Ancient Egyptians knew the pain of heart disease

AP Photo/Dr. Michael I. Miyamoto

This undated photo provided by Dr Michael I. Miyamoto shows the mummified remains of Esankh, who lived in the third Intermediate period (1070 712 BCE), entering a CT scanner tube set up outside of the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo.

The hardening of the arteries associated with heart attacks and strokes is not just a modern phenomenon, according to new research showing ancient Egypt's pharaohs suffered from heart disease too.
"Atherosclerosis is ubiquitous among modern day humans and, despite difference in ancient and modern lifestyles, we found that it was rather common in ancient Egyptians of high socioeconomic status living as much as three millennia ago," said Gregory Thomas, a cardiology professor at the University of California, Irvine.
"The findings suggest that we may have to look beyond modern risk factors to fully understand the disease," added Thomas, one of the co-authors of the study.
The main risk factors that contribute to arterial hardening today are fatty foods, lack of exercise and smoking.
The study was prompted by a nameplate found with the body of the Pharaoh Merenptah, who lived between 1213 and 1203 BC, that gave his age at death at 60 and says he suffered from arthritis, dental decay and atheroscleroris.
Working with Egyptologists and preservation specialists, a team of US and Egyptian cardiologists selected 20 mummies from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo and scanned them with a CT scanner.
The mummies underwent full body scans with a particular focus on their cardiovascular system.
The process revealed that nine of the 16 mummies with identifiable hearts and arteries showed signs of arterial calcification.
The hardening was visible both inside the arteries and in the paths where the artery should have been found, the researchers said the study published in the Nov. 18 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Some of the mummies had calcification in up to six of their arteries, the authors said.
Based on skeletal analysis, the researchers were able to estimate the ages of most of the mummies at death, and they also gathered the names and occupations of the majority.
Among the mummies that died over the age of 45, seven out of eight had calcification in their arteries and suffered atherosclerosis, the study found.
Only two out of eight of those who died at a younger age showed similar calcification, but the hardening was found in the arteries of both male and female mummies.
Those mummies whose identities could be established by the research team generally came from a high socioeconomic class, with many working as courtiers for the Pharaoh.
The particular diet of each individual could not be determined, but the authors of the study noted that consumption of various cattle, as well as ducks and geese was common at the time.
"While we do not know whether atherosclerosis caused the demise of any of the mummies in the study, we can confirm that the disease was present in many of them," Thomas said.

Four archaic wells discovered in Egypt

Egyptian -French archaeologists have unearthed in El- Sharqiya province four ancient wells that date back to the 25th and 26th pharaonic dynasties.

The wells are part of a newly-discovered Sacred Lake in a temple to the Egyptian goddess Mut in the ruins of ancient Tanis.

Supreme Council of Antiquities Secretary
General Zahi Hawwas said on Sunday 8/11/2009 the wells vary in shape and size.

Two of them have circular shapes with a 210-220 cm diameter, while the other two are square.

They are believed to have been used by the people for daily purposes, he added.

The Sacred Lake was uncovered in October. It was found 12 meters below ground at the San al-Hagar archaeological site in Egypt's eastern Nile Delta and was 15 meters long and 12 meters wide and built out of limestone blocks. It was in good condition.

It was the second sacred lake found at Tanis, which became the northern capital of ancient Egypt in the 21st pharaonic dynasty, over 3,000 years
ago.

The first lake at the site was found in 1928. The goddess Mut, sometimes depicted as a vulture, was the wife of Amun, god of wind and the breath of life. She was also mother of the moon god Khonsu.

More tombs likely found in Egypt's Valley of the Kings

Underground radar searches point to eight undiscovered tombs still hidden in Egypt's storied Valley of the Kings.
The Amarna Royal Tombs Project reports two radar searches undertaken in 2000 suggests that hollow spaces underlie two regions of the Valley near King Tut's tomb and a recently-uncovered tomb near King Amenmesse's resting place.
Following a re-analysis of radar data by team member Hirokatsu Watanabe, likely "some or all of the eight remaining anomalies also represent undiscovered burials," reports project archaeologist Nicholas Reeves.
The radar data pointed to KV-63, a single-chambered tomb shaft uncovered under an ancient worker's hut in 2006.

Fracture zones endanger tombs in Egypt

Easy digging in Egypt's ancient Valley of the Kings might mean tough problems today for conservation efforts, suggests a mapping study.

Of the 63 tombs in the Valley of the Kings, so far 30 have been identified by Katarin and Richard Parizek of Penn State as lying on rock fractures prone to flooding, damaging the ancient tombs.

"It seems that tomb builders may have intentionally exploited these avenues of less resistant limestone when creating tombs," says Katarin Parizek, in a statement.

