News from the ancient world
Ancient Egypt was the civilisation that grew up along the lower Nile in north-east Africa. The country was unified under a single king around 3100 BC, and the long run of pharaonic rule that followed is usually divided into the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, with less centralised intermediate periods between them. Its rulers built pyramids at Giza and Saqqara and temples and royal tombs at Thebes, modern Luxor. After Alexander the Great, Egypt was ruled by the Ptolemies, then became a Roman province in 30 BC and later part of the Byzantine empire.
Recent work covers most of that span. At Giza, the ScanPyramids team located two air-filled cavities behind the east face of Menkaure's pyramid, which supports the idea of a second entrance. At Luxor, a cache of 22 painted coffins from the Third Intermediate Period still held their mummies, and most bear titles, chiefly 'singer of Amun', in place of their owners' names. At Tanis, a French team found 225 shabtis inscribed for Sheshonq III at the foot of an uninscribed sarcophagus that probably belonged to him.
Bronze Age · c. 2280 BC · Saqqara, Giza Governorate, Egypt
The Old Kingdom official was buried beside King Merenre's pyramid, and although his tomb held the instruments, no inscription in his burial chamber calls him a doctor.
Bronze Age · c. 1259 BC · Hattusa (Boğazkale), Çorum province, Turkey
The clay piece, part of an Akkadian copy of the pact between Ramesses II and Hattusili III, preserves clauses on people fleeing between the two kingdoms.
Byzantium · 4th century AD · Ain el-Sabil, Dakhla Oasis, New Valley Governorate, Egypt
The 4th-century AD mudbrick settlement at Ain el-Sabil had a street grid, a central church, a fortress and an earlier house that may have served as a church.
Greece & Rome · Late Ptolemaic to Byzantine · Muharram Bey, Alexandria, Alexandria Governorate, Egypt
Rescue excavations in central Alexandria found a site occupied from the Ptolemaic to the Byzantine period, with marble statues of Bacchus, Asclepius and possibly Minerva.
Bronze Age · c. 2500 BC · Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt
Radar, ultrasound and resistivity scans by the ScanPyramids team located two air-filled cavities behind a polished granite patch, supporting the idea of a second entrance.
Bronze Age · 13th century BC · Tell El-Faraoun (Imet), Sharqia Governorate, Egypt
The five-to-six-ton figure was probably carved in the royal capital Pi-Ramesse and later moved to Imet for reuse in a local temple.
Greece & Rome · Roman period · Oxyrhynchus (El Bahnasa), Minya Governorate, Egypt
At Oxyrhynchus in Minya, a Spanish-Egyptian team also found jars of cremated human remains buried with cat bones, a rare practice in the area at that time.
Greece & Rome · 2nd century BC to 6th century AD · Tell el-Farama (Pelusium), North Sinai, Egypt
First taken for a council chamber, the 35-metre brick basin at Pelusium, fed by a branch of the Nile, is now identified as a sanctuary used for nearly 800 years.
Greece & Rome · c. 1st century BC · Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
A papyrus about 2,000 years old in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology preserves part of Empedocles' poem Physica on vision and perception.
Byzantium · 5th century AD · Al-Qalaya, Hosh Issa, Beheira, Egypt
The 13-room building at Al-Qalaya in Beheira has a prayer room, a hall for visitors, wall paintings of monks and a Coptic epitaph.
Greece & Rome · 3rd century BC to 11th century AD · Athribis (Nagaa Sheikh Hammad), Sohag, Egypt
The Egyptian-German mission says Athribis has now yielded 43,000 ostraca since 2005, including more than 130 that deal with astronomy and the zodiac.
Greece & Rome · 1st–3rd century AD · Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt
About 30 inscriptions in three ancient Indian languages, left in six tombs in Roman times, include eight signatures by a man named Cikai Korran, probably from southern India.
Iron Age · c. 1070–715 BC · Qurna, Luxor, Luxor Governorate, Egypt
The coffins still hold their mummies, date to Egypt's Third Intermediate Period, and most bear titles, chiefly 'singer of Amun', instead of their owners' names.
Stone Age · c. 10,000–5500 BC · Umm Araka Plateau, near Serabit el-Khadim, South Sinai, Egypt
Red animal paintings on the ceiling of a sandstone shelter near Serabit el-Khadim open a sequence of images that runs into the Islamic period.
Iron Age · Third Intermediate Period, Twenty-second Dynasty · Tanis (San al-Hagar), Egypt
A French team found 225 figurines inscribed for the Libyan king at the foot of an uninscribed sarcophagus, which probably belonged to him.
Bronze Age · c. 2445–2421 BC · Abu Ghurab, Abusir, Giza Governorate, Egypt
An Italian team has cleared more than half of the 4,400-year-old Fifth Dynasty building, which groundwater kept out of reach after its location was identified in 1901.
Stone Age · c. 3300 BC · Badari, Asyut Governorate, Egypt
Wear marks and six coils of leather thong indicate that a 63-millimetre copper alloy tool from a Predynastic grave was spun with a bow about 5,300 years ago.
Byzantium · c. AD 712/713 · St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, South Sinai, Egypt
Written around AD 712/713 in Syriac and later translated into Arabic, the 'Maronite Chronicle of 713' survives in one damaged 13th-century copy at St Catherine's Monastery.
Bronze Age · c. 3000 BC · Wadi Khamila, South Sinai, Egypt
Found in Wadi Khamila by an Egyptian antiquities inspector, the scene carries an inscription naming the god Min as ruler of the copper region, a Bonn Egyptologist says.
Byzantium · 5th–6th century AD · Al-Qarya bi-al-Duweir, Tama, Sohag Governorate, Egypt
Excavators in Upper Egypt found a fifth- or sixth-century AD monastic complex with a church, vaulted rooms thought to be monks' cells and Coptic inscriptions.