AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

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

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

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

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

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

Meet the family: Scientists have for the first time – with the help of DNA – been able to identify these skulls as belonging to King Tut’s father Akhenaten (left) and mother (right). They were also brother and sister

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

King Tut’s grandmother Queen Tiye, the mother of Pharaoh Akhenaten. The hairpiece behind her is believed to have been made up of her own hair. It has not disintegrated because of the mummification process and the dry conditions within the tomb
The two faces of the boy king Tutankhamun. Left, his mummified head and, right, reconstruction of what he would have looked like

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

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

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

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

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

Autopsy Unmasks King Tut’s True Face, and It Isn’t Pretty
After 3,000 years and DNA analysis, scientists have proved that from foreground to background, these mummies are of King Tut’s mother, grandmother, and his father, Akhenaten
Antiquities expert Dr Zahi Hawass (right) announces today in Cairo’s Egypt Museum that the mummies in front of him have been identified as Tutankhamun’s father, mother and grandmother by using DNA
Technicians take DNA samples from the mummy of Boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. Tests revealed his parents were siblings

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

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

King Tutankhamun has long been big business.

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

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

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

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

Dr Zahi Hawass removed King Tut from his stone sarcophagus in 2007 to study his DNA. Tests revealed the king was a sickly young adult.
BOLIVIA, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Three images that prove the Ancient Builders of Puma Punku had access to advanced technology

Three images that prove the Ancient Builders of Puma Punku had access to advanced technology

Perhaps the biggest mystery involving Puma Punku is, how ancient mankind managed to transport these huge blocks of stone from quarries within 10 to 100 km.

How did they manage to achieve this type of precision cuts and how did they place the blocks in such a perfect manner? Engineers and constructors around the world today cannot answer nor replicate these achievements done by ancient mankind thousands of years ago.

Scientists cannot come to a conclusion and answer how were these amazing blocks of stone transported. Some of them believe that it was accomplished by the large labour force of ancient Tiwanaku. Several theories have been proposed as to how this labour force transported the stones from the quarries to Puma Punku, but these theories remain speculative.

Another puzzling mystery at Puma Punku is the assembly of the walls. Each stone was finely cut to interlock with the surrounding stones and the blocks fit together like a puzzle, forming load-bearing joints without the use of mortar. The precision challenges today’s engineering abilities.

The answer to these and other enigmas can be solved by a different approach and different thinking methods.

By looking at images from Puma Punku you can notice a perfection that is baffling, you will notice the elegance in every single construction at Puma Punku, but most importantly, you will notice a mysterious pattern that could help explain how ancient man achieved all of this, thousands of years ago.

Three images that prove the Ancient Builders of Puma Punku had access to advanced technology

This image is one of the best examples of advanced technology present at Puma Punku. We are looking at andesite blocks, a material that is extremely difficult to work with.

Can anyone explain how ancient mankind managed such perfection, elegance, and precision? We believe that this is one of the best examples of highly advanced tools that were made available to ancient man, thousands of years ago.

One of our favourite images of Puma Punku is where you can see small holes that are placed with such perfection apart that it is hard to believe that primitive man achieved this with sticks and stones.

Puma Punku is one of the most important places if you want to see what ancient man was capable of. These stone structures are among the biggest ever found.

The H Blocks. A trademark of Puma Punku and perhaps one of the best examples of lost technology. The perfection present within these blocks is staggering.

It is difficult to even think that ancient mankind managed to cut, transport and stack these blocks of stone which such perfection without the use of some sort of technology. Not everything can be achieved through force.

What do you think? Is it possible that the ancient builders of Puma Punku and Tiahuanaco had access to advanced technology that has been lost in history? A forgotten, omitted piece of history that mainstream scholars do not seem to be interested in?

ASIA, IRAQ, WORLD

Ancient Mesopotamian Discovery Transforms Knowledge of Early Farming

Ancient Mesopotamian Discovery Transforms Knowledge of Early Farming

Rutgers researchers have unearthed the earliest definitive evidence of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) in ancient Iraq, challenging our understanding of humanity’s earliest agricultural practices.

Their findings appear in the journal Scientific Reports.

“Overall, the presence of millet in ancient Iraq during this earlier time period challenges the accepted narrative of agricultural development in the region as well as our models for how ancient societies provisioned themselves,” said Elise Laugier, an environmental archaeologist and National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

Broomcorn millet is an “amazingly robust, quick-growing and versatile summer crop” that was first domesticated in East Asia, Laugier added.

