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While excavating an ancient Greek palace in eastern Libya in the 1930s, an archaeologist dug up a large earthen storage jar, looked inside and spotted something unexpected — a 2,200-year-old sculpture of a bearded man carved from basalt, a dark volcanic stone.The two-foot-tall antiquity, most likely chiseled during ancient Egypt's Ptolemaic Dynasty, was a rare find. Known as a striding male figure, it is one of only 33 statues like it known to exist, Egyptologists say.But it wasn't long before thieves got ahold of the bearded figure and took it on an illicit odyssey that brought it, in 1991, to...

Dr. Zahi Hawass, one of the most famous Egyptologists and the former Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, has criticized Netflix for its controversial decision to cast Cleopatra with a black actress in an upcoming docuseries. The new Netflix series, dubbed “Queen Cleopatra”, which is produced and narrated by the American actress Jada Pinkett Smith, has sparked fierce debate over the misrepresentation of history and representation in TV and media. Hawass, who is Egypt’s most recognizable archaeologist, decried the decision by Netflix to portray Cleopatra as being of black descent, pointing out that the historical figure “was Greek”. Zahi...

The 4,281-foot-long (1,305 meters) tunnel, which brought water to thousands of people in its heyday, was discovered by an Egyptian-Dominican Republic archaeological team, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement(opens in new tab). Ancient Egyptian builders constructed the 6.6-foot-high (2 m) tunnel at a depth of about 65 feet (20 m) beneath the ground, Kathleen Martínez, a Dominican archaeologist and director of the team that discovered the tunnel, told Live Science in an email. Finds within the tunnel included two alabaster heads: one of which likely depicts a king, and the other represents another high-ranking person,...

Wojtek Ejsmond, one of the three co-founders of the Warsaw Mummy Project, told CNN the mummy was first brought to Poland in 1826 by Jan Wężyk-Rudzki. At that time it was believed to be a woman, but the view changed during the 1920s when an inscription on the sarcophagus was translated to reveal the name of an Egyptian priest, Hor-Djehuty. Though it belongs to the University of Warsaw, the mummy has been on loan to the museum since 1917 where it has been on display. During the course of its research, the team revealed some interesting clues. Using computer tomography,...

Cleopatra may not have been ancient Egypt's only female pharaoh of the Ptolemaic dynasty -- Queen Arsinoë II, a woman who competed in and won Olympic events, came first, some 200 years earlier, according to a new study into a unique Egyptian crown. After analyzing details and symbols of the crown worn by Arsinoë and reinterpreting Egyptian reliefs, Swedish researchers... suggest that Queen Arsinoë II (316-270 B.C.) was the first female pharaoh belonging to Ptolemy's family -- the dynasty that ruled Egypt for some 300 years until the Roman conquest of 30 B.C. While researchers largely agree on Arsinoë's prominence...