Archaeologists in Egypt reveals ‘elite’ mummies, jars filled with organs, and mystery snake cult

The ancient Egyptians, known for their elaborate mummies, took a lot of care in preparing for the afterlife. Now, for the first time, archaeologists have discovered that they had a bustling funeral industry, too. As it turns out, priest-embalmers were also savvy business people whose tactics presaged the modern funeral industry.

A burial workshop unearthed in 2018 in Saqqara, a necropolis (or city of the dead) 20 miles south of Cairo, offered Egyptologists the first major opportunity to document a site where mummies were made.

Archeologists behind early excavations likely overlooked such sites in their eagerness to uncover richly decorated royal tombs.

But as it turns out, the Egyptian funeral parlor wasn’t just preparing the pharaohs for the afterlife. They offered a whole range of services, from ornate golden funerary masks to cheaper plaster ones embellished with gold foil. The canopic jars, which stored the organs of the dead, could be made from alabaster or cheaper painted clay.

“The evidence we uncovered shows the embalmers had very good business sense,” says Ramadan Hussein, an Egyptologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany, told National Geographic. “They were very smart about providing alternatives.”

The ancient funeral parlor was located beneath a burial shaft that had last been investigated in the late 1800s—archaeologists had to remove 42 tons of debris to access the chamber, found just three feet below where the earlier excavations had ceased.

Hussein soon realized that what they had found wasn’t a tomb, but the site where bodies were prepared for burial. There was an air shaft that would have provided crucial ventilation, bowls containing traces of the oils and resins used in mummification, and a table-like slab perfect for laying out bodies.

The excavation of the funeral parlor also uncovered six nearby tombs, home to some 50 mummies that illustrate how the business offered its services to different clientele.

The wealthy, buried the deepest—the closest to the underworld—bought such expensive trappings as a limestone sarcophagus and a silver face mask with gold gilding, only the third of its kind ever discovered. The working class on the tomb’s upper tiers, on the other hand, settled for simple wooden coffins.

The afterlife was hugely important to the ancient Egyptians, and the ritualized mummification process that ensured one’s safe journey to the underworld took a full 70 days.

Embalmers carefully packed the internal organs into four canopic jars, then dried the body out with salt, anointed it with oil, and wrapped it in linen. The finished mummy would be laid to rest in a fully provisioned tomb, according to the family’s means.

Loved ones would pay embalmers regular fees for the upkeep of the dead, according to papyrus documents found in Saqqara over 100 years ago. The discovery of an actual Egyptian funeral parlor offers the first physical evidence of this practice.

“Mummification was a business transaction between an individual and an embalmer in which the embalmer was a specialist, a priest, and a businessman,” Hussein told.

Among the important discoveries at the site was the coffin of a woman named Didibastet, who was buried with six canopic jars, two more than tradition dictates, reports Al-Ahram Weekly.

All of the jars contain human tissue, a CT scan revealed, suggesting that this was a special form of mummification that preserved additional organs beyond the lungs, stomach, intestines, and liver. The team’s radiologist is now studying the jars to identify the extra organs.

Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies Viewed with High-Tech Tools

Science News reports that Richard Johnston of Swansea University and his colleagues used a micro-CT scanner to create highly detailed 3-D models of mummies held in the university’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities for virtual examination.

Egyptian animal mummies can look like little more than bundles of cloth. Now high-tech X-rays have unveiled the mysterious life histories of three of these mummies — a cat, a bird, and a snake.

While 2-D X-rays of each specimen existed, little information existed beyond generic animal labels.

So, Richard Johnston, an engineer at Swansea University in Wales, and his colleagues used a microCT scanner to see what lies beneath the wraps of animal mummies at the university’s Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

The bone scans of three of those specimens provided such detail that researchers could identify the cat as a domestic kitten (Felis catus), the bird as a Eurasian kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) and the snake as an Egyptian cobra (Naja haje), the team reports August 20 in Scientific Reports.

The cause of death was clear in two of the cases: The kitten was strangled, and the snake had its neck broken.

The snake also suffered from kidney damage, possibly a result of water deprivation near the end of its life. Like many of Egypt’s mummified animals, these three may have served as offerings to Egyptian gods.

