News, Esna "3" : Temple Restoration Reveals Previously Unknown Names of Ancient Egyptian Constellations.

The restoration of an ancient Egyptian temple in Esna, located about 60 km south of the ancient capital of Luxor in Egypt, has uncovered the original colors of the temple inscriptions and images, and revealed previously unknown names of ancient Egyptian constellations.

The temple of Esna, dedicated to the Egyptian deity Khnum, is one of the last examples of ancient Egyptian temple architecture.

Only the vestibule, called the pronaos, of the original temple complex survived, because it was used as storage facility for cotton during the 19th century CE.

The building measures 37 m long, 20 m wide, and 15 m tall, and was decorated mainly during the Roman period (1st to 3rd century CE).

The roof is supported by 18 columns with wonderfully varied floral capitals in the form of palm leaves, lotus buds and papyrus fans; some also have bunches of grapes, a distinctive Roman touch.

It is decorated with astronomical scenes, while the pillars are covered with hieroglyphic accounts of temple rituals.

“In Egyptian temple architecture this is an absolute exception,” said Dr. Daniel von Recklinghausen, a researcher in the Department of Egyptology at the University of Tübingen.

“The work on the elaborate decorations probably took up to 200 years.”

“The real wealth, the inscriptions, was recognized by the French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron, who pushed ahead with the excavation of the temple and published the inscriptions in full,” the researchers said.

“But without the original colors, Sauneron could not recognize them under the layers of soot and bird excrement.”

“Now, the layers have been removed and the temple looks in part as it may have done some 2,000 years ago.”

“In addition, it now offers new approaches for Egyptology research,” said Professor Christian Leitz, director of the Department of Egyptology at the University of Tübingen.

“The hieroglyphics that Sauneron explored were often only very roughly chiseled out, the details only applied by painting them in color.”

“This means that only preliminary versions of the inscriptions had been researched. Only now do we get a picture of the final version.”

During the restoration, the scientists found the descriptions of the Big Dipper (Mesekhtiu) and Orion (Sah) constellations.

They also discovered inscriptions about the previously unknown constellations, including the Geese of Ra (Apedu n Ra).

“In the area of the astronomical ceiling, many inscriptions were not executed in relief, but only painted in ink,” Professor Leitz said.

“They were previously undetected under the soot and are now being exposed piece by piece.”

“Here we have found, for example, the names of ancient Egyptian constellations, which were previously completely unknown.”

Source:sci-news

News Egypt: Egypt’s Supreme Committee for Museums Display Scenario completes placing Amun’s mummies in New Administrative Capital Museum.

The Supreme Committee for the Museums Display Scenario has completed placing the mummies of the priests and priestesses of the god Amun, in their show cases in the Museum of Egyptian Capitals in the New Administrative Capital. 

Dr. Ali Omar, head of the Supreme Committee for the Museum Display Scenario at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, explained that these mummies arrived in the museum last week, coming from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, in order to enrich the display of the Museum of Egyptian Capitals in the new Administrative Capital.

He added that their show cases were prepared and sterilized in a special way to preserve the mummies inside. 

Mr. Moamen Othman, head of the museums sector at the ministry, said that these mummies were discovered in the royal cache in Deir el-Bahari in 1881, and belong to the mummy of Najm, the wife of Harihor, the chief priest of Amun, whose eyes were inlaid with white and black stones, which gives the feeling that they are still alive as well as wearing natural wigs and eyebrows.

 

As for the mummy of Nasi Khonsu, the second wife of the chief priest of Amun Banjum II, he said that it is considered a distinct example of the development of the mummification method of the 21st Family, where the eyes covered with stones and the dark yellow color of the skin gave a sense of vitality and freshness.  

 

As for the mummy of Banjum II, the high priest of Amun, Othman added that her skin was colored yellow and dark red, and the mummy was wrapped in thin linen with colored fringes.  

 

And the mummy of the grandfather of Ptah uf Ankh from Dynasty 21, fingers and toes are decorated with rings.  As for the mummy of Hanutawi, the wife of the chief priest of Amun, Banjum I, with a face Plump to show vitality.

 

Dr. Mona Raafat, the General Supervisor of the Museum of the Capitals of Egypt, explained that the museum received, during the past week, more than a hundred artifacts coming from a number of museums and archaeological storages; including the storages of the museums of Luxor, the royal carriages in Bulaq, Suez and the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, and the archaeological site of Mit Rahinah. She said that work in the museum is progressing in preparation for its opening.

 

She added that these artifacts have been selected carefully to enrich the museum display scenario to tell the history of the Egyptian capitals through different historical eras.

