Egyptian mummy believed to be of a male priest turns out to be a pregnant woman
According to the AFP, X-rays of a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy kept at Poland’s National Museum since 1917 showed the remains of a woman with long, curly hair who died between 26 and 30 weeks pregnant.
Marzena Ozarek-Szilke, an anthropologist at the Warsaw Mummy Project, was examining a CT scan of a mummy at the National Museum in the Polish capital when she spotted something peculiar.
“When I looked at the lesser pelvis of our mummy I was interested in what was inside… I thought I saw a tiny foot,” Ozarek-Szilke said.
X-ray images showed a little foot in the belly of the world’s first pregnant Egyptian mummy
She asked her husband, an archaeologist who also worked on the project, to take a look.
“My husband looked at the picture and as a father of three, he said: ‘Well, that’s a foot’. At that moment … the whole picture started to come together,” Ozarek-Szilke told Reuters.
The mummy came to Poland in the 19th century when the nascent University of Warsaw was creating an antiquities collection. For decades, it was thought the mummy belonged to an ancient Egyptian priest named Hor-Dehuti.
However, in discovery revealed in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Thursday, scientists at the Warsaw Mummy Project said the mummy was in fact a woman in her twenties who was between 26 and 28 weeks pregnant.
The cause of death is not clear, but Ozarek-Szilke said the pregnancy may have had something to do with it.
“It is possible that the pregnancy itself contributed to the death of this woman. Now we have modern medicine, women who are between 20 and 30 weeks pregnant and something happens to the pregnancy, they have a chance to be rescued. It used to be impossible,” she said.
The discovery sheds some light on the little-known role of children in ancient Egypt and the religious beliefs of the time, but also raises many questions, according to Wojciech Ejsmond, co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project.
“What was the status of this child in the Egyptian religion? Did it have a soul, could it go to the afterlife on its own, could it be reborn in the afterlife… if it was not yet born?”
Ejsmond said scientists would study the mummy further to determine the cause of death and establish why the foetus was left in the body.
A man stumbles across a 2,500-year-old Bronze Age treasure trove in Swedish forest – in pictures
The AFP reports that more than 50 Bronze Age artefacts were discovered in western Sweden by Tomas Karlsson, an orienteering enthusiast. The 2,500-year-old cache of bronze items includes necklaces, chains, needles, and eyelets used to decorate and construct clothing.
Conservator Madelene Skogbert shows a bone ring that is part of the about 50 whole or larger parts of bronze objects that have been found in Alingsas, in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Among the relics, believed to be from the period between 750 and 500 BC, are some “very well preserved necklaces, chains and needles” made out of bronze.
The objects were lying out in the open in front of some boulders out in the forest.
The discovery has been hailed as one of the most spectacular and largest cache finds from the Bronze Age.
“Presumably animals have dug them out of a crevice between the boulders, where you can assume that they had been lying before,” the government agency said.
Tomas Karlsson, the cartographer who made the discovery when he was out updating a map, at first thought, it was just junk.
“It looked like metal garbage. Is that a lamp lying here, I thought at first,” Karlsson told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.
He told the paper he then hunched over and saw a spiral and a necklace.
“But it all looked so new. I thought they were fake,” he continued.
He reported the find to local authorities who sent out a team of archaeologists to examine the site.
“Most of the finds are made up of bronze items that can be associated with women of high status from the Bronze Age,” Johan Ling, professor of archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, said in the statement.
“They have been used to adorn different body parts, such as necklaces, bracelets and ankle bracelets, but there were also large needles and eyelets used to decorate and hold up different pieces of clothing, probably made of wool,” Ling added.
Medieval sword unearthed by a metal detectorist in Poland may have been used in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410
A medieval sword, metal pieces of a scabbard and a belt, and two knives that would have been worn on the belt were discovered in northern Poland by a metal detectorist who donated the artefacts to the Museum of the Battle of Grunwald, according to a Live Science report.
Alexander Medvedev discovered the sword near Olsztyn, in northern Poland, the local governmental Marshal’s Office of Warmia and Masuria reported in a translated news release on April 22.
“Such a find is found once in decades,” archaeologists said, according to the statement.
