The Tomb of Ptahme, which was discovered south of Cairo at Saqqara; Source: www.drhawass.com; Credit: Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)

The 3,300-year-old tomb is believed to belong to a mayor of the ancient capital of Memphis.

It was originally discovered by artefact hunters in the 19th Century, who then lost the tomb’s location.

The tomb was located by a team of Egyptian researchers after a five-year search and they are hopeful mummified remains are still inside.

Nile hunt carvings

The tomb belongs to Ptahmes, who was also army chief, overseer of the treasury and a royal scribe under the Pharaohs Seti I and his son Ramses II, during the 13th Century BC.

“Since 1885 the tomb has been covered in sand and no-one knew about it,” Professor Ola el-Aguizy of Cairo University said.

“It is important because this tomb was the lost tomb.”

The 70m-long tomb, located in the Saqarra necropolis, contains carvings depicting Ptahmes and his family hunting and fishing on the Nile River.

The team is still looking for the main chamber where it is believed the mummified remains and sarcophagus of the occupants may still remain.

Source: BBC News

On Friday, he presented his theory in the form of a new book at a seminar at the Theological Seminary in the northeastern Italian city of Vicenza.

“Actually it’s not a theory, it’s a reality. I’m sure of it, Anati told The Jerusalem Post by telephone from his home in Capo di Ponte. “My archeological discoveries at Har Karkom over many years and my close reading of the Bible leave me with no doubt that it is the real Mount Sinai. I’m now sure that Karkom is the real mountain of God.”

Is this the real Sinai? Image by Flickr user Jonathan Gopp

In 2001, Anati published the English edition of a book that was first issued in Italian two years earlier and titled The Riddle of Mount Sinai – Archaeological Discoveries at Har Karkom. In the book, he postulated that Karkom, 25 km. from the Ramon Crater, was probably the peak at which Moses received the Ten Commandments – and not the summit in southern Sinai where Santa Catarina (Saint Catherine’s Monastery) stands.

“I know this is revolutionary,” he conceded. “I’m not only changing the location, but I’m moving Mount Sinai to Israel, and I’m sure it will anger the Egyptians. But Israel should be proud of this. The Negev is empty and should be developed.”

“I’m also changing the date of the Exodus from Egypt to some 1,000 years earlier than previously thought,” he added. “I know this will drive everyone crazy. But I am right. I’m sure of it.”

Anati reasoned that if the account in the Book of Exodus was historically accurate, it must refer to the third millennium BCE – and more precisely to the period between 2200 and 2000 BCE.

Jewish tradition puts the Exodus around the year 1313 BCE. According to Catholic tradition, Helena of Constantinople – the mother of Emperor Constantine credited with finding the relics of Jesus’s cross – determined the location of Mount Sinai and ordered the construction of a chapel at the site (sometimes referred to as the Chapel of Saint Helen) in about 330 CE.

According to Anati, however, an abundance of archeological evidence showed that Mount Karkom had been a holy place for all desert peoples, and not just the Jews, which substantiated his case.

He said more than 1,200 finds at Karkom – including sanctuaries, altars, rock paintings and a large tablet resembling the Ten Commandments – indicated that it had been considered a sacred mountain in the Middle Bronze Age. In addition, he said, the topography of its plateau perfectly reflected that of the biblical Mount Sinai.

Finally, he concluded, the biblical tale clearly backed up his geographic argument.

“When the Children of Israel left Egypt, they reached the Arava. They couldn’t have been in Santa [Catarina], because it says in the Bible that they reached Nahal Tzin, and moved on to Hebron,” Anati said. “The whole story of receiving the Torah must have taken place in the Negev. The Children of Israel wandered in the north and not the south, in the Negev and not the Sinai.”

He was just as certain that the Holy See would officially sanction his stance, and that millions of Catholic pilgrims could soon be visiting Mount Karkom instead of Mount Sinai.

“Actually, they have already accepted my theory,” he said. “They are already organizing pilgrimages. There is already a plan, and I have meetings scheduled with theologians and others, including the Vatican pilgrimage office. They want to start pilgrimages to Karkom as soon as next year.”

Anati said he was aware that he had his detractors, especially among archeologists in Israel, several of whom were interviewed refuting his claims on a Channel 1 Mabat Sheni documentary aired on Wednesday night.

“I know there are all kinds of people – including professors – who resist my theory, and it’s natural that this occurs,” he said. “I urge them all to read my book and study the evidence before criticizing me.”

Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Israel Finkelstein, a world-renowned expert on the subject, said he could not accept Anati’s hypothesis.

