A Tough Commute: Long Hike to Work in the Valley of the Kings Caused Laborers to Suffer from Arthritis

Ancient Origins

In the ancient world, work was so hard that bone pathologies show up in skeletal remains even to this day. In ancient Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, workers labored hard to build the mortuary temples and complexes to pharaohs and other high officials, but they also worked hard just hiking to the job site that their legs show osteoarthritis, a new study says. Anne Austin, an osteologist and Egyptologist at California’s Stanford University in Palo Alto, has separated the jumbled-up bones of the workers in robbed tombs beside the village of Deir el-Medina in Egypt.

 Deir el-Medina, once known as Set Maat (“The Place of Truth”) is located on the west bank of the Nile, across the river from modern-day Luxor. It was a grueling hour's climb for the workers, across the mountainside that looms above Egypt's Valley of the Kings. The village may have been built apart from the wider population in order to preserve secrecy in view of the sensitive nature of the work carried out in the tombs.

The ancient village of Deir el-Medina (Public Domain) Ms Austin determined the people’s sexes and ages from the recovered bones, and analyzed them for symptoms of osteoarthritis, which causes stiffness and pain, says a story about her research in Science online. Ms. Austin’s findings have been published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.

She says the bones that appear to be from men show signs of more osteoarthritis in the ankles and knees than the bones of the women from the cemetery.

The Science story reports: The location of the disease, and its higher occurrence among men, struck Austin as odd. Although the artisans' work in the Valley of the Kings was hard—involving digging, carving, and painting in the rock-cut royal tombs that descend into the Theban hills—this would mainly affect the upper body, not the knees and ankles.

A Tough Commute
Based on 3,500-year-old carved inscriptions detailing daily life, the archaeological record and her observations of the hiking distance, the women remained in the village. But the male workers walked over 2 kilometers (1.242 miles) from the village to their workplace in the Theban Hills on the west bank of the Nile River every week. From their stone huts, the men hiked downhill 93 meters (305 feet) to the valley where they worked on the tombs. At the end of the day, they hiked uphill 93 meters, a rise of 151 meters (494 feet), to the stone huts. These huts are still there to this day. The climb was steep and many of the workers made the hike week after week for years. These workers and artisans cut out sections of rock and then decorated them, carving and painting royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, the resting place of the New Kingdom pharaohs.

Back-Breaking Work
But Deir el-Medina wasn’t the only place where workers suffered. In 2015, Ancient Origins reported on Akhenaten’s iconoclastic revolution of around 1330 BC and how it affected workers at Amarna. The work at Amarna went on somewhat after the time of Ms. Austin’s Valley of the Kings. When Pharaoh Akhenaten ordered the construction of the new city of Amarna dedicated to the sun god Aten, more than 20,000 people moved there to do the back-breaking work. The work was so strenuous that it resulted in numerous broken bones, including many fractured spinal bones, according to a recent study by archaeologists who examined skeletal remains from a commoners’ cemetery at Amarna.

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their children bask in the rays of the sun, Aten, a god that Akhenaten raised above all others. (Photo by Andreas Praefcke/ Wikimedia Commons )

The team of archaeologists, who published their work in the journal Antiquity, examined skeletons with more than 50 percent of the bones remaining and found that in addition to probably work-related fractures and degenerative joint disease, the workers also had smaller-than-average stature suggesting lifelong malnutrition and other hardships. Medical Treatment, Prayers and Magic This is not the first work Ms. Austin has done at Deir el-Medina, and her work shows while the artisans may have suffered from osteoarthritis in their lower limbs, they also may have had recourse to treatment.

As Ancient Origins reported in 2014, as in other Egyptian communities, the workmen and inhabitants of Deir el-Medina received care for their health problems through medical treatment, prayer and magic. The records at Deir el-Medina, for example, note both a “physician,” who saw patients and prescribed treatments; and a “scorpion charmer,” who specialized in magical cures for scorpion bites. Archaeologists even recovered an ancient prosthetic toe, which would have enabled a worker with a missing toe to continue working.

Prosthetic toe from the commoners’ cemetery at Deir el-Medina of ancient Egypt, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The big toe is carved from wood and is attached to the foot by a sewn leather wrapping. ( Wikipedia)

 Top image: The ancient village of Deir el-Medina ( Wikimedia)

