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Post by Admin on May 30, 2022 22:38:20 GMT
Hundreds Of Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagi Discovered 12,027 views May 31, 2022 Hundreds of ancient Egyptian sarcophagi and other antiquities were discovered at the Saqqara archeological site near Giza, the trove also included statues of deities. Cairo — Egyptian archaeologists have revealed another massive haul of priceless artifacts from the Saqqara Necropolis, a bountiful site near Cairo that likely still holds untold secrets. On display Monday were dozens of newly-discovered, beautifully decorated coffins or sarcophagi, still sealed up with their owners mummified inside, along with dozens of bronze statues. Monday's big reveal, with artifacts lined up in front of Saqqara's Step Pyramid of Djoser for journalists to admire, was the fifth by the archaeologists working at the site since 2018, and there are still many years of work left to carry out there. The latest discoveries, including about 250 still-sealed sarcophagi, came from the "Cemetery of Sacred Animals" at Saqqara, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told CBS News. There have now been more than 450 decorated, sealed coffins containing mummies in good condition discovered at the cemetery, all of them dating back some 2,500 years. The cemetery site at Saqqara was previously called "Bubasteion," a reference to the ancient Egyptian goddess Bast, who was worshiped in the form of a cat. Many of the statues initially discovered there depicted the goddess. In 2019, however, the site was renamed the Cemetery of Sacred Animals after archaeologists discovered other mummified animals and statues of other Egyptian deities there, Dr. Mohamed Al Saidi, the mission's director, told CBS News. The artifacts displayed on Monday included about 150 bronze statues of Egyptian deities of different sizes, including some portraying the gods Anubis, Osiris, Nefertem, Isis, and Hathor. "Today's discovery confirms that the temple wasn't exclusively for cats, but for other Egyptian deities too," Al Saidi told CBS News. "We found two beautiful wooden statues with golden faces of the deities Isis and Neftis, named the protectors of the coffin," he said of the artifacts pulled from one of the dig shafts at the cemetery. "They were in a seated position [by one coffin], one of them by the head of the coffin and the other by the feet, in a position called 'the mourners' or 'weepers' for the deceased." Inside the same coffin, the archaeologists discovered a papyrus roll they believe may be 10 yards long and contain chapters of the "Book of the Dead." The papyrus has been sent to a lab at the Egyptian Museum for further examination. The worksite is almost 440 yards long, and the archaeologists working there have only carried out excavations on the first 100 yards, so Al Saidi told CBS News the site likely still has a lot more treasures to reveal.
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Post by Admin on Jun 1, 2022 0:41:53 GMT
Egypt uncovers 2,500-year-old coffins, bronze statues l ABC News 52,935 views May 31, 2022 The latest discovery comes two months after five ancient tombs were found nearby. Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered the "largest cache of 150 bronze statues" and 250 coffins containing mummies that date back 2,500 years, officials announced Monday. The big picture: Officials hope the sarcophagi and other treasures at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo, will create jobs and boost Egypt's tourism industry, which has been hit by the pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, per the Washington Post. Both countries are usually significant sources of tourism for Egypt. Statuettes depicting the Egyptian goddesses Isis and Nephthys and other sarcophaguses found in a cache dating to the Egyptian Late Period (around the 5th century BC) are displayed on May 30. Photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images Statuettes and figurines depicting cats and Egyptian deities found in a cache dating to the Egyptian Late Period at the Bubastian cemetery at the Saqqara necropolis on May 30. Photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
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Post by Admin on Jun 2, 2022 19:28:53 GMT