“I do not see any connection between the third millennium BCE finds at Har Karkom and the Exodus story. The latter was put in writing not before the 7th or 6th centuries BCE, and as such depicts realities which are many centuries later than the finds of Har Karkom,” Finkelstein told the Post. “Roaming the desert with the Bible in one hand and the spade in the other is a 19th-century endeavor which has no place in modern scholarship.”

Anati said it had taken the Catholic Church several years to be persuaded by his argument, and recognition had been a slow process.

“About three-and-a-half years ago, I had a telephone call from the Vatican that a priest of high standing wanted to meet with me, and he arrived here with a driver. I live 500 km. from Rome, and he sat with me for a whole day and asked me a lot of questions,” Anati recalled.

“Then he disappeared, and after about a year, a group of theologians from the Catholic Church appeared and wanted to investigate the matter more deeply. Seven theologians sat here for the whole day, and I later met with them four times.

“Six months ago they spent four days with me at Karkom, and as a result of this, the Vatican publisher – Edizioni Messaggero Padova – asked me to write up my findings. I revised and updated my book, and they have now published it in Italian, changing the title to The Rediscovery of Mount Sinai.”

“Twenty years ago, I had a hunch that Har Karkom was the real Mount Sinai,” Anati said. “Three years ago I was convinced I was correct. Today I know I’m right.”

There was no official Vatican response to Anati’s claims, nor was there an immediate reaction from the Egyptians.

Anati was born in Florence in 1930 to Jewish parents, and soon after the establishment of Israel, he moved to Jerusalem and received a bachelor’s degree in archeology from the Hebrew University. He later became a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard and was awarded a doctorate at the Sorbonne.

Fluent in Hebrew, he taught prehistory at Tel Aviv University and conducted extensive research in the Negev.

Upon his return to Italy, he founded the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici in Capo di Ponte in 1964, and he remains its executive director today. It is believed to be the only institute in the world that specializes in prehistoric art.

Anati’s study of rock paintings in Valcamonica spurred UNESCO to include the alpine valley in its list of World Cultural Heritage sites.

[Article via JPost]

(Above) These were the many flint stones unearthed near Daraa in Southern Syria; Source: Global Arab Network

The pieces were discovered by the expedition of Damascus University in cooperation with the Directorate of Antiquities and Museums in the governorate. Head of the expedition Prof. Ahmad Diab said the findings prove that the Acholic and Mousteric civilizations existed in Horan, proved to be in light of the findings one of the most important and old-inhabited places in Syria.

He indicated that the area where the study was done enjoys lime characteristics and rain-fed agriculture, especially olives, in addition to its proximity to al-Zaidi Valley, one of the most important places of residence for the ancient men where dozens of caves and grottos are found.

He stressed the importance of cooperation between these missions and the Antiquities Directorates in the governorates to discover more on the history of the Syria, and thus exploring the civilizations prevalent thousand of years ago.

For his part, archeological researcher Yaser Abu Nokta said the Directorate works since 1999 to explore all the ancient places of residence in Horan area.

The expedition discovered a set of stone tools belonging to many pre-historic phases, especially the Paleolithic age, in addition to a number of pieces dating back to the Neolithic age, indicating that there is scarcity in the findings which date back to the Paleolithic era.

”Hence the importance of these missions in pursuing the discoveries of the directorate seven years ago at al-Maisari site, 4 km southeast of Daraa, one of the most important sites dating back to the Paleolithic age (8000 B.C.) and Neolithic age (500 B.C.),” Abu Nokta added.

Source: Global Arab Network 

When laborers stumbled on an ancient hoard of 1,300 silver coins and the walls of a 3,300-year-old city in the southern town of Rafah in January, it was a fresh reminder that the tiny territory maintains a rich past.

The Gaza Strip; Source: Google Maps

At least a dozen major empires have conquered this tiny territory – including the Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, and British. They left behind everything from walled fortresses to alabaster jewelry to bronze weaponry.

But in the absence of solid laws or regulations, relics from as early as the Bronze Age are happened upon mostly by chance, poorly kept, plundered, or sold on the black market.

“Gaza is very small geographically, but in terms of archaeology, it is very large,” says the Hamas minister of tourism and antiquities, Mohammed al-Agha. “Gaza was at the crossroads of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and there is a great accumulation of human civilization here. But we don’t have our own specialists so we can’t manage the sites professionally.”

Far-flung Gaza artifacts

Many of Gaza’s artifacts, including 3,000-year-old anthropoid coffins, can be found at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, dug up by Israeli archaeologists during the country’s 38-year occupation of Gaza. Other Gazan antiquities are as far-flung as Istanbul and the British Museum in London.