The researchers analyzed microscopic plant remains (phytoliths) from Khani Masi, a mid-late second millennium BCE (c. 1500-1100 BCE) site in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Ancient Mesopotamian Discovery Transforms Knowledge of Early Farming
Drone footage of the Khani Masi plain in the Garmian Province, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, taken in 2018.

“The presence of this East Asian crop in ancient Iraq highlights the interconnected nature of Eurasia during this time, contributing to our knowledge of early food globalization,” Laugier said.

“Our discovery of millet and thus the evidence of summer cultivation practices also forces us to reconsider the capacity and resilience of the agricultural systems that sustained and provisioned Mesopotamia’s early cities, states and empires.”

The discovery of broomcorn millet in ancient Mesopotamia was surprising for environmental and historical reasons. Until now, researchers thought that millet wasn’t grown in Iraq until the construction of later 1st millennium BCE imperial irrigation systems.

Millet generally requires summer precipitation to grow, but Southwest Asia has a wet-winter and dry-summer climate, and agricultural production is based almost entirely on crops grown during the winter, such as wheat and barley.

Agricultural production is thought to be the basis for supporting and provisioning Mesopotamian cities, states and empires.

The researchers’ new evidence that crops and food were, in fact, grown in summer months means that previous studies likely vastly under-appreciated the capacities and resilience of ancient agricultural food-system societies in semi-arid ecosystems.

The new study is also part of growing archaeological research showing that in the past, agricultural innovation was a local initiative, adopted as part of local diversification strategies long before they were used in imperial agricultural intensification regimes — new information that could have an impact on how agricultural innovations move forward today.

“Although millet isn’t a common or preferred food in semi-arid Southwest Asia or the United States today, it is still common in other parts of Asia and Africa,” Laugier said.

“Millet is a hearty, fast-growing, low-water requiring and nutritious gluten-free grain that could hold a lot of potential for increasing the resilience capacities of our semi-arid food systems. Today’s agricultural innovators should consider investing in more diverse and resilient food systems, just as people did in ancient Mesopotamia.”

Laugier, a visiting scientist at Rutgers who received her PhD and began her research on this topic at Dartmouth College, said the research team hopes to make phytolith analysis more common in the study of ancient Iraq because it could challenge assumptions about the history and practice of agriculture in the region.

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Ancient Helmets and Temple Ruins Exhumed Where Greeks Settlers First Arrived in Italy

Ancient Helmets and Temple Ruins Exhumed Where Greeks Settlers First Arrived in Italy

Archaeologists in southern Italy have discovered ancient warrior helmets and the ruins of a painted brick wall at a site that might have been a forerunner of a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, officials said Tuesday.

Remains of an ancient helmet found in southern Italy.

Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said the remains dug up at the popular tourist site of Velia were found on what had been an acropolis of one of Magna Graecia’s most important cities.

Velia is 40 kilometres (25 miles) southeast of Paestum, a much-visited site of ancient Greek temples.

The recently completed excavation at Velia unearthed a pair of helmets in good condition, the remains of a building, vases with the Greek inscription for “sacred” and metal fragments of what possibly were weapons, the culture ministry said.

State Museums Director Massimo Osanna, who formerly had long directed excavations at Pompeii, Italy’s most celebrated excavated site, said the area explored at Velia probably contained relics of offerings made to Athena, the mythological Greek goddess of war and wisdom, after a key naval battle in the nearby Tyrrhenian Sea.

In the 6th-century B.C. battle of Alalia off the coast of Corsica, Greek forces were victorious over Etruscan forces and their Carthaginian allies.

Velia is famed for being the home of an ancient Greek school of philosophy, including philosophers Parmenides and Zeno.

It was part of Magna Graecia, the area of southern Italy colonized by Greek city-states.

The settlement at Velia occupied an upper part, or acropolis, of the area as well as hillsides, and was surrounded by a wall. The city’s ancient name was Elea.

Velia’s founding dates to about 540 B.C. by colonists from Asia Minor.

Franceschini said the discoveries yielded by the Velia excavation underscored the importance of investing in archaeological research to reveal “important pieces of the history of the Mediterranean.”

ASIA, ISRAEL, WORLD

2000-year-old ‘lost’ street built by Pontius Pilate uncovered in Jerusalem

2000-year-old ‘lost’ street built by Pontius Pilate uncovered in Jerusalem

Archaeologists have unearthed part of a 2,000-year-old ‘lost’ street built by Pontius Pilate that likely served as a route for pilgrimage within the ancient city. The street had been buried when the Roman ransacked the city in 70 AD.

