Archaeologists discover a Perfectly Preserved 4,000-year-old tomb in Egypt
Archeological finds in Egypt never stop. This was made all the more apparent by the recent discovery in Saqqara of a vibrant tomb, home to some of the oldest pyramids in Egypt.
There are vivid wall paintings in the amazingly well-preserved tomb that look like they were made yesterday when in reality the tomb was created over 4,000 years ago.
To celebrate the discovery, Prof. Khaled al-Enani—Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities—recently led over 50 foreign dignitaries on a tour through the site.
Mohamed Mujahid, head of the Egyptian mission which discovered the tomb of the ancient Egyptian nobleman “Khewi”, takes a selfie. The tomb at the Saqqara necropolis dates back to the 5th dynasty (2494-2345 BC).
It’s believed that the tomb, which is located within a large necropolis, was created during the Fifth Dynasty.
This period spanned the early 25th century BCE until the mid 24th century BCE and was known as a time when funerary prayers began to be inscribed on royal tombs. In this particular case, the exceptional tomb was created for a dignitary named Khuwy.
Several aspects of the tomb lead researchers to believe that Khuwy was a man of great importance. Architecturally, it has a tunneled entrance, which is a feature typically reserved for pyramids—the tombs of the pharaohs.
Artistically, the colors of the paintings are considered “royal colors” by officials. These clues bring into question Khuwy’s influence and his relationship with the Fifth Dynasty’s longest-ruling pharaoh, Djedkare Isesi.
Step Pyramid at Saqqara
Djedkare’s pyramid is located nearby in Saqqara and one theory is that Khuwy was a relative of the leader.
Others believe that the lavishness of the tomb was instead owed to the Djedkare’s reforms on funerary cults. Whatever the cause, what we’re left with are incredible examples of the artistry of ancient Egypt.
In addition to the tomb decoration, archaeologists also found Khuwy’s mummy and canopic jars—used to hold organs—scattered in several fragments.
Egyptologists hope that the newly discovered tomb will give them more insight into Djedkare’s reign, as the pharaoh’s own tomb was raided prior to excavation in the 1940s.
While Djedkare appeared to be held in high regard even after his death—he was the object of a cult until at least the end of the Old Kingdom—he is still a somewhat enigmatic leader.
Israeli Archaeological Dig Uncovers 9,000-year-old Mega City
The largest ever Neolithic settlement discovered in Israel and the Levant, say archaeologists — is currently being excavated ahead of highway construction five kilometres from Jerusalem.
Because of its scale and the preservation of its material culture, the 9,000-year-old site, situated near the town of Motza, is the ‘Big Bang’ for prehistory settlement research, said Jacob Vardi, co-director of the excavations at Motza on behalf of the Antiquities Authority,
Vardi said It’s a game-changer, a site that will shift what we know about the Neolithic era drastically.” He said that some international scholars are beginning to realize the existence of the site may necessitate revisions to their work, he said.
“So far, it was believed that the Judea area was empty and that sites of that size existed only on the other bank of the Jordan river, or in the Northern Levant. Instead of an uninhabited area from that period, we have found a complex site, where varied economic means of subsistence existed, and all these only several dozens of centimeters below the surface,” according to Vardi and co-director Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily in an IAA press release.
Roughly half a kilometer from point to point, the site would have housed an expected population of some 3,000 residents. In today’s terms, said Vardi, prehistoric Motza would be comparable to the stature of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv — “a real metropolis.”
According to an IAA press release, the project was initiated and financed by the Netivei Israel Company (the National Transport Infrastructure company) as part of the Route 16 Project, which includes building a new entrance road to Jerusalem from the west running from the Route 1 highway at the Motza Interchange to the capital.
According to co-director Khalaily, the people who lived in this town had trade and cultural connections to widespread populations, including Anatolia, which is the origin for obsidian artifacts discovered at the site. Other excavated materials indicate intensive hunting, animal husbandry, and agriculture.
Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily, Antiquities Authority Excavation director at the Motza site, holding a bowl from the Neolithic Period.
“The society was at its peak” and appeared to increasingly specialize in raising sheep, said Khalaily.
In addition to prehistoric tools such as thousands of arrowheads, axes, sickle blades, and knives, storage sheds containing large stores of legumes, especially lentils, were uncovered. “The fact that the seeds were preserved is astonishing in the light of the site’s age,” said the archaeologists.
Archaeologists recovered thousands of flint tools crafted by early farmers, such as sickles to harvest crops and arrowheads for hunting and warfare.