Ancient Egyptian genomes suggest an increase of Sub-Saharan African ancestry in post-Roman periods Verena J. Schuenemann, Alexander Peltzer, Beatrix Welte, W. Paul van Pelt, Martyna Molak, Chuan-Chao Wang, Anja Furtwängler, Christian Urban, Ella Reiter, Kay Nieselt, Barbara Teßmann, Michael Francken, Katerina Harvati, Wolfgang Haak, Stephan Schiffels & Johannes Krause Nature Communications volume 8, Article number: 15694 (2017) Abstract Egypt, located on the isthmus of Africa, is an ideal region to study historical population dynamics due to its geographic location and documented interactions with ancient civilizations in Africa, Asia and Europe. Particularly, in the first millennium BCE Egypt endured foreign domination leading to growing numbers of foreigners living within its borders possibly contributing genetically to the local population. Here we present 90 mitochondrial genomes as well as genome-wide data sets from three individuals obtained from Egyptian mummies. The samples recovered from Middle Egypt span around 1,300 years of ancient Egyptian history from the New Kingdom to the Roman Period. Our analyses reveal that ancient Egyptians shared more ancestry with Near Easterners than present-day Egyptians, who received additional sub-Saharan admixture in more recent times. This analysis establishes ancient Egyptian mummies as a genetic source to study ancient human history and offers the perspective of deciphering Egypt’s past at a genome-wide level. Introduction Egypt provides a privileged setting for the study of population genetics as a result of its long and involved population history. Owing to its rich natural resources and strategic location on the crossroads of continents, the country had intense, historically documented interactions with important cultural areas in Africa, Asia and Europe ranging from international trade to foreign invasion and rule. Especially from the first millennium BCE onwards, Egypt saw a growing number of foreigners living and working within its borders and was subjected to an almost continuous sequence of foreign domination by Libyans, Assyrians, Kushites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks and Brits. The movement of people, goods and ideas throughout Egypt’s long history has given rise to an intricate cultural and genetic exchange and entanglement, involving themes that resonate strongly with contemporary discourse on integration and globalization1. Until now the study of Egypt’s population history has been largely based on literary and archaeological sources and inferences drawn from genetic diversity in present-day Egyptians. Both approaches have made crucial contributions to the debate but are not without limitations. On the one hand, the interpretation of literary and archaeological sources is often complicated by selective representation and preservation and the fact that markers of foreign identity, such as, for example, Greek or Latin names and ethnics, quickly became ‘status symbols’ and were adopted by natives and foreigners alike2,3,4. On the other hand, results obtained by modern genetic studies are based on extrapolations from their modern data sets and make critical assumptions on population structure and time5. The analysis of ancient DNA provides a crucial piece in the puzzle of Egypt’s population history and can serve as an important corrective or supplement to inferences drawn from literary, archaeological and modern DNA data. Despite their potential to address research questions relating to population migrations, genetic studies of ancient Egyptian mummies and skeletal material remain rare, although research on Egyptian mummies helped to pioneer the field of ancient DNA research with the first reported retrieval of ancient human DNA6. Since then progress has been challenged by issues surrounding the authentication of the retrieved DNA and potential contaminations inherent to the direct PCR method7. Furthermore, the potential DNA preservation in Egyptian mummies was met with general scepticism: The hot Egyptian climate, the high humidity levels in many tombs and some of the chemicals used in mummification techniques, in particular sodium carbonate, all contribute to DNA degradation and are thought to render the long-term survival of DNA in Egyptian mummies improbable8. Experimental DNA decay rates in papyri have also been used to question the validity and general reliability of reported ancient Egyptian DNA results9. The recent genetic analysis of King Tutankhamun’s family10 is one of the latest controversial studies that gave rise to this extensive scholarly debate11. New data obtained with high-throughput sequencing methods have the potential to overcome the methodological and contamination issues surrounding the PCR method and could help settle the debate surrounding ancient Egyptian DNA preservation8. However, the first high-throughput sequences obtained from ancient Egyptian mummies12 were not supported by rigorous authenticity and contamination tests. Here, we provide the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods and assessing the authenticity of the retrieved ancient DNA via characteristic nucleotide misincorporation patterns13,14 and statistical contamination tests15 to ensure the ancient origin of our obtained data.