The ancient walkway linking the Temple Mount with the Pool of Siloam was first discovered in 1894 by British archaeologists in Jerusalem’s ‘City of David’.

Researchers have now found more than 100 coins beneath the paving stones that date the street to around the year 31 AD. The finding provides strong evidence that the street was commissioned by Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the province Judaea from 23–36 AD.

Pilate is best known as the biblical official who presided over the trial of Jesus and ordered his crucifixion.

The 722 feet (220 metres) -long section of the road was unearthed by researchers from the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University after six years of extensive archaeological excavations.

The ancient walkway linking the Temple Mount with the Pool of Siloam was first discovered in 1894 by British archaeologists in Jerusalem’s ‘City of David’
The walkway ascends from the Pool of Siloam in the south to the Temple Mount — both sites of significance to the followers of Judaism and Christianity

The walkway ascends from the Pool of Siloam in the south to the Temple Mount — both sites of significance to the followers of Judaism and Christianity. The Temple Mount, located within the Old City of Jerusalem, has been venerated as a holy site for thousands of years. 

According to the bible, the Pool of Siloam was the location where Jesus performed the miracle of healing the man born blind, at around the same as the street was being constructed. During the dig, the team uncovered more than 100 coins trapped beneath the street’s paving stones.

The latest coins were dated between 17–31 AD — firm evidence that work began and was completed during the time that Pilate governed Judea.

‘Dating using coins is very exact,’ said paper author and archaeologist Donald Ariel, of the Israel Antiquities Authority.’

‘As some coins have the year in which they were minted on them, what that means is that if a coin with the date on it is found beneath the street, the street had to be built in the same year or after that coin had been minted, so any time after.’

‘However, our study goes further, because statistically, coins minted some 10 years later are the most common coins in Jerusalem.’

‘So not having them beneath the street means the street was built before their appearance, in other words only in the time of Pilate.’

Archaeologists have unearthed part of a 2,000-year-old ‘lost’ street, pictured, built by Pontius Pilate that likely served as a route for pilgrimage within the ancient city
During the dig, the team uncovered more than 100 coins trapped beneath the street’s paving stones. Pictured, US officials attending the opening of the ancient road
The ancient walkway linking the Temple Mount with the Pool of Siloam, pictured in this artist’s impression, was first discovered in 1894 by British archaeologists in Jerusalem’s ‘City of David’
According to the bible, the Pool of Siloam was the location where Jesus performed the miracle of healing the man born blind, at around the same as the street was being constructed

The street — which was 0.37 miles (600 metres) -long and around 26 feet (eight metres) wide — was paved with the large stone slabs that were customary across the Roman Empire. The researchers estimate that some 10,000 tons of quarried limestone rock would have been used in its construction — a feat requiring considerable skill.

The opulent and grand nature of the street, coupled with the fact that it links two of the most important spots in Jerusalem — Temple Mount and the Pool of Siloam — both provide strong evidence that the street acted as a route for pilgrims.

‘If this was a simple walkway connecting point A to point B, there would be no need to build such a grand street,’ said paper author and Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Joe Uziel.

‘At its minimum, it is eight metres wide. This, coupled with its finely carved stone and ornate “furnishings” like a stepped podium along the street, all indicate that this was a special street.’

Pilate is best known as the biblical official who presided over the trial of Jesus and ordered his crucifixion, as depicted in this painting
The street — which was 0.37 miles (600 metres) -long and around 26 feet (eight metres) wide — was paved with the large stone slabs that were customary across the Roman Empire
The paving stones of the street were found hidden beneath layers of rubble, which researchers believe was generated when Romans captured and destroyed the city in 70 AD

‘Part of it may have been to appease the residents of Jerusalem,’ added paper co-author and archaeologist Nahshon Szanton.

‘Part of it may have been about the way Jerusalem would fit in the Roman world, and part of it may have been to aggrandise [Pontius Pilate’s] name through major building projects.’

The paving stones of the street were found hidden beneath layers of rubble, which researchers believe was generated when Romans captured and destroyed the city in 70 AD.

This rubble contained weapons — including arrowheads and stones for slings — along with the remains of burnt trees and collapsed stones from the buildings along its edge. The researchers say that it is possible that Pilate had the street built in order to help reduce tensions with the Jewish population.

‘We can’t know for sure, although all these reasons do find support in the historical documents,’ added Dr Ariel. The full findings of the study were published in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University.

