Graeco-Roman baths discovered in Egypt

An Egyptian Archaeological Mission from the Supreme Council of Antiquities has uncovered Parts of a huge red brick building during excavations carried out at San El-Hagar archaeological site at Gharbia Governorate.

Credit: Ministry of Antiquities

Dr. Ayman Ashmawy, Head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities explains that the discovered building most probably is a part of a bath dating back to the Graeco-Roman era; it is about 16 meters long, and its measure 3.5 x 1.80 meters.

Credit: Ministry of Antiquities

The Mission would complete its work during the coming seasons to reveal more parts of the building and its function.

Credit: Ministry of Antiquities

Dr. Ashmawy continues that the mission also found pottery vessels, terracotta statues, bronze tools, a stone fragment engraved with hieroglyphs and a small statue of a ram.

Credit: Ministry of Antiquities

On his part Dr. Saeed Al-Asal Head of the mission said that the most important discovered artifacts is a gold coin of Ptolemy III, which was made in the reign of Ptolemy IV in memory of his father.

Credit: Ministry of Antiquities

The diameter of the coin is 2.6 cm and weighs about 28 gr. on one of the coin’s faces is decorated with a portrait of Ptolemy III wearing the crown and the other side bears the Land if Prosperity surround with the name of the king.

Source: Ministry of Antiquities [May 23, 2018]

Earliest evidence of blood vengeance found in Jerusalem's hills

History's earliest evidence of blood vengeance in ancient times has been discovered in a cave in the Jerusalem hills.

The cracks in the skull [Credit: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority]

In an archaeological survey conducted in the cave, Prof. Boaz Zissu, of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, discovered a human skull and palm bones that have been dated to the 10th-11th centuries CE.

The bones were identified by Dr. Yossi Nagar, an anthropologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), and the National Center for Forensic Medicine and Tel Aviv University's Dr. Haim Cohen as belonging to a man aged 25-40 years.

The cave in the Judean Hills where the skull was found [Credit: Prof. Boaz Zissu, Bar-Ilan University]

According to the researchers, "The skull cap shows signs of two traumatic injuries that eventually healed -- evidence of previous violence experienced by the victim -- as well as a small cut-mark caused close to the time of death, and a blow by a sword that caused certain and immediate death.

A morphological examination of the skull shows a great resemblance to the local Bedouin population, which apparently had a tradition of blood vengeance even before the birth of Islam. This is consistent with historical knowledge that in the period under discussion some 1,000 years ago, the Jerusalem hills were inhabited by a Bedouin population that came from Jordan and northern Arabia.

Researchers who are studying the first evidence of blood vengeance, discovered in a cave in the Jerusalem Hills.
From left to right: Prof. Boaz Zissu Dr. Yossi Nagar and Dr. Haim Cohen with the skull
[Credit: Chen Galili/Israel Antiquities Authority]

A text from the beginning of the 20th century tells the story of a case of revenge, during which the murderer presented his family with the skull and right hand of the victim in order to prove the carrying out of a commandment. These are precisely the parts of the body that were discovered in the present case. Since this is a person who was previously involved in violent incidents who then died from the fatal blow, the researchers say it can be concluded that the earliest evidence of blood vengeance has been discovered.

The findings of a joint study by the Israel Antiquities Authority, Bar-Ilan University and Tel Aviv University will be presented on Tuesday at the 44th Archaeological Congress, at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in cooperation with the Antiquities Authority and the Israel Exploration Society.

Source: Israel National News [May 17, 2018]

12 Zeugma mosaics to be returned to Turkey by USA

The Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry signed an agreement on May 14 with Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Ohio in the United States for the return of 12 ancient Zeugma mosaic pieces looted during illegal excavations in Turkey’s southeastern province of Gaziantep nearly 50 years ago.

Credit: BGSU

“We are very happy that the Zeugma pieces are being returned to Turkey. The importance of carrying on cultural relations in the international arena by a mutual understanding has been underlined once again,” said Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry’s New York office director Tülin Sermin Özduran, who signed the agreement.

