ANTARCTICA, WORLD

Ernest Shackleton’s Lost Ship Endurance, Found Off Antarctica Coast After 107 Years

Ernest Shackleton’s Lost Ship Endurance, Found Off Antarctica Coast After 107 Years

An expedition that set out in search of the lost ship of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton has found it — 106 years after the vessel sank off Antarctica. The wooden ship Endurance has been located remarkably intact about 10,000 feet underwater in the Weddell Sea.

In 1915, the ship Endurance became trapped in ice during Ernest Shackleton’s failed expedition to cross Antarctica.

The find is “a milestone in polar history,” said Mensun Bound, a maritime archaeologist and the director of the exploration on the expedition, called Endurance22.

“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact and in a brilliant state of preservation. You can even see ‘Endurance’ arced across the stern,” Bound said.

Ernest Shackleton's Lost Ship Endurance, Found Off Antarctica Coast After 107 Years
The Endurance was located by an expedition this week, 106 years after it sank into the Weddell Sea.
The name Endurance is still visible on the ship’s stern.

Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic expedition went dangerously awry

As World War I was beginning in 1914, the British explorer Shackleton set out to traverse Antarctica. The plan was for Shackleton to take 27 men on two ships, the Endurance and the Aurora, that would arrive at different locations on the continent to explore two routes by which to sledge across the ice. But in January 1915, the Endurance became trapped in ice off the coast of Antarctica.

Strenuous endeavours were made to free the Endurance from the ice on Feb. 14 and 15, 1915, but those efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.

The men lived on the ship for months, but pressure from the ice began to slowly crush it. On Oct. 27, 1915, Shackleton gave the order to abandon the Endurance. The men were told to gather no more than 2 pounds each of personal gear from the ship; much of the ship’s supplies had already become inaccessible because of broken timbers in the hull. The Endurance finally broke up and sank into the Weddell Sea on Nov. 21, 1915.

The crew made a new camp on an ice floe, and any ambition to cross Antarctica dissipated. The mission was now one of survival, a saga that would stretch into August 1916 before all the men were rescued.

The Aurora also became trapped in ice. Three men from that voyage died before the final members of the crew were rescued in early 1917.

The crew of the Endurance poses on the ship’s deck on Feb. 7, 1915.

An expedition to find the long-missing ship is successful

This year’s expedition to find the Endurance set sail from Cape Town, South Africa, on Feb. 5.

John Shears, the expedition leader, said the hunt for the Endurance was “probably the most challenging shipwreck search ever undertaken.”

An expedition called Endurance22 set sail from Cape Town, South Africa, on Feb. 5 to find the lost ship Endurance.

The expedition used sonar to find the sunken ship. It was located about 4 miles south of where Capt. Frank Worsley had noted the ship’s location back in 1915.

Then the team used an autonomous underwater vehicle with a camera on it to swim over the hull and the deck and confirm what the team had found.

The Endurance’s starboard (right) bow.

“It can only be one ship,” Shears said. “In this area, few ships have ever even been here. We’re only, I think, the fourth ship to ever get into this place in the Wendell Sea. It’s Endurance. It can be nothing else.”

Shears says he was stunned by the good condition of the vessel: There’s hardly anything living on it, and even some of the original paint is intact.

“You can see inside the hatchways, the stairs. You can see the ropes and the rigging. It’s as if it sank only yesterday,” he said.

Marc De Vos (from left), the senior meteorologist/oceanographer, shows weather data to Jean-Christophe Caillens, off-shore manager; Nico Vincent, expedition subsea manager; and Lasse Rabenstein, chief scientist, on the bridge of the S.A. Agulhas II, seen here last month during the Endurance22 expedition. The expedition team worked from the South African polar research and logistics vessel.

The wreck will stay where it was found, protected as a historical site and monument under the Antarctic Treaty. That means that though the Endurance is being filmed and surveyed, it won’t be disturbed.

The expedition crew now returns to Cape Town.

Mensun Bound (left), director of the exploration for the Endurance22 expedition, and John Shears, expedition leader, stand on the ice of the Weddell Sea.

Bound, the expedition’s exploration director, said the discovery is not only about the past but also about bringing the story of Shackleton and the Endurance to the next generation.

“We hope our discovery will engage young people and inspire them with the pioneering spirit, courage and fortitude of those who sailed Endurance to Antarctica,” Bound said. “We pay tribute to the navigational skills of Capt. Frank Worsley, the captain of the Endurance, whose detailed records were invaluable in our quest to locate the wreck.”

