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When Manfred Bietak, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences who has led digs at Tell el-Dab’a for decades, first saw the remains, he immediately thought of the trophy-taking ritual. According to ancient accounts, Egyptian warriors presented the hands of slain enemies to the pharaoh, who rewarded them with gold necklaces or golden pendants in the shape of flies...The care also suggests the hands were removed after death, not hacked from living prisoners. They were probably severed after rigor mortis–a tightening of the tendons in the hours after death–had passed, Gresky argues...Fingers are among the first parts of the...

From axes to swords to chariots, see the weapons that helped make ancient Egyptian warriors formidable.The Egyptian military became one of the ancient world’s greatest fighting forces during the New Kingdom period (1550 B.C. - 1070 B.C.), but it did so using borrowed weapons technology. For much of its early history, Egypt relied on simple stone maces, wooden-tipped spears, axes and bows and arrows to fight off neighboring Nubian and Libyan tribesmen. Then came the Hyksos, an invading army from Syria that conquered Egypt around 1650 B.C. with vastly superior weapons like speedy chariots and powerful composite bows. During the...

Egyptian archaeologists working in the Nile Delta have uncovered dozens of rare pre-dynastic tombs dating to the period before Egypt's Pharaonic kingdoms first emerged more than 5,000 years ago.They also found tombs from the later Hyksos period (1650 to 1500 BC) when Western Asian migrants took over the country, putting an end to Egypt's Middle Kingdom.The tombs include 68 from the Buto period, which began around 3300 BC, and five from the Naqada III period, which was just before the emergence of Egypt's first dynasty around 3100 BC, according to a statement from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities released...

Topics mentioned with David... Greek Dark Age, The Exodus, Trojan War, Hyksos Invasion, The Sojourn, Solomons Temple, Pyramid Construction, Diorite Bowls, Longevity, Babylon Chronology, Hammurabi, Bronze Age Collapse, Etrutria, Aeneas, Greek Expansion, Family Planning in the Ancient World, Festival Of Drunkenness, Golden Calf, Spiked Wine, Psychedelics, Phoenicians in South America, 1177BC, Historicity of The Old Testament, King Saul, King David, etc ...

The Hyksos were a foreign dynasty that ruled parts of Egypt between approximately 1638-1530 BCE, the first instance of Egypt being ruled by individuals of a foreign origin. The common story is that the Hyksos were invaders from a far-off land, but this idea has been drawn into question. Archaeological evidence does link Hyksos culture with an origin in the Near East, but exactly how they rose to power is unclear. ...Stantis and colleagues collected enamel samples from the teeth of 75 humans buried in the ancient Hyksos capital city of Tell el-Dab'a in the northeast Nile Delta. Comparing ratios...

In the Second Intermediate Period (18th-16th centuries B.C.E.), towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age, the West Asian (Canaanite) Hyksos controlled Lower (Northern) Egypt. In the 16th century, Ahmose I overthrew the Hyksos and initiated the XVIII dynasty and the New Kingdom of Egypt. Recent archaeological discoveries at Tel Habuwa (also known as Tell el-Habua or Tell-Huba), a site associated with ancient Tjaru (Tharo), shed new light on Ahmose's campaign. A daybook entry in the famous Rhind Mathematical Papyrus notes that Ahmose seized control of Tjaru before laying siege the Hyksos at their capital in Avaris. Excavations at the...

10 Strange Archaeological Finds Straight Out Of A Horror Story Scattered under the ground beneath our feet are the remains of history. There are little pieces of the lives of people who lived before us that give us little glimpses into who they were—the things they held dear, the homes they lived in, and the bones of their decaying bodies. But life thousands of years ago wasn’t always gentle and easy. Sometimes, when these remains are uncovered, the stories they reveal are brutal and violent—and sometimes, they’re pulled straight out of a horror story. 10 A Pit Of Amputated Arms10b-amputated-arm-bones-from-pit...

Harvard University educated archaeologist and president of the Paleontological Research Corporation, Dr. Joel Klenck, states an array of archaeological discoveries evidence a crisis during the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose II... in the Eighteenth Dynasty. An inscription by the succeeding Pharaoh Hatshepsut... in her Underground Temple at Speos Artemidos states that Egypt was "ruined" and "had gone to pieces" before the beginning of her reign. Hatshepsut's inscription also states that a population of "vagabonds" emerged from former Asiatic populations that once controlled northern Egypt and caused this ruination. Hatshepsut notes these vagabonds were responsible for "overthrowing that which had...

The remains of a previously unknown pharaoh who reigned more than 3,600 years ago have emerged from the desert sand at South Abydos in Sohag province, about 300 miles south of Cairo... The skeleton of Woseribre Senebkay, who appears to be one of the earliest kings of a forgotten Abydos Dynasty (1650–1600 B.C.) was found by a University of Pennsylvania expedition... It rested in a four-chambered tomb amidst the fragmented debris of his coffin, funerary mask and canopic chest... Senebkay's tomb dates to about 1650 B.C., during Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, when central authority collapsed, giving rise to several small...

The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said the discovery of the pumice would open a new field of study in Egyptology. "Geologists will help us study how ... natural disasters, such as the Santorini tsunami, affected the Pharaonic period," he said... While noting that layers of ash from Santorini have been found in Egypt's Nile Delta, he told The Associated Press that he thought it more likely the floating pumice was carried to the Sinai by regular ocean currents. The archaeological team found the pumice while excavating at Tel Habuwa in the desert northeast of Qantara,...