She thanked the authorities of Turkish Foreign and Interior Ministries as well as the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality for their efforts.

Turkish Consul General in Chicago Umut Acar, who hosted the signing ceremony, also thanked the Foreign Ministry and the Culture and Tourism Ministry for their efforts to return archaeological remains and pieces of cultural heritage to Turkey from all over the world, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Some of the mosaics on the floor of the Arts Center of the 
University of Bowling Green, USA [Credit: BGSU]

BGSU President Rodney Rogers said they took it as a legal and ethical duty to return the tile fragments to Turkey.

“Legally, there’s one question and then there’s what we believe is the right decision … Unbeknownst to us, these items appear to have been removed in an improper way. Therefore, we believe it is our duty as a university to allow these pieces, which have historical significance to Turkey and the citizens of Turkey, but also to society in general, [to be returned] to their home,” he said at the ceremony, according to the daily The Blade based in Toledo, Ohio.

Raymond Craig, dean of the BGSU College of Arts and Sciences, and Sean Fitzgerald, general counsel for the university also signed the agreement.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News [May 16, 2018]

Earliest version of our alphabet possibly discovered

The earliest example of our alphabet — a possible mnemonic phrase that helped someone remember "ABCD" — has been discovered on a 3,400-year-old inscribed piece of pottery from ancient Egypt, a scholar believes.

One side of the inscribed 3,400-year-old piece of pottery may show an ancient forerunner to our alphabet sequence
[Credit: copyright Nigel Strudwick. No reproduction without permission]

Three of the words start with the ancient equivalent of B, C and D, creating what may be a mnemonic phrase.

Thomas Schneider, a professor of Egyptology and Near Eastern Studies at the University of British Columbia, reported the discovery in a paper published recently in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. This discovery "would be the first historical attestation of 'our' alphabet sequence," he told Live Science in an email.

Modern-day scholars sometimes call the early ancestor of our ABCD alphabet sequence the "abgad" sequence, because this phrase mentions some of the first letters of the early version of our alphabet. Until this discovery, the oldest example of this sequence had only dated back about 3,200 years, Schneider wrote in his paper.

The alphabet that we use today is derived from that used by the Phoenicians, a civilization that flourished between roughly 3,500 and 2,300 years ago in the Eastern Mediterranean. They used what scholars call a Semitic language, a term that refers to a branch of languages that trace their origins to the Middle East, each sharing some similar words. The early forerunner to our alphabet was written in Semitic languages. Few texts that are written in Semitic languages date back 3,400 years or more, however.

Earliest ABCDs?

A team of archaeologists from the Cambridge Theban TombsProject discovered the inscribed piece of pottery in 1995 in a tomb that belonged to an Egyptian official named Sennefer, and recently Schneider studied and deciphered it. While the text is written in hieratic — a form of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing — "all [the] words appear to be of foreign linguistic origin" and are mostly Semitic, wrote Schneider in his paper.

One side of the pottery piece contains a series of Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols that represent the words "bibiya-ta" (a word that can mean "earth snail"), "garu" (a word that can mean "dove") and "da'at" (a word that can mean "kite"), Schneider wrote in his paper. More than 3,000 years ago, the "g" would have represented the sound that "c" does today, Schneider told Live Science. This means that the first letter of each of these words is the ancient equivalent of "BCD."

There are symbols in front of these three words that are harder to interpret, but they could spell out "elta'at" (a word that can mean "gecko" or "lizard"), Schneider wrote in his paper.

It's possible that all the signs together formed the phrase "and the lizard and the snail, and the dove and the kite …" wrote Schneider in the paper — a phrase that may have helped the person who wrote the text to remember the proper order of the ancient forerunner of today's alphabet.

