Luxor News

Egypt-US concede failure of steel barrier along Gaza borders

2010-06-11T09:25:00.001-07:00

Hebrew media sources have revealed that an atmosphere of pessimism prevailed on the meeting of US Vice-president Joe Biden with Egyptian president Husni Mubarak in Sharm e-Sheikh due to the failure of the steel barrier strategy in tightening the grip on the besieged Gaza Strip.

Military and security consultants from both countries were profoundly disappointed after "Hamas engineers" in the Gaza Strip succeeded in penetrating the barrier, the sources added.

The sources also disclosed that reports received by Biden alleged that "Hamas engineers" succeeded in excavating 18 meters under the ground and in planting burning materials in the way of the steel slabs that melted the foundations of the barrier and made them of no effect.

Furthermore, the sources said that that the USA decided to abandon the project and stopped financing it, and started to pull out all American military engineers participating in and supervising the project.

The US-Egypt plan was meant to destroy all tunnels along the Gaza Strip borders with Egypt in a bid to complete the Israeli siege and suffocate the 1.6 million Palestinians living in the Strip.

National inflation rate hits 10.5%

2010-06-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) on Thursday announced that the annual inflation rate in urban areas had reached 10.5 percent due to a 16.5-percent rise in foodstuff prices.

The rate jumped by 0.5 percent last May, when grain and bread prices rose by 2.4 percent; meat and poultry by 18.3 percent; eggs and dairy products by 9.2 percent; cooking oil by 10.7 percent; fruit by 22.9 percent; and vegetables by 38.6 percent.

"And inflation rates are expected to rise further in July and August," said economy expert Riham el-Dessouqi.
Planning Institute adviser Mahmoud Abdel Hai noted that rising inflation rates stood to affect average family incomes. "The average Egyptian family currently spends 50 percent of its income on food," he noted.

Economy expert Ahmed Adam, however, questioned the accuracy of the official figures, contending that the inflation rate is in actuality much higher than that being reported.

Policemen beat young Alexandrian man to death

2010-06-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

Khaled Said, a 28-year-old Alexandrian man was beaten up to death by two policemen as he refused to give them money, a human rights group said on 10 June.

Witnesses called el-Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Torture and recounted to its lawyers the incident.

“On Sunday, Khaled was at cyber café at around 11:30 in the evening. Two policemen asked him for money and when he said he didn’t have, they beat him,” Muhammad Abdel Aziz, lawyer with el-Nadeem, told al-Masry al-Youm. “As he was beaten up, his head hit a marble table and he started bleeding.”
According to Abdel Aziz, the policemen took Said out of the cyber café and continued to beat him. “He screamed at them saying ‘I am dying, leave me’, and he fell on the floor.” Abdel Aziz added that witnesses saw a yellow liquid coming out of Said’s mouth when he fell on the floor, after which there was bleeding. A pharmacist and a medic passing by confirmed he was shortly dead after they checked his tension.

Witnesses said a police car picked Said up. His family was later contacted and told he is in the morgue of Kom el-Dekka, to which they were denied access. At the prosecutor’s office, security told Said’s mother and brother that he swallowed a bag of drugs and that there were witnesses to the incident who confirmed seeing the bag. Ahmad Badawy, an activist in Alexandria with al-Ghad Party went on 11 June to the cyber café where the incident happened and said witnesses told him the drugs bag belonged to the two policemen who beat him up as he was shooting a video of them while making a deal.

The police has ordered an autopsy of Said's body.
“The forensic authorities report will be crucial in tomorrow’s investigation,” Abdel Aziz said. “Alexandria’s forensic authorities are well reputed for the quality of their reports. But it is the prosecutor’s final report that will decide for the future of the case.”

In the evening of 10 June, a group of activists protested in front of the Sidi Bishr prosecutor office in Alexandria against the alleged torture of Said. Protestors recounted in a video that they gathered in solidarity with the family of Said, demanding a fair investigation into the issue, when police intervened and attacked some of them. According to Abdel Aziz, 11 protestors were arrested, four of whom were released and the rest is still facing accusations of disturbing public order and of illegal association.

The incident sparked a state of anger on online social media, which have been recently key in spreading news about human rights violations in the country.

Alexandria’s prosecutor office was unavailable to comment.

Human rights watchdogs have repeatedly called Egypt’s torture practices as consistent and systematic.

Discovery of the tomb of Ptahmes

2010-05-31T22:53:00.000-07:00

The Archaeology faculty at Cairo University has discovered a new tomb at Saqqara. The mission uncovered the tomb of Ptah Mes, arm leader and royal scribe, in the 19^th dynasty cemetery of top governmental officials, which is located at the southern side of the ramp of king Unas’ pyramid in Saqqara.

The tomb can be dated to the second half of the 19^th dynasty (1203-1186 BC).

The tomb is 70m long and composed of a number of corridors and chapels. This tomb design is similar to the tomb of Ptah Im Wiya, the royal seal bearer, who lived during the reign of king Akhenaten. A Dutch mission discovered Ptah Im Wiya’s tomb at Saqqara in 2007.

The owner of the tomb is a prominent figure as he was appointed to several governmental posts, including the inherited prince, the royal scribe and the supervisor of Ptah temple. She continued that excavations also revealed several stelae. Among them is an unfinished stela engraved with a scene featuring the deceased and his family before the Theban triad: Amun, Mut and Khonsu. Such a stelae, El-Egezi said, reveals that during the second half of the 19^th dynasty, the cult of Amun was revived.

During the excavations several fragments of a statue of the tomb’s owner and his wife were unearthed. A painted head that most probably belongs to his wife or one of his daughters has also been discovered along with a lower part of a limestone statue that belongs to the deceased. Clay vessels, shawbti figurines and amulets have also been found within the sand.

Painted statuary head of either the wife or a daughter of Ptahmes

Sahara cave may hold clues to dawn of Egypt

2010-05-29T21:47:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists are studying prehistoric rock drawings discovered in a remote cave in 2002, including dancing figures and strange headless beasts, as they seek new clues about the rise of Egyptian civilisation.
Amateur explorers stumbled across the cave, which includes 5,000 images painted or engraved into stone, in the vast, empty desert near Egypt's southwest border with Libya and Sudan.
Rudolph Kuper, a German archaeologist, said the detail depicted in the "Cave of the Beasts" indicate the site is at least 8,000 years old, likely the work of hunter-gatherers whose descendants may have been among the early settlers of the then-swampy and inhospitable Nile Valley.
The cave is 10 km (6 miles) from the "Cave of the Swimmers" romanticised in the film the "English Patient", but with far more, and better preserved, images.
By studying the sandstone cave and other nearby sites, the archaeologists are trying to build a timeline to compare the culture and technologies of the peoples who inhabited the area.
"It is the most amazing cave ... in North Africa and Egypt," said Karin Kindermann, member of a German-led team that recently made a trip to the site 900 km (560 miles) southwest of Cairo.
"You take a piece of the puzzle and see where it could fit. This is an important piece," she said.
The Eastern Sahara, a region the size of Western Europe that extends from Egypt into Libya, Sudan and Chad, is the world's largest warm, dry desert. Rainfall in the desert's centre averages less than 2 millimetres a year.

The region was once much less arid.
About 8500 BC, seasonal rainfall appeared in the region, creating a savanna and attracting hunter-gatherers. By 5300 BC, the rains had stopped and human settlements receded to highland areas. By 3500 BC, the settlements disappeared entirely.
MOVING TOWARDS THE NILE VALLEY
"After 3-4,000 years of savanna life environment in the Sahara, the desert returned and people were forced to move eastwards to the Nile Valley, contributing to the foundation of Egyptian civilisation, and southwards to the African continent," said Kuper, an expert at Germany's Heinrich Barth Institute.
The mass exodus corresponds with the rise of sedentary life along the Nile that later blossomed into pharaonic civilisation that dominated the region for thousands of years and whose art, architecture and government helped shape Western culture.
"It was a movement, I think, step-by-step, because the desert didn't rush in. The rains would withdraw, then return, and so on. But step by step it became more dry, and people moved toward the Nile Valley or toward the south," Kuper said.
Kuper and his team are recording the geological, botanic and archaeological evidence around the cave, including stone tools and pottery, and will compare it to other sites in the Eastern Sahara region, adding new pieces to a prehistoric puzzle.
"It seems that the paintings of the Cave of the Beasts pre-date the introduction of domesticated animals. That means they predate 6000 BC," said Kuper, who led his first field trip to the cave in April 2009. "That is what we dare to say."
The visible art work covers a surface 18 metres wide and 6 metres high. In October, Kuper's team scanned the cave by laser to capture high-definition, three-dimensional images.
A test dig a few weeks ago during the team's third expedition to the sandstone cave uncovered yet more drawings that extend down 80 cms below the sand, Kindermann said.
"Now we have increasing evidence how rich the prehistoric culture in the Eastern Sahara was," Kuper said.

Sunken treasure - divers recover the stunning artefacts of Cleopatra's palace

2010-05-28T02:15:00.000-07:00

Divers in the waters off Alexandria today recovered stunning artefacts from the submerged ruins of a palace and temple complex belonging to Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
The international team is painstakingly excavating one of the richest underwater archaeological sites in the world, and retrieving amazing riches from the last dynasty to rule over ancient Egypt before the Roman Empire annexed it in 30BC.

Colossal discovery: This quartzite block has an engraving of a pharaoh, indicated by hieroglyphic inscriptions on the stone as Seti I, father of Ramses II

2,500 years old: A statuette of a boy pharaoh dating from the 5th century BC lies among other artefacts brought to the surface from an underwater excavation of a palace and temples of Cleopatra

Using advanced technology, the team is surveying ancient Alexandria's Royal Quarters, encased deep below the harbour sediment, and confirming the accuracy of descriptions of the city left by Greek geographers and historians more than 2,000 years ago.
Since the early Nineties the topographical surveys have allowed the team, led by French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio, to conquer the harbour's extremely poor visibility and excavate below the seabed.
They are discovering everything from coins and everyday objects to colossal granite statues of Egypt's rulers and sunken temples dedicated to their gods.

'It's a unique site in the world,' said Mr Goddio, who has spent two decades searching for shipwrecks and lost cities below the seas.
The finds from along the Egyptian coast will go on display at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute from June 5 to January 2 - in an exhibition titled Cleopatra: The Search For The Last Queen of Egypt.

Stunning find: Recently excavated artefacts are shown aboard the Princess Duda research boat, anchored in the harbour off Alexandria, Egypt. A team of divers using advanced technology is exploring the ruins

Fit for a queen: Stone plates are a mere fraction of the priceless statues, jewellery and artefacts being brought to the surface from one of the richest underwater archaeological sites in the world

Many archaeological sites have been destroyed by man, with statues cut or smashed to pieces.
Alexandria's Royal Quarters - ports, a cape and islands full of temples, palaces and military outposts - simply slid into the sea after cataclysmic earthquakes in the fourth and eighth centuries.
Mr Goddio's team found it in 1996. Many of its treasures are completely intact, wrapped in sediment protecting them from the salt water.

Under the sea: A diver inspects limestone blocks that form part of the ruins of the Temple of Isis on the royal island of Antirhodos. The structure slid under the sea as a result of a earthquake more than 1,000 years ago

'It's as it was when it sank,' said Ashraf Abdel-Raouf of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, who is part of the team.
Today's dive explored the sprawling palace and temple complex where Cleopatra, the last of Egypt's Greek-speaking Ptolemaic rulers, seduced the Roman general Mark Antony before they committed suicide upon their defeat by Octavian, the future Roman Emperor Augustus.
Dives have taken Mr Goddio and his team to some of the key scenes in the dramatic lives of the couple - including the Timonium, commissioned by Antony after his defeat as a place where he could retreat from the world, though he killed himself before it was completed.

Proud relic hunter: French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio shows a recently excavated bronze cult statue found in the Temple of Isis

They also found a colossal stone head believed to be of Caesarion, son of Cleopatra and previous lover Julius Caesar, and two sphinxes - one of them probably representing Cleopatra's father, Ptolemy XII.
Divers photographed a section of the seabed cleared of sediment, their flashlights glowing in the green murk, the divers photographed ruins from a temple to Isis near Cleopatra's palace on the submerged island of Antirhodos.
Among the massive limestone blocks toppled in the fourth century was a huge quartzite block with an engraving of a pharaoh. An inscription indicates it depicts Seti I, father of Ramses II.
'We've found many pharaonic objects that were brought from Heliopolis, in what is now Cairo,' said Mr Abdel-Raouf.
'So, the Ptolemaic rulers re-used pharaonic objects to construct their buildings.'
On the boat's deck, researchers displayed some small recent finds: imported ceramics and local copies, a statuette of a pharaoh, bronze ritual vessels, amulets barely bigger than a fingernail, and small lead vessels tossed by the poor into the water or buried in the ground as devotions to gods.
Alexandria's eastern harbour was abandoned after another earthquake, in the eighth century, and was left untouched as an open bay - apart from two 20th century breakwaters - while modern port construction went ahead in the western harbour. That has left the ancient Portus Magnus undisturbed below.
'We have this as an open field for archaeology,' Mr Goddio said.

Every day Tourist Police

2010-05-25T11:33:00.000-07:00

The last days we have now every day Tourist Police in front of our door.
I don't know why. Maybe there is to much unrest in Egypt?

Colossal statue of Thoth discovered at temple of Amenhotep III in Luxor

2010-05-24T22:11:00.000-07:00

A colossal statue of the ancient Egyptian god Thoth, the deity of wisdom, is the latest artefact to be discovered near the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III during archaeological works aimed at controlling the subterranean water level on Luxor's west bank.

The 3.5 metre tall red granite statue is one of several artefacts discovered in the area since excavations began. The head of a 2.5 metre high statue depicting Pharaoh Amenhotep III in a standing position – possibly the best preserved depiction of the pharaoh’s face found to date - was unearthed at the King's funeral temple at Kom El-Hettan only months ago. A statue of the god Thoth in the shape of a baboon was also discovered. Last year two black granite statues of Amenhotep III were found at the temple, as well as a 5 metre high statue similar to the Thoth statue just found.

Amenhotep III ruled Egypt between 1390 BC and 1352 BC, and recent DNA and forensic research suggests that he was probably the grandfather of Tutankhamun. His temple was built closer to the river than any other temple at Thebes - right on the edge of the floodplain – and within 200 years it had collapsed. Many of its stones were subsequently removed for the building projects of later pharaohs.

The famous Colossi of Memnon, two 18-metre-high stone statues of Amenhotep III, are all that remains of the pharaoh's mortuary temple, once the largest religious complex in ancient Egypt.

They said that evidence found during the excavation suggests that more colossi could yet be found at the site. Afifi Rohayem, assistant director of the excavations, suggests that an avenue of Thoth statues could be found on the original path leading to Amenhotep III's funerary temple.

Since 1998, the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III has been on the World Monument Fund's list of the planet's 100 most endangered monuments. Extensive excavation and restoration works at the temple site are taking place.

“I believe that in less than 20 years we will have achieved our objectives here,” Dr Hourig Sourouzian, head of the conservation project, said in a video interview with Heritage Key. The final stage of the works at Amenhotep III's mortuary temple will be the creation of an open-air museum.

Video: Dr Hourig Sourouzian reveals the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III

New Discoveries in Lahun

2010-05-24T04:53:00.000-07:00

A collection of 45 ancient Egyptian tombs was discovered last week by an Egyptian mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) at the site of Lahoun, in the Fayoum.

One of forty-five mummies uncovered at the excavations in Lahun (Photo: Dr. Abdel Rahman El-Aydi)

They announced today that each tomb contains a painted wooden sarcophagus with the mummy of the deceased still inside it. They explained that during the excavation work, the mission unearthed an 18th dynasty tomb (1550-1295 BC) containing 12 wooden sarcophagi stacked on top of each other. Each sarcophagus contains a well-preserved mummy. The mummies are covered in cartonnage, which is decorated with religious texts from the Book of the Dead and scenes featuring different ancient Egyptian deities.

The mission also discovered four cemeteries; the first is dated to the first and second dynasties (ca. 2750-2649 BC), the second belongs to the Middle Kingdom (2030-1660 BC) while the third and fourth are dated to the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC) and The Late Period (724-343 BC).

Dr. Abdel Rahman El-Aydi, head of the archaeological mission, pointed out that the first and second dynasties cemeteries are composed of 14 tombs. One of the tombs is almost completely intact, including all of its funerary equipment and a wooden sarcophagus with a mummy wrapped with linen.

Sarcophagus and vessels excavated at Lahun

The Middle New Kingdoms cemetery contains 31 tombs most of which are dated to the 11^th and 12^th dynasties (2030-1840 BC). Each tomb includes a painted wooden sarcophagus bearing a mummy covered with cartonnage, decorated with religious texts that help the deceased to cross through the underworld, as well as scenes of different ancient Egyptian deities, such as Horus, Hathor, Khnum and Amun.

Also, at the four corners of king Senwosret II’s temple, the mission has located four shafts filled with a large collection of clay vessels.

Last year, the mission found 53 stone tombs from the Middle and New Kingdom, as well as the Late Period and the Roman era.

Archaeologists in Egypt find Ptolemaic king statue

2010-05-06T01:22:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists in Egypt say they have discovered a headless granite statue more than 2000 years old belonging to an unidentified Ptolemaic-era king.
Tuesday's statement by the Supreme Council of Antiquities says an Egyptian-Dominican team made the discovery at the temple of Taposiris Magna, west of the coastal city of Alexandria.
Archaeology chief Zahi Hawas says the well-preserved statue may be among the most beautiful carvings in the ancient Egyptian style. He says the statue could belong to King Ptolemy IV.
The statue's height is 135 centimeters and its width at the shoulders is 55 centimeters.
Alexandria was the seat of the Greek-speaking Ptolemaic Dynasty, which ruled Egypt for 300 years, until the suicide of Queen Cleopatra.

The Egyptian-Dominican team spent the past five years trying to locate the last resting place of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, the Roman general who became Cleopatra’s lover and had three children with her.
The couple supposedly committed suicide after their combined forces were defeated by Roman Emperor Octavian in the Battle of Actium more than two millennia ago.
While excavating the site --a radar survey of the temple has identified three spots where a burial chamber might lie deep underground -- the archaeologists have unearthed several significant artifacts. These include a number of headless royal statues, which may have been subjected to destruction during the Byzantine and Christian eras, a collection of heads featuring Queen Cleopatra, and 24 metal coins bearing Cleopatra’s profile.
Behind the crumbling temple, a necropolis was also discovered, containing many Graeco-Roman style mummies. Early investigations, said Hawass, show that the mummies were buried with their faces turned toward the temple, which means that a significant royal personality could be buried inside the temple.
“All these findings are leading us to the discovery of the tomb of Cleopatra. They show that something important is waiting for us inside the temple,”

New taxi program runs into difficulties

2010-05-04T21:50:00.000-07:00

Finance Ministry officials say the ministry's project to encourage Egypt's taxi owners to replace their aging cabs with new automobiles is facing financial problems, since advertisers were neglecting to pay banks for the advertisements featured on new taxis.
The project's phase-two subscribers, meanwhile, complain that the ministry is selling them cars at prices higher than those charged their counterparts in phase one. Others say the ministry is failing to deliver new automobiles even though their applications have been approved.
"I finished all the paperwork with the bank in July of last year and yet I still haven't received my new car," said project subscriber Emad Mohamed.
Assistant Finance Minister Nabil Rashdan, for his part, said that banks had agreed to extend credit facilities for seven years to ease payment obligations for new subscribers. "And we're also talking to more advertising agencies in hopes of bringing in more ads," he added.

New Tomb Discovered in Ismailia

2010-04-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

Interior decoration of the tomb, showing a scene from Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead.

A new tomb was discovered by an SCA mission at Tell el-Maskhuta in the Ismailia governate. The tomb dates to the 19^th Dynasty (1315-1201 BC), is constructed of mud brick and consists of a rectangular room with a domed ceiling made of stone, and a deep square-shaped shaft. The interior is decorated with scenes depicting the owner of the tomb, whose name was Ken-Amun.

The newly discovered tomb, shown with the 35 Roman Period tombs nearby.

This is the first Ramesside tomb to be discovered in Lower Egypt. The tomb is very high quality, and is beautifully decorated and inscribed with scenes known from the Ramesside Period. In addition to this tomb, the excavation has found 35 tombs dated to the Roman Period.

The excavation discovered a limestone stela inscribed with hieroglyphs containing the name of the capital of the Hyksos, Avaris (Het-Waret). The stela depicts the god Set in front of a king of Dynasty 19, whose name is not written. This stela shows the relationship between the site at Tell el-Maskhuta and the Hyksos capital Avaris, located at Tell el-Daba in Sharqiya.

Dr. Mohamed Abdel Maqsud, the supervisor of the Department of Antiquities of Lower Egypt, said there was a large limestone sarcophagus found inside the tomb that belonged to the owner, Ken-Amun. He was the overseer of the royal records during the 19^th Dynasty. The sarcophagus contained inscriptions on its inner and outer surfaces. The tomb walls were inscribed with the titles of the deceased and the name of his wife, Isis, who was a singer of the god Atum. The tomb is decorated in sunken relief with different religious and funerary scenes; the most important scenes were one from the Book of the Dead Chapter 125, as well as one of women mourning the dead. Other important scenes include a depiction of the goddess Hathor in the shape of a cow, emerging from the Delta marshes, as well as a scene of the four sons of Horus. The scenes and titles in the tomb show that Ken-Amun was an important man, who was in charge of keeping the royal records.

The discovery of this tomb will provide information about the history of the Delta and the geography of the area, as well as the relationship between this area and the eastern border of Egypt. Excavations will continue at the site, and conservation and restoration work will begin at the tomb, and the tomb and its scenes will be completely documented and registered, under the supervision of Dr. Mohamed Abdel Maqsud.

Tell el-Maskhuta is located in the Wadi Tumilat near the eastern branch of the Nile that connects with the Suez Canal. When the Suez Canal was being constructed, many sphinx statues of Ramesses II and stelae were found. It is known that the ancient city at Tell el-Maskhuta contained a settlement in the Ramesside Period with a temple for Atum. It also contained a garrison, which stored supplies to equip the ancient Egyptian army before they went east to the border on their military campaigns.

Waiting for Nefertiti

2010-04-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

Thousands of artifacts are now returning to Egypt from abroad, but one piece continues to elude decades of government calls for its return: the famous bust of Nefertiti.

The bust has become such a contentious symbol that a copy of it is now part of an exhibition at the Ruhr Museum in Germany dubbed "The Great Game: Archaeology and Politics in the Colonial Period," open until 13 June.

The original, unfinished sculpture from Thutmose's workshop in Tel Amarna is internationally recognized for its artistic quality and aesthetic beauty.

The Egyptian government says it was illegally smuggled out of the country some time around 1924. The German government has always refused to repatriate the queen, which remains the centerpiece of the Neues Museum in Berlin.

The Ruhr exhibition also displays the contract between the Egyptian government and the sponsor of the Thutmose's workshop exhibition, James Simon, who was also the founder of the German Oriental Society.

Charlotte Trümpler, curator of both the exhibition and of the archeological collection at the Ruhr Museum, said it was clear that all parties had agreed that half the findings would go to the excavation team.

Authorities in Egypt say the export papers for the bust were deceptive, since it listed the bust as a statue of a "princess"--a description hardly befitting one of the most powerful queens in pharaonic Egypt.

"I don't think Nefertiti's bust left legitimately, because, despite there being a contract, maybe Nefertiti was hidden or not seen by the person who ought to have seen her and decided on whether she should leave or not," said Salima Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo.

That the copy of the bust at the Ruhr was made for the Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1913, a year after the original was discovered, does not prove the Germans knew of its importance at the time--or that they intentionally deceived Egyptian authorities.
Trümpler said the Kaiser had been the patron of many archaeological activities, not only of the bust. "He sponsored excavations in Babylon and other places because he presided over the German Orientalist Society," Ikram explained.

A few years after the bust left its homeland, the Egyptian government realized its importance. Germany, however, refused to return it. "King Fouad II wanted Nefertifi back and they offered statues from the Cairo Museum to make an exchange," Trümpler said. "They knew the bust came to Germany correctly through a find sharing [contract]."

"They had other objects that the director of antiquities found more important," she added. "He wasn't so interested in this bust."

But the relationship between colonial rule and the exportation of antiquities raises the question of whether the antiquities in question left their country of origin legitimately. "It's a complicated thing because, at that time, that was the legitimate government, whether one likes it or not," Ikram said.
France, the US and the United Kingdom have recently been repatriating items following pressure from and negotiations with Egypt. In early March, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) announced that the UK had recently returned about 25,000 artifacts, some dating back to the Stone Age. In October, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed to return a granite relief fragment. Around the same time, the Louvre announced it would send back five fresco fragments after French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand convened a special meeting on the issue.
"What they're giving back are small things on the whole, and I think that they're doing it with good will and good intent," Ikram said. "In some cases, what they are doing is giving a fragment of something the larger part of which remains in Egypt, so they're completing something."
In other cases, the objects appear to have been smuggled illegally. This week, US authorities are sending back to Egypt a 3,000-year-old casket found with a Spanish dealer who failed to provide papers showing proof of ownership. "This coffin is one of the most beautiful wooden coffins, dating to 1080 BC," said Egyptian Culture Minister Farouq Hosni in a statement today. "It's return to Egypt comes after nearly three years of Egyptian-American contacts through which Egypt succeeded in proving its legal right to restore this coffin."
SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass could not be reached for comment because he was traveling to the US to bring back the coffin.
Hawass has repeatedly called for the return of antiquities from a number of countries, sometimes threatening to cut off cultural ties as a means of exerting pressure. Such pressure may have contributed to the decision by the Louvre--and other museums--to repatriate antiquities, but the Germans have yet to acquiesce.
"Frankly, Nefertiti is an iconic piece," Ikram said. "I'm sure the Germans feel they would lose not only tourism, but also prestige, by returning her."

