To find the oldest known human-made structures in the Americas, you don’t need to hike into the wilderness or paddle down a raging river — all you need to do is visit Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At the north end of Louisiana State University’s (LSU) campus sit two grassy mounds, rising in a gentle slope to […]
The “Book of the Dead” is a modern-day name given to a series of ancient Egyptian texts that the Egyptians believed would help the dead navigate the underworld, as well as serving other purposes. Copies of these texts were sometimes buried with the dead. The “‘Book of the Dead’ denotes the relatively large corpus of […]
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 4,500-year-old temple dedicated to the Egyptian sun god Ra at the site of Abu Ghurab, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Cairo. The temple was built sometime during ancient Egypt‘s fifth dynasty (circa 2465 B.C. to 2323 B.C.) — a “period in which the cult of the […]
Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a 2,600-year-old tomb belonging to a man of high status: a “commander of foreign mercenaries” named “Wahibre-mery-Neith.” The tomb’s embalming cache, found in 2021, includes more than 370 pottery storage jars containing materials used in the commander’s mummification, making it the “largest embalming cache ever found in Egypt,” a team […]
A 3D animation of the pregnant mummy’s skull, which has a tumor shaped hole behind the left eye socket. (Image credit: Warsaw Mummy Project) (opens in new tab) A mysterious mummy of an ancient Egypt woman, who may have been pregnant when she died, likely also had cancer, according to researchers. Deformities in the mummy’s […]
A tomb dating back over 3,200 years that was built for a senior official of one of Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs has been discovered at Saqqara, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Oct 30. Inscriptions found in the tomb say that Ptah-M-Wia, the person buried there, held a number of positions including […]
University of Queensland’s Dr. Anthony Romilio has examined the ‘Meidum Geese,’ a painting from the Chapel of Itet at Meidum in Egypt. The Meidum Geese painting was found in 1871 in a tomb located near the Meidum Pyramid, which was built by the pharaoh Snefru (reign 2610-2590 BCE). The tomb belonged to the pharaoh’s son, the vizier Nefermaat, and […]
Recently discovered tomb of official dating back more than 2,000 years contains dozens of animals and two mummies Dozens of mummified mice were among the animals found in an ancient Egyptian tomb that was unveiled on Friday. The well-preserved and finely painted tomb near the Egyptian town of Sohag – a desert area near the […]
A criminal trial has begun of an archaeologist accused of forging a trove of Roman artifacts that allegedly show a third-century depiction of Jesus’ crucifixion, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the early use of the Basque language. Archaeologist Eliseo Gil and two former colleagues appeared this week in a criminal court in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of Spain’s […]
Historic Egyptians took their board video games severely. The backgammonlike senet began out as a mere pastime, however over almost 2 millennia it developed right into a sport with deep hyperlinks to the afterlife, performed on a board that represented the underworld. Now, a model of the sport sitting in a California museum would possibly […]
