Free Republic

Excavation work carried out by an American mission from New York University at the temple of Ramses II in Abydos has stumbled upon a menagerie of mummified animals that provides previously undocumented evidence of cultic worship through the ages.The most significant find at the site is over 2,000 mummified heads of rams from the Ptolemaic period along with other mummified ewes, dogs, wild goats, cows, gazelles and mongooses, said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.The mummified remains, some still in their linen wrappings, were found stored in one of the recently discovered magazines within the temple’s northern...

The faces of disaster through the ages are legion, and the dusty places of archaeological digs in Israel have been no exception, as archaeologists at the Tel Gezer excavation site in central Israel will tell you after they encountered 3,200-year-old skeletal remains of three individuals. As they were conducting excavations during the summer of 2017, traces of human bones emerged as they dug within a stratum that evidenced a fiery destruction. They were articulated skeletons. The archaeologists could see that one of them, an adult, whose remains were badly decomposed and burned, was lying with hands over the head. The...