Roman-Era mummy uncovered in Egypt oasis

2010-04-13T09:02:00.000-07:00

A bejeweled mummy dressed in Roman robes has emerged from the sands of Egypt's Bahariya Oasis, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said Monday.

Entombed in a decorated gypsum sarcophagus, the 38-inch tall mummy belonged to a woman or girl who died in the Greco-Roman period about 2,300 years ago. Unearthed in a rock-hewn tomb at a modern construction site near the town of Bawiti, in Bahariya Oasis, some 185 miles southwest of Cairo, the mummy points to the existence of a large Greco-Roman necropolis nearby, Mahmoud Affifi, director of Cairo and Giza antiquities, said in a statement.
Indeed, Egyptian archaeologists uncovered 14 Graeco-Roman tombs at the site dating to the third century B.C. They also found four anthropoid masks made of plaster, a collection of coins, clay and glass vessels of different shapes and sizes, and a sheet of gold depicting Imsety, Duamutef, Hapi and Qebehsenuef -- the four sons of the ancient Egyptian sky god Horus.
According to Affifi, the tombs have a unique interior design. They consist of a long stairway leading to a corridor which ends in a hall. Each corner of the hall contains mastabas (rectangular structures found above many Egyptian tombs) that were used in burning the deceased. Set in a depression covering over 1,250 square miles in Egypt's Western Desert near the city of Bawiti, the Bahariya Oasis consists of colonies of palm trees and hot springs, with black hills in the background. There is no trace of pyramids - tombs par excellence - or of mausoleums.
Yet it is here that in 1996 Dr. Zahi Hawass discovered 17 tombs with 254 golden masked mummies. Called the Valley of the Golden Mummies, the site has turned out to be the biggest ancient Egyptian cemetery ever uncovered - holding perhaps as many as 10,000 mummies buried more than 2,000 years ago.

King Tut Wore Orthopedic Sandals

2010-04-09T05:45:00.000-07:00

King Tutankhamun might have worn some sort of orthopedic shoes specially designed to cope with his club foot condition, an investigation into the pharaoh's footwear has suggested.
Published in the book, "Tutankhamun's Footwear: Studies of Ancient Egyptian Footwear," the research is the first detailed analysis of the 3,300-year-old footwear since King Tut's mummy and treasure-packed tomb were discovered by Howard Carter in 1922.
Even though the mummy had been X-rayed several times, it was only recently, during a major genetic investigation into King Tut's family, that researchers found a series of malformations in the pharaoh's feet.
Apart from a foot bone disorder known as Kohler disease II, King Tut might have had seriously deformed feet which left him hobbling around with the use of a cane.
Indeed, the second toe in King Tut's right foot lacked the middle bone, making it shorter, while the left foot was clubbed, rotating internally at the ankle.
The foot condition might have required appropriate shoes with a tight strap in order to avoid them being dragged over the floor.

Over 80 pieces of footwear of different sizes were buried with the boy king. Some are much deteriorated, with just fragments or isolated straps remaining. Others, however, have survived in decent condition.

New Finds in Luxor Temple KARNAK

2010-03-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

A large red granite false door belonging to the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut’s vizier User and his wife Toy has been unearthed in front of Karnak Temple.

CZ: Velké červené žuly falešné dveře, které patří do hrobu vezíra královny Hatšepsut se Uživatel a jeho manželka hračka byla odhalena před Karnak Temple.

The stela of User, found recently in excavations near Karnak Temple.

This discovery was carried out by an Egyptian excavation team during a routine excavation work. The door is 175 cm tall, 100 cm wide and 50 cm thick. It is engraved with religious texts, as well as different titles of the vizier User, who took office in the fifth year of Queen Hatshepsut’s reign. His titles included mayor of the city, vizier, and prince. The tomb number 61 on Luxor’s west bank belonged to User. The newly discovered door was reused during the Roman period: it was removed from the tomb of User and used in the wall of a Roman structure previously found by the mission. The User is the uncle of the well-known vizier Rekhmire, who was King Tuthmosis III’s vizier (1504-1452 BC). A chapel of User was also found in the Silsila mountain quarries in Aswan, which attests to his importance during Hatshepsut’s reign, as well as the importance of the post of vizier in ancient Egypt, especially during the 18^th Dynasty. Among the most well-known viziers during this dynasty were Rekhmire and Ramose from the reigns of kings Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV as well as the military chief Horemheb, who later came to Egypt’s throne as the last king of the 18^th Dynasty.

CZ:
Tento objev byl uskutečněn egyptského výkopu tým během rutinních výkopových prací. Dveře je 175 cm vysoký, 100 cm široký a 50 cm. To je ryté s náboženskými texty, stejně jako různé tituly vezíra Uživatel, který se ujal úřadu v pátém roce panování královny Hatšepsut je. Jeho titulů včetně primátora města, vezír, a prince. Hrob číslo 61 o západním břehu Luxoru je patřilo uživatele. Nově objevený dveře znovu použity v období Roman: To bylo odstraněno z hrobu uživatele a používaných ve zdi struktury římské dříve nalezené mise. Uživatel je strýc známý vezír Rekhmire, kdo byl král Tuthmosis III je vezír (1504-1452 př. nl). Kaple uživatel byl rovněž nalezen v horských lomech Silsila v Aswan, což svědčí o jeho důležitosti během vlády Hatšepsut, stejně jako význam post vezíra ve starověkém Egyptě, a to zejména v průběhu 18. dynastie. Mezi nejvíce známý vezíři během této dynastie byly Rekhmire a Ramose od panování králů Amenhotep III a Amenhotep IV, stejně jako vojenský šéf Horemheb, který později přišel k trůnu Egypta jako poslední král 18. dynastie.

The Avenue of Sphinxes

2010-03-26T23:40:00.000-07:00

The Avenue of Sphinxes dates back to the reign of Amenhotep III in the 18^th Dynasty. He built an avenue of sphinxes with ram heads, and we also know that before that, Queen Hatshepsut built seven chapels along this route. The most important phase of the avenue is dated to the 30^th Dynasty, during the reign of Nectanebo I. At that time the avenue was made up of 1350 sphinxes lining both sides of the road connecting the temples, which was over 70 meters wide. During the Roman Period, the avenue was subjected to destruction. Many people built roads and houses over the top, and reused the sphinxes in their construction.

The Goverment gave the governor of Luxor, Samir Farag, 30 million Egyptian pounds to compensate those who built their houses over the avenue. They gave them money so that they can buy a new house or apartment. (The people have no choice. It was take it and go away).

Next they began the restoration project. The first phase was the excavation of the area. Six teams are excavating now under 30 archaeologists. The areas they are concentrating on are 700 meters south of the road that leads to the airport, as well as 200 meters to the north of the avenue of the sphinxes visible at Luxor Temple. They are also working in many other parts of the avenue. They have discovered until now 650 sphinxes in pieces. They began to restore the sphinxes they found, making bases of modern materials and placing the bodies of the sphinxes on them along the avenue. Sixteen sphinxes are currently undergoing restoration, and will soon be transferred to the area of Luxor Temple.

One of the important discoveries they made while excavating the Avenue of the Sphinxes was the cartouche of Cleopatra VII carved into a limestone block. The presence of this cartouche perhaps indicates that when she was sailing the river with Mark Anthony, they visited the avenue, and maybe she ordered the area to be restored, and they left a cartouche. Along the avenue they have also found workshops for pottery and statues dated to the Roman Period, and also and old Roman wine factory.

Now, anyone who visits this area will be impressed. Around one month from now, the area for the Mubarak Library will be ready for visitors, and soon it will be able to open the avenue for people to walk this ancient religious route.

Avenue of sfing sahá až do vlády Amenhotepa III v 18. dynastie. Postavil alej sfing s hlavou berana, a víme také, že před tím, královny Hatšepsut postaveno sedm kaplí podél této cesty. Nejdůležitější fáze avenue je z 30. dynastie, v době vlády Nectanebo I. Tehdy avenue byl složen z 1350 sfing obložení obou stranách silnice spojující chrámy, což bylo více než 70 metrů široký. Během římského období, byl podroben cestu do záhuby. Mnoho lidí postavena silnice a domy přes vrchol, a znovu Sfingy v jejich konstrukce.
Vláda dala guvernéra Luxor, Samir Farag, 30 milionů egyptských liber na odškodnění těch, kteří postavili své domy po avenue. Dali jim peníze, aby si mohli koupit nový dům nebo byt. (Lidé nemají možnost volby. Bylo to vzít a jít pryč).
Další začali obnovení projektu. V první fázi byla těžební oblasti. Šest týmů jsou těžební nyní pod 30 archeologové. Oblastech, které se zaměřují na 700 metrů se jižně od silnice, která vede na letiště, stejně jako 200 metrů na sever alej sfing viditelná Luxor Temple. Pracují také v mnoha jiných částech avenue. Oni objevili až nyní 650 Sfingy v kusech. Začali obnovit sfing našli, takže základy moderních materiálů a umístění orgánů sfing na nich po avenue. Šestnáct Sfingy jsou v současné době probíhá obnova, a brzy budou převedeny do oblasti Luxor Temple.
Jedním z významných objevů, které se při hloubení Avenue of the sfingy byl kartuši Kleopatry VII vytesaný do vápence bloku. Přítomnost této kartuši snad naznačuje, že když se plavil řeky s Markem Anthonym, navštívili cestou, a možná poručila oblast, kterou chcete obnovit, a nechali kartuš. Po avenue mají také zjištěno, workshopy pro keramiku a sochy ze dne na římské období, a také, a to staré římské víno továrny. Nyní každý, kdo navštíví tuto oblast budou dojem. Zhruba jeden měsíc od této chvíle bude prostor pro Mubarak knihovny připraveny pro návštěvníky, a brzy bude moci otevřít cestu pro lidi chodit této prastaré náboženské cesty.

New Statues Found at Kom el-Hettan

2010-03-26T23:23:00.000-07:00

The Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, announced that two red granite statues of King Amenhotep III and of the god Thoth, were unearthed near the Pharaoh’s funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan on Luxor’s west bank.

The discovery was carried out by an Egyptian team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) during routine work reducing the groundwater’s level.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, said that the first statue depicts the 18th Dynasty king, Amenhotep III, together with the god Re-Horakhty, while the second statue represents the god of wisdom, Thoth, in the form of a baboon. A huge, calcite statue fragment possibly dating to the reign of Amenhotep III, was also found.

Mansour Boriak, General Supervisor of the Luxor Antiquities Department of the SCA, added that excavation work is ongoing in order to discover further statues which once stood inside the temple at Kom el-Hettan.

Ministr kultury, Farouk Hosni oznámil, že dva červené žuly sochy krále Amenhotepa III a bůh Thoth, byly objeveny u pohřební chrámu faraóna v Kóm el-Hettan na západním břehu v Luxoru.
Objev byl proveden podle egyptského týmu z Nejvyšší rady pro památky Egypta (SCA) při běžné práci snižuje úroveň podzemní vody.
Dr. Zahi Hawass, generální tajemník SCA, řekl, že první socha je zobrazen král 18. dynastie, Amenhotepa III, spolu s bohem Re-Horakhty, zatímco druhá socha představuje bůh moudrosti, Thoth, ve formě pavián. Obrovský, vápenec socha fragment možná datovat do vlády Amenhotepa III, byl také nalezen.
Mansour Boriak, vedoucí z Luxoru Antiquities oddělení SCA, dodal, že výkopové práce probíhá, aby zjistil další sochy, které kdysi stály uvnitř chrámu v Kóm el-Hettan.

The Myth of a 12th Planet

2010-03-17T23:30:00.000-07:00

.
Introduction
Readers of Zecharia Sitchin’s books, particularly The 12th Planet, will recognize the above seal, VA 243 (so named because it is number 243 in the collection of the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin). This seal is the centerpiece of Sitchin’s theory that the Sumerians had advanced astronomical knowledge of the planetary bodies in our solar system. This knowledge was allegedly given to the Sumerians by extraterrestrials, whom Sitchin identifies as the Anunnaki gods of Sumero-Mesopotamian mythology. In the upper left-hand corner of the seal, Sitchin argues, one sees the sun surrounded by eleven globes. Since ancient peoples (including the Sumerians according to Sitchin) held the sun and moon to be “planets,” these eleven globes plus the sun add up to twelve planets. Of course, since we now know of nine planets plus our sun and moon, part of Sitchin’s argument is that the Sumerians knew of an extra planet beyond Pluto. This extra planet is considered by Sitchin to be Nibiru, an astronomical body mentioned in Mesopotamian texts. Sitchin’s works detail his contention that Nibiru passes through our solar system every 3600 years, and so some believers in Sitchin’s theory contend that Nibiru will return soon. Some followers of Sitchin’s ideas also refer to Nibiru as “Planet X”.
Is Sitchin correct – in whole or in part? Is Nibiru a 12th planet that will soon return? Does VA243 prove his thesis? Unfortunately for Sitchin and his followers, the answer to each of these questions is no. This paper will focus on the heart of his theory, VA243. Nibiru is the subject of another paper on my website.
Method and Approach
The study of cylinder seals is actually a very specialized sub-discipline within Sumerology and Assyriology.a It is possible to determine, through the efforts of cylinder seal specialists of the recent past and current experts, to decisively say that Sitchin’s interpretation of this seal is deeply flawed and lacks scholarly merit. In short, his theory is false and is unsupported by the seal itself.
In the discussion that follows, I will demonstrate that VA243 in no way supports Sitchin’s ideas. My reasons / lines of argument for this are:
1) The inscription on the seal (left hand and right hand sides – which are not discussed by Sitchin) says nothing about planets or any element of astronomy. Rather than offering an independent translation, I will defer to authorities on Sumerian seal inscriptions in this regard to avoid any charge of bias.
2) The alleged “sun” symbol on the seal is not the sun. We know this because it does not conform to the consistent depiction of the sun in hundreds of other cylinder seals and examples of Sumero-Mesopotamian artwork. I will describe the typical depiction (determined with certainty because it appears with texts about the sun god [Shamash Akkadian, known as Utu in Sumerian]) and provide image examples. Sources are provided for readers to check for themselves. The “sun” symbol is actually a star (which in Mesopotamian art could have six or, more commonly, eight points). Lest the modern reader retort that “well, the sun is a star,” I offer several images where the star symbol and the sun symbol (which again, is not that in VA243) are side-by-side and distinct from one another. The Sumerians and Mesopotamians distinguished the sun from stars by using different symbols – and associating each symbol with the sun god and other gods, respectively. There is simply no ancient Sumero-Akkadian evidence to support Sitchin’s identification.
3) If the “sun” is not the sun, then what are the dots? The dots are also stars, as is best illustrated by the Sumerian-Mesopotamian depiction of the Pleaides (seven dots together with reasonable astronomical accuracy since they are visible to the naked eye).b The Pleaides are actually one of the most frequently depicted astronomical features in Sumero-Mesopotamian art. As Sitchin points out (and this is corroborated by actual scholars in the field - it’s common knowledge), stars were associated with or considered to be heavenly beings – gods. In Sumero-Mesopotamian artwork, a star represents either a god or an astronomical body. The same can be said of the sun – it can either reference the literal sun or the sun god. There are three possibilities as to what VA243 is depicting:

(A) It is singling out a deity or special star and associating it with other stars in some sort of zodiacal representation. I don’t consider this likely because there are other far clearer representations of zodiacal constellations. Unless there are clear zodiacal connotations, a star was symbolic of a deity, which brings us to the second option.
(B) More probable is the idea that the central star stands for a deity that has some association with fertility (as in crops) since the inscription describes an offering made by a worshipper (who is named) to a seated god who is associated in the seal with fertile harvest. Since there are two other figures in the seal in addition to the seated god, and one is the offerer, the remaining figure is likely a deity also associated with the offering. In favor of this possibility are the “implements” shown on the seal with respect to these two figures facing the seated god and the figure’s headdress. Also in its favor is the fact that there are literally hundreds of such “offering seals,” and many have a star in upper proximity to the figures’ heads, signifying the figure is a deity (see the example).
(C) Since the star is surrounded by eleven other stars (dots), the artistic depiction could stand for the lead god of the Mesopotamian divine council and its other eleven (upper tier) members. Recall that (as Sitchin again points out) the Mesopotamian council had 12 members. I have noted before that the 12 member council isn’t always consistent in Mesopotamian religion (at times eight gods are considered the council), but 12 is the more prevalent number. This thesis is attractive, but I can’t say there is much to commend it over option B. The reader might be thinking at this point, “Well, isn’t the sun god the leader of the pantheon – so if this symbology points to the divine council the center symbol could still be the sun?” This would be an erroneous line of thought since in Sumero-Mesopotamian religion the sun god is NOT the high god; the high god is Anu (later, Marduk), not Shamash.
These options are admittedly subjective, but one thing is certain – the “sun” symbol does not conform to the abundantly frequent symbol for the sun in Sumero-Mesopotamian art. We are not dealing with a depiction of the solar system. Astronomer Tom van Flandern pointed this out years ago anyway, since the sizes of the “planets” around the alleged sun do not conform to the correct sizes of the planets and there distances from the pseudo-sun are not depicted in such a way as to depict elliptical (or at least varying) orbits. The link to van Flandern’s critique is on my website.

4) There is not a single text in the entire corpus of Sumerian or Mesopotamian tablets in the world that tells us the Sumerians (or later inhabitants of Mesopotamia) knew there were more than five planets. This is quite a claim, but is demonstrable through the work of scholars who specialize in cuneiform astronomy. Below I list all the major works on cuneiform astronomy (catalogues of texts, dissertations / books) and invite readers to check them out of a library and look for themselves. Literally every cuneiform text that has any astronomical comment (even with respect to astrology and omens) has been translated, catalogued, indexed, and discussed in the available academic literature. The tablets are often quite detailed, even discussing mathematical calculations of the appearance of planetary bodies in the sky, on the horizon, and in relation to other stars. The field is by no means new, and is considerably developed.
All of the above facets of the discussion are now offered in more detail with bibliography.
I. The Inscriptions on VA 243
VA243 has three lines of text (“line 1” is actually repeated on both sides of the seal):
The seal is transliterated (the Sumero-Akkadian signs in English letters) and translated in the principal publication of the Berlin Vorderasiatische Museum’s publication of its seal collection, Vorderasiatische Rollsiegel (“West Asian Cylinder Seals”; 1940) by Mesopotamian scholar Anton Moortgat on page 101. This book is in German, so I offer the German and an English translation:

Line 1 = dub-si-ga “Dubsiga” [a personal name of an apparently powerful personc]

Line 2 = ili-il-la-at “Ili-illat” [another personal name, this time of the seal’s owner]

Line 3 = ir3-su “dein Knecht” [German for “your servant”d]

So the full (rather boring) inscription of VA243 reads: “Dubsiga, Ili-illat, your/his servant.” Nothing in the inscription suggests anything remotely to do with astronomy or planets.
In an email correspondence with Dr. Rudi Mayr, whose dissertation was on cylinder seals, Dr. Mayr commented on the inscriptions and the seal [and I interject a few comments in brackets]:
“The seated figure is a god; the ‘flounced’ garment is normal for deities (though kings start wearing them a little later); deities also have the distinctive headdress. Most scholars call it a ‘horned’ headdress, but I’ve always thought it looked more like flames than horns. Ancient texts often refer to deities having a bright, shining, brilliant aspect [this is true across the ancient near east – witness the “shining one” terminology I discuss in The Façade and in several papers on my website]; they don’t mention horns . . . The introducing figure also has the ‘horns’ of divinity” [this is a strong contextual argument that the symbol – again, it’s not the “sun” – to the upper left of the introducing figure is a star. Precisely because they SHINE, stars were associated with deities. Shamash, the sun god, had his own symbol of the sun. See below for what it looked like].
II. The “Sun” Symbol
This is perhaps the biggest problem with Sitchin’s interpretation of VA243 signifying the solar system. Simply put, if the central symbol in his solar system isn’t the sun, the interpretation collapses completely. There’s actually a good deal of evidence to demonstrate decisively that Sitchin is wrong here. Toward offering that evidence, we’ll first introduce a few general comments on Sumero-Akkadian symbols and move to the specifics.
A. General Comments
Like all ancient religions, Sumero-Mesopotamian religion had a great concern with heavenly bodies that could be observed with the naked eye. In particular, the sun, moon, and Venus were important focus points because of their ease of visibility, and each was artistically symbolized and stood for a deity.
In Sumer-Mesopotamian religion, the sun god symbology was very clear:
Sun god = Shamash (Utu in the Sumerian languagee)

The symbol of the sun god in Sumero-Mesopotamian religion was a central circle with four extended “arms” with wavy lines in between each “arm” (most common), or a circle with only wavy lines. The entire symbol was itself nearly always [I don’t know any exceptions, but there may be one – just being cautious here] inside a circle, as right:f
The reader should note immediately that this is NOT the symbol on VA243. VA 243’s “pseudo-sun” lacks the wavy lines and is not set inside a circle.
This sun symbol is ubiquitous in Sumero-Mesopotamian religious artwork. The other common symbol for the sun god was the god in flight upon a set of wings (a depiction akin to the winged disc in Egyptian religion).
The above classic solar disk iconography in Sumero-Mesopotamian religion is contrasted with the star symbol, used to symbolize either stars in constellations, any deity (the star is either over the deity’s head or above it to the left of right), or Ishtar (Sumerian Inana), who stood for Venus, the most visible object in the sky aside from the sun and moon:g
Note that this example has eight points. This is the most frequently attested style in Sumero-Mesopotamian religious art. The star also is found with six (like VA 243) or seven points, and the points even vary within the same seal or stela carving. It wasn’t consistent in points, but what the symbol stood for was consistent – either a star, planet, or deity – but NOT the sun. The star symbol is either set within a circle or, far more often, not within a circle. It is clearly distinct from the sun symbol.
How do I know that the symbol of VA 243 is a star and not the sun disk? Other than the obvious noted above – that VA 243 does not have the wavy lines between the “arms” of the symbol and is not set within a circle - Sumero-Mesopotamian religion often grouped the symbols for the sun god with that of the moon god (Akkadian = Sin; Sumerian = Nanna) and Ishtar (Sumerian = Inana). This isn’t surprising since they were so readily viewed. In short, they didn’t confuse the symbols and neither should we.
This grouped threesome is very prevalent in Sumero-Mesopotamian art, and compels the observation that the sun symbol and star symbol were distinguished from each other:

Source: Ursula Seidl, Die Babylonischen Kudurru Reliefs, Tafel 11, Zweite Gruppe, stela “a” = The Babylonian Kudurru Reliefs, Plate 11, 2nd Group, stela “a”. Note the wavy lines and encircled sun symbol on the right.
Ursula Seidl, Die Babylonischen Kudurru Reliefs, Tafel 19, Vierte Gruppe, stela “b” = The Babylonian Kudurru Reliefs, Plate 19, 4th Group, relief “b”. Note the wavy lines and encircled sun symbol on the lower right. The symbols for sun and star/planet are also distinguished clearly in zodiacal artwork from Mesopotamia:

Source: Ursula Seidl, Die Babylonischen Kudurru Reliefs, p. 47 = The Babylonian Kudurru Reliefs, p. 47 The sun symbol (Left) and star symbol (Right) are next to each other under the snake (Draco). Note the wavy lines of the sun symbol
Here is a close-up of the sun (L) and star (R) symbol above. Note that the star in this case has eight points:
A second zodiac example:

Source: Ursula Seidl, Die Babylonischen Kudurru Reliefs, p. 60 = The Babylonian Kudurru Reliefs, p. 60 The sun symbol (center) and star symbol (R of center) are next to each other under the snake’s tail. Note the wavy lines of the sun symbol
In the above example, note that: (1) the star has seven points, and (b) the stars below it have six points. Note also that these smaller stars also LACK points – they are just dots. This seven dot/circle arrangement is one of the most common motifs in Mesopotamian art, and denote the Pleiades.
The point here is that dots = stars in Mesopotamian art when in an astronomical context (or a context where a deity is identified with a star). This is important for our consideration of VA 243.
Again, here is a close-up:
A third zodiac example:

Source: Ursula Seidl, Die Babylonischen Kudurru Reliefs, p. 23 = The Babylonian Kudurru Reliefs, p. 23 Note that the star symbol here has six points as does the VA 243 star.
Some commentary on this last example is in order. The previous two examples clearly are in zodiac context, as is this one. Those previous two examples clearly have the sun symbol drawn in a manner consistent with expected Sumero-Mesopotamian features (wavy lines, encircled) that unmistakably distinguishes the sun from the star symbol. The star symbol signifies the same astronomical body in each case, yet the number of points varies. This means that the number of points is unimportant for identifying the star symbol as a STAR or planet, NOT the sun. Hence one cannot say, “well the star symbol usually has eight points, and the Sitchin seal has six, therefore it’s not a star but the sun.” This is erroneous because these examples demonstrate clearly that a star symbol can have 6, 7, or 8 pts., and LACKS wavy lines. The symbol on Sitchin’s VA 243 is NOT the sun. It is a star, and thus denotes a star, a god, or a single planet. This isn’t my opinion, it’s the Sumero-Mesopotamian art convention.

