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Hatshepsut seems to have idolized her father (she would eventually have him reburied in the tomb she was having built for herself) and would claim that soon after her birth he had named her successor to his throne, an act that scholars feel would have been highly unlikely... [I]t was the accepted New Kingdom practice for widowed queens to act as regents, handling the affairs of government until their sons -- in this case, stepson/ nephew -- came of age... says Peter Dorman, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago and a contributor to the exhibition catalog. "But it's also...

CAIRO, Egypt - An American-Italian team of archaeologists has found the remains of 4,000-year-old ships that used to carry cargo between Pharaonic Egypt and the mysterious, exotic land of Punt, the Supreme Council of Antiquities has announced. The ships' remains were found during a five-year excavation of five caves south of the Red Sea port of Safaga, about 300 miles southeast of Cairo, the chairman of the supreme council, Zahi Hawass, said in a statement late Thursday. The archaeologists, who came from Boston and East Naples universities, found Pharaonic seals from the era of Sankhkare Mentuhotep III, one of seven...

Sailing to PuntWell-preserved wrecks of Pharaonic seafaring vessels unearthed last week on the Red Sea coast reveal that the Ancient Egyptians enjoyed advanced maritime technology, Nevine El-Aref reports The long-held belief that the Ancient Egyptians did not tend to travel long distances by sea because of poor naval technology proved fallacious last week when timbers, rigging and cedar planks were unearthed in the ancient Red Sea port of Marsa Gawasis, 23 kilometres south of Port Safaga. The remains of seafaring vessels were found in four large, hand-hewn caves which were probably used as storage or boat houses from the Middle...

Ancients Rang In New Year with Dance, Beer By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Dec. 30, 2005 — Many ancient Egyptians marked the first month of the New Year by singing, dancing and drinking red beer until they passed out, according to archaeologists who have unearthed new evidence of a ritual known as the Festival of Drunkenness. During ongoing excavations at a temple precinct in Luxor that is dedicated to the goddess Mut, the archaeologists recently found a sandstone column drum dating to 1470-1460 B.C. with writing that mentions the festival. The discovery suggests how some Egyptians over 3,000 years ago...

Statue of Egyptian pharaoh found after nearly 3,600 years Sat Jun 4, 4:45 PM ET LUXOR, Egypt (AFP) - Buried for nearly 3,600 years, a rare statue of Egypt's King Neferhotep I has been brought to light in the ruins of Thebes by a team of French archaeologists. Officials said on Saturday that the statue was unusual in that the king is depicted holding hands with a double of himself, although the second part of the carving remains under the sand and its form has been determined by the use of imaging equipment. Archeologists unearthed the 1.8 metre (six foot)...

April 26 A new Egyptian king has been discovered, according to Italian archaeologists digging at Luxor. Known to be a high-ranking priest in the theocratic state of Amon at Thebes, Harwa was also a king ruling southern Egypt during the obscure period of the so-called Black Pharaohs, the Nubian kings of the 25th Dynasty. A fat, bald man with a large face, almond-shaped eyes and thin lips, as portrayed in a statue, Harwa was born in the 8th century B.C. into a family of Theban priests. He must have been at the beginning of his career when Piankhy, the black...

Royal Nubia lies under sand Canadian archaeologists in Sudan, using magnetometers, have found a 2,000-year-old palace in the heart of the ancient black civilization If his partner had not fallen into an ancient tomb and broken both legs, Professor Krzysztof Grzymski would have discovered the ancient Nubian royal palace even sooner. Still, Grzymski, a professor at the University of Toronto and a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, is a happy archaeologist these days. He and his colleague, who is walking again, have found what they believe are the remains of a palace and a colonnade built more than...

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...

DNA can be used to understand the evolution of modern humans, trace migrations of people, identify individuals, and determine the origins of domestic plants and animals. DNA analysis, as one scholar put it, is "the greatest archaeological excavation of all time." Because ancient DNA molecules are normally so few and fragmented, and preserved soft tissues so rare, scientists had little hope of finding and analyzing it. But two breakthroughs have made this possible: the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method for copying any fragment of DNA, and the successful recovery of DNA from preserved hard tissues, bones and teeth, that...

The true mummy of ancient Egyptian queen Hatshepsut was discovered in the third floor of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Secretary General of Supreme Council for Antiquities Zahi Hawwas revealed on Thursday. The mummy was missing among thousands of artifacts lying in the museum, he said during his lecture at the New York-based Metropolitan Museum of Arts. He said for decades archaeologists believed that a mummy found in Luxor was that of the Egyptian queen. It was a streak of luck, he said, to find this mummy. The Metropolitan is hosting a Hatshepsut exhibition that displays 270 artifacts on the...

Instead of building a 'saff' tomb like those of his predecessors, Mentuhotep II decided to build an impressive tomb by the cliffs of Deir el Bahri (the same location chosen in the 18th dynasty by Hatshepsut). A T-shaped terrace was built using masonary and by using the natural rock. The walls built on this terrace were then decorated both inside and out with painted relief carving.