The Expedition22 team worked from the South African polar research and logistics vessel S.A. Agulhas II.
ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Large Roman Villa Site in England Surveyed

Large Roman Villa Site in England Surveyed

The scale of a sprawling villa that housed one of the most important mosaics found in Britain in decades has been revealed. The Rutland mosaic was made public in November – but the size of the complex around it was only hinted at.

Large Roman Villa Site in England Surveyed
The three panels show, from bottom to top, Achilles fighting, dragging and selling Hector

Now ground-penetrating surveys have shown an area as large as five football pitches, boasting possible formal gardens, a bathhouse and a mausoleum.

Survey lead Dr John Gater said it was the largest site his team had covered.

Two areas of excavation, including the mosaic, have revealed less than 3% of the site

The mosaic was described by Historic England as “one of the most remarkable and significant… ever found in Britain” and by TV presenter and academic Professor Alice Roberts as “important and exceptional“.

Rather than standard scenes of hunting or mythology, its panels illustrated an unusual version of a scene from the Trojan war, where the warrior Achilles ransoms the body of fallen enemy Hector.

Dated to the 3rd and 4th Century AD, the 11m x 7m (36ft x 23ft) floor, while impressive, was only one time period in, and one part of, the villa.

But for security reasons, its full size and complexity were kept under wraps, except for an admission less than 3% of the site had been excavated.

Magnetometry revealed a series of box-like ditches, while radar detailed the buildings inside

Now a geophysical survey of the area has been released, showing a complex of structures worthy of such a centrepiece.

One set of scans, which uses magnetic variations, showed the 5-hectare site was surrounded by ditches.

Dr John Gater, of SUMO Geophysics Ltd, said: “This is the largest site we have worked on and on a par with the largest villas in the Cotswolds.

“The ditches could date from the Iron Age, with the villa occupying an already defended area, or they could be Roman, marking the villa.”

The survey team has put forward ideas on what the buildings may be, based on size and shape

But what is inside the huge ditches, shown by the ground-penetrating radar, is remarkable.

Dr Gater said: “To find a mosaic is exciting but to find the whole complex it is part of is really impressive.

“And for me the clarity of the surveys is incredible – you can see not just walls but individual pits and wells.”

Villas varied in size from the large – like this one at Gargrave, North Yorkshire – to smaller examples with one or two buildings

While definitive answers will have to wait for archaeologists, the pattern of buildings already found is highly suggestive.

“It looks like a large number of villa buildings, along with a probable bathhouse and perhaps even mausolea and a chapel,” said Dr Gater.

“There is also an aisled building which might be Anglo-Saxon, perhaps showing the use of the site continued after the Romans.”

Excavation work, led by the University of Leicester and funded by Historic England, is due to resume later this year.

EUROPE, SCOTLAND, WORLD

Pictish Carved Stone Unearthed in Scotland

Pictish Carved Stone Unearthed in Scotland

Archaeologists have uncovered a Pictish symbol stone close to the location of one of the most significant carved stone monuments ever uncovered in Scotland.

Pictish Carved Stone Unearthed in Scotland

The team from the University of Aberdeen hit upon the 1.7metre-long stone in a farmer’s field while conducting geophysical surveys to try and build a greater understanding of the important Pictish landscape of Aberlemno, near Forfar.

Aberlemno is already well known for its Pictish heritage thanks to its collection of unique Pictish standing stones the most famous of which is a cross-slab thought to depict scenes from a battle of vital importance to the creation of what would become Scotland – the Battle of Nechtansmere.

The archaeologists were conducting geophysics surveys of the ground early in 2020 in an effort to better understand the history of the existing stones as part of the Leverhulme Trust-funded Comparative Kingship project.

Taking imaging equipment over the ground, they found anomalies that looked like evidence of a settlement. A small test pit was dug to try and establish whether the remains of any buildings might be present but to their surprise, the archaeologists came straight down onto a carved Pictish symbol stone, one of only around 200 known.

Their efforts to establish the character of the stone and settlement were hindered by subsequent Covid lockdowns and it was several months before they were able to return to verify their find.

The team think the stone dates to around the fifth or sixth century and, over the last few weeks, they have painstakingly excavated part of the settlement and removed it from its resting place – finding out more about the stone and its setting. 

Professor Gordon Noble who leads the project says stumbling upon a stone as part of an archaeological dig is very unusual.

