A large sarcophagus dating to the reign of King Ramses II (1279-1213 BC) was discovered in Saqqara, south of Cairo, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said on Tuesday.
The sarcophagus, made of red granite, bears hieroglyphic text and different titles of the deceased. It belongs to an overseer of stables during the reign of Ramses II.
"The newly-discovered sarcophagus was found inside an old kingdom tomb previously discovered in the 1980s," said the statement.
Look closer next time.
Archaeologists search for Orpheus
IN the past few weeks, archaeologists have discovered a Thracian temple in the Eastern Rhodope mountains which may include the gravesite of the mythical figure Orpheus.
Nikolai Ovcharov, along with his team, discovered the temple near the village of Tatul and the Perperikon settlement near Kurdjali.
Among their discoveries was a clay model of a staff of the Thracian kings, with the sun depicted at the top with a cross and triangles. They also found the wheel of the king’s chariot, also with sun images, and nine ritual fireplaces made of rock which were used for worshipping the Sun God.
Shuffle off to Werowocomoco Personal past mined at dig
To Ashley Atkins and Jeff Brown, few places are as important as Werowocomoco.
They are members of the Pamunkey tribe, one of several descended from the Powhatan chiefdom.
"This was the spot where Powhatan, John Smith and Pocahontas met, and history was made," Brown said yesterday.
Mummy update I Microprobe makeover for museum's mummy
THE CSIRO has teamed up with the National Gallery of Victoria to reconstruct and conserve the last resting place of a teenage Egyptian priestess who died around 700BC.
The coffin lid, one of the first major Egyptian antiquities to arrive in Australia, is in a fragile state.
About 60 per cent of the wood, and even more of its painted surface, are lost, but the original bright colours on the remaining pieces survive under layers of dirt – gallery officials think.
Mummy update II Bog Mummy Mistaken for Murder Victim
The body of a teenage girl thought to be the victim of foul play has turned out to be one of Germany's oldest and best-preserved mummies, German archaeologists announced at a press conference last week.
Found in September 2000 in a peat bog in the town of Uchte, in Lower Saxony, the corpse was first examined by the police homicide unit.
Though it had been fragmented by the peat machine, the body appeared to belong to a teenage girl. Investigators thought it could be a 16-year-old girl who had been missing since 1969.
Archaeological dig perplexes
Sitting in a mosquito-infested camp just off the Parks Highway a few weeks ago, archaeologist Brian Wygal was happily baffled.
Last summer, the University of Nevada, Reno, instructor made two intriguing finds in the Trapper Creek area while working with a Matanuska-Susitna Borough crew. The teams discovered sharp, stone blades and other tools at twin sites perched on knolls about five miles apart, one overlooking Trapper Creek, the other the Susitna River. They dated the sites at about 7,000 years old, one of the earliest found in the Susitna Valley and among the earliest in all of Southcentral.
Good article.
Kennewick update Scientists to begin study of ancient skeleton over Indian protest
After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week.
A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider.
Four Northwest Indian tribes had opposed the study, claiming the skeleton could be an ancestor who should be buried. The Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers had sided with the tribes.
Hi-Tech Stone Age Site Found
A 2.34-million-year-old tool manufacturing site in East Africa may have been the Stone Age's center for high tech, according to French archaeologists who studied more than 2,600 artifacts excavated there.
The archaeologists believe relics at the site in Kenya, called Lokalalei 2C, display a level of tool-making sophistication among its dwellers that was unique to the Late Pliocene, which occurred between 2.6 and 2.0 million years ago.
"Planning, productivity and the existence of a real knapping method are not yet demonstrated in other sites for this time period," said co-author, Anne Delagnes, referring to the early technique of shaping stones into tools.
Non-archaeological-but-cool story Extinct Mammal Had Venomous Bite, Fossils Suggest
About 60 million years ago, a small shrew-like mammal captured its prey by stabbing it with dagger-like teeth that delivered a nasty dose of venom, paleontologists reported today.
"Nothing like that has ever been described before," said Richard Fox, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.
Fox and his colleague Craig Scott found fossilized teeth at two sites in central Alberta. The remains are the first evidence to suggest that extinct mammals used venom to either capture prey or fend off predators.
So why aren't many mammals venomous?