By Mark Miller

3,200-Year-Old Ancient Egyptian Mummy Discovered in Great Shape in Luxor

Ancient Origins

A Spanish mission has just announced an exciting new discovery of a 3,200-year-old mummy in a highly decorated sarcophagus at Thutmose III's temple in Luxor, a city on the east bank of the Nile River in southern Egypt. The discovery was from the tomb of the servant of King Thutmose III’s house. The Spanish Mission stated that the mummy cartonnage is in an extremely good state of preservation. Thutmose III’s Reign and the Temple Project Thutmose III’s tomb was discovered by Victor Loret in 1898, in the Valley of the Kings. He was the sixth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty and his reign lasted from 1479 to 1426 BC. He is considered to be one of the greatest and most dominant kings of ancient Egypt, which is the reason why many archaeologists and historians often refer to him as the Egyptian "Napoleon". He is described as a very skilled warrior who brought the Egyptian empire to the zenith of its power by conquering all of Syria, crossing the Euphrates to defeat the Mitannians, and invading south along the Nile River to Napata in the Sudan. When Thutmose III died, he was buried in the Valley of the Kings as were the rest of the kings from this period in Egypt, also called the "mansions of millions of years" by the Egyptians. The excavation, restoration and enhancement project of these royal tombs was orchestrated by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and the Academy of Fine Arts Santa Isabel of Hungary of Seville and began in 2008. The team is led by Dr. Myriam Seco Álvarez, who coordinates researches in the Temple of Millions of Years of Thutmose III.



Temple of Millions of Years in Luxor. Credit: Thutmose III Temple Project Millennia-Old Mummy Found in Egyptian Tomb The ninth archaeological field season, which only launched a few weeks ago, is already considered successful after the joint Spanish-Egyptian mission discovered the tomb of the servant of the king’s house, Amenrenef, near a temple from the era of the great warrior king Thutmose III at Al-Deir Al-Bahari on Luxor's west bank. The mummy had been bound with linen stuck together with plaster and placed in an ornate, colored wooden sarcophagus.

The newly-discovered mummy and sarcophagus in Luxor. Credit: Ministry of Antiquities Mahmoud Afifi, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Department at the Ministry of Antiquities told Ahram Online that the tomb was uncovered at the southern enclosure wall of the temple and is in an excellent state of conservation. A deteriorated wooden coffin was found inside the tomb, he continued, but inside a beautiful and well-preserved mummy cartonnage was found.

Entrance to the tomb where the mummy was found. Credit: Ministry of Antiquities The archaeological team’s head, Myriam Seco Alvarez, said that the mummy was decorated with "many colorful decorations recalling religious symbols from ancient Egypt, such as the goddesses Isis and Nephtys displaying their wings, and the four sons of Horus". She also added that the cartonnage includes its almost complete polychrome painted decoration and inscriptions with some of the most characteristic symbols and elements of the ancient Egyptian religion.

Credit: Ministry of Antiquities

 Luxor, a city of nearly half a million people, has been battered by political instability and jihadi violence since the 2011 revolution that toppled the longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak. However, many archaeologists are being optimistic and consider Luxor a city of treasures that only small part have been discovered and more is waiting to be discovered.

Top image: The newly-discovered mummy and sarcophagus in Luxor. Credit: Ministry of Antiquities
By Theodoros II

10 things you (probably) didn't know about Ancient Egypt

History Extra

Fresco on the Tomb of Iti showing the transportation of wheat by donkey. Donkeys were more commonly used by the Ancient Egyptians than camels. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

 

1) They did not ride camels

The camel was not used regularly in Egypt until the very end of the dynastic age. Instead, the Egyptians used donkeys as beasts of burden, and boats as a highly convenient means of transport. 

 

The River Nile flowed through the centre of their fertile land, creating a natural highway (and sewer!). The current helped those who needed to row from south to north, while the wind made life easy for those who wished to sail in the opposite direction. The river was linked to settlements, quarries and building sites by canals. Huge wooden barges were used to transport grain and heavy stone blocks; light papyrus boats ferried people about their daily business. And every day, high above the river, the sun god Ra was believed to sail across the sky in his solar boat.

 

2) Not everyone was mummified

The mummy – an eviscerated, dried and bandaged corpse – has become a defining Egyptian artefact. Yet mummification was an expensive and time-consuming process, reserved for the more wealthy members of society. The vast majority of Egypt’s dead were buried in simple pits in the desert. 

 

So why did the elite feel the need to mummify their dead? They believed that it was possible to live again after death, but only if the body retained a recognisable human form. Ironically, this could have been achieved quite easily by burying the dead in direct contact with the hot and sterile desert sand; a natural desiccation would then have occurred. But the elite wanted to be buried in coffins within tombs, and this meant that their corpses, no longer in direct contact with the sand, started to rot. The twin requirements of elaborate burial equipment plus a recognisable body led to the science of artificial mummification.  

 

3) The living shared food with the dead

The tomb was designed as an eternal home for the mummified body and the ka spirit that lived beside it. An accessible tomb-chapel allowed families, well-wishers and priests to visit the deceased and leave the regular offerings that the ka required, while a hidden burial chamber protected the mummy from harm. 