 

She pointed out that one of the most important pieces in the museum is a collection of Talatat stones depicting King Akhenaten and his wife Queen Nefertiti from the Luxor Museum storage, they are now being restored in preparation for their display; in addition to a Cuban carriage and a Kalash and a model of a war carriage which was a gift  to King Farouk.

 

The museum also received a number of mummies from the Egyptian Museum, mummies of priests and senior statesmen, in addition to a number of canopic jars and a wooden box inscribed with a picture of the god Anubis, to be displayed in the museum's funeral ritual hall.  This is in addition to a wonderful double statue of King Merenptah and the goddess Hathor from Mitt Rahman.

 

The Museum of the Capitals of Egypt tells the history of the Egyptian capitals through different eras. It consists of a main gallery in which the relics of a number of ancient and modern capitals are displayed. There are 7 capitals; namely Memphis, Thebes, Tell El-Amarna, Alexandria, Islamic Cairo, Khedivial Cairo.  The patterns of life are represented in each historical period of each capital separately, such as decorative tools, tools of war and fighting, the system of government and various correspondences.

 

As for the second section of the museum, it is a wing that represents the after life in ancient Egypt. It consists of the tomb of Tutu, which was discovered in 2018 in Sohag Governorate, in addition to a hall for mummies, coffins, and two shelves containing canopic jars and a set of false doors and alternate heads that simulate religious rituals in  Ancient Egypt.

 

The museum’s display will use modern technology, where the exhibition galleries are equipped with screens displaying an interactive panoramic film showing the history, and an illustration of each of the ancient Egyptian capitals.

Source:egypttoday

New Discovery , Sakkara "2": Secrets of mummy's portrait exposed under microscope after 1,800 years.

ANALYSIS of an ancient speck of paint has exposed the secrets of a portrait buried alongside an Egyptian mummy more than 1,800 years ago.

The striking painting, known as The Portrait of a Bearded Man, hails from the second century AD when Egypt was under Roman control.

Consequently, the painting does not resemble Egypt's two-dimensional murals that adorned the walls of its numerous temples and tombs. Instead, it is a very life-like depiction of the person it was buried alongside nearly 2,000 years ago. 

The portrait was discovered in Faiyum, some 62 miles southwest of Cairo. Experts have dated it to between 170 and 180 AD, and the painting one of about 1,100 similar works of art from the Roman period of Egypt's history. The portraits were painted onto wooden boards and wrapped up into the linens used to hold their mummified owners together.

Archaeologists believe these depictions not only represent a likeness of their owner but also hold clues about their status in life - one they held or aspired to hold before death. And according to a team of researchers who analysed microscopic amounts of purple pigment from the portrait, status played a big role in how these portraits were assembled.

Darryl Butt, a material scientist at the University of Utah, US, who co-authored a study of the portrait, said: "We're very interested in understanding the meaning and origin of the portraits, and finding ways to connect them and come up with a cultural understanding of why they were even painted in the first place." A small part of the Faiyum portrait shows purple marks on the man's Roman toga or robe - a symbol of status known as the clavi.

Glenn Gates of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, where the portrait is housed, said: "Since the purple pigment occurred in the clavi - the purple mark on the toga that in Ancient Roman indicated senatorial or equestrian rank - it was thought that perhaps we were seeing an augmentation of the sitter's importance in the afterlife."

But according to Dr Butt, the purple pigment has only raised more questions about the Egyptian mummy.

In some cultures, the colour purple is viewed as a symbol of death, while others consider it a symbol of life. Purple was also often associated with royalty in ancient times and is still thought of such today. Queen Elizabeth I, for instance, forbade everyone but royalty from wearing the colour. And purple is believed to have been particularly revered in the Byzantine Empire as a symbol of power.

Dr Butt said: "So the presence of purple on this particular portrait made us wonder what it was made of and what it meant. The colour purple stimulates many questions."

To better unlock the secrets hidden within the portrait's pigments, Dr Gates sents a microscopic particle to Dr Butt and his team to analyse. The speck of paint was about the same width as a human hair - 50 microns across.

Dr Butt said: "The process of analysing something like this is a bit like doing surgery on a flea." However, the expert and his colleagues were able to determine the purple pigment was synthetic in nature, and not naturally from the glands of the Murex sea snails as most purple dyes were at the time.

Instead, the researchers have suggested the purple was an accident - possibly made by mixing together red and blue indigo dyes together. The dye was then likely mixed with clay or a silica material into a pigment that was bound with beeswax. Pigments made this way are known as lake pigments.

Dr Gates said: "Lake pigments were thought to be without crystallinity prior to this work.