Despite spending more than 600 years buried underground, the weapons are well preserved, said Medvedev, an archaeology enthusiast, who donated the findings to the Museum of the Battle of Grunwald in Olsztyn.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the person who carried the sword might have been one of roughly 66,000 people who clashed at the Battle of Grunwald on July 15, 1410.
The bloody Battle of Grunwald (pictured) between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania triggered the decline of the Teutonic Order and brought about a shift in power in Europe which lasted for centuries
The battle fought near the Polish villages of Stębark (also known as Tannenberg), Grunwald and Ludwigsdorf, ended with a Polish-Lithuanian victory over the Knights of the Teutonic Order, which was founded during the Crusades to the Holy Land and later came to rule over what was then Prussia.
The Knights of the Teutonic Order often waged battles against their non-Christian neighbours, including the Duchy of Lithuania. But then, Lithuania’s pagan grand duke converted to Catholicism and married the Polish Queen Jadwiga; he became king when she died and took the name King Władysław II Jagiełło.
The sword may have been worn by a warrior at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410.
King Jagiełło also converted Lithuania to Christianity. But the Knights of the Teutonic Order doubted the sincerity of the king’s conversion, and in 1409, their Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen declared war on Poland and Lithuania, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
After a day of fighting, von Jungingen was killed when a lance pierced his throat and his troops withdrew. In all, of the 39,000 Polish-Lithuanian troops, about 5,000 died; of the roughly 27,000 Teutonic troops, 14,000 were captured and 8,000 died, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. After the defeat, the Teutonic Order’s power declined.
Hundreds of years later, the Soviets retrospectively claimed the battle as a Russian victory, because some soldiers from Smolensk, a city in Russia, were present on the Polish-Lithuanian side. During World War I, the Germans won a battle against Russia near the medieval battle site.
The Germans, who viewed the medieval knights as noblemen who spread Christianity, named the new battle the Battle of Tannenberg so they could claim revenge for the knights who were defeated in the medieval battle, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
The newly discovered sword and its accessories are now undergoing conservation and analysis.
The team hopes to learn more about the “social status of a medieval sword owner, and we are curious to see what lies beneath the rust layer,” Szymon Drej, director of the Museum of the Battle of Grunwald, said in the statement.
“We will also examine the site of the excavation of the monument in more depth to get to know the situational context of its origin.” After all, It’s rare to find such valuable items from the Middle Ages buried underground, Drej said.
More Than 100 Burials Uncovered in Egypt’s Nile Delta
According to an Ahram Online report, 110 burials containing the remains of adults and children have been found at the Koum el-Khulgan archaeological site in the Nile Delta region of northern Egypt.
Some of the graves discovered at the Koum el-Khulgan archaeological site in Dakahlia province were found still carrying the human remains inside.
The tombs were located approximately 150 kilometres northeast of Cairo, the ministry said, adding that at least 68 of these oval-shaped tombs belonged from the Predynastic Period that spanned between 6000-3150BC.
Ancient burial tomb unearthed recently with human remains
As many as 37 rectangular-shaped tombs from an ancient era known as the Second Intermediate Period (1782-1570BC) were also unearthed. This dated back to the period when the Semitic of Hyksos ruled ancient Egypt, the ministry informed.
The remaining graves were found to belong to the Naqada III period that thrived between 3200BC to 3000BC.
Inside these ancient mystical tombs, archaeologists found human remains of adults and children as well as the funerary equipment and pottery objects, the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said.
Artefacts found at the site include pottery, scarab amulets and jewelry.
Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr Mustafa Waziri said in a Facebook post that this discovery is an important historical and archaeological addition to the site, where among the tombs found are 68, dating back to the period of the civilization of Lower Egypt.
And as many as five tombs from the era of Naqada III and 37 tombs from the era of Hyksos were dugout. “The excavations will continue to reveal more secrets from this region,” he said.
An ancient burial tomb unearthed recently with human remains and and pottery
Uncovered remains of a baby
Meanwhile, the head of the Egyptian antiquities sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Ayman Ashmawi, said that tombs are oval-shaped pits cut in the island’s sandy layer and contain people buried in a squatting position, most of whom lay on their left side with their head pointing westward.
Archaeologists uncovered the remains of a baby buried inside a pottery vase from the Bhutto 2 period, a small pot of spherical pottery was placed with it.
