Staging of religion on rock paintings that are thousands of years old in southern Egypt desert

Egyptologists at the University of Bonn and the University of Aswan want to systematically record hundreds of petroglyphs and inscriptions dating from the Neolithic to the Arab period and document them in a database.

The desert in southern Egypt is filled with hundreds of petroglyphs and inscriptions oldest dating from the fifth millennium B.C. and few have been studied.

A more than 5,000-year-old rock painting that shows a boat being pulled by 25 men on a rope among them stands out in particular.

“The first newly discovered sources shed new light on the pre-Pharaonic period of the Fourth Millennium and the importance of the socio-cultural periphery,” says Egyptologist Prof. Dr. Ludwig Morenz of the University of Bonn.

Mohamed Abdel Hay Abu Baker, who was specifically responsible for researching the rock images at the Aswan Inspectorate, among the images captured during his explorations in the field, one, in particular, stood out to the Egyptologist from the University of Bonn.

It is depicted over the bumps and edges of the rock, how a boat is pulled by 25 men with raised arms on a rope. A ritual is obviously impressively shown here – namely the great procession of an image of the gods, according to Morenz.

This is clear from image details, he said: the boat with shrine and standard and, in particular, the cattle horns, which are typical of sacred imagery. “This rock image gives us insights into the sacred design of an apparently remote landscape, the Wadi al Agebab, which is still largely unknown in research,” says the Egyptologist.

The entire later Pharaonic culture is based on the beginnings of the pictorial staging of religion. Morenz: “Here, the high importance of religion and especially the cult of the gods in the still pre-Egyptian society of the second half of the Fourth Millennium is revealed as a culture-creating factor.”

Documentation

“This cultural treasure in the northeast of Aswan has been largely undocumented, let alone published,” says Egyptologist Prof. Dr. Ludwig Morenz of the University of Bonn.

The petroglyphs are found in numerous and often remote locations in dried-up river valleys, called “wadis” in Arabic. At the same time, the petroglyphs, which are sometimes inconspicuous at first glance, are under severe threat, especially from current quarrying activities in the desert.

 “Especially in recent years, there has already been serious destruction of this cultural asset,” says Morenz, who is also a member of the Cluster of Excellence Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) and the Transdisciplinary Research Area “Present Pasts” at the University of Bonn.

“Such losses can hardly be prevented completely, given the vastness of the area, but all the more important is at least good documentation.”

In the course of his doctoral studies at Aswan University in Aswan, Abu Baker will now work together with the University of Bonn to create a comprehensive database with an image archive on rock images. For this purpose, the University of Excellence Bonn supports the inspector of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities for one year with a scholarship from excellence funds of the federal and state governments. Prof. Morenz is the second supervisor of the dissertation.

Excavations Continue in Middle Egypt’s Meir Necropolis

An Egyptian archaeological mission has uncovered a collection of structure relics from the Byzantine and Late Period in Meir Necropolis in the Assiut governorate.

The mission discovered the large remains of structures on two levels, with the upper level consisting of monks’ cells with a court and a number of chambers and the lower level consisting of a collection of burials.

​“The discovery highlights the significance of Meir during the Old and Middle Kingdoms as well as the Late Period,” said Mostafa Waziry, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, referring to a Coptic text engraved on one of the walls of the structural remains.

The text, written in black ink, consists of eight lines of prayers to God. Above it, three clay shelves that may have been used to hold the monks’ equipment at the time or manuscripts.

The burials include a collection of coffins and human skeletons in poor condition, among them the funerary objects of an unidentified lady.

These objects consist of remains of a decorated coffin in poor condition, a funerary mask and collar, clay pots of different shapes and sizes, along with a group of blue and black faience beads and two copper mirrors, said Adel Okasha, head of the Central Archaeological Department for Antiquities in Middle Egypt.

The Meir site is located about 50 kilometres northwest of the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut. Provincial rulers, or nomarchs, were buried in tombs in the hillside.

Several of the tombs have been cleared and opened to visitors.

The necropolis has many important rock-cut tombs dating to the sixth and seventh dynasties, painted with coloured scenes depicting daily life including industries and sports with a distinct local style.

A surprising discovery in the Lublin countryside! Ancient figurines of Egyptian and Roman gods found

Two ancient figurines depicting the Egyptian god Osiris and a bust of the Roman god Bacchus were found in the Opole district of Lublin, Poland.

An extraordinary discovery was made at the beginning of May by Krzysztof Kozłowski, who, having obtained permission from the Lublin Voivodship Conservator, conducted a search for historical monuments in Kluczkowice (Opole district).