The Annunaki and the Myth of a 12th Planet

2010-03-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

Sumerian Culture and the Annunaki

Working from the same archaeological discoveries, artifacts, and recovered records as archaeologists and linguists have for two hundred years, Sitchin propounds – proves, in the opinion of this author -- that the Anunnaki (Sumerian: “those who came down from the heavens”; Old testament Hebrew, Anakeim, Nefilim, Elohim; Egyptian: Neter), an advanced civilization from the tenth planet in our solar system, splashed down in the Persian gulf area around 432,000 years ago, colonized the planet, with the purpose of obtaining large quantities of gold. Some 250,000 years ago, the recovered documents tell us, their lower echelon miners rebelled against the conditions in the mines and the Anunnaki directorate decided to create a creature to take their place. Enki, their chief scientist and Ninhursag their chief medical officer, after getting no satisfactory results splicing animal and Homo Erectus genes, merged their Anunnaki genes with that of Homo Erectus and produced us, Homo Sapiens, a genetically bicameral species, for their purposes as slaves. Because we were a hybrid, we could not procreate. The demand for us as workers became greater and we were genetically manipulated to reproduce.
Eventually, we became so numerous that some of us were expelled from the Anunnaki city centers, gradually spreading over the planet. Having become a stable genetic stock and developing more precociously than, perhaps, the Anunnaki had anticipated, the Anunnaki began to be attracted to humans as sexual partners and children were born of these unions. This was unacceptable to the majority of the Anunnaki high council and it was decided to wipe out the human population through a flood that was predictable when Nibiru, the tenth in our solar system and the Anunnaki home planet, came through the inner solar system again (around 12,500 years ago) on one of its periodic 3600 year returns. Some humans were saved by the action of the Anunnaki official, Enki, who was sympathetic to the humans he had originally genetically created. For thousands of years, we were their slaves, their workers, their servants, and their soldiers in their political battles among themselves. The Anunnaki used us in the construction of their palaces (we retroproject the religious notion of temple on these now), their cities, their mining and refining complexes and their astronomical installations on all the continents. They expanded from Mesopotamia to Egypt to India to South and Central America and the stamp of their presence can be found in the farthest reaches of the planet.
Around 6000 years ago, they, probably realizing that they were going to phase off the planet, began, gradually, to bring humans to independence. Sumer, a human civilization, amazing in its “sudden”, mature, and highly advanced character was set up under their tutelage in Mesopotamia. Human kings were inaugurated as go-betweens, foremen of the human populations answering to the Anunnaki. A strain of humans, genetically enhanced with more Anunnaki genes, a bloodline of rulers in a tradition of “servants of the people” was initiated (Gardner). These designated humans were taught technology, mathematics, astronomy, advanced crafts and the ways of advanced civilized society (in schools, called now “mystery schools” but there was no mystery about them). Gardner has brought to light the fact that there exists a robust, highly documented, genealogical, genetic history carrying all the way back to the Anunnaki, possessed by the heterodox tradition of Christianity, which is only now coming forward, no longer gun-shy of the Inquisition. This tradition, preserving the bloodline, is the one branded “heretical” and murderously persecuted by the Roman Church. There were no Dark Ages for this tradition, only for those whom the Church wanted to keep in the dark about the real nature of human history and destroy the bloodline, a direct threat to the power of the Bishops.
What evidence supports the Sitchin thesis?
The Astronomical Evidence
“...no concrete problem is going to be solved as long as the experts of astronomy are too supercilious to touch "mythical" ideas -- which are firmly believed to be plain nonsense, of course -- as long as historians of religion swear to it that stars and planets were smuggled into originally "healthy" fertility cults and naive fairy tales only "very late" -- whence these unhealthy subjects should be neglected by principle -- and as long as the philologists imagine that familiarity with grammar replaces that scientific knowledge which they lack, and dislike.” - Giorgio de Santillana, Ph.D.& Hertha von Dechend, Ph.D., "Hamlet's Mill"
A key underpinning of the Sitchin paradigm is the existence, now or in the past, of the tenth planet in our solar system, the home planet of the Anunnaki with the size, orbit, and characteristics described, as Sitchin has demonstrated, in the Enuma Elish and corroborated by Harrington, former chief of the U.S. Naval Observatory, now deceased.
Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930. Christie, of the U.S. Naval Observatory, discovered Charon, Pluto’s moon, in 1978. The characteristics of Pluto derivable from the nature of Charon demonstrated that there must still be a large planet undiscovered because Pluto could not be the cause of the residuals, the “wobbles” in the orbital paths of Uranus and Neptune clearly identifiable. The IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite), during ’83 -’84, produced observations of a tenth planet so robust that one of the astronomers on the project said that “all that remains is to name it” -- from which point the information has become curiously guarded. In 1992 Harrington and Van Flandern of the Naval Observatory, working with all the information they had at hand, published their findings and opinion that there is, indeed, a tenth planet, even calling it an “intruder” planet. The search was narrowed to the southern skies, below the ecliptic. Harrington invited Sitchin, having read his book and translations of the Enuma Elish, to a meeting at his office and they correlated the current findings with the ancient records.
The recovered Enuma Elish document, a history of the formation of our solar system and more, says that, at the time when Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Saturn were in place, there was a Uranus sized planet, called Tiamat, in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. Earth was not in place yet. A large wandering planet, called Nibiru, was captured into the system gravitationally. As it passed by the outer planets it caused the anomalies of their moons, the tilting of Uranus on its side, the dislodging of Pluto from its being a moon of Saturn to its own planetary orbit. Its path bent by the gravitational pull of the large planets, first its satellites collided with the large planet Tiamat and, on a second orbit through, Nibiru collided with Tiamat, driving the larger part of it into what is now Earth’s orbit to recongeal as Earth, dragging its moon with it to become our Moon with all its anomalies. The shattered debris of Tiamat’s smaller part became the asteroid belt, comets, and meteorites. The gouge of our Pacific basin is awesome testimony to the collisional event. Nibiru settled into a 3600 year elliptical retrograde (opposite direction to all the other planets) orbit around our sun, coming in through the asteroid belt region between Mars and Jupiter at perigee and swinging far out past Pluto at apogee. Harrington acknowledged that his information agreed with all these details and the maps they each had drawn of the orbits were almost indistinguishable. The current probable location of Nibiru (Planet X, our tenth) estimated by both was the same.
It is the opinion of this author and others that, in light of the evidence already obtained through the use of the Pioneer 10 and 11 and two Voyager space craft, the Infrared Imaging Satellite (IRAS, ‘83-84) and the clear and unequivocal statements of Harrington when consulting with Sitchin, that the search has already been accomplished, in fact that the planet has already been found.
We need to force the issue of the tenth planet being in our solar system, not just to demonstrate the validity of the new paradigm but for a very practical reason. The ancient records are very clear. The passage of the tenth planet, Nibiru, once every 3600 years, through the inner solar system effects the Earth, sometimes in catastrophic ways. It is very probably the cause of pole shifts, pole reversals, changes in the precessional movement, perhaps even catastrophic bombardment by asteroid size space debris that it may drag along with it. Since it passes through the asteroid belt area between Mars and Jupiter and its orbital path may vary depending on the position of the other planets when it comes though, it may have been responsible for the devastation of Mars. A rigorous, detailed computer modeling of the solar system, including the tenth planet needs to be done urgently for our own planetary safety. Remember that the Vatican maintains an astronomical observatory and Msgr. Balducci may have access to information that prompts him to make the amazing statements he has ---- no doubt as voice of the Vatican.
The Technological Evidence
Ooparts is the term used to describe the purportedly out of place in time artifacts, toys, tools, technical devices, depictions and documents which have come to light through archaeological excavation or discovery. Almost everyone is familiar, through published works or documentaries, with the clay pot batteries still containing the electrodes from the Iraqi desert dated at 2500 B.C., the flyable model airplane from a pyramid tomb, the sophisticated machining of stone requiring the most advanced techniques we know today, the 1000 ton precision cut blocks of stone in a temple foundation that we could not even handle, an ancient relief frieze from an Abydos temple depicting rockets, airplanes and even a helicopter, etc. The most recent and quite amazing oopart is the rediscovery of monoatomic gold by David Hudson (Monoatomics are superconductors at room temperature, have anti-gravitic properties and are only now being investigated by the advanced physics community) Hudson’s discovery, correlated with the bringing to light, by Gardner, of the suppressed discovery of the Anunnaki gold processing plant on Mt. Horeb by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1889 demonstrates that the monoatomics were already known at least 3000 years ago. These ooparts coupled with evidence from many disciplines and the historical records indicate that an advanced civilization existed in those times possessing a high technology and that that civilization was indeed the Anunnaki.
The Documentary Evidence
The recorded historical documentation for the existence and deeds of the Anunnaki has become gradually available to us only since the early 1800’s. The excavation of the ancient sites of Mesopotamia brought to light the amazingly advanced civilization of Sumer and, with it, thousands of clay tablets containing not only mundane records of commerce, marriages, military actions and advanced astronomical calculation systems but of the history of the Anunnaki themselves. It is clear from those records that the Sumerians knew these aliens to be real flesh and blood. The library of the ruler, Ashurbanipal, at Nineveh was discovered to have burnt down and the clay tablets held there were fired, preserving them for our reading. One of the most impressive finds, in very recent time, has been a sealed, nine foot by six foot room in Sippar holding, neatly arranged on shelves, a set of some 400 elaborate clay tablets containing an unbroken record of the history of those ancient times, a sort of time capsule. The evidence is so overwhelming and robust that, if it weren’t for those with power enough to suppress, it would have been accepted and our world view changed a century ago or, perhaps, sooner.
The Genetic Evidence
The recovered records place the location of the Anunnaki laboratory where the first humans were literally produced in east central Africa just above their gold mines. This falls precisely on the map where the mitochondrial DNA “search for Eve” places the first woman Homo Sapiens and in the same period. (The gold mining engineers of Africa have found 100,000-year-old gold mines in that area.) The evidence for, and description of advanced genetic engineering is all there in the ancient documents. Our rapid progress from inception to going to Mars soon, after only 250,000 years, does not correspond to the million year periodicities of slow evolutionary development of other species such as Homo Erectus before us. As so many thinkers have pointed out, we are radically and anomalously different, as discussed in part three.
Scientific Objections to the Thesis
How could the Anunnaki, clearly described as comfortable in earth gravity and atmosphere, very similar to current humans in all ways, have evolved on a planet within our solar system whose orbital apogee takes it into the deep cold of space for much of its orbit?
The ancient records repeatedly describe Nibiru as a “radiant” planet. This may be understood as having a high core temperature. Although controversial, there is also astrophysical opinion that a large body in elongated orbit is constantly tending toward circular orbit and this causes stresses in the body that could generate a good deal of heat. That their planet is gradually cooling, may be indicated by Sitchin’s interpretation of their colonizing Earth (contains most of the gold identifiable in the solar system) for the purpose of obtaining large quantities of gold for molecular seeding of their atmosphere with a reflective gold shielding. Pertinent here is Harrington’s confident statement to Sitchin that it is “a nice, good planet, could be surrounded by gases, probably has an atmosphere and could support life like ours”. The sunlight level there might be quite different than on earth. The Anunnaki were often depicted or sculpted with what seem to be obviously sunglasses.
If, however, the Anunnaki evolved on a radically different planet from earth under quite different conditions to which to adapt, why should they have turned out to be so identical to human species? Sitchin’s answer is based on the collisional event between the intruder planet, Nibiru, and the planet Tiamat, the residual part of which recongealed into the Earth after being driven into current Earth orbit. That the two, or at least one, of the colliding planets was sufficiently developed to have evolved basic organic compounds, perhaps even simple life, the cross-seeding of everything from amino acids to more complicated organic compounds or even primitive organisms, could account for the evolutionary similarity. Although this author finds it a reasonable hypothesis, even trivial, that advanced civilizations would be capable of crossing extremely different genomes, perhaps with even radically different bases, the cross-seeding theory can account for the apparent relative ease with which the Anunnaki impinged their genes on the genes of Homo Erectus. The Anunnaki skill level, 200,000 years ago, is indicated well by the recorded fact that, in early trials, they succeeded in crossing animal genes with Homo Erectus genes, obtained living hybrids but never a satisfactory product which led them to modify Homo Erectus genes with their advanced genes.
If our genome is estimated as 98% to 99% similar to the chimpanzee, how could there be a melding of the Homo Erectus and Anunnaki genomes, or impingement of the advanced code on the lesser advanced one detectable? The author suggests that this is a major question probably answerable only by the geneticists open-minded enough to attack it. The resolution of that question should provide rich additional clues in itself.

Three Decades of Discovery Modern technology and innovation bring new insight to Egypt’s past

2010-02-28T01:34:00.000-08:00

Over the last three decades, technological advancement has allowed archeologists to answer longstanding questions and refute misconceptions about missing details of Egypt’s history. From the remains of ancient rulers to Napoleon’s flagship, et takes you through some of archeology’s most significant discoveries in the last 30 years.

Tombs of the Pyramid Builders
For years it has been assumed that sites exist that could shed light on the lives of the Giza pyramid builders. Now that assumption is backed up by proof.

Since 1990, an Egyptian archeological team headed by Dr. Zahi Hawass has been excavating the remains of the town where the permanent workforce of pyramid artisans and their supervisors lived, In addition, the team also excavated a section where temporary workmen were housed and fed, and a vast cemetery in which all of the pyramid builders were buried.

The cemetery is divided into two sections — an upper section for the artistic overseers, including the overseers of the sculptors, and a lower section for the actual workers. At the time of the pyramid construction, 20 percent of Egyptians were royalty. The tombs yield important information about how the other 80 percent lived.

“The construction of the pyramids was a national project,” says Hawass. “The massive monument symbolized the might and power of the royal house, and many of the large families in Upper Egypt and the Delta contributed to its construction. This was either done by sending money or food.”
[Associated Press Though relatively new in Egypt, underwater archeology is catching up with land-based exploration.]
Associated Press
Though relatively new in Egypt, underwater archeology is catching up with land-based exploration.

New evidence in the tombs put much speculation about the pyramids’ construction to rest. Unlike the 100,000 workers the Greek historian Herodotus estimated to have built the pyramids, the new evidence points to a figure closer to 10,000. Aside from providing proof of their actual numbers, the tombs also confirm their true identities.

“One of the biggest falsehoods about the Great Pyramid of Khufu is that it was built by slaves,” says Hawass. “The discovery of the tombs of the pyramid builders on the Giza Plateau has finally and conclusively put this theory to rest. We now know with certainty that the Pyramids were built by Egyptian men and women — not slaves!”

Had the workers been slaves, he says, they would never have been buried beside the pyramids with tombs prepared for the afterlife.
A Golden Opportunity

Dating back to Roman times, the Valley of the Golden Mummies was discovered by pure chance. In 1996, on the road to Farafra, the donkey of an antiquities guard tripped on the edge of what turned out to be a hidden tomb. The tomb held the mummies of men, women and children, many of which were covered in gold.

The site is of particular significance for the information it provides about the religious and social customs of the Greco-Roman era. Though many of the funerary traditions of the Pharaonic period were still in use until the second century AD, mummification methods used for the Bahariyya bodies were different than those used on New Kingdom-era mummies. Reeds were placed to the right and left of the body, then wrapped with linen and covered with resin. This made the mummies more stable and ultimately better preserved than their New Kingdom-era counterparts.

Hawass and his team brought an x-ray machine to the site and were able to find evidence of how the people buried in the tomb died; they were even able to detect signs of diseases such as cancer.
The Clue of the Queen’s Molar

Archeological technology took another step forward with the search for Queen Hatshepsut.

“[The Discovery Channel] built for us the only DNA lab in the world that is dedicated exclusively to mummies,” says Hawass. “DNA has never before been shown to be reliable for mummies, since it is hard to get a long enough sequence to learn anything useful, and it is very hard to be sure that the sample has not been contaminated. When you take a mummy and put it in another lab that is used for other things, you can have a 40 percent rate of error in the results due to contamination.”

Conducting DNA tests and CT scans on a portable machine donated by National Geographic, the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, one of the notable exceptions in the overwhelmingly male list of pharoahs, was conclusively identified, Hawass says.

The project examined unidentified New Kingdom mummies found in the Royal Mummy Caches. Hawass describes the site as a series of secret tombs in the Valley of the Kings where the high priests of Amun hid royal mummies from the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth dynasties.

Identifying these mummies is difficult, according to Hawass. “We have to keep in mind that these mummies were moved at night, and we have to know that the bodies could be misplaced and misidentified. When they were being transferred, the mummy of one king could easily be placed in a coffin intended for another.”

In the search for Hatshepsut, two mummies were examined first: a small woman found inside an Eighteenth Dynasty coffin inscribed with the name of a royal nurse called In and an obese woman lying on the floor next to In’s coffin.

Originally discovered by Howard Carter in 1903, the tomb’s inscription named the small woman’s mummy as Sitre-In, Hatshepsut’s wet-nurse. The mummy of the obese woman has its left hand clenched across its chest — a sign of a royal mummy. The obese woman was assumed to be Hatshepsut, but there was no concrete proof.

CT scans were conducted on the two mummies and objects found in the tomb, including Hatshepsut’s canopic jars and a wooden box bearing her cartouches. The wooden box held the key to Hatshepsut’s identity.

“We know from other embalming caches that anything associated with a body or its mummification became ritually charged and had to be buried properly,” Hawass says. “Therefore, it seemed that during the mummification of Queen Hatshepsut, the embalmers put into the box anything that came loose from the body during the mummification process.” Aside from mummified viscera, there was a single tooth inside the box.

Dr. Galal El Beheri, a dentist from Cairo University, was brought in to study the CT scans of the mummies. The obese woman was missing a tooth, and an empty socket in her mouth was an exact match for the tooth in the box. When the results came in, Hawass was finally able to proclaim: “We therefore have scientific proof that this is the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut.”

According to an article by Dan Morrison for National Geographic News in June 2007, Hatshepsut and suffered from diabetes and died of bone cancer around the age of 50.

Identification of the mummies set new scientific standards for Egyptologists. The specialized DNA lab for mummies and the use of CT scans were groundbreaking in the world of archeology.
The Theban Mapping Project

Technology is not simply being used to unearth new treasures; it is being used to preserve old ones.

Packed with countless monuments and riches, Luxor was once the New Kingdom’s capital Thebes. Unfortunately, its notoriety has made it the target of treasure hunters throughout history. Now it is seeing traffic of a different sort, as millions of tourists visit every year to see what remains of the New Kingdom.

To prevent future degradation of the site, the Theban Mapping Project (TMP), led by Dr. Kent Weeks, has worked since 1978 to document archeological finds at the site, beginning with the Valley of the Kings.

As a first step in protecting the heritage of the site, a comprehensive database is being compiled using modern surveying techniques. Future plans include 3D computer models of the tombs. Due to heavy tourist traffic at the delicate site, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) demanded a management plan to preserve the Valley of the Kings in 2004. The World Monument Fund and the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), along with private donors, supported the initiative.

The management plan includes a comprehensive diagnosis of factors affecting the monuments on a daily basis. With such a massive task at hand, the project is still underway and remains critical to finding a balance between tourism, exploration and preservation in the area.
The Sons of Ramses II

While working on the mapping project, the team rediscovered the tomb of Ramses II’s sons, the largest tomb in the Valley of the Kings. James Burton, who visited the tomb in 1825, only managed to crawl through a few chambers and never discovered the full extent of the site. In subsequent years the tomb was essentially forgotten.

In 1989, events took an unexpected turn when the TMP team started excavating the tomb and found decorations on the walls. Among the decorations were the names of six of Ramses II’s sons.

A narrow channel was cut through debris that blocked chamber three of the tomb in 1995. Instead of leading to a small side chamber as expected, it led to a 60-meter-long corridor lined with side chambers. Objects including human and animal remains, jewelry and written documents were found at the site. Today the tomb remains closed to the public as cleaning and conservation work takes place.
Hidden Portraits

Sohag’s Church of Saints Bishai and Bigol is unique in Coptic history. Known as the Red Monastery, the site dates back to the early Byzantine period, and contains a number of beautiful architectural artworks.

ARCE headed the campaign to conserve and study the monastery under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Bolman from Temple University. In 2007 the cleaning and conservation of niches and architecture in the southern apse revealed elaborate, colorful paintings. As work progresses, intriguing discoveries are being made, such as a bearded figure emerging from green foliage, reminiscent of the Green Man in Gothic sculpture. Others include peacocks and gazelles among plants and painted curtains.Many images remain a mystery, waiting to be uncovered from behind blackened surfaces.

With substantial support from the Coptic Church, the work continues to reveal more about the monastery, regarded as the heart of a monastic community in the fifth century AD.
Making Waves

Founded by Alexander the Great and once the nation’s cultural and political capital, Alexandria today is being rediscovered underwater. But underwater archeology has a less extensive history in Egypt than the land-based excavations. It was not until 1962 that Kamel Abu-Saadat, now considered a pioneer of underwater diving in Alexandria, convinced the navy to raise a colossal statue of Isis lying eight meters under the waves near the Qaitbey fortress. The project opened the door for other underwater excavations in Alexandria and an underwater archeology department was opened in 1996.

After Abu-Saadat’s work, underwater discoveries took off. Franck Goddio, a French underwater archeologist, and a team of Egyptian archeologists have recovered antiquities that included a statue of a high priest of Isis and another statue thought to be a sphinx representing Cleopatra’s father Ptolemy VII.

In the coastal town of Abu Qir, exciting recoveries were made when Jacques Dumas excavated L’Orient, the flagship of Napoleon’s fleet. Napoleon’s command ship lay 11 meters deep and yielded a treasure of gold coins from Egypt, Malta, Spain and Turkey, as well as artifacts that provided clues about the lives of its crew.

Three other ships, Le Guerrier, L’Artemise and La Serieuse, were also identified; objects recovered from them include iron cannons, small arms, and ammunition, ceramic plates, wine bottles and glass perfume flasks, along with gold, silver and bronze coins.

Underwater discoveries have gained increased importance for Alexandria. According to Dr. Ibrahim Darwish, director of the Alexandria National Museum and former director of the Underwater Archeology Department at the SCA, three earthquakes damaged the city in the second, fourth and twelfth centuries AD and many monuments fell into the sea.

“The Ptolemaic era remains a shady one in history, as we only have accounts from historians from the fourth, fifth and eighth centuries and no substantial material,” says Darwish. “Salvaging and rediscovering many of these sites is important for the study of that period.”

Advances in underwater archeology mean that much of the area’s Ptolemaic history may finally be recovered.
The Islamic Period

Dr. Bernard O’Kane, professor of Islamic art and architecture at the American University in Cairo, is navigating a landscape far different from the watery depths of the Mediterranean, but no less challenging. His project is to record every inscription on Cairo’s monuments, including prayers and Qur’anic inscriptions, not just dates and foundation stones.

“The project is designed to be a tool for historians and architects,” O’Kane explains. “It covers all Cairene monuments constructed before 1800, starting with the earliest Islamic monumental inscription.”

O’Kane’s team is photographing and translating every inscription. “This is a unique feature in the project because it was not done before,” says O’Kane. “Even though records were made by Max Van Berschem in the 1920s to record monumental inscriptions, [they did] not include translation.”

Because some monuments in the city have not stood the test of time, like the Musafir Khana palace that burned down in 1998, the project is invaluable for preserving monuments and providing a resource for future researchers.

The project’s fieldwork required an adventurous three-person team to scale imposing heights and deal with the awkward positions required to access some inscriptions. O’Kane explains, “One took the photos, another kept records and the third sketched a ground plan with arrows pointing to where photos of the inscription were taken.” The crew was recruited from students at AUC’s Islamic Art and Architecture Department, who received fellowships from the project. Some graduate students based their master’s theses on the project.

“Many collaborated in this project,” says O’Kane. “AUC and the American Research Center in Egypt covered many of the costs, especially because I got course release during the time I was working on the project. Also, there was a project director, Dr. Lubna Lufti and three students who received fellowships.”

The project has encountered problems trying to record monuments in military areas such as Moqqatam and Heliopolis; due to restoration efforts some monument inscriptions cannot be photographed. Nonetheless, publication is underway. The Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (Cultnat) is developing user-friendly software for the database so that it can be put on a DVD, slated for release later in the year, followed by a website that will provide updates on the project.

“The publication of this data is most likely going to be a collaboration between ARCE, AUC and Cultnat,” says O’Kane. “It will have worldwide distribution through AUC and will be most beneficial to Islamic art historians, epigraphers and calligraphers, as well as linguists.” et

Během posledních tří desetiletí, technologický pokrok umožnil archeologové odpovědět na dlouhodobé otázky a vyvrátit mylné představy o chybějící údaje o historii Egypta. Od pozůstatky dávných vládců vlajkové lodi Napoleona, et vás prostřednictvím některé z archeologie nejvýznamnější objevy v posledních 30 letech.