 

Within the tomb-chapel, food and drink were offered on a regular basis. Having been spiritually consumed by the ka, they were then physically consumed by the living. During the ‘feast of the valley’, an annual festival of death and renewal, many families spent the night in the tomb-chapels of their ancestors. The hours of darkness were spent drinking and feasting by torchlight as the living celebrated their reunion with the dead. 

 

^{Food offerings to the dead. From a decorative detail from the Sarcophagus of Irinimenpu. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)}

 

4) Egyptian women had equal rights with men

In Egypt, men and women of equivalent social status were treated as equals in the eyes of the law. This meant that women could own, earn, buy, sell and inherit property. They could live unprotected by male guardians and, if widowed or divorced, could raise their own children. They could bring cases before, and be punished by, the law courts. And they were expected to deputise for an absent husband in matters of business. 

 

Everyone in Ancient Egypt was expected to marry, with husbands and wives being allocated complementary but opposite roles within the marriage. The wife, the ‘mistress of the house’, was responsible for all internal, domestic matters. She raised the children and ran the household while her husband, the dominant partner in the marriage, played the external, wage-earning role. 

 

5) Scribes rarely wrote in hieroglyphs 

Hieroglyphic writing – a script consisting of many hundreds of intricate images – was beautiful to look at, but time-consuming to create. It was therefore reserved for the most important texts; the writings decorating tomb and temple walls, and texts recording royal achievements. 

 

As they went about their daily business, Egypt’s scribes routinely used hieratic – a simplified or shorthand form of hieroglyphic writing. Towards the end of the dynastic period they used demotic, an even more simplified version of hieratic. All three scripts were used to write the same ancient Egyptian language.

 

Few of the ancients would have been able to read either hieroglyphs or hieratic: it is estimated that no more than 10 per cent (and perhaps considerably less) of the population was literate.

 

^{Legal text on parchment, written in hieratic: a list of witnesses during the settlement of a quarrel, 1000 BC. (Photo by DEA / G Dagli Orti/De Agostini/Getty Images)}

 

6) The king of Egypt could be a woman

Ideally the king of Egypt would be the son of the previous king. But this was not always possible, and the coronation ceremony had the power to convert the most unlikely candidate into an unassailable king. 

 

On at least three occasions women took the throne, ruling in their own right as female kings and using the full king’s titulary. The most successful of these female rulers, Hatshepsut, ruled Egypt for more than 20 prosperous years.

 

In the English language, where ‘king’ is gender-specific, we might classify Sobeknefru, Hatshepsut and Tausret as queens regnant. In Egyptian, however, the phrase that we conventionally translate as ‘queen’ literally means ‘king’s wife’, and is entirely inappropriate for these women. 

 

7) Few Egyptian men married their sisters

Some of Egypt’s kings married their sisters or half-sisters. These incestuous marriages ensured that the queen was trained in her duties from birth, and that she remained entirely loyal to her husband and their children. They provided appropriate husbands for princesses who might otherwise remain unwed, while restricting the number of potential claimants for the throne. They even provided a link with the gods, several of whom (like Isis and Osiris) enjoyed incestuous unions. However, brother-sister marriages were never compulsory, and some of Egypt’s most prominent queens – including Nefertiti – were of non-royal birth. 

 

Incestuous marriages were not common outside the royal family until the very end of the dynastic age. The restricted Egyptian kingship terminology (‘father’, ‘mother’, ‘brother’, ‘sister’, ‘son’ and ‘daughter’ being the only terms used), and the tendency to apply these words loosely so that ‘sister’ could with equal validity describe an actual sister, a wife or a lover, has led to a lot of confusion over this issue.

 

8) Not all pharaohs built pyramids

Almost all the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (c2686–2125 BC) and Middle Kingdom (c2055–1650 BC) built pyramid-tombs in Egypt’s northern deserts. These highly conspicuous monuments linked the kings with the sun god Ra while replicating the mound of creation that emerged from the waters of chaos at the beginning of time. 

 

But by the start of the New Kingdom (c1550 BC) pyramid building was out of fashion. Kings would now build two entirely separate funerary monuments. Their mummies would be buried in hidden rock-cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at the southern city of Thebes, while a highly visible memorial temple, situated on the border between the cultivated land (home of the living), and the sterile desert (home of the dead), would serve as the focus of the royal mortuary cult. 

 

Following the collapse of the New Kingdom, subsequent kings were buried in tombs in northern Egypt: some of their burials have never been discovered.

 

9) The Great Pyramid was not built by slaves

The classical historian Herodotus believed that the Great Pyramid had been built by 100,000 slaves. His image of men, women and children desperately toiling in the harshest of conditions has proved remarkably popular with modern film producers. It is, however, wrong.

