Italian hospital uses CT scan to unveil secrets of an Egyptian mummy

Researchers believe they can reconstruct the life and death of the Egyptian priest and understand which kinds of products were used to mummify the body.

Ancient Egypt met modern medical technology when a mummy underwent a CT scan at an Italian hospital as part of a research project to discover its secrets.

The mummy of Ankhekhonsu, an ancient Egyptian priest, was transferred from Bergamo’s Civic Archaeological Museum to Milan’s Policlinico hospital, where experts will shed light on his life and the burial customs of almost 3,000 years ago.

“The mummies are practically a biological museum, they are like a time capsule,” said Sabina Malgora, the director of the Mummy Project Research.

Malgora said information on the mummy’s name comes from the sarcophagus dated between 900 and 800 BC, where Ankhekhonsu – which means ‘the god Khonsu is alive’ – is written five times.

Researchers believe they can reconstruct the life and death of the Egyptian priest and understand which kinds of products were used to mummify the body.

“Studying ancient diseases and wounds is important for modern medical research … we can study cancer or the arteriosclerosis of the past and this can be useful for modern research,” she said.

Remains of a 7,000-Year-Old Lost City Discovered in Egypt

Egypt has announced the discovery of the ruins of a long-lost city in the Upper Egypt province of Sohag, which are believed to be over 7,000 years old.

The 5,316 BC residential city, discovered alongside a nearby cemetery, is being hailed as a major archaeological find that predates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period, which lasted about 5 millennia.

During a dig 400 meters south of the mortuary temple of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled thousands of years later from 1290 to 1279 BC, archaeologists from the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities discovered the remains of ancient huts and graves.

Seti I’s temple is located in Abydos – one of the oldest known cities of ancient Egypt and the historic capital of Upper Egypt – and the newly found dwellings and graves could be parts of the long-gone capital now resurfaced, or a separate village that was swallowed by it.

“This discovery can shed light on a lot of information on the history of Abydos,” antiquities minister Mahmoud Afifi said in a press statement.

The recently unearthed structures are thought to have been home to high-ranking officials and grave builders.

In addition to the foundations of ancient huts, the archaeologists found iron tools and pottery, plus 15 giant tombs – the capacious size of which means their intended inhabitants must have been well-established individuals.

“The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the first dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.

It’s possible that these officials oversaw the construction of royal tombs in nearby Abydos, but the size of their own resting places outside the capital suggests they didn’t want to slum it in eternity either.

“About a mile behind where this material is said to be we have the necropolis with royal tombs going from before history to the period where we start getting royal names, we start getting identifiable kings,” Egyptologist Chris Eyre from the University of Liverpool in the UK, who wasn’t involved with the excavation, told the BBC.

“So, this appears to be the town, the capital at the very beginning of Egyptian history.”

According to the researchers, the ancient tools and pottery are the leftover traces of a once giant labour force that was engaged in the considerable feat of constructing these royal tombs – and if you’ve seen the kinds of structures we’re talking about, you’ll understand they had a pretty epic responsibility:

The nearby cemetery is made up of 15 mastabas, an ancient Egyptian tomb that takes a rectangular shape, made with sloping walls and a flat roof.

According to lead researcher Yasser Mahmoud Hussein, these mastabas are now the oldest such tombs we know about, pre-dating the previous record holders in Saqqara, which served as the necropolis for another ancient Egyptian city, Memphis.

We’ll have to wait for these new findings to be verified by other scientists, but we’re excited to see what new insights further excavations will bring.

13-foot-long ‘Book of the Dead’ scroll found in burial shaft in Egypt

Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed a cache of treasures—including more than 50 wooden sarcophagi, a funerary temple dedicated to an Old Kingdom queen and a 13-foot-long Book of the Dead scroll—at the Saqqara necropolis, a vast burial ground south of Cairo, according to a statement from the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiques.

As first reported by Al-Ahram, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and his colleagues discovered the coffins, which appear to date back to the New Kingdom era (1570–1069 B.C.), in 52 burial shafts measuring 33 to 40 feet deep. Paintings of ancient gods and excerpts from the Book of the Dead, which was thought to help the deceased navigate the afterlife, adorn the sarcophagi.

