Pharaohs' tombs 'could disappear'

THE ornate pharaonic tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Kings are doomed to disappear within 150 to 500 years if they remain open to tourists, the head of antiquities has warned.

The humidity and fungus are eating into the walls of the royal tombs in the huge necropolis on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor, which is swamped daily by several thousand tourists. Poor ventilation and the breath of the hordes of visitors are causing damage to the carvings and painted decorations inside the tombs.

"The tombs (in the Valley of the Kings and nearby Valley of the Queens) which are open to visitors are facing severe damage to both colours and the engravings," . "The levels of humidity and fungus are increasing because of the breath of visitors and this means that the tombs could disappear between 150 and 500 years."

The Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, where pharaonic royalty was mummified, is home to the tombs of legendary pharaohs such as the boy king Tutenkhamun and Queen Nefertiti. Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has taken a series of measures to protect the tombs, including setting up new ventilation systems, restricting the number of visitors and closing some tombs.

The authorities have also decided "to close some tombs definitively to tourists and replace them by identical replicas", including those of Tutenkhamun, Nefertiti and Seti I.

"A team of experts is currently using laser technology to examine these tombs in order to build the replicas... which would then open to visitors in a place near the Valley of the Kings,".

King Tut's tomb caused an international sensation when it was first discovered in 1922 by Briton Howard Carter and has not ceased to fuel the imagination because of the fabulous treasures that emerged from it.

The mummy of the "boy king", who was made pharaoh at the age of nine, was found in an ornate sarcophagus his face covered by a solid gold burial mask encrusted with semi-precious stones.

The 18th dynasty pharaoh reigned reigned 1333 and 1324 BC and died mysteriously at the age of 19. Some experts say he was assassinated, others blame the death on a gangrened leg.
His ancestry is also a mystery and Mr Hawass said in June that DNA testing would be conducted to determine his parentage.

The pharaoh Akhenaten was thought to have fathered King Tut and his mother could have been Nefertiti, a foreign princess, or his wet nurse Maya.

Nefertiti, renowned as one of history's great beauties, was the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, remembered for having converted his kingdom to monotheism with the worship of one sun god, Aton. But in March German researchers in Berlin said they have uncovered a second, hidden face within an iconic bust of Nefertiti, which indicates she may not have been the flawless beauty depicted on the bust's exterior. The bust is on display in Berlin's Altes Museum and has been at the centre of a row with Egypt which has repeatedly demanded its restitution.

Seti I was one of ancient Egypt's greatest rulers and a formidable military commander from the 19th dynasty. His tomb in the Valley of the Kings is the largest ever discovered but archaeologist have yet to tap all its mysteries.

New Developments at Luxor

These projects include the restoration of Abul Hagag El-Loxori Mosque, changing the entrance of Luxor temple, the development of the area around Deir el-Bahri Temple, the restoration of Howard Carter’s rest house with a view to developing it into a museum, and the installation of a new lighting system in the Valley of the Kings.

The Abul Hagag mosque was built in 1286 to commemorate the Sunni Sheikh Abul Hagag. The passage of time had taken its toll on the mosque’s walls and foundations; cracks had spread all over its walls, and water from the Mayda’a (water fountain) had leaked into its foundations. Restoration work, which lasted for 14 months and cost LE 13.4 million, has now been carried out, aimed at returning the mosque to its original glory. The cracks have now been removed, the foundations consolidated, and the water fountain renovated. The mosque’s open court has been developed, and a fire alarm system has been installed. The mosque’s dome has been restored as well, along with the Pharaonic columns re-used in 1286 to construct the mosque.

The entrance to Luxor Temple has also been changed; this project cost LE 7,260 million and lasted 18 months. Furthermore, the area around Deir el-Bahri has been developed over the past 15 months, at a cost of LE 9,850 million. The aim was to remove all unlicensed vendors from around the temple, who would encroach on the safe zone protecting the monument, and to establish an official visitor’s centre, a cafeteria, a bookstore and 52 bazaars, as well as repaving all roads leading to the temple.

The Carter Rest-House, used as the residence of Howard Carter during his excavations at the Valley of the kings in the early 1990's, has been restored and developed into a museum displaying the tools and instruments used by Carter during his excavations. The project costs LE 1.121 million and lasted for four months. This will open in the future.

A final project involved the installation of a new lighting system in the Valley of the Kings; this new system will be tested.

Cave Complex allegedly found under Giza Pyramids

Aug. 13, 2009 -- An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.

Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.

"There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow," British explorer Andrew Collins said.

Collins, who will detail his findings in the book "Beneath the Pyramids" to be published in September, tracked down the entrance to the mysterious underworld after reading the forgotten memoirs of a 19th century diplomat and explorer.