Alongside utilitarian tools, a number of small statues were unearthed, including a clay figurine of an ox and a stone face, which Khalaily joked was either a human representation “or aliens, even.”
9,000-year-old figurine of an ox, discovered during archaeological excavations at Motza near Jerusalem.
In the ancient, unrecorded past as well as today, the site is situated on the banks of Nahal Sorek and other water sources. The fertile valley is on an ancient path connecting the Shefela (foothills) region to Jerusalem, said the IAA. “These optimal conditions are a central reason for long-term settlement on this site, from the Epipaleolithic Period, around 20,000 years ago, to the present day,” according to the press release.
“Thousands of years before the construction of the pyramids, what we see in the neolithic period is that more and more populations turn to live in a permanent settlement,” said Vardi. “They migrate less and they deal more and more in agriculture.”
Among the architecture uncovered in the excavation are large buildings that show signs of habitation, as well as what the archaeologists identify as public halls and spaces used for worship. In a brief video published by the IAA, archaeologist Lauren Davis walks a narrow path between remains of buildings — a prehistoric alleyway. “Very much like we see in buildings today, separated by alleys between,” said Davis.
Excavation works on the Motza Neolithic site
According to the archaeologists, this alleyway is “evidence of the settlement’s advanced level of planning.” Likewise, the archaeologists discovered that plaster was sometimes used for creating floors and sealing various facilities during the construction of the residents’ domiciles and buildings.
In addition to signs of life, the archaeologists uncovered several graves. According to Davis, in the midst of a layer dating to 10,000 years ago, archaeologists found a tomb from 4,000 years ago. “In this tomb are two individuals — warriors — who were buried together with a dagger and a spearhead,” she said.
“There’s also an amazing find,” said Davis, “which is a whole donkey, domesticated, that was buried in front of the tomb probably when they sealed it.” Added Vardi, the donkey was apparently meant to serve the warriors in the world to come.
According to Amit Re’em, the IAA’s Jerusalem District archaeologist, despite the roadworks, a significant percentage of the prehistoric site around the excavation is being preserved and all of it is being documented.
Each architectural structure is being documented through 3-D modeling. “When we finish the excavation here,” said Vardi, “we will be able to continue to research the site in the laboratory,” adding that this is an unprecedented use of technology.
“In addition, the IAA plans to tell the story of the site at the site by means of a display and illustration. At Tel Motza, adjacent to this excavation, archaeological remains are being preserved for the public at large, and conservation and accessibility activities are being carried out in Tel Bet Shemesh and Tel Yarmut,” announced the IAA release.
The miniature Sculpture of a bird was Carved 13,500 years ago
A miniature bird statue carved out of burnt bone has been unearthed by archaeologists in Lingjing, China. At over 13,000 years it is believed to be the oldest East Asian work of art ever found.
Humans have been creating sculptures since the Upper Paleolithic period (50,000 to 12,000 years ago), the earliest being a lion-headed human carved from mammoth tusk found in German caves, dating back 35,000-40,000 years.
This bird figurine shows that sculpture was emerging independently in East Asia during the same period.
Discovered by a team of archaeologists led by Prof Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux, France, the 2cm-long bird is incredibly well-preserved, with a short neck, rounded bill and long tail, and a pedestal so that it can stand up.
The sculpture is thought to represent a ‘passerine’ – a diverse group of birds that includes the sparrows, finches and thrushes.
Photo (top) and 3D reconstruction using microtomography (bottom) of the miniature bird sculpture.
The researchers analysed the bird using microscopy and X-ray scanning, determining that it was carved from a mammal limb bone that had been blackened by heating.
They also painstakingly reconstructed the sculpting process: the bird was created using four different techniques – gouging, abrading, scraping, and incising.
“Our analysis reveals that the Lingjing artist has chosen the appropriate techniques and applied them skillfully to faithfully reproduce the distinct anatomical features of a passerine,” they write.
“The style of this diminutive representation is original and remarkably different from all other known Paleolithic avian figurines.”
The researchers estimate the figurine to be 13,500 years old – more than 8,500 years older than other animal sculptures found in East Asia.
World War II–Era Code Machine Recovered from Baltic Sea
From the bottom of the Baltic Sea in Europe, three-quarters of a century after it was lost at the end of the Second World War, one of the most famous puzzles on the planet has been recovered.
A mechanical encryption device that once confounded the Allies while allowing Adolf Hitler’s Nazis to make battle plans in secret, German divers say they have dredged up a long-lost Enigma machine.
The typewriter-like machine was found on the seafloor of Gelting Bay in northeast Germany, where divers were working to collect old fishing nets on behalf of the World Wildlife Federation.
