Secret Hieroglyphs Discovered on Ancient Egyptian Obelisk in Paris
Apr 24, 2025
Seven previously unknown messages have been identified on the 3,000-year-old Luxor Obelisk in Paris, long believed to be fully deciphered.
The 75-foot granite monument, carved during the reign of Ramses II and gifted to France in the 19th century, stands at Place de la Concorde. During recent access enabled by Olympic renovation scaffolding, Egyptologist Dr Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier of Paris-Sorbonne University found the encrypted texts using his expertise in crypto-hieroglyphs. Among the inscriptions is a phrase invoking the 'ka-force of Amun,' suggesting symbolic appeals to divine power.
The findings, made during the first full expert examination of the obelisk's upper sections since its 1836 installation, will be published in the Montpellier-based Egyptology journal ENIM . Only one of two Luxor Obelisks, its twin remains in Luxor, Egypt and may hold additional undiscovered texts.
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Al-Ahram Weekly
6 days ago
- Al-Ahram Weekly
The mummy of Queen Nefertiti - Heritage - Al-Ahram Weekly
It is the dream of many people to discover the mummy of the famous ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. One theory about the mummy was announced by Joan Fletcher, a member of an English expedition working inside the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35), in 2003. Fletcher was making a TV show with the Discovery Channel, and her theory was published all over the world. According to Egypt's antiquities law, any discovery must be reported first to the Antiquities Department, and after review, and if it is correct, the Supreme Committee of Antiquities (SCA) announces the name of the person who made the discovery. Fletcher was informed about this law, but as she broke it Egypt's Permanent Committee of Antiquities decided not to permit her to work again in the country. There was a great furore over Fletcher's announcement that she had discovered the mummy of Nefertiti. As head of the SCA at the time, I felt it was my duty to set the record straight. Two things in particular disturbed me. The first was that Fletcher's theory, which is no more than that, was presented in the media as a fact. The second was that my criticism of Fletcher, who ignored SCA regulations and thus betrayed responsible Egyptology, was interpreted as nationalism or fundamentalism. I should like to take this opportunity to share the opinions of two Egyptologists, both of whom supported my position, as did the majority of other Egyptologists around the world. The first is Rosalie David, professor and director of the Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the School of Sciences at Manchester in the UK, who was Fletcher's thesis adviser. David is one of the foremost experts on mummies and mummification in the world (in contrast to Fletcher, who wrote her thesis on wigs and hairstyles in Ancient Egypt). In a letter to the SCA, David wrote that 'apart from electron microscopy of a head-louse found within one of the hairpieces that Joan Fletcher was studying, there was no specific scientific content to the research or the thesis. The electron microscopy was carried out by the university's electron microscopy unit (not by Joan Fletcher herself) and she was allowed to use the results in her thesis.' 'Joan Fletcher received no training in anthropology or biomedical Egyptology or any other scientific techniques related to human remains; she was never involved in any of the work or research undertaken by the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Project; and indeed she showed no interest in the anthropological and biomedical research on the mummies that were undertaken at that time.' David added that 'in summary, she received no training in anthropology or studies related to mummy research during her university course at Manchester.' David had no contact with Fletcher after she finished her thesis, even though, as she was her adviser, she should have had a close relationship with her. David concluded by saying that 'I am surprised to see that in recent years she has chosen to describe herself in the media as an expert in mummy studies.' The second letter was from George Tassie, an archaeologist who works in the Delta and is concerned for the preservation of our common heritage. Here is the text of a letter that came to me at the time. 'I don't know whether anyone else was outraged by the article in last Friday's edition of [the UK] Times (22 August 2003) 'How Nefertiti put a curse on British Archaeologist' reporting how Joan Fletcher and her team from York University have been barred from conducting research in Egypt.' 'I thought it was one of the most biased, offensive, bigoted, racist and inflammatory pieces of journalism I have ever read. This article is available online in The Times archives, but the minimum fee is £10 to become a member to access them. However, I do have a copy if anyone would like to see this terrible article. I have already written a letter of complaint to the editor of The Times, but as of yet have had no reply.' The most disturbing part of The Times article, Tassie wrote, was the interview with an unnamed British Egyptologist who declared that Hawass and the SCA were practicing a form of cultural nationalism and that, desirous to keep Egyptology for Muslims, they had issued new regulations that make life 'very hard for foreign Egyptologists'. This was a dangerous and inflammatory remark, presumably based on the fact that there was a moratorium on excavation in the Nile Valley. During the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists (28 March-3 April 2000), members of the SCA voiced their concern at the rate of destruction of sites in the Nile Delta, and many leading archaeologists from around the world called for attention to be directed towards that area and other threatened regions. For that reason, it was declared that while concessions would be granted during the upcoming 10 years for widespread restoration, conservation, archaeological survey, documentation and epigraphical work, new concessions would not be granted between Giza and Abu Simbel. However, new applications for excavation concessions in the Western Desert, the Eastern Desert, and the Delta would be granted. These regulations were welcomed by the larger community of archaeologists who were concerned with protecting Egypt's cultural heritage against such modern threats as the salinisation of the soil from the high water table and the flooding of vast areas of land, mechanised farming techniques and agricultural expansion, the activities of the sebakhin (people who dig in ancient mud-brick settlement sites for fertiliser or for brick manufacture), not to mention building and development projects, pollution, and expanding urban development, all of which were acutely felt in the Delta. Although sites in Upper Egypt are similarly threatened, they do not face problems so severe as those in Lower Egypt. In cases where an archaeological site in the Nile Valley does face a direct threat from any of the above causes, and just reason can be given for its excavation with a view to protection, the SCA will grant permission for