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To solve the mystery of where Punt was, a team of scientists is turning to two mummified baboons in the British Museum... One was found at Thebes and the other in the Valley of the Kings. The team is conducting oxygen isotope tests on the preserved hairs of the baboons. Oxygen isotopes act as a 'signal' that can tell scientists where an animal is from... To aid in narrowing down the location of Punt the team is also performing oxygen isotope tests on samples of modern day baboons from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Yemen, Uganda and Mozambique. If the oxygen isotope...

Tucked away in Ans directorate of Dhamar governorate, a local stumbled across an ancient crypt within a known archaeological area, while digging a well for drinking water. According to preliminary examinations, the crypt extends anywhere between 150 and 180 meters in length and reaches over 9 meters in height. Police in Dhamar governorate confirmed that the name of the local who stumbled across this magnificent find is Anwar Abdu-Rabbuh al-Kooli. Upon finding the crypt buried in the ground, al-Kooli reported the site to the local authorities. The police then secured the site to prevent any further tampering or access to...

...The 2,700-metre-long avenue of sphinxes was built during the reign of Pharaoh Nectanebo I of the [30]th-Dynasty. It replaced one built formerly in the 18th Dynasty, as Queen Hatshepsut (1502-1482 BC) recorded on the walls of her red chapel in Karnak Temple. According to this, she built six chapels dedicated to the god Amun-Re on the route of the avenue during her reign... The excavation team unearthed a large number of fragmented sphinxes that are now undergoing restoration in an effort led by SCA consultant Mahmoud Mabrouk. Once restored, they will be placed on display along the avenue... Archaeologists have...

Archaeologist discovers ancient ships in Egypt By Tim Stoddard Kathryn Bard had “the best Christmas ever” this past December when she discovered the well-preserved timbers and riggings of pharaonic seafaring ships inside two man-made caves on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. They are the first pieces ever recovered from Egyptian seagoing vessels, and along with hieroglyphic inscriptions found near one of the caves, they promise to shed light on an elaborate network of ancient Red Sea trade. Bard, a CAS associate professor of archaeology, and her former student Chen Sian Lim (CAS’01) had been shoveling sand for scarcely an hour on...

Sunday, January 28, 2007 Oldest maritime artefacts found A cave cut in the rock has been discovered in the Pharaonic Port of Marsa Gawasis in Safaga. In December-January, archaeologists found the timbers of sea-going vessels that were over 3,500 years old at Marsa Gawasis, which was a port on Egypt's Red Sea coast in Pharaonic times. The cedar planks, which were imported from Syria, were found in two man-made caves. Among the other finds were rigging and inscriptions about expeditions to the Land of Punt. Marsa Gawasis is located on a coral reef at the northern end of the Wadi...

Coils of Ancient Egyptian Rope Found in Cave Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News June 20, 2008 -- The ancient Egyptian's secret to making the strongest of all rigging ropes lies in a tangle of cord coils in a cave at the Red Sea coast, according to preliminary study results presented at the recent congress of Egyptologists in Rhodes. Discovered three years ago by archaeologists Rodolfo Fattovich of the Oriental Studies University of Naples and Kathryn Bard of Boston University, the ropes offer an unprecedented look at seafaring activities in ancient Egypt. "No ropes on this scale and this old have been...

It turns out the oldest seafaring ships ever found actually work An archaeologist who examined remnants of the oldest-known seafaring ships has now put ancient Egyptian technology to the test. She teamed up with a naval architect, modern shipwrights and an on-site Egyptian archaeologist to build a replica 3,800-year-old ship for a Red Sea trial run this past December. The voyage was meant to retrace an ancient voyage that the female pharaoh Hatsheput sponsored to a place which ancient Egyptians called God's land, or Punt. Ship planks and oar blades discovered in 2006 at the caves of Wadi Gawasis provided...

...Boston University archeologist Kathryn Bard and her colleagues are uncovering the oldest remnants of seagoing ships and other relics linked to exotic trade with a mysterious Red Sea realm called Punt... the team led by Bard and an Italian archeologist, Rodolfo Fattovich, started uncovering maritime storerooms in 2004, putting hard timber and rugged rigging to the notion of pharaonic deepwater prowess. In the most recent discovery, on Dec. 29, they located the eighth in a series of lost chambers at Wadi Gawasis after shoveling through cubic meters of rock rubble and wind-blown sand... The reconnaissance of the room and its...

