Free Republic

The mystery of how Egypt’s pyramids survived thousands of years of earthquakes may partly come down to smart engineering, according to a new study that examined how the Great Pyramid of Giza responds to seismic vibrations. Researchers found that the Pyramid of Khufu has a natural vibration frequency that differs sharply from the surrounding ground, helping reduce the risk of dangerous resonance during earthquakes. The study, led by Mohamed ELGabry and published in Scientific Reports, analyzed ambient seismic noise recorded inside the 4,600-year-old pyramid. Researchers said the findings may explain why the structure has survived centuries of earthquakes with little...

https://archive.ph/CHQ6i President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed a new effort to reach a deal with Iran in a difficult call on Tuesday, three sources said, with one source saying Netanyahu's "hair was on fire" after the call. Why it matters: A revised peace memo was drafted by Qatar and Pakistan with input from the other regional mediators to try to bridge the gaps between the U.S. and Iran, the sources said. It comes with Trump vacillating over ordering a massive strike on Iran and holding out for a deal. Netanyahu is highly skeptical about the negotiations and...

Inside a hidden burial chamber, researchers found 22 painted coffins and sealed papyri linked to the mysterious Singers of Amun. © Archaeologists Found Coffins Stacked Like A Sacred Archive. Credit: Canva A tightly packed rock-cut chamber beneath the Luxor desert has yielded one of the more striking funerary finds from Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period: 22 painted wooden coffins belonging to women who served as Singers of Amun, stacked in ten horizontal rows alongside eight sealed papyri stored inside a ceramic vessel. The discovery was announced in March 2026 by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities following excavations in the Asasif...

There are moments in American foreign policy when the warning signs are flashing so brightly that failing to act becomes its own form of negligence. This is one of those moments. Senator Ted Cruz and his fellow sponsors of S. 4063 are not engaging in political theater. They are responding to a gathering national security threat that too many in Washington have either underestimated or deliberately ignored for years: the growing cooperation between the Polisario Front and Iranian-backed terrorist networks operating across North Africa and beyond. The Senate should move quickly to advance this legislation. Not because it is politically...

Iran is in no position to fight a long-term war with Israel and even asked the US to intervene to prevent a possible large-scale Israeli retaliation to any Iranian attack, according to Mohsen Sazegara, founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post. The IRGC was founded shortly after the 1979 revolution in Iran to protect the Islamic Republic’s religious control over the country, and to act as a counterbalance to the regular Iranian Army, many of whose officers were still loyal to the Shah of Iran, and therefore could not be trusted...

Two weeks ago, Freedom Center Investigates ran a blockbuster story exposing the troubling background of Adam Hamawy. a New Jersey congressional candidate, who had testified at the Blind Sheikh’s trial. In 1995, ‘Adam’ Hisham Hamawy testified for the defense in the trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman: the Egyptian Islamic terror leader linked to the World Trade Center bombing. Now, Hamawy is running for Congress in New Jersey while promising to defund the military, abolish ICE, and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security. The Sheikh’s supporters carried out terrorist attacks across Egypt. Others were responsible for the World Trade Center...

In the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, archaeologists recently discovered a 1,600-year-old tomb with several mummies inside. Some of them were decorated with gold leaf or geometric patterns—features commonly found in burials of this kind.But one of the mummies was unearthed alongside a particularly unusual artifact: a papyrus fragment from Homer's Iliad, the epic poem set during the Trojan War. The ancient Greek text had been tucked beneath the wrappings on the mummy's abdomen during the embalming process."The fact that in this case the text, in Greek, refers to a literary text is truly novel," say Maite Mascort and Esther...

A snake crawled into the German tourist's pants and bit him, according to police.WASHINGTON — A German tourist on vacation in Egypt died this month after he was bitten during a snake-charming show, according to German police. Bavarian Police said this week that a family of three from the Unterallgäu region of Germany went to the snake-charming show in early April in the Hurghada resort area of Egypt, along the Red Sea coast. The show was entertainment provided by the hotel complex, police said.Two snakes that police said were "presumably" cobras were used in the performance and placed around the...

A 37-year-old Coptic Christian researcher and YouTuber has filed an appeal to overturn his conviction for posting online videos about Christianity. He was sentenced in January to five years’ imprisonment with hard labor.Augustinos Samaan filed the appeal last week, according to ADF International, the international religious freedom legal advocacy organization representing him.He was arrested in the early hours of Oct. 1, 2025, by masked special forces officers who seized his laptop, phone, books and personal papers, reports Coptic Solidarity, a U.S.-based advocacy group for Egyptian Copts and persecuted minorities.Samaan runs a YouTube channel with more than 800,000 subscribers. His videos...

According to an Ahram Online report, a Roman-era tomb has been discovered in Upper Egypt at the site of Al-Bahnasa -- the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus -- by a team of Egyptian and Spanish researchers including Maite Mascort and Esther Pons of the University of Barcelona. Several decorated, linen-wrapped mummies were found in the tomb in addition to wooden coffins. Three golden tongues, one copper tongue, and gold leaf were also uncovered alongside some of the mummified bodies. A papyrus buried with one of the individuals contains a passage from book 2 of Homer’s Iliad known as the Catalogue of...