Another alphabetic sequence

The other side of the inscribed piece of pottery also contains a series of Semitic words written in hieratic, Schneider said. They spell out the words "hahāna lāwī ḥelpat mayyin leqab." The first letters of the first four words in that series — the letters "hlhm" — represent the first few letters of another ancient alphabetic sequence, one that never became as popular as the ancient forerunner to our alphabet.

These words form a phrase that means, "to make pleasant the one who bends reed, water [according] to the Qab." The "qab" is a unit of measurement that equals about 1.2 liters, Schneider wrote. This phrase likely helped the person who wrote this inscription to remember the first few letters of this alphabetic sequence, Schneider said.

Ben Haring, a senior university lecturer in Egyptology at Leiden University, was the first to recognize the "hlhm" sequence on this pottery piece and published a paper on it in 2015 in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies.

Semitic alphabet practice?

Whoever wrote these inscriptions 3,400 years ago may have been trying to remember the start of both alphabetic sequences, Schneider said. Sennefer was an official who dealt with Egyptian foreign affairs and likely understood the Semitic languages that were used in the Eastern Mediterranean, Schneider said.

When Sennefer's tomb was being constructed, perhaps the scribes helping to build the tomb were trying to learn the languages, and one of them wrote these words down as a practice exercise, Schneider told Live Science.

Schneider's article was recently published, and it remains to be seen how scholars will react to his findings.

Haring, who identified the "hlhm" sequence, said that he welcomes Schneider's work, but is cautious about the idea that the other side of the pottery piece bears evidence of the ancient forerunner to our modern alphabet sequence. A major problem with research into this piece of pottery is the lack of texts written in Semitic dating back 3,400 years, Haring said. This means that when scholars analyze the words, they have to use Semitic texts from later periods to understand them, even though their meanings could have been different 3,400 years ago, Haring said.

When Haring published his "hlhm" finding in 2015, he published it as a suggestion — even he wasn’t convinced of his own discovery at the time. He said that since that time, his finding has received widespread acceptance among scholars. It remains to be seen if Schneider's finding will receive the same acceptance.

Author: Owen Jarus | Source: LiveScience [May 16, 2018]

This article was originally published on Live Science. Read the original article. 

Archaeologists uncover earliest evidence for equid bit wear in the ancient Near East

An international team of archaeologists has uncovered the earliest example of the use of a bridle bit with an equid (horse family) in the Near East. The discovery provides first evidence of the use of the bit (mouth piece) to control an animal long before the appearance of the horse in the Near East.

View of the donkey in situ [Credit: Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project]

Evidence of the bridle bit was derived from the skeleton of a donkey dating to the Early Bronze Age III (approximately 2700 BCE) found at the excavations of the biblical city Gath (modern Tell es-Safi) of the Philistines, the home of Goliath, located in central Israel. The donkey was laid as a sacrificial offering before the construction of a house in a domestic neighborhood.

The international team, including archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University, the University of Manitoba (St. Paul's College), University of Saskatchewan (St. Thomas More College), Ariel University and Grand Valley State University published their findings in the journal PLOS ONE.

The donkey being excavated [Credit: The Tell es-Safi/Gath project]

"This is significant because it demonstrates how early domestic donkeys were controlled, and adds substantially to our knowledge of the history of donkey (Equus asinus) domestication and evolution of riding and equestrian technology. It is also significant that it was discovered on the remains of an early domestic donkey that was sacrificed probably as an offering to protect what we interpret to be a merchant domestic residence uncovered during our excavations," said Prof. Haskel Greenfield, of the University of Manitoba, the paper's lead author.

"The use of a bridle bit on a donkey during this period is surprising, since it was commonly assumed that donkeys were controlled with nose rings, as depicted in Mesopotamian art," said Prof. Aren Maeir, from Bar-Ilan University's Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology. Prof. Maeir has led the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project since its inception more than 20 years ago. The excavations take place every summer in the Tel Zafit National Park, about halfway between Jerusalem and the coastal city of Ashkelon.

