Greek Community of Alexandria

Tag: Archaeology

  • New Pyramid Discovered in Egypt

    New Pyramid Discovered in Egypt

    After thousands of years, researchers are still making incredible finds in Egypt (case in point, the giant statue unearthed in Cairo last month). Now, researchers have made another big find: earlier this week the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced that a team of their archaeologists discovered the remains of pyramid dating back to the 13th Dynasty, which ruled about 3,700 years ago reports the Associated Press. The only problem is that an inscription indicates that the pyramid may have been built for a ruler that already has a pyramid next door.

    The Egypt Independent reports that the remains were uncovered at the Dahshur Necropolis, an area about 25 miles south of Cairo on the west bank of the Nile. That area is home to what is considered to be some of the earliest pyramids including Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid.

    While the pyramid-shaped upper section is gone, the substructure still remains. “The uncovered remains of the pyramid represents a part of its inner structure, which is composed of a corridor leading to the inner side of the pyramid and a hall, which leads to a southern ramp and a room to the western end,” Adel Okasha, the director general of the Dahshur Necropolis says in a statement, reports Owen Jarus at LiveScience.

    Though the writing on the slab has not been translated by the Antiquities Ministry, Jarus shared images of the hieroglyphics with Egyptologists. He reports that two have said the writing is a religious text often used inside pyramids, and that the text appears to include the name of the pharaoh Ameny Qemau, the fifth king of Dynasty XIII, who briefly ruled around 1790 B.C.

    That raises some questions, however, since Ameny Qemau’s pyramid was discovered in Dahshur in 1957, Aidan Dodson, a research fellow at the University of Bristol who has written about artifacts from that earlier pyramid, tells Jarus. He suggests one possibility for the discrepancy is that Qemau may have hacked out the name of a predecessor king and inserted his own name. That practice was common in the ancient world when a new ruler wanted to bury the memory of an enemy or unpopular ruler. 

    The AP reports that the Ministry of Antiquities plans to continue excavations and hope to find more evidence of which ruler or high-ranking official the pyramid belonged to.
    (www.smithsonianmag.com)

  • An ancient Egyptian mystery draws tourists to King Ramses II statue

    An ancient Egyptian mystery draws tourists to King Ramses II statue

    Ancient Egyptians were known for their scientific excellence and genius, especially in the fields of astronomy, sculpture and construction. For instance, the three pyramids are considered among the Seven Wonders of the World. Pharaonic arts and antiquities still hide secrets that no scientists have managed to explain or understand.

    Every year, a Pharaonic miracle has been happening for 33 centuries.

    At the main entrance of the Great Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel in Aswan governorate, a solar alignment is witnessed on the face of the King Ramses II statue twice a year, once on his birthday, Oct. 22, and again on his coronation day, Feb. 22.

    Ramses II built his temple, which took 19 years to complete, in 1275 B.C. At the same time, the king inaugurated another temple for his wife, Queen Nefertari, who was said to be the most beautiful among Pharaonic queens. He ordered her shrine to be located near his own, on a mountain overlooking the Nile.

    King Ramses II, of the ninth Pharaonic family, was born in 1315 B.C. He came to power in 1290 B.C. and gained wide popularity for several reasons. For one, he acceded to the throne when he was a young, ambitious and enthusiastic man and remained king for 67 years. He also inherited a strong and rich country from his father who taught him the arts of war, rule and politics.

    Civilians and soldiers supported him, and he defeated the Hittites, the largest military power at the time. He was passionate about immortalizing his memory and honoring himself. For that purpose, he built more shrines, palaces, statues and obelisks than any other ruler before him. During his reign, Egypt built a new capital called Pi-Ramesses, which became one of the most important capitals of the ancient Near East.

    When the sun shines, its rays creep into his deep shrine, which is about 60 meters (197 feet) from the entrance, to illuminate it. The aim is for the sun’s rays to fall on Ramses II’s face from the east from a narrow opening.

    British explorer Amelia Edwards and her team detected this phenomenon in 1848, and she recorded it in her book “A Thousand Miles Up the Nile.” She wrote, “The statues of Abu Simbel Temple gain huge influence and are surrounded by an aura of praise and respect when the sunrays shine and set on them.”

    Al-Monitor attended the Aswan governorate’s celebration of the phenomenon. According to Aswan Gov. Magdy Hijazi, the governorate holds several artistic and cultural events for the occasion.

    “This year, the celebration was more organized, given the development of the work and performance to suit its grandiosity,” Hijazi told Al-Monitor. He noted that the event was made possible in coordination with the Ministry of Tourism, Antiquities and Culture in Aswan. “The governorate was spending large sums of money on the celebrations of solar alignment in the past, but it is currently agreeing with other parties to support and improve the celebrations as part of the expenditure rationalization policy,” he said.

    The celebration marked the beginning of the fifth Aswan International Festival for Arts and Culture, in which 17 folk art troupes participated, including ones from China, India, Greece, Sudan, Nigeria, Armenia, South Korea and Thailand.