“Gaza was for centuries the primary trade outlet of the hinterland of Jordan and the greater Arabian Peninsula,” says Salim al-Mubaid, a professor at Gaza’s Islamic University. “The Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mamluks, and Ottomans all ruled us. There are secrets of history under every square meter.”

Until fairly recently, black market antiquities dealers say their business was nothing short of a free-for-all. Of some 25,000 gold and bronze coins discovered since 1990, for example, 14,000 were stolen and sold off, according to the antiquities ministry.

Construction contractors like Jawhdat Khodary, who opened a private museum in a beachfront space in 2008, would pay laborers and local fishermen for any artifacts they found, preserving at least 3,000 pieces.

“An ancient piece the size of a cellphone from the Pharaonic or Canaanite eras easily sells for $1 million on the black market,” says Abu Ahmed, a dealer involved in the underground antiquity trade. “And I used to make a major deal every month.”

He says Israel’s new travel restrictions through the Erez border crossing have hampered smuggling. But the market for relics in Israel, which he says is the biggest, is still there.

Many Israelis consider the ancient region of Canaan, in which Gaza is believed to have been located, the precursor of the original land of Israel in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.

But Hamas says it is making both the regulation and preservation of historical sites a priority. The tourism and antiquities ministry inaugurated in January an artifacts museum in Gaza City – in an Ottoman-era governor’s residence – and took control of the Rafah coin find.

Mr. Agha says the ministry also plans to cooperate with Gaza’s Islamic University to expand courses on archaeology. Hamas hired a new guard for the remains of the 3rd-century monastery that Mr. Mubaid says is Gaza’s most important site.

But Mr. Khodary charges Hamas with censoring some of his finds. He claims Hamas asked him to put away tiny menorahs – and a small statue of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, whose gown was deemed too revealing.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

A photograph of a section of the Tower Tombs, which were unearthed in Palmyra, Syria; Source: Global Arab Network

Head of Palmyra Antiquities Department Walid Asa’ad said Wednesday the square-shaped burial has a two-slab decorated stone gate. The doorway leads to the roof of the burial place through stairs.

The burial site includes a yard with several chambers; each contains six multi-storey tower tombs, he added. Asa’ad indicated that the site was a typical Palmyra ancient burial place, adding that the tower tomb was re-used as a defensive tower in the 6th century.

Fragments of sculptures were unearthed at the site in addition to other archaeological monuments such as shelves, arches and pillars.

Palmyra’s burials are unique. Situated outside the city walls, they show the changes in burial practice over the city’s history and reflect Palmyran beliefs in the afterlife.

The vast necropolises of Palmyra contain three kinds of tombs: high towers used for multiple burials, underground burial complexes (hypogea), and temple tombs.

The tombs usually contain large burial chambers with long grave recesses in their walls to accommodate the bodies. These shafts were usually closed with decorated stone slabs. Sarcophagi were rare in Palmyra.

Archaeologists have found cooking equipment and food containers, which indicate that feasting, took place in the tombs. The presence of altars and incense burners also suggest that offerings were made

Palmyra, situated in central Syria, was one of the largest centres during the Roman Empire and an important stop on the caravan route to Persia. The ancient Palmyrian sculpture style is famous, and includes elaborately-executed funerary relieves.

Source: Global Arab Network

The huge head as seen after its excavation. Credit: SCA

A multi-national team of Egyptian and European archaeologists excavating at the site of Amenhotep III’s enormous funerary temple in the Kom El-Hettan area of Luxor’s West Bank have uncovered the 3,000-year-old head of a massive statue of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh, the king of Egyptian kings, whom DNA testing has recently proven was Tutankhamun’s grandfather.

The find – made by the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project – was announced on Monday by Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni. Measuring 2.5 metres, made from solid red granite and depicting Amenhotep III wearing the Upper Egyptian white crown, it has been described in a press statement by Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass as a “masterpiece of highly artistic quality”.

The head, added Hawass, is a “portrait of the king with very fine youthful sculptured features”. It was sheared from the body statue at the chin and neck. The body statue – fragments of which are currently in restoration – is believed to show Amenhotep III in a standing position, with his hands crossed over his chest and holding the royal insignia.

Dr. Hourig Sourouzian, Leader of the project at Amenhotep III’s funerary temple, said that more of the statue may still lie in the rubble of the enormous ruined monument, which is one of the biggest man-made structures in ancient history. Measuring 700 metres long and 500 metres wide, and covering an area of 350,000 square metres – it was ten times larger than any other mortuary monument in Egypt.