The bridle bit from a donkey burial from the Middle Bronze Age (circa 1700-1550 BCE) found
at the Tel Haror excavation in the Negev [Credit: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem]

The authors propose that the wear on the tooth of the donkey was made with a soft bit, likely made from rope or wood. "Only later, from the Middle Bronze Age and onward (after 2000 BCE), was it thought that bits, in particular metal bits, were used - first with horses that were introduced to the Near East at the time, and subsequently with other equids, such as donkeys," added Maeir. Examples of these later bits were found in Israel at Tel Haror.

The donkey is one of four that were found buried under neighbourhood houses, which indicates the importance of the donkey in this society -- most likely as a beast of burden used in trade, the researchers said.

Vertical aerial view of Area E, where the donkey was found in an Early Bronze Age neighbourhood
[Credit: Skyview Inc.]

In a previously-published study the researchers provided evidence, based on isotopic analyses, that this very donkey was born in Egypt and brought to Canaan sometime during its lifetime. This demonstrates that this animal -- and most likely others -- was transported over large distances. Using bits allowed donkey herders to control the animals more easily during their transport.

Studies of the dental isotopes from the same donkey demonstrate, as well, that it was born and raised in Egypt and brought to the site only in the last few months of its life, before it was sacrificed and buried beneath the floor of the house as it was being rebuilt. Domestic horses were not yet present in the Near East at that time. As a result, donkeys were not only used as beasts of burden, but also were used to pull and be ridden by the newly emerging elites in these early city-states.

Source: Bar-Ilan University [May 16, 2018]

High-definition archaeology reveals secrets of the earliest cities

You may not have noticed, but a revolution is underway in archaeology. In the recent years, archaeologists have begun to integrate new methods from the natural sciences, helping us to date archaeological remains and revealing the source of these remains at a new level of detail.

View of the main street in Gerasa as seen from the Sanctuary of Zeus Olympios
[Credit: Rubina Raja]

These new techniques provide archaeologists like myself with new ways to investigate ancient materials. But they also introduce problems: How exactly should we analyse all of this material with these new, often expensive, techniques?

This is what my colleague Søren Sindbæk and I have been tackling at the Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) at Aarhus University, Denmark: And we call our approach “High Definition Archaeology.”

We need a new research practice

So what exactly is High Definition Archaeology?

In essence, it’s where we look at defined groups of material or stratigraphic sections (specific parts of an excavation) in very fine detail.

Through such an approach we gain completely new insights into how and when certain events changed the world. At UrbNet we investigate such situations in the context of urban societies, since becoming urban was a turning point in human history.

Human culture before written sources

Early urban societies have fascinated people for centuries. Why is that?

For archaeologists, they provide a lens through which we can describe urban phenomena and patterns, and studying them can help to explain why human beings came together to live in organised larger spaces in the first place.

Today more than half of the world's population live in cities and the planet is dominated by cities of various sizes and character. Urbanisation is rapidly growing and numerous government committees oversee the planning of urban expansion and the founding of new cities.

China for example found new cities on a daily basis. Some of them fail and people do not want to live there. It's clearly an economic advantage to figure out what makes a city successful and a place in which people want to live.

Archaeology is one way of coming to a more nuanced understanding of how urban societies worked in the past, which may in turn help us understand what works and does not work in modern urban societies.

How do you study a dead city?

A good example is the early urban societies of Mesopotamia, which arose as early as the fifth millennium BCE. These were some of the earliest urban societies that we know of anywhere in the world.

Some of the mosaic tiles recovered from Gerasa [Credit: The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project]

But in many ways we know little about these vast spaces, whose archaeological remains yield information about our own past at a time we call prehistory – before written sources existed.

One reason why we know so little is that these first cities no longer exist today. It's one thing to excavate Copenhagen, London, or Rome. But what about societies that died out thousands of years ago?

Studying dead societies presents a certain challenge, since there is no one alive to speak to who actually lived in these societies.