“Here at the University of Aberdeen we’ve been leading Pictish research for the last decade but none of us has ever found a symbol stone before,” he said.

“There are only around 200 of these monuments known. They are occasionally dug up by farmers ploughing fields or during the course of road building but by the time we get to analyse them, much of what surrounds them has already been disturbed.

“To come across something like this while digging one small test pit is absolutely remarkable and none of us could quite believe our luck.

To come across something like this while digging one small test pit is absolutely remarkable and none of us could quite believe our luck”

~Professor Gordon Noble.

“The benefits of making a find in this way are that we can do much more detailed work in regard to the context. We can examine and date the layers underneath it and extract much more detailed information without losing vital evidence.”

Research fellow Dr James O’Driscoll who initially discovered the stone describes the excitement: “We thought we’d just uncover a little bit more before we headed off for the day. We suddenly saw a symbol. There was lots of screaming. Then we found more symbols and there was more screaming and a little bit of crying!

“It’s a feeling that I’ll probably never have again on an archaeological site. It’s a find of that scale.”

Like the other stones at Aberlemno, the new discovery appears to be intricately carved with evidence of classic abstract Pictish symbols including triple ovals, a comb and mirror, a crescent and V rod and double discs. Unusually the stone appears to show different periods of carving with symbols overlying one another.

The stone has now been moved to Graciela Ainsworth conservation lab in Edinburgh where a more detailed analysis will take place. Professor Noble hopes that it could make a significant contribution to understanding the significance of Aberlemno to the Picts.

“The stone was found built into the paving of a huge building from the 11th or 12th century. The paving included Pictish stones and examples of Bronze Age rock art. Excitingly the 11th-12th century building appears to be built directly on top of settlement layers extending back to the Pictish period” he added.

“The cross-slab that stands in the nearby church at Aberlemno has long been thought to depict King Bridei Mac Bili’s defeat of the Anglo Saxon King Ecgfrith in 685, which halted the expansion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to the north.

“The settlement of Dunnichen, from which the battle is thought to have taken its name, is just a few miles from Aberlemno. In recent years scholars have suggested another potential battle site in Strathspey, but the sheer number of Pictish stones from Aberlemno certainly suggests the Aberlemno environs was a hugely important landscape to the Picts.

“The discovery of this new Pictish symbol stone and evidence that this site was occupied over such a long period will offer new insights into this significant period in the history of Scotland as well as helping us to better understand how and why this part of Angus became a key Pictish landscape and latterly an integral part of the kingdoms of Alba and Scotland.”

The project has had help from Aberdeenshire Council Archaeology Service and the Pictish Arts Society to get the stone lifted and to the conservation lab, with radiocarbon dating funded by Historic Environment Scotland.

Bruce Mann, Aberdeenshire Council Archaeologist, said: “We have been providing a service to Angus Council for many years and I can say this is one of the most important discoveries made in the area in the last thirty years. To find prehistoric rock art re-used in the floor of this building would be exciting in its own right, but to have the Pictish symbol stone as well is just amazing.”

Researchers will now be working with the Pictish Arts Society to develop a fundraising campaign for the conservation and display of the stone.

ASIA, WORLD

Archaeologists find more than 6,500-year-old pearl beads in Qatar’s tomb

Archaeologists find more than 6,500-year-old pearl beads in Qatar tomb

The discovery of the oldest known natural pearl bead in Qatar has yet again shone the spotlight on the pearl-diving history of the peninsular country that is on its toes as the host of the upcoming FIFA 2022 World Cup to be played about eight months later.

A local excavation mission led by Ferhan Sakal, Head of Excavation and Site Management at Qatar Museums, dug out the oldest known natural pearl bead in Qatar, corresponding to the earliest human settlements on the peninsula.

Dated to 4600 BCE, the bead was found within a grave at Wadi Al Debaian, one of the country’s oldest Neolithic sites.

The oldest pearl bead found in Qatar recently reveals just how long pearl trading and diving has been practised in the region. (Qatar Marine)

Until oil was discovered on the peninsula close to 1940, fishing for pearls was the mainstay of the local population. People went on months-long voyages on wooden boats known as ‘dhows’ and would dive into the sea without oxygen tanks or diving suits to bring up oysters that would be later opened up to yield natural pearls. One might have to open scores or even hundreds of oysters to find one which has a pearl.

