Robot to explore mysterious tunnels in Great Pyramid

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/

For 4,500 years, no one has known what lies beyond two stone doors deep inside the monument

By Andrew Johnson

For 4,500 years, the Great Pyramid at Giza has enthralled, fascinated and ultimately frustrated everyone who has attempted to penetrate its secrets.

Now a robotics team from Leeds University, working with Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, is preparing a machine which they hope will solve one of its enduring mysteries.

The pyramid, known as the Pyramid of Khufu after the king who built it around 2,560BC, is the only wonder of the ancient world still standing. At its heart are two rooms known as the King's Chamber and the Queen's Chamber. Two shafts rise from the King's Chamber at 45-degree angles and lead to the exterior of the monument. They are believed to be a passageway designed to fire the king's spirit into the firmament so that he can take his place among the stars.

In the Queen's Chamber, there are two further shafts, discovered in 1872. Unlike those in the King's Chamber, these do not lead to the outer face of the pyramid

No one knows what the shafts are for. In 1992, a camera sent up the shaft leading from the south wall of the Queen's Chamber discovered it was blocked after 60 metres by a limestone door with two copper handles. In 2002, a further expedition drilled through this door and revealed, 20 centimetres behind it, a second door.

"The second door is unlike the first. It looks as if it is screening or covering something," said Dr Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council who is in charge of the expedition. The north shaft bends by 45 degrees after 18 metres but, after 60 metres, is also blocked by a limestone door.

Now technicians at Leeds University are putting the finishing touches to a robot which, they hope, will follow the shaft to its end. Known as the Djedi project, after the magician whom Khufu consulted when planning the pyramid, the robot will be able to drill through the second set of doors to see what lies beyond.

afp/getty images

The Pyramid of Khufu is the only wonder of the ancient world still standing

Ancient mayor's 'lost tomb' found south of Cairo

From: http://news.yahoo.com/

AP – This undated photo released by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities on Sunday, May 30, 2010, shows …

CAIRO – Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old tomb of the ancient Egyptian capital's mayor, whose resting place had been lost under the desert sand since 19th century treasure hunters first carted off some of its decorative wall panels, officials announced Sunday.

Ptahmes, the mayor of Memphis, also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.

The discovery of his tomb earlier this year in a New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara, south of Cairo, solves a riddle dating back to 1885, when foreign expeditions made off with pieces of the tomb, whose location was soon after forgotten.

"Since then it was covered by sand and no one knew about it," said Ola el-Aguizy, the Cairo University archaeology professor who led the excavation. "It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb."

Some of the artifacts ended up in museums in the Netherlands, the United States and Italy as well as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, providing the only clues about the missing tomb.

A team from Cairo University's archaeology department found the tomb during new excavations of the area that started in 2005, el-Aguizy said.

The inner chambers of the large, temple-style tomb and Ptahmes' mummy remain undiscovered.

In the side sanctuaries and other chambers they uncovered, archaeologists found a vivid wall engraving of people fishing from boats made of bundles of papyrus reeds. There were also amulets and fragments of statues.

Unmasked: The real faces of the crippled King Tutankhamun (who walked with a cane) and his incestuous parents

By Claire Bates

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

King Tutankhamun was a hobbled, weak teenager with a cleft palate and club foot. And he probably has his parents to blame.

For the mother and father of the legendary boy pharaoh were actually brother and sister.

The startling discovery was revealed today by a team led by Egyptian antiquities expert Dr Zahi Hawass. They identified the mummies of both his parents and both of his grandparents by studying DNA samples over two years.

For a long time there were strong suspicions that he was murdered because he had a hole in the back of his head.

But this is now believed to be due to the mummification process and scientists think the new research points to him dying from complications from a broken leg exacerbated by malaria.

Scroll down for video report

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Meet the family: Scientists have for the first time - with the help of DNA - been able to identify these skulls as belonging to King Tut's father Akhenaten (left) and mother (right). They were also brother and sister

INCEST AND ROYALTY

King Tut (pictured below) belonged to the 18th dynasty of Egyptian kings during the period of the New Kingdom. His genealogy is complex as there was considerable inter-marriage within his family.

