Latest news with #Archaeology
Daily Mail
a day ago
- General
- Daily Mail
Archaeologists amazed to discover an ancient 'door to the afterlife' in the tomb of an Egyptian prince
Archaeologists examining a 4,400–year–old ancient Egyptian tomb have made a groundbreaking discovery. The catacomb, which belonged to a previously unknown prince called Userefre, features a large pink granite 'false door' – the largest ever discovered in Egypt. The door, which measures 4.5 metres high and 1.15 metres wide (15ft by 4ft) resembles a functional door but does not actually open. Instead, experts believe it held profound spiritual significance – serving as a symbolic portal through which the soul of the dead could travel to the afterlife. This 'gateway' demonstrates how considerable time and resources were dedicated to achieving eternal rest. The discovery, in Egypt's Saqqara necropolis, was made during an excavation mission led by Dr Zahi Hawass, former Minister of Antiquities. The door is decorated with hieroglyphic inscriptions detailing Prince Userefre's impressive titles, including 'Hereditary Prince, Governor of the Buto and Nekhbet Regions, Royal Scribe, Minister, Judge, and Chanting Priest.' The royal, who also goes by Prince Waser–If–Re, according to the inscriptions, was the son of King Userkaf, who was the founder of Egypt's Fifth dynasty. Despite his many titles, the prince and his tomb were previously unknown to scholars. 'Before this discovery, we didn't even know he existed,' Ronald Leprohon, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Toronto, told The Archaeologist. Dr Melanie Pitkin, from Cambridge University, has previously explained how false doors were intended to serve as portals that allowed the life force – or 'ka' – of the deceased to move back and forth between the tomb and the afterlife. 'Family members and priests would come to the tomb where the false door was standing and they would recite the name of the deceased and his or her achievements and leave offerings,' she said. 'The ka of the deceased would then magically travel between the burial chamber and the netherworld. 'It would come and collect the food, drink, and offerings from the tomb to help sustain it in the afterlife.' Alongside the false door, archaeologists also found 13 high–backed chairs, each of which featured statues carved out of pink granite too. Most false doors discovered in Egyptian tombs are made of limestone, which was abundant at the time. Pink and red granite was a rarity and had to be quarried and transported from Aswan – around 650km away. As a result, it was reserved for royalty. The imposing size of this particular false door reflects Prince Userefre's elevated status within the royal hierarchy. The archaeologists also found a red granite offering table measuring 92.5cm in diameter, featuring carved texts describing ritual sacrifice. The tomb also had a massive black granite statue of a standing man, measuring 1.17 metres tall. The owner of this statue – whose name was inscribed on its chest – appears to date to a more recent time period, indicating the tomb may have been reused. Scientists working at the site are still looking to locate the prince's actual burial chamber. Tutankhamun was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, and ruled between 1332 BC and 1323 BC. He was the son of Akhenaten and took to the throne at the age of nine or ten. When he became king, he married his half-sister, Ankhesenpaaten. He died at around the age of 18 and his cause of death is unknown. In 1907, Lord Carnarvon George Herbert asked English archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter to supervise excavations in the Valley of the Kings. On 4 November 1922, Carter's group found steps that led to Tutankhamun's tomb. He spent several months cataloguing the antechamber before opening the burial chamber and discovering the sarcophagus in February 1923. When the tomb was discovered in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter, under the patronage of Lord Carnarvon, the media frenzy that followed was unprecedented. Carter and his team took 10 years to clear the tomb of its treasure because of the multitude of objects found within it. For many, Tut embodies ancient Egypt's glory because his tomb was packed with the glittering wealth of the rich 18th Dynasty from 1569 to 1315 BC.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Spanish discovery suggests Roman era ‘church' may have been a synagogue
Seventeen centuries after they last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small and long-vanished Jewish community that lived in southern Spain in the late Roman era as the old gods were being snuffed out by Christianity. Archaeologists excavating the Ibero-Roman town of Cástulo, whose ruins lie near the present-day Andalucían town of Linares, have uncovered evidence of an apparent Jewish presence there in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. As well as three fragments of oil lamps decorated with menorahs and a roof tile bearing a five-branched menorah, they have also come across a piece of the lid of a cone-shaped jar bearing a Hebrew graffito. While experts are split over whether the engraving reads 'light of forgiveness' or 'Song to David', its very existence points to a previously unknown Jewish population in the town, which eventually fell into decay and abandonment 1,000 years later. The discovery of the materials has led the team to consider whether the ruins of a nearby building, assumed to be an early Christian basilica dating from the fourth century AD, could perhaps have been a synagogue where Cástulo's Jewish community came to worship. When the site of the supposed church was first excavated between 1985 and 1991, archaeologists assumed it was a Christian edifice. 