AFRICA, WORLD

Buried in Sand for a Millennium: Africa’s Roman Ghost City

Buried in Sand for a Millennium: Africa’s Roman Ghost City

Buried in Sand for a Millennium: Africa’s Roman Ghost City

Got Your archeologist’s cap on? Today we invite you to touch down in Algeria and explore Timgad, a lost Roman city on the edge of the Sahara desert that remained hidden beneath the sand for nearly a thousand years.

Positively obscure compared to the international notoriety of Pompeii, this ancient city is nonetheless one of the best surviving examples of Roman town planning anywhere in the historical Empire.

No one believed the first 18th century European explorer who claimed to have found a Roman city poking out of the sand in the North African desert, and the full extent of the 50-hectare site wouldn’t be realised and excavated in its entirety until the 1950s. Rome is still well worth the visit, but it’s in Algeria that some of the most impressive Roman remains in the whole world are to be found…

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

The first thing you might be thinking when looking at these aerial photographs is that our modern grid design for cities is not so modern after all.

Long before New York City had its “grid” street system, Timgad was designed with an orthogonal grid which is lined by a partially restored Corinthian colonnade, magnificently visible from above. And it’s the oldest of its kind in the world.

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

Originally founded by Emperor Trajan in 100 AD and built as a retirement colony for soldiers living nearby, within a few generations of its birth, the outpost had expanded to over 10,000 residents of both Roman, African, as well as Berber descent.

Most of them would likely never even have seen Rome before, but Timgad invested heavily in high culture and Roman identity, despite being thousands of kilometers from the Italian city itself.

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

The extension of Roman citizenship to non-Romans was a carefully planned strategy of the Empire – it knew it worked better by bringing people in than by keeping them out. In return for their loyalty, local elites were given a stake in the great and powerful Empire, and benefitted from its protection and legal system, not to mention, its modern urban amenities such as Roman bath houses, theatres, and a fancy public library…

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

Timgad, also known as Thamugadi in old Berber, is home to a very rare example of a surviving public library from the Roman world. Built in the 2nd century, the library would have housed manuscripts relating to religion, military history and good governance.

An artist’s interpretation of the Timgad library

These would have been rolled up and stored in wooden scroll cases, placed in shelves separated by ornate columns. The shelves can still be seen standing in the midst of the town ruins, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a monument to culture.

Mosaic found in Timgad

The remains of as many as 14 baths have survived and a mosaic portraying Roman flip-flops was found at the entrance of a house in Timgad dating back to the 1st or 2nd century, with the inscription “BENE LAVA” which translates to ‘wash well’. This mosaic, along with a collection of more than 200 others found in Timgad, are held inside a museum at the entrance of the site.

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

Other surviving landmarks include a 12 m high triumphal arch made of sandstone, a 3,500-seat theater is in good condition and a basilica where a large, hexagonal, 3-step immersion baptismal font richly decorated with mosaics was uncovered in the 1930s.

Baptismal font uncovered in Timgad

You can imagine the excitement of Scottish explorer James Bruce when he reached the city ruins in 1765, the first European to visit the site in centuries. Still largely buried then, he called it “a small town, but full of elegant buildings.” Clearing away the sand with his bare hands, Bruce and his fellow travellers uncovered several sculptures of Emperor Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s successor.

Unable to take photographs in 1765, and without the means to take the sculptures with them, they reburied them in the sand and continued on Bruce’s original quest to find the source of the Blue Nile. Upon his return to Great Britain, his claims of what he’d found were met with skepticism. Offended by the suspicion with which his story was received, James Bruce retired soon after and there would be no further investigation of the lost city for another hundred years.

A Roman lavatory, flanked by sculptures of dolphins, photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

Step forward Sir Robert Playfair, British consul-general in Algeria, who, inspired by James Bruce’s travel journal which detailed his findings in Timgad, went in search of the site. In his book, Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis, Playfair describes in detail what he found in the desolate and austere surroundings of the treeless desert plain.

“The whole of this district is of the deepest interest to the student of pre-historic archaeology … we left Timegad not without considerable regret that we could not afford to spend a longer time there. We would fain have made some excavations as there is no more promising a field for antiquarian research.”

