Ancient circular mathematical mystery solved?

Arkysite  

A recent paper from Tel Aviv regarding Egyptian standard sizes for round pottery jugs may have inadvertently helped to solve an Egyptian mathematical mystery:

http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/article00367.html

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033895

A cursory examination of the new information suggests it is significant and may provide a long-sought-after explanation for the seeming existence of two different measurement traditions used for circular calculations in Egypt: one algorithmic, used in papyri and based on a diameter of 9 units (i.e. 28/9), and one geometric and used in monumental architecture and based on a circumference of 3+1/7th times the diameter (i.e. 22/7) (Legon 1990; Legon 1991; Lightbody 2008; Cooper 2011: 478; Lightbody 2012).

WikiLoot aims to use crowdsourcing to track down stolen ancient artefacts

The Guardian, UK (Tom Kington)

Egypt is not included in this programme just yet, but hopefully it will be before too long.

Campaigns to combat archaeological tomb raiders have notched up some big successes, notably a deal under which the J Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles agreed to hand back 40 precious artefacts after it was shown they had been looted from digs in Italy.

Activists, however, call that a drop in the ocean in a business valued at as much as $10bn (£6.5bn) a year, and claim hard-pressed lawyers and police forces are struggling against unscrupulous dealers.

Which is why plans are afoot to put thousands of previously unpublished photos and documents about stolen artefacts online to create WikiLoot, a new crowdsourcing, data mining experiment to help track down some of the world's oldest treasures.

Sad News: Paul Sussman

CNN 

Family, friends, colleagues and fans have been paying tribute to the author, archaeologist and former CNN journalist Paul Sussman, who has died suddenly.

Sussman, who lived in London with his wife Alicky and their two children, Jude and Ezra, had just completed the fourth in a series of novels, based around the exploits of a gritty detective from Cairo, that had been translated into 33 languages and sold two million copies.

On his Facebook page he described his feelings over its forthcoming publication: "First proof copy of 'Labyrinth of Osiris' arrived with the postman this morning. Curiously I am more excited about this one than any of my previous novels!"

His wife, a documentary maker, on Sunday announced Sussman's death from a ruptured aneurysm, adding: "He was a truly unique person - a brilliant Dad and adored husband. We will all miss him so, so much xxx."

New interactive gallery to open to the public for the first time at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro

This is Cornwall

AN EGYPTIAN mummy will be the centrepiece of a new interactive gallery that will open to the public for the first time at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro on Friday from 11am to 4pm.

Iset Tayf Nakt was an Egyptian priest, craftsman, husband and father who lived more than 2,500 years ago.

His mummified remains have long been the museum's most popular exhibit and now, as well being able to enter an enclosed tomb area to see him and his inner coffin, there is an opportunity to see what he looked like following a scan and specialist reconstruction of his head.

Another exhibition highlight is the statue of Sekmet, the Lion Goddess, which is being loaned from the British Museum – together with a wide variety of objects and interactive displays showcasing what life was like for ancient people.

The Heritage Lottery Fund awarded a grant of £233,000 to develop the new gallery.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council contributed another £55,000 and £10,000 was secured from the Foundation for Sports and the Arts.

Exhibition: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science, Boston

MetroWest Daily News (Chris Bergeron)

Even sleeping, “Annie” is just one of many mysteries in the recently opened show subtitled “Ancient Secrets, Modern Science.” It will be on view through Sept. 3.

Visitors will get to feel what it was like to drag by rope 60-pound versions of the brick blocks used to build the pyramids. They’ll get to experience what it was like for archaeologists to enter the darkened tombs of ancient pharaohs.

And they’ll get to puzzle over a life-sized replica of the famed Rosetta Stone that provided the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs that held the secrets of Egypt’s ancient religious culture.

The exhibit was created and produced by COSI, the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, and built by the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Archaeologist John Nolan, who has been working in Egypt since 1988 including several years at the site where many of the exhibit’s artifacts were recovered, stressed that “Lost Egypt” offers much more than earlier explorers’ obsession with tombs, temples and treasure.