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Post by Admin on Jun 3, 2022 18:13:29 GMT
By directly studying ancient DNA from ancient Egyptians, we can test previous hypotheses drawn from analysing modern Egyptian DNA, such as recent admixture from populations with sub-Saharan16 and non-African ancestries17, attributed to trans-Saharan slave trade and the Islamic expansion, respectively. On a more local scale, we aim to study changes and continuities in the genetic makeup of the ancient inhabitants of the Abusir el-Meleq community (Fig. 1), since all sampled remains derive from this community in Middle Egypt and have been radiocarbon dated to the late New Kingdom to the Roman Period (cal. 1388BCE–426CE, Supplementary Data 1). In particular, we seek to determine if the inhabitants of this settlement were affected at the genetic level by foreign conquest and domination, especially during the Ptolemaic (332–30BCE) and Roman (30BCE–395CE) Periods. Figure 1: Geographic context, of the samples used in this study. Map of Egypt depicting the location of the archaeological site Abusir-el Meleq (orange X) and the location of the modern Egyptian samples (orange circles) (design of the graphic by Annette Günzel).
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Post by Admin on Jun 3, 2022 20:28:42 GMT
Results Samples and anthropological analysis All 166 samples from 151 mummified individuals (for details of the 90 individuals included in the later analysis, see Supplementary Data 1) used in this study were taken from two anthropological collections at the University of Tübingen and the Felix von Luschan Skull Collection, which is now kept at the Museum of Prehistory of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung preußischer Kulturbesitz (individuals: S3533, S3536, S3544, S3552, S3578, S3610). According to the radiocarbon dates (Supplementary Data 1, see also ref. 18), the samples can be grouped into three time periods: Pre-Ptolemaic (New Kingdom, Third Intermediate Period and Late Period), Ptolemaic and Roman Period. During their conservation in the Tübingen and Berlin collections the remains underwent different treatments: some were preserved in their original mummified state, while others were macerated for anthropological analysis or due to conservation problems19. In most cases, non-macerated heads still have much of their soft tissue preserved. Some of the remains (individuals analysed in our study: 1543, 1547, 1565, 1577, 1611) have traces of gold leaf near the mouth and the cheekbone, which is characteristic for mummies from the Ptolemaic Period onwards20. In most cases the brain was removed and the excerebration route was highly likely transnasal, resulting in visible defects on the cribriform plate (for the individuals analysed in our study, see Supplementary Data 1). In summary, the excellent bone preservation and the more or less good soft tissue preservation made a wide-ranging analysis possible19. Recently, various studies were conducted on these remains, including a study on ancient Egyptian embalming resins, two ancient DNA studies and an anthropological examination of the macerated crania12,18,19,21. While the possibilities of a demographic reconstruction based on anthropological finds are naturally limited—due to incompleteness of the assemblage, the following anthropological observations were made on the assemblage: For a first assessment, computer tomographic scans of 30 mummies with soft tissue preservation were produced to describe sex (Supplementary Data 1), age at death (Supplementary Data 1) and the macroscopic health status; the six macerated mummies were examined directly. It is notable that most of the individuals are early and late adults, and that subadult individuals are underrepresented (Supplementary Data 1). It is possible that the sample’s demographic profile is the result of different burial treatments for adults and subadults, but it seems more likely that it is due to collection bias, with collectors favouring intact adult skulls. Almost all of the teeth show significant dentine exposure up to a total loss of the crown. This abrasion pattern is likely due to the food and food preparation itself, in particular for a cereal-rich diet containing a high proportion of coarse sandy particles. These particles act to abrade the dental tissues, allowing bacteria to penetrate the interior of the teeth. As a result, carious lesions or periapical processes appear in the analysed individuals (Supplementary Data 1)19. For the DNA analysis we sampled different tissues (bone, soft tissue, tooth), macerated and non-macerated, to test for human DNA preservation. Processing and sequencing of the samples We extracted DNA from 151 mummified human remains and prepared double-stranded Illumina libraries with dual barcodes22,23. Then we used DNA capture techniques for human mitochondrial DNA24 and for 1.24 million genomic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)25 in combination with Illumina sequencing, through which we successfully obtained complete human mitochondrial genomes from 90 samples and genome-wide SNP data from three male individuals passing quality control.
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