Best known for King Tut's tomb, the Valley of the Kings holds at least 63 ancient burial chambers for Egypt's Pharaohs from the 16th to 11th centuries B.C. Four tombs show signs of seven separate floods, according to the report made Friday at Geological Society of America meeting in Portland, Ore.

Floods destroy tomb paintings and trigger wall flaking. "Archaeologists try very hard to mitigate flooding in the tombs, but it becomes even harder if there are tombs flooding that no one knows about," says Parizek. Some archaeologists are looking for other fractures in the search for more hidden burials.

Abu Dhabi seal reveals ancient past

A 5,000-year-old cylinder seal points to ancient Arabian trade, archaeologists say.
In the current Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy journal, Holly Pittman of the University of Pennsylvania and Daniel Potts of Australia's University of Sydney detail last year's discovery of the cylinder seal, the oldest one found in Arabia, on a barren sand dune in Abu Dhabi.
"Seals were used to make an impression on a soft substance like clay that was put around or over the mouth of a storage jar, or on clay that was put around a door lock, or on a cuneiform tablet, in each case to signify the ownership of the goods or the identity of the seal-user," Potts says. In this case, the mystery seal derives from Uruk, a bronze age civilization in modern-day Iraq that saw the development of cuneiform writing. "Some seals were very individual and recognizable, whereas this one belongs to a well-known type," Potts says, with carvings of spiders and women likely a visual pun, pointing to cloth from a weaving factory.
How the seal arrived on a barren dune, "really it's impossible to say," Potts adds, "though I am sure it arrived in antiquity." The seal might have arrived with ancient Sumerian merchants, or it might have arrived millennia later "perhaps used as a bead or exotic trinket," says the study, and lost to mischance.
"If the Abu Dhabi seal was not transported to its final resting place thousands of years after its manufacture, it may well have been amongst a range of goods brought by traders from southern Mesopotamia desirous of obtaining copper to take back to their homeland," concludes the study. "Despite the forbidding nature of the desert of western Abu Dhabi, this kind of movement could well account for the deposition of a cylinder seal in such a sandy environment."

Secrets from a sunken Egyptian city

Scholars unveiled inscriptions discovered in a sunken Egyptian city on Monday.
The Oxford Centre for Maritime Archaeology released the monograph of a sunken stone stele discovered in the city of Heracleion dating to the reign of the Greek Pharaoh Ptolemy VIII before 116 B.C. The stele, inscribed in Greek and Hieroglyphs, details the religious rules governing the recovery of plundered items and temple asylum offered by priests to penitents.
Divers recovered the 19-foot-high stele from the seafloor of the Nile Delta, where Heracleion sank about 13 centuries ago. "The stele was discovered in numerous pieces in the seafloor and its surface had been badly eroded so that only a quarter of the document has survived," according to the Oxford Centre.
 More studies on the stele are planned.

ASWAN: Underwater Archaeology in the Nile

Aswan is a town in Upper Egypt close to the border with the Sudan.  It has been an important region in Egypt since the Predynastic times, and there are many archaeological sites in the area, making it rich with finds to this day.  In order to further explore this area, they have been conducting underwater archaeology to find artefacts that are hidden in the river.



The area they are working in now used to be a market place, where people would come from the north and the south and meet to trade their goods. Goods from Aswan would include granite, which was quarried locally and traded in other major cities like Thebes and Memphis. The main way of moving goods for trade was on the river, and there was always the possibility that goods could be lost or discarded on the journey. These are the kinds of things they discover through underwater archaeology, showing them what kinds of things were moving around ancient Egypt.

Many churches were built in Aswan during the Coptic Period, and they utilized sandstone from Gebel el-Silsila in forms like this piece, which is a niche that would have been placed near the altar in one of these churches. It could have been decorated in a workshop near the quarry in Gebel el-Silsila, and on its way the boat could have wrecked and lost its cargo in the river, depositing this piece for them to find 3000 years later. Another piece likely from Gebel el-Silsila is this pottery jar that shows there was trade with Aswan extended perhaps as far as Turkey.

Their expedition has been very successful, they have made many important finds. They sayd it is not enough just to dig in the sand, they must go everywhere the ancient Egyptians did, so they where very happy with this underwater project and the big discoveries.

Next season they will move their survey further north from Aswan to Luxor. They hope to find some large statues or obelisks, because they know that many pharaohs built major buildings here and would have brought stone from all over the country.

The Lost Tombs of Thebes

On the West Bank of Thebes, there are over 800 tombs located in the hills of the area known as el-Qurna. Though some of them, such as Theban Tomb 100, that of Rekhmire, may be known to the public, there are many that have been neglected and lost since antiquity. 