Hroby stavitelé pyramidy Po léta to bylo předpokládal, že existují stránky, které by mohly vrhnout světlo na život stavitelů pyramid Gíze. Nyní tento předpoklad se opírá o důkaz.
Od roku 1990 egyptský archeologický tým pod vedením Dr. Zahi Hawass bylo hloubení zbytky města, kde stálá pracovní síla pyramidy řemeslníků a jejich nadřízené žil, kromě toho tým také vyhloubil sekce, kde byly dočasné dělníky držena a krmena, a obrovský hřbitov, v němž všechny ze stavitelů pyramid bylo pohřbeno.
Hřbitov je rozdělen na dvě části - horní část pro umělecké dozorců, včetně dozorců sochařů, a dolní části pro vlastní zaměstnance. V době stavby pyramidy, 20 procent Egypťanů poplatku. Hroby poskytne důležité informace o dalších 80 procent žil.
"Stavba pyramid byl národní projekt," říká Hawass. "Masivní památník symbolizovaly moc a moc královského domu, a mnoho z početné rodiny v Horním Egyptě a Delta přispěly k jeho konstrukci. To se děje buď tím, že pošle peníze nebo jídlo. " [Associated Press Ačkoli relativně nový v Egyptě, podvodní archeologii dohání země-založené průzkum.] Associated Press Ačkoli relativně nový v Egyptě, podvodní archeologii dohání země-založené průzkum.
Nové důkazy v hrobech dát hodně spekulací o stavbě pyramid 'k odpočinku. Na rozdíl od 100.000 pracovníků řecký historik Herodotus Odhaduje se, že postavil pyramidy, nové důkazy ukazující na číslo blíže k 10,000. Kromě poskytnutí důkazu o jejich skutečném počtu, hroby také potvrdit svou pravou identitu.
"Jeden z největších lži o velké pyramidy Chufu je to, že byl postaven otroky," říká Hawass. "Objev náhrobky stavitelů pyramid v Gíze Plateau konečně přesvědčivě a dal této teorie k odpočinku. Dnes už víme s jistotou, že pyramidy byly postaveny egyptské muže a ženy - ne otroky! "
Kdyby zaměstnanci byli otroci, jak říká, by se nikdy nebyl pohřben vedle pyramid s hrobkami připravené pro posmrtný život. Golden Opportunity
Datuje až do dob Římanů byla Údolí zlatých mumií, objevil čirou náhodou. V roce 1996, na cestě do Farafra, stráž osel ze starožitnostmi zakopl na hraně toho, co se ukázalo být skryté hrobce. Hrobka se konalo mumie mužů, žen a dětí, z nichž mnohé byly pokryty zlatem.
Místo má zvláštní význam pro poskytované informace o náboženské a společenské zvyklosti řecko-římské éry. Ačkoli mnoho z pohřební tradice období Pharaonic byly ještě v použití až do druhého století našeho letopočtu, mumifikace metody používané pro subjekty Bahariyya byly jiné než ty, používané na Nové říše-éra mumie. Rákos byly umístěny na pravé a levé části těla, pak se zalomil s prádla a pokryté pryskyřicí. Tím se mumie více stabilní a nakonec lépe chráněn, než jejich nového království-éra protějšky.
Hawass a jeho týmu přinesl x-ray stroj k webu a byli schopni najít důkazy o tom, jak lidé pohřbeni v hrobě zemřeli, byli dokonce schopni zjistit příznaky onemocnění, jako je rakovina. Stopa z molárních královny
Archeologické technologie udělal další krok vpřed při hledání královny Hatšepsut.
"[Discovery Channel] postavené pro nás pouze DNA laboratoř na světě, který je zaměřen výhradně na mumie," říká Hawass. "DNA nikdy předtím bylo prokázáno, že jsou spolehlivé pro mumie, protože je těžké dostat se dostatečně dlouhé sekvence se dozvědět něco užitečného, a to je velmi těžké být jisti, že vzorek nebyl kontaminován. Když se máma a dal ho do jiné laboratoře, která se používá pro jiné věci, můžete mít 40 procent chybovost ve výsledcích v důsledku kontaminace. "
Provádění testů DNA a CT vyšetření na přenosném počítači věnoval National Geographic, mumii královny Hatšepsut, jedna z výjimek v převážně mužské seznam pharoahs, byl přesvědčivě identifikovat, říká Hawass.
Projekt zkoumal neidentifikované mumie z Nové říše nalezené v královské mumie cache. Hawass popisuje místo jako série tajné hrobky v Údolí králů, kde veleknězů Amun ukryl královských mumií z osmnáctého, devatenáctém a dvacátém dynastií.
Identifikaci těchto mumie je těžké, podle Hawass. "Musíme mít na paměti, že tato mumie byly přesunuty v noci, a musíme vědět, že orgány by mohly být nesprávné a rozpoznána. Když oni byli přeložení by mumii krále jednoho snadno umístit do rakve určené pro jiné. "
Při hledání Hatšepsut, dvě mumie nejprve přezkoumat: malá žena nalezen uvnitř rakve Osmnácté dynastie napsaný s názvem královské sestry s názvem V a obézní ženu ležící na podlaze vedle je v rakvi.
Původně objevil Howard Carter v roce 1903, hrobky nápis s názvem Malá žena mumie jako Sitre-In, Hatšepsut mokrý-zdravotní sestra. Mumie obézní žena má svou levou ruku sevřenou v jeho hrudi - znamení královské mumie. Obézní žena byla Předpokládá se, že Hatšepsut, ale tam byl žádný konkrétní důkaz.
CT skeny byly provedeny na dvou mumií a předměty nalezené v hrobce, včetně canopic sklenic Hatšepsut a dřevěné krabici s ní kartuše. Dřevěná krabice drží klíč k identitě Hatšepsut.
"Víme z jiných balzamování vyrovnávací paměti, že cokoli spojené s orgánem nebo jeho mumifikace se stal rituálně obviněn a musel být pohřben správně," říká Hawass. "Proto se zdálo, že během mumifikace královny Hatšepsut, balzamovači do pole nic, přišel volný od těla při mumifikaci procesu." Až na mumifikované vnitřnosti, tam byl jeden zub uvnitř krabice.
Dr. Galal El Beheri, zubař z Káhirské univerzity, byl přinesen do studia CT vyšetření s mumií. Obézní žena byla chybějící zub, a prázdné zásuvky v ústech byl přesný za zub v krabici. Když přišli výsledky, Hawass se konečně mohl prohlásit: "Musíme proto vědecký důkaz, že se jedná o mumii královny Hatšepsut."
Podle článku by Dan Morrison pro National Geographic News v červnu 2007, Hatšepsut a trpěl cukrovkou a umřel na rakovinu kostí ve věku kolem 50 let.
Identifikace mumií stanovit nové vědecké standardy pro egyptology. Specializované laboratoře pro DNA mumií a používání CT vyšetření bylo průlomové ve světě archeologie. Thébské Mapping projektu
Technologie není jednoduše se používá, jak odkrýt nové poklady, že se používá pro zachování starých.
Balíčky s bezpočtem památek a bohatství, Luxor byl jednou Nové říše hlavního města Théby. Bohužel, jeho proslulost dala za cíl hledači pokladů v celé historii. Nyní je vidět provozu odlišného typu, jako miliony turistů navštěvují každý rok, abychom viděli, co zbylo z Nové říše.
Aby se zabránilo budoucí degradaci lokality, thébské Mapping projekt (TMP), vedený Dr. Kent týdny, pracoval od roku 1978 dokumentovat archeologické nálezy v místě, počínaje Údolí králů.
Jako první krok při ochraně kulturního dědictví v místě, komplexní databáze je sestaven za použití moderní techniky průzkumu. Budoucí plány zahrnují 3D počítačové modely z hrobů. Vzhledem k těžké cestovního ruchu na choulostivé místo, Nejvyšší rady pro památky Egypta (SCA) požadoval plán řízení pro zachování Údolí králů v roce 2004. World Monument fond a americké výzkumné centrum v Egyptě (ARCE), společně se soukromými dárci, podporuje iniciativu.
Plán zahrnuje komplexní diagnostiku faktorů ovlivňujících památky na denní bázi. S takovou masivní úkol, projekt je stále v plném proudu a je i nadále rozhodující pro nalezení rovnováhy mezi cestovního ruchu, průzkum a uchovávání v této oblasti. Sons of Ramses II
Při práci na projektu mapování, tým nově objevený hrobky synů Ramesse II, největší hrobky v Údolí králů. James Burton, který navštívil hrobky v roce 1825, se podařilo prolézt několik komor a nikdy se objevil v plném rozsahu webu. V následujících letech byl hrob v podstatě zapomenuta.
V roce 1989, události nabraly nečekaný obrat, když tým TMP začalo hloubení hrobu a našel výzdoby na stěnách. Mezi dekorace jsou jména šesti synů Ramesse II.
Úzký kanál byl řez přes trosky, která blokovala komora tři hrobky v roce 1995. Místo toho, což vede k malé boční komory, jak se očekávalo, to vedlo k 60-metr-dlouhé chodby lemované boční komory. Předměty včetně lidí a zvířat zůstává, šperky a písemné dokumenty byly nalezeny na místě. Dnes hrobka zůstává uzavřena pro veřejnost jako jsou čištění a památkové péče se koná. Skryté Portréty
Sohag kostel svatého Bishai a Bigol je unikátní v koptské historii. Známý jako Červený kláštor, místa se datuje do začátku byzantské doby a obsahuje řadu krásných architektonických děl.
ARCE v čele kampaně za zachování a studovat kláštera pod vedením Dr. Elizabeth Bolman z Temple University. V roce 2007 čištění a konzervaci výklenky a architektury v jižní apsidě odhalila komplikované, barevné obrazy. S postupem práce, jsou fascinující objevy, jako např. u postava vousatého vznikající ze zeleného listí, připomínající Zelený muž v gotické plastiky. Jiní zahrnují pávy a gazely mezi rostlinami a malované obrazy curtains.Many zůstává záhadou, čekající na odkryté zpoza zčernalé povrchy.
Se značnou podporu od koptské církve, pokračují práce odhalit více o klášter, považován za srdce klášterní komunity v pátém století našeho letopočtu. Making Waves
Založil Alexandr Veliký a po národní kulturní a politický kapitál, je dnes Alexandria nově objevený pod vodou. Podmořské archeologie, ale má méně bohatou historii v Egyptě, než země-založené vykopávek. To nebylo až do roku 1962, že Kamel Abu-Saadat, nyní považován za průkopníka potápění v Alexandrii, přesvědčil námořnictvo zvýšit kolosální sochy Isis ležící osm metrů pod vlnami v blízkosti tvrze Qaitbey. Projekt otevřel dveře pro další podvodní vykopávky v Alexandrii a podvodní archeologii oddělení bylo otevřeno v roce 1996.
Po Abu-Saadat práce, podvodní objevy vyrazil. Franck Goddio, francouzský podmořský archeolog, a tým egyptských archeologů se uzdravíte starožitnosti, které zahrnovaly socha velekněz Isis a další sochu považován sfinga představuje Kleopatřin otec Ptolemaios VII.
V pobřežním městě Abu Qir, vzrušující výtěžky byly provedeny, když Jacques Dumas vytěžené L'Orient, vlajkové lodi flotily Napoleona. Napoleon velení lodi leží 11 metrů hluboká a dal poklad zlatých mincí z Egypta, Malta, Španělsko a Turecko, stejně jako předměty, které podle klíče o život své posádky.
Další tři lodě, Le Guerrier, L'Artemise a La Serieuse, zjistila také předměty, vrátit jim patří železo kanónů, ručních zbraní a střeliva, keramické talíře, víno lahví a skleněných baněk parfém, spolu se zlatem, stříbrné a bronzové mince .
Podvodní objevy získává stále větší význam pro Alexandrii. Podle Dr. Ibrahim Darwish, ředitel Alexandrie Národního muzea a bývalého ředitele podvodní archeologie oddělení SCA, tři zemětřesení poškozeno město v druhém, čtvrtém a dvanáctého století nl a množstvím památek spadl do moře.
"Éry Ptolemaiovců zůstává temný jedna v historii, protože máme jen účty z historiků z čtvrtém, pátém a osmém století a žádné podstatné materiálu," říká Darwish. "Zachránit a znovu objevovat mnohé z těchto míst je důležité pro studium tohoto období."
Pokroky v podvodní archeologii znamenalo, že největší část této plochy je Ptolemaic historie může nakonec být vrácena. Islámské období
Dr. Bernard O'Kane, profesor islámské umění a architekturu na Americké univerzitě v Káhiře, je navigace daleko krajina liší od vodnaté hlubin Středozemního moře, ale neméně náročné. Jeho projekt je zaznamenat každý nápis na památky v Káhiře, včetně modlitby a koránu nápisy, a to nejen data a základní kameny.
"Projekt je navržen tak, aby se nástroj pro historiky a architekty," vysvětluje O'Kane. "To se vztahuje na všechny Cairene památek postavených před rokem 1800, od nejstarších islámských monumentální nápis."
O'Kane tým je fotografování a překládat každý nápis. "Jedná se o unikátní funkci v projektu, protože nebyla provedena dříve," říká O'Kane. "I když záznamy byly provedeny Max Van Berschem v roce 1920 na rekordní monumentální nápisy, [oni] nezahrnují překladu."
Protože některé památky ve městě dosud obstály ve zkoušce času, jako je palác Musafir Khana, který vyhořel v roce 1998, projekt je neocenitelná pro zachování památek a poskytuje zdroje pro budoucí výzkumné pracovníky.
Projektu v terénu vyžaduje dobrodružnou tři-tým osoby k uložení rozsahu výšek a zabývat se nepřirozených polohách vyžadován při otevírání některých nápisů. O'Kane vysvětluje: "Jednou se fotilo, další vedou záznamy a třetí načrtla půdorys se šipkami, kde byly pořízeny fotografie a nápis". Posádce se rekrutují ze studentů na AUC islámského umění a architektury oddělení, kteří dostávali stipendia z projektu. Někteří postgraduální studenti na základě svých magisterských prací na projektu.
"Mnoho spolupracoval na tomto projektu," říká O'Kane. "AUC a American Research Center v Egyptě, které mnohé z těchto nákladů, především proto, že jsem během uvolnění v době, kdy jsem pracoval na projektu. Také tam byl ředitel projektu, Dr. Lubna Lufti a tři studenti, kteří dostávali stipendia. "
Projekt má nějaké problémy se snaží zaznamenat památek ve vojenských oblastech, jako je Moqqatam a Heliopolis, vzhledem k obnovení úsilí o některé památky nápisy nelze vyfotografovat. Nicméně, zveřejnění je v plném proudu. Centrum pro dokumentaci kulturního a přírodního dědictví (Cultnat) zpracovává user-přívětivý software pro databázi, aby mohl být uveden na DVD, premiéra je plánována na propuštění ještě v témže roce, následovaný webové stránky, která bude poskytovat aktuální informace o projektu .
"Zveřejnění těchto údajů je s největší pravděpodobností bude spolupráce mezi ARCE, AUC a Cultnat," říká O'Kane. "To bude mít celosvětovou distribuci prostřednictvím AUC a bude mít největší přínos pro islámské historiků umění, epigraphers a kaligrafy, stejně jako lingvisté." Et

In de afgelopen drie decennia heeft technologische vooruitgang toegestaan archeologen aan langdurige vragen te beantwoorden en te weerleggen misvattingen over details ontbreken van de geschiedenis van Egypte. Uit de resten van de oude heersers van het vlaggenschip van Napoleon, et voert u door enkele van de meest belangrijke ontdekkingen archeologie in de afgelopen 30 jaar.

Tombs of the Pyramid BuildersJarenlang werd aangenomen dat sites bestaan die kunnen licht werpen op het leven van de piramide van Gizeh bouwers. Nu veronderstelling wordt ondersteund door bewijs.
Sinds 1990 heeft een Egyptische archeologische team onder leiding van dr. Zahi Hawass is het opgraven van de resten van de stad waar de vaste personeel van de piramide ambachtslieden en hun begeleiders woonden, Bovendien heeft het team ook een gedeelte waar opgegraven tijdelijke arbeiders werden gehuisvest en gevoed, en een enorme begraafplaats waarin alle bouwers van de piramide werden begraven.
De begraafplaats is verdeeld in twee delen - een bovenste gedeelte voor de artistieke opzichters, met inbegrip van de opzichters van de beeldhouwers, en een lager gedeelte voor de eigenlijke werknemers. Op het moment van de piramide bouw, 20 procent van de Egyptenaren waren royalty. De graven opbrengst belangrijke informatie over hoe de andere 80 procent woonde.
"De bouw van de piramiden is een nationaal project", aldus Hawass. "De massale monument symboliseerde de macht en kracht van het koninklijk huis, en veel van de grote gezinnen in Opper-Egypte en de Delta bijgedragen aan de bouw ervan. Dit werd gedaan, hetzij door het versturen van geld of voedsel. "[Associated Press Hoewel relatief nieuw in Egypte, is onderwater archeologie inhaalslag bezig met grond-gebaseerde exploratie.]Associated PressHoewel relatief nieuw in Egypte, is onderwater archeologie inhaalslag bezig met grond op basis van exploratie.
Nieuw bewijsmateriaal in de graven leggen veel gespeculeerd over de bouw van de piramiden 'om te rusten. In tegenstelling tot de 100.000 werknemers van de Griekse historicus Herodotus naar schatting de piramides hebben gebouwd, het nieuwe bewijsmateriaal wijst op een cijfer dichter bij de 10.000. Naast het verstrekken van het bewijs van hun werkelijke getallen, de graven ook bevestigen hun ware identiteit.
"Een van de grootste onwaarheden over de Grote Piramide van Khufu is dat het werd gebouwd door slaven", aldus Hawass. "De ontdekking van de graven van de piramide bouwers op het plateau van Gizeh is definitief en overtuigend gebracht deze theorie om te rusten. We weten nu met zekerheid dat de piramiden werden gebouwd door Egyptische mannen en vrouwen - geen slaven! "
Had de werknemers zijn slaven, zegt hij, dan zouden ze nooit zijn begraven naast de piramides met graven voorbereid voor het hiernamaals.Een gouden kans
Dateert uit de Romeinse tijd was de Vallei van de Gouden Mummies ontdekt door puur toeval. In 1996, op de weg naar Farafra, bewaken de ezel van een oudheden struikelde over de rand van wat bleek een verborgen graf. Het graf hield de mummies van mannen, vrouwen en kinderen, waarvan vele waren bedekt in goud.
De site is van bijzonder belang voor de te verstrekken informatie over de religieuze en sociale gebruiken van de Grieks-Romeinse tijdperk. Hoewel veel van de funeraire tradities van de faraonische periode waren nog in gebruik tot de tweede eeuw na Christus, mummificatie methoden die worden gebruikt voor de Bahariyya lichamen waren anders dan die welke op de Nieuwe Rijk-tijdperk mummies. Reeds werden geplaatst naar rechts en links van het lichaam, dan omwikkeld met linnen en bedekt met hars. Dit maakte de mummies stabieler en uiteindelijk beter behouden dan hun Nieuwe Rijk-tijdperk tegenhangers.
Hawass en zijn team brachten een x-ray machine naar de site en in staat waren om het bewijs van te vinden hoe de mensen begraven in het graf overleden, ze waren zelfs in staat om symptomen van ziekten op te sporen, zoals kanker.De aanwijzing van de Queen's Molar
Archeologisch technologie deed nog een stap voorwaarts met het zoeken naar koningin Hatsjepsoet.
"[De Discovery Channel] gebouwd voor ons de enige DNA-lab in de wereld die uitsluitend is gewijd aan mummies", aldus Hawass. "DNA nooit eerder is aangetoond betrouwbaar te zijn voor de mummies, omdat het moeilijk is om een sequentie lang genoeg om iets nuttigs te leren te krijgen, en het is zeer moeilijk om er zeker van zijn dat de steekproef niet is verontreinigd. Wanneer u een mummie te nemen en zet het in een ander lab dat gebruikt wordt voor andere zaken, kunt u een 40 procent tarief van fouten in de resultaten als gevolg van besmetting. "
Het uitvoeren van DNA-tests en CT-scans op een draagbare machine geschonken door National Geographic, de mummie van koningin Hatsjepsoet, een van de opmerkelijke uitzonderingen in het overwegend mannelijke lijst van farao's, werd definitief vastgesteld, aldus Hawass.
Het project onderzocht ongeïdentificeerde Nieuwe Rijk mummies gevonden in de Koninklijke mama Caches. Hawass beschrijft de site als een reeks geheime graven in de Vallei der Koningen, waar de hogepriesters van Amon verborg koninklijke mummies uit de achttiende, negentiende en twintigste dynastie.
Het identificeren van deze mummies is moeilijk, aldus Hawass. "We moeten in gedachten houden dat deze mummies werden verplaatst 's nachts, en we moeten weten dat de organen kunnen worden misplaatst en ten onrechte aangemerkt. Toen ze werden overgedragen, zou de mummie van een koning gemakkelijk worden geplaatst in een kist die bestemd zijn voor een ander. "
In de zoektocht naar Hatsjepsoet werden twee mummies eerst onderzocht: een kleine vrouw gevonden in een kist Achttiende Dynastie inscriptie met de naam van een koninklijke verpleegster geroepen en een zwaarlijvige vrouw liggend op de vloer naast de kist In's.
Oorspronkelijk ontdekt door Howard Carter in 1903, inscriptie op het graf genaamd mummie de kleine vrouw als Sitre-In, Hatsjepsoet's nat-verpleegkundige. De mummie van de zwaarlijvige vrouw heeft haar linkerhand geklemd over haar borst - een teken van een koninklijke mummie. De zwaarlijvige vrouw werd aangenomen dat Hatsjepsoet, maar er was geen concreet bewijs.
CT-scans zijn uitgevoerd op de twee mummies en voorwerpen gevonden in het graf, met inbegrip van canopic potten Hatsjepsoet en een houten kist met haar cartouches. De houten doos hield de sleutel tot de identiteit van Hatsjepsoet's.
"We weten uit andere balsemen caches dat alles gekoppeld aan een lichaam of mummificatie werd ritueel in rekening gebracht en moest goed worden begraven", aldus Hawass. "Daarom leek het erop dat tijdens de mummificatie van koningin Hatsjepsoet, de balsemers zetten in de doos alles dat los kwam van het lichaam tijdens de mummificatie proces." Naast gemummificeerde ingewanden, was er een enkele tand in de doos.
Dr Galal Beheri El, een tandarts van Cairo University, kwam bij de studie CT scans van de mummies. De zwaarlijvige vrouw miste een tand, en een lege socket in haar mond was een exacte match voor de tand in het vak. Wanneer de resultaten kwam, was Hawass eindelijk in staat te verkondigen: "We hebben dus wetenschappelijk bewijs dat dit de mummie van koningin Hatsjepsoet."
Volgens een artikel van Dan Morrison voor National Geographic News in juni 2007, Hatsjepsoet en leed aan diabetes en overleed aan botkanker rond de leeftijd van 50.
Identificatie van de mummies reeks nieuwe wetenschappelijke normen voor Egyptologen. De gespecialiseerde DNA-lab voor mummies en het gebruik van CT-scans zijn baanbrekend in de wereld van de archeologie.De Thebaanse Mapping Project
Technologie is niet alleen worden gebruikt om nieuwe schatten opgraven, het wordt gebruikt om oude te behouden.
Verpakt met talloze monumenten en rijkdom, Luxor was ooit de hoofdstad van het Nieuwe Koninkrijk Thebe. Helaas heeft zijn bekendheid maakte het de doelstelling van schattenjagers doorheen de geschiedenis. Nu is het zien van het verkeer van een andere soort, als miljoenen toeristen bezoeken elk jaar om te zien wat er nog van het Nieuwe Koninkrijk.
Om te voorkomen dat toekomstige afbraak van de site, heeft de Thebaanse Mapping Project (TMP), geleid door dr. Kent Weeks, werkte sinds 1978 aan archeologische vondsten op de site, het document te beginnen met de Vallei der Koningen.
Als een eerste stap in de bescherming van het erfgoed van de site, een uitgebreide database wordt samengesteld met behulp van moderne landmeetkundige technieken. Toekomstige plannen omvatten 3D computer modellen van de graven. Vanwege zware toeristische verkeer op de fijne site, de Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) gevraagd om een plan voor het beheer van de Vallei der Koningen te behouden in 2004. De World Monument Fund en de American Research Center in Egypte (ARCE), samen met particuliere donateurs, ondersteunde het initiatief.
Het beheersplan bevat een uitgebreide diagnose van factoren die de monumenten op een dagelijkse basis. Met zo'n enorme taak bij de hand, is het project nog aan de gang en blijft van cruciaal belang voor het vinden van een evenwicht tussen toerisme, exploratie en behoud in het gebied.De zonen van Ramses II
Tijdens het werken aan de mapping-project, het team herontdekte het graf van de zonen van Ramses II, het grootste graf in de Vallei der Koningen. James Burton, die een bezoek aan de tombe in 1825, alleen weten te kruipen door een paar kamers en nooit de volle omvang van de site ontdekt. In de daaropvolgende jaren het graf wezen was vergeten.
In 1989 gebeurtenissen een onverwachte wending wanneer de PTB-team begonnen met graven het graf en vond decoraties op de muren. Onder de decoraties werden de namen van zes van de zonen van Ramses II.
Een smalle kanaal werd gesneden door puin dat geblokkeerd kamer drie van de tombe in 1995. In plaats van te leiden tot een kleine kamer zijkant zoals verwacht, leidde dit tot een 60-meter lange gang vol met kant kamers. Objecten met inbegrip van menselijke en dierlijke resten, sieraden en schriftelijke documenten werden gevonden op de site. Vandaag het graf gesloten blijft voor het publiek als schoonmaken en het behoud werk plaatsvindt.Verborgen Portretten
Suhaj kerk van de heiligen Bishai en Bigol is uniek in Koptische geschiedenis. Bekend als de Rode Klooster, de site dateert uit het begin van de Byzantijnse periode, en bevat een aantal prachtige architectonische kunstwerken.
ARCE hoofd van de campagne voor de instandhouding en studie het klooster onder leiding van Dr Elizabeth Bolman van Temple University. In 2007 is het reinigen en het behoud van niches en architectuur in de zuidelijke apsis bleek te werken, kleurrijke schilderijen. Naarmate het werk vordert, worden intrigerend ontdekkingen worden gedaan, zoals een bebaarde figuur die uit groene bladeren, doet denken aan de Groene Man in gotische beeldhouwkunst. Andere zijn pauwen en gazellen tussen planten en geschilderd curtains.Many beelden blijven een mysterie, klaar om te worden ontdekt van achter zwart oppervlakken.
Met aanzienlijke steun van de Koptische Kerk, het werk blijft onthullen meer over het klooster, beschouwd als het hart van een monastieke gemeenschap in de vijfde eeuw na Christus.Making Waves
Gesticht door Alexander de Grote en eenmaal culturele en politieke hoofdstad van het land, is vandaag de dag Alexandrië onder water herontdekt. Maar onderwater archeologie heeft een minder uitgebreide geschiedenis in Egypte dan het land op basis van opgravingen. Het was niet tot 1962 dat Kamel Abu-Saadat, nu beschouwd als een pionier van de onderwater duiken in Alexandrië, overtuigde de marine tot een kolossaal standbeeld van Isis lag acht meter onder de golven in de buurt van het fort Qaitbey verhogen. Het project opende de deur voor andere onderwater opgravingen in Alexandrië en een onderwater-archeologie afdeling werd geopend in 1996.
Na Abu-werk Saadat's, onderwater ontdekkingen nam. Franck Goddio, een Franse onderwater archeoloog, en een team van Egyptische archeologen hebben hersteld oudheden met daarin een beeld van een hogepriester van Isis en een ander beeld beschouwd als een sfinx die vader van Cleopatra Ptolemaeus VII.
In de kuststad van Abu Qir, waren spannende terugvorderingen gemaakt toen Jacques Dumas opgegraven L'Orient, het vlaggenschip van de vloot van Napoleon. Bevel van Napoleon schip lag 11 meter diep en leverde een schat van gouden munten uit Egypte, Malta, Spanje en Turkije, alsmede de artefacten die welke aanwijzingen over het leven van de bemanning.
Drie andere schepen, Le Guerrier, L'Artemise en La Serieuse, werden ook geïdentificeerd; voorwerpen hersteld van ze op te nemen ijzeren kanonnen, kleine wapens en munitie, keramische platen, wijn en glazen flessen parfum flesjes, samen met goud, zilver en bronzen munten .
Onderwater ontdekkingen hebben opgedaan toegenomen belang voor Alexandrië. Volgens dr. Ibrahim Darwish, directeur van het Nationaal Museum Alexandrië en voormalig directeur van de afdeling Archeologie Onderwater de SCA, drie aardbevingen beschadigd de stad in de tweede, vierde en twaalfde eeuw AD en vele monumenten viel in de zee.
"De Ptolemaeïsche tijdperk blijft een schaduwrijke een in de geschiedenis, zoals we alleen rekeningen van historici hebben uit de vierde, vijfde en achtste eeuw en geen aanzienlijke materiële," zegt Darwish. "Berging en herontdekking van vele van deze sites is belangrijk voor de studie van die periode."
Advances in onderwater archeologie betekenen dat veel van Ptolemaeïsche geschiedenis van het gebied definitief kan worden teruggevorderd.De Islamitische Periode
Dr Bernard O'Kane, hoogleraar Islamitische kunst en architectuur aan de Amerikaanse Universiteit in Caïro, is het navigeren een landschap ver afwijkt van de waterige diepten van de Middellandse Zee, maar niet minder uitdagend. Zijn project is om op te nemen om de inscriptie op monument Caïro, met inbegrip van gebeden en Koran inscripties, niet alleen data en stichting stenen.
"Het project is ontworpen als een hulpmiddel voor historici en architecten," O'Kane uit. "Het heeft betrekking op alle Cairene monumenten die gebouwd zijn vóór 1800, te beginnen met de vroegste islamitische monumentale inscriptie."
Team O'Kane is fotograferen en het vertalen van elke opschrift. "Dit is een unieke functie in het project, omdat het niet eerder gedaan", zegt O'Kane. "Ook al records werden gemaakt door Max van Berschem in de jaren 1920 voor het registreren monumentale inscripties, [zij hebben] niet met vertaling."
Omdat sommige monumenten in de stad zijn niet de tand van de tijd, zoals de Musafir Khana paleis dat afbrandde in 1998, is het project van onschatbare waarde voor het behoud van monumenten en leveren van een bron voor toekomstige onderzoekers.
Veldwerk van het project vereist een avontuurlijke team van drie personen op de schaal leggen hoogten en omgaan met de lastige posities nodig om een aantal inscripties toegang. O'Kane legt uit: "Men vond de foto's, een ander hield dossiers en de derde schetste een plattegrond met pijlen wijzen naar de plaats waar foto's van het opschrift werden genomen." De bemanning werd gerekruteerd uit studenten van de AUC's Islamic Art and Architecture Department, die ontvangen beurzen uit het project. Sommige afgestudeerde studenten op basis van stellingen hun meester over het project.
"Veel samengewerkt in dit project", zegt O'Kane. "AUC en de American Research Center in Egypte onder veel van de kosten, vooral omdat ik heb natuurlijk vrij in de tijd dat ik werkte aan het project. Ook was er een project-directeur, Dr Lubna Lufti en drie studenten die ontvangen beurzen. "
Het project heeft problemen ondervonden probeert monumenten in militaire gebieden zoals Moqqatam en Heliopolis registreren; te wijten aan restauratie inspanningen sommige monument inscripties kan niet worden gefotografeerd. Toch is de publicatie aan de gang. Het Centrum voor Documentatie van cultureel en natuurlijk erfgoed (Cultnat) is het ontwikkelen van gebruiksvriendelijke software voor de database, zodat deze kan worden gelegd op een DVD, gepland voor release later in het jaar, gevolgd door een website die updates te verstrekken over het project .
"De publicatie van deze gegevens het meest waarschijnlijk zal een samenwerking tussen Arce, AUC en Cultnat," zegt O'Kane. "Het zal wereldwijde distributie via de AUC en zal zeer voordelig zijn voor islamitische kunst historici, epigraphers en kalligrafen, evenals linguïsten." Et