The Enigma cipher machine was discovered on the seabed in Gelting Bay near Flensburg, Germany.
It’s believed the Nazis tossed the device overboard in an attempt to destroy it in the final days of the war, as part of an effort to keep German technology out of the Allies’ hands.
Divers initially thought the object was an old typewriter, but underwater archaeologist Florian Huber says he recognized it after it was brought up to the surface.
“I’ve made many exciting and strange discoveries in the past 20 years,” he told Reuters. “But I never dreamed that we would one day find one of the legendary Enigma machines.”
While searching for abandoned fishing nets, German divers discovered this Enigma machine in the Baltic Sea.
The Enigma machine was essentially an encrypted typewriter that allowed the Germans to send and receive messages without fear of them being intercepted and decoded by the enemy.
The Nazis used the machines to coordinate their war efforts for years, thanks to a shifting encryption process that would change every 24 hours.
British cryptographers worked tirelessly to decode the encrypted messages at Bletchley Park.
Legendary mathematician Alan Turing is widely credited with finally cracking the code in 1941, which allowed the Allies to spy on German communications in the latter days of the war. The breakthrough came after Britain seized an Enigma machine from a captured German sub.
The codebreakers’ work is thought to have helped end the war and save thousands of lives. It also inspired the Oscar-nominated film The Imitation Game in 2014.
Huber says the Enigma machine found in Gelting Bay was likely lost in May 1945, around the time that the Germans surrendered.
German forces were ordered to sink approximately 50 of their own submarines in Gelting Bay at the end of the war, in an effort to prevent the subs from being captured. Crews were also specifically instructed to destroy the Enigma machines on board.
“We suspect our Enigma went overboard in the course of the event,” said Huber, who works for an underwater research firm called Submarines.
The divers have decided to donate the device to a museum where it can be restored and put on display.
Surviving Enigma machines are rare in 2020, although examples can be found at museums scattered across the world, including Canada. The restoration process for the new discovery is expected to take about a year.
Carving on 5,000-year-old Sudan rock shows world oldest Place name
Wadi Al-Malik is the bed of an extinct river in Sudan that is rarely explored by archaeologists, but a recent dig has uncovered an incredible discovery – the world’s oldest ‘place-name sign.’
A team with the University of Bonn deciphered four hieroglyphs carved more than 5,000 years ago on a large stone that read ‘Domain of the Horus King Scorpion.’
What makes this inscription unique is the circular symbol toward the top right that indicates the rock was a marking of a ruler’s territory.
Archaeologists note that such writings in a remote area were unusual for those living in the fourth millennium BC, but it highlights the process of internal colonization in the Nile River.
Egyptologist Prof. Dr Ludwig D. Morenz from the University of Bonn, said: ‘This ruler called ‘Scorpion’ was a prominent figure in the phase of the emergence of the first territorial state in world history.’
A team with the University of Bonn deciphered four hieroglyphs carved more than 5,000 years ago on a large stone that read ‘Domain of the Horus King Scorpion, making it the world’s oldest place name same
Morenz continued to explain that Scorpion lived around 3070BC, but the team has yet to determine the dates and length of his reign.
He told DailyMail.com in an email: ‘Around 3100 there started something completely new in the Nile Valley: the first territorial state (one political power reigning of a territory of more than 800km north-south).’
‘The ‘Scorpion’ I am talking about played an important role in this process (as the first territorial state in world history I think it is of high importance even for our understanding of ‘global history’).’
‘Furthermore, I think that with our findings in Wadi el-Malik we can get a better understanding of the internal socio-economic development of Egypt a bit more than 5000 years ago.’
The name ‘Scorpion’ is written together with three other hieroglyphs on a rock inscription discovered more than two years ago in Wadi Abu Subeira to the east of Aswan.
The team from the University of Boon collaborated with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities when the stone was discovered two years ago, with the hopes of deciphering the ancient drawings.
The name ‘Scorpion’ is written by what looks like the predatory arachnids, along with two other images. But in the top right corner is a circular design that reveals that stone is a place name sign
The name ‘Scorpion’ is written by what looks like the predatory arachnids, along with two other images. But in the top right corner is a circular design that reveals that stone is a place name sign.
‘This is precisely why the new discovery of the rock inscription is so valuable,’ Morenz said.
‘Despite its brevity, the inscription opens a window into the world of the emergence of the Egyptian state and the culture associated with it.’
The researchers explain that Egypt was the first territorial state worldwide. There were already ruling systems elsewhere before, but these were much smaller,’ said Morenz.