The pharaohs believed they were descended from the gods and incest was seen as acceptable so as to retain the sacred bloodline. King Tut was born c.1341 BC. His father was Akhenaten, first known as Amenhotep. Tutankhamun's mother has been confirmed as Mummy KV35YL, a sister of Akhenaten. Tut's stepmother was Nefertiti, the chief wife of Akhenaten. In c.1348 BC Ankhesenamun was born to Akhenaten and Nerfertiti, making her Tut's half-sister. At the age of ten Tut married her. He died at the age of 19.

The revelations are in stark contrast to the popular image of a graceful boy-king as portrayed by the dazzling funerary artifacts in his tomb that later introduced much of the world to the glory of ancient Egypt.

King Tut has fascinated the world ever since his ancient tomb was unearthed by the British archaeologist Dr Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings in 1922.

The treasure in his tomb included an 24.2lb solid gold death mask encrusted with lapis lazuli and semi-precious stones.

Rumours of a curse arose after Dr Carter's benefactor Lord Carnarvon died suddenly a few months after the tomb was opened, even though Dr Carter went on to live another 16 years.

King Tut was known to be the son of the 'heretic' pharaoh Akhenaten, who tried to reform the Egyptian religion during his rule. But the identity of his mother had been shrouded in mystery - until now.

The fact that his mother and father were brother and sister may seem bizarre today but incest was rife among the boy king's family because pharaohs were believed to be descended from the gods.

Therefore it was an acceptable way of retaining the sacred bloodline. King Tut's own wife Ankhesenpaaten, was his half-sister as they shared the same father. They were married when he was just ten.

But Dr Hawass' team found generations of inbreeding took their toll on King Tut - the last of his great dynasty.

The bone disease he suffered runs in families and is more likely to be passed down if two first-degree relatives marry and have children, the study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows.

They described him as: 'A young but frail king who needed canes to walk.'

This explains the presence of more than 100 canes in his tomb, which he would have needed in the afterlife.

'A sudden leg fracture possibly introduced by a fall might have resulted in a life threatening condition when a malaria infection occurred,' the JAMA article said.

Tut, who became pharaoh at the age of ten in 1333 BC, ruled for just nine years until his death. He was the last of the royal line from the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom.

The cause of King Tut's death has long been disputed among historians, with many speculating that he was murdered.

Theories that he was assassinated stemmed from the fact that he was the last ruler of his dynasty and had a hole in the back of his head.

King Tut's grandmother Queen Tiye, the mother of Pharaoh Akhenaten. The hairpiece behind her is believed to have been made up of her own hair. It has not disintegrated because of the mummification process and the dry conditions within the tomb

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The two faces of the boy king Tutankhamun. Left, his mummified head and, right, a reconstruction of what he would have looked like

However, in 2005 Dr Hawass announced his team had found no evidence for a blow to the back of the head, and the hole was from the mummification process.

King Tut was succeeded by the high priest Ay for four years - who also married his widow Ankhesenpamon.

Ay was followed by the military leader Horemheb who ruled for 26 years until he ceded power to Ramses, founder of the 19th dynasty.

The researchers studied 16 mummies from the Valley of the Kings. They revealed that beneath the golden splendour in which they lived, ancient Egypt's royals were as vulnerable as the lowliest peasant to disease.

Three other mummies besides Tut's showed repeated malaria infections and incestuous marriages only worsened their maladies.

However, analysis of King Tut's family disproved speculation his family suffered from rare disorders that gave them feminine attributes and misshapen bones, including Marfan syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that can result in elongated limbs.

The theories arose from the artistic style and statues of the period, which showed the royal men with prominent breasts, elongated heads and flared hips.

'It is unlikely that either Tutankhamun or Akhenaten actually displayed a significantly bizarre or feminine physique,' the team said.