Egypt's Cave Underworld Under Investigation...Egypt jeskyně Underworld předmětem šetření

2010-02-24T12:16:00.000-08:00

Inside Giza's cave underworld
Today, Egypt's leading Egyptologist, Dr Zahi Hawass, has revealed that an excavation team under his charge is investigating an ancient tomb at the centre of claims regarding the alleged discovery of a cave underworld beneath the Pyramids of Giza.
This is a surprising announcement for several reasons, not the least being that the "alleged" cave system has already been explored and photographed by British writer and explorer Andrew Collins. In August 2008, Collins announced that he had rediscovered the entrance to a previously unexplored cave system, entered via a mysterious tomb several hundred meters west of the Great Pyramid. Perhaps it was how Collins discovered the cave entrance that has caused the controversy.

The alignment of the three pyramids with the stars of Orion's belt [above] is not perfect. Much has been made observation that the three pyramids on the Giza plateau appear slightly mis-aligned. They are not on a straight line. Since we marvel at the mathematical perfection of the early Egyptians, this has bothered investigators. Thus when in 1993 Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert in their bestselling book The Orion Mystery saw the three 'belt' stars of Orion as defining the ground-plan of the Giza Pyramids the theory was met with cautious enthusiasm. However, not all were convinced by the "Orion Correlation Theory" (OCT), as it became known.
The alignment wasn't "perfect" but it was close enough for many Egyptologists. But not for Andrew Collins.

The alignment with the "wings" of Cygnus [above] is perfect.Collins discovered another group of stars in the constellation Cygnus that matched with the same perfection that was the trademark of the Egyptians. By superimposing the stars of Cygnus over the three pyramids he could see that one star, Deneb, was not aligned. Looking where something should be -- a pyramid or temple -- there was nothing. Perhaps time had destroyed it? Perhaps it was buried? Or perhaps it was a sign that something else was under the plateau, waiting to be discovered.
Collins later found clues left in the 200-year-old memoirs of British diplomat and explorer Henry Salt. Salt wrote how, in 1817, he and Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia had investigated cave "catacombs" at Giza for a distance of "several hundred yards" before coming across a "spacious" chamber. This chamber linked to three others of equal size, from which went various labyrinthine passages, one of which the Italian later explored for a distance of "300 feet further".
Collins decided to look for these caves in the area where the unmarked star of Cygnus would align in relation to the three pyramids. He discovered a series of catacombs, as Henry Salt had described, but no sign of any caves. Then, as he was about to leave the site he noticed a break in the catacomb wall which eventually revealed the entrance to this huge complex network of caves.
Excited by this monumental discovery, Collins immediately went to inform the Egyptian authorities and expected them to be as excited as he was. Wrong!

Why Cygnus x-1 is unusual Several thousand light-years away, near the "heart" of Cygnus, the swan, two stars are locked in a gravitational embrace. One star is a blue supergiant, known as HDE 226868. It is about 30 times as massive as the Sun and 400,000 times brighter. The other star is 5 to 10 times the mass of the Sun, but it's extremely small. The object must be the collapsed core of a star. Its mass is too great to be a white dwarf or a neutron star, though, so it must be a black hole -- the corpse of a star that once resembled the supergiant.
The system is called Cygnus X-1, indicating it was the first source of X-rays discovered in the constellation Cygnus. Discovered by the Uhuru X-ray satellite in the early 1970s, it was also one of the first suspected black holes.
The X-rays come from a disk of gas that's spiraling into the black hole. As the two stars orbit each other once every 5.6 days, the black hole's gravitational pull causes the blue supergiant to "bulge" toward it. In profile, the supergiant would resemble an egg, with the small end aimed at the black hole. But this egg doesn't have a smooth edge. Instead, hot gas flows away from the star toward the black hole. The gas forms a wide, flat accretion disk that encircles the black hole. Friction heats the gas to a billion degrees or more, causing it to emit a torrent of X-rays -- enough to fry any living thing within millions of miles.
But the X-ray glow isn't steady. Instead, it flickers, which is one bit of evidence that identifies the dark member of the binary as a black hole. Gas enters the outer edge of the accretion disk then spirals closer to the star. If the center of the disk contained a normal star, or even a superdense neutron star, then the disk would get hotter and brighter all the way in to its center, with the brightest X-rays coming from the middle. Instead, the X-ray glow cuts off well outside the center of the disk. Observations with Hubble Space Telescope reveal that the central region occasionally flares up as blobs of gas break off the inner edge of the disk and spiral into the black hole.
These blobs are accelerated to a large fraction of the speed of light, so they circle the black hole hundreds of times per second. This causes the system's X-rays to "flicker." If the blobs of gas were orbiting a larger object, they would not move as fast, so their high-speed revolution is one bit of circumstantial evidence that identifies the dark companion as a black hole.
The black hole's strong gravitational field "redshifts" the energy emitted by this gas to longer and longer wavelengths. Eventually, as the gas approaches the event horizon, the redshift becomes so great that the material disappears from view -- just before it spirals into the black hole.

Egyptian authorities try to hide the cave discovery
According to Collins,

"Dr Hawass [Secretary General for Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities] actually denied the existence of the caves. He has done this publicly. Why he has done this is a matter of debate. The most easiest explanation is that the preliminary investigations that he did following our visit to inform him of the discovery of this cave, in April 2008, meant that his people went in the tomb overlooked the entrance, as we did initially."

Fifteen months later, bowing to the inquiries made by the press and Egyptian scholars, Dr Hawass confirmed that he has ordered an all-Egyptian team to explore the tomb at the center of the "controversy". Controversy? How could a discovery on such a scale be controversial?

"We are clearing this system now, and it is a Late Period catacomb, like many others around Egypt," he stated this week. "There is no mystery about it, and there is no connection with esoteric topics. We will publish our results as part of our normal process."

While applauding Dr Hawass's new interest in the site, Collins remains sceptical of his motives. "We knew in August that he had started clearing the tomb," he said. "The excavations began almost immediately after knowledge of the cave discovery hit the internet."
Collins is also unconvinced by Hawass's explanation of what he calls the "catacomb". "Does his use of the term 'system' now suggest that he has found and entered the caves, which he previously denied even existed? he asks.

"My colleagues and I have examined photographic evidence of dynastic catacombs throughout Egypt, and these all appear to be carved by human hands." --Hawass

But photographs don't lie. Collins says, "Those at Giza are natural, and penetrate the bedrock for many hundreds of metres, perhaps following the course of local geological faulting."
Although Dr Hawass suggests there is no mystery surrounding the "catacomb", Collins suspects that the caves extend beneath the Second Pyramid, where ancient tradition puts the legendary Tomb of Hermes [right], Egypt's legendary founder. This is significant because Hermes is known as the Great Wisdom Bringer and Collins suspects that the chambers could possibly reveal something left behind by Hermes -- something like the legendary Hall of Records.
The Hall of Records -- as prophesied by Edgar Cayce?
According to the legendary psychic, Edgar Cayce, the pyramids were constructed by an ancient civilization that had its origins in Atlantis. This great civilization existed somewhere around 10,000 to 11,000 BC and was responsible for building the Great Pyramid, and for burying the lost history of mankind in a chamber called "The Hall of Records."

"The records are one... [They contain] "...a record of Atlantis from the beginnings of those periods when the spirit took form or began the encasements in that land." -- Cayce

The records extend through the first destructions of that ancient civilization, the exodus of Atlanteans to other lands, and the final destruction of Atlantis. They contain a description of the building of the Great Pyramid, as well as a prophecy of "who, what, where, would come [to make] the opening of the records." Collins says,

"This has never been found. So perhaps it is still there, awaiting discovery, somewhere close to where Salt and Caviglia reached nearly 200 years ago. "I do believe that the caves that we have entered are part of a much larger complex that stretches right beneath the entire Giza plateau."

Collins explains that the network of caves are natural and resemble Swiss Cheese. He believes they were formed long before the pyramids were built and suggests that they could be the reason the pyramids were built on this site. The early civilizations believed that part of the dying process involved traversing the so-called "underworld" and these caves might have been viewed as the entrance to this underworld. There is evidence of human activity in the deepest parts of the caves.

According to Collins, "Satellite images would tend to suggest that the caves... go all the way to the Second Pyramid." A little west of here archaeologists have found a collection of bird mummies. Since the constellation of Cygnus is historically depicted as a bird, specifically a swan, it is theorized that worshippers left mummified birds as an offering associated with this star configuration or perhaps to Socar, the bird-like figure that was the ruler of the underworld.

From the entrance of the caves it appears that you can travel towards the Second Pyramid and directly under the spot where the Cygnus star, Deneb, would be aligned with the three pyramids and the wings of Cygnus. Is this where we will find the famed "Hall of Records"? Will the Egyptian government allow the world to know about what's really there? Why are they being so secretive? Uvnitř jeskyně podsvětí v Gíze

Dnes, Egypt přední egyptolog Dr. Zahi Hawass, bylo zjištěno, že výkop tým pod jeho obvinění vyšetřuje starověké hrobky v centru tvrzení o údajné objevení jeskyně podsvětí pod Pyramidy v Gíze.

To je překvapivé oznámení z několika důvodů, v neposlední řadě je, že "údajná" jeskynní systém již byly prozkoumány a fotografoval britský spisovatel a cestovatel Andrew Collins. V srpnu 2008, Collins oznámil, že nově objevený vstup do dosud neprozkoumaných jeskyní systém, zadané přes tajemné hrobky několik set metrů na západ od Velké pyramidy. Možná to bylo, jak Collins objeven ke vchodu do jeskyně, která vedla polemiku.

Sladění tří pyramid s hvězdami pásu Oriona [výše] není dokonalý.

Hodně došlo zjištění, že tři pyramidy v Gíze plošině se jeví spíše jako mis-sladěny. Nejsou-li na přímce. Vzhledem k tomu, žasneme nad matematickou dokonalost brzy Egypťanů, to však neobtěžoval vyšetřovatelů. Když si tedy v roce 1993 Robert Bauval a Adrian Gilbert ve svém bestselleru Orion Mystery viděla tři 'pás' hvězdy Orion, jak definovat země-plán Giza Pyramids teorie se setkal s nadšením opatrný. Nicméně, ne všichni byli přesvědčeni o "Orion Srovnávací teorie" (říjen), jak to stalo se známé.

Vyrovnání není "dokonalý", ale to bylo dost blízko na mnoho egyptologů. Ale ne pro Andrew Collins.

Sbližování s "křídly" Cygnus [výše] je perfektní.

Collins objevil další skupiny hvězd v souhvězdí Labutě, které uzavřeno se stejnou dokonalostí, která byla ochranná známka Egypťanů. Od překrývá hvězd Cygnus přes tři pyramidy, viděl, že jedna hvězda, Deneb, nebyla sladěna. Hledáte-li něco, co by mělo být - pyramidu nebo chrám - nebylo nic. Možná čas zničil to? Možná to byl pohřben? Nebo snad je to znamení, že něco bylo pod plató, které čekají na objevení.

Collins později našel stopy vlevo v 200-rok-starý paměti britský diplomat a cestovatel Henry Salt. Soli, jak píše, v roce 1817, on a italský objevitel Giovanni caviglia šetřila jeskyně "katakomby" v Gíze na vzdálenost "několik set metrů" před vstupem přes "prostorný" komoře. Tato komora spojené s třemi dalšími o stejné velikosti, z nichž šel různých labyrintu chodeb, z nichž jedna italská později prozkoumány na vzdálenost "300 stop další".

Collins se rozhodl hledat těchto jeskyních v oblasti, kde neoznačené hvězdou Labutě by se přizpůsobit, pokud jde o tři pyramidy. Objevil řadu katakomby, jako Henry Salt popsal, ale nic nenasvědčuje jeskyní. Pak, když se chystal opustit místo, všiml si přestávku v katakomby zdi, která se nakonec ukázalo, vstup do tohoto obrovského komplexu síť jeskyní.

Nadšeni touto monumentální objev, Collins okamžitě šel informovat na egyptské úřady, a očekává, že mají být vzrušený jako on. Špatný!

Proč Cygnus X-1 je neobvyklé

Několik tisíc světelných let daleko-, u "srdce" Labutě, labutě, dvě hvězdy jsou zamčené v gravitačním objetí. Jedna hvězda je modrý veleobr, známý jako HDE 226868. To je asi 30 krát hmotnější než Slunce a 400000 krát jasnější. Další hvězda je 5 až 10 krát hmotnější než Slunce, ale je to velmi malý. Objekt musí být zhroutil jádro hvězdy. Jeho hmotnost je natolik velký, že se bílý trpaslík nebo neutronová hvězda, i když, tak to musí být černé díry - mrtvolu hvězdy, která kdysi podobala veleobr.

Systém se jmenuje Cygnus X-1, což značí, že byl první zdroj X-záření objevil v souhvězdí Labutě. Objeven Uhuru X-ray satelit na začátku roku 1970, to byl také jeden z prvních podezřelých černých děr.

X-ray disk pochází z plynu, který je po spirále do černé díry. Jako dvě hvězdy obíhají kolem sebe jednou za 5,6 dnů, černé díry je gravitace způsobí, že modrý veleobr na "boule" směrem k němu. V profilu by superobří připomínají vejce, s malým konce zaměřené na černé díry. Ale to vejce nemá hladký okraj. Místo toho, horký plyn proudí směrem od hvězdy k černé díře. Plyn tvoří široký, plochý akrečního disku, který obklopuje černou díru. Tření, ohřívá plyn miliardy stupňů nebo více, přimět to, aby vydávaly proud X-ray - stačí, aby potěr jakékoli živé bytosti do milionů kilometrů.

Ale X-ray záři, není stabilní. Místo toho, poblikává, což je jeden kousek z důkazů, že identifikuje tmavé členem binární jako černá díra. Plyn vstupuje do vnějšího okraje akrečního disku pak spirály blíže ke hvězdě. Pokud se střed disku obsahuje normální hvězdy, nebo dokonce superhustých neutronovou hvězdu, pak se disk dostane teplejší a jasnější po celou cestu do jeho středu, s nejjasnější X-záření, přicházející ze středu. Místo toho, X-ray záři uřízne i mimo střed disku. Pozorování Hubbleova kosmického dalekohledu ukazují, že centrální oblast občas světlice jako kuličky plynu přerušit vnitřního okraje disku a spirály do černé díry.

Tyto kuličky jsou urychlovány na velká část rychlosti světla, a tak se kruh černá díra stokrát za sekundu. To způsobí, že systém X-paprsky, "blikání". Pokud se kuličky na zemní plyn obíhá větší objekt, oni by se pohybovat tak rychle, aby jejich vysoce-rychlost revoluce je jeden kousek z nepřímých důkazů, které identifikuje tmavé společník jako černá díra.

Černé díry silným gravitačním polem "redshifts" energie vyzařované tohoto plynu na delší a delší vlnové délky. Nakonec, jak plyn přístupy horizontu událostí, rudý posuv stane se tak velké, že materiál, zmizí z dohledu - těsně před tím, než spirálách do černé díry.

Egyptské úřady se snaží skrýt objevení jeskyně

Podle Collins,

    "Dr. Hawass [generální tajemník Nejvyšší rady pro památky Egypta] vlastně popřel existenci jeskyní. Udělal to veřejně. Proč to udělal to je věc debaty.

    Nejvíce Nejjednodušší vysvětlení je, že předběžné vyšetřování, že to udělal po naší návštěvě ho informoval o objevu této jeskyně, v dubnu 2008, znamená, že jeho lidé šli do hrobky přehlédl vchod, jako jsme to udělali na začátku. "

O patnáct měsíců později, uklonil se šetření ze strany tisku a egyptských vědců, Dr. Hawass potvrdil, že nařídila všem-egyptský tým zkoumat hrobky v centru "diskuse". Diskuse? Jak by mohl objev v takovém měřítku, být kontroverzní?

    "Jsme zúčtování tento systém nyní, a to je Pozdní doby katakomby, stejně jako mnoho dalších lidí po celém Egyptě," prohlásil tento týden. "Není žádné tajemství o tom, a neexistuje žádná souvislost s esoterickou témata. Budeme publikovat naše výsledky jsou součástí naší normální proces."

Zatímco tleskal Dr. Hawass nový zájem o místě, Collins zůstává skeptický jeho motivy. "Věděli jsme, že se v srpnu začalo čištění hrobu," řekl. "Vykopávek začala téměř okamžitě po poznání objevení jeskyně hitem internetu."

Collins je rovněž přesvědčen o vysvětlení Hawass to, co nazývá "katakomby". "Je jeho užívání výrazu 'systému' nyní naznačují, že našel a vstoupil do jeskyně, kterou předtím popíral vůbec existuje? Ptá se.

    "Moji kolegové a já jsme zkoumat fotografické důkazy o dynastických katakomb v celém Egyptě, a to vše se zdá být vytesaná do lidských rukou." - Hawass

Fotografie, ale nelžu. Collins říká: "Ti v Gíze jsou přirozené, a proniknout základem pro mnoho stovek metrů, snad po průběhu místních geologických chybující."

I když Dr. Hawass naznačuje, že není žádné tajemství obklopující "katakomby", Collins podezření, že jeskyně pod rozšířit druhé pyramidy, kde starodávné tradice staví legendární hrobka Hermes [right], Egypt legendární zakladatel. To je významné, protože Hermes je známé jako Velká moudrost Bringer a Collins komory má podezření, že by mohly odhalit něco, co po sobě zanechal Hermes - něco jako legendární Hall of Records.

Hall of Records - jak prorokovali skrze Edgar Cayce?

Podle legendárního psychické, Edgar Cayce, byly pyramidy sestaven za starověké civilizace, která má své kořeny v Atlantidě. Tato velká civilizace existovala někde kolem 10.000 až 11.000 před Kristem a byl odpovědný za stavební Velké pyramidy, a pohřbila ztracené historie lidstva v komoře s názvem "The Hall of Records."

