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Ptahmes was Mayor of Memphis and high-ranking official under the Pharaohs Sethi I and Ramses II (1290-1213 BC) of the XIX dynasty. His tomb is located in the south of the Causeway of the Pharaoh Unas which yields a number of tombs dated to the New Kingdom. It was rediscovered in 2010 after a part of it was revealed in 1885 and lost under the sands at the end of the 19th century. During the 2013/2014 excavation season, Cairo University archeologists found broken jars at the site. One jar contained a solidified whitish mass, as well as canvas fabric that...

Last month, archaeologists cracked open a tomb excavated in Alexandria, Egypt, revealing three skeletons bathing in an crimson pool of sludgy sewage. In response, tens of thousands around the world immediately petitioned for the right to sip from the freshly uncorked casket of amontillado. (Spoiler: It hasn't worked out.) But fear not, coffin connoisseurs: There's a new artisanal artifact in town -- the world's oldest solid cheese, over 3,000 years in the making. The tomb of Ptahmes, mayor of Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt during the 13th century BC, contains quite the trove of treasures. First uncovered in 1885,...

Hours before he died, "Ötzi" the Iceman gorged on the fatty meat of a wild goat, according to a new analysis of the famous mummy's stomach contents. The frozen body of the Copper Age hunter was discovered in 1991 in the Alps of northern Italy, where he died some 5,000 years ago. The circumstances surrounding Ötzi's death are not fully known, but the most popular theory—based in part on the discovery of an arrowhead in his back—is that he was murdered by other hunters while fleeing through the mountains. Scientists previously analyzed the contents of Ötzi's lower intestine and determined...

In a presentation at the Seventh World Congress on Mummy Studies, researchers from the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman revealed that they had finally located the iceman known as Otzi’s stomach and determined his last meal. They were also able to successfully sequence his entire genome. Researchers from the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Italy divided the presentation into three different topics. The first part of the presentation was given by microbiologist Frank Maixner. He had recently examined old tomography scans taken of Otzi back in 2005 and was able to finally locate the stomach which was...

Less than 2 hours before he hiked his last steps in the Tyrolean Alps 5000 years ago, Ötzi the Iceman fueled up on a last meal of ibex meat. That was the conclusion of a talk here last week at the 7th World Congress on Mummy Studies, during which researchers—armed with Ötzi's newly sequenced genome and a detailed dental analysis—also concluded that the Iceman had brown eyes and probably wasn't much of a tooth brusher. The Iceman, discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991 some 5200 years after his death, has been a gold mine of information about Neolithic life,...

From the analysis of the intestinal contents of the 5,200-year-old Iceman from the Eastern Alps, Professor James Dickson from the University of Glasgow in the UK and his team have shed some light on the mummy's lifestyle and some of the events leading up to his death. By identifying six different mosses in his alimentary tract, they suggest that the Iceman may have travelled, injured himself and dressed his wounds. The Iceman is the first glacier mummy to have fragments of mosses in his intestine. This is surprising as mosses are neither palatable nor nutritious and there are few reports...