The figurines he found, which at first glance resembled the images of a “pharaoh” and a “goddess”, were handed over to the Lublin conservation office.

Lubelskie Voivodeship Conservatory of Monuments (LWKZ) Facebook post, “The find, so unusual in our area, raised doubts as to the authenticity of the artifacts (…). Thanks to cooperation with the National Museum in Lublin and scientists from the Faculty of Archeology of the University of Warsaw, it was possible to confirm that we are dealing with original objects from ancient Egypt and ancient Rome,” he wrote.

Thanks to cooperation with the National Museum in Lublin and scientists from the Faculty of Archeology of the University of Warsaw, the ancient record of the finds was confirmed. Osiris was made in the 1st millennium BC and the bust of Bacchus – in the 1st century AD.

Dr. Łukasz Miechowicz of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw determined that the artifacts are part of the Kleniewski family’s former collection, which was kept in the palace in Kluczkowice until World War II.

The Osiris figurine was probably purchased for the collection by Maria Kleniewska during her stay in Egypt in 1904. At that time, she and her daughter spent 4 months in Cairo, which she writes about in her memoirs.

“The bronze bust of the Roman god Bacchus was discovered around 1906 by Fr. Antoni Chotyński, chaplain of the Kleniewski family in Dratów (now Zagłoba/Wrzelów). They were found in a richly equipped grave of a deceased person from the Przeworsk culture”.

In April this year, dr Miechowicz led the verification research at the place where the figurines were found. The action was attended by representatives of the Ancient Society in Chodlik and the Opole Association of Explorers “Topór”.

During the search, another Egyptian bronze figurine of Osiris was discovered. It measures 8.5 cm in height and is equipped with two suspension rings. The artifact was discovered by Andrzej Kołodziej.

The Kleniewski family lived in the palace until 1942. Their property was confiscated and transferred to the administration of the SS. The Kleniewskis left hastily for Warsaw, taking only their personal belongings with them, Miechowicz determined.

Presumably, the deposit, which included the artifacts discovered in Kluczkowice, could have been hidden in 1942 by the owners leaving their ancestral seat or just after the war when the equipment of the Kleniewskis’ palace was dispersed and plundered.

Google Translate was used to translate the article from Lubelski Wojewódzki Konserwator Zabytków.

Ancient Buddha Statue Discovered in Egypt

A 1,900-year-old statue of the Buddha — discovered at the ancient Egyptian port city of Berenike, on the coast of the Red Sea — likely belonged to a transplant from South Asia, according to archaeologists. 

The Buddha statue depicts Siddhartha Gautama, who lived in South Asia around 2,550 years ago. Born a prince, he would later renounce his worldly wealth and seek out enlightenment, eventually becoming the Buddha, a Sanskrit-derived word that means “the enlightened one,” according to Buddhist tradition. The religion he founded gradually spread around the world. 

The newfound statue dates to between A.D. 90 and 140, said Steven Sidebotham, a history professor at the University of Delaware who is co-director of the Berenike Project, told Live Science in an email. 

The 28-inch-tall (71 centimeters) statue shows the Buddha standing and holding parts of his robes in his left hand, representatives from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement.

A halo is shown behind him, with sunlight radiating downward. In addition to the statue, a separate Sanskrit inscription was found at Berenike, the ministry noted. 

The statue dates to a time when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt. There was considerable trade between Egypt and India during that time, the ministry noted, adding that ships from India would bring ivory, pepper and textiles, among other products, to Egypt. 

It’s possible that the Buddha statue was made locally by people from South Asia living in Berenike, Sidebotham said. While the Sanskrit inscription is damaged, it appears to be a dedication of some form and dates back to the time of the Roman emperor Marcus Julius Philippus (better known as “Philip the Arab”), who reigned from A.D. 244 to 249, Sidebotham said. 

Sidebotham and his colleagues are now in the process of publishing their finds from Berenike; more information will be released after publication, he noted. 

“The new Sanskrit inscription and associated finds now show clearly that there was a settled Indian merchant community, rather than just traders passing through,” Richard Salomon, professor emeritus of Sanskrit at the University of Washington in Seattle who was not involved in the finding, told Live Science.

Philip Almond, emeritus professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Queensland in Australia who is not involved with the discovery, called it “a very exciting find.” Ancient historical records indicate that there were Indians living in Alexandria, Almond noted, and this discovery indicates that some of the Indians living in Egypt were Buddhists. 

The other co-directors of the Berenike Project are Rodney Ast, a researcher at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and Olaf Kaper(opens in new tab), an Egyptology professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

A permit for the project was granted by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities through the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology in Cairo.