such archaeological work to take place. The anonymous Egyptologist's claim that Egyptians do not like the British and resent them for their colonial past, made in the original Times article, is too outrageous to dignify with further comment. I shall simply refer readers a paper by D M Reid (1984) entitled 'Indigenous Egyptology: Decolonisation of a Profession?' (Journal of the American Oriental Society 105: 233-246). The SCA recognises the need for more collaborative projects between international and Egyptian archaeologists, and the dissemination of both academic and technical information. We welcome help both in terms of teaching young Egyptians the advanced techniques of field archaeology and in building an archaeological infrastructure. We are the custodians of a rich world heritage and welcome all those who wish to protect it. TAMPERING WITH NEFERTITI: Meanwhile, I also received many e-mails from art historians in the United States expressing outrage at the Berlin Museum's astonishing insolence in briefly fusing the beautiful painted bust of Nefertiti to a modern bronze nude body, also in 2003. One scholar, highly respected in his field, wrote passionately about this 'disgusting, ugly and unscientific' synthesis, an affront to one of our most treasured masterpieces. Writing to the director of the UN cultural organisation UNESCO, the German ambassador to Egypt, and Mohamed Al-Orabi, the Egyptian ambassador in Berlin at the time, I listed our objections to the treatment of Nefertiti, pointing out not only the aesthetic offence but the very real peril it entailed. Attaching a limestone bust to a bronze body may have caused it irreparable damage and risked its destruction, had it somehow fallen from it. To subject a rare masterpiece to such degradation combined with the possibility of harm is inexcusable. The Egyptian artist Thutmose who created this work of art in his studio in Tel Al-Amarna thousands of years ago, sculpted the bust of the beautiful queen as a trial piece. He did not intend it to have a torso, let alone a nude body sculpted 3,300 years later in a completely different medium. This bust was created in the likeness of the queen in order that her fine features could be reproduced in later works. The sculptor must have been turning in his grave at the thought of the abuse done to his art thousands of years later. The intricately painted bust of Nefertiti was unearthed in 1912 by a German mission directed by Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt, who discovered it inside the studio of the long-deceased artist. He brought it, along with other remarkably well-preserved artefacts found during his excavation to the Egyptian Museum. The beauty of the statue, and its excellent state of preservation, was hidden, however, according to some, intentionally, by a layer of grime, so that its priceless value was not recognised. Pierre Lacau, director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service at the time, was deceived. With Lacau's permission, the bust left Egypt for Germany, though it was not exhibited in Berlin for 10 years. The joining of the bust to a modern body took place in May 2003, when the bust of Nefertiti was removed from its display area in the Berlin Museum and joined with a nude bronze body made by Hungarian artists, apparently in a bid to draw publicity. Thus, one of the most wonderful examples of ancient art and an Egyptian national treasure was treated with wanton disrespect and subjected to physical danger. International law permits Egypt to ask for the return of objects taken abroad, and the outroar over the Berlin Museum's fusion prompted Farouk Hosni, the then Minister of Culture, to hold a press conference at the Cairo Opera House, announcing Egypt's intention to formally request that the German government return the bust of Nefertiti. I wrote to the Berlin Museum to ask for the bust of Nefertiti to be borrowed for three months for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The authorities in Berlin refused our request, raising questions about the bust's safety. I said we were not 'the pirates of the Caribbean' in response. I earlier appointed a research committee and began to research how the bust left Egypt, and we collected evidence that showed the bust had left Egypt illegally. I asked permission from the Prime Minister and wrote the first official letter to ask for the return of the bust in 2010. But the 25 January Revolution then took place in Egypt in 2011, and I could not follow up the letter. SEARCH FOR NEFERTITI: Nefertiti married King Akhenaten and bore him six daughters, one of them being Ankhesenamun, who married Tutankhamun. Some scholars believe that she ruled for a few years after the death of Akhenaten. Inside the tomb KV21 two mummies were found, one of them headless. A DNA study revealed that the KV21 A mummy should be that of Ankhesenamun. I believe that the other mummy, KV21 B, could be that of Nefertiti because the Egyptians always put daughter beside mother, as we see in KV35, where an elder mummy is that of Queen Tiye and a younger that of her daughter who married her brother Akhenaten. We also began to search for the skeleton of Motnujmet, her sister, and archaeologist Geoffery Martin found her burial inside the tomb of Horemhep at Saqqara. The bones were studied by Strouhal, who published his research and stated that Motnujmet died at the age of 40. * A version of this article appears in print in the 7 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Egypt Independent
28-07-2025
- Egypt Independent
Scientists unveil secrets of Egypt's most complex mummy
For decades, Egyptologists have been left baffled by the secrets of an ancient mummy known due to its intricate wrappings, unique mummification techniques, and rare inscriptions – until now. With state-of-the-art technology, scientists have revealed the mummy's secrets 'without having to unwrap it.' According to a report in The Sun newspaper on Sunday, the mummy is over 2,300 years old and was discovered by Egyptologist Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings, the same area where Tutankhamun's tomb was later found. Advances in X-ray and CT scanning technology made it possible to study it in-depth without damaging it, a significant step toward a greater understanding of the ancient mummy's secrets. The latest findings have revealed that the mummy belongs to an adult male, approximately 1.68 meters tall, who lived during the Ptolemaic period, which extended from 305-30 BC. X-rays also revealed inscriptions bearing the name of the buried person, but researchers have been unable to confirm whether the name was 'Bashiri' or 'Nino,' leaving some aspects of the story still mysterious. According to the American Museum of Natural History, the mummy's facial wrappings feature unique engravings resembling the base of a pyramid, 'a rare feature not seen on any other mummies.' The outer covering bears multiple decorations distributed across 'records,' including a depiction of the mummy lying on a bed surrounded by the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, as well as the Four Sons of Horus. The section surrounding the feet is decorated with the symbol of Anubis, the god of mummification in ancient Egyptian mythology.