    "Záznamy jsou jedním z ... [Obsahují]" ... záznam Atlantis od počátků těchto dob, kdy duch se formulář, nebo začal encasements v této zemi. "- Cayce

Záznamy rozšířit pomocí prvního zničení této dávné civilizace, odchod Atlanteans do jiných zemí, a konečné zničení Atlantidy. Obsahují popis stavby Velké pyramidy, stejně jako proroctví "kdo, co, kde, přijde [aby] otevření záznamů."

Collins říká,

    "To nebylo nikdy nalezeno. Takže možná, že je stále tam, čeká na objevení, někde blízko místa, kde sůl a caviglia dosáhl téměř 200 lety.

    "Věřím, že jeskyně, že jsme vstoupili, jsou součástí mnohem většího komplexu, který se rozkládá přímo pod celou plošinu Gíze."

Collins vysvětluje, že síť jeskyní jsou přirozené a podobají švýcarský sýr. Věří, že byly vytvořeny dávno předtím, než byly postaveny pyramidy, a naznačuje, že by mohly být důvodem, proč pyramidy byly postaveny na této stránce. Raných civilizací věřili, že část procesu umírání podílejí projíždějící tak-zvané "podsvětí" a tyto jeskyně mohly být považovány za vstup do tohoto podsvětí. Tam je důkaz lidské činnosti v nejhlubších částech jeskyní.

Podle Collins, "Satelitní snímky by se spíše o tom, že jeskyně ... jet celou cestu až do druhé pyramidy." Malý západní zde archeologové našli sbírku ptačích mumie. Vzhledem k tomu, v souhvězdí Labutě je tradičně líčen jako pták, konkrétně labuť je se domníval, že věřící levé mumifikované ptáků spojené s nabídkou této hvězdy konfigurace nebo snad na Socar, pták-jako postava, která byla vládcem podsvětí.

Od vchodu do jeskyně se zdá, že můžete cestovat na druhé pyramidy a přímo v místě, kde by Cygnus hvězda, Deneb, být v souladu s tři pyramidy a křídla Labutě. Je to, kde najdeme proslulý "Hall of Records"? Bude Egyptská vláda umožnila světu vědět o tom, co je opravdu existuje? Proč jsou tak utajené?

الجيزة والرذيلة داخل كهف
اليوم ، عالم المصريات في مصر الرائدة ، الدكتور زاهي حواس ، قد كشفت عن ان فريقا للتنقيب تحت قيادته هو المسؤول عن التحقيق في قبر قديم فى وسط مطالبات بشأن ما تردد عن اكتشاف العالم السرى للكهف تحت أهرامات الجيزة.
هذا الاعلان المفاجئ لأسباب عدة ، ليس أقلها أن يجري "المزعومة" نظام كهف قد تم استكشافها وتصويرها من قبل الكاتب والمستكشف البريطاني اندرو كولينز. في آب / أغسطس 2008 ، كولينز أعلن أنه اكتشف مدخل إلى النظام السابق غير مستكشفة كهف ، ودخل عبر قبر غامضة عدة مئات من الأمتار إلى الغرب من الهرم الأكبر. ربما كان كولينز كيف اكتشف مدخل الكهف الذي تسبب الجدل.
محاذاة الاهرامات الثلاثة مع النجوم من حزام أوريون [أعلاه] ليست مثالية.
كبيرا قد تم احرازه الملاحظة أن الاهرامات الثلاثة على هضبة الجيزة ويبدو قليلا خطاء الانحياز. أنهم ليسوا على خط مستقيم. إذ أننا نتعجب من الكمال الرياضي للمصريين في وقت مبكر ، وهذا قد ازعجت المحققين. ثم في عام 1993 عندما روبرت Bauval وادريان جلبرت في قائمة أفضل الكتب مبيعا والغموض حزام أوريون وشهد ثلاثة '' نجوم أوريون كما تحدد الخطة على أرض الواقع من أهرامات الجيزة من الناحية النظرية ، كان اجتمع مع الحماس الحذر. ومع ذلك ، لم يكن الجميع مقتنعين بها "أوريون ارتباط نظرية" (أكتوبر) ، لأنه أصبح معروفا.
المحاذاة ليست "مثالية" لكنها كانت قريبة بما فيه الكفاية لكثير من علماء المصريات. ولكن ليس لاندرو كولينز.
المحاذاة مع أجنحة "" من كوكبة الدجاجة [أعلاه] على ما يرام.
كولينز اكتشف فريق آخر من النجوم في كوكبة الدجاجة التي المتطابقة مع الكمال نفسه الذي كانت عليه في العلامة التجارية للمصريين. بواسطة تركيب النجوم في كوكبة الدجاجة أكثر من الاهرامات الثلاثة التي يمكن أن نرى أن نجمة واحدة ، دينيب ، لم تكن منحازة. يبحث فيها شيء ينبغي أن يكون -- الهرم أو المعبد -- لم يكن هناك شيء. ربما يكون الوقت قد دمروه؟ ربما كان دفنها؟ أو ربما كانت اشارة الى ان شيئا آخر كان تحت الهضبة وينتظر ان يتم اكتشافها.
كولينز في وقت لاحق العثور على الادلة التي تركتها في 200 عاما من العمر من مذكرات دبلوماسي بريطاني والمستكشف هنري سولت. كيف كتب الملح ، في عام 1817 ، وكان المستكشف الايطالي جيوفاني Caviglia حققت في سراديب الموتى "الكهف" في محافظة الجيزة على مسافة من "عدة مئات من الامتار" قبل ان يأتي عبر "واسعا" الغرفة. هذه الغرفة ترتبط ثلاثة آخرين متساوية في الحجم ، والتي ذهب من مختلف الممرات المتعرجة ، واحدة منها على الايطالية في وقت لاحق استكشاف لمسافة "300 قدم أخرى".
كولينز قرر أن ننظر لهذه الكهوف في المنطقة التي لا تحمل علامات مميزة للنجم الدجاجة من شأنه أن يجعل في ما يتعلق الاهرامات الثلاثة. اكتشف سلسلة من سراديب الموتى ، وهنري سولت قد وصفت ، ولكن لم تظهر أي علامات على الكهوف. ثم ، عندما كان يستعد لمغادرة الموقع انه لاحظ وجود كسر في جدار سرداب الموتى التي كشفت في نهاية المطاف على مدخل هذه الشبكة المعقدة الضخمة من الكهوف.
متحمس لهذا الاكتشاف الأثرية ، كولينز على الفور توجه الى إبلاغ السلطات المصرية والتي يتوقع لها أن تكون منتشيا كما كان. خطأ!
لماذا الدجاجة س 1 هو غير عادي
عدة آلاف سنة ضوئية ، بالقرب من "قلب" من كوكبة الدجاجة ، بجعة ، واثنين من النجوم التي دخلت في احتضان الجاذبية. نجمة واحدة هي supergiant الزرقاء ، والمعروفة باسم HDE 226868. فهو يقع في حوالي 30 أضعاف الكبير مثل الشمس و400،000 مرات أكثر إشراقا. النجم الآخر هو من 5 إلى 10 أضعاف كتلة الشمس ، ولكنه صغير للغاية. الكائن يجب أن يكون جوهر انهار نجم. كتلتها أكبر من أن يكون قزما أبيض أو نجم نيوتروني ، ورغم ذلك فإنه يجب أن يكون الثقب الأسود -- على جثة نجمة أنه بمجرد يشبه supergiant.
نظام يسمى الدجاجة إكس 1 ، مشيرا إلى أنه كان المصدر الأول للأشعة السينية التي اكتشفت في كوكبة الدجاجة. اكتشف من قبل العاشر اوهورو أشعة القمر الصناعي في أوائل 1970s ، كان أيضا واحدا من أول المشتبه الثقوب السوداء.
وتأتي الأشعة السينية من قرص من هذا الغاز المتصاعد في ثقب اسود. كما أن اثنين من النجوم المدار بعضهما البعض مرة كل 5.6 يوما ، والثقوب السوداء والجاذبية يؤدي supergiant الزرقاء إلى "انتفاخ" تجاهها. في لمحة ، فإن supergiant تشبه البيضة ، مع نهاية الصغيرة التي تهدف إلى ثقب أسود. ولكن هذا البيض لا تملك تفوقا على نحو سلس. بدلا من ذلك ، تدفق الغازات الساخنة بعيدا عن النجم باتجاه الثقب الأسود. ويشكل الغاز واسعة ، شقة تراكم القرص الذي يطوق الثقب الأسود. الاحتكاك مع ارتفاع درجات الحرارة والغاز إلى درجة أو أكثر من مليار دولار ، الامر الذي ادى الى سيل من انبعاث الأشعة السينية -- بما فيه الكفاية لجمهورية يوغوسلافيا الاتحادية أي شيء من الذين يعيشون داخل الملايين من الأميال.
ولكن للأشعة السينية توهج ليست ثابتة. بدلا من ذلك ، ومضات ، والذي هو واحد قليلا من الأدلة على أن يحدد عضو المظلم من ثنائية كما في ثقب اسود. الغاز يدخل في الطرف الخارجي للقرص ثم تراكم اللوالب أقرب إلى نجمة. إذا كان مركز القرص الواردة نجم عادي ، أو حتى بالغة الكثافة النجوم النيوترونية ، ثم القرص ستحصل على أكثر سخونة وأكثر إشراقا في كل الطريق الى وسطها ، مع العاشر ألمع السينية القادمة من وسطها. بدلا من ذلك ، والأشعة السينية توهج تقطع جيدا خارج مركز القرص. ملاحظات تلسكوب هابل الفضائي تكشف عن أن المنطقة الوسطى تشتعل أحيانا كما النقط من انقطاع الغاز قبالة الحافة الداخلية من القرص ودوامة إلى الثقب الأسود.
هذه النقط هي تسارع الى نسبة كبيرة من سرعة الضوء ، لذلك هم في دائرة الثقب الأسود مئات المرات في الثانية الواحدة. هذا يتسبب في نظام الأشعة السينية ل"وميض". إذا كانت النقط من الغاز كانت تدور حول جسم أكبر ، وأنها لن تتحرك بالسرعة ، وذلك لسرعة عالية للثورة هو واحد قليلا من الأدلة الظرفية التي تحدد رفيق الظلام كما في ثقب اسود.
ثقب أسود في مجال الجاذبية القوية "زحزحات الحمراء" الطاقة المنبعثة من هذا الغاز إلى موجات أطول وأطول. في نهاية المطاف ، لأن الغاز النهج في الأفق الحدث ، لطيف احمر يصبح كبيرا لدرجة أن يختفي من عرض المواد -- فقط قبل أن يفلت إلى الثقب الأسود.
السلطات المصرية في محاولة لاخفاء اكتشاف كهف
وفقا لكولينز ،

    "الدكتور حواس [مصر الامين العام للمجلس الاعلى للآثار] فعلا نفى وجود الكهوف. لقد فعل ذلك علنا ، لماذا قام به هذا هو موضوع نقاش.

    الأكثر أسهل تفسير هو أن التحقيقات الاولية انه بعد زيارتنا ليبلغه اكتشاف هذا الكهف ، في نيسان / أبريل 2008 ، يعني أن شعبه ذهب في التغاضي عن مدخل المقبرة ، كما فعلنا في البداية. "
خمسة عشر شهرا في وقت لاحق ، والركوع على الاستفسارات التي قدمها العلماء والصحافة المصرية ، أكد الدكتور حواس انه اصدر اوامره لجميع الفريق المصري لاستكشاف قبر في وسط هذا الجدل "". الجدل؟ كيف يمكن لهذا الاكتشاف على مثل هذا النطاق تكون مثيرة للجدل؟

    واضاف "نحن إزالة هذا النظام الآن ، وأنه هو سرداب الموتى الفترة الأخيرة ، مثل كثيرين آخرين في جميع أنحاء مصر ،" صرح هذا الاسبوع. "ليس هناك سر في ذلك ، وليس هناك أي اتصال مع المواضيع مقصور على فئة معينة ، ونحن لدينا وسوف تنشر النتائج كجزء من عملية طبيعية".
بينما أثنى الدكتور حواس مصلحة جديدة في الموقع ، وكولينز لا تزال تشكك في دوافعه. "لقد عرفنا في آب / أغسطس أنه قد بدأ تطهير القبر" ، قال. "وبدأت أعمال الحفر على الفور تقريبا بعد المعرفة لاكتشاف كهف ضرب شبكة الانترنت".
كولينز هو أيضا غير مقتنعين بها حواس تفسير ما يسميه سرداب الموتى "". "هل كان استخدام مصطلح' نظام 'الآن تشير إلى أنه قد تم العثور عليها ودخلت الكهوف ، والذي سبق ان نفت حتى وجدت؟ يسأل.

    "أنا وزملائي قمنا بفحص أدلة فوتوغرافية من سلالي سراديب الموتى في جميع أنحاء مصر ، وهؤلاء جميعا على ما يبدو منحوتة يد الإنسان." -- حواس
ولكن الصور لا تكذب. يقول كولينز : "هذه هي طبيعية في الجيزة ، واختراق حجر الأساس لعدة مئات من الأمتار ، وربما لمتابعة مسار المحلية يخطأ الجيولوجية".
على الرغم من أن الدكتور حواس يوحي ليس هناك من سر المحيطة سرداب الموتى "" ، أن المشتبه بهم كولينز الكهوف تمتد تحت الهرم الثاني ، حيث التقاليد القديمة يضع قبر الأسطوري لهيرميس [الحق] ، المؤسس الاسطوري في مصر. هذا أمر مهم لأن هيرميس يعرف قدرا كبيرا من الحكمة وجاء ب كولينز يشتبه في ان الغرف يمكن أن تكشف شيئا من مخلفات هيرميس -- شيء من هذا القبيل في قاعة الأسطوري من السجلات.
قاعة الوثائق -- كما تنبأ إدغار سايس؟
وفقا للأسطورة نفسية ، إدغار سايس ، الأهرامات تم بناؤها من قبل حضارة قديمة التي كانت أصولها في اتلانتيس. هذه الحضارة العظيمة موجودة في مكان ما حول 10،000 الى 11،000 قبل الميلاد ، وكان مسؤولا عن بناء الهرم الأكبر ، ودفن التاريخ فقدت البشرية في دائرة ما يسمى ب "القاعة من الوثائق."

    "والسجلات هي واحدة... [وهي تحتوي على]"... وهو رقم قياسي اتلانتيس من بدايات تلك الفترات التي يكون فيها روح استغرق شكل أو التغليفات وبدأت في تلك الأرض. "-- سايس
المحاضر من خلال توسيع نطاق التدمير الأول من تلك الحضارة القديمة ، ونزوح اطلانطس إلى أراض أخرى ، والتدمير النهائي لاتلانتيس. أنها تتضمن وصفا لبناء الهرم الأكبر ، وكذلك نبوءة "من ، ماذا ، أين ، من شأنه أن يأتي [لجعل] فتح السجلات."
يقول كولينز ،

    "وهذا لم يكن أبدا وجدت ، لذلك ربما لا يزال هناك ، والتي تنتظر الاكتشاف ، في مكان ما بالقرب من المكان والملح وCaviglia الى ما يقرب من 200 عاما مضت.

    وقال "اعتقد ان الكهوف أننا دخلنا هي جزء من مشروع أكبر المعقدة التي تمتد الحق تحت هضبة الجيزة بأكملها."
كولينز يوضح أن شبكة من الكهوف الطبيعية وتشبه الجبن السويسري. كان يعتقد أنها تشكلت قبل فترة طويلة من الاهرامات بنيت ويوحي بأنها قد تكون وراء الاهرامات بنيت على هذا الموقع. الحضارات في وقت مبكر عن اعتقاده بأن جزءا من عملية يموتون تشارك يجتاز ما يسمى "العالم السفلي" ، وهذه الكهوف ربما كان ينظر إليها على أنها المدخل إلى هذا العالم السفلي. هناك أدلة على النشاط البشري في الأجزاء الأعمق من الكهوف.
وفقا لكولينز "، صور الأقمار الصناعية من شأنه أن يوحي بأن الكهوف... يذهب كل في طريقه إلى الهرم الثاني". والغرب قليلا من هنا علماء الآثار عثروا على مجموعة من المومياوات الطيور. منذ كوكبة الدجاجة هي تاريخيا كما يصور طائر ، وتحديدا بجعة ، هو وضع نظرية مفادها أن خروج المصلين طيور محنطة كقربان المرتبطة بهذا التكوين نجمة ، أو ربما لسوكار ، والطيور مثل الرقم الذي كان حاكما للعالم الآخر.
من مدخل الكهوف يبدو أنه يمكنك السفر نحو الهرم والثانية مباشرة في إطار المكان الذي نجم الدجاجة ، دينيب ، من شأنه أن يكون متسقا مع الاهرامات الثلاثة وأجنحة الدجاجة. هذا هو حيث سنجد الشهير "قاعة الوثائق"؟ الحكومة المصرية لن تسمح للعالم لمعرفة حقيقة ما هناك؟ لماذا هم هكذا يجري السرية؟

Opětovném 3500 Year-Starý egyptský Perfume ..Recreating A 3,500 Year-Old Egyptian Perfume

2010-02-16T13:42:00.001-08:00

Screening to 3500-rok-starý flakon s počítačový tomograf, vědci na univerzitě zjištěné vysušený zbytků tekutin, které se chtějí podrobit další analýze. Ti by dokonce mohli uspět při obnově této vůni.
Farao Hatšepsut byla síla-vědomé žena, která převzala otěže vlády v Egyptě kolem roku 1479 př. nl Byla jen předpokládaný, že reprezentuje její krok-syn, Thutmose III, ve třech letech, až byl dost starý na to, aby převzal, ale bezvládí trvalo 20 let.
Hatšepsut parfém je také pravděpodobně demonstraci své moci. "Myslíme, že je pravděpodobné, že jedna složka byla kadidlo - vůně bohů", říká Michael Höveler-Müller, kurátorka Egyptského muzea univerzity v Bonnu.
Znít bláznivě? Možná ne. Je známo, že v průběhu jejího regentství Haptshepsut zavázal výpravu do Punt - moderní Eritrea - a Egypťané byli dovážející vzácné zboží, jako eben, slonovina, zlato, kadidlo a odtud od třetího tisíciletí před naším letopočtem Zřejmě expedice přivezl celé vonné rostliny, které Hatšepsut pak vysadil v blízkosti svého pohřební chrám.
Hatšepsut zemřela v roce 1457 B.C. Analýza mumie připsal jí ukázal, že panovník byl zřejmě mezi 45 a 60 let na konci svého života, že je také nadváhu a trpí cukrovkou, rakoviny, osteoporózy a artritidy. Zřejmě z důvodů bezpečnosti, byla stanovena na odpočinku v hrobě její kojná.
V roce 1903, více než 3300 rok později, slavný egyptolog Howard Carter narazil na dvě mumie. Nicméně, více než 100 let dříve, než bylo předat mrtvolu faraónovo mohly být identifikovány pomocí analýzy DNA a dentální v roce 2007. Thutmose III, mimochodem, zdá se, že jediná slza přístřešek pro jeho krok-matku, jako za jeho vlády měl každý obrázek, který zničil jí ukázal jako pravítko, a mohly by jí náleželo.
Filigránu flakon je nyní předmětem zkoumání, které výzkumníci v Bonnu nese nápis s názvem faraóna. Proto to bylo pravděpodobně jednou ve svém držení. Plavidlo je mimořádně dobře zachovalý. "Tak jsme za to může být obohacující, aby se na televizních obrazovkách ve Radiologické oddělení univerzitní kliniky," Höveler-Müller vysvětluje. "Pokud vím, že to nebylo nikdy předtím".
Tento světové premiéře bude nyní s největší pravděpodobností bude následovat ještě jeden: "vysušený zbytků tekutin lze jasně rozpoznat v x-ray fotografie", vysvětluje kurátorka muzea. "Naše farmakologové jsou nyní bude analyzovat tento sediment". Výsledky by mohly být k dispozici v dobrém rok. Jsou-li úspěšní, vědci v Bonnu jsou dokonce doufají, že "rekonstruovat", takže parfém, 3500 rok po smrti ženy, mezi jehož majetku bylo zjištěno, mohl vůně pak se revitalizuje.

Screening this 3,500-year-old flacon with a computer tomograph, scientists at the university detected the desiccated residues of a fluid, which they now want to submit to further analysis. They might even succeed in reconstructing this scent.

Pharaoh Hatshepsut was a power-conscious woman who assumed the reins of government in Egypt around the year 1479 B.C. She was only supposed to represent her step-son, Thutmose III, age three, until he was old enough to take over but the interregnum lasted 20 years.

Hatshepsut´s perfume is also presumably a demonstration of her power. "We think it probable that one constituent was incense – the scent of the gods", says Michael Höveler-Müller, the curator of Bonn University´s Egyptian Museum.

Sound crazy? Perhaps not. It is known that in the course of her regency Haptshepsut undertook an expedition to Punt - modern Eritrea - and the Egyptians had been importing precious goods such as ebony, ivory, gold, and incense from there since the third millennium B.C. Apparently the expedition brought back whole incense plants, which Hatshepsut then had planted in the vicinity of her funerary temple.

Hatshepsut died in 1457 B.C. Analysis of the mummy ascribed to her showed that the ruler was apparently between 45 and 60 years of age at the end of her life; that she was also overweight, and suffering from diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis and arthritis. Obviously for reasons of security, she was laid to rest in the tomb of her wet nurse.

In 1903, over 3,300 years later, the famous Egyptologist Howard Carter stumbled upon the two mummies. However, more than 100 years were to pass before the Pharaoh´s corpse could be identified using DNA and dental analysis in the year 2007. Thutmose III, incidentally, appears not to have shed a single tear for his step-mother, as during his reign he had every image destroyed which showed her as ruler, and which could have belonged to her.

The filigree flacon now under examination by the researchers in Bonn bears an inscription with the name of the Pharaoh. Hence it was probably once in her possession. The vessel is exceptionally well preserved. "So we considered it might be rewarding to have it screened in the University Clinic´s Radiology Department", Höveler-Müller explains. "As far as I know this has never been done before".

This world premier will now in all probability be followed by another one: "The desiccated residues of a fluid can be clearly discerned in the x-ray photographs", the museum´s curator explains. "Our pharmacologists are now going to analyse this sediment". The results could be available in a good year´s time. If they are successful, the scientists in Bonn are even hoping to "reconstruct" the perfume so that, 3,500 years after the death of the woman amongst whose possessions it was found, the scent could then be revitalized.

Egyptský Pharaoh května zemřelo na malárii, abnormality kostí..Egyptian Pharaoh May Have Died From Malaria, Bone Abnormalities

2010-02-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

DNA analysis of royal mummies suggest that malaria and bone abnormalities may have contributed to the death of Egyptian pharaoh King Tutankhamun, with other results appearing to identify members of the royal family, including King Tut’s father and mother, according to a new study published in the Journal of The American Medical Association. The findings may lead to a new way of researching the molecular genealogy and pathogen paleogenomics of the Pharaonic era, perhaps even a new field called 'molecular Egyptology.'

Because Tutankhamun died so young (age 19), and left no heirs, there have been numerous speculations regarding diseases that may have occurred in his family, as well as debate regarding the cause of Tutankhamun’s death. Also, artifacts have shown the royalty of that era as having a somewhat feminized or androgynous appearance. Diseases that have been suggested to explain this appearance include a form of gynecomastia (excessive development of the breasts in males; usually the result of a hormonal imbalance), Marfan syndrome and others.

“However, most of the disease diagnoses are hypotheses derived by observing and interpreting artifacts and not by evaluating the mummified remains of royal individuals apart from these artifacts,” authors of the JAMA paper write. There have also been questions regarding the identification of a number of royal mummies from this era and the exact relationships between some members of the royal family.

From September 2007 to October 2009, royal mummies underwent detailed anthropological, radiological, and genetic studies (DNA was extracted from 2 to 4 different biopsies per mummy).

In addition to Tutankhamun, 10 mummies (circa 1410-1324 B.C.) possibly or definitely closely related in some way to Tutankhamun were chosen; of these, the identities were certain for only 3. In addition to these 11 mummies, 5 other royal individuals dating to the early New Kingdom (circa 1550-1479 B.C.) were selected that were distinct from the supposed members of the Tutankhamun lineage. Most of these 5 mummies were used as a morphological (form and structure) and genetic control group. Genetic fingerprinting allowed the construction of a 5-generation pedigree of Tutankhamun's immediate lineage.

The researchers found that several of the anonymous mummies or those with suspected identities were now able to be addressed by name, which included KV35EL, who is Tiye, mother of the pharaoh Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamun, and the KV55 mummy, who is most probably Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamun. This kinship is supported in that several unique anthropological features are shared by the 2 mummies and that the blood group of both individuals is identical. The researchers identified the KV35YL mummy as likely Tutankhamun’s mother.

No signs of gynecomastia or Marfan syndrome were found. “Therefore, the particular artistic presentation of persons in the Amarna period is confirmed as a royally decreed style most probably related to the religious reforms of Akhenaten. It is unlikely that either Tutankhamun or Akhenaten actually displayed a significantly bizarre or feminine physique. It is important to note that ancient Egyptian kings typically had themselves and their families represented in an idealized fashion,” they write.

The researchers did find an accumulation of malformations in Tutankhamun's family. “Several pathologies including Kohler disease II [bone disorder] were diagnosed in Tutankhamun; none alone would have caused death. Genetic testing for STEVOR, AMA1, or MSP1 genes specific for Plasmodium falciparum [the malaria parasite] revealed indications of malaria tropica in 4 mummies, including Tutankhamun's.

