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Pyramid Discoveries Will Force History To Be Re-Written
The world’s largest and oldest pyramid has been discovered in BosniaA pyramid has been discovered in Bosnia-Herzegovina that is larger, older and more perfectly oriented than Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza. Located near the city of Visoko, not only is it the first pyramid to be discovered in Europe, but it is also the largest valley of pyramids in the world.
Its discoverer, Dr. Semir Osmanagich, has also identified pyramids in Asia, Africa, North America and even islands such as Mauritius and Tahiti. He believes these man-made structures are so similar that they prove there was communication during ancient times over vast distances. “Our history books must be re-written,” he said.
The pyramid in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been dated at over 12,000 years old, and it also features the largest complex of Read more…
Ancient Egypt treasure gate unearthed in Luxor
CAIRO — Egyptian and French archaeologists have unearthed a 2,700-year-old stone gate belonging to Nubian King Shabaka while digging near Luxor’s Karnak temple, the ministry of antiquities said on Sunday.
The gate, which was found to be “in good condition,” once led to the room holding the king’s treasures, the ministry said.
“It is the first time an item of the 25th dynasty has been found in such good condition, and wasn’t ruined by the 26th dynasty,” Mansur Boraik, the Egyptian head of the Franco-Egyptian Research Centre of the Temples of Karnak, told AFP.
The large stone door features colourful engravings that depict King Shabaka offering the goddess of truth, Maat, to the god Amun Raa, the chief deity.
“The Egyptian-French mission succeeded in making important discoveries from the 18th to the 25th dynasties,” minister of state for antiquities Zahi Hawass said in a statement.
The mission also unearthed a stone wall surrounding the temple of Ptah, the chief god of the city of Memphis. His temple had been built on the site of an earlier Middle Kingdom temple, and restored by Shabaka.
The Franco-Egyptian Centre has been working to open the temple to visitors next winter and plans to put Shabaka’s gate on display.
“The discovery shows that the temple of Karnak still has many secrets to be uncovered and it will do for years to come,” the centre’s Dominique Valbelle was quoted as saying in the ministry statement.
Shabaka established the capital at Thebes and was believed to have invested great effort in restoring religious architecture.
After 90 Years, a Dictionary of an Ancient World
Martha Roth, dean of humanities at the University of Chicago, and Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute there.
Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume dictionary of the language of ancient Mesopotamia and its Babylonian and Assyrian dialects, unspoken for 2,000 years but preserved on clay tablets and in stone inscriptions deciphered over the last two centuries, has finally been completed by scholars at the University of Chicago.
This was the language that Sargon the Great, king of Akkad in the 24th century B.C., spoke to command what is reputed to be the world’s first empire, and that Hammurabi used around 1700 B.C. to proclaim the first known code of laws. It was the vocabulary of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first masterpiece of world literature. Nebuchadnezzar II presumably called on these words to soothe his wife, homesick for her native land, with the promise of cultivating the wondrous Hanging Gardens Read more…
Pyramid-Exploring Robot Reveals Hidden Hieroglyphs
A robot explorer sent through the Great Pyramid of Giza has begun to unveil some of the secrets behind the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum as it transmitted the first images behind one of its mysterious doors.
The images revealed hieroglyphs written in red paint that have not been seen by human eyes since the construction of the pyramid. The pictures also unveiled new details about two puzzling copper pins embedded in one of the so called “secret doors.”
Published in the Annales du Service Des Antiquities de l’Egypte (ASAE), the images of markings and graffiti could unlock the secrets of the monument’s puzzling architecture.
“We believe that if these hieroglyphs could be deciphered they could help Egyptologists work out why these mysterious shafts were built,” Rob Richardson, the engineer who designed the robot at the University of Leeds, said. The study was sponsored by Mehdi Tayoubi and Richard Breitner of project partners Dassault Systèmes in France.
NEWS: Great Pyramid May Hold Two Hidden Chambers
Built for the pharaoh Cheops, also known as Khufu, the Great Pyramid is the last remaining Read more…
Egypt finds 17 lost pyramids
A new satellite survey of Egypt reportedly found 17 lost pyramids along with more than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements.
The survey used infra-red images to detect underground buildings, the BBC reports.
Satellites above the earth were equipped with cameras that could pin-point objects on the earth’s surface. The infra-red imaging then highlighted different materials under the surface, it states.
The work was done by a NASA-sponsored laboratory in Birmingham, Alabama.
“To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archeologist,” Sarah Parcak who led the project told BBC.
Meanwhile, Egypt opened the tombs of seven men, including some who served King Tutankhamen, to tourists earlier this week after restoration, the Associated Press reports.
Egypt hopes the tombs in the New Kingdom Cemetery in South Saqqara will draw more tourists to the area.
Egypt’s tourism industry has been badly hit by the revolution that toppled the government in February and subsequent political uncertainty.
The number of tourists to Egypt fell 46 percent in the first quarter, Reuters reported Sunday.