The name ‘Scorpion’ is written together with three other hieroglyphs on a rock inscription discovered more than two years ago in Wadi Abu Subeira to the east of Aswan
However, during this time it was popularly known that the north-south extension of Egypt was already nearly 500 miles.
In fact, several rival population centres merged into the new central state,’ says Morenz. Royal estates, known as domains, were founded on the periphery of the empire in order to consolidate the pharaonic empire.’
In addition to various rock carvings, other early rock inscriptions were discovered here and found together with pottery from this period.
‘This area is still in the early stages of archaeological investigation,’ says Morenz. The researchers see this as an opportunity to take a closer look at the momentous process of the world’s first state emergence.
Petrified Forest National Park: Ancient and Spectacular
We’re going to the southwestern state of Arizona on our National Parks trip this week. We’ll find a strange and vivid landscape there. The hilly soil is covered by black, red, and sometimes purple rocks and sand. In odd forms, massive bits of ancient trees curl.
The Jasper Forest section of the park
The area is the only national park that includes a part of the historic U.S. Route 66.
Welcome to the Petrified Forest National Park!
The word “forest” may mislead visitors. The park is in a desert. And the word “petrified” — which can mean “afraid”– may scare visitors away!
But fear not. “Petrified Forest” gets its name from the trees that have, over millions of years, turned to stone. That natural process is called fossilization.
Much of the Petrified Forest formed from tall trees called conifers. They grew over 200 million years ago near waterways. During floods, water forced the trees to be pulled up from the ground. Over time, the wood from the trees became petrified. The Petrified Forest National Park is one of the wonders of Arizona. It sits within the Painted Desert.
A Spanish explorer in the 1500s gave the place its name. It is easy to see why. The desert looks like an artist’s canvas. Brilliantly coloured mudstones and clays cover the land as far as the eye can see. They contain bentonite, a clay that is the product of changed volcanic ash.
The oldest geological formations in the park are about 227 million years old. Differently coloured formations show different time periods. The Blue Mesa formations, for example, have thick bands of grey, purple, blue and green mudstones. They are about 220 million years old.
Ancient history
Evidence of humans in the Petrified Forest dates back 13,000 years.
People first came here after the last Ice Age. Early Paleoindian groups used petrified wood to create different kinds of stone tools. They used them to hunt large animals. The climate warmed over several thousand years. Humans began building villages here and growing food, such as corn, squash and beans.
In the 900s, people in the area began building above-ground houses, called pueblos. They also made pottery for cooking and other uses. Scientists today find evidence of early pottery and pueblo homes all over Petrified Forest National Park. A long and severe drought in the early 1400s forced most of the people living here to move. But new groups soon arrived.
European explorers came in the 1500s. By the 1800s, American pioneers began settling in the area. And, by the 1920s, American motorists were travelling on U.S. Route 66. The road winds through the heart of the Painted Desert.
Long before humans entered the area, though, dinosaurs dominated. Petrified Forest National Park is a world-class area for fossil research. The fossil record at the park preserves some of the earliest dinosaurs. The dinosaur fossils are from the Late Triassic period, called the “dawn of the dinosaurs.” They help scientists reconstruct ancient environments.
Creating a National Park
The land here was set aside as a national monument in 1906. Congress moved to protect it because of its unique ecosystem, a record of human history and dramatic southwestern scenery. It became a national park in 1962.
More than 800,000 people visit the Petrified Forest National Park each year. The best way to explore the park is by foot. The National Park Service maintains many kilometres of walking trails.
The Crystal Forest trail is a one-kilometre path. It is named for the crystals that can be seen on the pieces of petrified wood. The trail is one of the best chances to see this fossilized wood up close.
The Petrified Forest includes many shapes and sizes of wood, from large logs to stumps to the smallest remains of plants. Most of the petrified wood found in the park is made up of quartz. Quartz is a hard, colourless mineral. The wood sometimes shines in the sunlight as if covered by glitter.
The Painted Desert Rim trail offers visitors a good chance to see the park’s wildlife. Lizards and rabbits are common. So are snakes and foxes.
Early morning or evening are the best times to see animals. These are also the times when the sun makes the Painted Desert the most colourful and spectacular.
The discovery of the ruins of a lost city in Sohag, Upper Egypt Province, considering to be more than 7,000 years old has been announced by Egypt.
The Ancient City, found beside a nearby cemetery, dates back to 5,316 BC and is announced as a major archaeological discovery which predates the Early Dynastic Period in Egypt that began about 5 millennia ago.
