Posted on 12/01/2011 8:25:02 PM PST by SunkenCiv
In a secluded stretch of desert about 300 kilometres south of Cairo, hundreds of bodies lie buried in the sand. Wrapped in linen and rolled up in stiff mats made of sticks... their ornate plaited hair styles and simple personal possessions help to reveal details about the individuals in each grave. The bodies date from... when the Pharaoh Akhenaten... moved his capital to remote Amarna, to worship... the Sun disc Aten...
Barry Kemp, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and director of the Amarna Project, has been working with his colleagues to excavate the skeletons, and says that they are starting to reveal "an alarming picture of a stressful life". Many Amarnans died young, with retarded growth and signs of multiple injuries. Some young men had marks where their shoulder blades had been pierced, perhaps as part of a brutal ritual.
Kemp can't say much more about the skeletons because he had to flee the site in January, putting his team on flights out of the country and walling up his storehouses as a present-day revolution sent the country into chaos... Although the situation soon calmed -- in fact, Amarna did not suffer a single episode of looting -- Kemp has spent months waiting for permission to resume excavations. Other teams working in the country tell a similar story. "We've lost a year," says Frank Rühli, a palaeopathologist from the Centre for Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who was scheduled to start work in February on human remains at the pyramids of Saqqara, near Cairo, and in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.
The block on excavations has been the latest in a series of obstacles for archaeologists working in Egypt...
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
|
|
|
| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
|
|
Thanks Renfield. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
|
|
|
|
You know how the three stars in Orion's belt align perfectly with the pyramids of Egypt?
Has anyone done the math and imposed the entire Orion constellation upon the three pyramid sites?
And then extrapolated data to investigate sites where a star such as Sirius would correspond to coordinates on Earth? Or M42 under Orion's belt?
Then see how the three stars in Orion's belt could be laid over the pyramids. At the same scale, has anyone dug where Beetlejuice, Rigel, Saif (M42) or (not shown but important as the brightest star in the southern sky) Sirius?
We know where it ends, with Bamyan-style demolitions.
Joe, regarding your tagline: “A closed mouth gathers no feet”
I can tell from long personal experience that you’ve obviously never been the loser in a bar fight.
Note: this topic is from 12/01/2011. Just an updated ping message, but without the ping.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