“With each new remnant of Qatar’s past that comes to light, we gain a clearer understanding of and appreciation for our religious history and identity, which ultimately inform our aspirations for a sustainable future.”

The recently discovered grave points to the earliest known evidence of Qatar’s antique pearl diving industry, which over centuries formed the centre of trade and economic influx to the country.

It also offers new insights into the early civilizations occupying the peninsula, including prevalent social structures and wealth distribution.

Located a few kilometres south of Al Zubarah on Qatar’s northwest coastline, Wadi Al Debaian has yielded several important archaeological finds over the years with pottery originating from the Ubaid period (ca. 6500 to 3800 BCE) of South Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), obsidian from Anatolia (modern Turkey) and further burial sites among the ancient remnants.

Wadi Al Debaian falls under Qatar Museums’ conservation and outreach scope.

Through its year-round excavations and fieldwork, Qatar Museums aims to preserve and document Qatar’s heritage through the epochs, and to construct a link between modern communities and their past.

The Wadi Al Debaian Neolithic cemetery was excavated as part of the National Priority Research Programme “Human Populations and Demographics in Qatar from the Neolithic to the Late Iron Age” led by Sidra Medicine and funded by the Qatar National Research Fund. IANS

EUROPE, SWITZERLAND, WORLD

7000-year-old grain reveals the origin of the Swiss stilt houses

7000-year-old grain reveals the origin of the Swiss stilt houses

Nowhere else are so many Neolithic pile dwellings known around the Alps. However, how this particular construction boom got its start is a mystery. Researchers at the University of Basel have now uncovered new evidence: Settlers on Lake Varese in northern Italy may have played a major role.

Remains of crops from the Neolithic period – here naked barley and naked wheat – indicate connections between geographically distant settlements.

When workers discovered the first pile-dwelling settlement on Lake Zurich in the mid-19th century, a whole branch of archaeological research began. 111 pile-dwelling villages in the Alps now belong to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. So far, however, it was unclear where this unique design came from. Until a few years ago, experts assumed that this was a local phenomenon.

Researchers around Prof. Dr However, Ferran Antolín from the Department of Integrative Prehistoric and Natural Scientific Archeology (IPNA) at the University of Basel are now providing new clues as to how the pile-dwelling culture came to the areas north of the Alps. 

Prehistoric plant remains from a settlement on Lago di Varese in northern Italy show the same composition as the useful plants from the oldest Swiss lake dwelling settlements in Zurich and in Egolzwil in Lucerne. 

The researchers report on this in the “Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports”.

Durum wheat, barley, opium poppy and flax

The team collected sediment cores around a prehistoric settlement on the Isolino Virginia and radiocarbon dated crops in the deposits. According to this, people seemed to have visited this artificial island as early as 4950 to 4700 BC. to call their home. The oldest known pile-dwelling settlements in Switzerland date back to around 4300 BC. Chr.

Through comparisons with the IPNA reference collection, the archaeobotanists were able to identify the composition of the approximately 7000-year-old plant material from this earliest settlement phase on Isolino Virginia: naked wheat (durum wheat), naked barley, opium poppy and flax. The same types of plants as those cultivated by the inhabitants of Switzerland’s oldest pile-dwelling settlements.

Connection to the western Mediterranean

However, these plant species are atypical for the northeast Italian population of the time, whose agriculture concentrated on the cultivation of spelled wheat such as emmer. 

The crops found around Lake Varese tended to be cultivated in the western Mediterranean. From this, the research team concluded that the settlement on the Isolino Virginia was probably founded by groups that came from the western Mediterranean or were closely connected with it through trade. 

“These groups probably played a major role in the spread of the pile-dwelling phenomenon north of the Alps,” says archaeobotanist Antolín.

The period between 4700 B.C. BC, when the settlement on the Isolino Virginia was temporarily abandoned, and 4300 BC, when the first pile-dwelling villages emerged north of the Alps, remains fraught with unanswered questions. 

The researchers suspect that other archaeological evidence, such as other settlements, may have remained undiscovered or lost.

In addition, ongoing research shows that there is also a wealth of evidence of prehistoric pile dwellings in other areas of Europe, such as in the central Balkans. Here, too, the team from the University of Basel is involved in research into the Neolithic pile-dwelling settlements.

However, these sites have a different agricultural tradition, so a direct connection to the pile dwellings of Switzerland seems unlikely.