During excavation works, archaeologists chanced upon the remains of administrative buildings dating back to the Hyksos and the New Kingdom periods in the second millennium BC, as well as a great many grain silos. Each administrative edifice is a two-storey structure with a number of mud brick rooms and courtyards. Inside these halls a collection of coffins, skulls and skeletons of human beings and animals were found buried in sand. Early studies of the skeletons reveal that they bear deep scars and wounds as the result of being stabbed with arrows or spears. "This indicates that the battles between the...

Archaeologists have found a 3,500-year-old Egyptian town buried under the earth in the country’s northeastern region of the Nile delta. The city, discovered by a team of Austrian archaeologists in Tell El-Dab’a, is likely to be Avaris, the capital of Hyksos rulers who ruled Egypt from 1664 B.C. to 1569 B.C., Egyptian Cultural Minister Farouk Hosni was quoted as saying by Xinhua. Meanwhile, Zahi Hawaas, an eminent Egyptian archaeologist and secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) said radar imaging showed the outlines of streets, houses and temples of the underground town and a whole view of its...

A team of archaeologists excavating a palace in the ancient city of Avaris, in Egypt, has made a gruesome discovery. The archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of 16 human hands buried in four pits. Two of the pits, located in front of what is believed to be a throne room, hold one hand each. Two other pits, constructed at a slightly later time in an outer space of the palace, contain the 14 remaining hands. They are all right hands; there are no lefts. "Most of the hands are quite large and some of them are very large," Manfred Bietak,...

During the Late Bronze Age, the Aegean volcanic island of Thera erupted violently, spreading pumice and ash across the eastern Mediterranean and triggering frosts as far away as what is now California. The Theran town of Akrotiri was completely buried. Tsunamis up to 12 meters high crashed onto the shores of Crete, 110 kilometers to the south, and the cataclysm may ultimately have sped the demise of Crete's famed Minoan civilization. For nearly 30 years, archaeologists have fought over when the eruption took place. Those who rely on dates from pottery styles and Egyptian inscriptions put the event at roughly...

Ancient history as taught today is a disaster area. The chronology of the first and second millennium BCE is badly wrong. The history of ancient history revisionism offered here is drawn largely from the pages of SIS publications over the last 25 years. The Revision of Ancient History - A Perspective By P John Crowe. An edited and extended version of a paper presented to the SIS Jubilee Conference, Easthampstead Park, Sept. 17-19th 1999 [1] Internet Paper Revision no.1 March 2001 Contents Introduction An Outline History of Revising Ancient History - Up to 1952. 2.1 Exaggerating Antiquity. 2.2 The Early...

The tale of a city The discovery of the eastern fortress of the New Kingdom military town of Tharo in North Sinai charts the military quarters used by the ancient Egyptian to protect Egypt's northeast border, says Nevine El-Aref From top: a worker brushing the sand off the newly discovered water channel; a bird view of the Tharo foundation; the inscription of king Seti I engraved on a wall of Karnak Temples photos courtesy of SCA The fortified city of Qantara East (Sharq) in North Sinai is often hailed by historians as Egypt's eastern gateway to the Nile Delta. Its...

A team of archaeologists digging at Tel-Habuwa, near the town of Qantara East and three kilometres east of the Suez Canal... chanced upon a cachet of limestone reliefs bearing names of two royal personalities and two seated statues of differing sizes. The larger statue is made of limestone and belongs to a yet unidentified personage, but from its size and features archaeologists believe that it could be a statue of Horus, the god of the city. In 2001 archaeologists unearthed remains of a mud-brick temple dedicated to this deity. The second is a headless limestone statue inscribed on the back...

Article by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor published in Science magazineBEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL June 17, 2010 -- In a just published article in Science magazine (June 18, 2010), Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev presents novel implications related to new developments in the radiocarbon dating of Pharaonic Egypt. The article reports that, for the first time, it is possible to relate the Minoan Santorini eruption with Egyptian Historical Chronology solely on the basis of radiocarbon dates. Thus, it appears that the eruption preceded the 18th Dynasty and occurred during the Hyksos Period. Moreover, conventional association of...

Austrian archaeologists have found a Babylonian seal in Egypt that confirms contact between the Babylonians and the Hyksos during the second millennium B.C. Irene Forstner-Müller, the head of the Austrian Archaeological Institute's (ÖAI) branch office in Cairo, said today (Thurs) the find had occurred at the site of the ancient town of Avaris near what is today the city of Tell el-Dab'a in the eastern Nile delta. The Hyksos conquered Egypt and reigned there from 1640 to 1530 B.C. She said a recently-discovered cuneiform tablet had led archaeologists to suspect there had been contact between the Babylonians and the Hyksos....

CAIRO: Egyptian archaeologists have discovered what they say was the ancient headquarters of the pharaonic army guarding the northeastern borders of Egypt for more than 1,500 years, the government said on Wednesday. The fortress and adjoining town, which they identify with the ancient place name Tharu, lies in the Sinai peninsula about 3km northeast of the modern town of Qantara, Egyptian archaeologist Mohamed Abdel Maksoud said. The town sat at the start of a military road joining the Nile Valley to the Levant, parts of which were under Egyptian control for much of the period, the government's Supreme Council for...