PERU, SOUTH AMERICA, WORLD

Human spines on sticks found in 500-year-old graves in Peru

Human spines on sticks found in 500-year-old graves in Peru

Hundreds of years ago, Indigenous people in coastal Peru may have collected the scattered remains of their dead from desecrated graves and threaded reed posts through the spinal bones.

Human spines on sticks found in 500-year-old graves in Peru
Examples of vertebrae on posts, found in Peru’s Chincha Valley.

Scientists recently counted nearly 200 of these bone-threaded posts in stone tombs in Peru’s Chincha Valley, and they suspect that the practice arose as a means of reassembling remains after the Spanish had looted and desecrated Indigenous graves.  

Archaeologists investigated 664 graves in a 15-square-mile (40 square kilometres) zone that contained 44 mortuary sites. They documented 192 examples of posts threaded with vertebrae.

The researchers then measured the amount of radioactive carbon in the bones and reed posts. Radioactive carbon accumulates when an organism is alive but decays to nitrogen at a constant rate once the organism is dead. So based on the amount of this carbon, the scientists could estimate when the posts were assembled.

Their analysis placed the vertebrae and posts between A.D. 1450 and 1650 — a time when the Inca Empire was crumbling and European colonizers were consolidating power, the researchers wrote in a new study.

This was a period of upheaval and crisis in which Indigenous tombs were frequently desecrated by the Spanish, and Chincha people may have revisited looted tombs and threaded spinal bones on reeds in order to reconstruct disturbed burials, said lead study author Jacob Bongers, a senior research associate of archaeology with the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

“The fact that there’s 192 of these and that they’re widespread — we find these throughout the Chincha Valley — it means on one level that multiple groups of people coordinated and responded in a shared way, that this interesting practice was deemed the appropriate way of dealing with disturbed bodies of the dead,” Bongers told Live Science.

Most of the vertebrae on posts were found in and around large and elaborate stone tombs, called chullpas, that typically held multiple burials; in fact, one chullpa contained remains from hundreds of people, Bongers said.

In one of the chullpas, threaded vertebrae were inserted into a cranium.

The people who performed the burials were part of the Chincha Kingdom, “a wealthy, centralized society that dominated Chincha Valley during the Late Intermediate period, which is the period that precedes the Incan Empire,” Bongers explained.

The Chincha Kingdom once had a population numbering around 30,000, and it thrived from around A.D. 1000 to 1400, eventually merging with the Inca Empire toward the end of the 15th century. But after the Europeans arrived and brought famines and epidemics, Chincha numbers plummeted to just 979 heads of household in 1583, according to the study.

Historic documents record accounts of Spaniards frequently looting Chincha graves across the valley, stealing gold and valuable artefacts, and destroying or desecrating remains.

For the new study, the researchers closely examined 79 bone-threaded posts, each of which represented a collection of spinal bones from an adult or from a child.

Most posts held bones belonging to a single individual, but the spines were incomplete, with most of the bones disconnected and out of order. This suggested that the threading was not performed as a part of the original burial. Rather, someone gathered and threaded the spinal vertebrae after the bodies had decomposed — and perhaps after some of the bones were lost to looting, the study authors reported. 

Two chullpas in the middle Chincha Valley.

And because Andean cultures valued preserving the integrity and completeness of a dead body, the likeliest explanation is that Chincha people revisited looted graves and reconstructed the scattered remains in this way to try and restore some semblance of wholeness to remains that had been dispersed and desecrated.

“When you look at all data we gathered, all of that supports the model that these were made after these tombs had been looted,” Bongers said.

Ancient mortuary practices, such as this bone threading, provide valuable clues about how long-ago communities dealt with their dead, but they also shed light on how people defined their identities and culture through their relationships with the dead, Bongers told Live Science.

“Mortuary practices arguably are what make us human — this is one of the key distinguishing features of our species. So, by documenting mortuary practices, we’re learning diverse ways of how people showcased their humanity.”

The findings were published on Feb. 2 in the journal Antiquity.

EUROPE, POLAND, WORLD

Three Pendants Recovered at Nazi Death Camp

Three Pendants Recovered at Nazi Death Camp

Archaeologists in Poland have discovered three pendants that belonged to people who were murdered at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in eastern Poland.

Three Pendants Recovered at Nazi Death Camp
A pendant featuring Moses holding the Ten Commandments was found by the gas chambers located in Camp II at Sobibor.

The researchers discovered two of the pendants in places where Holocaust victims were forced to undress before guards herded them into gas chambers; they discovered the third pendant near a mass grave at the death camp, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). 