'During the 2012-2013 [dig], we found the roof tile with the five-armed [menorah],' said Bautista Ceprían, one of the archaeologists working on the Andalucían regional government's Cástulo Sefarad, Primera Luz project, which aims to uncover the town's Jewish history. 'Until that moment, we didn't know that there could have been a very small Jewish community in Cástulo.' In a recently published paper, Ceprián and his colleagues David Expósito Mangas and José Carlos Ortega Díez consider the possibility that the 'church' could in fact have been a synagogue. They argue that the lack of Christian materials in the site, combined with an absence of evidence of burials or religious relics – which would normally be expected in a Christian church of the era – could point to its use as a Jewish temple. A nearby baptistry, in contrast, has already yielded Christian finds and burials. Jewish religious law, however, forbids burials within 50 cubits (23m) of a residential area. 'When we looked at the interior of the building a little more closely, there were some strange things for a church; there was something that could have been the hole for a big menorah,' said Ceprián. 'It's also strange that this building doesn't have any tombs.' The authors also point to the site's architectural features, such as its layout, which is reminiscent of some synagogues found in Palestine. 'Synagogues of that time could be more square in shape than Christian basilicas because in Jewish worship, there's usually a central bimah [raised platform], which people sit around,' said Ceprián. 'In a church, the priest performs the rituals in the apse, which means things are more rectangular.' Then there is the location of the possible synagogue; it would have sat in an isolated part of town near a ruined Roman bathhouse that would have been feared and hated by the local bishops. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion 'The Roman baths were the last pagan place that remained in a city,' said Ceprián. 'It was something diabolical and therefore something that had to be outside the Christian world. It seems to be the case that the baths in Cástulo had already been closed by the end of the fourth century, or the beginning of the fifth century.' He argues that the synagogue's location, so close to a font of paganism, would have helped the local Christian hierarchy in its efforts to conflate Judaism with unholy practices: 'The Jews would have had few options and at that moment it's clear that it's the bishops who are fundamentally organising the town – and it would allow them to relate Jews with evil.' If the researchers' theories were to be confirmed, the Cástulo synagogue would be among the very oldest Jewish temples on the Iberia peninsula. Spain's handful of surviving original synagogues are mainly medieval. The most recently discovered synagogue, in the Andalucían city of Utrera, dates from the 1300s. The problem for Ceprián and his colleagues – as they acknowledge – is the lack of written historical corroboration. 'I'm sure there will be criticism, which is totally legitimate – that's how science works and how it has to work,' he said. 'But of course we believe we've provided data with enough seriousness to allow ourselves to posit it.' Whether the building was a church or a synagogue, those digging up Cástulo have uncovered evidence of what would appear to be a small Jewish community living, if only for a while, in peaceful coexistence with their Christian neighbours. As the centuries wore on and the church propagated the otherness of Spain's Jewish inhabitants in order to forge and galvanise a Christian identity, there were pogroms and, finally, the expulsion of the country's Jewish population in 1492. 'It shows us that there was a good coexistence between all the different social groups or faith groups that were there at that time,' said Ceprián. 'But later, from the time when the Christian church begins to grow stronger in the Roman government, you start to get powerful groups opposed to those who are weaker in society. Oddly, that's something that's happening now, too.'
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Spanish discovery suggests Roman era ‘church' may have been a synagogue
Seventeen centuries after they last burned, a handful of broken oil lamps could shed light on a small and long-vanished Jewish community that lived in southern Spain in the late Roman era as the old gods were being snuffed out by Christianity. Archaeologists excavating the Ibero-Roman town of Cástulo, whose ruins lie near the present-day Andalucían town of Linares, have uncovered evidence of an apparent Jewish presence there in the late fourth or early fifth century AD. As well as three fragments of oil lamps decorated with menorahs and a roof tile bearing a five-branched menorah, they have also come across a piece of the lid of a cone-shaped jar bearing a Hebrew graffito. While experts are split over whether the engraving reads 'light of forgiveness' or 'Song to David', its very existence points to a previously unknown Jewish population in the town, which eventually fell into decay and abandonment 1,000 years later. The discovery of the materials has led the team to consider whether the ruins of a nearby building, assumed to be an early Christian basilica dating from the fourth century AD, could perhaps have been a synagogue where Cástulo's Jewish community came to worship. When the site of the supposed church was first excavated between 1985 and 1991, archaeologists assumed it was a Christian edifice. 'During the 2012-2013 [dig], we found the roof tile with the five-armed [menorah],' said Bautista Ceprían, one of the archaeologists working on the Andalucían regional government's Cástulo Sefarad, Primera Luz project, which aims to uncover the town's Jewish history. 