We have to reconstruct everything through excavation, which is destructive and invasive and requires objects to be removed in order to study them. Archaeology often offers a snapshot of a moment in time and we often have just one chance while excavating to get the understanding right.

This is where the high definition approach comes in.

An ancient city in high definition

In North West Jordan, the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter project has been excavating the ancient city of Gerasa since 2011.

Gerasa, which also was called "Antioch on the Chryssorhoas" in antiquity, Antioch on the Golden River, was part of the Decapolis, a union of cities described by Pliny as more than the ten which the name implies.

The city was divided into two parts by a river, with bridges built to connect the east and west sides. The city flourished in the first eight centuries CE, until a devastating earthquake brought life to a sudden halt on the morning of 18th January 749 CE.

The earthquake is described in sources as having destroyed large parts of the Levant, and Gerasa was no exception. And today, the remnants of the city record a moment frozen in time when the earthquake hit.

A rich tapestry of life revealed at one site

A series of houses were excavated by the Danish-German team and we now have a detailed picture about a transitional period in time between the Arab invasion of the region in the 7th century CE and the end of Umayyad period in the middle of the 8th century CE.

The ‘House of the Tesserae’ excavated in Gerasa. The numbers relate to different archaeological features
[Credit: The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project]

This new evidence tells us what the inhabitants ate, specifically in winter, how they adopted Roman technology into the Islamic period, and how religions and religious practices changed

Organic material has been radiocarbon dated and classified, and we discovered a mosaic workshop, using technology known from the Roman period in a representative house undergoing major restoration.

We digitally "unfolded" a small silver scroll with Semitic letters, which turned out to be inscribed with Greek ritual letters and 16 lines of early Arabic letters, presenting us with a straight continuity from Roman traditions of magic in the early Islamic period.

We cannot see the overall plans and layouts of these spaces, but all of these detailed archaeological findings give a rich picture of everyday life and daily practices in Gerasa and connect us almost directly with the inhabitants of this Middle East city at a time of both continuity stemming from the Greco-Roman cultural heritage and new developments following the Arab invasion.

The next chapter in archaeology

The high definition approach taken to the archaeological material in the excavation has proven a useful line of enquiry, which offers new understanding of urban societies and their development in antiquity.

Archaeology has come a long way since the 20th century when sites mentioned in ancient sources and the bible were rediscovered and placed on the map, and large scale urban excavations got underway. Many of these were paid for by kings and emperors in order to underline the importance of European nations to world history, and the Roman period fascinated the scholars undertaking these extensive excavations, in particular.

Since then, Scholars such as Die Stadt, Max Weber, and Gordon Childe, have written influential accounts of how to understand what cities do to people and vice versa. However, much of this was very much based on a protestant world-view – one which cannot necessarily be transferred to non-European urban settings.

Today, High Definition Archaeology promises to revolutionise the way in which we understand past urban societies and their networks and thereby also better understand the dynamics of these societies and how it compares to our modern urban societies.

Author: Rubina Raja | Source: Aarhus University, ScienceNordic [May 15, 2018]

This article was originally published by ScienceNordic. Read the original article.

Subterranean Mithras temple excavated in southeast Turkey

Archaeologists discovered two new corridors in a 1,700-year-old Roman-era temple belonging to the Mithras religion as part of the excavations conducted in the Zerzevan Castle in Turkey's southeastern Diyarbakır province.

IHA Photo

The head of the excavations, assistant professor Aytaç Coşkun, a faculty member of the Department of Archaeology at Dicle University, said the corridors were discovered as underground passways to the Mithras temple.

"This temple's rituals were conducted in secret and only people which met certain criteria were accepted to the religion," Coşkun said.

The assistant professor said the Zerzevan Castle will soon become the most important touristic attraction in Diyarbakır and they have set the target number of tourists at 1 million for Diyarbakır and 600,000 for the Castle in the upcoming season.

Haber21 Photo

According to the findings, the followers of Mithras religion were a closed community because their religious ceremonies are completely secret and no information was leaked to outsiders.