According to Antolín, the origin of the pile dwellings remains a complex phenomenon that can hardly be explained from the remains of the buildings themselves. “However, the analysis of crop residues can make an important contribution here.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

157-year-old Civil War Shell Discovered Intact in Georgia

157-year-old Civil War Shell Discovered Intact in Georgia

A group of archaeologists poking around in the dirt at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield in Georgia stumbled upon an intact Civil War bomb, according to the Southeast Archeological Center.

157-year-old Civil War Shell Discovered Intact in Georgia
A team of archaeologists working at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park in Georgia found a 10-pound Parrott shell from the Civil War buried in the dirt.

The bomb was deemed still viable, and the Cobb County Police Department Bomb Squad was summoned to the site, just west of Marietta.

“After examination and review, the Civil War-era explosive was moved to the bunker for storage until the bomb squad can counter charge the cannon shell,” the Cobb County Police Department wrote in a Feb. 28 Facebook post.

“This 157-year-old parrot shell was discovered 10 inches below the surface and was used extensively in the Civil War by the Union Army.”

During an archaeological survey at the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield archeologists discovered an unexploded ordnance (UXO). Our Bomb Squad was notified and Bomb Technicians Sgt Duncan and Detective Mathis arrived on scene. They finished carefully digging it out of the battlefield. After examination and review the civil war era explosive was moved to the bunker for storage until the bomb squad can counter charge the cannon shell. This 157 year old parrot shell was discovered 10 inches below the surface and was used extensively in the Civil War by the Union Army.

The 2,965-acre Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park preserves the battleground where Union and Confederate forces fought from June 19 through July 2 in 1864.

The fighting was part of the Atlanta Campaign, during which “more than 67,000 soldiers were killed, wounded and captured,” Explore Georgia says. The Southeastern Archaeology Center reports the bomb was found last week as a team did “a metal detecting survey for a new hiking trail.”

“There is an old ‘truism’ in archaeology — the most exciting find is almost always on the last day. And this project was no exception,” the centre wrote on March 3 on Facebook.

“This shell had a percussion fuse that did not ignite when it hit the ground.” Many commenters on social media called for the bomb to be preserved. But the safest approach is a controlled detonation, Cobb County officials wrote.

“The bomb squad stated that they would love nothing more than to preserve this piece of history, however, there is no way to safely render it without counter charging it,” police said.

“They try to use the smallest charge appropriate. This charge is very small and will perforate the case. Unfortunately, even a small amount of live explosives can set the whole shell off.”

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Looted Artifacts Returned to France

Looted Artifacts Returned to France

The United States has returned a set of illegally obtained artefacts, including a skull from the Parisian catacombs and golden ingots from an Atlantic shipwreck, to their rightful owner: France. 

The prized objects, which also included an ancient Roman coin, were handed over on Wednesday during an official “restitution” ceremony at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington.

Steve Francis, a high-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with French Ambassador Philippe Etienne, unveiled the pieces and detailed how American authorities had worked with their French counterparts to get them back into French hands.

Artefacts are displayed during a ceremony marking the restitution of cultural property from the U.S. to France at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C., on March 2, 2022. The items include five gold ingots from the Prince de Conty, which sank near the Breton coast in 1746, a gold coin from the third century discovered in 1985 of Corsica’s Gulf of Lava, and a skull from the Paris catacombs.

“These objects tell the history of France, its commerce, and its people,” Francis said in a statement. “HSI is proud to have played a role in ensuring these artefacts continue to be part of France’s history for future generations to enjoy.”

The five golden ingots had originally been looted from the Prince de Conty, a ship that wrecked in December 1746 off the French island of Belle-Ile-en-Mer, near mainland France, according to a handout provided by the French embassy.

The vessel, which was on a return trip from China, had long been forgotten until a teacher in 1975 came across archival documents mentioning its location. He received authorization to excavate the site, but it was quickly looted, with many of the ingots disappearing before arrests were made.

However, in December 2017, five ingots matching the description of the Prince de Conty gold appeared on a list of items up for auction in California.

A French agency dedicated to underwater archaeology notified American authorities, who stepped in to seize the objects.

“The evidence that was provided by the French government was overwhelming,” said David Keller, a U.S. agent who focuses on cultural property and antiquities.

“These marks on them identify the people that actually made the ingots in the Qing dynasty,” Keller told AFP, “so there’s a lot of history just wrapped up in it.”

The golden coin is much older, dating back to the third century AD.