These results suggest avascular bone necrosis [condition in which the poor blood supply to the bone leads to weakening or destruction of an area of bone] in conjunction with the malarial infection as the most likely cause of death in Tutankhamun. Walking impairment and malarial disease sustained by Tutankhamun is supported by the discovery of canes and an afterlife pharmacy in his tomb,” the authors write. They add that a sudden leg fracture, possibly from a fall, might have resulted in a life-threatening condition when a malaria infection occurred.

Analýza DNA královských mumií vyplývá, že malárie a kostní abnormality mohou přispět k smrti egyptského krále faraon Tutanchamon, s dalšími výsledky jsou uvedeny pro identifikaci členů královské rodiny, včetně otce krále Tutanchamona a matky, podle nové studie zveřejněné v Journal of American Medical Association. Nálezy mohou vést k novému způsobu výzkumu molekulární genealogie a patogenních paleogenomics éry Pharaonic, možná i nové pole s názvem 'molekulární egyptologie.'

Proto, že Tutanchamon zemřel tak mladý (19 let), a nezanechal dědice, tam byly četné spekulace o onemocnění, které se mohly vyskytnout v jeho rodině, stejně jako diskuse o příčině smrti Tutankhamun. Také artefakty ukázaly poplatku z té doby je s poněkud feminizované nebo androgynní vzhled. Nemoci, které byly navrženy k vysvětlení tohoto vzhledu zahrnují formy gynekomastie (zduření prsů u mužů, většinou v důsledku hormonální nerovnováha), Marfanův syndrom a další.
"Nicméně, většina z nemoci diagnózy jsou hypotézy získané pozorováním a tlumočení artefakty a nikoli hodnocení mumifikované ostatky královské osob kromě těchto artefaktů", autoři dokumentu JAMA psát. Vyskytly se však i otázky týkající se určení počtu královských mumií z této éry a přesné vztahy mezi některými členy královské rodiny.
Od září 2007 do října 2009, prošel královské mumie podrobné antropologické, radiologické a genetických studií (DNA byla extrahována 2 až 4 různé biopsie za mumii).
Kromě Tutankhamun, 10 mumie (cca 1410-1324 př. nl), možná nebo určitě úzce souvisí nějakým způsobem s Tutanchamona byly zvoleny, z nich, identity byly některé pouze 3. Kromě těchto 11 mumie, 5 jiné královské osoby pocházející z počátku Nové říše (asi 1550-1479 př. nl) byl vybrán, aby byly odlišné od předpokládaného členů rodu Tutankhamun. Většina z těchto 5 mumií byly použity jako morfologické (forma a struktura) a genetické kontrolní skupiny. Genetické stopy povolena výstavba 5-generace rodokmen rodu okamžité Tutankhamun.

Vědci zjistili, že několik anonymních mumií, nebo ti s podezřením identit nyní mohla být řešeny podle jména, která zahrnovala KV35EL, který je Teje, matky faraona Achnatona a babička Tutanchamon a mumie KV55, který je s největší pravděpodobností Achnatona, otec Tutankhamun. Toto příbuzenství je podporován v tom několik unikátních antropologické rysy jsou sdíleny 2 mumie a krevní skupiny obou osob je totožný. Výzkumníci identifikovali mumii KV35YL jako matka pravděpodobně Tutankhamun.
Žádné známky gynekomastie nebo Marfanův syndrom byly nalezeny. "Proto je zvláštní umělecké prezentace osob v období Amarna potvrzen jako královsky rozhodl stylu s největší pravděpodobností souvisí s náboženským reformám Achnatona. Je nepravděpodobné, že buď Tutanchamon nebo Achnatona skutečně zobrazí podstatně bizarní nebo ženské postavě. Je důležité si uvědomit, že králové starého Egypta obvykle sami a jejich rodiny zastoupené v idealizované módě, "píší.
Výzkumníci našli hromadění deformací v rodině Tutankhamun. "Několik patologií, včetně onemocnění Kohler II [kostní porucha] bylo diagnostikováno v Tutanchamon, nikdo sám by způsobila smrt. Genetické testování pro STEVOR, AMA1, nebo MSP1 geny jsou specifické pro Plasmodium falciparum [parazit malárie] odhalily náznaky malárie tropica ve 4 mumií, včetně Tutankhamun.
Tyto výsledky naznačují avaskulární kostní nekróza [stavu, ve kterém špatný krevní zásobení kosti vede k oslabení či zničení oblasti kostní] ve spojení s výskytem malárie infekce jako nejpravděpodobnější příčinou úmrtí v Tutankhamun. Chůze ledvin a onemocnění malárií, kterou utrpělo Tutanchamon je podporován objev hole a posmrtný život lékárna v hrobě, "autoři. Dodávají, že náhlé zlomeninu nohy, případně z pádu, může mít za následek život-ohrožující stav, kdy došlo k infekci malárií.

Avenue of the sphinxes will be restored

2010-01-31T01:55:00.000-08:00

Excavations on part of an ancient 2.7km avenue of sphinxes that once linked temples in Luxor and Karnak should be completed in March, Egypt's antiquities chief said on Thursday.

Archaeologists have so far uncovered 65 of the 1 350 sphinxes that lined a path between temples during the time of Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who reigned 3 350 years ago.

The project will cost 60-million Egyptian pounds, half of which will be used to compensate about 2 000 families that must be relocated to make way for the roadway, Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass told Reuters.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities was currently working on about a third of the 2.7km pathway lined with sphinxes, mythological creatures with the body of a lion and usually, although not always, the head of a human.

The remainder of the buried avenue will be uncovered in the next few years.

"In the area that we restored, we found many sphinxes," Hawass said. "We'll be excavating the rest of the road until it can go to Karnak, and this will take years."

Home to many of Egypt's most renowned antiquities, Luxor attracts thousands of sightseers to a country where tourism is a vital source of jobs and foreign currency.

In 2006 Egypt began a plan to demolish and relocate Gurna, a village near the Valley of the Kings, to access and preserve tombs buried beneath nearly 3 200 homes.

The government built the villagers new houses about 3km away, but many complained the new homes were too small for big families, and that people would lose their livelihoods in the tourist business.

"We are not moving anyone by force," Hawass said of the Sphinx

My comment about this is: I talked with the people the last 3 years about this. The true is that if you don't accept the sum of money which the Goverment offers you, they take your house. So you must leave. It's indirect by force.
The owners get a little sum of money. It's very bad. Because from this money they can't buy a new home near the city but outside far away from the city. The houses which the Goverment buy from the people are far more worth then they give the people. Beause their houses are on strategic artifacts points. They misused the people. And the Goverment get a lot of money from USA, UN and from the income of the turist. Shamely it's a bad example again for Egypt. The poor people can't do nothing. Even the middle class can't do nothing. The poor people will be more poor and the rich people will be more rich by using corruption. Almost whole Egypt is full of corruption. I see it with my own eyes. They say it will be better in Egypt for all the people. But it's going be worse and worse.
Why? Because of the internet more and more people open their eyes and more and more disclosures about the truth in Egypt. And the Illuminati loses grip of it. So they want to have more control over the 85 million Egyptians. Also buy depopulations.

2009-12-31T00:18:00.000-08:00

Tipping is not just expected, it is a way of life in Luxor.

2009-12-14T16:37:00.001-08:00

How much?

We have heard many suggestions concerning the amounts to tip. By and large, local people who are not receivers of tips tend to suggest that you tip modestly, explaining that local wage levels are low and that big tips can represent a significant proportion of the recipients income and can distort relative income levels.
People who do receive tips from foreign visitors will emphasise that workers in the tourist industry are particularly poorly paid and tend to depend on tips to supplement their income. We will leave aside the argument about whether generous tips encourage low wages.
Tips are a personal gift as a reward for good service, so the amount has to be discretionary. They will depend on the generosity of the donor and the quality of service. Nevertheless, the following indications may be helpful as a starting point.

Porters

Local businessmen normally give around LE2 per bag. Tourists are normally more generous and the rule of thumb often promoted is LE5 per bag in a hotel. Please do not be over-generous at the airport. People often give £1 per bag, because they don't have, or don't yet understand, the local currency. To put it in context, £1 is around a day's wages for most people, so it is far too much.

Room staff

An Egyptian businessman will probably give around LE10 every other day. A tip of LE10 per day for a short stay, LE50 for a week or LE100 per fortnight is a good tourist tip. It can be helpful to follow the local tradition and give something every now and then, say on alternate days, rather than leaving it all to the end. It saves the staff wondering if they will get a tip or not and it can also help if you want little things done.

Pool staff

This depends a lot on the services that are provided, which varies a lot between hotels. At the hotels where the pool staff provide the towels, fetch and position the loungers and so on, LE20 at the beginning, rather than at the end of your stay, will encourage good service. Another LE20 at the end won't hurt if you have been pleased.

Taxis

10% is normal, but it can be difficult because the sums are so small. For a local trip, 50 piastres to LE1 is fine. LE5 would be normal for a longer journey costing LE25 or more. For a half-day on the West Bank, the normal charge would be LE80 - LE100, and a tip of LE10 - LE20 would be fair depending on how pleased you are with the tour. For a full day, LE20 would be OK as a minimum, but most tourists would give a little more if the driver has been helpful.
Take into account also that if you are 'encouraged' to spend some of your West Bank time in papyrus galleries or alabaster factories, the driver gets up to 50% commission on your purchases. We tend to tip better if the driver does not automatically stop outside these places.

Restaurants

Local people tend not to tip as a percentage of the bill, but give a fixed amount, typically LE5 per person. Tourists are normally more used to tipping in relation to the cost of the meal, but don't be too fussed about the calculation. If a service charge is not included aim for something around 10% of the total, but depending on how satisfied you are and how convenient the sums work out. For example, if your bill is LE89, a tip of LE11 would be a tip of about 12% and would round up the total to convenient LE100.
Even if a service charge is included you would be expected to leave some spare change, around LE3 - LE10 per person.

Tour guides

10% of the tour cost, but see the comment about commissions relating to taxi drivers and bear in mind that reps get up to 50% commission too.

Cruises

Tips are normally quite regimented and are regarded as part of the cost of the cruise rather than as a 'gratuity' in the traditional sense. If you are in a group with a rep, the tipping arrangements will normally be explained at the outset or quite early on.
On some trips you may be invited to pay a suggested sum up front. More usually there will be an envelope that you put your donations in and hand to reception towards the end of the trip.
If you are in a guided group, the amounts will be suggested to you. If not, work on the basis of a minimum of LE10 per person per night. In practice, LE200 per couple for a one-week cruise for all on-board staff and LE100 for the Egyptologist (if you do the excursions) is not unusual.
The tips are distributed to all staff according to a formula, so even the staff who do not normally come into direct contact with the passengers get something. This doesn't prevent you giving a little extra to people who may have provided particular services. It is not uncommon to give the room staff a little extra, not necessarily at the end of the trip, to encourage particularly good service.

When to tip

Sometimes it is handy to pay tips in advance. Wage levels are very low compared with western standards and a tip can be rewarded not only with especially attentive service, but also with favours that might not otherwise be available. Giving the room staff something every other day rather than at the end is appreciated.

Tip in Egyptian pounds

It is quite difficult for local people to change foreign coins. Tip in Egyptian pounds if you can. You can get some Egyptian pounds at the bank kiosks at the airport (where they sell the visas), so you can have some local currency right from the start.

Finding the small change

It is relatively easy to leave a tip at a restaurant, because the cash is usually already there as part of your change. At other times it can mean finding the right amount of local currency. Small denomination notes are often hard to get hold of. We suggest you keep hold of any LE1 and LE5 notes you get, so that they are available for tips and small purchases when you need them.

Egypt holidays

2009-12-14T16:25:00.001-08:00

Event	2009	2010
Coptic Christmas Day	7 Jan	7 Jan
Independence Day (from UK)	28 Feb	28 Feb
Mohammed's birthday (Moulid-an-Nabi)	9 Mar	26 Feb
Coptic Easter (Sham-El-Nessim)	19 Apr	4 Apr
Labour Day	1 May	1 May
Liberation Day	18 Jun	18 Jun
National Day (anniversary of 1952 revolution)	23 July	23 July
Flooding of the Nile (Wafa'a el Nil)	15 Aug	15 Aug
Moulid of Abu el-Haggag	8 Aug	28 July
Coptic New Year	11 Sept	11 Sept
Ramadan begins	22 Aug	11 Aug
Armed Forces Day	6 Oct	6 Oct
Eid Al Fitr Ramadan ends (Bairam Feast)	21 Sept	10 Sept
Suez Victory Day	24 Oct	24 Oct
Victory Day	23 Dec	23 Dec
Hajj begins	25 Nov	14 Nov
Hajj (Eid al-Adha)	28 Nov	17 Nov
Grand Feast	27-28 Nov	9 Dec
Hijrah (Islamic New Year)	18 Dec	7 Dec

News from the town

2009-12-14T16:15:00.001-08:00

Police station, Jamboree etc have gone.
Mosque, Mina Palace and government buildings are going.

Parts of the centre of Luxor are in a bit of a mess at the moment! Since October 2005 the town has been undergoing some massive changes. The changes are part of the grand plan of Dr. Samir Farag, president of the Supreme Council of Luxor. The plan is to restore the ancient link between Luxor and Karnak temples, to clear the skyline along both banks, so that ancient monuments are easily visible across the river and to improve the road network.

Linking Luxor and Karnak Temples

A controversial part of the plan is to restore the 3km long road connecting Luxor with Karnak. The road is clearing a 60 meter wide open space between the temples, involving the demolition of huge numbers of buildings, mostly residential but also including the town centre police station and even a mosque.

Paving on the station side of Luxor temple

Progress is very evident. When you come from the airport you can see part of the new causeway as you go over a bridge coming into Luxor town. There are also open areas, especially to the north of the temple, where buildings have been cleared. The area on the station side of the temple itself is much tidier and largely paved, including a large decoratively paved area between the temple and the road to the station.

Clearing the vista

Buildings have already been cleared on the Nile side of Karnak temple, so the temple is visible from the west bank and Hatshepsut's temple is visible from Karnak. This has opened up the view of Karnak temple from the road along the Nile.
Buildings have been demolished in front of Luxor Temple, including the pair of old colonial style government buildings, the Mina Palace Hotel, the small shops and the old Jamboree restaurant.

Roads

Station Road (see the central Luxor map) has been widened. Shops have been demolished along its length and some new ones built further back from the road's edge. From the station there is now a clear view to the temple complex. The station itself has been redeveloped. The kiosk near McDonald's and the clock tower in the roundabout near the entrance to the Old Market have gone. The roundabout has been rebuilt and paved.
The road to the east of the station, once a busy, narrow road, has been doubled in width and is now a dual carriageway.

New Winter Palace has gone. Coptic Church towers to the left

New Winter Palace

The front block of the New Winter Palace has been demolished. The rear (Pavilion) block is still open and is accessed via the Old Winter Palace. The grounds at the back are all in use as normal. The New Winter Palace is being replaced with a low-rise hotel

New Coptic Church

In contrast to the clearance of the skyline along the edge of the Nile, a new double-bell-tower coptic christian church is being built near the railway crossing to the north of the station, which can easily be seen from many parts of the east and west banks. Apparently the church is being funded by the owners of two hotels, including the owner of the Sonesta.

Shopping

The old tourist shops near the temple and restaurants, such as Amoun's, have moved to the new 3 storey Savoy centre near the Mercure hotel, which has also replaced the arcade that used to be there.

Market

Old Market Street has been dug up and arches and trellises have been erected. Cars, horse carriages and other vehicles are no longer allowed through Old Market Street. At the southern entrance to Old Market Street (the tourist end) an arch announcing the market has been built. The market is still quieter than the old one, partly because caleche drivers can no longer drive through, so they try to convince tourists that the market is closed and to go to a 'local market' instead. The market is not closed - ignore anyone who says it is.

Ferry

There is no change (yet) on the East Bank side, but the National Ferry terminal on the West Bank is being redeveloped and will be moved slightly. The taxi car park is being converted into a park. New National Ferry boats are operating.

Marina

There is a plan to build a marina on the West Bank.

Other

Work is going on elsewhere in the town as well, so getting around can be very hazardous in places. Roads are not closed when work is going on. Cars vie with steam rollers for space on the road even whilst under construction.

Egypt’s Cave Underworld Under Investigation – Egyptian archaeological team move in to find answers

2009-12-09T16:34:00.000-08:00

Cairo, December 2nd, 2009 – Egypt’s leading Egyptologist, Dr Zahi Hawass, has revealed that an excavation team under his charge are investigating an ancient tomb at the centre of claims regarding the alleged discovery of a cave underworld beneath the Pyramids of Giza.

In August British writer and explorer Andrew Collins announced that he had rediscovered the entrance to a previously unexplored cave system, entered via a mysterious tomb several hundred meters west of the Great Pyramid.

The cave entrance was found following clues left in the 200-year-old memoirs of British diplomat and explorer Henry Salt, who recorded how in 1817 he and Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia had investigated cave “catacombs” at Giza for a distance of “several hundred yards” before coming across a “spacious” chamber.

This chamber linked to three others of equal size, from which went various labyrinthine passages, one of which the Italian later explored for a distance of “300 feet further”.

Dr Hawass, Secretary General for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has now confirmed that he has ordered an all-Egyptian team to explore the tomb at the centre of the controversy.

“We are clearing this system now, and it is a Late Period catacomb, like many others around Egypt,” he stated this week. “There is no mystery about it, and there is no connection with esoteric topics. We will publish our results as part of our normal process.”

While applauding Dr Hawass’s new interest in the site, Collins remains sceptical of his motives. “We knew in August that he had started clearing the tomb,” he said. “The excavations began almost immediately after knowledge of the cave discovery hit the internet.”

Collins is also unconvinced by Hawass’s explanation of what he calls the “catacomb”. “Does his use of the term ‘system’ now suggest that he has found and entered the caves, which he previously denied even existed? he asks. “My colleagues and I have examined photographic evidence of dynastic catacombs throughout Egypt, and these all appear to be carved by human hands.

“Those at Giza are natural, and penetrate the bedrock for many hundreds of metres, perhaps following the course of local geological faulting.”

Although Dr Hawass suggests there is no mystery surrounding the “catacomb”, Collins suspects that the caves extend beneath the Second Pyramid, where ancient tradition puts the legendary tomb of Tomb of Hermes, Egypt’s legendary founder.

“This has never been found,” he added, “So perhaps it is still there, awaiting discovery, somewhere close to where Salt and Caviglia reached nearly 200 years ago.”

Collins book Beneath the Pyramids, published last month, tells the story of his discovery of the natural cave system. He has also released a YouTube video showing his exploration of the caves in 2008.

end.

For more on the discovery of Giza’s cave underworld, go to www.andrewcollins.com, or read the full story in Andrew Collins book Beneath the Pyramids (4th Dimension Press, 2009).

On March 3rd, 2008 I entered a large, yet little understood tomb on the Giza plateau. It was a place I had explored a year earlier, and on that occasion I had found nothing of consequence - no hieroglyphs, no evidence of burials - just strange letterbox-like slots in the walls, where the mummies of embalmed birds might well have been left in honour of some local deity over 2,000 years ago. I had come here again to this neglected area of the plateau, some 806 yards (740 meters) due west of the Great Pyramid, following new information that was set to challenge everything we know about the evolution of Giza's famous pyramid field.

Fig. 1. Giza's Tomb of the Birds, designated NC 2 by George Reisner's team in 1939. They drew a rough plan of the site, but failed to record the presence of the caves.

British Egyptological researcher Nigel Skinner Simpson, a friend and colleague, had been studying the memoirs of Henry Salt (1780-1827), a former British Consul General in Egypt, rediscovered in the basement of the British Museum in 2005, and published two years later by the British Museum Press (Usick and Manley, 2007). Salt was an avid explorer and collector of Egyptian antiquities. What most excited Nigel was the brief but tantalizing mention of Salt and his employee, the redoubtable Italian explorer and former sea-captain Giovanni Battista Caviglia (1770-1845), entering a vast network of "catacombs" that stretched beneath the plateau, a story he had first seen mentioned, if only briefly, in an old biography of Salt (Halls, 1834). However, this had not said where the catacombs were located, only that they lay west of the main pyramid field. This time the information was much more specific, with the site of the catacombs alluded to on Salt's rather distorted plan of the plateau.

Fig. 2 - Henry Salt (1780-1827)

Inside the caves, Salt and Caviglia had journeyed for an estimated distance of "several hundred yards", crawling on hands and knees where necessary, before eventually coming across a spacious chamber that connected with three others of equal size, from which went various labyrinthine tunnels. Yet because the two men were unable to locate anything of value - no gold or treasure - Salt had given up the search, leaving his Italian colleague to continue on his own. This Caviglia did, taking one of these new cave tunnels for a distance of "300 feet further", before giving up himself.
What concerned Nigel most was the fact that no one in the Egyptological community had ever picked up on the significance of this account dated 1817, which describes an extraordinary cave complex existing beneath the Pyramids themselves.

Explorations at Giza

The next people to have possibly come into contact with these caves after Salt and Caviglia was the British explorer Colonel Howard Vyse (1784-1853) and his colleague, the engineer John Shae Perring (1813-1869). They would appear to have chanced upon the tomb containing the caves during their routine explorations of the plateau in 1837.
Vyse records how during their excavations there, his team carefully removed from its interior a mummified bird of great size(Vyse, 1840). Nothing more is known of what Vyse and Perring found here, although a detailed plan of the plateau prepared by Perring shows the tomb's deeply-cut façade in the rocky north cliff, with dotted lines indicating its interior compartments, next to which is the legend "Excavated tombs and pits of bird mummies" (see also Perring, 1839-40). Whether or not Vyse and Perring explored the cave system is debatable, although Perring's published plan does hint at the fact that they at least went beyond the tomb into the complex's entrance chamber.
After this time no one is known to have visited the rock-cut tomb until American Egyptologist George Reisner came here with his team in 1939, and designated it the identity NC 2, with two other smaller tombs, also found in the north cliff, becoming NC 1 and NC 3. At least two rough plans were drawn of NC2 by Reisner's team, although neither indicate the presence of the caves, a strange oversight in itself. Nothing was written about the tomb, although a comment on one of Reisner's plans offered the thought that it might date to the eighteenth dynasty of Egyptian history, c. 1575-1307 BC. It is a theory that could well have some merit, since the exterior façade is similar to that of at least one key tomb dating to the Amarna period. This said, their interiors are entirely different in style. Whatever the age of the tomb, it seems likely that access to the caves would already have been possible, since they most likely broke through into the plateau's northern cliff face, prior to them being used to create a new tomb.

Fig. 3 - Geological map of the Giza plateau, showing the approximate location of the Tomb of the Birds (NC2) and cave entrance.

Rumours and Stories

There is no question that what Salt and Caviglia found in 1817 is of immense importance to the Egyptological world, for rumours of the existence at Giza of a vast underworld of the pharaohs are as old as the Pyramids themselves. Ancient Egyptian creation texts, as well as an assortment of funerary literature, i.e. books of the dead, speak repeatedly of a realm of darkness existing beneath the earth, guarded by demons and snakes. It was through this confusing labyrinthine realm of the night, known as the Duat, that the deceased, in his (or her) role as the sun-god, had to navigate in order to enter an afterlife among the stars. Only by learning and using a series of different spells outlined in these texts, and left on tombs, sarcophagi or in papyrus form, could he hope to handle a sequence of trials and tribulations, involving pits of fire and venom-spitting snakes, before exiting the Duat via its eastern gate on the dawn horizon. From here the pharaoh's ba, or "spirit", usually represented by a hieroglyph showing a human-headed bird, would be free to journey on into the starry firmament.

Underworld of the Soul

Egyptologists have always considered the Duat as a purely mythical concept, meant to strike fear into those hoping to gain any easy passage to heaven. Yet there are clear indications that a physical representation of this nocturnal realm existed somewhere near the Giza Pyramids. This was the conclusion of Egyptian-born Egyptologist Dr Selim Hassan (1893-1961), who for ten years was director of excavations on the plateau on behalf of the Egypt University, Cairo, and later the Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte. He proposed that the Duat's Fourth and Fifth Hours (each of its twelve compartments were represented by one of twelve symbolic hours of the night) seemed different to the rest, and bore the name Rostau which was the ancient name for Giza. Hassan therefore concluded that the descriptions of these particular "hours", as portrayed in a 3,500-year-old text known as the Am-duat, the "Book of that which is in the Underworld", were once part of a quite separate tradition that in some manner related directly to the topography of Giza (Hassan, 1946).

Fig. 4 - The Fifth Hour of the Duat Underworld from the Am-duat text, dating from the New Kingdom period, c. 1575-1087 BC. It is known as the Duat of Memphis, also Rostau, the name given to the Giza necropolis in pharaonic times.