There are many sites in Egypt that have not been fully explored, holding many secrets that have yet to be revealed.  It is very important to find these tombs and properly record the paintings and objects inside, as they are deteriorating quickly.  These tombs are in danger, and the scenes could be completely destroyed if they are not properly conserved and recorded.  The purpose of ancient Egyptian tombs was to ensure a successful afterlife for the tomb owner, which is shown in their decoration.  The interior walls of the tomb depict many different kinds of scenes, including daily life activities and religious rituals.

These lost tombs are an important source of information about life in ancient Egypt.  They were completely sealed; when they were opened recently, they revealed mummies and artefacts that had been hidden for 3000 years. The owners of these Theban tombs were the nobles who oversaw many works of the king, they were important in the administration.  By studying their tombs, we can learn about these important people and how they built the golden age of Egypt, the New Kingdom.

The burial chamber of Amun-nakht is a good example of the scenes in these tombs.  A scene in this chamber shows the tomb owner as a mummy on a bed with a lion-head, with Anubis, the god of mummification.  Other scenes in the tomb normally included depictions of the tomb owner’s profession.  For example, Menna, the owner of TT 69, worked for the estates of the king and the god Amun, and his tomb contains scenes of agricultural work, such as harvesting crops.  Theban Tomb 79 showed scenes of grapevines and wine making, indicating the owner was the supervisor of wine production.

There are some famous tombs on the West Bank of Thebes that are known to the public, such as TT 100, the tomb of Rekhmire. Rekhmire was a vizier, and scenes in his tomb illustrate the relationship between himself and his king, providing a unique example from ancient Egypt.  However, there are hundreds of other tombs with valuable information that have not yet been fully explored or understood.

New Walls Encircle Pyramidal Complex at Giza

Since the beginning of 2002, Dr. J.J. Hurtak and a European team of investigators and explorers have been recording the construction of a massive system of walls being placed around the historic pyramidal sites and the larger unexcavated area of Giza, Egypt — in total, an area covering approximately eight square kilometers. Why build these massive walls at this time?  Certainly Giza is one of the finest archaeological zones of the world.  Are there new treasures of ancient Egypt yet to be uncovered that require sophisticated technology and surveillance platforms, to protect the ongoing research along the Giza plateau?  Has, perhaps, an area been discovered that shows tracings of rare earths and unique minerals?  Or is it simply, as some officials are claiming, a move to protect the plateau from terrorists and control the masses of tourists visiting the area? 

The standard argument for the creation of such a wall is “crowd control”, but the details of this new construction suggest an initiative that is both multi-purpose and grand scale: the wall near Nazlat al Salman will be, at a minimum, 7 meters (22 feet) high.  Are such measures solely for crowd control?

The walls have been built in stages.  Images taken in February of 2002 reveal the walls extending far out into the desert where, for the most part, they have not been noticeable to the average visitor. Note the foundation and the massive re-bar supports. The walls have been carefully constructed on a deep and wide foundation (at least 2 meters below ground) with iron rod poles poised to support the concrete interfaces, with room for a special attachable cover. All in all this suggests a gargantuan wall.

This barrier would enclose all major archaeological activity but would do nothing to protect the archaeological site from the strong winds that blow across the plateau. So vast is this structure that some local village homes have been removed, suggesting that what is envisioned on the plateau is more than just a restricting device for visitors to the popular site. What we see is a larger, carefully thought-out design, encompassing neighboring findings and, perhaps, protecting underground graves, tunnels and passages.

Thus, not only are the aboveground structures contained in this “new zone,” but also the vast underground structures yet to be uncovered.  The extent of the walls clearly shows the detailed consideration of civil engineers and hydrological experts. (I think of the likes of the ingenious Italian architect Paolo Soleri, who designed all the ingredients for an underground city to match his aboveground city in the deserts of Arizona.)

The psychological reality of guards stationed as sentries at intervals along the entire wall carries the intrigue of a major feature film set, designed for the few experts who are to find an underground sphinx or obelisk, or a connection between Osiris and the constellation of Orion, rather than an open-door feature for thousands of well-behaved international students of history and archaeology who have never needed to be extensively controlled. 

Indeed, are the chambers of the deep being closed in the 21^st century to students of world culture history who follow in the footsteps of explorers like Charles Piazzi Smyth and R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, who entertained a higher meaning to Egyptian architecture? Are these sites now being closed to technologically gifted explorers at a time when new proto-historic findings could serve to unite the various camps of thinkers and philosophers in the Near East on the basis of a grand history for all people?

We hope that newly discovered realities within the walls will not be limited to the few, and that there will be no concealment of important historical information that could bring a higher knowledge and unity to all humankind.