A pottery coffin was found inside a burial ground for a child, two brick tombs in the form of a rectangular building with the children’s burials and some funeral furniture, including a small pottery vase and silver rings, as well as the remains of a baby buried inside a large pottery pot were also excavated.
The funerary furniture was placed inside the pot, which was represented in a small black pottery vase.
The graves were found at the Koum el-Khulgan archaeological site in Dakahlia province.
Teenage woolly mammoth with soft tissues intact found on Yamal peninsula
She is 42,000 years old and has come a long way for her Australian debut. First, she was recovered from the frozen mud in Siberia that was her tomb for so long. Then she was packed into a crate at a tiny museum in Russia and flown to a humidity-controlled cube at the Australian Museum.
Mammoths – Giants of the ice age
The ice age world of woolly mammoths will be brought to life in Mammoths – Giants of the Ice Age, exclusive to the Australian Museum from 17 November 2017.
Baby Lyuba, the world’s most complete and best-preserved woolly mammoth, has arrived in Sydney. She is in remarkable condition, with her skin and internal organs intact. Scientists even found her mother’s milk in her belly.
The 42,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth was unveiled on Friday at the Sydney Museum.
We will finally be able to see her when she is unveiled as the centerpiece of the museum’s Mammoths – Giants of the Ice Age exhibition.
Lyuba, who died at 35 days, is one of Russia’s national treasures, and the government is reluctant to let her out of its sight too often. This is only the fifth time Shemanovsky Museum has let her out, and it’s her first trip to the southern hemisphere.
The mammoth was first spotted in 2007 by Yuri Khudi, a Siberian reindeer herder, who found her as the frost thawed on a muddy bank of the Yuribey River.
When he brought a team of scientists back to recover her, she was gone; someone else had got there first. The team tracked her to a village deep within Siberia’s frozen wasteland. She was propped up on the door of a shop. The shopkeeper had reportedly bought her for two snowmobiles and a year’s worth of food from Mr. Khudi’s cousin.
Registrars and preparators from the Field Museum join the team at Australian Museum to install the exhibit.
“And while she was propped up, a dog came up and chewed off her tail and her ear. If only for that she’d be completely intact,” says Trevor Ahearn, the Australian Museum’s creative producer.
Palaeontologist Matthew McCurry at the exhibit.
Lyuba (Lay-oo-bah) means love in Russian. The museum has chosen to surround her with models of huge, ferocious adult mammoths, much as the herd would have surrounded and protected her in life.
It is thought her feet had become stuck in a muddy hole on the side of a Siberian riverbank. Before her mother could yank her out, Lyuba slipped below the surface, where the mud choked her mouth and trunk.
Mammoths lived in late Paleolithic period, which stretched from about 200,000 BC to 10,000 BC.
But the mud that killed her also contained sediments and bacteria that created an acid barrier around her body, in effect pickling her. When the river froze over, she was left perfectly preserved.
Had she lived a full mammoth life – 60 years – Lyuba would have grown to more than three meters in height and about five tonnes. To sustain that bodyweight she would have consumed up to 180 kilograms of grass and 80 liters of water a day.
Mammoths lived in the late Paleolithic period, which stretched from about 200,000 BC, the time Homo sapiens first emerged in Africa, to 10,000 BC. Mammoths were uniquely adapted for the conditions, with small ears and thick, woolly fur. They ate grass and bark and roamed across Europe, North America, and Siberia.
That makes Lyuba the first of her kind to visit our shores, and it took the Australian Museum a fair bit of what director Kim McKay terms “cultural diplomacy” to get her over here. Negotiations involved the Shemanovsky Museum and the Russian government.
Mr. Ahearn says: “One of the first things we had to do before we brought Lyuba over here was absolutely guarantee our Russian colleagues that there was no possibility of her getting seized because there is some controversy over who owns her.
“She’s a little controversial in Russia, with her association with an oil company that helped bring her into the museum. I think it’s paranoia. Russia is feeling a little bit of pressure, so I don’t know if it’s founded. There are lots of myths; it’s all very hazy.”
The prospect of mammoth cloning
Scientists have two competing theories on why mammoths became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Both have important things to tell us about the modern environment – and perhaps contain a message about why we shouldn’t be trying to bring mammoths back.
The first theory is climate change. The ending of the ice age at about 10,000 BC may have dramatically reduced the area in which these cold-environment animals could survive.
