• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.
Two ancient Egyptian mummies have been found floating in sewage in a village waterway, it's reported.

The mummies, which were wrapped in several layers of linen and still in their wooden sarcophagi, were found by police in a village near the city of Minya, about 240km (150 miles) south of Cairo, the CairoScene online magazine reports. They're thought to date back to the Greco-Roman era, from 332 BC to 395 AD, but the Ministry of Antiquities says little is left of the bodies. "Although the coffins were decorated with colourful designs, they were missing any ancient Egyptian inscriptions or hieroglyphics," the ministry says in a statement. A third sarcophagus was also found, but was empty. ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-31145993
 
私は小さなクルド人です ‏@JPY_Kurdish 2m2 minutes agoView translation
Man selling mummies in Egypt (1875), photograph by Félix Bonfils.

CrvRgb1XEAA7N0n.jpg
 
Mummies and papyrus among treasures found in Egypt's newest ancient Greco-Roman tomb
Posted yesterday (May 13) at 11:50pm


Photo: Egypt's Minister of Antiquities, Khaled Al-Anani, said he hoped the discoveries would help the country's tourism sector. (Reuters: Mohamed Abd El Ghany)

Related Story: Mummies and more than 1,000 statues discovered in Egyptian tomb
Related Story: Part of ancient Egyptian statue excavated in Cairo suburb
Map: Egypt
Egypt has unearthed an ancient burial site containing at least 17 mummies, most fully intact, in the latest in a string of discoveries that the country's Antiquities Minister described as a helping hand for its struggling tourism sector.

Key points:
  • At least 17 mostly-intact mummies discovered in the tomb south of Cairo
  • Believed to date from Greco-Roman period, after 332 BC
  • One of a number of ancient discoveries in Egypt this year


The funerary site, uncovered eight metres below ground in Minya, a province about 250 kilometres south of Cairo, contained limestone and clay sarcophagi, animal coffins, and papyrus inscribed with Demotic script.

The burial chamber was first detected last year by a team of Cairo University students using radar.

The mummies have not yet been dated but are believed to date to Egypt's Greco-Roman period, a roughly 600-year span that followed the country's conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, according to Mohamed Hamza, a Cairo University archaeology dean in charge of the excavations.

Egypt is hoping the recent discoveries will brighten its image abroad and revive interest among travellers that once flocked to its iconic pharaonic temples and pyramids but have shunned the country since its 2011 political uprising.

"2017 has been a historic year for archaeological discoveries," Antiquities Minister Khaled Al-Anani told a news conference in announcing the find on Saturday.

"It's as if it's a message from our ancestors who are lending us a hand to help bring tourists back."

Salah Al-Kholi, a Cairo University Egyptology professor who led the mission, said as many as 32 mummies may be in the chamber, including mummies of women, children and infants.


Photo: The tomb in Minya province contained limestone and clay sarcophagi, animal coffins, and papyrus inscribed with Demotic script. (Reuters: Mohamed Abd El Ghany)



Year of discoveries
Archaeologists have excavated a slew of relics in recent months that include a nobleman's tomb from more than 3,000 years ago, 12 cemeteries that date back about 3,500 years and a giant colossus believed to depict King Psammetich I, who ruled from 664 to 610 BC.

Tourism Minister Yehia Rashed said last month the new finds could boost tourist arrivals this year to about 10 million, an improvement from the 9.3 million visitors that came in 2015 but still far below the 14.7 million from 2010.

No 2016 figure is yet available.

The tourism sector, a crucial source of hard currency, has struggled to regain ground amid a growing number of militant attacks, including two Islamic State church bombings last month.

Reuters
via http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-14/egypt-uncovers-chamber-of-mummies/8524172
 
The Fiendish Plot Behind The “Screaming Mummy”

This mummy, frozen in an eternal scream, was the result of a murderous plot carried out over 3,000 years ago.

When archaeologists first discovered the “Screaming Mummy” in June of 1886, they were perplexed. Entombed among the great pharaohs buried in the Deir El Bahri valley, like Rameses the Great, Seti I and Tuthmosis III, this mummy was held in a plain, undecorated cedar coffin that had been crudely hacked open to accommodate the corpse.