Just a few years later, French colonists took control of the site in 1881, and began a large-scale excavation, which continued until Algeria gained independence from France in 1959.

Timgad photographed by Brian Brake for LIFE magazine, 1965

“These hills are covered with countless numbers of the most interesting mega-lithic remains,” wrote Playfair in 1877.

Oh what we would do for a time machine right about now.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Egypt Unearths Tomb of Royal Priest From 4,400 Years Ago

Egypt Unearths Tomb of Royal Priest From 4,400 Years Ago

Egypt unveiled a well-preserved 4,400-year-old tomb decorated with hieroglyphs and statues south of Cairo on Saturday, and officials expect more discoveries when archaeologists excavate the site further in the coming months.

The tomb was found in a buried ridge at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara. It was untouched and unlooted, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters at the site. He described the find as “one of a kind in the last decades.”

The tomb dates from the rule of Neferirkare Kakai, the third king of the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom.

Guests enter a newly-discovered tomb at the Saqqara necropolis, 30 kilometers south of Cairo, belonging to the high priest ‘Wahtye’ who served during the reign of King Neferirkare
A view of statues inside the newly-discovered tomb of ‘Wahtye’, which dates from the rule of King Neferirkare Kakai

Archaeologists removed a last layer of debris from the tomb on Thursday and found five shafts inside, Waziri said.

One of the shafts was unsealed with nothing inside, but the other four were sealed.

The entrance to the tomb.

They are expecting to make discoveries when they excavate those shafts starting on Sunday, he said. He was hopeful about one shaft in particular.

“I can imagine that all of the objects can be found in this area,” he said, pointing at one of the sealed shafts. “This shaft should lead to a coffin or a sarcophagus of the owner of the tomb.”

The tomb is 10 meters (33 ft) long, three meters (9.8 ft) wide, and just under three meters high, Waziri said.

The walls are decorated with hieroglyphs and statues of pharaohs. Waziri said the tomb was unique because of the statues and its near-perfect condition.

Statues of pharaohs and others in the tomb of Wahtye.
The 33 ft (ten metres) long, 9.8 ft (three metres) wide tomb has just under three metres high walls which are decorated with hieroglyphs and statues of pharaohs
Scenes in the ancient tomb depicted life during the rule of King Neferirkare Kakai during the Fifth Dynasty

“The color is almost intact even though the tomb is almost 4,400 years old,” he said.

The tomb lies on a buried ridge that has only partially been uncovered. Waziri said he expects more discoveries to be made there when archaeologists start more excavation work in January.

The Fifth Dynasty ruled Egypt from about 2,500 BC to 2,350 BC, not long after the great pyramid of Giza was built.

Saqqara served as the necropolis for Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt for more than two millennia.

Ancient Egyptians mummified humans to preserve their bodies for the afterlife, while animal mummies were used as religious offerings.

Egypt has revealed over a dozen ancient discoveries this year.

The country hopes the finds will brighten its image abroad and revive interest among travelers who once flocked to its iconic pharaonic temples and pyramids but who fled after the 2011 political uprising.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Giant 1,100-pound bone belonging to sauropod found in France

Giant 1,100-pound bone belonging to sauropod found in France

The femur of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French paleontologists at an excavation site in southwest France where, since 2010, remains of some of the largest animals ever to live on land have been excavated.

Giant 1,100-pound bone belonging to sauropod found in France
Maxime Lasseron inspects the femur of a Sauropod

The thigh bone of a giant dinosaur was found this week by French paleontologists at an excavation site in southwestern France where remains of some of the largest animals that ever lived on land have been dug up since 2010.

The two-meter-long femur at the Angeac-Charente site is thought to have belonged to a sauropod, herbivorous dinosaurs with long necks and tails which were widespread in the late Jurassic era, over 140 million years ago.

“This is a major discovery,” Ronan Allain, a paleontologist at the National History Museum of Paris told Reuters. “I was especially amazed by the state of preservation of that femur.”

“These are animals that probably weighed 40 to 50 tonnes.”

