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Study shows life was tough for ancient Egyptians By Alaa Shahine Fri Mar 28, 10:12 AM ETReuters Photo: The Giza pyramids in a file photo. New evidence of a sick, deprived population working... CAIRO (Reuters) - New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found. Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt's old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk...

How wild asses became donkeys of the pharaohs 21:00 10 March 2008 NewScientist.com news service Andy Coghlan The ancient Egyptian state was built on the backs of tamed wild asses. Ten skeletons excavated from burial sites of the first Egyptian kings are the best evidence yet that modern-day donkeys emerged through domestication of African wild asses. The 5000-year-old bones also provide the earliest indications that asses were used for transport. The skeletons suggest that the smaller frames of today's donkeys hadn't yet evolved. Instead, the bones resemble those of modern-day Nubian and Somali wild asses, which are much larger than...

Mark Borda and Mahmoud Marai, from Malta and Egypt respectively, were surveying a field of boulders on the flanks of a hill deep in the Libyan desert some 700 kilometres west of the Nile Valley when engravings on a large rock consisting of hieroglyphic writing, Pharaonic cartouche, an image of the king and other Pharaonic iconography came into view. Mr Borda would not reveal the precise location in order to protect the site... "The consensus among Egyptologists is that the Egyptians did not penetrate this desert any further than the area around Djedefre's Water Mountain. This is a sandstone hill...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew in to the Egyptian city of Luxor on Tuesday aboard a private jet accompanied by his new love, ex-supermodel Carla Bruni, to spend Christmas on the banks of the Nile. French billionaire Vincent Bollore provided the plane that brought Sarkozy, Bruni and nine others from Paris to the pharaonic splendour of Luxor, where the recently divorced Sarkozy will relax for a few days ahead of an official visit on December 30. The group travelled from the airport to the Old Winter Palace hotel in a 16-vehicle convoy, with the pair walking hand-in-hand up the stairs...

Is she or isn't she? Mummy lab working to ID pharaoh queen CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Months after Egypt boldly announced that archaeologists had identified a mummy as the most powerful queen of her time, scientists in a museum basement are still analyzing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old corpse to try to back up the claim aired on TV. DNA testing continues on these mummified remains thought to be Queen Hatshepsut. So far, results indicate the linen-wrapped mummy is most likely, but not conclusively, the female pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled for 20 years in the 15th century B.C. Running...

So far, results indicate the linen-wrapped mummy is most likely, but not conclusively, the female pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut... Running its own ancient-DNA lab is a major step forward for Egypt, which for decades has seen foreigners take most of the credit for major discoveries in the country... But the Hatshepsut discovery also highlights the struggle to back up recent spectacular findings in Egypt, including the unearthing of ancient tombs and mummies, investigations into how King Tut died, and even the discovery in the Siwa oasis of possibly the world's oldest human footprint... In June Egypt announced that Hatshepsut's mummy had...

Excavations reveal ancient Egyptians were master dam builders 2007-12-03 06:47:01 New Delhi, Dec 3 (ANI): Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an ancient dam, dating back to some 4,000 years, in Upper Egypt, proving theories that ancient Egyptians were master dam builders. Discovered by an Egyptian-French archaeological team, which has been working in Luxor since March, the ancient dam was found a few meters away from the Karnak Temple in the city, some 500 km south of Cairo. "The 230-meter long dam was built during the age of the Middle Kingdom (of ancient Egypt) to protect the temple from the...

LUXOR, Egypt - The face of King Tut was unshrouded in public for the first time on Sunday — 85 years after the 3,000-year-old boy pharaoh's golden enshrined tomb and mummy were discovered in Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings. Archeologists removed the mummy from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb, momentarily pulling aside a white linen covering to reveal a shriveled leathery black face and body. The mummy of the 19-year-old pharaoh, whose life and death has captivated people for nearly a century, was placed in a climate-controlled glass box in the tomb, with only the face and...

Tutankhamun's true face to be revealed By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent Last Updated: 2:55am BST 22/10/2007 The true face of Tutankhamun, the boy king who ruled Egypt 3,500 years ago, is to be revealed to the public for the first time. Only a handful of experts have ever seen Tutankhamun's true likeness To coincide with the opening of the exhibition of the treasures of Tutankhamun in London next month, Egyptian archaeologists are to put his mummified body on display in Luxor. Only a handful of experts have ever seen the 19-year-old pharaoh's true likeness. Though not the most important of...

Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamun was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognise the boy king's dark skin colour. "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters. "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency. Hawass said he was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia after a lecture he gave there on September 6 where he defended his theory. Protestors also...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian archaeologists have found what they said could be the oldest human footprint in history in the country's western desert, the Arab country's antiquities' chief said on Monday. "This could go back about two million years," said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. "It could be the most important discovery in Egypt," he told Reuters. Archaeologists found the footprint, imprinted on mud and then hardened into rock, while exploring a prehistoric site in Siwa, a desert oasis. Scientists are using carbon tests on plants found in the rock to determine its...