When they opened the coffin, the archaeologists were in for a greater shock. The body had been wrapped in sheepskin, a ritually unclean material to the ancient Egyptians.

It's worth reading the whole story: http://all-that-is-interesting.com/screaming-mummy

 
Deep below the sands of the Saqqara necropolis, archaeologists have uncovered a unique discovery they say reveals the secrets of the ancient Egyptian mummies.

A mummification workshop and adjoining burial shaft as well as five mummies, their bejewelled sarcophagi, figurines, and a gilded silver and onyx mummy mask were all unearthed at the site, which archeologists say provides a wealth of new knowledge about the mummification process.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/14/a-goldmine-mummies-secrets-uncovered-in-egypt

(Wonder why it, and all its valuable loot, just got abandoned and buried?)
 
When we think of mummies, we think of the civilization most closely associated with them - i.e., Egypt.

Recent research persuasively indicates the practice of Egyptian mummification began up to 1500 years earlier than previously believed ...

This Ancient Mummy Is Older Than the Pharaohs
Embalming in ancient Egypt predated the pharaohs, an ancient mummy reveals. That would mean that the practice began at least 1,500 years earlier than once thought.

The mummy — an adult male curled on its left side in a fetal pose — is about 6,000 years old. It was previously thought to be naturally preserved by desert conditions at the site where it was buried. But the first-ever tests performed on the remains showed that the mummy was embalmed, making it the earliest known example of Egyptian mummification, researchers reported in a new study.

Further examination showed that the ancient embalmers used multiple ingredients to preserve the corpse, employing a similar recipe to the ones used 2,500 years later, when mummification in Egypt was at its peak. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63351-mummy-older-than-pharaohs.html
 
When we think of mummies, we think of the civilization most closely associated with them - i.e., Egypt.

Recent research persuasively indicates the practice of Egyptian mummification began up to 1500 years earlier than previously believed ...FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63351-mummy-older-than-pharaohs.html

What surprised me about that was the lack of crocodile dung. Most ancient Egyptian recipes call for it, even contraceptive pessaries.
 
More Mummies!

Fifty mummies dating back to the Ptolemaic era (305-30 BC) have been found by Egyptian archaeologists, the antiquities ministry says.

The mummies, of which 12 were children, were found in four burial chambers 9m (30ft) deep in the Tuna El-Gebel site in Minya, south of the capital Cairo. Some were wrapped in linen, others were in stone coffins or wooden sarcophagi. Their identities were unknown, officials said, but they were likely to have held important positions.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47103114
 
Well that's the last time I go to an Egyptian restaurant.:dpoo:

:rofl2:

One also might wonder, how did they collect the stuff? It's not like when yer old Da'd chase the Co-Op milk cart down the street with a shovel and bucket. Those crocs, they bite.
 
Last year my wife and I were fortunate enough to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There they have one of the largest collections of ancient Egyptian art and antiquities. Included amongst this is the Temple of Dendur and an impressive collection of mummies and their sarcophagi.
Below are selection of four I took images of. I don't recall the dates & location where they were from, however the work and different styles throughout the ages is astounding (one is clearly of a Roman).
mummy1.jpg

mummy2.jpg

mummy3.jpg

mummy4.jpg


And for something just a little different, below is one of the sarcophagi used in the original Boris Karloff Universal Studios horror film 'The Mummy' - 1932.
Before visiting New York, we spent a few days in Los Angeles, visited Universal Studios and had the opportunity there to take a behind the scenes visit to the props department, a series of enormous warehouses filled with items, famous and everyday used in movies and t.v shows. We were being shown some props including a throne from the Russel Crowe film 'Gladiator, when the person showing us casually mentioned a couple of items from the original 'Mummy' movie just leaning against a wall the the end of an aisle. I had to take a couple of pics, though we weren't really supposed to.
mummy5.jpg
 
Wonderful picture, wow! The textures further down on the fourth mummy case look like Fair Isle knitting.