Hawass tells CBS News’ Ahmed Shawkat that researchers first started excavating the site, which stands next to the pyramid of King Teti, first of the Sixth Dynasty rulers of the Old Kingdom (2680–2180 B.C.), in 2010.

“[B]ut we didn’t find a name inside the pyramid to tell us who the pyramid belonged to,” he adds.

Now, reports Agence France-Presse, experts have finally identified the complex—which boasts a stone temple and three mud-brick warehouses that housed offerings and tools—as the tomb of Teti’s wife, Queen Naert.

Around a month ago, the team found Naert’s name etched onto a wall in the temple and written on a felled obelisk near the entrance of the burial, per CBS News.

“I’d never heard of this queen before,” Hawass says to CBS News. “Therefore, we add an important piece to Egyptian history, about this queen.”

According to the statement, this is the first time archaeologists have unearthed 3,000-year-old coffins at Saqqara—one of Egypt’s “richest archaeological sites,” as Jo Marchant wrote for Smithsonian magazine last year. In recent months, excavations at the necropolis have yielded an array of exciting, albeit newer, finds, from sealed sarcophagi to ancient statues.

“Actually, this morning we found another shaft,” Hawass told CBS News on Monday. “Inside the shaft, we found a large limestone sarcophagus. This is the first time we’ve discovered a limestone sarcophagus inside the shafts. We found another one that we’re going to open a week from now.”

The coffins found in the burial shafts probably hold the remains of followers of a Teti-worshipping cult formed after the pharaoh’s death writes Owen Jarus for Live Science.

Experts think that the cult operated for more than 1,000 years; members would have considered it an honour to be entombed near the king.

Other highlights of the discovery include a set of wooden masks; a shrine to the god Anubis; bird-shaped artefacts; games including Senet, which was believed to offer players a glimpse into the afterlife; a bronze axe; paintings; hieroglyphic writings; and fragments of a 13-foot-long, 3-foot-wide papyrus containing Chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead.

The name of the scroll’s owner, Pwkhaef, is inscribed on the papyrus, as well as on one sarcophagus and four sculptures, according to Live Science.

These finds, notes the statement, as translated by CNN’s Amy Woodyatt, “will rewrite the history of this region, especially during the 18th and 19th dynasties of the New Kingdom, during which King Teti was worshipped, and the citizens at that time were buried around his pyramid.”

FBI cracks the case of the 4,000-year-old mummy’s head

A team of forensic scientists has managed to extract DNA from a 4,000-year-old mummy, and their finding has solved a century-old mystery of its ransacked tomb.

The Egyptian mummy wasn’t a fully preserved corpse, but rather a decapitated, mutilated, bandage-wrapped head that archaeologists found on top of a coffin when they excavated a tomb back in 1915. And that was the source of the mystery.

As the researchers explained in a paper published March 1 in the journal Genes, the tomb belonged to an Egyptian Middle Kingdom governor named Djehutynakht.

But by the time modern scientists found the tomb, it had been ransacked; it was robbed in ancient times. In an article describing the discovery, The New York Times reported that the robbers had set the place on fire “to cover their tracks.” 

All that remained of the tomb’s occupants was a dismembered torso in one corner of the tomb and a head placed on top of Djehutynakht’s coffin. For more than a hundred years, researchers have wondered and disagreed about whether these mummified remains belonged to Djehutynakht himself or to his wife.

Deepening the mystery, the head had been altered during the mummification process, with several bones removed from the jaw and cheek in an effort to enable the deceased to eat and drink in the afterlife, the Times reported. Those bones might have offered clues as to whether the body was male or female.

That left DNA analysis. But extracting DNA from ancient Egyptian mummies, after centuries in hot, DNA-degrading environments, had never been achieved before. The Times reported that earlier attempts failed or produced contaminated results.