Exhibition: Shadow of the Sphinx, Ancient Egypt and its Influence

Observer-Dispatch (Elizabeth Cooper)

The mysteries of ancient Egypt still have the power to awe and inspire, and  now Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute is hoping they will draw thousands of  visitors to the museum this summer.

The exhibit is the third in a series  designed to attract a broader audience to the nearly 100-year-old institution  and revitalize its relationship with the community it calls  home.

Photograph for Today - Decorated vase from Hierakonpolis Main Deposit

Ashmolean Museum

Burial site revealing ancient Egyptian funerary rites uncovered

 Dayr al Barsha

Press Report: The discovery of a new nomarch burial in Dayr al-Barshā

Please find the full press report attached as a pdf.
During its 2012 spring campaign, the archaeological mission of Leuven University in Dayr al-Barshā, directed by Harco Willems, has discovered an important burial dating back to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (approx. 2040 B.C.). Although the burial has been robbed at least twice, and has suffered extensive damage, a large amount of objects were still found in their original position, providing unique information on the scenario of the funerary ritual. The tomb must have belonged to a nomarch

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

With three great photos.

In the course of routine excavation work at the tomb of the first Middle Kingdom governor of the Hare Nome or province, the nomarch Ahanakht I at the Deir Al-Barsha site in Minya, Belgian archaeologists from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven stumbled on what is believed to be an important burial going back to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.

“It is for the first time in over a century that a relatively well preserved burial of this kind has been found,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, Minister of State for Antiquities. He went on to explain that, although the burial was robbed at least twice in antiquity and has suffered extensive damage since, a large part of the funerary collection was found well preserved at its original position.

Early studies suggest that the burial must belong to one of the governor or a member of his family.

Stolen Pharaonic statue pieces seized in Giza

Egypt Independent (Yousry el Badry) 

Security forces seized 40 pieces that make up the top parts of Pharaonic Shawabti figurines, an Egyptian security source said on Thursday. The artifacts were stolen from the Cairo University excavation warehouses located in the archeological Saqqara region in Giza.

Investigations revealed that the suspects were surreptitiously digging and drilling then burying the figurine pieces in the sand until they could be sold.

A source said that following investigations, a number of search teams were formed which were dispatched to the site in order to search for the stolen figurine pieces. The 40 faience pieces covered in Pharaonic inscriptions were found buried in the sand, along with a 48 centimeter long limestone door, and two reliefs engraved with hieroglyphic text.

Antiquities Authority starts pumping out drainage water from under the Sphinx

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

This week, Giza Inspectorate operated 18 water pump machines to pump out subterranean water that has accumulated under the Sphinx.

The machines are distributed over the Giza plateau according to a map showing the areas where the subterranean water has accumulated.

Mohamed Ibrahim Minister of State for Antiquities said that the machines will pump out 1100 cubic metres of water every hour, based on studies carried out previously by reputed Egyptian and American experts in subterranean water and ground mechanic and equilibrium factors.

Rare new head of Nefertiti

Zenobia (Judith Weingarten)

A new head of  Nefertiti has been identified (left).

This, we now must acknowledge, is a head of the famous Queen Nefertiti, wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten (1353-1336 BCE). After some serious detective work, Dr Christian E. Loeben, Egyptologist at the August Kestner Museum in Hanover, Germany, has established its true and fascinating identity. It had been thought, wrongly as it now turns out, that this fragment of a face depicted the unisex pharaoh himself.

Dr Loeben has been able to demonstrate convincingly that it is in fact the illustrious queen, whose most famous portrait is the polychrome bust kept in the Berlin Museum (below left).

It measures barely 5.5 cm (2.2") in height, but the red-brown quartzite* head is a tiny masterpiece of Egyptian art.