Allain said scientists at the site near the city of Cognac have found more than 7,500 fossils of more than 40 different species since 2010, making it one of the largest such finds in Europe.

The scientists believe that the bones are from a sauropod, which is the largest herbivorous dinosaur and first appeared in the late Triassic Period.

These reptiles were the largest of all dinosaurs and the largest land animals that have ever lived, they had a small head a long neck, and a very long tail.

Scientists believe they would spend their time wallowing in shallow water that would help support their bodies.

The dinosaur bone was found covered in clay by volunteers from the National Museum of Natural History.

ASIA, JAPAN, WORLD

Japanese scientists ‘reawaken’ cells of 28,000 Old woolly mammoth

Japanese scientists ‘reawaken’ cells of 28,000 Old woolly mammoth

Japanese scientists 'reawaken' cells of 28,000 Old woolly mammoth

Her name is Yuka: an ancient woolly mammoth that last lived some 28,000 years ago, before becoming mummified in the frozen permafrost wastelands of northern Siberia.

But now that icy tomb is no longer the end of Yuka’s story.

The mammoth’s well-preserved remains were discovered in 2010, and scientists in Japan have now reawakened traces of biological activity in this long-extinct beast – by implanting Yuka’s cell nuclei into the egg cells of mice.

“This suggests that, despite the years that have passed, cell activity can still happen and parts of it can be recreated,” genetic engineer Kei Miyamoto from Kindai University told AFP.

In their experiment, the researchers extracted bone marrow and muscle tissue from Yuka’s remains, and inserted the least-damaged nucleus-like structures they could recover into living mouse oocytes (germ cells) in the lab.

Red and green dyed proteins around a mammoth cell nucleus (upper right) in a mouse oocyte (Kindai University)

In total, 88 of these nuclei structures were collected from 273.5 milligrams of mammoth tissue, and once some of these nuclei were injected into egg cells, a number of the modified cells demonstrated signs of cellular activity that precede cell division.

“In the reconstructed oocytes, the mammoth nuclei showed the spindle assembly, histone incorporation, and partial nuclear formation,” the authors explain in the new paper.

“However, the full activation of nuclei for cleavage was not confirmed.”

Despite the faintness of this limited biological activity, the fact anything could be observed at all is remarkable and suggests that “cell nuclei are, at least partially, sustained even in over a 28,000-year period”, the researchers say.

Calling the accomplishment a “significant step toward bringing mammoths back from the dead”, Miyamoto acknowledges there is nonetheless a long way to go before the world can expect to see a Jurassic Park-style resurrection of this long-vanished species.

“Once we obtain cell nuclei that are kept in better condition, we can expect to advance the research to the stage of cell division,” Miyamoto told The Asahi Shimbun.

Less-damaged samples, the researchers suggest, could hypothetically enable the possibility of inducing further nuclear functions, such as DNA replication and transcription.

Another thing needed is better technology. Previous similar work in 2009 by members of the same research team didn’t get this far – which the scientists at least partially put down to “technological limitations at that time”, and the state of the frozen mammoth tissues used.

To that end, the researchers think their new research could provide a new “platform to evaluate the biological activities of nuclei in extinct animal species” – an incremental progression to perhaps one day, maybe, seeing Yuka’s kind roam again.

The findings are reported in Scientific Reports.

MEXICO, NORTH AMERICA, WORLD

Traces of Possible Zapotec Temple Detected in Southern Mexico

Traces of Possible Zapotec Temple Detected in Southern Mexico

The Catholic Church of San Pablo in Mitla is built on the footprint of an earlier Zapotec temple.

A hidden “entrance to the underworld” built by the ancient Zapotec culture has been discovered beneath a Catholic church in southern Mexico, according to a team of researchers using cutting-edge ground-scanning technology.

The complex system of underground chambers and tunnels was built more than a millennium ago by the Zapotec, whose state arose near modern-day Oaxaca in the late sixth century B.C. and grew in grandeur as people created monumental buildings and erected massive tombs filled with lavish grave goods. 

