A joint Italian-Palestinian team has been conducting archaeological digs at the site of Tell es-Sultan, 13 miles northeast of modern Jerusalem in the West Bank, since During their latest excavation season, the team made an extraordinary discovery in a home occupied some 5, years ago—five mother of pearl shells, stacked one on top of the other, that could only have come from the Nile.
Two of the shells still contained the residue of a dark substance, which a laboratory analysis identified as manganese oxide. That powdered mineral was the main component of a cosmetic known as kohl, used as an eyeliner in ancient times. See the facial reconstruction of a 9,year-old man from Jericho. Researchers think the powder probably came from the Sinai Peninsula, where manganese mines that the ancient Egyptians once exploited have been found.
The city of Jericho, in what is today the West Bank, grew around an abundant spring. As far back as 10, B. Eventually they settled down, cultivated crops, and domesticated animals. The latest excavation season also revealed evidence of continuing ties between Jericho and Egypt several centuries later than the cosmetic find—a unique burial dating to about 1, B. Unlike earlier excavations, which have uncovered groups of wealthy graves, very likely royal, in the area encircled by the palace walls, the Italian-Palestinian team found a distinctly different burial right below the palace floor, an indication of special status.
This elite burial chamber held the remains of two people—a nine- or year-old girl adorned with jewelry, and an adult female who was presumably an attendant. The bones of two young sacrificed animals—a gazelle and a goat—as well as six pottery vessels were also discovered by the archaeologists.
The most interesting vessel was a small black burnished jug that was found next to the skull of the younger female. It contained a perfume or an ointment and may have been left in this spot so the deceased could smell sweet aromas throughout eternity.
Get inspiration from these 9 ancient sites. The title would have been especially appropriate in this city, where people had learned to harness the agricultural power of water—and benefited greatly from that—as the ancient Egyptians had also done. Two more signs on the scarab, a crouching lion and the sun rising over a hill, represent rw and ha , which form the name Rwha, or Ruha.
Paleolithic peoples lived at Wadi Kubbaniya for about 2, years, exploiting the different environments as the seasons changed. Other ancient camps have been discovered along the Nile from Sudan to the Mediterranean, yielding similar tools and food remains.
These sites demonstrate that the early inhabitants of the Nile valley and its nearby deserts had learned how to exploit local environments, developing economic strategies that were maintained in later cultural traditions of pharaonic Egypt. Oxford: Blackwell, Visiting The Met?
Apollo 11 ca. Cave Stones Blackwater Draw ca. Some eight millennia, that is, before the construction of Khufu's Pyramid.
What's more, he said, they had built somewhere close by it a Hall of Records, crammed with their most marvellous secrets; and he predicted that this Hall would be uncovered in the last 20 years of the millennium.
Fringe Egyptological circles were in a state of excitement throughout the s, expecting an announcement any day. None came. With the s came something a little more space age. In - not so coincidentally, the year of the Apollo 11 mission that first put men on the moon - there appeared the first English-language version of the book Chariots of the Gods?
The author of this curiously written and much publicised work was a Swiss hotelier, Erich von Daniken, and its theme passed into popular consciousness, borne along by serialisation in tabloid newspapers. Briefly, von Daniken contended that the earth had long ago been visited by superior beings from other worlds, whose technology appeared to our distant ancestors as a form of magic; that our most ancient monuments, including the Great Pyramid von Daniken maintains that its construction by existing earthly methods would have taken at least years, although the evidence he gives for this is not clear , are the material evidence of that visit; and that the world's religions and mythologies reflect garbled memories of the culture shock it engendered.
Although it is sometimes hard to penetrate von Daniken's prose, he also appears to contend that the Pyramid was a sort of freezing chamber, in which the significant dead could be preserved until such time as the sun god Ra an astronaut, naturally returned to revive them. Despite widespread derision, the refutations of scientists, and the promptings of plain old common sense, von Daniken's writings remain in print to this day, and help perpetuate one of the leading folk myths of our time.
The s and 70s also saw the rise of that loose coalition of unorthodox and far-fetched beliefs known as New Age philosophy. The Pyramid plays as lively a role in this philosophical fashion as it did a hundred years ago in the heyday of Theosophy, and the mania for all things 'pyramidical' burns as ardently as ever.
One of the more novel aspects of the craze took off in the mids, when attention shifted from the physical presence of the Giza structure to its proportions. A Czech radio engineer, Karel Dribal, heard rumours of the remarkable preservative powers of tiny model pyramids, made some tests of his own, and then announced to the world that a used razor blade, placed inside a cardboard replica of the pyramid just 15 inches high, would miraculously regain its original sharpness.
Before long, the media rang with reports of people using mini-pyramids to keep milk fresh, and to sharpen not only blades but also brainpower. That particular fad appears to have died away; but others have taken its place.
For every reader who is interested in the true story of Khufu's Pyramid, there appear to be hundreds who wish to read only of its mystical secrets, its occult alignment with the heavens, its connection with the so-called 'Face on Mars' a fuzzy photograph of a rock form taken by the space craft Viking II, in which some people believe they can make out an approximately human profile, somewhat akin to that of the Sphinx , and a supposed 'hidden chamber', the 'door' to which was recently found by a remote-controlled camera.
These unorthodox theories are the stuff of many present-day bestsellers - some relatively sober and moderately well researched, others opportunistic or simply zany. Belief in them is harmless enough, no doubt, and may lead on to a further interest in matters Egyptological.
But just as astronomers bemoan the persistence of belief in astrology, professional Egyptologists are exasperated by people's willingness to buy into fantasies about the Pyramid when the unadorned truth of the matter is so endlessly fascinating, and so easy to uncover.
Robert Bauval The site caters for the growing debates and discussions that are now part of the 'Alternative History' scene.
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