Watani
23-07-2025
- Watani
Atlas of Egyptian Cities wins
Egypt's 'Atlas of Egyptian Cities' Geoportal has won the 2025 Special Achievement Award in GIS (SAG) granted by Esri, the California-based Environmental Systems Research Institute. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems. The Atlas of Sustainable Egyptian Cities, which was launched at the 12th World Urban Forum (WUF12) in November 2024 in Egypt, is a geoportal launched to guide cities in adapting to environmental risks and promoting sustainable urban planning. It is a collaborative effort highlighting Egypt's commitment to sustainable development, particularly in the face of climate change. The geoportal serves as a guide for cities to adapt to environmental risks and supports sustainability-conscious urban planning. It is intended to be a key tool for implementing national strategies such as 'Egypt Vision 2030' and the 'National Climate Change Strategy 2050'. The Atlas of [Sustainable] Egyptian Cities was created through a partnership among the Egyptian Ministry of Local Development, the World Bank, and Esri. The platform's database enables policymakers to assess the impacts of climate change, optimise service distribution, and plan projects more efficiently. Minister of Local Development Manal Awad received the 2025 SAG Award during the Esri International User Conference, held in San Diego, California. She was handed the award by Jack Dangermond, president and founder of Esri, the global leader in geographic information systems. On its Facebook page, Esri North Africa posted the news and mentioned that 'Location Intelligence plays a vital role in shaping the future of our planet, not only as an integral part in designing smarter cities, but also in driving digital transformation, and advancing sustainable development goals'. A congratulatory message was posted for Egypt's Ministry of Local Development on this unparalleled achievement. 'We are extremely proud of the remarkable outcomes of our collaboration, and look forward to continued success and greater GIS empowerment in support of the Ministry's digital transformation journey!' Dr Awad pointed out that Egypt's Ministry of Local Development is spearheading one of the most comprehensive spatial and economic development efforts across numerous Egyptian villages and cities, efforts that require advanced data-driven tools and technological capabilities. She noted that geographic information systems have become integral to planning, decision-making, evaluation, and local monitoring processes. She said Esri is a strategic partner capable of supporting the Ministry in building a robust knowledge infrastructure for managing development both locally and nationally. Dr Awad highlighted the 'Atlas of Egyptian Cities' as a national platform built on spatial data to track urban performance indicators, identify development gaps, and monitor climatic and demographic shifts. She noted the ministry's ambition to transform the platform into a dynamic tool that offers predictive analytics, periodic updates, and informed support for investment and policy decisions, leveraging Esri's advanced technologies. The Minister also expressed interest in strengthening collaboration with Esri across various strategic initiatives in Egypt's governorates, including solid waste management, land encroachment control, local asset management, and spatial change monitoring. Mr Dangermond praised the ministry's significant progress in integrating GIS into its development plans and reaffirmed Esri's commitment to supporting Egypt's efforts through tailored solutions, knowledge sharing, and institutional capacity-building. Esri is the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping. Established in 1969, it has supported customers with geographic science and geospatial analytics. On its website, Esri posted: 'We take a geographic approach to problem-solving, brought to life by modern, enterprise-grade GIS technology. We are committed to using science and technology to build a sustainable world. 'Our greatest challenges—including climate change, sustainability, and social and economic inequality—are interrelated and inherently tied to issues of geography. A science-based, geographic approach can help us understand these interconnected problems holistically by integrating all kinds of information.' Watani International 23 July 2025 Comments comments Tags: 2025 SAG award Esri GISAtlas of Egyptian Cities geoportalMariam Awad