 

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Great Pyramid was in fact built by a workforce of 5,000 permanent, salaried employees and up to 20,000 temporary workers. These workers were free men, summoned under the corvée system of national service to put in a three- or four-month shift on the building site before returning home. They were housed in a temporary camp near the pyramid, where they received payment in the form of food, drink, medical attention and, for those who died on duty, burial in the nearby cemetery.

 

^{Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, which was not, as many believe, built by slaves. (Photo by MyLoupe/UIG via Getty Images)}

 10) Cleopatra many not have been beautiful

Cleopatra VII, last queen of ancient Egypt, won the hearts of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, two of Rome’s most important men. Surely, then, she must have been an outstanding beauty? 

 

Her coins suggest that this was probably not the case. All show her in profile with a prominent nose, pronounced chin and deep-set eyes. Of course, Cleopatra’s coins reflect the skills of their makers, and it is entirely possible that the queen did not want to appear too feminine on the tokens that represented her sovereignty within and outside Egypt. 

 

Unfortunately we have no eyewitness description of the queen. However the classical historian Plutarch – who never actually met Cleopatra – tells us that her charm lay in her demeanour, and in her beautiful voice. 

 

 

Joyce Tyldesley, senior lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester, is the author of Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt (Allen Lane 2010) and Tutankhamen’s Curse: the developing history of an Egyptian king (Profile 2012).

Archaeologists identify Temple of Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh the ancients tried to erase

Ancient Origins

King Thutmose III, sixth Pharaoh of the 18^th Dynasty in Ancient Egypt, tried to erase all memory of Hatshepsut, the “Woman Who Was King”, but he was unsuccessful as traces of this powerful female Pharaoh have remained. Now more evidence of her reign has been found, as archaeologists have discovered a temple with inscriptions to Hatshepsut.
Polish archaeologists were working at a temple in the ancient Gebelein complex 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) southwest of Luxor, when they identified a temple dedicated to Hathor and possibly Amun-Ra, which appears to have been commissioned by Hatshepsut. According to a new report at Science & Scholarship in Poland, the temple has been known for some time but archaeologists have eschewed studying it until now, perhaps because of the deteriorated condition of the artworks.
The archaeologists, led by Wojciech Ejsmond, believe it is possible the temple was built during Hatshepsut’s reign in the 15^th century BC.
It is somewhat amazing that any indications of gods invoked earlier than the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten of the 14^th century BC survived because he went on an iconoclastic spree to instead promote his favorite god—Aten, the sun god. Also, kings would hammer out previous rulers’ names and instead have their own names and attributes carved into rock surfaces of temples and other buildings. This was true especially for Hatshepsut, whose stepson Thutmose III (also known as Tuthmosis III), tried to erase her from history. However, the attempt to eradicate her from memory only fueled the desire of modern civilizations to know more about her.

“Images of many deities were destroyed in antiquity,” the report states. “Pharaoh Akhenaten … promoted the worship of one god, whose symbol was the solar disk. Depictions of other gods who did not have solar aspects were destroyed during his rule. The Goddess Hathor was associated with the sun, so her depictions were spared. … ‘The most puzzling was the lack of royal names in the temple. Rulers of ancient Egypt loved to put their names on the walls of temples exposed to the public view. Sometimes they would destroy the names of previous kings to put their own in these places,’ added Wojciech Ejsmond.”

Hathor is the cow-headed goddess at right in this image from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. (Wikimedia Commons)

The scholars believe the construction of the temple happened during Hatshepsut’s reign. Fragments of hieroglyphs with feminine word endings and placement of a cartouche indicate the temple was hers, the article states.
Hatshepsut was the longest reigning female pharaoh. Egypt’s economy flourished during her rule. She was known as “The Woman Who Was King” and directed the construction and repairs of many buildings, memorials and temples.

Gebelein is a complex of archaeological sites known for many years. This relief from Gebeline showing the jackal-headed-god Wepwawet and the earth-deity Geb was acquired by Henry Walters in 1925. (Wikimedia Commons)

Born in 1508 BC, Hatshepsut was the only child of Egyptian king Thutmose I and his principal wife and queen, Ahmose. When Hatshepsut was 12, her father died. She married her half-brother Thutmose II and assumed the role of principal wife and queen.  She remained Thutmose II’s queen until he died 15 years later, leaving Hatshepsut a widow at 27. Hatshepsut and Thutmose II had one child together – a daughter named Neferure. Thutmose II also had a son, his heir Thutmose III, born to a concubine. Thutmose III was an infant upon Thutmose II’s death, so Hatshepsut served as his regent.
This was highly unusual. Egypt’s gods had supposedly decreed that the king’s role could never be fulfilled by a woman ruling on her own. But Hatshepsut refused to submit to this and in around 1437 BC, she had herself crowned as pharaoh, changing her name from the female version Hatshepsut—which means Foremost of the Noble Ladies—to the male version, Hatshepsu.

