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Up to 70 percent of British men and half of all Western European men are related to the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun, geneticists in Switzerland said. Scientists at Zurich-based DNA genealogy center, iGENEA, reconstructed the DNA profile of the boy Pharaoh, who ascended the throne at the age of nine, his father Akhenaten and grandfather Amenhotep III, based on a film that was made for the Discovery Channel. The results showed that King Tut belonged to a genetic profile group, known as haplogroup R1b1a2, to which more than 50 percent of all men in Western Europe belong, indicating that they share...

A significant problem with Egyptology's current approach to the tomb of Tutankhamun is the assumption that Howard Carter had all the answers, and that now, with online access to most of his Griffith Institute notes, all the data is to hand and the tomb has effectively had its say. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only were Carter's investigations very much a work in progress, with conclusions subject to constant change as yet another piece of the jigsaw fell into place; it is increasingly clear that much of what the excavator did and thought in relation to the...

"[The king] Unis seizes the sky and splits its iron."Inscribed in hieroglyphs in a 4,400-year-old pyramid, this sentence evidences that ancient Egyptians understood the extraterrestrial origin of iron-rich meteorites—thousands of years before European scientists reached the same conclusion......the world's oldest-identified iron objects are small beads that come from a burial in Gerzeh, a roughly 5,300-year-old village in northern Egypt. Other pre-Iron Age iron objects have been found in Egypt, including an amulet in the 4,000-year-old tomb of Queen Aashyet in Deir el-Bahari and a dagger blade in King Tutankhamun's tomb...The earliest-known Egyptian references to iron in connection with stars, meteoroids...

An ancient Egyptian woman had an ovarian tumor with teeth and was buried with a possible healing object.While excavating an ancient Egyptian cemetery, archaeologists made a rare discovery: an ovarian tumor nestled in the pelvis of a woman who died more than three millennia ago. The tumor, a bony mass with two teeth, is the oldest known example of a teratoma, a rare type of tumor that typically occurs in ovaries or testicles.A teratoma can be benign or malignant, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and it is usually made up of various tissues, such as muscle, hair, teeth or bone....

Ever since mummy KV55 was discovered in 1907, it has generated deep interest, debate, and controversy. The big issues have been identifying the KV55 mummy in ancient Egyptian history and combining its most probable identity with that person's proposed age of death....The mummy was found with grave goods attributed to different people and a desecrated coffin in the undecorated tomb KV55 in the Valley of the Kings in 1907 by an Egyptologist named Edward R. Ayrton.This tomb is just a few meters from Tutankhamun's tomb.Upon excavation, mummy KV55 disintegrated into dust and bones, so today it's only a skeleton.It was...

In an innovative endeavor to create a sensory bridge to the ancient past, a team of researchers led by Barbara Huber of the MPI of Geoanthropology has recreated one of the scents used in the mummification of an important Egyptian woman more than 3,500 years ago...The team's research centered on the mummification substances used to embalm the noble lady Senetnay in the 18th dynasty, circa 1450 BCE. The researchers utilized advanced analytical techniques—including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, high-temperature gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry—to reconstruct the substances that helped to preserve and scent Senetnay for eternity. Their research has...

Swedish archaeologists in cooperation with the antiquities department have excavated two burial tombs at the site of Dromolaxia-Vyzakia that they believe belonged to two rich families judging by the nature of the finds, they said on Friday.This large Late Bronze Age city, which flourished between 1630 and 1150 BC, is situated along the shores of the Larnaca Salt Lake near the mosque of Hala Sultan Tekke.Both tombs contained material from the outgoing 15th and the 14th centuries BC, which chronologically corresponds to the Late Cypriot IIA-B period, the Late Helladic IIIA1-2 and the famous Egyptian 18th Dynasty. One of the...

The statue is featured in a Dutch exhibition that pairs Egyptian antiquities with works from Black culture.What did the ancient Egyptians look like? A new exhibition at National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, the Netherlands, has sparked controversy by including a contemporary artwork that appears to depict the Pharaoh Tutankhamun as Black. “Kemet: Egypt in Hip-Hop, Jazz, Soul and Funk” pairs Egyptian antiquities from the museum’s collection with work inspired by ancient Egyptian culture by created by musicians of the African diaspora, including Miles Davis, Erykah Badu, Beyoncé, and Rihanna. The Leiden exhibition acknowledges that while generations of Black musicians...

Many people died after visiting King Tut's tomb in Egypt. What exactly happened, and how does it involve the Aspergillus fungus?The tomb of the 19-year-old pharaoh who ruled ancient Egypt from 1323-1332 BCE was discovered by British archaeologist Howard Carter and has since become one of Egypt's most popular archaeological attractions. Tourists from all over the world come to the Valley of the Kings on the Nile's west bank to see the tomb. To this day, it remains surprisingly intact, decorated with frescoes, statues and the gilded sarcophagus containing the original mummy of King Tut. But all of this beauty...