Still, FBI forensic researchers gave it a shot. They had access because the head, along with many artefacts from the tomb, had long since made its way to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. (Shipping artefacts out of Egypt would be illegal today under Egyptian law.) They drilled into a molar extracted from the head “in pristine condition” back in 2009, producing 105 milligrams (0.004 ounces) of tooth dust.

After exposing the dust to a liquid mixture designed to copy and amplify existing DNA, they found that it came from a biological male. The head, in other words, most likely belonged to Djehutynakht and not his wife.

A team at the Department of Homeland Security, working with a smaller tooth-dust sample, later confirmed the results. In both cases, the DNA was damaged, demonstrating that it came from the ancient mummy and not modern contamination.

Interestingly, it remains unclear which Djehutynakht the head (and tomb) belonged to. Two governors with that name ruled an area call Hare Nome, and, the researchers wrote, “while they shared the same name (which means Thoth [the main local deity] is Strong), there is no evidence they were related.”

Who built the Egyptian pyramids?

The pyramids of Egypt are a marvel of archaeology, soaring high above the desert sands and visible for miles. Who were the people who managed to construct these pyramids, which was obviously a monumental task?

Many hypotheses exist concerning who constructed Egypt’s pyramids, including massive groups of enslaved Jewish and wilder ideas, such as inhabitants of the ‘lost city of Atlantis or even aliens.

None of these theories, however, have evidence to back them up.

The pyramids could not have been constructed by Jewish slaves, as no archaeological remains that can be directly linked to the Jewish people have been found in Egypt that date back to 4,500 years ago, when the Giza pyramids were built, archaeological research has revealed.

Additionally, the story told in the Hebrew Bible about Jews being slaves in Egypt refers to a city named “Ramesses.” A city named pi-Ramesses was founded during the 19th dynasty (about 1295-1186 B.C.) and was named after Ramesses II, who ruled 1279–1213 BC. This city was constructed after the era of pyramid construction had ended in Egypt.

“We have no clue, not even a single word, about early Israelites in Egypt: neither in monumental inscriptions on walls of temples, nor in tomb inscriptions, nor in papyri,” wrote archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in their book “The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts” (The Free Press, 2001). 

What’s more, no archaeological evidence has ever been found for the lost city of Atlantis in any time period, and many scholars believe that the story is fictional. As for aliens, well, that idea is out of this world. 

In fact, all the evidence shows that the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, Egyptologists say. But how the pyramid builders lived, how they were compensated and how they were treated is a mystery that researchers are still investigating. 

The pyramids and their builders

Egypt has more than 100 ancient pyramids, but it’s most famous include the first step pyramid, built during the reign of the pharaoh Djoser (about 2630-2611 B.C.), and the first true pyramid — one that has smooth sides — built under the rule of pharaoh Snefru (about 2575-2551 B.C.), Mark Lehner wrote in his book, “The Complete Pyramids: Solving the Ancient Mysteries” (Thames & Hudson, 2008). The Great Pyramid was constructed at Giza during the reign of pharaoh Khufu (about 2551-2528 B.C.), and two of his successors, Khafre (about 2520-2494 B.C.) and Menkaure (about 2490-2472 B.C.), also had pyramids built at Giza. 

Pharaohs gradually stopped building pyramids during the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.), choosing instead to be buried in the Valley of the Kings, which is located about 300 miles (483 km) south of Giza, Lehner noted in his book. Over the past few decades, archaeologists have found new pieces of evidence that provide clues as to who the pyramid builders were and how they lived. 

Surviving written records, including papyri discovered in 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, indicate that large groups of workers — sometimes translated as “gangs” — helped bring material to Giza. The papyri found at Wadi al-Jarf tell of a group of 200 men headed by an inspector named Merer. The group of workers transported limestone by boat along the Nile River a distance of about 11 miles (18 kilometres) from Tura to the Great Pyramid, where the stone was used to build the outer casing of the monument. 

In the past, Egyptologists had theorized that the pyramid builders were largely made up of seasonal agricultural workers who had reached a point in the year in which there was little agricultural work to be done. However, it remains to be seen whether this is actually true.