Source:express

New Discovery, Sakkara "4": ‘Death has become a big business.’ Elaborate coffins illuminate hidden history of ancient Egypt.

Last week, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities announced a spectacular find. More than 100 elaborately decorated wooden coffins, many containing intact human mummies, were unearthed at the Saqqara necropolis, a burial complex covering 160 square kilometers and located 20 kilometers south of Cairo. 

The most recent finds date back roughly 2500 years, to a time archaeologists call Egypt’s late period.

Unlike earlier eras in Egyptian history, when prominent people were laid to rest individually in multichambered tombs or inside massive, eye-catching pyramids, Egyptian archaeologists found these coffins stacked two and three deep at the bottom of deep underground shafts.

The artifacts illuminate a lesser known era in Egypt’s history: one separated from the reigns of more familiar pharaohs like Tutankhamun and Ramesses II by more than 700 years of turmoil, civil war, and decline.

Science spoke to University of Tübingen archaeologist Ramadan Hussein, who has excavated extensively at Saqqara but was not part of the latest dig, about what the new finds reveal about the ancient Egyptians. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Why are there so many coffins at this site?

A: By 650 B.C., Egypt was starting to get back on its feet and become a power in the Mediterranean again. At some point the center of power moves back to Memphis, on the other side of the Nile and also about 20 kilometers south of Cairo. Saqqara once more becomes the main cemetery for a thriving, wealthy city full of temples. All those priests and government officials were high-income individuals; that explains why we have so many beautiful coffins from the late period. The richness of the city at the time is reflected in the richness of the burials.

Meanwhile, there’s an intellectual movement to look back at Egyptian history and revive its traditions. They even call it a renaissance at the time: They’re reviving art, literary traditions, and religious practices from 1000 years earlier. That shows up in the decorations and burial practices. You can see a nostalgia for what was good in Egyptian history in the cemeteries at Saqqara, like inscriptions on the coffins replicating religious texts from the walls of nearby pyramids.

Q: Yet Egypt has changed. What do the burials tell you about what was going on at the time?

A: In the late period, Egypt has started becoming an international power again, and as a result it’s becoming a real mosaic of ethnicities: There are Phoenicians and Greeks and Libyans, and you can see their influence in the grave goods, from a gilded silver mask made from imported metal we discovered in 2018 to pottery and precious oils. Trade connections with Greece are intensifying. Many of the coffins at Saqqara are made from expensive wood brought in from southern Europe and elsewhere around the Mediterranean.

Q: But there are no new pyramids.

A: No, but death has become a big business. Discoveries like this are important for what they tell us about how you administer a cemetery and run the business of death. Priests and undertakers at Saqqara are selling everything from mummification services to burial plots. The ideology of death had shifted. People weren’t focused on the size of their tomb, they were happy to be buried in a sacred precinct and a nice coffin.

For example, a lot of these coffins come from shafts cut into older buildings: Apparently the best way to sell new cemetery plots was to put them close to places considered ancient and therefore sacred. Undertakers would just stack as many coffins as they could in tunnels at the bottom of each shaft—they promised customers it would be in a sacred space, not that it would be private.

Q: Is there more to come?

A: Will we see another find like this? Definitely. There are more of these shafts we haven’t found yet. But analyzing the texts and scenes on the Saqqara coffins alone is going to give us work for the next 50 years.

Source:sciencemag

News: Egypt celebrates 118th anniversary of renowned Cairo museum.

Egypt celebrated late on Tuesday the 118th anniversary of the establishment of the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo.
Held at the museum in Tahrir Square, the celebration was attended by Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anany, government officials and a number of foreign envoys, including the Chinese ambassador to Cairo Liao Liqiang.
The celebration witnessed the opening of two exhibitions at the museum.
During the event, al-Anany delivered 100 ancient coins that belong to China, Saudi Arabia and India.
“This is the second time that the Egyptian government returned smuggled cultural relics to the Chinese government,” Liao told Xinhua.
He also congratulated al-Anany for the major discoveries that have been made in Egypt recently.

Al-Anany said in a speech that the main artifacts at the Egyptian Museum will remain, except the collection of King Tutankhamen and the renowned Royal Mummies, which will be permanently displayed at the under-construction Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.
Over the past few years, the Ministry of Tourism Antiquities has been moving a lot of its unique artifacts to the GEM near the Pyramids Plateau in Giza.
“The Egyptian Museum will never die, even after the transfer of Tutankhamen collections and the Royal Mummies to other museums,” Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Xinhua.
Sabah Abdel-Razek, director-general of the Egyptian Museum, said that the museum is going through an all-out development process to restore its original historical character.