The second theory is over-hunting. Mammoths, with their tonnes of fat, would have represented an incredibly valuable food source for early humans, who developed sharp spears to hunt them. Scientists think it is possible the mammoth is the first species humanity managed to push into extinction.
Mammoth cloning has always excited the popular imagination, and the exhibition dedicates a section to the possibilities.
So far, we have sequenced about 70 percent of mammoth DNA, so the raw material is not there yet. But even if we could, we shouldn’t, says David Alquezar, manager of the Australian Museum’s genetics lab.
“The money to do that could be better invested in species that are endangered right now, rather than focusing our efforts on a species that has been extinct for 10,000 years,” says Dr. Alquezar.
Meet Sue One of the Largest, Most Extensive, and Best Preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimen
Sue, the world’s largest, most accurate, and best-preserved T. rex, has attracted millions of visitors to Chicago’s Field Museum.
Many of Sue’s bones have never been found in a T. rex before. Sue’s skeleton, which is 90 percent intact, also gives scientists the rare ability to recreate what T. rex would have felt like and how it moved while it was alive.
Finding most of the bones from a single specimen gave scientists excellent detailed information about Sue’s anatomy and biology. T. rex is known for its tiny forelimbs, and Sue’s right arm is only the second nearly complete arm ever found.
Sue the T. rex. Notice the wishbone or furcula (circled), the first such bone ever found on a T. rex.
It will help scientists better understand the strength and motion of this oddly small appendage. Sue’s arms are about the same size as human arms, making them too short to reach her mouth.
Yet the bones are quite thick which indicates they would have been very powerful. Current thinking is that the arms were more useful to T. rex in its early life when it would have been proportionately larger.
If you do visit Sue at the Field Museum, you won’t see all of her bones attached. For example, there are long thin bones that were formed just beneath Sue’s skin on her belly called gastralia. They are different from her ribs and scientists are trying to figure out their positioning and how they should be attached.
They might have helped her breathe or perhaps they helped protect her internal organs. Usually, these delicate bones are incomplete or missing, but Sue has about 75% of her gastralia intact.
Sue’s has a wishbone or furcula in her chest. This bone is the first ever found on a T. rex. Only carnivorous dinosaurs have a furcula and it’s one of the many links between dinosaurs and birds.
The tail on Sue is the most complete tail ever found on a T. rex. A complete tail allows for accurate measurement of the animal’s length. Perhaps the most significant part of Sue’s skeleton is her skull, and Sue’s is one of the most complete and best-preserved T. rex skulls ever found.
Its structure and arrangement provide some of the best clues about how Sue lived and related to her environment.
Before being put on display, Sue’s skull spent 500 hours inside a powerful CT scanner. As a result, scientists can now learn about the structure of T. rex’s brain.
These CT images show Sue’s brain cavity. The brain itself was about the size and shape of a big sweet potato. Sue had large olfactory bulbs and sinus cavities indicating she had a strong sense of smell which would have been important for hunting or scavenging for food.
These Mysterious Artificial Islands Are Older Than Stonehenge, Claim Scientists
Ancient humans did not always live on dry land in the northern British Isles in the distant past. The roots of thousands of ancient artificial islands remain to this day across Scotland, Ireland, and Wales: known as crannogs, these unusual systems were constructed long ago by prehistoric hands in the chilly waters of rivers, lakes, and sea inlets.
Exactly how long ago these things were shaped is something that’s never been fully understood. Traditionally, archaeologists estimated Scottish crannogs emerged no earlier than the Iron Age, being first constructed around 800 BCE.
But in more recent years, evidence has come to light that these engineered structures could be much more ancient, and a new study confirms the formations are actually thousands of years older than we realized.
Using radiocarbon dating of four sites located in the Outer Hebrides (the Western Isles of Scotland), researchers have discovered ancient crannogs dating back to 3640–3360 BCE, meaning early humans were building these giant artificial islands roughly 5,500 years ago, pre-dating even the construction of Stonehenge.
“These crannogs represent a monumental effort made thousands of years ago to build mini-islands by piling up many tonnes of rocks on the loch bed,” says archaeologist Fraser Sturt from the University of Southampton.