An inscription containing 15 headless falcons and unknown ancient rituals found in an ancient Egyptian temple

Archaeologists have discovered a shrine containing previously unknown ancient rituals during excavations at Berenike, a Greco-Roman port in Egypt’s eastern desert.

The discovery was made by archaeologists from the Sikait Project led by Professor Joan Oller Guzman at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The study, which was recently published in the American Journal of Archaeology, describes the Sikait Project’s excavation of a religious complex from the Late Roman Period.

The religious complex, dubbed the “Falcon Shrine” by the researchers, dates from the Late Roman Period, which lasted from the fourth to sixth centuries AD.

During this time, the city was partially occupied and controlled by the Blemmyes, as indicated by the discovery of inscriptions on a stele in a small traditional Egyptian temple, which was adopted by the Blemmyes to their own belief system after the 4th century AD.

The Blemmyes were nomadic Eastern Desert people who appeared in written sources between the 7th and 8th centuries BC. The Greek term first appears in a poem by Theocritus and in Eratosthenes in the third century BC. The Blemmyes, according to Eratosthenes, lived with the Megabaroi in the land between the Nile and the Red Sea north of Mero.

They had occupied Lower Nubia and established a kingdom by the late 4th century. From inscriptions in the temple of Isis at Philae, a considerable amount is known about the structure of the Blemmyan state.

The most remarkable find in the shrine was around 15 falcons, most of them without their heads. Burial of falcons had already been found in the Nile Valley but this was the first time archaeologists discovered falcons buried within a temple and accompanied by eggs.

This discovery the team considers suggests a new previously unknown ancient ritual when compared to falcon burials in the Nile Valley.

Mummified headless falcons found in other areas were always just individuals, not a group, as in the shrine discovered at Berenike.

The shrine contained the following inscription: “It is improper to boil a head in here” which has been interpreted as a message barring people who enter the shrine from boiling the heads of the animals inside the temple.

“From its archaeological context, the stele almost certainly records an injunction associated with the falcon cult. The text forbade boiling the head of a bird within the area in which the stele was set up,” the researchers wrote in the study.

“All of these elements point to intense ritual activities combining Egyptian traditions with contributions from the Blemmyes, sustained by a theological base possibly related to the worshipping of the god Khonsu (the ancient Egyptian god of the Moon)”, said UAB researcher Professor Joan Oller Guzman.

Mummy of Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep ‘unwrapped’ for the first time in 3,500 years!

Egyptian scientists have digitally unwrapped the 3,500-year-old mummy of pharaoh Amenhotep I. For the first time, a team in Egypt used CT scans to see inside the burial wrappings of Pharaoh Amenhotep I.

The non-invasive research enabled scientists to reveal Amenhotep’s face and work out his age and health at the time of his death.

The remains of the pharaoh, who ruled approximately between 1525-1504 BC, were discovered in Deir Al Bahari in 1881 and had remained unwrapped until Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Cairo University professor Sahar Saleem launched an in-depth study in 2019.

The mummy of ancient Egypt’s former king is the only royal mummy in contemporary history that has not been opened by scientists or tomb thieves.

This isn’t due to some old curse frightening people away, but rather to Egyptologists’ refusal to damage the well-preserved decorations covering Amenhotep’s mummy.

Decorated with flower garlands and a wooden face mask, Amenhotep’s mummy was so fragile that archaeologists had never dared to expose the remains before.

The remains of the pharaoh, who ruled approximately between 1525-1504 BC, were discovered in Deir Al Bahari in 1881 and had remained unwrapped until Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Cairo University professor Sahar Saleem launched an in-depth study in 2019.

Hawass and Saleem used advanced X-ray technology, computed tomography scans, and digital software to map out the mummy in great detail, without stripping it of any of its strips.

The team also discovered that the king had been the first ruler to be embalmed with his forearms crossed in the so-called Osiris position.

In addition, they found amulets and a girdle festooned with gold beads under the mummy’s wrapping.

To continue the tradition of leaving pharaoh Amenhotep I undisturbed, scientists turned to three-dimensional CT (computed tomography) scanning to “digitally unwrap” his tomb.

“This fact that Amenhotep I’s mummy had never been unwrapped in modern times gave us a unique opportunity: not just to study how he had originally been mummified and buried, but also how he had been treated and reburied twice, centuries after his death, by High Priests of Amun,” says Dr. Sahar Saleem, professor of radiology at Cairo University and the radiologist of the Egyptian Mummy Project, in a media release.

The scans reveal the pharaoh was a relatively young man at the time of his death, being only 35 years old. He stood between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-7 and the team believes he was in good physical health when he died, apparently of natural causes.