Mysterious Ancient Rock Carvings Found Near Nile
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| Here a rock etched with patterns forming a crescent moon and orb, an example of another piece of rock art discovered at Wadi Abu Dom in northern Sudan. CREDIT: Courtesy of Tim Karberg/Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. |
An archaeological team in the Bayuda Desert in northern Sudan has discovered dozens of new rock art drawings, some of which were etched more than 5,000 years ago and reveal scenes that scientists can’t explain.
The team discovered 15 new rock art sites in an arid valley known as Wadi Abu Dom, some 18 miles (29 kilometers) from the Nile River. It’s an arid valley that flows with water only during rainy periods. Many of the drawings were carved into the rock faces — no paint was used — of small stream beds known as “khors” that flow into the valley.
Some of the sites revealed just a single drawing while others have up to 30, said lead researcher Tim Karberg, of the Westfälische Wilhelms- Read more…
Enormous statue of powerful pharaoh unearthed
This undated photo released by the Supreme Council of Antiquities on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, shows a 13 meter (42 foot) tall statue of Amenhotep III in Luxor, Egypt. Archeologists unearthed one of the largest statues to date of the powerful ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, as well as one of the god Thoth with a baboon's head and and a six foot (1.85 meters) tall one of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, the country's antiquities authority announced Tuesday.
CAIRO – Archaeologists unearthed one of the largest statues found to date of a powerful ancient Egyptian pharaoh at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, the country’s antiquities authority announced Tuesday.
The 13 meter (42 foot) tall statue of Amenhotep III was one of a pair that flanked the northern entrance to the grand funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile that is currently the focus of a major excavation.
The statue consists of seven large quartzite blocks and still lacks a head and was actually first discovered in the 1928 and then rehidden, according to the press release from the country’s antiquities authority. Archaeologists expect to find its twin in the next digging season.
Excavation supervisor Abdel-Ghaffar Wagdi said two other statues were also unearthed, one of the god Thoth with a baboon’s head and a six foot (1.85 meter) tall one of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.
Archaeologists working on the temple over the past few years have issued a flood of announcements about new discoveries of statues. The 3,400-year-old temple is one of the largest on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor, where the powerful pharaohs of Egypt’s New Kingdom built their tombs.
Amenhotep III, who was the grandfather of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, ruled in the 14th century B.C. at the height of Egypt’s New Kingdom and presided over a vast empire stretching from Nubia in the south to Syria in the north.
The pharaoh’s temple was largely destroyed, possibly by floods, and little remains of its walls. It was also devastated by an earthquake in 27 B.C. But archaeologists have been able to unearth a wealth of artifacts and statuary in the buried ruins, including two statues of Amenhotep made of black granite found at the site in March 2009.
Fossil Sirenians Give Scientists New Look at Ancient Climate
Geologist Mark Clementz samples tooth enamel from molars in the lower jaw of a Florida manatee.
April 21, 2011
What tales they tell of their former lives, these old bones of sirenians, relatives of today’s dugongs and manatees.
And now, geologists have found, they tell of the waters in which they swam.
While researching the evolutionary ecology of ancient sirenians–commonly known as sea cows–scientist Mark Clementz and colleagues unexpectedly stumbled across data that could change the view of climate during the Eocene Read more…
Researcher cites ancient Minoan-era ‘computer’
(ANA-MPA) — The Minoan civilisation on pre-Classical Crete discovered the first rudimentary analog computer in mankind’s history, according to researcher Minas Tsikritsis, an academic who specialises in ancient Aegean writing systems.
Tsikritsis, who also hails from Crete — where the Bronze Age Minoan civilization flourished from approximately 2700 BC to 1500 century BC — maintains that the Minoan Age object discovered in 1898 in Paleokastro site, in the Sitia district of western Crete, preceded the heralded “Antikythera Mechanism“ by 1,400 years, and was the first analog and “portable computer“ in history.
“While searching in the Archaeological Museum of Iraklion for Minoan Age findings with astronomical images on them we came across a stone-made matrix unearthed in the region of Paleokastro, Sitia. In the past, archaeologists had expressed the view that the carved symbols on its surface are related with the Sun and the Moon,” Tsikritsis said.
The Cretan researcher and university professor told ANA-MPA that after the relief image of a spoked disc on the right side of the matrix was analysed it was established that it served as a cast to build a mechanism that functioned as an analog computer to calculate solar and lunar eclipses. The mechanism was also used as sundial and as an instrument calculating the geographical latitude. (ANA-MPA)
Could this be the biggest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls? Seventy metal books found in cave in Jordan
For scholars of faith and history, it is a treasure trove too precious for price.
This ancient collection of 70 tiny books, their lead pages bound with wire, could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity.
Academics are divided as to their authenticity but say that if verified, they could prove as pivotal as the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947.
On pages not much bigger than a credit card, are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and, possibly even, to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Adding to the intrigue, many of the books are sealed, prompting academics to speculate they are Read more…
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