It’s not the first time archaeologists have wondered whether crannogs could have Neolithic origins. Excavations in the 1980s at the crannog Eilean Dòmhnuill suggested it could date back thousands of years, but for decades no other comparably ancient specimens were located.
Things changed in 2012, when former Royal Navy diver Chris Murray, who was a resident of the Scottish Isle of Lewis, became intrigued by a crannog in the waters of Loch Arnish.
Diving beside the remnants of the weathered platform, Murray made a totally unexpected discovery: hidden beneath the lake’s surface around the engineered island, he found a scattered collection of remarkably well-preserved Early/Middle Neolithic pots lying on the loch bed.
Neolithic pottery recovered from Loch Arnish in 2012.
Working with Sturt and other researchers, the team investigated Loch Arnish and several other crannogs – some of which had not previously been identified in archaeological records and were located using Google Earth.
In total, the researchers discovered over 200 Neolithic ceramic vessels discarded from five crannogs – evidence of an extensive and arcane cultural practice we never knew about until now.
“Survey and excavation of these sites have demonstrated – for the first time –that crannogs were a widespread feature of the Neolithic and that they may have been special locations, as evidenced by the deposition of material culture into the surrounding water,” the researchers report in a new paper.
“These findings challenge current conceptualisations of Neolithic settlement, monumentality, and depositional practice while suggesting that other ‘undated’ crannogs across Scotland and Ireland could potentially have Neolithic origins.”
The site investigations, which encompassed a mixture of underwater and aerial surveying, plus excavations and radiocarbon analysis, revealed clear evidence the crannogs were human-made. The ancient builders created the structures by piling up boulders to make artificial islets.
At one of the sites, Loch Bhorgastail, ancient timbers were also observed around the edges of the crannog, thought to have been placed to increase the stability of the rock structure.
Six crannogs that have produced Neolithic material.
Sometimes, a stone causeway leads out to the island; at other sites, no causeway seems to exist, suggesting the crannog might have been accessed by boat, or perhaps a wooden bridge. While no other timber evidence remains at any of the sites, it’s thought the crannogs may have borne wooden structures and dwellings built on top of them, from which ancient pottery was once hurled – and not, it seems, by accident.
“The quantities of material now identified around several sites, and the position of these vessels in relation to the islets, suggests that pots were intentionally deposited into the water,” the researchers write.
“Many vessels had substantial sooting on their external surfaces, and some had internal charred residues; they had clearly been used before deposition.”
As for what these ancient disposals into the loch signified, and the other purposes of the crannogs may have had, we don’t know.
But given the amount of work that must have gone into creating these giant structures – engineered with stones weighing up to 250 kilograms (550 lbs) a piece – it’s clear they must have had some unique importance to the prehistoric community who once inhabited these mysterious spaces.
Perhaps the crannogs were reserved for important celebratory feasts, or used in mortuary rituals, with the watery backdrop of the loch somehow framing the otherness of these long-ago gatherings.
“They would have required a huge investment of labour to build and probably remained significant places for a long time,” the researchers explain.
“These islets could also have been perceived as special places, their watery surroundings creating separation from everyday life. The process of crossing over to the islets may have emphasized this separation; the practices that took place on them do appear to have been very different from those of ‘normal life.”
Mysterious Giant Objects Discovered Near The Egyptian Pyramids On The Giza Plateau
It would seem that near the famous pyramids in Egypt, everything has long been known. But, thanks to new technologies and clear high-quality images from space, new details began to be discovered.
At first glance, it seems to be nothing ordinary – pyramids, like pyramids…
But this is only at first glance. If you enlarge the details of this image, then you can find the barely guessed outlines of giant, clearly artificial rectangular formations that are located opposite the famous pyramids.
What are these incomprehensible huge geometric objects protruding through the sand dunes?
It may well be that in the thickness of the limestone plateau, ancient artificial underground structures of the disappeared Egyptian civilization of the pharaohs are hidden from prying eyes.
We are sure that the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt is well aware of these objects.
Therefore, permits for archaeological work are issued only in strictly designated places and not at all free of charge, and the more promising such a site is in terms of finds, the larger the contributions (and the contributions, judging by a number of publications, are not at all weak).
In addition, excavations at a number of sites are generally prohibited.
So the Egyptian land will keep its secrets and mysteries for a long time from ordinary inhabitants – you and us.