“We are currently working to restore its original shape and color … we are also developing the exhibition halls,” she told Xinhua. 

“We have a complete development plan for the museum that will be carried out soon in cooperation with major international museums.”

The two-storey museum was built during the reign of Khedive Abbas Helmi II in 1897 and opened for visitors in mid-November 1902.
The ground floor is specified for featuring heavy monuments such as large statues, coffins, wall inscriptions and others, while the upper floor showcases drawings, small statues, ancient tools, in addition to the complete set of ancient King Tutankhamen’s artifacts.

Source:africa.cgtn

News: A tour of the Royal Chariots Museum shows off the Muhammad Ali dynasty.

The Royal Chariots Museum in Bulaq Abul-Ela has opened its doors to allow visitors to spend a day and experience the majestic lifestyle of the Muhammad Ali dynasty.

Considered one of the oldest qualitative museums in the world, the museum is also one of the most important museums dedicated to chariots globally. It had been under restoration and development until recently, with the restoration having started in 2001 and suspended several times until properly resuming in 2017. Development included rehabilitation of the building and its structural support, the restoration of its façades, and finalizing all architectural finishes.

The museum’s various collections grant visitors a glimpse into royalty, with celebration halls resembling old Egyptian streets filled with royal carriages of various sizes and types, dating back to the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha’s family.

The basalt on the floor of the hall remains the same since the museum was first established during the reign of Khedive Ismail (1863-1879).

The museum includes a collection of horse gear and supplies, and clothing for carriage workers. It also features a collection of oil paintings depicting kings and princesses from the era.

The Royal Chariots Museum’s main purpose is to shed light on unique artifacts through the museum’s five exhibition halls, and plays a role as a strong and important addition to Egypt’s archaeological sector.

The first hall is the gift hall, in which the vehicles gifted to the Muhammad Ali dynasty are displayed during various occasions, mostly notable of which being a caravan presented by French Empress Eugénie de Montijo to Khedive Ismail on the occasion of the opening of Suez Canal.

The second hall is an open-air exhibition hall in which the rarest types of vehicles are displayed such as the Alay chariot, horse-drawn carriages manufactured with certain specifications for kings and senior statesmen.

The third hall is the main hall of the museum. It displays the carriages used by members of the Muhammad Ali dynasty during various official occasions, in addition to oil paintings of the dynasty’s royal family members.

In the fourth hall, you will find the clothes of stablemen, and a set of special accessories used to decorate the horses in the fifth hall.

A special celebration was held for opening the Royal Chariots Museum, launched by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, in the presence of many ministers, public figures and 50 ambassadors from different countries. Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Khaled al-Anany, said that the museum enjoys the possession of purely Egyptian antiquities.

Source: egyptindependent

New Discovery, Saqqara "3": Mummy count continues to grow at ancient Egypt burial site.

The number of mummy-filled coffins found in a series of burial shafts at Saqqara in Egypt keeps growing, archaeologists with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities reported.

At the start of September, the team had found 13 coffins with mummies inside. By the beginning of October, that number had risen to 59, and now the number is over 100, archaeologists reported in a statement issued Saturday (Nov. 14).

People are "asking how many coffins did we find. The answer is I don't know yet," said Mustafa Waziri, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, in a video released by the ministry and the Smithsonian Channel, which is filming the excavations.

Inside the burial shafts, the team also found 40 statues depicting the deity "Ptah-Soker," the ministry said. This deity is an amalgamation of "Ptah," who was the god of Memphis, and "Soker," who was the god of Saqqara. Archaeologists also found 20 wooden boxes showing depictions of Horus — an Egyptian sky god with a falcon head. Additionally, two wooden statues are inscribed with the name "Phnomus," though the researchers are still trying to figure out who that person was in antiquity.

Numerous shabti figurines were also found. Ancient Egyptians believed that shabtis acted as servants for the deceased in the afterlife.

The various finds date back between roughly 712 B.C. and 30 B.C., according to the ministry statement. During this time period, ancient Egypt was occupied and controlled by foreign groups such as the Assyrians, Persians and Greeks. 

At times, Egypt would regain its independence only to lose it to another foreign power. Excavations continue at the site, and the archaeologists expect to find more coffins filled with mummies and other artifacts, said Khaled El-Enany, Egypt's antiquities minister.

The Smithsonian Channel is filming a documentary called "Tomb Hunters" and released a statement claiming that some of the artifacts date back 4,500 years — to around the time when the Giza Pyramids were being built. The antiquities ministry statement has not confirmed this claim.

Source:livescience