"In his memoirs, British consul general Henry Salt recounts how he investigated an underground system of 'catacombs' at Giza in 1817 in the company of Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia," Collins said.

The document records that the two explored the caves for a distance of "several hundred yards," coming upon four large chambers from which stretched further cave passageways.

With the help of British Egyptologist Nigel Skinner-Simpson, Collins reconstructed Salt's exploration on the plateau, eventually locating the entrance to the lost catacombs in an apparently unrecorded tomb west of the Great Pyramid.

Indeed, the tomb featured a crack in the rock, which led into a massive natural cave.

"We explored the caves before the air became too thin to continue. They are highly dangerous, with unseen pits and hollows, colonies of bats and venomous spiders," said Collins.

According to Collins, the caves -- which are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years old -- may have both inspired the development of the pyramid field and the ancient Egyptian's belief in an underworld.

"Ancient funerary texts clearly allude to the existence of a subterranean world in the vicinity of the Giza pyramids," Collins told Discovery News.

Indeed, Giza was known anciently as Rostau, meaning the "mouth of the passages."

This is the same name as a region of the ancient Egyptian underworld known as the Duat.

"The 'mouth of the passages' is unquestionably a reference to the entrance to a subterranean cave world, one long rumored to exist beneath the plateau," Collins told Discovery News.

Collins' claim is expected to cause a stir in the Egyptological world.

Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has dismissed the discovery.

"There are no new discoveries to be made at Giza. We know everything about the plateau," he stated.

But Collins remarks that after extensive research, he found no mention of the caves in modern times.

"To the best of our knowledge nothing has ever been written or recorded about these caves since Salt's explorations. If Hawass does have any report related to these caves, we have yet to see it," Collins said.

Source: Discovery.com

Last Breath.........

Zawjaty

ANCIENT RUINS OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

In the heart of southern Africa lies the scattered evidence of a lost civilisation whose people built some 20,000 stone structures. These breathtaking ruins constitute the largest continuous stone settlement ever built on Earth as it stretches over thousands of kilometres from South Africa all the way to Kenya and beyond.

Adam's Calendar discovered by Johan Heine in 2003. Estimated to be the oldest man-made structure on earth at around 75,000 years old.

These mysterious ancient ruins consist of dwellings, forts, temples roads, irrigation systems and agricultural terraces that cover thousands of square kilometres. It is our estimate that more stone went into building these features than went into building all of the Egyptian pyramids. It is an archaeologist’s dream that will unveil even greater and more mysterious secrets in years to come.

There is an overwhelming consensus by scholars, academics and even mystics that southern Africa is the cradle of humankind and that this is where the first humans walked the Earth before migrating to the distant corners of our planet. Through the study of mitochondrial DNA in females, geneticists found evidence that points to a time when the first humans suddenly appeared on Earth, reigniting the ongoing debate about the ‘missing link’. Their calculation show that the common ancestor to all humans appeared somewhere between 180,000 and 360,000 years ago. She was affectionately called Mitochondrial Eve.

But the first signs of human intelligence and consciousness only appeared around 75,000 years ago, when the Khoisan people of southern Africa, sometimes also referred to as Bushmen, started leaving behind an array of spectacular cave paintings all over this part of the continent. Finely crafted beads and bracelet fragments found in a cave at Blombos in the Western Cape, South Africa, show that these early humans had already developed a feel for the arts and crafts around 80,000 years ago. Until recently, this was the only real link we had to the cradle of humankind in southern Africa and its earliest inhabitants.

Southern Africa holds some of the deepest mysteries in all of human history. Although much has been written about the first humans who appeared in this part of the world, we have found very little evidence of their activity, what they did and what kind of lives they led.

The re-evaluation of some of these ancient stone ruins of southern Africa has led us further back in time than ever before. Could these stone ruin be the remains of the earliest human settlements on Earth?

Astronomical Alignment

Many of the circular structures are aligned to specific geographic points including solstices and equinoxes. But only when Johan Heine began to experiment with other possible encoded geometry, that the real hidden secrets of the ruins began to emerge. They are riddled with sacred geometry, Reiki symbolism and the Phi factor or golden ratio of 1,618.

The discovery of the ancient stone calendar site by Johan Heine (Adam’s Calendar) in among all these stone dwellings and temples, would suggest that some of the structures would date back to the same era as the calendar some 75,000 years ago. It shows us with a certain level of clarity that these lost civilisations have been around for much longer than anyone could ever have imagined. It would not be absurd to then suggest that we may be staring at the very first concentrated human settlements inhabited by the early Homo sapiens
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