The papyri detailing the pyramid’s histories are still in the process of being deciphered and analyzed, but the results indicate that the gang led by Merer did far more than help with pyramid construction. These workers appear to have travelled over much of Egypt, possibly as far as the Sinai Desert, carrying out various construction projects and tasks that had been assigned to them. This raises the question of whether they were part of a more permanent professional force rather than a group of seasonal agricultural workers who would return to their fields. 

According to the papyri, the workers were given a diet that included dates, vegetables, poultry and meat, said Pierre Tallet, an Egyptology professor at Paris-Sorbonne University who is deciphering the papyri and is co-leader of the team that found them. In addition to the healthy diet, the papyri describe members of the work team regularly getting textiles that were “probably considered as a kind of money at that time,” Tallet told Live Science. 

Additionally, officials in high-ranking positions who were involved in pyramid construction “might have received grants of land,” said Mark Lehner, director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), a research institute based in Massachusetts. Historical records show that at times in Egypt’s history, land grants were given out to officials. However, it’s unknown whether land grants were also given to officials involved with pyramid construction. 

Lehner’s team has been excavating a town at Giza that was lived in and frequented by some of the workers who were constructing the pyramid of Menkaure. So far, the archaeologists have found evidence that this town’s ancient inhabitants used to bake large amounts of bread, slaughter thousands of animals and brew copious amounts of beer. Based on the animal bones found at the site, and considering the nutritional needs of the workers, archaeologists estimate that about 4,000 lbs. (1,800 kilograms) of animals — including cattle, sheep and goats — were slaughtered every day, on average, to feed the workers. 

The remains of workers buried in graves near the pyramids show that the workers had healed bones that were set properly — suggesting that they had access to the medical care that was available at the time. The rich diet of the pyramid builders, combined with the evidence for medical care and receiving textiles as a form of payment, has led Egyptologists to generally agree that the workers were not enslaved people. 

But this doesn’t mean all of the workers got equal accommodations. AERA’s excavations show that some of the higher-ranking officials lived in large houses and had the choicest cuts of meat. In contrast, Lehner suspects that the lower-ranking workers likely slept in simple dwellings or “lean-tos” at the pyramids themselves. 

The Legendary Emerald Tablet And Its Secrets of The Universe

The origins of Western alchemy can be traced back to Hellenistic Egypt, in particular to the city of Alexandria. One of the most important characters in the mythology of alchemy is Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice-Great).

The name of this figure is derived from the Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth, and his Greek counterpart, Hermes. The Hermetica, which is said to be written by Hermes Trismegistus, is generally regarded as the basis of Western alchemical philosophy and practice. In addition, Hermes Trismegistus is also believed to be the author of the Emerald Tablet.

Legends of the Emerald Tablet

The Emerald Tablet is said to be a tablet of emerald or green stone inscribed with the secrets of the universe. The source of the original Emerald Tablet is unclear; hence it is surrounded by legends. The most common story claims that the tablet was found in a caved tomb under the statue of Hermes in Tyana, clutched in the hands of the corpse of Hermes Trismegistus himself.

And the creator of the Emerald Tablet has been provided in myth as the Egyptian god Thoth, who Armando Mei writes “divided his knowledge into 42 plates of emerald, codifying the great scientific principles ruling the Universe.

The legend tells that after the gods’ fall, the Hermetic tablets were cleverly hidden so that no human being might find them. Only Thoth, on his return to that dimension, was able to recover the mysterious book.”

Another legend suggests that it was the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth, who originally wrote it. Others believed that the tablet was once held within the Ark of the Covenant. Some even claim that the original source of the Emerald Tablet is none other than the fabled city of Atlantis.

Spreading Stories of the Emerald Tablet

While various claims have been made regarding the origins of the Emerald Tablet, as yet no verifiable evidence has been found to support them. The oldest documentable source of the Emerald Tablet’s text is the Kitab sirr al-haliqi (Book of the Secret of Creation and the Art of Nature), which was itself a composite of earlier works.