Moreover, the hidden realm of darkness in the Fifth Hour was ruled over by the falcon-headed god Sokar, who in the Am-duat text is shown standing on a massive two-headed snake. Sokar was the patron god of the sprawling cemeteries and pyramid fields that served the ancient city of Memphis, and in particular those at Rostau, ancient Giza. In the area once known as Upper Rostau - Giza South as it is known to Egyptologists today - textual evidence of the former presence there of an important shrine to Sokar have been unearthed (Pasquali, 2007, and Pasquali, 2008). This now lost structure featured in an annual festival involving the falcon-headed god, which celebrated the existence thereabouts of a mythical site called the Shetayet, quite literally the "Tomb of God". Ancient texts tell us that the dweller of this underground sepulchre was none other that the god Osiris, Lord of the Underworld, who lies in a secret chamber somewhere north of Memphis, i.e. in the vicinity of Giza. Other texts preserved on the walls of the temple of Edfu in southern Egypt refer to this same chthonic realm as the Duat n Ba, or "Underworld of the Soul". Here, we are told, mythical beings in an age known as zep tepi, the First Occasion, came in order to celebrate the act of First Creation around the time of a great catastrophe brought about by an "enemy snake" called the Great Leaping One (Reymond, 1969).

Mouth of the Passages

Adding to the belief that a physical representation of the pharaoh's underworld existed at Giza is the name Rostau, which translates as something like "mouth of the passages", an obvious allusion to the entrance to some kind of subterranean realm, perhaps the Shetayet, or Underworld of the Soul. Even after the fall of Egypt with the death of Cleopatra in the first century BC, stories regarding Giza's underworld persisted. For example, the fourth-century Graeco-Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (fl. AD 360-390), who travelled extensively in Egypt and wrote concerning the Pyramids, spoke of "subterranean fissures and winding passages called syringes" underneath the plateau, which, he said "those acquainted with the ancient rites, since they had fore-knowledge that a deluge was coming, and feared that the memory of the ceremonies might be destroyed, dug in the earth in many places with great labor" (Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, xxii, 15, 30).
After the fall of Egypt to the armies of Mohammed in the seventh century AD, Arab travellers recorded very similar tales following conversations with Coptic Christian priests and monks, who inherited some of ancient Egypt's ancient wisdom. These stories spoke of subterranean passages created beneath the Great Pyramid by a legendary king named Saurid in advance of a cataclysm involving fire from heaven and a subsequent deluge. In these tunnels were placed the arts and sciences of Saurid's age in order that they might be preserved for future generations of humanity. Still further tales voiced by Sabaean pilgrims who came to Giza in medieval times from far off Harran, in what is today southeast Turkey, spoke of the Second Pyramid as marking the site of the cave-tomb of Hermes Trismegistus, with his father, Seth, or Agathodaimon, a kind of demiurge in the form of a serpent, said to repose beneath the Great Pyramid. The site of Hermes' son Sab, from whom the Sabaeans claimed direct descent, was said to have been marked by the "coloured" pyramid, i.e. the Third Pyramid of Menkaure (see Arab sources quoted in Greaves, 1646, for instance).
Critics dismiss such stories as works of fiction, but what seems possible is that they predate the Arab annexation of Egypt, and thus confirm a long held belief in the existence of a subterranean world at Giza. Yet if so, what did this lost underworld contain? Was it natural, or created by human hands, and could its entrance be located today?

Hall of Initiation

It was with questions such as these that the first European explorers arrived at Giza intent on discovering the lost treasures of the Pyramids. As far back as the ninth century the ruling caliph of the Islamic world, al-Mamoun, spent an enormous amount of time and effort tunnelling a hole through into the Great Pyramid, hoping to find gold and treasure. He failed to find the wealth de desired, but those who came after him continued the trend, forever searching for hidden entrances to subterranean tunnels and vaults that were said to connect the Great Pyramid with the nearby Sphinx monument.
It was towards the end of 1816 that the Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia arrived in Egypt with the intention of clearing away the sand that had engulfed the body of the Sphinx since Roman times. It was an exploration he undertook with the backing of the newly appointed British Consul General, Henry Salt, who would retain the post until his untimely death outside Alexandria in 1827. Why the two men zoomed in on this area of the plateau remains unclear, although it is likely that they were influenced by rumours of pseudo-Egyptian initiations having taken place within hidden compartments accessed via some secret door in the vicinity of the leonine monument.

Fig 5 - Line drawing of Caviglia's excavations at the Sphinx after an original by Henry Salt.

One perfect example of this tradition is found in "The Magic Flute" (German "Die Zauberflöte"), the Freemasonry-inspired opera written by Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), and popular in the years leading up to Salt and Caviglia's arrival in Egypt. Not only does the hero of the opera have to undergo a series of ordeals within the darkness of an Egyptian "temple", but the Sphinx in the form of a dragon has to be defeated, all very reminiscent of the type of trials that the ancient Egyptians expected of the soul as it passed through the Duat underworld on its way to the afterlife.
In the six months that Caviglia spent excavating the Sphinx, no record of him finding hidden chambers has been preserved, although he did find hieroglyphs in some underground chambers accessed via tomb entrances in the sunken enclosure wall behind the Sphinx.
Having established this fact, it had been Salt and Caviglia's discovery of a vast network of "catacombs", or caves, during their explorations of the plateau that had most intrigued Nigel Skinner Simpson and myself. No one in the field of Egyptology had, to our knowledge, mentioned this matter in print. What is more, the commentary accompanying Salt's newly published memoirs misleads the reader by concluding that the "catacombs" in question were located in the wrong part of the plateau (an error admitted to Nigel by one of the authors in October 2009). Despite this obscuration of the facts, Nigel made a thorough examination of Salt's plan of the plateau, and in early 2008 finally traced the true location of the cave entrance. It turned out to be in the vicinity of the mysterious tomb, NC 2, the one that Perring had in 1837 referred to on his plan of the plateau as "Excavated tombs and pits of bird mummies".

Fig 6 - The section of John Perring's plan of the Giza plateau from 1837 showing the site of the Tomb of the Birds, marked with the legend "Excavated tombs and pits of bird mummies".

Star Correlation

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Sue Collins and I had visited this strange tomb in January 2007, some months before Salt's memoirs were published, in the belief that it might hold clues concerning the entrance to Giza's lost cave underworld. The reason we had zoomed in on this area was because it figured in a ground-sky correlation featuring the stars of the Cygnus constellation. Although this asterism, known more popularly as the Northern Cross, was seen in classical star lore as a swan in flight, in ancient Egypt its stars appeared to mark the position of the cosmic womb of the sky-goddess Nuit, the mother both of Osiris, the god of death and resurrection, and Re, the sun-god (see Wells, 1992, 1993, 1994. Also Maravelia, 2003). In Egyptian funerary texts, the coffin, tomb and sarcophagus of the pharaoh were themselves representations of the womb of the sky-goddess, within which his soul or spirit might begin the process of transformation and renewal. Such ideas surrounding the soul returning from whence it came, i.e. the womb of the cosmic mother, is echoed within various pre-dynastic burials, where the body of the deceased was laid to rest in a foetal position. Occasionally, the burials are found to contain the bones, bucrania or horns of bovines, a link to the idea that sky-goddesses such as Nuit and her great rival Hathor, the mother of Horus, were seen as dynastic personifications of a primeval Cow Mother, whose divine womb was associated not only with the origins of life, but also the destination of the soul in death.

Fig 7 - the sky-goddess Nuit in the form of the Milky Way. The stars of Cygnus marked the position of her womb and navel.

As the sky-goddess Nuit was thought to swallow the dying sun at sunset and then give birth to the new sun at dawn the next morning, the interior of her body, through which the sun-god would pass on its way to regeneration, being identified with the Duat underworld. As such, her womb, in which the spark of rebirth is attained, became the Shetayet, the conceptual Tomb of God - the perceived point of renewal of the pharaoh in his role as Osiris, Re, or, indeed, Horus. This transformation was reflected in celestial terms by the prominent presence upon the Milky Way of the stars of Cygnus, not as they appear in the night sky, but as they exist after setting within the Duat underworld.
Working with British engineer Rodney Hale, I was able to determine that the placement of the three main pyramids at Giza reflected the astronomical positions of three key stars in Cygnus, which in classical star-lore represented the wings of the celestial swan. This star-pyramid relationship is confirmed in the knowledge that from a position southeast of the plateau these same three stars would have been seen to set down into their respective pyramids around the time of their completion, c. 2500 BC.

Fig 8a - Cygnus "wing" stars overlaid on Pyramids with corresponding star setting lines, and, Fig 8b, - the Cygnus stars as they would have been seen to set from the southeast in c. 2500 BC.

The Hall of Records

Yet despite this astounding ground-sky relationship, Cygnus's brightest star, Deneb, remained to be matched with a substantial marker on the ground at Giza (it did match with a fairly large mastaba tomb in the western cemetery, but one to which very little is known, other than its designation Lepsius LG 14, given to it by the nineteenth century German Egyptologist Karl Lepsius). The matter puzzled me, and it was not until I presented my findings to a colleague that I was given an unexpected insight into this baffling mystery. Having listened to my discoveries regarding the Cygnus-Pyramids correlation, he looked at the designated Deneb spot on the plateau and said: "What's there?"
Nothing of any significance, I told him.
"Perhaps what you're looking for is underground, and no one has found it yet," he offered, quite matter-of-factly. "Perhaps it's the entrance to the Hall of Records."
It was an interesting and somewhat tangential observation, but one that I was not prepared to accept.

Fig 9 - The Cygnus constellation roughly overlaid over the Giza plateau, showing the approximately position of the star Deneb in the western cemetery.

The Hall of Records was the name given to Giza's lost underworld by the American psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), who as early as 1925 predicted that just such a hidden chamber, containing the records of the ancients, would one day be found in the vicinity of the Sphinx. It is for this reason that the Edgar Cayce Foundation, and its research division, the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.), has sponsored a number of high profile scientific expeditions at Giza over the past 40 years in the firm conviction that one day the Hall of Records will be found.
The rediscovery of the lost cave underworld explored in 1817 by Salt and Caviglia might go some way to fulfilling Cayce's predictions in this respect. This seemed especially so, for the entrance to these catacombs seemed to lie not far away from the Deneb spot in the Cygnus-Pyramids correlation. It would appear possible that the dynastic Egyptians saw this bright star as marking the navel of the sky-goddess in her role as the Milky Way - her "legs" being formed by the starry trail's bifurcation to create what is known to astronomers as the Dark Rift, or Cygnus Rift. It is from this perceived celestial "birth tube" that separates the Milky Way between the Cygnus region and the zodiacal constellation of Sagittarius that the much-anticipated new sun of 2012 will be born according to aficionados of the New Age movement.
It was from this same area of sky, marked by the stars of Cygnus, that the ancient Egyptians might well have believed that the soul of the deceased pharaoh would be born anew on the dawn horizon, prior to his ascension as a star among the firmament (Wells, 1992, 1993, 1994). It was probably for this reason that the King's Chamber inside the Great Pyramid was offset slightly from the monument's north-south center line in order that someone lying in its famous granite sarcophagus could have gazed upwards, through the position of the capstone, to the point where the star Deneb would have daily crossed the meridian at its highest point in the sky.

Fig 10 - The Kings Chamber's offset of 6 degrees, 15 seconds, might well reflect an alignment through the pyramid's capstone with the daily culmination of Cygnus's bright star Deneb.

Wonderful Discoveries

Finding that the entrance to Salt and Caviglia's cave complex was in the same general area as the Deneb spot in the Cygnus-Pyramids correlation seemed oddly relevant. So, having determined to locate Salt and Caviglia's lost cave underworld, I now sought the help and support of Edgar Cayce's A.R.E., and made preparations to fly out to Egypt at the beginning of March 2008. Our group's intention was to conduct a second investigation of the tomb, which, I now concluded, might well conceal a hidden entrance to Giza's cave underworld.
Having journeyed to the site on Monday, March 3rd, Nigel, Sue and I entered the tomb and explored its every nook and cranny without discovering the entrance to any lost catacombs. After deciding to abandon our search in favour of exploring other smaller tombs in the same area, we chanced upon a small breach in a stone and mortar wall at the southeast corner of the tomb, something I had missed on our earlier visit. Peering inside, an incredible sight greeted us - a vast chasm-like chamber filled with fallen rock debris. It was a natural cave chamber, over 15 meters square, enhanced in order to make it more rectilinear in appearance. As we gazed inside, flocks of bats, no doubt disturbed by the intrusion of torchlight into their natural habitat, began escaping through the tiny exit.

Fig 11 - Breached wall inside the Tomb of the Birds leading into the cave underworld.

Knowing that we could not leave without exploring further, I sank into the depths of the darkness and examined the cave's opening chamber. After exploring some cave compartments in its northwest corner, which were also littered with rock debris, I found and entered a long cave tunnel that headed roughly south. In the pitch black, I navigated a seemingly never ending carpet of huge natural boulders, caused by constant falls from the cave ceiling, which towered to as much as 15 feet (4.5 meters) in height. Strewn across the floor were discarded animal bones, just as Salt had recorded. Here and there, wedged between rocks, were perfectly preserved skulls of large vertebrates that I could not identify.

Fig 12 - Inside the opening chamber of Giza's cave underworld, looking towards the northwest.

I penetrated the blackness still deeper, being careful to avoid any unseen pits and holes, our camel guide having joined me. Suddenly, a rush of warm air heralded the imminent approach of more bats that flew just inches away from our scalps. Rising too soon, one hit me squarely in the face, almost knocking me to the ground. Reaching a natural bifurcation in the cave tunnel, we felt it the right time to double back and return to the surface, having taken some 20 minutes to travel just 75 yards (69 metres). Yet I knew from Salt and Caviglia's account that the cave tunnels carried on for a minimum distance of "several hundred yards" before they reached a spacious chamber that connected with three others of equal size, from which went further labyrinthine passages that disappeared into the darkness.

Fig 13 - Andrew Collins in the north-south cave tunnel.

A few days later, Nigel, Sue and I returned to the Tomb of the Birds, as we now referred to it, and Sue and I explored the cave system as Nigel kept watch in the antechamber. The deeper into the rocky darkness we got, the more we became aware that the air was becoming thinner, while the effects of the airborne bat guano were also beginning to take their toll on our bodily systems.

Danger in the Darkness

We were back in Egypt a month later, again with the support of Edgar Cayce's ARE, and twice more, as Nigel waited with walky-talky in the cave entrance area, Sue and I penetrated the caves. The thick airborne guano stifled the air, while the intense heat caused us to sweat buckets, making the experience less than pleasant. Adding still further to our rising concerns over safety in the caves was the tentative identification of a species of venomous spider commonly known as the white widow (a cousin of the black widow). Putting your hand on one of these was not an option, forcing us to cover up our skin completely when in the caves.
Despite all these problems, on our final two occasions in the caves Sue and I reached a conservative distance of around 300 feet (90 meters), maybe a lot more, before we decided to go no further due to very real safety fears. The air became so thin that we began to experience tell-tale signs of hypoxia - oxygen starvation. These peculiar sensations caused us virtually to ignore what was potentially an even greater threat, which was the presence beyond a long stone tube in front of us of an animal or creature heard displacing dirt and gravel. Whether it was a scavenging hyena, hiding out of the way, or something more exotic, we did not bother to find out.

Fig 14 - Sue Collins inside Giza's cave underworld.

Nigel, Sue and I left the tomb knowing that we had rediscovered something quite extraordinary. Clearly, it was not the Hall of Records, the Tomb of Osiris or the Tomb of Hermes. What we do have here, however, is the first, indisputable proof of a natural cave system extending beneath the plateau that was most likely carved out by the actions of water tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of years ago. It stretches beneath the pyramid field, and very possibly follows the course of local faulting, perhaps reflecting the northwest to southeast orientation of the plateau's underlying geology. Although the caves are entirely natural, here and there in the deepest part of the complex I recorded the presence of incised, parallel lines etched sporadically into the cave walls. Its positioning seemed meaningless, with one set found beneath a curved rock surface. Who carved this, and when, remains a mystery. No hieroglyphic inscriptions, or graffiti of any kind, were noticed, although the limited time in the caves meant that there was much more to search and explore than we could possibly achieve on this visits. The only artefacts noted were mummy remains, including a long cigar-like object that might have contained a small animal. This was observed in the main north-south cave tunnel.

Fig 15 - Two areas of incised parallel chiselling visible in the deepest cave department reached in Giza's cave underworld.

It is possible that the caves might help confirm the connection between the ancient Egyptians' belief in a Duat underworld and Giza's role as Rostau, the "mouth of the passages". Since the caves existed long before the age of the Pharaohs it is likely that they influenced decisions regarding the setting and evolution of the pyramid field. Work done with chartered engineer Rodney Hale highlighted in my book Beneath the Pyramids, demonstrates that the Tomb of the Birds figures in very basic landscape geometry found in connection with the setting of the Giza monuments. As with the geographical placement of the three pyramids, this geometry is locked into astronomical alignments featuring the stars of Cygnus for a date of 2500 BC.

Fig 16 - Based pythagorean geometry at Giza showing the apparent significance of the site of the Tomb of the Birds.

Snake Guardian

Beyond any of this is the story told to us by a local tomb guardian, whom we encountered in the vicinity of the Tomb of the Birds. He was elderly, spoke no English and is unlikely to have been influenced by new age visitors to the plateau. He knew the tomb, but refuses point blank to enter the caves, for they are the abode, he says, of a gigantic snake called el-Hanash. Apparently, it is "nine meters (30 feet)" long, and anyone attempting to enter el-kahf (Arabic for "the cave") will be squeezed to death within its powerful coils. It is a fable, of course, yet one that echoes the very ancient belief that snakes of great size inhabited the Duat underworld, and that a huge serpent called Agathodaimon, the "good spirit", was in Sabaean tradition believed to repose beneath the Great Pyramid.

Fig 17 - A Local tomb guardian reveals that the caves are haunted by a giant snakes called el-Hanash.

Afterwards, I heard more about the mysterious el-Hanash. A stone craftsman living in Nazlet el-Samman, the village of the Pyramids, told me that el-Hanash protects the "Hall of Records". Apparently, this great snake of legend spits venom in the face and blinds anyone who tries to enter this underground place and steal a great diamond that it protects. Yet one day, when the end times are near, a chosen one will find the entrance to the Hall of Records, and el-Hanash will blind him only in one eye. It will be this person that goes on to learn the secrets that the ancients knew, and in so doing gain great powers, including the ability to hold back the waters.
It is a strange tale, tainted by modern new age thought, although it seems to echo the ancient Egyptian belief that the Underworld of the Soul, or Tomb of Osiris, contains a power object, like a great egg of creation, that emits an unearthly radiance. Clearly, nothing like this was found in the caves by Salt and Caviglia. Yet they left this underground world only partially explored, as we did ourselves, providing hope that one day this mystery may finally be revealed. Until then, its secrets seem safe under the protection of el-Hanash.

Aftermath - December 2009

This is the story of the rediscovery of Giza's cave underworld as recounted in my new book Beneath the Pyramids. However, so much has happened since news of the discovery became public in August that an update is necessary. Dr Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, was moved by the enormous amount of internet traffic on this subject (it is featured on over 5,000 web pages and sites to date) to make a public statement denying the existence of the cave system. He suggested that we had simply got confused inside a fully recorded rock-cut tomb of 35 meters in length (see http://www.drhawass.com/node/303).
His dismissal of what he calls "Collins' Cave Discovery" was suitably countered by Nigel Skinner Simpson and myself in statements issued afterwards (see http://www.andrewcollins.com/page/news/hawass.htm). I point out that the hundreds of photos and film footage of the caves ably demonstrate that we entered a natural cave system - the first ever recorded at Giza. This we navigated for a distance of at least 300 feet (90 meters), without reaching the end. Moreover, Salt's memoirs of 1817 make it clear that the caves continue on for many hundreds of yards, and eventually connect up with four "spacious" chambers, from which even further cave tunnels exit into the darkness.
Dr Hawass refuses to budge on his position, creating a stalemate whereby the news media has been extremely reticent about pursuing the subject as a potential news story. This is a shame as we now have new evidence that the caves might follow the course of local faulting beneath the plateau's Mokkatam formation. Radar satellite imagery of the Giza plateau created by the TerraSAR-X satellite, launched in 2007 and operated jointly by Astrium GmbH and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), shows a shadow line, running from the proximity of the Tomb of the Birds towards the south-southwest, that corresponds pretty well with the positioning beneath the ground of the caves explored so far.

Fig 18 - The section of the TerraSAR-X radar satellite image of the Giza plateau showing a shadow line corresponding to the course of the cave tunnels explored so far (Picture credit: Astrium GmbH and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR)).

There is nothing visible on the ground in the corresponding Google satellite image taken, coincidentally, around the same time in 2007, making this shadow line a mystery, especially as the the TerraSAR-X satellite programme is promoted as being able to detect underground features.
More incredible is the fact that the shadow line on the TerraSAR-X radar satellite image seems to connect with another wider shadow line that starts at a position corresponding to a gully in the plateau's northern cliff, just west of the Tomb of the Birds, and curves towards the Second Pyramid, where it is finally lost from sight on the north side of the monument's square base. Once again, there are no visible features on the corresponding Google satellite map to explain this anomaly (actually, a second, more fainter, shadow line is also seen on the radar satellite image. It commences in the proximity of the caves explored so far and curves towards the Second Pyramid, where it is lost, finally, as it approaches the west side of the pyramid).

Fig 19 - The curved shadow line on the TerraSAR-X radar satellite map that seems to show the course either of the caves, or localized faulting, which itself might highlight the course of subterranean caves. Not that it disappears on the northwest corner of the Second Pyramid (Astrium GmbH and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR)).

It would be great to consider that this curving shadow anomaly, traced from the area of the caves reached by ourselves to the proximity of the Second Pyramid, shows the course of the caves. This is indeed possible, although the operators of the TerraSAR-X satellite have been unable to comment on the anomaly, saying only that to date they have a relatively limited understanding of just how far their radar technology is able to record sub-surface or subterranean features.
If the shadow lines here described do not mark the course of actual caves, I still suspect that they represent physical features on the plateau. I believe they trace the course of local faulting, which would itself mark the most probable path of subterranean caves carved out by the actions of water across tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.
If correct, then the fact that the shadow lines disappear in the vicinity of the Second Pyramid is very interesting indeed. Not only did the Second Pyramid mark the location of the hidden cave-tomb of Hermes in medieval Sabaean tradition, but in 1977 a scientific survey conducted jointly by the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and the Ain Shams University, Cairo, used ground penetration radar (GPR) equipment to search for subterranean structures beneath the plateau at Giza. Aside from some interesting discoveries in the area of the Sphinx, the team, under the leadership of geophysicist Lambert T. Dolphin, detected the presence of previously unknown chambers in the vicinity of the Second Pyramid. One, at least, was situated beneath Belzoni's Chamber inside the structure, while another was found beneath the monument's northwest corner on the west side (Dolphin, 1977). Additionally, the team noted the presence of localized faulting on the north side of the Second Pyramid, adding weight to the conclusion that the shadow lines shown on the TerraSAR-X radar satellite imagery really do record the presence of either sub-surface or subterranean geological features.

Fig 20 - Hermes Trismegistus as seen in a mosaic in Sienna cathedral.

Since the Tomb of the Birds is approximately 517 yards (473 meters) from the northwest corner of the Second Pyramid, I now suspect that it was into this area that Salt and Caviglia journeyed underground in 1817, this distance constituting the "several hundred yards" they travelled before reaching the reported spacious chambers, from which went other passages. If so, then this is a very interesting realization when we recall the Sabaean belief that the Second Pyramid marked the position of the cave-tomb of Hermes. Is it possible that the bird cult once associated with this site honoured Hermes, the Graeco-Egyptian form of the Egyptian god Thoth, the keeper of ancient records and guardian of the ancient wisdom? If correct then future excavations inside the tomb and caves might well reveal that the bird mummies purportedly left here as ritual offerings (and found by Vyse and Perring in 1837) contained the remains of ibises, a bird sacred to Thoth-Hermes. If the birds found here were not ibises, but raptors, such as hawks and falcons, then the cult here was probably that of Sokar, the guardian of the Duat of Memphis, or Rostau, the ancient name for Giza. Either solution will go some way to prove that the Tomb of the Birds was seen as an entrance into a cave underworld.
According to medieval Arab and European sources the cave-tomb of Hermes (Idris, or Enoch, as he was called in Arabic) housed not only the earthly remains of its owner, but also the so-called Emerald Tablet (also known as the Tabula Smaragdina, the "table of green stone") on which was written the "secret of Hermes", or the secrets of creation. Is it possible that legends relating to the presence in the cave-tomb of the Emerald Tablet is a metaphor for a previously unknown structure at Giza with green stone walls and inscriptions recording the secrets of Egyptian creation? Alternatively, perhaps the Emerald Tablet really did once exist, and was discovered here at some point in the past.

Fig 21 - Medieval illustration of Hermes Trismegistus, showing him holding the Emerald Tablet, containing the key to the secrets of the universe.

If the fact that the Tomb of the Birds was once recognized as the entrance to the cave-tomb of Hermes, then it is possible that long before Salt and Caviglia got into Giza's cave underworld, others were here looking for the legendary Emerald Tablet. Just maybe they found something in the cave's deepest part, perhaps even a green stone fragment that they removed and revered afterwards as a chip from the Emerald Tablet. Whatever the answer, I sincerely believe that we have here a major discovery at Giza - one that is set to reverberate through the Egyptological world for a very long time indeed.