'Until that moment, we didn't know that there could have been a very small Jewish community in Cástulo.' In a recently published paper, Ceprián and his colleagues David Expósito Mangas and José Carlos Ortega Díez consider the possibility that the 'church' could in fact have been a synagogue. They argue that the lack of Christian materials in the site, combined with an absence of evidence of burials or religious relics – which would normally be expected in a Christian church of the era – could point to its use as a Jewish temple. A nearby baptistry, in contrast, has already yielded Christian finds and burials. Jewish religious law, however, forbids burials within 50 cubits (23m) of a residential area. 'When we looked at the interior of the building a little more closely, there were some strange things for a church; there was something that could have been the hole for a big menorah,' said Ceprián. 'It's also strange that this building doesn't have any tombs.' The authors also point to the site's architectural features, such as its layout, which is reminiscent of some synagogues found in Palestine. 'Synagogues of that time could be more square in shape than Christian basilicas because in Jewish worship, there's usually a central bimah [raised platform], which people sit around,' said Ceprián. 'In a church, the priest performs the rituals in the apse, which means things are more rectangular.' Then there is the location of the possible synagogue; it would have sat in an isolated part of town near a ruined Roman bathhouse that would have been feared and hated by the local bishops. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion 'The Roman baths were the last pagan place that remained in a city,' said Ceprián. 'It was something diabolical and therefore something that had to be outside the Christian world. It seems to be the case that the baths in Cástulo had already been closed by the end of the fourth century, or the beginning of the fifth century.' He argues that the synagogue's location, so close to a font of paganism, would have helped the local Christian hierarchy in its efforts to conflate Judaism with unholy practices: 'The Jews would have had few options and at that moment it's clear that it's the bishops who are fundamentally organising the town – and it would allow them to relate Jews with evil.' If the researchers' theories were to be confirmed, the Cástulo synagogue would be among the very oldest Jewish temples on the Iberia peninsula. Spain's handful of surviving original synagogues are mainly medieval. The most recently discovered synagogue, in the Andalucían city of Utrera, dates from the 1300s. The problem for Ceprián and his colleagues – as they acknowledge – is the lack of written historical corroboration. 'I'm sure there will be criticism, which is totally legitimate – that's how science works and how it has to work,' he said. 'But of course we believe we've provided data with enough seriousness to allow ourselves to posit it.' Whether the building was a church or a synagogue, those digging up Cástulo have uncovered evidence of what would appear to be a small Jewish community living, if only for a while, in peaceful coexistence with their Christian neighbours. As the centuries wore on and the church propagated the otherness of Spain's Jewish inhabitants in order to forge and galvanise a Christian identity, there were pogroms and, finally, the expulsion of the country's Jewish population in 1492. 'It shows us that there was a good coexistence between all the different social groups or faith groups that were there at that time,' said Ceprián. 'But later, from the time when the Christian church begins to grow stronger in the Roman government, you start to get powerful groups opposed to those who are weaker in society. Oddly, that's something that's happening now, too.'
The National
4 days ago
- Science
- The National
Best photos of July 26: Tourist spot in Salalah to Children cools off in a fountain in Moscow
Thermal imaging shows the temperature variations around the Parthenon temple at the top of the Acropolis hill during a heatwave in Athens, Greece. Reuters
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
London team helps Jersey with archaeological finds
Archaeologists from London are visiting Jersey to help catalogue and store hundreds of ice age animal bone from an ancient site. Jersey Heritage said while the items, found before 1960 at La Cotte de St Brelade, had been subjected to detailed work, the early finds were yet to be studied using modern scientific techniques. It said visitors could meet the team from the University College London (UCL) Institute of Archaeology for a free "Meet the Collections" event on Saturday at Sir Francis Cook Gallery. The finds, which are part of a Société Jersiaise collection, include a fragment of woolly mammoth bone and lots of pieces of horse, red deer, bison, and bear bones, said Jersey Heritage. It added the UCL team was interested in the remains of animals that may have been hunted by some of the last surviving Neanderthal groups in the region. Jersey Heritage said: "There is no reason why some of these fragments of bone might not be from the Neanderthal people themselves." More news stories for Jersey Listen to the latest news for Jersey Curator of archaeology at Jersey Heritage, Olga Finch, said: "It's great to have the expertise of the London team to undertake this curatorial work and provide a detailed catalogue, which the public and researchers can access to learn more about this important story in the Island's history." Dr Matt Pope from UCL said it was exciting to be involved in the "important process". "This is one of the most important collections of Ice Age animal bone in the region and we are getting every ready to unlock its secrets," he added. Follow BBC Jersey on X and Facebook. Send your story ideas to Related internet links Jersey Heritage UCL Institute of Archaeology More on this story New exhibition to explain history of Jersey Heritage releases historical Jersey records Gold award for Jersey Museum exhibit about island