One of the most impressive-looking mummies who was studied was King Tut's grandmother, Queen Tiye.

She was the chief wife of Amenhotep III and mother of King Tut's father Akhenaten. She was the first queen to figure so prominently beside her husband in statues and temple reliefs.

After 3,000 years and DNA analysis, scientists have proved that, from foreground to background, these mummies are of King Tut's mother, grandmother, and his father, Akkenaten

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Antiquities expert Dr Zahi Hawass (right) announces today in Cairo's Egypt Museum that the mummies in front of him have been identified as Tutankhamun's father, mother and grandmother by using DNA

Technicians take DNA samples from the mummy of Boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings. Tests revealed his parents were siblings

SO WHO WAS KING TUT?

King Tut became pharaoh at the age of ten in 1333BC and ruled for just nine years until his death. In the same year he became pharaoh he married Ankhesenpaaten, his half-sister. Tutankhamun's significance stems from his rejection of the radical religious innovations introduced by his predecessor and father, Akhenaten.

He had attempted to supplant the traditional priesthood and deities with the minor god Aten. When King Tut was aged 12 the backlash against the new religion was so intense that the young pharaoh changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun. A year later, the royal court moved back to the old capital at Thebes (now called Luxor), which was the centre of worship of the god Amun and the power base of the Amun priests. King Tut is considered a minor phaorah. However, his fame arose when his tomb was found in 1922 by Howard Carter (pictured above). It was almost intact and remains the most complete ancient Egyptian royal tomb ever found.

Queen Tiye held much political influence at court and acted as an adviser to her son after the death of her husband.

There has been speculation that her eldest son Prince Tuthmose was in fact Moses who led the Israelites into the Promised Land.

A lock of her hair was found in a miniature coffin in King Tut's tomb.

Her tomb was identified by matching the labelled hair in Tut's tomb with the well-preserved hair on her mummy.

The ancient Egyptians were very concerned with maintaining their hair to promote their social status.

They devised remedies for baldness and greying and regularly washed and scented their hair. Adults sometimes wore hairpieces, and had elaborate styles.

The hairpiece found by Queen Tiye is believed to have been made up of her own hair. It has not disintegrated because of the mummification process and the dry conditions within the tomb.

Hair does not continue to grow after death, instead the skin retracts around the follicles as it dries, making the hair jut out more prominently.

King Tutankhamun has long been big business.

A 1970s Tut exhibit drew millions of visitors to U.S. museums, and a popular revival including artefacts from his tomb and others' has been traveling around the United States for the past several years and is currently at San Francisco's DeYoung Museum.

Egypt's economy depends a great deal on tourism, which brings in around $10billion a year in revenue.

The King Tut exhibit at Cairo's Egyptian Museum is one of the crown jewels of the country's ancient past and features a stunning array of treasures including Tut's most iconic relic - the golden funeral mask.

Another tourist destination is Tut's tomb tucked in the Valley of the Kings amid Luxor's desert hills. In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered it and the trove of fabulous gold and precious stones inside, propelling the once-forgotten pharaoh into global stardom.

Hundreds of tourists come daily to the tomb to see Tut's mummy, which has been on display there since 2007.

Though historically Tut was a minor king, the grander image 'is embedded in our psyche' and the new revelations won't change that, said James Phillips, a curator at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

'Reality is reality, but it's not going to change his place in the folk heroism of popular culture,' Phillips said. 'The way he was found, what was found in his grave - even though he was a minor king, it has excited the imagination of people since 1922.'

Dr Zahi Hawass removed King Tut from his stone sarcophagus in 2007 to study his DNA. Tests revealed the king was a sickly young adult

Ancient cat goddess temple found in Egypt

Temple thought to belong to wife of king who ruled in 3rd century B.C.

	The ancient cat-goddess Bastet was found amongst the temple's ruins in the Kom el-Dekkah area of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.  View related photos
AP

INTERACTIVE

8 real-life mummies Fictional mummies are a staple of Hollywood movies, but real-life mummies come with their own horrific tales.