Anyway...
Today on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, there was a nice Lionel Blair joke.

(Back story - there was a joke about Blair in most editions when Humphrey Lyttelton was presenting. They were elaborate puns about his purely fictional sexual adventures with imaginary Guardsmen and other robustly gay stereotypes. Blair didn't take this well and hated Humph with a passion.

So after Lyttelton died, Blair was asked, live, on Radio 4 for a tribute and said (as well as I can remember) 'Good. I'm glad he's dead. I hated him. He was a horrible, horrible man.' The interviewer was shocked. Brilliant radio!
Were they put up to it for a laugh? We'll never know!

I heard this on the day and laughed my head off. The episode of whatever show it was stayed on Listen Again for a couple of years but it's gone now, pity.)

Anyway...
Lionel Blair was in Egypt visiting the Valley of the Kings. 'Disaster struck when Lionel drifted off during a tour of Rameses III's burial chamber and was stolen by tomb robbers.
On a lighter note, Lionel is now on permanent display at the British Museum.'
 
Hidden Tattoos Found on Egyptian Mummies Change Our Knowledge of The Ancient Practice

Source: sciencealert.com
Date: 6 December, 2019

Three thousand years ago, the village of Deir el-Medina in ancient Egypt was home to a community of artisans, all living and working together on the tombs of the Valley of the Kings necropolis. But new evidence has emerged that tombs were not their only creative outlet.

Infrared imaging has revealed a range of tattoos on the previously unstudied mummified corpses of seven women. The ink was scattered across their bodies, with a range of different motifs.

https://www-sciencealert-com.cdn.am...n-mummies-have-been-found-with-hidden-tattoos
 
Getting a mummy to speak? And a mummified priest at that! This will not end well. The script for a horror film is being written!

Scientists have fulfilled a mummified Egyptian priest's wish for life after death - by replicating his voice with artificial vocal chords.

Nesyamun's voice has been reproduced as a vowel-like sound that is reminiscent of a sheep's bleat.The priest lived during the politically volatile reign of pharaoh Ramses XI, between 1099 and 1069BC. As a priest in Thebes, Nesyamun would have needed a strong voice for his ritual duties, which involved singing.

When Nesyamun died, his voice fell silent, but 3,000 years on, a team of researchers have brought it back to life. They have done so by producing a 3D-printed voice box based Nesyamun's vocal tract, which was scanned to establish its precise dimensions. By using the vocal tract with an artificial larynx sound, they synthesised a vowel sound meant to be similar to the voice of Nesyamun.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51223828
 
Getting a mummy to speak? And a mummified priest at that! This will not end well. The script for a horror film is being written!

Scientists have fulfilled a mummified Egyptian priest's wish for life after death - by replicating his voice with artificial vocal chords.

Nesyamun's voice has been reproduced as a vowel-like sound that is reminiscent of a sheep's bleat.The priest lived during the politically volatile reign of pharaoh Ramses XI, between 1099 and 1069BC. As a priest in Thebes, Nesyamun would have needed a strong voice for his ritual duties, which involved singing.

When Nesyamun died, his voice fell silent, but 3,000 years on, a team of researchers have brought it back to life. They have done so by producing a 3D-printed voice box based Nesyamun's vocal tract, which was scanned to establish its precise dimensions. By using the vocal tract with an artificial larynx sound, they synthesised a vowel sound meant to be similar to the voice of Nesyamun.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51223828
Do not read from the book!
 
Nesyamun's voice has been reproduced as a vowel-like sound that is reminiscent of a sheep's bleat.
If you want to hear it, it was on Radio 4's Inside Science this evening
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dgbt
Sort of funny and sort of ghastly a noise at the same time. And even (dare I say it) slightly pointless?? They admitted that it was essentially the noise he would make from his sarcophagus rather than any noise he'd have made alive (though they were working on that too? or hoping to? I'm not sure). It's amazing what people find money and time to do. (Sorry for being a philistine.)
 
Do not read from the book!

“What we have done is to create the sound of Nesyamun as he is in his sarcophagus,” said the study co-author Prof David Howard, head of the department of electronic engineering at Royal Holloway, University of London. “It is not a sound from his speech as such, as he is not actually speaking.”