Focusing on sections instead of just scanning the whole mummy at once allowed the team to get increased detail and create models of the mummified remains that could be 3-D printed and investigated through virtual reality.

“With VR, I can effectively make the cat skull as big as my house and wander around it,” Johnston says. That’s how the team found the kitten’s unerupted molars, a clue that the animal was under five months old.

That novel approach to microCT scanning mummies definitely has potential, says Lidija McKnight, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester in England who was not affiliated with the study.

“These advanced techniques are extremely powerful tools to improve our understanding of this ancient practice.”

Scans hint at Egyptian ritual in the snake, which had rock structures in its open mouth, possibly the mineral natron used by ancient Egyptians to slow decomposition.

Ancient embalmers often opened the mouths and eyes of mummies so the dead could see and communicate with the living, but previously this kind of procedure had primarily been seen in human mummies. Snakes, it appears, may have also whispered beyond the grave, serving as a messenger between the gods and a worshipper.

Egypt unearths 7,000-year-old lost city

In the Upper Egyptian province of Sohag, Egypt announced the discovery of the ruins of a forgotten city believed to be more than 7,000 years old.

The ancient residential city, found alongside a nearby cemetery, dates back to 5,316 BC and is being heralded as a major archaeological discovery that pre-dates ancient Egypt’s Early Dynastic Period that began about 5 millennia ago.

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

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.

CT Scans Reveal Contents of Small Ancient Egyptian Mummies

As scientists peered under the wrappings of two small ancient Egyptian mummies who believed they were carrying human hearts, they were taken aback: Not only were there no noticeable hearts inside, but the remains were not even human. 

Instead of one mummy is packed tightly with grain and mud – a so-called grain mummy, while the other one holds the remains of a bird, possibly a falcon, that is missing a body part and several organs, the researchers found.

“It’s missing its left leg, nobody knows why,” said Dr. Marcia Javitt, chairperson of radiology at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, Israel, and an adjunct professor of radiology at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who helped scan the mummies with computed tomography (CT) on June 29. 

The two mummies, both interred in sarcophagi, have been housed at Haifa Museum for about 50 years. However, “records were not kept as diligently as they are now,” so not much is known about them except that they’re more than 2,000 years old, Ron Hillel, registrar, and head of collection management of Haifa Museums told BBC News. 

Over the past few years, the National Maritime Museum in Haifa has been going through its collection and determining the best way to preserve each artifact. When curators came across the two mummies, they realized they didn’t know what was inside.

The records noted they contained mummified hearts, but “we did the research and it didn’t make sense,” Hillel said. Often, (but not always) “the hearts were left in the body,” of Egyptian mummies, Hillel said because the ancient Egyptians thought that when people died, their hearts would be weighed against a feather representing ma’at, an Egyptian concept that includes truth and justice, BBC News previously reported. If the heart weighed the same or less than the feather, these people would earn eternal life; if not, they would be destroyed.

The CT scans done at Rambam Hospital revealed that the mummies had very different insides from one another. The roughly 18-inch-long (45 centimeters) human-shaped mummy — designed to look like Osiris, the god of the afterlife, the dead, life, and vegetation — contained mud and grains. 

“During Osiris festivals that were held, [the ancient Egyptians] would produce these,” Hillel said. “It would be a mixture of clay or sand with these grains, and then they would dip it in water and the grains would germinate.” In effect, this act would tie Osirus to death, life, and Earth’s fertility.

Or, as Javitt put it, “they’re not real mummies; they’re artifacts.”

The other mummy, a roughly 10-inch-long (25 cm) bird-shaped mummy, represented the god Horus. According to Egypt mythology, Horus was the falcon-headed son of Osiris and Isis; a deity associated with the sky and pharaohs. 

Over time, the bird mummy had desiccated, meaning that the tissue got more dense, like beef jerky. Meanwhile, the marrow in the bones had dried out, leaving nothing but delicate bone tubes.

So Javitt and her colleagues used a dual-energy CT, which uses both normal X-rays and less powerful X-rays, a technique that can reveal properties of the tissues that a regular CT scan can’t, Javitt said. 