For the St. Louis Art Museum, a Legal Victory Raises Ethical Questions

The Atlantic (Malcolm Gay)

In certain respects, the tale of the Ka-Nefer-Nefer follows a familiar script: like many disputed antiquities, the Egyptian funerary mask was unearthed last century and quickly vanished, spending nearly 50 years in obscurity before resurfacing on the European art market in the late 1990s. The St. Louis Art Museum soon bought the mask -- an elaborately tooled cartonnage of blended gold, glass and linen. It has since become the centerpiece in a bitter ownership dispute between the museum, which claims clear title, and Egypt, which charges the mask was plundered from a government storeroom.

But this story went decidedly off-script last year after U.S. officials, acting on Egypt's behalf, entered the fray. The feds informed museum leaders that they believed the mask was stolen, and they intended to use the courts to seize the artifact and return it to Egypt. But where some museums might have simply handed over the goods, St. Louis went on the attack, filing its own a pre-emptive lawsuit that claimed the statute of limitations had expired -- an aggressive challenge from an institution that has repeatedly defied calls to release its grip on this pricey piece of loot.

Ancient Egyptian Husband and Wife to Be Re-united at Brussels Ancient Art Fair

PR Web

After thousands of years of separation, it appears that the husband and wife depicted in an ancient Egyptian pair statue may be reunited at last. Thanks to the skillful eye of an Egyptologist, who recognized similarities between our fragment and a fragment in a European museum collection, the couple may once again be joined together. The possible reunion is set to take place at the 10th annual Brussels Ancient Art Fair in June at the Hixenbaugh Ancient Art exhibition.   

The Hixenbaugh Ancient Art fragment is of a seated female figure wearing a high-waisted dress and a tri-partite wig, her left arm is extended to embrace her husband. The statue dates to either the New Kingdom or the Third Intermediate Period(ca. 1550 – 702 BC). The statue was intentionally defaced in antiquity - the pair separated and the woman’s face obliterated to damn her for all time. 

How the Pharaohs gave us the domesticated cat

Daily Mail (Sara Malm)

It has long been debated how cats went from running in the wild to becoming our domesticated furry friends.

Researchers may have solved the mystery after analysing the genetic makeup of Egyptian cat mummies.

The results of the study of DNA from the remains of ritually slaughtered animals found in tombs suggest that we have the people of Ancient Egypt to thank for our moggies and ginger toms.

Huge Canaanite Jewelry Hoard Unearthed in Megiddo

The MidEast News Source (Arieh O’Sullivan)

With photo.

Archaeologists digging at Tel Megiddo in northern Israel have unearthed what turns out to be one of the largest troves of Canaanite treasures ever found, buried in rubble from destruction 3,100 years ago.

The treasure was hidden inside a clay vessel that had been unearthed in the summer of 2010. The pot had been filled with dirt and sent for testing. It was only recently that the dirt was examined in a restoration laboratory and the treasure revealed to their great surprise.

The hoard includes a collection of gold and silver jewelry, beads, a ring and a pair of unique gold earrings with molded ibexes and wild goats that was likely made in Egypt.

“We find about 10 [whole] vessels every year. The only thing that was unusual was that the jug was found inside a bowl. It was put inside a bowl 3,000 years ago and was covered by another bowl and it was put in the corner of a court yard,” archaeologist Eran Arie told The Media Line. 

A piece of Mummy wrapping

ABC South West Victoria   

While some of the Warrnambool Art Gallery's more eclectic objects are reasonably well documented, this particular piece has many question marks around it which Collections Registrar Agostina Hawkins has been trying to solve.

Inside a lovely little cigarette tin decorated with pictures from Cairo are a couple of handwritten notes and a piece of material which is, apparently, a piece of Egyptian Mummy wrapping.

According to the note the wrapping is from a Mummy's tomb at Memphis from the time of King Unas.

The note also says there should be a scarab grub inside the tin, but it's no longer there.