Probably for the best.
 
The long-studied mummy of a woman named "Takabuti" has yielded new and unexpected results - not the least of which is the fact she was murdered.
Egyptian mummy cold case closed: 'Takabuti' was stabbed to death

The elite woman also had two rare conditions; an extra tooth and an extra vertebra.

It took 2,600 years to crack the case, but Egyptologists have finally determined how a curly haired, elite woman from ancient Thebes met her untimely end.

The 20-something-year-old Takabuti was murdered in a violent knife attack, researchers announced today (Jan. 27), on the 185th anniversary of the mummy's original unwrapping, in 1835, according to a statement from The University of Manchester in England.

An analysis of Takabuti's mummified remains revealed more of her secrets. She had two rare conditions; an extra tooth (33 instead of 32), and an extra vertebra, the researchers said. ...

The DNA analysis showed that Takabuti was more genetically similar to Europeans than to modern-day Egyptians, the researchers said. ...

The CT scans revealed that her heart, which hadn't been located until now, was intact and perfectly preserved. These scans also disclosed her violent death: Wound marks showed that Takabuti had been stabbed in her upper back, near her left shoulder. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/egypt-mummy-murdered-with-knife.html
 
News from University College Cork...

"The fact that UCC hid a 3000-year-old mummy under the floorboards of a lecture theatre on a campus where two and a half tonnes of uranium rods were being stored in a basement nearby and DIDN'T end up with a zombie-pharaoh apocalypse is both a mystery and endlessly disappointing."

"We did, we just passed it off as a Halloween Ball and no one noticed."


 
A new discovery of mummies and shabti figurines...

Mummies of ancient Egyptian priests found buried with thousands of afterlife 'servants'
A massive burial ground holding the remains of several high priests of ancient Egypt, along with their assistants, has been discovered in the northern part of the site of Tuna el-Gebel, Egypt's antiquities ministry announced Thursday (Jan. 30).

So far, the archaeologists have unearthed 20 stone sarcophagi (coffins) made of a "very good quality of limestone" in the burial ground, which lies about 170 miles (270 kilometers) south of Cairo, said Mostafa Waziri, the general secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, during a news briefing.

In addition, the burials together contained some 700 amulets, some made of gold or precious stones, along with more than 10,000 shabti figurines made of faience (a glazed ceramic), Waziri said. The ancient Egyptians believed that shabti figurines served the deceased in the afterlife.
https://www.livescience.com/mummies-of-high-priests-in-ancient-egypt.html
 
Yes, right bores were the Egyptians...no sense of Archaeological Drama.

But Im sure the Shabti would do the job in the afterlife, less messy.
 
Another batch of sarcophagi, mummies and ushabti figurines has been discovered in Saqqara and publicized in the last few weeks.
Mummies discovered in burial shaft in Egypt

Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has announced the unearthing of five limestone sarcophagi and four wooden coffins containing human mummies. These incredible archaeological finds were inside a burial shaft stretching nine meters below ground.

This shaft is located in Sacred Animal Necropolis in Saqqara, an ancient burial ground that's about 20 miles south of Cairo and is also home to landmarks including the Step Pyramid, considered to be the world's oldest.

Details of the discovery were shared via a video posted on the ministry's Facebook page earlier this month.

Also excavated from the shaft were an incredible array of small artifacts, including 365 faience ushabti figurines, some inscribed with hieroglyphics. Ushabti are objects, usually small statues, that were buried in Egyptian graves to aid the body in its afterlife. ...

There have been a spate of recent archaeological discoveries in Egypt, following ongoing restoration projects.

On April 24, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities also announced the uncovering of a mummy that dates back to Egypt's 17th dynasty, circa 1550 BCE.

A joint Egyptian-Spanish archaeological mission discovered the coffin in the Draa Abul Naga necropolis in Luxor, in the south of Egypt. ...
SOURCE (With Photos & Link To Video):
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/ancient-egypt-discoveries-saqqara/index.html
 
Back
Top