“In order to differentiate the soft tissues from one another and the bones and so on, it can be very helpful to use a dual-energy CT,” Javitt said.

Now, her team is identifying the bird’s various tissues and bones. Javitt noted that the bird’s neck is broken, but that this injury likely happened after the bird was dead. That’s because the skin is broken too, and in most cases of broken bones, “you don’t usually crack open the skin from one edge to the opposite side, you just break the bone,” Javitt said. 

Moreover, the bird appears to be missing some of its abdominal organs, but more study is needed to determine which ones aren’t there, she said. For instance, the heart appears to be present, as is the trachea.

Going forward, Hillel said the museum may make a special exhibit centered around these two mummies. He also hopes to have them dated with radiocarbon 14, so the museum can determine their age.

Egyptian archaeological team opens the door on ancient treasure trove

Archaeology org reports that a team led by Mohammed Abd Al-Badea discovered a series of rock-cut openings in a cliff while surveying Upper Egypt’s valley of Abydos. No burials have been found at the site, but pottery suggests it was used during the Ptolemaic period, from 304 to 30 B.C.

An extensive series of mysterious opening cut high in a cliff inside the sacred valley south of the Royal Cemetery of Umm Al Qaab has been discovered by the Egyptian archeological investigations team, headed by Mohammed Abd Al-Badea and documenting human activity from prehistoric ages to modern times about eight-kilometer in the west desert of Abydos.

Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that examination showed that these openings are entrances to carved out chambers, which probably have sacred religious importance.

Some openings lead to one chamber, while others lead to groups of two, three, and five chambers.

The groups are interconnected by narrow doorways cut through the bedrock wall. The chambers are rarely more than 1.20 meters high and are undecorated, but most have cut-rock features such as shallow niches, benches, rows of circular depressions or troughs cut in the floor, and many small holes in the walls just below the ceiling.

Besides most of the opening, Waziri said, are ropes or handholds.

Some of the chambers are enlargements of natural tunnels in the bedrock created by water flowing over thousands of years.

The cliff chambers are cut above deep vertical well-like shafts that follow natural water tunnels down into the bedrock, but these are now blocked by debris.

There is no evidence of burials inside any of the chambers, and they do not appear to have been tombs. Material evidence for the function of the complex is scant.

A single graffiti in one of the chambers gives the names of one Khuusu-n-Hor, his mother Amenirdis, and grandmother Nes-Hor.

These names, as well as the pottery found in and around the chambers, suggests that the complex probably dates to the Ptolemaic period, 332-30 BCE.

The only carved decoration consists of two small but unusual figures cut in bas relief on the side of one entry point.

Matthew Adams of the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and co-director of the North Abydos Expedition, who is collaborating with the survey mission, suggests that the chambers’ location inside the sacred valley of Abydos and their hard-to-reach position high on a cliff means that they may have had great religious significance.

The exploration of the area is at a preliminary stage, and much additional research and on-the-ground work will be needed.

How Thonis-Heracleion resurfaced after 1,000 years underwater

The Egyptian city of Thonis-Heracleion was the main port of entry to the Mediterranean Sea between the eighth century BCE and the fourth century BCE. By the eighth century CE, what remained of the city sank into the sea and eventually became a distant memory. Without any trace, except for a few references in historical writings, the forgotten ruins rested undisturbed until the 21st century.

In 2000, the European Institute of Maritime Archaeology, led by renowned archaeologist Franck Goddio, finally discovered the city’s treasures in the depths of the Abu Qir Bay.

For thirteen years, Goddio and his team methodically excavated and explored the sunken city. They also found more than 64 shipwrecks and 700 anchors in the Abu Qir Bay.

The high number of maritime relics led researchers to believe that Heracleion was a mandatory port of entry for trade between the Nile and the Mediterranean.

This is also supported by the discovery of weights from Athens, which would have been used to make important measurements of goods. Never before had such weights been found among archaeological sites in Egypt.