It is part of a larger treasure trove of ancient Roman objects, known as the Treasure of Lava, which was found in 1985 on the French island of Corsica, and was sold without official permission.

According to the French Embassy, specialists in currency “consider it one of the most important monetary treasures in the world.”

The skull originated in the Parisian catacombs, extensive caverns created in the late 18th century to house relocated remains from local cemeteries.

The site, known as an ossuary, is the largest in the world, containing the bones of more than six million Parisians.

The skull was recovered from an antiquities dealer in Houston, Texas in 2015. It will be returned to the Catacombs Museum in Paris, to join the collections of the ossuary, DHS said.

Over the years, Homeland Security Investigations has returned many artifacts to France, including a painting by Picasso stolen from France’s National Museum of Modern Art; a manuscript stolen from the French Navy Archival Depository Fund; and a painting by Edgar Degas stolen from the Musée Malraux in Le Havre, France.

“It is unacceptable that cultural property can be stolen and trafficked, and this is one of the mutual priorities between the United States and France,” Ambassador Etienne told AFP Thursday.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Ancient papyrus holds the world’s oldest guide to mummification

Ancient papyrus holds the world’s oldest guide to mummification

The oldest known instructions for the ancient art of embalming mummies were recently discovered on a medical papyrus from ancient Egypt. How-to descriptions of the mummification process are exceptionally rare in the archaeological record — only two other such “manuals” are known.

Ancient papyrus holds the world’s oldest guide to mummification
Section of the papyrus deals with swellings of the skin.

This newest example, found in an ancient scroll dating to around 1450 B.C., predates other mummification texts by more than 1,000 years. The guide contains many helpful suggestions, such as how to make herbal insect repellent and using red linen wrappings to reduce facial swelling.

Sofie Schiødt, a research assistant in the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen, discovered the embalming manual while translating a papyrus for her doctoral thesis, which will be published in 2022, university representatives said in a statement.

Half of the papyrus scroll is in the university’s Papyrus Carlsberg Collection, and the other half is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Prior to that, each piece was privately owned, and they were acquired by the university and the Louvre in 2015 and 2006, respectively, Schiødt told Live Science in an email. It wasn’t until 2018 that experts learned that the two pieces were part of the same scroll.

In its entirety, the papyrus measures nearly 20 feet (6 meters) long and is inscribed on both sides. It is the second-longest medical papyrus from ancient Egypt, and Schiødt’s translation project relies mostly on high-resolution photographs of the precious artefact.

“This way we can move displaced fragments around digitally, as well as enhance colours to better read passages where the ink is not so well-preserved,” Schiødt said. “It also aids in reading difficult signs when you can zoom in on the high-res photos.”

The papyrus contains new evidence of the procedure for embalming the deceased’s face, where the face is covered with a piece of red linen and aromatic substances.

Succinct recipes

There are five sections in the medical papyrus. The first is short medical recipes, followed by a section on herbs. Next is a long section on skin diseases, followed by the embalming manual, “and finally another section of succinct medical recipes,” Schiødt said. 

Only a small portion of the papyrus — just three columns of text — covers embalming. Though the mummification section is brief, it’s packed with details, many of which were absent from later embalming texts. 

“Several recipes are included in the manual describing the manufacturing of various aromatic unguents,” Schiødt told Live Science, referring to substances used as ointments.

However, some parts of the embalming process, such as drying the corpse with natron — a desiccating compound made of sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate (salt and baking soda) — aren’t described at length. 

“As such, the text reads mostly as a memory aid, helping the embalmer remember the most intricate parts of the embalming process,” she said.

According to the manual, embalming a person took 70 days, and the task was performed in a special workshop near the person’s grave. The two main stages — drying and wrapping — each lasted 35 days. 

Schiødt said that one of the exciting new pieces of information from the text involves a procedure for embalming a dead person’s face.

The instructions include a recipe that combines plant-based aromatics and binders, cooking them into a liquid “with which the embalmers coat a piece of red linen,” she said. 

“The red linen is then applied to the dead person’s face in order to encase it in a protective cocoon of fragrant and anti-bacterial matter,” and this was repeated every four days, according to the study. On days when the embalmers were not actively treating the body, they covered it with straw infused with aromatic oils “in order to keep insects and scavengers away,” according to Schiødt.

Work on the mummy typically wrapped up by day 68, “after which the final days were spent on ritual activities allowing the deceased to live on in the afterlife,” Schiødt wrote.

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