The architectural complex at Mitla, 27 miles (44 kilometers) southeast of Oaxaca, boasts unique and intricate mosaics, having functioned as the main Zapotec religious center until the late 15th century, when the Aztec conquest likely resulted in the abandonment of the site.

The Spanish then reused stone blocks from the ruins to build the San Pablo Apostol church a century later. 

Traces of Possible Zapotec Temple Detected in Southern Mexico
Researchers use a georadar to scan the plaza in front of the Palace of the Columns.

Oral histories have long suggested that the main altar of the church was purposefully built over a sealed entrance to a vast underground labyrinth of pillars and passages that originally belonged to a Zapotec temple known as Lyobaa, which means “the place of rest.” 

Investigating this claim with modern geophysical methods, the Project Lyobaa research team announced on May 12 that they had found a complex system of caves and passageways beneath the church.

The project is a collaboration of 15 archaeologists, geophysical scientists, engineers, and conservation experts with the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and the ARX Project.

A seismic tomography scan shows areas of low velocity (blue) that may indicate underground chambers or natural cavities.

Using three nondestructive methods — ground penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography and seismic noise tomography — the team produced a virtual 3D model of the subterranean ruins.

These methods work by measuring reflection properties of electromagnetic and seismic waves as they pass through different subsoil layers and other material underground.

A number of measuring devices placed around the church recorded information about a large void below the main altar and two connecting passages, all at a depth of 16 to 26 feet (5 to 8 meters). 

“The newly discovered chambers and tunnels directly relate to the ancient Zapotec beliefs and concepts of the Underworld,” Marco Vigato, founder of the ARX Project, told Live Science in an email, “and confirm the veracity of the colonial accounts that speak of the elaborate rituals and ceremonies conducted at Mitla in subterranean chambers associated with the cult of the dead and the ancestors.” 

A ground-penetrating radar scan shows a stairway under the surface.

Although the team suspected that the underground temple existed, they were surprised by its scale and depth, according to Vigato. “More research is needed to accurately determine the full extent of these subterranean features,” he said.

José Luis Punzo Díaz, an archaeologist at Centro INAH Michoacán who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email that “geophysical methods are very important in current archaeology.”

These methods have helped find anomalies at other Mesoamerican sites, such as Teotihuacán, which have also been interpreted as entrances to the underworld.

As a result, these methods “should be contrasted with archaeological excavations,” Punzo noted, “because although the geophysical data are interesting, it is always essential to verify them in the field.” 

The joint research team has plans for a second season of geophysical investigation in September, which will focus on additional groups of structures at Mitla, and they hope to get permission from authorities to conduct further work at San Pablo Apostol as well, Vigato said.

All told, “these findings will help rewrite the history of the origins of Mitla and its development as an ancient site,” the team members wrote in a statement.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Paint like an Egyptian: X-rays reveal creative process behind ancient tomb art

Paint like an Egyptian: X-rays reveal creative process behind ancient tomb art

Every painter has a process, but the painstaking revisions and countless tiny edits are invisible to those who only see the final product. In a study published today in PLOS ONE, researchers used x-rays to reveal how 3000-year-old paintings inside Egypt’s Theban Necropolis unfolded step by step.

Paint like an Egyptian: X-rays reveal creative process behind ancient tomb art
Inside the Theban Necropolis, researchers used an x-ray fluorescence machine to peek behind the surface layers of ancient paintings lining tomb walls

The findings hint at the creative process used to produce these ancient masterworks.

Applying the x-ray method to ancient Egyptian wall paintings “is really a game changer,” says Marine Cotte, a chemist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, who previously collaborated with the study’s authors but was not involved with this work.

In recent years, scientists and art historians around the world have teamed up to use a technology known as x-ray fluorescence to identify paint colors and traced lines buried beneath the surface of famous works of art.

Every paint color has a distinct chemical composition. By bombarding paintings with x-rays and measuring how they are absorbed, scientists can fingerprint the pigments both at the surface and below.

The technique allows scientists to see the mistakes artists covered up, as well as the layer-by-layer iterations that resulted in famous end results.