Egypt has launched what developers describe as the country’s first fully artificial‑intelligence‑powered “cognitive city,” a major new urban development east of Cairo pitched as a global investment hub and described by its developer as an unprecedented step in smart urban development. The project, known as “The Spine,” was unveiled over the weekend by Talaat Moustafa Group (TMG) at an event attended by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly at the Cabinet headquarters in the New Administrative Capital, according to a company statement. Developers say the project will serve as a major international business hub and could contribute about one percent of Egypt’s...

Ancient Egyptian mummified remains in the collection of the MNMKK Semmelweis Museum of Medical History were examined with a CT scanner equipped with a photon-counting detector, according to a statement released by Semmelweis University. The remains in the study include two heads, two left lower limbs, a mummy bundle containing a foot, and a hand. The oldest artifacts in the collection are some 2,300 years old. The resulting images revealed the internal structure of the body parts, said team physician Ibolyka Dudás, providing a highly detailed view of abnormalities and preservation techniques used in antiquity. The new images of the...

The Republic of Somaliland in the Horn of Africa is once again offering the United States a military base in a strategic area with access to critical minerals, this time reminding the USA that this could be the perfect foothold from which to counter terrorist operations from the Iranian regime and the Houthis. On Monday, the Republic of Somaliland's X account shared a Fox News headline about how a potential U.S. base in the African nation could be crucial in combatting the jihadis who terrorize the area: The Republic of Somaliland is seeking international recognition and is offering the United...

President Donald Trump has announced that the Iranian regime contacted his administration to resume negotiations, even as the United States maintains its strict naval blockade. In a significant diplomatic development, President Donald Trump revealed from the White House that his administration has received a formal outreach from the "proper authorities" in Tehran. According to the President, the Iranian leadership has expressed a clear desire to return to the negotiating table following the collapse of high level talks in Islamabad earlier this month. While the President appeared open to the prospect of renewed dialogue, he maintained a rigid stance on the...

The prime suspect in the alleged German terror plot to blow up hundreds of people may have had contact with Mohammed Atta, the suicide pilot who smashed a hijacked plane into the Twin Towers. German police reports are vague about the encounter, but it has helped investigators to trace Fritz Gelowicz’s path from average Bavarian schoolboy to Islamic radical. His case has also highlighted the curious and sinister role of Neu-Ulm — a small township in the Roman Catholic heart of southern Germany — as a cradle of Islamic extremism. The connection between Gelowicz, 28, who was arrested this week,...

If Iran is not supporting al-Qaeda efforts why is it so many terrorists in Europe use Tehran as their transit point between Europe and the training facilities and gathering forces of al-Qaeda inside Pakistan? On April 1, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on April 1 notified leaders of Germany’s military, the United Nations and potential targets — including a five-star hotel in Kabul — that two men from Germany with known ties to terrorist groups could be planning a bomb attack against Germans in Afghanistan.The men are identified as Eric B., a 20-year-old German Muslim convert, and Houssain al-M.,...

At 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 14, Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), walked into a public telephone booth outside Washington's National Zoo and made two calls to pager numbers later traced by federal agents to Cuba's Directorate of General Intelligence (DGI). She already had compromised the identities of CIA agents, revealed U.S. military secrets and exposed the contents of classified files. But, as Montes sent repeated signals to her DGI handlers during the days immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the ...

When you think of biblical epics in film, what comes to mind? Do you envision Charlton Heston hefting the Ten Commandments in, well, The Ten Commandments? Or maybe Charlton Heston locked in a life-or-death chariot race in Ben-Hur? Or Charlton Heston in … well, you get it. Charlton Heston was in a lot of those movies. But one biblical epic that Charlton Heston wasn’t in? The Prince of Egypt. The 1998 film wasn’t produced by Old Hollywood, but a different kind of studio: DreamWorks Animation. Though the inspiration for the film—wasn’t far off from Old Hollywood. DreamWorks co-founder and former...

Ancient Egyptians may have left behind a cryptic clue to a hidden second Sphinx, carved directly into stone more than 3,000 years ago.The Dream Stele, positioned between the paws of the Great Sphinx, appears to depict two sphinx figures, hinting that the legendary monument may once have had a twin.Now, Italian researchers who, in 2025, claimed to have uncovered massive underground structures beneath the Giza Plateau believe they have identified the second guardian buried deep beneath the sands.Filippo Biondi revealed the discovery on Thursday while speaking on the Matt Beall Limitless podcast, explaining that lines drawn from the pyramids to...

Egyptian archaeologists recently unearthed the remnants of a Christian monastic site from the 5th century — some 400 years after the time of Jesus Christ. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities wrote in a translated statement on March 23 that a building was recently found in the Qallaya area in Egypt’s Beheira Governorate. The structure, likely a guesthouse used to host visitors, is a remnant of the “early beginnings of Coptic monasticism,” the release said. Previous buildings have also been found at the site, and the newly discovered structure had 13 multipurpose rooms used for “hospitality and teaching …...