Recent finds from Abydos

WAMC 

Radio recording (audio file)

In today’s Academic Minute, Dr. Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner of the University of Toronto reveals some recent finds from an archaeological excavation in Abydos, Egypt.

Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner is Assistant Professor of Egyptian Archaeology in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. She also serves at Project Director for the North Abydos Votive Zone Project , an ongoing project which focuses on understanding the social organization of the community that left behind traces of votive activity at the site. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

The site of Abydos in southern Egypt has long attracted pilgrims and archaeologists. As the center of the cult of Osiris, god of death and regeneration, Abydos drew people from allwalks of life to participate in a festival that dramatized the god’s successful post-mortemtransformation. The focal point of the festival was a procession in which statues of Osiris, along with his wife Isis and son Horus, were carried on the shoulders of priests in boat-shaped shrinesacross the desert landscape from his temple dwelling to his tomb.

Police recover pharaonic artefacts stolen in wake of revolution

Ahram Online (Nevine el-Aref)

A collection of 35 ancient Egyptian artefacts stolen in the wake of last year's Tahrir Square uprising was recovered on Monday by Tourism and Antiquities police.

The objects were found buried in sand close to the Horemhab funerary complex in the Saqqara Necropolis on the outskirts of Cairo.

According to police, the objects were stolen from neighbouring archaeological sites during the uprising. The thieves, police speculate, had been planning to smuggle the objects out of the country at a later date.

The Mummy’s Curse: The Truth Behind an Edwardian Rumour

UCL Blogs (Katherine L Aitchison)

Anyone who knows anything about the horror genre will have heard stories of curses placed on tombs in Ancient Egypt to deter grave robbers and those who would plunder the graves of priests and pharaohs. But where do these stories come from and is there any truth behind them?

On 21 May Professor Roger Luckhurst of Birkbeck College presented the true story of a mummy’s curse to a packed Petrie Museum audience.

Or perhaps, I should say, he presented the truth behind the rumour as far as he could piece it together drawing from numerous different accounts. A little more convoluted as a turn of phrase, but much more accurate.

The mummy in question is, in fact, simply a coffin lid known as “The Unlucky Mummy”, or to give it its official name: British Museum object-22542.

This lid, once part of the last resting place of an unknown woman from a high-ranking family in the priesthood, was donated to the museum by the sister of Arthur F. Wheeler, the man who was believed to have brought it back from Egypt.

But the story surrounding the lid is full of intrigue, featuring a number of shooting accidents and suspicious deaths as well as a lost fortune and a picture of a ghostly face.

New Book: Egyptian Tomb Architecture

British Archaeological Reports


Egyptian Tomb Architecture The archaeological facts of pharaonic circular symbolism 
By David I. Lightbody.
ISBN 9781407303390. £25.00. xiii+88 pages; 77 figures, maps, plans, drawings and photographs; 4 data Appendices.
BAR S1852 2008:

The objective of this monograph is to describe and explain the meanings underlying some otherwise anomalous archaeological data drawn from the study of Ancient Egypt. An explanation for the phenomena observed has hitherto proved elusive. The data is principally concerned with royal funerary architecture from the Old Kingdom, and the underlying systems of measurement and geometry that were employed therein. As well as providing a description and explanation for the data, this work also has the objective of providing the first synthesis of related cultural information drawn from several different textual and archaeological resources. The general subject matter is pharaonic funerary architecture from Old Kingdom Egypt, and the work focuses specifically on the circular proportions deliberately incorporated into the tomb designs by the architects. Contents: Introduction; 1) Fundamentals of Ancient Egyptian mathematics and architecture; 2) The Evidence and facts of Egyptian circular proportions; 3) The symbolism; 4) Methodology, analysis and discussion of mathematics; 5) Arguments from authorities; 6) Archaeology and philology; fieldwork and deskwork; 7) Conclusions; Appendix 1: Secondary Issues; Appendix 2: Social Context of early Egyptology; Appendix 3: Egyptian and Greek Mathematics; Appendix 4: Quotes from the Greeks.