Most of this work has happened in museums or laboratories, where smaller, portable objects can be brought to the machine. That’s tough to do with paintings on the wall of an underground tomb. So, using two portable x-ray machines, an interdisciplinary team of art historians, Egyptologists, and engineers brought the lab to the tombs instead, allowing the researchers to look beneath the surface without destroying it.

The Theban Necropolis—which includes Tutankhamun’s tomb—features hundreds of tombs, each chock full of paintings memorializing the dead.

Many art historians consider them to represent the peak of ancient Egyptian painting. X-raying them wasn’t easy: Getting the devices into the tombs meant carrying the sensitive machines through the desert into hard-to-reach areas off-limits to tourists.

Once inside the warm, humid funerary chapels, the work was slow and painstaking.

A small area could take 3 hours to scan, as crouching scientists worked centimeter by centimeter in total silence. “You feel in the heart of humanity,” says study co-author Catherine Defeyt, an art conservation scientist at the University of Liège, of working in the tombs.

When the researchers emerged to analyze their data, the results surprised them.

Many Egyptologists believed the sheer number of Egyptian paintings inside the Necropolis would have required an assembly line process, with no room for artists to return and redo work.

Yet x-rays of a well-known portrait of Rameses II, who ruled Egypt from 1279 B.C.E. to 1213 B.C.E., revealed traces of an earlier version underneath.

The previous depiction of Rameses II had a shorter crown, a different scepter, and an altered necklace—“a remarkable encounter with the ghost of the painters at work,” the team writes in the paper.

Thomas Christiansen—an Egyptologist with the Danish National Encyclopedia who wasn’t involved with the research—says the amount of reworking surprised him.

The hidden details, he says, help us “understand and appreciate the ancient Egyptian artist.” But just why the painters revised their work, changing small details like an arm’s position, may be “impossible to fathom” today, the authors note.

Christiansen speculates that the revisions suggest a master artist envisioned the project, whereas apprentices applied the paint, and the master later issued corrections. “More effort went into realizing a preconceived artistic idea than we thought,” he says.

The fact that they altered paintings at all challenges many historians’ assumptions about Egyptian art as preplanned and precise, says Philippe Martinez, lead author on the study and an Egyptologist at Sorbonne University. “What we see is that nothing is perfect. And that’s great, because they were human beings.”

EUROPE, IRELAND, WORLD

Dublin hotel dig unearths 1,000-year-old burial site

Dublin hotel dig unearths 1,000-year-old burial site

Dublin hotel dig unearths 1,000-year-old burial site
A member of the archaeology team examines skeletal remains discovered during preparatory works for a new hotel in central Dublin

About 100 skeletal remains from the Middle Ages have been unearthed during excavations for a Northern Ireland firm’s new hotel in Dublin.  Burial sites dating back more than 1,000 years were found at Capel Street where an abbey, St Mary’s, once stood.

At least two of the remains are believed to date back to the early 11th Century. The excavations have been commissioned by Beannchor, which is building its new Bullitt Dublin hotel on the site.

The abbey used by the Savigniac and Cistercian orders opened in the 12th Century. Carbon dating of one of the discovered graves predates that by 100 years, indicating the presence of a Christian settlement on the site prior to St Mary’s being built.

The archaeological investigations at the site, which formerly housed Boland’s Bakery, also unearthed the foundations of buildings dating back to the 1600s.

Edmond O’Donovan, director of excavations for Courtney Deery Heritage Consultancy (CDHC), at the Capel Street site

The finds were discovered close to a former Presbyterian meeting house dating from 1667. Parts of a domestic house known as the ‘Dutch Billies’ have also been found.

It was constructed in about 1700 by settlers who came to Dublin after William of Orange ascended to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1689.

Incorporated into design

While the skeletal remains will be painstakingly excavated, cleaned and sent for further analysis, before ultimately being given to the National Monuments Services, the other structures found during the examination of the site are set to be incorporated into the design of the new hotel complex.

Beannchor Group, which runs high-profile hotels and bars in Northern Ireland, has undertaken similar restoration of historic buildings in the past, including Belfast’s Merchant Hotel, which was a former bank.

It said the Dublin project is by far its biggest and most complex project to date.