Massive Egyptian fort discovered Mon, 23 Jul 2007 Egypt announced on Sunday the discovery of the largest-ever military city from the Pharaonic period on the edge of the Sinai desert, part of a series of forts that stretched to the Gaza border. "The three forts are part of a string of 11 castles that made up the Horus military road that went from Suez all the way to the city of Rafah on the Egyptian-Palestinian border and dates to the 18th and 19th dynasties (1560-1081 BC)," antiquities supreme Zahi Hawwas said in a statement. Teams have been digging in the...

Mystery of Tut's Father: New Clues on Unidentified Mummy Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News July 10, 2007 Egyptologists have uncovered new evidence that bolsters the controversial theory that a mysterious mummy is the corpse of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, husband of Nefertiti and, some experts believe, the father of King Tut. (Photos: Who Was Tut's Father?) The mummy's identity has generated fierce debate ever since its discovery in 1907 in tomb KV 55, located less than 100 feet (30 meters) from King Tutankhamun's then hidden burial chamber. So an international team of researchers led by Zahi Hawass, head of...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptologists think they have identified with certainty the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an archaeologist said on Monday. Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, will hold a news conference in Cairo on Wednesday. The Discovery Channel said he would announce what it called the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tutankhamun. The archaeologist, who asked not to be named, said the candidate for identification as the mummy of Hatshepsut was one of two...

CAIRO: There are diverse aspects to the ancient Egyptian civilization that many of us are fascinated by: the building of pyramids, the tombs that store mummies or hoards of gold, as well as the captivating paintings on the walls. But few of us direct our attention to the ancient Egyptians’ cuisine and their kitchens. The issue would have remained sidelined, even despite of the fact that the walls in temples and tombs are replete with images showing the Pharaohs’ meals as well as the poultry and animals that made up part of their dishes. But when a tour guide’s interest...

Panaji, Feb 07: Renowned German Indologist and scientist of religion, Egbert Richter Ushanas today claimed that he has unravelled the mystery of Indus Valley scripts by decoding major seals and tablets found during various archaeological excavations. "Already 1,000-odd seals are decoded and of them, 300-odd are printed in monography -- the message of Indus seals and tablets," stated Richter, who has also decoded tablets from Easter Island in Pacific Ocean and disc of Phaistos on Island of Crete in Meditarrenean Sea. "All the seals are based on Vedas -- Rig Veda and Atharva Veda," Richter told a news agency here....

Engineers on Friday moved a 3,200-year-old statue of Ramses II. The pharonic statue had stood for more than 50 years in a congested square in downtown Cairo. Its new home will be at a tranquil spot next to the Great Pyramids. Thousands came out to watch the statue makes its 20 kilometer journey. Onlookers crowded along the street around the statue of Pharaoh Ramses II which was surrounded by a convoy including 1,500 soldiers, during the final leg of its journey It took 10 hours for the 11 meter, 83 ton statue to travel through downtown Cairo and cross the...

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt owed their existence to prehistoric climate change in the eastern Sahara, according to an exhaustive study of archaeological data that bolsters this theory. Starting at about 8500 B.C., researchers say, broad swaths of what are now Egypt, Chad, Libya, and Sudan experienced a "sudden onset of humid conditions." ...The new study, which appears online today on the Science Express Web site, is based on painstaking research that combines new radiocarbon dating of about 500 artifacts from the region with data from past studies. Kröpelin and study co-author Rudolph Kuper also collected geological climate data from...

LONDON: It has been 84 years since Egypt's famed Valley of the Kings revealed its last great riches – the fabulous gold of Tutankhamen's tomb. Now archaeologists believe they have stumbled across one final secret: The mummified remains of the boy king's widow buried 3000 years ago. In a mysterious shaft less than 15m from Tutankhamen's burial ground, US archaeologists found seven coffins. They believe one they have not yet been able to open may contain the remains of Queen Ankhesenpaaten. The tomb – found by accident by Memphis University team leader Dr Otto Schaden – contained seven coffins stacked...

Treasure hunter Franck Goddio has spent years bringing the sunken city of Alexandria to the surface. The results of his labors, now premiering in Berlin, reveal incest, fratricide and iniquity. And breathtaking beauty. It's a good thing that the Martin Gropius Building has such high ceilings. It'll need them. The exhibit at the Berlin museum includes 15-ton statues sculpted from rose-colored granite that have spent millennia on the ocean floor. The pieces that will be on display in the exhibit entitled "Egypt's Sunken Treasure," opening to the public on May 13, but ceremoniously unveiled by German President Horst Köhler and...