This was an Arabic work written in the 8th century AD and attributed to ‘Balinas’ or Pseudo-Apollonius of Tyana. It is Balinas who provides us with the story of how he discovered the Emerald Tablet in the caved tomb. Based on this Arabic work, some believe that the Emerald Tablet was also an Arabic text and written between the 6th and 8th centuries AD, rather than a piece of work from Antiquity, as many have claimed.

While Balinas claimed that the Emerald Tablet was written originally in Greek, the original document that he purportedly possessed no longer exists, if indeed it existed at all. Some say the text burned up in the Library of Alexandria. Nevertheless, Balinas’ version of the text itself quickly became well-known and has been translated by various people over the centuries.

For instance, an early version of the Emerald Tablet also appeared in a work called the Kitab Ustuqus al-Uss al-Thani (Second Book of the Elements of the Foundation), which is attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan. It would, however, take several more centuries before the text was accessible to Europeans. In the 12th century AD, the Emerald Tablet was translated into Latin by Hugo von Santalla.

What’s written on the Emerald Tablet?

The Emerald Tablet would become one of the pillars of Western alchemy. It was a highly influential text in medieval and Renaissance alchemy, and probably still is today. In addition to translations of the Emerald Tablet, numerous commentaries have also been written regarding its contents.

For instance, a translation by Isaac Newton was discovered among his alchemical papers. This translation is currently being held in King’s College Library in Cambridge University. Other notable researchers of the Emerald Tablet include Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, John Dee, and Aleister Crowley. And today knowledge of the legendary Emerald Tablet (at least one interpretation of it) is reaching new audiences with its presence in the surreal German-language series Dark.

The interpretation of the Emerald Text is not a straightforward matter, as it is after all a piece of esoteric text. One interpretation, for instance, suggests that the text describes seven stages of alchemical transformation – calcination, dissolution, separation, conjunction, fermentation, distillation and coagulation.

Yet, despite the various interpretations available, it seems that none of their authors claims to possess knowledge of the whole truth. Furthermore, readers are encouraged to read the text and try to interpret and find the hidden truths themselves.

What is this Bizarre structure found in the Egyptian desert?

To some viewers, it looks like a landing strip for extraterrestrial spacecraft — or perhaps the portal to a parallel universe, if not an ancient monument to a benevolent deity who had a keen eye for design and symmetry.

But what people are actually seeing in the desolate reaches of the Egyptian desert, just a short distance from the shores of the Red Sea is in fact an environmental art installation. And it’s been baffling tourists and armchair travelers since it was constructed in March 1997.

Danae Stratou, Alexandra Stratou, and Stella Constantinides worked as a team to design and build the enormous 1 million square foot (100,000 square meters) piece of artwork — called Desert Breath — to celebrate “the desert as a state of mind, a landscape of the mind,” as stated on the artists’ website.

Constructed as two interlocking spirals — one with vertical cones, the other with conical depressions in the desert floor — Desert Breath was originally designed with a small lake at its center, but recent images on Google Maps show that the lake has emptied.

The entire structure, in fact, is slowly disintegrating as the sand that forms the art piece slowly blows off its cone-shaped hills and fills in its depressions, making it “an instrument to measure the passage of time.”

The art piece joins other mysterious images and environmental artworks that fascinate viewers on Google Earth, Google Maps, and other online platforms.

For example, the wind-blown steppes of Kazakhstan are home to a large pentagram etched into the Earth’s surface on the shores of a desolate lake.

The five-pointed figure bedeviled viewers’ imaginations until it was revealed to be the outline of the roads in a Soviet-era park.

The star was a popular symbol in the U.S.S.R., and Kazakhstan was part of the former Soviet Union until that union dissolved in 1991.

And etched onto the desert floor of New Mexico are two large diamonds surrounded by a pair of overlapping circles.

This is reportedly the site of a hidden bunker belonging to the Church of Scientology, according to the author of a book on the religious group.

The creators of Desert Breath have no political or cult-like aspirations, however: “Located … at the point where the immensity of the sea meets the immensity of the desert, the work functions on two different levels in terms of viewpoint: from above as a visual image, and from the ground, walking the spiral pathway, a physical experience.”