"At present it is believed that the situation was more complicated. The Queen Hatshepsut ruled together with young Tuthmosis III in order to ensure the stability of Egypt, and many of her actions led to strengthening the position of the young king,” Ejsmond says in the article at Science & Scholarship in Poland. "Perhaps many years after her death, due to a complicated dynastic situation, Tuthmosis III was afraid that another ambitious queen might take over and push his own son away from power? This could lead to his decision to remove references to Hatshepsut as a pharaoh, according to the principle, if it is not engraved in hieroglyphics, it never happened."

Twenty-two years after taking reign, in around 1458 BC, Hatshepsut died in her late 40s. She was buried in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, in the hills behind Deir el-Bahri. Thutmose III ruled for 30 years. He demanded that evidence of Hatshepsut’s rule be eradicated and ordered her image removed from temples and monuments. Thutmose III likely wanted to remove evidence that Egypt had been ruled by a strong woman. For this reason, scholars knew very little of Hatshepsut’s existence prior to 1822 AD, when hieroglyphs on the walls of Deir el-Bahri were deciphered.
The excavations of the temple are part of a multi-discipline study of the Gebelein complex, which was on ancient Egyptian maps and may have had a capital of one of the early Egyptian states 5,000 years ago that led to the rise of the pharaohs’ civilization, the article states.
Featured image: Hatshepsut by catch22/deviantart

By Mark Miller

The Search Continues: Scientists to Use Radar in Hunt for the Tomb of Nefertiti

Ancient Origins

Egyptologists have been given the green light to use non-invasive radar to see if the chamber hidden behind a wall in King Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings really does belong to Nefertiti. The go ahead has been given following the recent release of highly-debated reports from Dr. Nicholas Reeves.
In his report (which has yet to be peer-reviewed), Reeves asserts that there are entrances to another chamber visible beneath the painted and plastered walls of Tutankhamen’s tomb.  He believes that these entrances may lead to the answer of where Nefertiti was entered. The style and size of the tomb in which King Tut was found also seems to be more appropriate for a queen than a king, according to Reeves.

The golden mask of King Tut. Tutankhamen’s tomb is the gateway to the lost tomb of Nefertiti according to a recent report. (Phys.org)

Reeves is undoubtedly accompanied by others in the impatience to discover if what the digital scans by Factum Arte, really are indications of a great find. A press release says that Reeves will be arriving in Luxor on September 28 to meet with Antiquities Minister Mamduh al-Damati and “the best Egyptologists in the ministry to examine the interior of the tomb.”
Mouchira Moussa, media consultant to Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damati, has said that they are hoping to have a security clearance to use the radar within a month and that the radar is “…not going to cause any damage to the monument.”
Reeves believes that the sudden death of King Tutankhamen in 1332 BC led to his being placed in a part of Nefertiti’s tomb. The two “ghost” doors that he identified in the scans are said to be to a storage room and the tomb of Nefertiti.

Image showing the location of the two chambers from Dr. Reeves report. The upcoming radar scan will search for their existence. (Daily Mail)

"We're very excited... It may not be a tomb belonging to Nefertiti, but it could be a tomb belonging to one of the nobles," said Moussa about the upcoming work at the tomb. "If it is Nefertiti's, this would be very massive."

• The Elusive Tomb of Queen Nefertiti may lie behind the walls of Tutankhamun's Burial Chamber
• The Mysterious Disappearance of Nefertiti, Ruler of the Nile
• Pharaoh Akhenaten

Ahram Online says that they have contacted Reeves for more information regarding the upcoming procedure; however he will not be releasing a statement until after the analysis is completed. The only other known information available is that the radar will be coming from Japan and operated by an expert accompanying the machine from Japan.
The news statement from the Antiquities Minister says we will not have to wait too long to find out more information on the next step: there will be a news conference on October 1st in Cairo to present the preliminary findings and the plan they will use to “verify with certainty” if hidden rooms exist and “still conceal secrets or not.”
Neferneferuaten Nefertiti was born in 1370 BC and died in 1340 BC. She was married to the Pharaoh Akhenaten and renowned for her beauty. Her fame as an Egyptian queen is only second to that of Cleopatra. The mystery of the location of Nefertiti’s tomb has been one of the biggest mysteries in Egyptology.
Featured Image: Bust of Nefertiti, the Egyptian Queen for whom a tomb has yet to be found. (Ahram Online)
By Alicia McDermott