In 1903 the renowned archaeologist Howard Carter had found Hatshepsut's sarcophagus in the 20th tomb discovered in the Valley of the Kings -- KV20. The sarcophagus, one of three Hatshepsut had prepared, was empty. Scholars did not know where her mummy was or whether it had even survived the campaign to eradicate the record of her rule during the reign of her co-regent and ultimate successor, Thutmose III, when almost all the images of her as king were systematically chiseled off temples, monuments, and obelisks... Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Mummy Project and secretary general of the Supreme Council...

The Ancient Egyptians cherished their fragrant scents, too, as perfume flacons from this period indicate. In its permanent exhibition, Bonn University's Egyptian Museum has a particularly well preserved example on display. Screening this 3,500-year-old flacon with a computer tomograph, scientists at the university detected the desiccated residues of a fluid, which they now want to submit to further analysis. They might even succeed in reconstructing this scent... Pharaoh Hatshepsut... perfume is also presumably a demonstration of her power. "We think it probable that one constituent was frankincense -- the scent of the gods," Michael Höveler-Müller declares. This idea is not...

Rare Egyptian "Warrior" Tomb Found Steven Stanek in Cairo, Egypt for National Geographic NewsFebruary 15, 2008 An unusual, well-preserved burial chamber that may contain the mummy of an ancient warrior has been discovered in a necropolis in Luxor. Scientists opened the tomb—found in Dra Abul Naga, an ancient cemetery on Luxor's west bank—on Wednesday. Inside the burial shaft—a recess crudely carved from bedrock—experts found a closed wooden coffin inscribed with the name "Iker," which translates to "excellent one" in ancient Egyptian. Near the coffin they also found five arrows made of reeds, three of them still feathered. A team of...

Is she or isn't she? Mummy lab working to ID pharaoh queen CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Months after Egypt boldly announced that archaeologists had identified a mummy as the most powerful queen of her time, scientists in a museum basement are still analyzing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old corpse to try to back up the claim aired on TV. DNA testing continues on these mummified remains thought to be Queen Hatshepsut. So far, results indicate the linen-wrapped mummy is most likely, but not conclusively, the female pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled for 20 years in the 15th century B.C. Running...

So far, results indicate the linen-wrapped mummy is most likely, but not conclusively, the female pharaoh Queen Hatshepsut... Running its own ancient-DNA lab is a major step forward for Egypt, which for decades has seen foreigners take most of the credit for major discoveries in the country... But the Hatshepsut discovery also highlights the struggle to back up recent spectacular findings in Egypt, including the unearthing of ancient tombs and mummies, investigations into how King Tut died, and even the discovery in the Siwa oasis of possibly the world's oldest human footprint... In June Egypt announced that Hatshepsut's mummy had...

Contact: Aeron Haworth aeron.haworth@manchester.ac.uk 44-771-788-1563 University of Manchester Manchester University helps with pharaoh DNA analysisPreliminary results support positive identification of Egyptian queen Preliminary results from DNA tests carried out on a mummy believed to be Queen Hatshepsut is expected to support the claim by Egyptian authorities that the remains are indeed those of Egypt’s most powerful female ruler. Egyptologists in Cairo announced last month that a tooth found in a wooden box associated with Hatshepsut exactly fitted the jaw socket and broken root of the unidentified mummy. Now, Dr Angelique Corthals, a biomedical Egyptologist at The University of Manchester, says...

Egypt will run DNA tests on an unidentified mummy to determine whether it is the pharaoh Tuthmosis I, who ruled over a period of military expansion and extensive construction, state news agency MENA said on Tuesday. Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass said the findings would be compared with DNA from mummies of known members of Tuthmosis's family, including Queen Hatshepsut, whose mummy was identified last week, and Kings Tuthmosis II and III, according to MENA. Hawass said on Wednesday that he had recently concluded that a mummy once assumed to be that of Tuthmosis I was not in fact his,...

Egyptologists Think They Have Hatshepsut's MummySculpted Head to show Egyptian Headress taken at Met. Museum of Art.Jonathan Wright June 25, 2007 Egyptologists think they have identified with certainty the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an archaeologist said on Monday. Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, will hold a news conference in Cairo on Wednesday. The Discovery Channel said he would announce what it called the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tutankhamun. Related Stories Egyptians Find...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptologists think they have identified with certainty the mummy of Hatshepsut, the most famous queen to rule ancient Egypt, found in a humble tomb in the Valley of the Kings, an archaeologist said on Monday. Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, will hold a news conference in Cairo on Wednesday. The Discovery Channel said he would announce what it called the most important find in the Valley of the Kings since the discovery of King Tutankhamun. The archaeologist, who asked not to be named, said the candidate for identification as the mummy of Hatshepsut was one of two...

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...