    Among those who participated in the event were Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany, Minister of Culture Helmy al-Namnam and Minister of Tourism Yehia Rashed. About 4,000 people attended the solar alignment event, including 1,500 tourists.

    The first Aswan International Women’s Film Festival coincided with the solar alignment and was launched over six days under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Tourism. The festival’s prize statue comes in the shape of the ancient Egyptian goddess of the moon and motherhood, Isis.

    Mohammad Idriss, the general manager of the Ministry of Culture in Aswan, told Al-Monitor, “The festival program includes performances from the participating troupes. It took place in several cultural locations and youth centers in the governorate.”

    In a Feb. 6 press statement, Houssam Abboud, the director general of Abu Simbel antiquities at the Ministry of Antiquities, said the ministry took great efforts to prepare the celebrations for the occasion, which is a boon for tourism.

    He added that the solar alignment phenomenon stems from the ancient Egyptian belief that King Ramses II was intricately connected to the sun god Ra.

    Residents of Abu Simbel also participated in the celebration and promoted their city. They held an exhibition to display their antiquities and city folklore, as well as handicrafts from the families of tribes in Abu Simbel to reflect their culture to foreigners and Egyptians.

    Aswan University participated in this global event by sending students from the Faculty of Linguistics to help guide foreign tourists who attended the celebrations.

    (www.al-monitor.com)

  • Hundreds of coffins to be restored in Egyptian conservation project

    Hundreds of coffins to be restored in Egyptian conservation project

    Egypt will restore hundreds of coffins dating back thousands of years to the time of the pharaohs as part of an American-Egyptian project to preserve and document one of the world’s oldest civilisations, a director of the project said.

    The conservation effort, funded by a US grant, will restore more than 600 wooden coffins that date to various eras of ancient Egypt and which are currently stored at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

    “There has been no other project like this worldwide, with this number of coffins being documented or restored,” said head of the museum’s restoration department, Moamen Othman.

    Egypt was awarded the conservation grant worth $130,000 (£105,000), in December 2015. That project is part of a larger US-Egypt treaty signed in 2016 to curtail illicit trafficking of the country’s rich cultural heritage.

    Antiquities theft flourished in Egypt in the chaotic years that immediately followed its 2011 uprising, with an indeterminate amount of heritage stolen from museums, mosques, storage facilities and illegal excavations.

    Global interest in Egypt’s pharaonic era remains high. The hunt for the resting place of the lost queen Nefertiti grabbed international headlines in 2015, though the search has yet to bear fruit.

    The gilded ancient relics and resting sites of the pharaohs were once the cornerstone of a thriving tourism sector, a vital source of foreign currency, that has suffered setbacks since the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

    The Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation (AFCP), a US programme founded in 2001, has been responsible for the conservation and restoration of countless ancient sites, museums and artefacts around the world.

    The fund previously helped Egypt to conserve a mausoleum in historic Cairo and an ancient temple in upper Egypt.

    “One of the main goals of the project is to ensure that the [Egyptian] Museum has a full inventory of the objects and understands their conservation needs so that the coffins can be made available for research by scholars but also for the public,” AFCP programme director Martin Perschler said.

    “It means that in the long run more people here in Egypt and people from around the world will have the opportunity to discover and appreciate the full range of heritage and of history within this single collection of coffins.”

    (www.theguardian.com)

  • Egypt unearths city and cemetery over 7,000 years old

    Egypt unearths city and cemetery over 7,000 years old

    ΑρχαιολογίαEgypt has unearthed a more than 7,000-year-old city and cemetery dating back to its First Dynasty in the southern province of Sohag, the Antiquities Ministry said on Wednesday.

    The find could be a boon for Egypt’s ailing tourism industry, which has suffered endless setbacks since an uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011 but remains a vital source of foreign currency.

    The city likely housed high-ranking officials and grave builders. Its discovery may yield new insights on Abydos, one of the oldest cities in Ancient Egypt, the ministry said in a statement.

    Experts say Abydos was Egypt’s capital towards the end of the Predynastic Period and during the rule of the first four dynasties.

    The discovery was made 400 metres away from the temple of Seti I, a New Kingdom period memorial across the Nile from present day Luxor.

    Archaeologists have so far uncovered huts, pottery remains and iron tools as well as 15 huge graves, some of which were larger than the graves of kings in Abydos, the ministry said in a statement.

    “The size of the graves discovered in the cemetery is larger in some instances than royal graves in Abydos dating back to the First Dynasty, which proves the importance of the people buried there and their high social standing during this early era of ancient Egyptian history,” the ministry said.

    Egypt’s tourism industry has struggled to recover since the bombing of a Russian plane carrying 224 people from a Red Sea resort in October 2015.

    More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million in 2011. In the first quarter of 2016 just 1.2 million tourists travelled to Egypt, down from 2.2 million a year earlier.

    (in.reuters.com)