"Their temples are usually built underground. There are three niches on the eastern part of the temple. A very thoroughly constructed one is in the water basin. There is also a pool. We believe water was very widely used in Mithras ceremonies and about 40 people attended ceremonies held here," Coşkun said.

With the arrival of Christianity, the religion of Mithras lost its importance and the recently discovered temple is from the peak times of this religion.

Haber21 Photo

The Zerzevan Castle is situated along the ancient route of military premises and located on a 124-meter-high rocky hill in a strategic location between Amida and Dara. The settlement overlooks the entire valley and once controlled a large area on a key, ancient trade path. Once a strategic Roman border garrison town, the castle also witnessed the clashes between Romans and Sassanians.

The first settlement was named 'Samachi' and while it is not certain when it was built, the excavations are close to revealing its age. The castle walls were repaired at the time of Anastasios (491-518 A.D.) and Justinian (527-565 A.D.) and some parts have been completely reconstructed.

Source: Daily Sabah [May 13, 2018]

Roman-era temple discovered in Egypt's Siwa Oasis

Egypt says archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a temple dating back to the second century.

Workers examining the remains of a temple dating back to the second century, in the country's western desert,
some 50 km west of Siwa Oasis, Egypt [Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities]

The Antiquities Ministry said Thursday that the temple, which dates back to the reign of Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, was found near the Siwa Oasis in the western desert. It includes the foundations of a large limestone building.

Archaeologists examine a limestone block with Greek inscription found among the remains of a temple
dating back to the second century [Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities]

Detail of limestone block with Greek inscription [Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities]

Abdel-Aziz al-Dimeiry, head of the archaeological mission, said they found a five-meter (yard) long limestone painting bearing Greek inscriptions and decorated with the sun disc surrounded by cobras.

The limestone block with Greek inscription [Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities]

He says the painting, which is believed to be part of the temple's entrance, was found in good condition and will undergo restoration.

Source: Associated Press [May 10, 2018]

Tomb of great Ramesses II era general discovered in Saqqara

An Archaeological Mission from Cairo University working in Saqqara has uncovered a tomb of the Great Army General in the period of Ramsses II, which named “Iwrhya”.

Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

Dr. Ola El-Aguizy the Head of the mission and Professor of Egyptology at Cairo University announced.

She explains that the discovery was carried out in the last excavation season 2017/2018, which was yielded a very interesting and important discovery in the New Kingdom necropolis south of the Causeway of Unas in Saqqara.

Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

She continues that this tomb is probably dated to both the reigns of Sethi I and Ramesses II. It is still not fully excavated, but has already given us a lot of material testifying to the high status of its owner and his family.

The owner of the tomb is a high army General, and High steward of the domain of Amun, High steward of the estates of Ramesses II in the domain of Amun (the Ramesseum) Urkhya . His name appears on the tomb together with that of his son “Yuppa” and his grand-son “Hatiay”; the latter occupying a very significant position in the inscriptions on the blocks found on the walls still in place. He has began his military career during the reign of Sethi I and reached the highest positions in the Egyptian court during the reign of Ramesses II.

Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

Dr. El-Aguizy, pointed out that the tomb seem to follow the style of the contemporary tombs in the area: forecourt – statue room with adjacent plastered vaulted storehouses, perystile court and western chapels which are still not excavated.

This high officia—from foreign origin-was among the many foreigners who settled in Egypt and succeeded to reach high positions in the Egyptian court in the New Kingdom.

Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

The remaining scenes on the walls of the statue room and on the blocks found buried in the sand showed very interesting and quite unusual scenes of every day life activities which seem to be related to a great extent to the military career of its owner and the foreign relations with neighboring countries: Mooring boats taking down their loads of Canaanite wine jars.

A block also discovered in the sand, probably detached from the northern wall shows quite an exceptional scene of an infantry unit and charioteers crossing a waterway with crocodiles. The preliminary study of this scene proved that it represents the eastern boarders of Egypt with its fortified walls.

Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

The scene has only one parallel represented on the outer north wall of the hypostyle court of the Karnak temple in Thebes showing Sethi I coming back from his victorious campaign against the Shasu Bedouins and entering Egypt through the same waterway with crocodiles. The remains of such fortified walls were actually found lately By Mohamed Abdel Maksoud and his team working on the site known as Tell Heboua I and II; on the Pelusian branch of the Nile, in Eastern Qantara (North Sinai).

The archaeological discoveries in this area (Qantara) has also proved that there was an active daily life in this garrison: Wine cellars, livestock the scenes on the walls

Credit: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

All the scenes of this tomb are quite exceptional and its artistic features are very characteristic to the time of Sethi I and that of Ramesses II; a fact that proves that this tomb has been constructed over different phases.

The fact that the names of many members of the family of Iwrhya: his son Yuppa and his grandson Hatyay are very prominent in the tomb might suggest that it might be a family tomb. This could not be surely attested except after the excavations of its sanctuary and its shaft.

Source: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities [May 08, 2018]

New survey confirms no hidden Nefertiti chamber in Tutankhamun's tomb

After almost three months of study, a new geophysics survey has provided conclusive evidence that no hidden chambers exist adjacent to or inside Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of Kings in Luxor, Egypt [Credit: Nasser Nuri/Reuters]

Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced the results, adding that the head of the Italian scientific team carrying out the research,

Francesco Porcelli of the Polytechnic University of Turin, is to provide all the details of the ground penetrating radar (GPR) studies during his speech to be delivered on Sunday evening at the ongoing Fourth Tutankhamun International Conference.

Waziri said that a scientific report was submitted on Sunday morning to the Permanent Committee for Ancient Egyptian Antiquities by Porcelli and his team, which included experts from the nearby University of Turin and from two private geophysics companies, Geostudi Astier (Leghorn) and 3DGeoimaging (Turin), who collected GPR data from the inside of Tutankhamun’s tomb in February 2018.

According to the report, which Ahram Online has obtained, Porcelli said that the GPR scans were performed along vertical and horizontal axes with very dense spatial sampling. Double antenna polarisations were also employed, with transmitting and receiving dipoles both orthogonal and parallel to the scanning direction.

Porcelli asserted that the main findings are as follows: no marked discontinuities due to the passage from natural rock to man-made blocking walls are evidenced by the GPR radargrams, nor there is any evidence of the jambs or the lintel of a doorway.

Similarly, the radargrams do not show any indication of plane reflectors, which could be interpreted as chamber walls or void areas behind the paintings of the funerary chamber.

“It is concluded, with a very high degree of confidence, that the hypothesis concerning the existence of hidden chambers or corridors adjacent to Tutankhamun’s tomb is not supported by the GPR data,” Porcelli said in the report.

This is the third GPR survey to be conducted inside the tomb in recent years. It was designed to stop the controversy aroused after the contradictory results of two previous radar surveys to inspect the accuracy of a theory launched in 2015 by British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, who suggested that the tomb of queen Nefertiti could be concealed behind the north and west wall paintings of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.

The theory was supported by former minister of antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty, who agreed to conduct two GPR surveys. The first was conducted by a Japanese professional who asserted with 95 percent certainty the existence of a doorway and a hall with artefacts.

The second radar survey was carried out with another high-tech GPR device by an American scientific team from National Geographic, who rejected the previous Japanese results and asserted that nothing existed behind the west and north wall of Tutankhamun's burial chamber.

To solve the difficulties encountered by the two preceding surveys and provide a conclusive response, the current antiquities minister, Khaled El-Enany, who took office in March 2016, decided to discuss the matter at the second International Tutankhamun Conference, which was attended by a group of pioneer scholars and archaeologists who decided to conduct a third GPR analysis to put an end to the debate.

Author: Nevine El-Aref | Source: Ahram Online [May 06, 2018]