CAIRO - Egypt said Tuesday that its archaeologists have unearthed a Ptolemaic-era temple dating back more than 2,000 years, that may have been dedicated to the ancient cat goddess, Bastet.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities said the temple's ruins were discovered in the heart of the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, the seat of the dynasty founded by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., that ended with the suicide of Cleopatra 300 years later.

The statement said the temple was thought to belong to Queen Berenice, wife of King Ptolemy III who ruled Egypt in the 3rd century B.C.

Mohammed Abdel-Maqsood, the Egyptian archaeologist who led the excavation team, said the discovery may be the first trace of the long-sought location of Alexandria's royal quarter.

The large number of statues depicting Bastet found in the ruins, he said, indicated that this may be the first Ptolemaic temple discovered in Alexandria to be dedicated to the cat goddess.

That also suggests that the worship of the cat-goddess continued in Egypt during the later, more Greek-influenced, Ptolemaic period, he said. Statues of other ancient Egyptian deities also present, he added.

Zahi Hawas, Egypt's chief archaeologist, said the temple may have been used in later times as a quarry and that this was evidenced by the large number of missing stone blocks.

Modern Alexandria was built squarely on top of the ruins of the classical-era city and many of the great temples, palaces and libraries of that time remain undiscovered.

The temple was found in the Kom el-Dekkah neighborhood near the city's main train station and is also the site of a Roman-era amphitheater and well preserved mosaics.

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Isis Temple Fragment Dates Back to Cleopatra Era

A sunken piece of Cleopatra's underwater city has been lifted from the depths of the sea.

content provided by Katarina Kratovac, Associated Press

This 9-ton temple pylon had been submerged beneath the waters near Alexandria since around the 4th century.

AP Photo

Archaeologists on Thursday hoisted a 9-ton temple pylon from the waters of the Mediterranean that was part of the palace complex of the fabled Cleopatra before it became submerged for centuries in the harbor of Alexandria.

The pylon, which once stood at the entrance to a temple of Isis, is to be the centerpiece of an ambitious underwater museum planned by Egypt to showcase the sunken city, believed to have been toppled into the sea by earthquakes in the 4th century.

Divers and underwater archaeologists used a giant crane and ropes to lift the 9-ton, 7.4-foot-tall pylon, covered with muck and seaweed, out of the murky waters. It was deposited ashore as Egypt's top archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, and other officials watched.

The pylon was part of a sprawling palace from which the Ptolemaic dynasty ruled Egypt and where 1st Century B.C. Queen Cleopatra wooed the Roman general Marc Antony before they both committed suicide after their defeat by Augustus Caesar.

The temple dedicated to Isis, a pharaonic goddess of fertility and magic, is at least 2,050 years old, but archaeologists believe it's likely much older. The pylon was cut from a single slab of red granite quarried in Aswan, some 700 miles (more than 1,100 kilometers) to the south, officials said.

"The cult of Isis was so powerful, it's no wonder Cleopatra chose to make her living quarters next to the temple," said coastal geoarchaeologist Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Egyptian authorities hope that eventually the pylon will become a part of the underwater museum, an ambitious attempt to draw tourists to the country's northern coast, often overshadowed by the grand pharaonic temples of Luxor in the south, the Giza pyramids outside Cairo and the beaches of the Red Sea.

WATCH VIDEO: Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, tells Discovery News what it's like hunting down ancient Egyptian treasures.

They are hoping the allure of Alexandria, founded in 331 B.C. by Alexander the Great, can also be a draw.

Cleopatra's palace and other buildings and monuments now lie strewn on the seabed in the harbor of Alexandria, the second largest city of Egypt. Since 1994, archaeologists have been exploring the ruins, one of the richest underwater excavations in the Mediterranean, with some 6,000 artifacts. Another 20,000 objects are scattered off other parts of Alexandria's coast, said Ibrahim Darwish, head of the city's underwater archaeology department.