King Tut's Beard Broken Off, Wrongly Glued Back on

by Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News

Inappropriate epoxy glue is now holding together the long, narrow, blue and gold beard on the famous mask of King Tutankhamun, according a report in the Arabic news site Al Araby Al Jadeed.
Braided like a pigtail with the end jutting forward, the beard was reportedly detached from the over 3,300-year-old mask during a cleaning incident last October at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where the artifact is one of the top attractions.
Weird Facts About King Tut and His Mummy
A museum employee, who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisals, told Al Araby Al Jadeed that the beard was unintentionally severed from the chin during ordinary dusting.
Three of the museum’s conservators confirmed the incident to the Associated Press, although they gave different accounts as to whether the beard was knocked off during cleaning or was removed because it was loose.
They all agreed that the beard was glued back on improperly.
Rather than following the regular procedures reporting the damage to the Ministry of Antiquities and send the priceless artifact to the restoration lab, someone opted for a DIY procedure, Al Araby Al Jadeed wrote.
Tut’s Funeral: Burying the Boy King
The beard was fixed with quick drying epoxy that cannot unstuck given its very high adhesive property. Indeed, the material is used for attaching on metal or stone.
Moreover, the glue was used abundantly, causing it to dramatically flow along the beard and chin.
According to the Arabic news site, which has published a picture to show “the presence of a foreign substance between the mask and chin,” it was then decided to remove the residue adhesive with a spatula, only doing more damaging as scratches are now visible.
King Tut’s Chariots: Ferraris of Ancient Egypt
The incident, according to the news site, is the reason why the room housing the priceless golden mask is dimmer than the rest of the museum.
“Instructions were given in order to avoid showing the face and the damage in the chin area,” Al Araby Al Jadeed wrote.
The Egyptian museum has not yet confirmed the reports.
Image: King Tut mask at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo before the alleged incident. Credit: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen/Wikimedia Commons.

Origins of Hierarchy: How Egyptian Pharaohs Rose to Power

By Stephanie Pappas

New research reveals how despots like the rulers of ancient Egypt, including King Tut (represented here), arose to power. Credit: Dmitry Denisenkov, CC Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic.

The rulers of ancient Egypt lived in glorious opulence, decorating themselves with gold and perfumes and taking their treasures with them to the grave.
But how could such a hierarchical, despotic system arise from egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies? The reasons were part technological and part geographical: In a world where agriculture was on the rise and the desert was all-encompassing, the cost of getting out from under the thumb of the pharaoh would have been too high.
"There was basically nowhere else to go," said study author Simon Powers, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and evolution at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. "That cost of leaving could basically lock individuals into despotism

From egalitarianism to hierarchy
Ancient Egypt is just one example of a society that transitioned from equality to hierarchy. During the Neolithic Period, often referred to as the Stone Age — which began about 10,000 years ago — agriculture began to replace hunting and gathering as the principal means for obtaining food. At the same time, societies in which everyone had been more or less equal began to schism into classes, with clear leaders emerging. In many cases, these leaders held absolute power.
Many researchers have theorized that agriculture allowed people to hoard food and resources, and that with this power, they could induce others to follow them. But no one had ever convincingly explained how the transition from no leaders to leaders could have occurred, Powers told Live Science. If everyone in hunter-gatherer societies was more or less equal in strength or resources to start, why would they allow an individual to dominate in the first place? [Dictator Deaths: How 13 Notorious Leaders Died]
To find out, Powers created a computer model filled with individuals who had their own preferences for egalitarianism or hierarchy. In the model, as in life, the more resources an individual possessed, the more offspring they could have. In the simulations, populations would sometimes gain a voluntary leader — though the next generation down the line could choose to break off from that leader, at a cost of some resources. (Leaders' children did not defect, given that they stood to inherit their parents' wealth.)
The simulations revealed that voluntary leadership arises when leaders give enough benefits to their followers at the outset, Powers said. If leaders give their people an advantage in producing food, the people will follow them, he added.
From leaders to despots
But leadership turns to despotism when two factors arise. The first is the growth of population density and size, which follows naturally from an organized, agricultural society.
"It basically becomes hard for individuals to stop following the leader," Powers said. "As the density of the population grows, there is less free land available."
This leads to the second factor: a feedback loop. With the benefits of leadership, subjects get more resources and thus are able to have more children. These children increase the population size and density, leading to even less free land and fewer opportunities to leave.
However, if the cost of leaving the group is low — perhaps because there's a friendly city nearby to join, or open land an easy journey away — despotism can't arise. People simply leave when a leader becomes too powerful. When the cost is high — either because of geographical barriers, such as Egypt's desert, or practical ones, such as the need to access to irrigation — people have to put up with more abuse of power from their leaders.
"In hunter-gatherer groups, if an individual tries to behave in a despotic way, then the rest of the group simply gets up in the middle of the night and walks away, but with agriculture that was much less feasible," Powers said.
The findings can explain differences in hierarchy across the Stone Age world. For example, Peru was the site of multiple early states, which evolved in long, fertile agricultural valleys. To leave one of these valleys, people would have had to cross the mountains — a dangerous and difficult undertaking, Powers said.
In contrast, the Amazon basin remained more egalitarian even after the advent of agriculture, likely because it was easier to move around and find suitable land.
Some of these Stone Age rules still remain today. In democratic societies, Powers said, it's easier to kick out a leader, so leaders rarely achieve despotism. In nondemocratic societies, however, leaders can behave in more autocratic ways without fear of losing their perch.
Powers and his adviser Laurent Lehmann, also of the University of Lausanne, reported their findings Aug. 5 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The next step, Powers said, is to scale up the model.
"I want to look at what drove the creation of large-scale states from despotic groups," he said.
http://www.livescience.com/47284-how-stone-age-despots-evolved.html