During an excavation 400 metres south of the mortuary temple of Seti I, a pharaoh who ruled thousands of years later from 1290 to 1279 BC, a team of archaeologists from the Egyptian ministry of antiquities discovered the ruins of ancient huts and tombs.
One of the excavated 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.
A section of the newly-discovered site with some artifacts found within it.
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.
Some of the Abydos boats in their brick-built graves.
“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:
Entrance to the Temple of Seti I.
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.
Remains of a 7,000-Year-Old Lost City Discovered in Egypt
Massive dinosaur fossil unearthed by Alberta pipeline crew
A new large tyrannosaur from Alberta, a predatory dinosaur whose name means “reaper of death,” was found by palaeontologists from the University of Calgary and the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
The 79-million-year-old fossil, named Thanatotheristes, is the oldest tyrannosaur reported from northern North America and the first new tyrannosaur species found in Canada in 50 years, according to the research team’s report.
“It’s the oldest example of a large tyrannosaur in Canada found in an older window of time than in previous tyrannosaurs,” says Dr Darla Zelenitsky, a co-author of the study, PhD, Principal Dinosaur Researcher of the University of Calgary and Assistant professor in the Department of Geoscience.
Study lead author Jared Voris, shown above, a PhD student of Zelenitsky’s whose analysis identified the new species, says the fossil specimen is very important to understanding the Late Cretaceous period when tyrannosaurs roamed the Earth. It gives us a new understanding of tyrannosaur evolution and how these animals interacted with their ecosystem.
“With this new species, we now know that tyrannosaurs were present in Alberta prior to 77 million years ago, the age of the next-oldest tyrannosaur,” says study co-author Dr. François Therrien, PhD, curator of dinosaur palaeoecology at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. “We can tell from the skull how Thanatotheristes is related to the other, better-known tyrannosaurs from Alberta.”
The research team also included Dr.Caleb Brown, PhD, curator of dinosaur systematics and evolution at the Royal Tyrrell and a co-author of the study.
Thanatotheristes degrootorum is named after John and Sandra De Groot, who found the fossils.
The team’s study, “A New Tyrannosaurine (Theropoda: Tyrannosauridae) from the Campanian Foremost Formation of Alberta, Canada, Provides Insight into the Evolution and Biogeography of Tyrannosaurids,” is published in the peer-reviewed journal Cretaceous Research.
New species have distinct physical features
Thanatotheristes degrootorum, a new genus and species, was identified from a fragmentary fossil consisting of parts of the skull and the upper and lower jawbones. The bones, which had apparently tumbled from a cliff and shattered on the shore of the Bow River, were found by John and Sandra De Groot (after whom the new species was named) in 2010 near the town of Hays, about 200 kilometres southeast of Calgary.
The specimen lay in a drawer at the Royal Tyrrell Museum until last spring, when Voris examined it. “We found features of the skull that had not been seen before in other tyrannosaurs,” he says. “The fossil has several physical features, including ridges along the upper jaw, which clearly distinguishes it as being from a new species.”
The diagnostic evidence showed that Thanatotheristes is a close relative of two other well-known tyrannosaur species, Daspletosaurus torosus and Daspletosaurus horneri. All three species form a newly named group of dinosaurs called Daspletosaurini.
This group had longer, deeper snouts and more teeth in the upper jaws than tyrannosaurs found in the southern U.S., which had shorter, bulldog-like faces, Voris says.
Research indicates diversity among tyrannosaurs
Thanatotheristes, which Voris estimates were approximately eight metres long, likely preyed on large plant-eating dinosaurs, such as the horned Xenoceratops and the dome-headed Colepiochephale that were part of the ecosystem.
The differences in size, skull shape and other physical features among tyrannosaur groups from various geographical regions may be adaptations to different environments, available prey type and hunting strategies, Zelenitsky says.
“Some species are better suited to certain environments,” Voris says. “This reduces competition and gives species a better chance of survival.”
Such “provinciality” can also be seen in modern ecosystems with lions and tigers, he adds. Lions are found in Africa and favour open, savanna-type environments, while tigers are found in Asia and prefer forested environments.
Darla Zelenitsky, Jared Voris and François Therrien stand with the Thanatotheristes fossils.
Royal Tyrrell Museum
The team’s research also suggests tyrannosaurs didn’t share one general body type. Instead, groups of different tyrannosaur species evolved distinct skull forms, body sizes and other physical features, spreading into different environments where each group thrived.
“The next step is to test that hypothesis further and compare how tyrannosaur species from various geological regions differed,” Voris says.
The team’s research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, an Eyes High Doctoral Recruitment Scholarship for Voris, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum Cooperating Society.