In recent years, excavators have discovered dozens of sphinxes in the harbor, along with pieces of what is believed to be the Alexandria Lighthouse, or Pharos, which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The pylon is the first major artifact extracted from the harbor since 2002, when authorities banned further removal of major artifacts from the sea for fear it would damage them.

"The tower is unique among Alexandria's antiquities. We believe it was part of the complex surrounding Cleopatra's palace," Hawass said, as the crane gently placed the pylon on the harbor bank. "This is an important part of Alexandria's history and it brings us closer to knowing more about the ancient city."

Hawass has already launched another high-profile dig connected to Cleopatra. In April, he said he hopes to find the long-lost tomb of Antony and Cleopatra -- and that he believes it may be inside a temple of Osiris located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Alexandria.

The pylon extracted Thursday was discovered by a Greek expedition in 1998. Retrieving it was a laborious process: For weeks, divers cleaned it of mud and scum, then they dragged it across the sea floor for three days to bring it closer to the harbor's edge for Thursday's extraction.

A truck stood by to ferry the pylon to a freshwater tank, where it will lie for six months until all the salt, which acts as a preservative underwater but damages it once exposed, is dissolved.

Still in its planning stages, the underwater museum would allow visitors to walk through underwater tunnels for close-up views of sunken artifacts, and it may even include a submarine on rails.

A collaboration between Egypt and UNESCO, the museum would cost at least $140 million, said Darwish. The above-water section would feature sail-shaped structures that would complement the architecture of the harbor and have the city's corniche seabank in the backdrop, with the splendid Alexandria Library on the other end of the bay, Darwish said.

"To me, the greatest draw would be that visitors would be able to see these amazing objects in their natural surrounding, not out of context on some museum shelf," said Stanley, who has carried out excavations around Alexandria but is not involved in the underwater dig.

Speaking to The Associated Press by phone from Washington, Stanley cautioned that the dangers to such a museum would be twofold -- from storms, which in wintertime have been known to sink ships in Alexandria's harbor, and from earthquakes.

Egypt and UNESCO are still studying the feasibility of building such an underwater museum. No one knows where the money would come from, but there is hope construction could start as early as late 2010.

"If the study shows it's possible, this could become a magical place, both above and underwater," Hawass said. "If you can smell the sea here, you can smell the history."

Darwish, one of seven Egyptian archaeologists who are also qualified divers, said the country has had to rely on foreign expertise, mostly French and Greek, for diving archaeology expeditions around Alexandria. That will change, he says, as the Alexandria university educates more underwater archaeologists.

A temporary downtown museum will house the Isis pylon extracted Thursday and some 200 other objects removed from the sea here in the last decade.

Egyptian temples followed heavenly plans

The Karnak temple in Luxor was laid out to coordinate with astronomical events (Image: Hisham Ibrahim / Getty)

ANCIENT Egyptian temples were aligned so precisely with astronomical events that people could set their political, economic and religious calendars by them. So finds a study of 650 temples, some dating back to 3000 BC.

For example, New Year coincided with the moment that the winter-solstice sun hit the central sanctuary of the Karnak temple (pictured) in present-day Luxor, says archaeological astronomer Juan Belmonte of the Canaries Astrophysical Institute in Tenerife, Spain.

Hieroglyphs on temple walls have hinted at the use of astronomy in temple architecture, including depictions of the "stretching of the cord" ceremony in which the pharaoh marked out the alignment for the temple with string. But there had been little evidence to support the drawings. Belmonte and Mosalam Shaltout of the Helwan Observatory in Cairo found that the temples are all aligned according to an astronomically significant event, such as a solstice or equinox, or the rising of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky (Advances in Space Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2009.03.033).

"Somebody would have had to go to the prospective site during a solar, stellar or lunar event - as we did - to mark out the position that the temple axis should take," Belmonte says. "For the most important temples, this may well have been the pharaoh, as the temple drawings show."