Long-Lost Mummy of Pharaoh's Foster Brother Found

by Rossella Lorenzi

 

The mummy of the pharaoh Amenhotep II's foster brother may have been found in a former monastery, according to archival research into 19th-century documents.
The mummy, now reduced to a skeleton, is believed to be that of Qenamun, the chief steward of Amenhotep II (about 1427–1400 B.C.) who was the 7th Pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty and likely Tutankhamun's great-great-grandfather.
Qenamun was effectively Amenhotep II's foster brother, as his mother, Amenemipet, was the chief royal nurse of the future king. The two grew up together and the bond endured in adult life, with Qenamun enjoying a high and powerful status. But the whereabouts of Qenamun's afterlife journey had remained a mystery -- no coffin nor mummy was found in his large and beautifully decorated tomb in Thebes."Identifying Qenamun has been like fitting together long-lost puzzle pieces," Marilina Betrò, professor of Egyptology at Pisa University, told Discovery News.It all began two years ago when a skeleton resting in a cardboard box was found in a store room of a 14th-century monastery. Located in Calci, a village near Pisa, the monastery now houses one of the world's oldest natural history museums."Intriguingly, the skull bore an inscription in black ink stating it was one of the mummies brought from Egypt by Ippolito Rosellini, Europe's first Egyptology professor," Marilina Betrò told Discovery News. She holds the same chair at Pisa University that Rosellini did.In 1828 the Pisa academic left for Egypt with Jean-Francois Champollion, the French philologist who had recently deciphered the Rosetta Stone.Financed by the grand-duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, and the King of France, Charles X, the joint Franco-Tuscan expedition brought to Europe a treasure trove of ancient antiquities. At the same time, it yielded a survey of the monuments of Egypt and their hieroglyphic inscriptions, which, thanks to Champollion, were readable for the first time.On Dec. 29, 1829, back from Egypt, Rosellini wrote a report to Grand Duke Leopold II. Attached to that letter was a list of 1878 antiquities he had packed for the journey back to Tuscany -- 660 were acquired by excavations, while 1,218 were purchased.Rosellini stated he chose to take the best intact items, leaving behind several other objects because of shipping costs."Until a few years ago, only the draft of that letter was known, and it lacked the list. We found it in the National Archives in Prague, where all the documents of the Habsburg-Lorraine family are kept," Betrò said.The list of the 660 antiquities began with the description of 11 mummies. Seven are currently on display in Florence's Egypt museum, while records about three others -- a woman, a man and a child -- reveal they were destroyed and never made to the Florence museum. The eleventh mummy remained a mystery.
http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/long-lost-mummy-of-pharaohs-foster-brother-found-140523.htm

Roman Emperor Dressed As Egyptian Pharaoh in Newfound Carving

 

By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor

An ancient stone carving on the walls of an Egyptian temple depicts the Roman emperor Claudius dressed as an Egyptian pharaoh, wearing an elaborate crown, a team of researchers has discovered.
In the carving, Emperor Claudius, who reigned from A.D. 41 to 54, is shown erecting a giant pole with a lunar crescent at the top. Eight men, each wearing two feathers, are shown climbing the supporting poles, with their legs dangling in midair.
Egyptian hieroglyphs in the carving call Claudius the "Son of Ra, Lord of the Crowns," and say he is "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands." The hieroglyphs say he is raising the pole of the tent (or cult chapel) of Min (an ancient Egyptian god of fertility and power) and notes a date indicating a ritual like this took place around the summertime researchers say. It would have taken place even though Claudius never visited Egypt. A cult chapel is a place of worship and a tent could also be used for this purpose. [See Photos of the Egyptian Carving and Emperor]