History of Thonis-Heracleion

For more than four centuries until the foundation of Alexandria in 331 BCE, Thonis reigned supreme over the Canopic portion of the Nile River. The Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily wrote about Thonis-Heracleion in his great work, Bibliotheca Historica, between 60 BCE – 30 BCE.

Sometime in the fifth century BCE, Herodotus wrote that the Greek god and hero, Heracles, actually first stepped foot onto Egypt at this port city. Thus, the Greeks gave Thonis the name Heracleion and built a grand temple dedicated to him. Herodotus also said Paris and Helen of Troy visited the port city.

Religious Center of Worship

There are commonalities in the accounts of the old historians. Most significant of these is that the city boasted a huge temple constructed to honor the heroic god Heracles, hence the name, Heracleion.

The city was both a bustling trade port and a religious center of worship. Sixteen-foot stone sculptures and sarcophagi believed to contain mummified animals were discovered. This reinforces the idea that this divine city was a prominent religious site. Additionally, the annual Mysteries of Osiris celebration took place at the temple. The three large statues pictured below are a pharaoh, his queen, and the god Hapy, from left to right. They stood at the entrance to the temple.

The Egyptians had their own version of Heracles and, so, shared this godlike hero. Herodotus identifies Heracles with the Egyptian god Shu. Still, others claim Sesotris was the forerunner of the Greek hero. In all cases, this mythical god-hero signified strength.

It seems to reflect the belief by both the Egyptians and the Greeks that they were strong, proud people, as unconquerable as the mighty Hercules himself. What better way to signify Heracleion’s strength than to essentially deem it the seat of a god? And so it was that their beloved Heracles became the focal point of the thriving port city and center of trade.

Port Business

In addition to serving as a place of worship, many official business transactions took place here. Ships from various parts of the ancient world dropped their anchors and unloaded their merchandise before returning home with a fresh supply of Egyptian goods to take back with them. Officials collected taxes and fees, and a huge amount of value traded hands. The Nile was also easily defensible from this location.

The Demise of the Temple City

Thonis-Heracleion suffered from a flaw that undermined its overall strength. The Egyptians built the city upon a portion of the Nile delta. The region was particularly susceptible to subsidence, flooding, a rising sea level, and earthquakes that had the ability to trigger enormous tidal waves. As a result, these natural circumstances waged a centuries-long battle with the port.

Beginning in the second century BCE, the splendid city started sinking into the depths of the sea. Some have theorized that flooding and the excessive weight of the city contributed to its sinking.

The structures and religious statuary of which the Egyptians were so proud literally equaled millions upon millions of pounds. Additionally, the land under which those structures resided was in a perpetual state of flux due to the flooding common in the delta.

End of a City and Its Symbolism

As civilization evolved and the first millennium of the Common Era came and went, humanity approached the dawn of the Age of Reason when science and monotheism countered the age of gods and mythical heroes. It seems the sinking of this ancient Egyptian port and temple serves as a perfect metaphor for the sunset of mankind’s devotion to its old gods and reverence for ancient mythology.

The second sphinx buried in sand in Egypt Giza plateau, pyramid much older than believed, researchers

It is one of the most prominent structures in the world and for decades has been the Sphinx – the legendary and giant statue of what seems to be a lion with a human face. It has captured the imaginations of archaeologists, photographers, and visitors on the Giza plateau of Egypt.

But there could be a second Sphinx built around the same time as the one known to the world — but this Sphinx has been hidden for thousands of years in the sands of Giza.

Two British historians, Gerry Cannon and Malcolm Hutton are now suggesting this theory: Who says that unlike numerous examples of smaller Sphinx structures and illustrated depictions of Sphinxes found in Egypt, the Sphinx of Giza is a rarity in that it stands alone, according to a report by the Egypt Today online site.

Every other Sphinx dating from ancient Egypt has been part of a pair, believed to represent the “duality” of male and female, the report says — also representing the duality of the sun and moon.

Ancient Egyptians believed that at the end of every day the sun traveled underground and reemerged as the moon, with a Sphinx protecting each end of the journey.

“Every time we have to deal with the solar cult, we should discuss of one lion and one lioness facing each other, posing parallel to each other or sitting in a back-to-back position,” said Egyptologist Bassam el-Shammaa, whose 2011 ebook, Quest for the Truth: Discovering The Second Sphinx forms the basis for the current Cannon and Hutton theory.