“Little is known about the stories behind the pendants, which are heartbreaking,” Yoram Haimi, an archaeologist with the IAA who co-directed the excavation, said in a statement released Jan. 27. 

It took about 10 years of archaeological excavations to find all three pendants at Sobibor. Though each pendant is different, all three have depictions of Moses and the Tablets of the Law (also known as the Ten Commandments) on one side, and the Hebrew prayer, “Shema Yisrael,” which translates to “Hear O Israel,” on the other.

For Jews, the Shema is “an affirmation of God’s singularity and kingship,” according to My Jewish Learning, a site run by 70 Faces Media, a nonprofit, nondenominational media organization.

“Its daily recitation is regarded by traditionally observant Jews as a biblical commandment.” Traditionally, Jewish people say the prayer as their last words before death.

The words framed in each metal pendant were inscribed by hand. During the past year, researchers managed to identify each pendant’s country of origin: Lviv, Ukraine; Poland; and Czechoslovakia.

A figure of Moses and the Ten Commandments on a pendant that was found in the women’s barracks before they entered the gas chambers.

“It has been possible to identify a kind of tradition or fashion among the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe with pendants that were inscribed with ‘Shema Yisrael’ on one side and a depiction of Moses and the Tablets of the Law on the opposite side,” Haimi said. However, it’s unclear how the pendants became widespread.

“Were they distributed in synagogues by local Jewish communities or possibly produced for individual orders?” Haimi wondered. “Research of the pendants is ongoing and we invite the public to provide us with details concerning them.” 

Of the 6 million Jews, as well as people with disabilities, Roma, Poles and other Slavic people killed during the Holocaust, about 250,000 people — largely Jews from Poland the occupied parts of the Soviet Union — died at Sobibor between 1942 and 1943, according to Britannica.

However, the death toll was likely higher, Haimi, whose uncle was killed at the camp, previously told Live Science. 

The pendant was found by the mass grave at Sobibor. Only the side with the Shema survived.
A pendant was discovered in a women’s undressing area at Sobibor, where victims were forced to unclothe before entering the gas chambers.

Sobibor was connected to a railroad that transported Jews captured from around Europe, and it’s likely that not everyone on the trains, or those taken to the death camp by foot or truck, were included on the lists used to estimate the death toll, Haimi previously said.

“The personal and human aspect of the discovery of these pendants is chilling,” Eli Eskozido, director of the IAA, said in the statement. “They represent a thread running between generations of Jews — actually a thick thread, thousands of years old, of prayer and faith.”

The new excavations were directed by Wojciech Mazurek, an archaeologist from Poland, Haimi and Ivar Schute, an archaeologist from Holland, all of whom were assisted by local residents.

ENGLAND, EUROPE, WORLD

Medieval College Building Found in Oxford, England

Medieval College Building Found in Oxford, England

A “lost” Oxford University college has been unearthed during the construction project for new student flats. The former St Mary’s College was founded in 1435 but had already fallen into disrepair 100 years later.

Medieval College Building Found in Oxford, England
Thirty student flats are being developed at Brasenose College’s Frewin Annexe where the college was found

A team from Oxford Archaeology discovered a massive limestone wall foundation, butchered animal bones and decorated floor tiles.

Construction firm Beard is developing 30 student flats at Brasenose College’s Frewin Annexe.

The ill-fated St Mary’s College was to be a base for Augustinian canons studying in Oxford.

A two-storey college chapel and library was built, but construction was very slow.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey tried to speed things up but was later accused of treason by King Henry VIII and died.

The college further faded into obscurity after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

A team from Oxford Archaeology are excavating a series of pits

Archaeologists have found a wall believed to have supported one of the college’s stone buildings.

They are also excavating a series of pits where disposed animal bones and charcoal suggest the kitchens were nearby.

Other items include a 17th Century stone flagon – drinks container, a bone comb and a medieval long cross silver penny.

A two-storey college chapel and library was built at the site

The site has been occupied since the late 11th Century and was once the location of a high-status Norman house.

Ben Ford, senior project manager at Oxford Archaeology, called the remains a “unique and fascinating part of Oxford”.

“We are hoping to shed light not only on the layout of the lost college of St Mary’s but also discover evidence that tells us about the lives of some of medieval Oxford’s most powerful Norman families who probably lived at the site,” he said.

He added: “If we are really lucky, we may uncover signs of even older everyday life, from Oxford’s earliest years when it was first built as a heavily-defended town on the Thames, guarding the border between Saxon and the Viking held lands.”

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