The elaborate crown on Claudius consists of three rushes (plants) set on ram horns with three falcons sitting on top. Three solar discs representing the sun (one for each plant) are shown in front of the rushes. Egyptian rulers are shown wearing crowns like this relatively late in ancient Egyptian history, mainly after 332 B.C., and they were worn only in Egypt. The Roman Empire took over Egypt in 30 B.C., and while the Roman emperors were not Egyptian, they were still depicted as pharaohs Egyptologists have noted.
In the recently discovered carving, the god Min is shown wearing his own crown and has an erect penis, because Min was a god of fertility, the researchers said. The hieroglyphs describe Min as "the one who brings into control the warhorses, whose fear is in the Two Lands." Min tells Claudius, "I give you the (southern) foreign lands," which researchers say could be a reference to the deserts surrounding the Nile River, where minerals could be quarried.
The scene was discovered on the western exterior wall of the Temple of Isis at Shanhur, located on the east bank of the Nile River about 12 miles (20 kilometers) north of Luxor. It is an Egyptian temple built and decorated during the Roman occupation under Augustus (who reigned from about 30 B.C. to A.D. 14) through to Trajan (who reigned from A.D. 98 to 117). The pole-raising scene was first found during the 2000-2001 excavation season and was recorded in full during the 2010 epigraphic (recording) season. The temple originally had 36 scenes on each of its eastern and western exterior walls, and this new scene, protected for millennia by a layer of dirt, is one of the best preserved.
The study was published recently in the journal Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde by Martina Minas-Nerpel, a Reader (the American equivalent of an associate professor) at Swansea University in the United Kingdom, and Marleen De Meyer, a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven University in Belgium. Careful line drawings of the scene were done by Troy Sagrillo, a senior lecturer at Swansea University.
Roman pharaohs
Although Cleopatrais often called the "last pharaoh of Egypt," the Egyptian priests depicted the Roman emperors as pharaohs up until the fourth century A.D. The Roman emperors allowed, or even encouraged, these depictions in Egyptian temples in order to keep Egypt — which was an important Roman province — stable. [Cleopatra & Olympias: Top 12 Warrior Moms in History]
"Although we know that Claudius, as most Roman emperors, never visited Egypt, his rule over the land at the Nile and the desert regions was legitimized through cultic means," Minas-Nerpel and De Meyer wrote in the journal article. "By decorating the exterior temple wall with this ritual, Claudius theoretically received Min's characteristics and thus his ability to rule over Egypt."
The researchers noted that similar scenes showing a pole being raised for the god Min date as far back as 4,300 years ago, during the age when pyramids were being built in Egypt. This tradition of creating pole-raising scenes was continued into the period of Roman rule.
Real-life ritual
In addition, the date on the carving indicates that a ritual like this took place in real life, the researchers said, adding that people may have climbed the central pole of the chapel of Min. In fact, a priest may have stood in for the absent Claudius, and a statue could have been used to represent Min, Minas-Nerpel said.
"What we see depicted on the temple scene is the ideal scenario," Minas-Nerpel told Live Science. She added that, even before the Romans took over Egypt in 30 B.C., Egypt's pharaohs were unable to take part in each temple ceremony in person, and stand-ins would have been necessary.
Lettuce scene
Another ritual offering at the Shanhur temple depicted at the axially corresponding scene on the eastern exterior wall shows Claudius giving an offering of lettuce to Min, which symbolizes the continued fertility of Egypt. It is located on the east wall and did not have to be excavated. In this scene, the Egyptian god Horus (shown as a child) is depicted between the two.

"[Take for] you the lettuce in order to unite it with your body (or phallus)," Claudius says to Min in hieroglyphs shown on the depiction. At one point, Claudius says, "One is in fear when seeing your face."
The two scenes highlight fertility and victorious power, both of which were important for legitimizing the rule of an absent Roman emperor who wanted to control Egypt, Minas-Nerpel and De Meyer wrote.
The Shanhur project and team
In 2009, Minas-Nerpel (principal investigator) and Harco Willems, a professor of Egyptology at the KU Leuven in Belgium, were jointly awarded the research grant by the Gerda Henkel-Foundation of Düsseldorf, Germany, to continue research at the temple of Isis at Shanhur in Upper Egypt. The project was also sponsored by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council in the United Kingdom. The international team also included De Meyer, Peter Dils (of the Universität Leipzig in Germany), René Preys (of the Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix in Namur and KU Leuven), and Sagrillo. In Egypt, the mission was supported by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, theDeutsches Archäologisches Institut, Cairo (DAI) and the Nederlands-Vlaams Instituut in Cairo.
An article on Shanhur temple by De Meyer and Minas-Nerpel can be seen on the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5hc3t8dh.
http://www.livescience.com/44350-carving-shows-roman-emperor-dressed-as-egyptian-pharaoh.html