Cannon and Hutton also say that the Sphinx is much older than the current estimated age of approximately 4,600 years.

In fact, rather than the generally accepted belief that the Sphinx was constructed sometime between 2,700 B.C. and 2,500 B.C., though the exact date has not been pinpointed, Cannon and Hutton say that the structure could not have been built at that time.

In fact, they place the construction of the Sphinx prior to Earth’s most recent Ice Age — sometime earlier than 10,000 B.C. If their theory is correct, the Sphinx would be about eight millennia older than experts currently believe.

“The Sphinx had to have been carved when there was no sand there. You can’t carve a rock when it’s under the sand,” Cannon told the British Express newspaper. “When it was not under the sand was about 12,000 years ago and the Egyptians weren’t there.”

The researchers also say that the pyramids of Giza, which the Sphinx is apparently positioned to guard, would have been built at approximately the same time as the Sphinx — meaning that the ancient Egyptian civilization recorded by history was not the origin of the remarkable structures.

An earlier, prehistoric civilization that was perhaps wiped out by the ice age, must have built the Sphinx and pyramids, the pair of authors say.

Giant Egyptian Pyramids Hidden Beneath, buried by sands of time

Indiana Jones found success with little more than a bullwhip and a fedora. These days, however, if you want to make your mark as an archaeologist, a bit of space technology works wonders.

Satellites have helped locate 17 pyramids and 3,000 ancient settlements hidden underground in Egypt. More than 1,000 burial sites were also discovered thanks to infra-red technology capable of probing beneath the desert sands from 450 miles above the Earth.

Astounded researchers on the ground have already confirmed that two of the pyramids exist – and they believe there are thousands more unknown sites in the region.

NASA-funded archaeologist Sarah Parcak said: ‘I couldn’t believe we could locate so many sites. To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist.’ The finds are hugely significant. Until the latest discoveries there were thought to have been almost 140 pyramids across Egypt.

But experts have long argued that there must be many more that remain undiscovered, buried by the sands of time. Dr Parcak, from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, analysed images from satellites equipped with cameras so powerful they can zoom in on objects less than three feet in diameter on the Earth’s surface.

Dr. Parcak told the BBC: ‘I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me, the “a-ha” moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we’d found.’

The mud bricks used by ancient Egyptians are much denser than the sand and soil that surrounds them, allowing the shapes of homes, temples, tombs and other structures built thousands of years ago to be seen by satellites orbiting 435miles above Earth to photograph the outlines of structures invisible to the human eye.

The cameras on the satellites are so powerful that they can precisely image objects on Earth that are less than one metre in diameter. The researchers’ findings are a major boost to the relatively new science of space archaeology.

Their most promising excavations are taking place in Tanis, the hiding place of the Ark of the Covenant in the 1981 Indiana Jones blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark, where they are uncovering a 3,000-year-old house.

Excitingly, the outline of the house exactly matches the shape seen on the satellite images.

Two pyramids at Saqqara – the burial ground for the ancient capital of Memphis – have already been confirmed by excavations and the site is being hailed as one of the most important in Egyptian archaeology. The oldest pyramids ever discovered were built in Saqqara around 2,600BC.

The camera’s high level of accuracy has impressed the Egyptian government, which now plans to use the technology to identify and protect its colossal heritage in the future.

Dr Parcak believes that there are many more buildings buried deeper than those already spotted, the most likely location being under the banks of the River Nile.

She said: ‘These are just the sites close to the surface. There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered over with silt.

‘This is just the beginning of this kind of work.’

She told the BBC: ‘It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements.

‘These are just the sites [close to] the surface. There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered over with silt. This is just the beginning of this kind of work.’

She said the technology could be used to monitor the looting of antiquities, as well as to engage young people around the world in science and help archaeologists in their quest to uncover the secrets of the past.

The archaeologist said, ‘We have to think bigger and that’s what the satellites allow us to do. Indiana Jones is old school. We’ve moved on from Indy, sorry Harrison Ford.’