The 17th Century Presbyterian meeting house will be central to the development of a new bar and restaurant concept.

The ‘Dutch Billies’ house will also be preserved while a building with surviving ovens from the Boland’s Bakery dating from 1890 will be renovated and repurposed.

Edmond O’Donovan, director of excavations for Courtney Deery Heritage Consultancy (CDHC, said St Mary’s Abbey was Ireland’s largest and most wealthy medieval abbey in its day.

Archaeologists examine remains at the site of the medieval St Mary’s Abbey

“It was demolished after 1540 when the monastery was disbanded by Henry VIII and was later the site of a 17th Century Presbyterian meeting house.

“One of the things that was intriguing and exciting about the excavation is that we found an early burial or at least a number of burials that we suspect to be quite early.

“We have one that’s carbon dated to the 11th Century and we have a second burial that was found with a diagnostic stick pin from the 11th Century.

“And that suggests that there was an earlier Christian and potentially monastic foundation here which predates the Savigniac and Cistercian Abbey.”

Bill Wolsey, managing director of Beannchor, said it was impossible to have foreseen what the project would entail at its outset in 2017.

“As time went on, we began to understand just how complex this project may be,” he said.

Skeletal remains unearthed at the site of a new hotel being developed by Belfast-based Beannchor Group in Dublin

“Great care has been taken to preserve and incorporate elements of these early surviving buildings into the new development, on what we now know is one of the most significant heritage sites in the city.”

The new Bullitt Dublin hotel is expected to open in 2025.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Archaeologists Find Massive 3,000-Year-Old Statue in Cairo Slum

Archaeologists Find Massive 3,000-Year-Old Statue in Cairo Slum

A woman walks past the head of a statue at the site of the new discovery in Cairo’s Mattarya district on Thursday.

Archaeologists have found a 26-foot statue submerged in ground water in a Cairo slum that the Antiquities Ministry has hailed as one of the most important discoveries ever.

Experts say it probably depicts the revered Pharaoh Ramses II, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago.

The was unearthed near the ruins of Ramses II’s temple in the ancient city of Heliopolis, which is located in the eastern part of modern-day Cairo.

“Last Tuesday they called me to announce the big discovery of a colossus of a king, most probably Ramses II, made out of quartzite,” Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anani said Thursday.

The quartzite colossus possibly of Ramses II and the limestone bust of Seti II were unveiled on Thursday.

The most powerful and celebrated ruler of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh also known as Ramses the Great was the third of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt.

He led several military expeditions and expanded the Egyptian Empire to stretch from Syria in the east to Nubia in the south. His successors called him the “Great Ancestor.”

On Thursday, archaeologists, officials, local residents, and members of the news media looked on as a massive forklift pulled the statue’s head out of the water

The joint Egyptian-German expedition also found the upper part of a life-sized limestone statue of Pharaoh Seti II, Ramses II’s grandson, that is 31 inches long.

The torso of the statue of Pharaoh Ramses II was unveiled on Thursday.

The sun temple in Heliopolis was founded by Ramses II, lending weight to the likelihood the statue is of him, archaeologists say.

It was one of the largest temples in Egypt, almost double the size of Luxor’s Karnak, but was destroyed in Greco-Roman times.

Many of its obelisks were moved to Alexandria or to Europe and stones from the site were looted and used for building as Cairo developed.

“It is one of the most important excavations in Egypt,” Dr. Salima Ikram, an archaeologist and professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo who was part of the dig this week told NBC News. She described the new find as “spectacular, the things are astonishing.”

She said the ongoing work at the site is “crucially important because it is basically rescue archaeology of one of the most important religious places in ancient Egyptian history. It is the birthplace of the Sun God and indeed of Egypt and its civilization in terms of Egyptian mythology.”

Experts will now attempt to extract the remaining pieces of both statues before restoring them. If they are successful and the colossus is proven to depict Ramses II, it will be moved to the entrance of the Grand Egyptian Museum, set to open in 2018.

The discovery was made in the working-class area of Matariya, among unfinished buildings and mud roads.

Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anani poses for a picture with workers next to the head of a statue on Thursday.

All In One Magazine