Tutankhamun and the Tomb that Changed the World with Dr. Bob Brier | 22:16World History Encyclopedia | 73.9K subscribers | 3.1K views | 7 months ago

Surprise Finds at Egypt Temple "Change Everything" Steven Stanek in Luxor, Egypt for National Geographic NewsDecember 17, 2007 A series of surprising discoveries has been made at the foot of Egypt's famous Temple of Amun at Karnak, archaeologists say. The new finds include ancient ceremonial baths, a pharaoh's private entry ramp, and the remains of a massive wall built some 3,000 years ago to reinforce what was then the bank of the Nile River. A host of other artifacts, including hundreds of bronze coins, has also been found. Together the discoveries are causing experts to reconsider the history of the...

A group of Egyptologists from Spain have discovered two tombs that housed almost 60 mummies at site in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor.“The most important thing this year is the discovery of two tombs, almost six meters deep,” made up of “two chambers each and housing around 60 mummies and remains of mummies,” Francisco J. Martin, the president of the Vizier Amenhotep Huy Project, told EFE.Martín, who leads a team of 22 Spanish Egyptologists and eight Egyptian experts, said the tombs were dated after Vizier Amenhotep-Huy’s tomb (18th dynasty).The site is a rich example of the architectural style and...

One of the world’s foremost Egyptologists says that recent hieroglyphics discoveries in King Tut’s tomb give further credence to a theory he put forth more than seven years ago: that Queen Nefertiti’s body is inside a hidden chamber next to that of her stepson, King Tutankhamun.Nicholas Reeves, an Egyptologist and former curator at the British Museum, realized that cartouches—carved oval or oblong tablets that enclose a group of Egyptian hieroglyphs—showing Tutankhamun being buried by Ay, his successor, had been painted over other cartouches that showed Tutankhamen burying Nefertiti, according to the Guardian.“I can now show that, under the cartouches of...

The art in question is part of a series discovered at the Amarna site on the east bank of the Nile, in modern day Minya. Excavations conducted in 1924 revealed a palace featuring several lavishly decorated rooms that include numerous plaster panels illustrated with natural scenes in stunning detail...Here the team looked at artwork in what's known as the Green Room, a place most likely used for rest and relaxation, if not occasional socializing and music playing.Some birds, including the pigeons and kingfishers, had already been identified, but the researchers were able to expand on the catalogue of known animals...

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced Sept. 22 that the joint Egyptian-German archaeological mission working on the Temple of Esna in Luxor governorate (south Egypt) has restored several inscriptions, drawings and colors in the temple’s ceiling...The Temple of Esna, near the west bank of the Nile River in the city of Esna in southern Egypt, was begun during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius in the first century AD and finished in the era of Emperor Decius between 249-251. It was dedicated to the ancient deity Khnum, who is usually depicted with the head of a ram...The colors...

A prominent Egyptologist has boldly claimed to have solved one archaeology’s greatest mysteries: the location of Queen Nefertiti’s mummified remains. Zahi Hawass, the previous Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in Egypt, is part of the Egypt-led team that undertook a high-profile excavation in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings that allegedly uncovered amulets once owned by King Tut. The team announced last December that they had also unearthed several unnamed mummies, one of which Hawass believes is the famed ruler. “We already have DNA from the 18th dynasty mummies, from Akhenaten to Amenhotep II or III, and there are two...

Takafumi Matsui, director of the Chiba Institute of Technology’s Planetary Exploration Research Center in Japan, and his colleagues visited the weapon at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo in 2020 to find out... their chemical analyses of the dagger's blade and gold hilt, combined with historical knowledge of ancient manufacturing techniques, now cast doubt on whether it was crafted in ancient Egypt at all...Four years later, aided by the Grand Egyptian Museum’s conservation center, Matsui and his colleagues used a portable scanning X-ray fluorescence instrument to map out the elements on the surface of the blade; not just iron, nickel and...

A new exhibition at the University of Oxford's Bodleian Libraries - Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archives - marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter and his team.Dramatically lit images captured by the photographer Harry Burton, along with letters, plans, drawings and diaries from Carter's archive shed new light on the story of the 10-year excavation of the tomb, which was the first known intact royal burial from ancient Egypt.They also challenge the perception of Carter as a solitary hero, highlighting the contribution of the many skilled Egyptian workers who are often overlooked.Four Egyptian foremen -...

Live Science makes predictions about what archaeologists will uncover in the new year. There are a number of archaeological finds and stories we might hear about in 2022. These include discoveries from Egypt's "lost golden city," new finds from Qumran — the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in nearby caves — as well as finds that may shed light on what life was like 11,000 years ago, when humans started building large ceremonial sites. In this countdown, Live Science makes five archaeology predictions for 2022. New finds from Egypt's 'lost golden city' In 2021 archaeologists announced the...

An ancient Egyptian "garbage dump" discovered within a temple honoring the powerful female Pharaoh Hatshepsut is piled high with offerings to a fertility goddess, archaeologists report.Archaeologists unexpectedly found the rubbish heap in a tomb within the 3,500-year-old Hathor cult complex, a three-temple complex that sits within the Hatshepsut Temple at Deir el-Bahari (also spelled Deir el-Bahri), near Luxor. Even though the dump was hidden in an early Middle Kingdom tomb, many of the artifacts in the dump date to the New Kingdom, which includes the 18th, 19th and 20th dynasties...Many of these artifacts are votive offerings — special objects, like...