sphinxes have been unearthed by archaeologists excavating the temple of Amenhotep III, who ruled ancient Egypt about 3,300 years ago and was the grandfather of Tutankhamun.

The statues depict the pharaoh wearing a mongoose-shaped headdress, a royal beard and a wide necklace. After further analysis, the team found the script ‘the beloved of Amun-Re’ across one of the sphinx’s chests.

The Egyptian-German archaeological team, led by Horig Sorosian, found the colossal statues submerged in water at the funerary building, known as the ‘Temple of Millions of Years,’ according to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The temple is in Luxor, Egypt, which is famously known for the oldest and most ancient Egyptian sites, along with being home to the Valley of Kings.

Along with the 26-foot-long sphinxes, the team also uncovered three nearly intact statues of the goddess Sekhmet, the lion-like defender of the Sun god Ra and the remains of a great pillared hall.

And the walls throughout the hall are decorated with ceremonial and ritual scenes. Horosian emphasized the importance of this discovery, as the two sphinxes confirm the presence of the beginning of the procession road where the celebrations of the Beautiful Valley Festival were held every year.

This yearly event was a time when people could visit their deceased loved ones and bring them gifts – and it was only celebrated in the ancient city of Thebes.

King Amenhotep III was the grandfather of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun and ruled in the 14th century BC at the height of Egypt’s the New Kingdom and presided over a vast empire stretching from Nubia in the south to Syria in the north.  

The 18th dynasty ruler became king aged around 12, with his mother as regent and is believed to have ruled Egypt between 1386 and 1349 BC. Amenhotep III chose the daughter of a provincial official as his royal wife, and throughout his reign, Queen Tiy featured alongside the king. 

Amenhotep III died in around 1354 BC and was succeeded by his son Amenhotep IV, widely known as Akhenaten, who was King Tut’s father.

Tut began his reign at the age of eight or nine and ruled for about nine years. However, the young king was plagued with health issues due to his parents being brother and sister – and experts believe the issues led to his death.

Amenhotep III may have left the Earth thousands of years ago, but archaeologists are still uncovering remnants of his past, with the most lavish being the ‘lost golden city.’ 

In April 2021, archaeologists announced the discovery of a 3,500-year-old city in Luxor, which they said is the largest ancient city ever to be discovered in Egypt.

It was built by Amenhotep III and later used by King Tutankhamun. Luxor, a city of some 500,000 people on the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt, is an open-air museum of intricate temples and pharaonic tombs. 

Excavations at the site uncovered bakeries, workshops and burials of animals and humans, along with jewellery, pots and mud bricks bearing seals of Amenhotep III.

The team initially set out to discover Tutankhamun’s Mortuary Temple, where the young king was mummified and received status rites, but they stumbled upon something far greater.

Betsy Brian, Professor of Egyptology at John Hopkins University in Baltimore USA, said ‘The discovery of this lost city is the second most important archaeological discovery since the tomb of Tutankhamun’.

‘The discovery of the Lost City, not only will give us a rare glimpse into the life of the Ancient Egyptians at the time when the Empire was at its wealthiest but will help us shed light on one of history’s greatest mysteries: why did Akhenaten & Nefertiti decide to move to Amarna.’

The city sits between Rameses III’s temple at Medinet Habu and Amenhotep III’s temple at Memnon. Excavations began in September 2020 and within weeks, archaeologists uncovered formations made of mud bricks.

After more digging, archaeologists unearthed the site of the large, well-preserved city with almost complete walls, and rooms filled with tools once used by the city’s inhabitants. 

Has the Burial Chamber of Ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti Been Found?

Egyptian archaeologists announced recently they may have found the burial place of Queen Nefertiti in a hidden chamber close to the pharaoh’s burial complex in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.

The final resting place of Nefertiti, who served as queen alongside Pharaoh Akhenaten over 3,000 years ago, is one of Egypt’s greatest mysteries.

It is believed that the powerful monarch was the mother of King Tutankhamun’s wife and that she briefly ruled Egypt outright after the death of her husband in 1335 BC.

Archaeologists have never found her remains, and one long-standing theory is that she was buried in a secret compartment within Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Tutankhamun died at just 19 years of age, and his burial complex is exceptionally small for a monarch, leading some experts to speculate that parts of it still remain undiscovered.

Now scientists have used high-tech radar scans to reveal possible evidence of hidden chambers beyond the tomb’s north wall.

The corridor-like space measures two meters (six feet) high and over 10 meters (32 feet) long. It sits just a few meters from Tutankhamun’s gold-laden treasury.

The study was led by archaeologist Mamdouh Eldamaty, a former Egyptian minister of antiquities.

A new technology called ground-penetrating radar, which uses radar pulses to see through soil and rock, was used to scan around Tutankhamun’s tomb.

There is no concrete proof yet that what they found really is a hidden chamber – let alone that it contains Nefertiti’s tomb – but it offers an extremely tantalizing prospect to Egyptologists.

Ancient Egyptian mummy of a young girl is first with a bandaged wound

Before you go, “Aren’t all mummies wrapped in bandages, hardy, har, har,” hilarious, but let us explain. Scientists have found the oldest-known example of a bandaged wound on the mummy of a child who once lived in Ancient Egypt.

Business Insider reports how researchers from Germany, Italy, and the States were able to essentially digitally unwrap the mummy—a four-year-old girl who passed away about 2,000 years ago—using computed tomography (CT) scans in order to properly examine the remains.

It was only then in the resulting images that they were able to observe how a “bandage-like structure” was wrapped around the child’s lower right leg, remnants of pus implying that some type of skin lesion may have occurred.

“In ancient Egypt, infections were likely a common aspect of daily life and the major cause of death,” reads the study, as published to Science Direct.

“However, the overall evidence of infections in ancient mummies is limited, especially in the less frequently investigated child mummies.”

This particular mummy was one of 21 children mummies that were observed in all, others, too, which showed signs of skin lesions and infections.

Only the girl, though, had a bandage still attached to where it was placed over her injury.

Furthermore, while the study explains that such Ancient Egyptian medical treatments have been recorded by previous texts, the child mummy is a rare, physical example.

The same Business Insider article does note, however, that the scientists do posit the possibility that the bandage is for religious purposes, not medicinal.