Investigation and restoration of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple is expected to take upwards of 20 years. 84 statues have been unearthed there already, among them representations of King Amenhotep III and his wife, Queen Tiye.

Queen Tiye’s mummy was recently identified by Dr Hawass and a team of scientists as part of a painstaking medical and archaeological endeavour to map the family history of Tutankhamun. The results will be revealed in the Discovery Channel’s documentary King Tut Unwrapped, which will air this Wednesday and Thursday in the UK.

The project also determined that Amenhotep III – ninth pharaoh of the 18th dynasty, ruler of Egypt between 1390 BC and 1352 BC – was King Tut’s grandfather. The boy king is believed to have been born of an incestuous marriage between Akhenaten and his sister, both the offspring of Amenhotep III.

Amenhotep was the wealthiest and most powerful of all the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. In a list compiled by American business and financial bible Forbes in 2008, he was ranked as the 12th richest person in human history.

Article: Independent

The rising sea level is one of the phenomena that have most influence on humankind: the rising sea not only floods the littoral regions but also causes underground water salinisation, flooded effluents, accelerated coastal destruction, and other damage.

According to Dr. Sivan, the changing sea level can be attributed to three main causes: the global cause – the volume of water in the ocean, which mirrors the mass of ice sheets and is related to global warming or cooling; the regional cause – vertical movement of the earth’s surface, which is usually related to the pressure placed on the surface by the ice; and the local cause – vertical tectonic activity. Seeing as Israel is not close to former ice caps and the tectonic activity along the Mediterranean coast is negligible over these periods, it can be concluded that drastic changes in Israel’s sea levels are mainly related to changes in the volume of water.

In the present study, in light of earlier studies, research student Ayelet Toker and Dr. Sivan, set out to examine Israel’s sea level over the past 2,500 years, based on data deduced from many coastal archaeological findings. They made a careful selection of findings that have been reliably and accurately dated, and first focused on findings that were excavated by the Antiquities Authority in Acre of the Crusader period. These revealed that the sea level during the Crusader period – just 800 years ago – was some 50-90 centimeters lower than the present sea level. Findings from the same period at Caesarea and Atlit reinforced this conclusion. When additional sites were examined from periods before and after the Crusader period, it was revealed that there have been significant fluctuations in sea level: During the Hellenistic period, the sea level was about 1.6 meters lower than its present level; during the Roman era the level was almost similar to today’s; the level began to drop again during the ancient Muslim period, and continued dropping to reach the same level as it was during the Crusader period; but within about 500 years it rose again, and reached some 25 centimeters lower than today’s level at the beginning of the 18th century.

“Over the past century, we have witnessed the sea level in Israel fluctuating with almost 19 centimeters between the highest and lowest levels. Over the past 50 years Israel’s mean sea level rise is 5.5 centimeters, but there have also been periods when it rose by 10 centimeters over 10 years. That said, even acute ups and downs over short periods do not testify to long-term trends. An observation of the sea levels over hundreds and thousands of years shows that what seems a phenomenon today is as a matter of fact “nothing new under the sun”, Dr. Sivan concludes.

Source: University of Haifa

Image source: IAA

Remains of a prehistoric building, the earliest ever discovered in the Tel Aviv region and estimated to be between 7,800 and 8,400 years old, were recently discovered in an archaeological excavation in Ramat Aviv.

Ancient artifacts thought to be 13,000 and 100,000 years old were also discovered there.

Archaeologist Ayelet Dayan, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said that “this discovery is both important and surprising to researchers of the period. For the first time we have encountered evidence of a permanent habitation that existed in the Tel Aviv region 8,000 years ago.”

“The site is located on the northern bank of the Yarkon River, not far from the confluence with Nahal Ayalon. We can assume that this fact influenced the ancient settlers in choosing a place to live. The fertile alluvium soil along the fringes of the streams was considered a preferred location for a settlement in ancient periods,” she said.

During the Neolithic period (also known as the New Stone Age) man went from a nomadic existence of hunting and gathering to living in permanent settlements and began to engage in agriculture.

Remains of an ancient building with at least three rooms were discovered at the site. The pottery shards that were found there attest to the age of the site, which dates to the Neolithic period. In addition, flint tools such as sickle blades were discovered, as well as numerous flakes left over from the knapping of these implements, which are indicative of an ancient tool-making industry.

Flint implements that are also ascribed to earlier periods were discovered at the site: a point of a hunting tool from the Middle Paleolithic period and items that date to c. 13,000 years ago.

Other interesting finds were also uncovered in the excavation, among them a fragment of a base of a basalt bowl and animal remains – hippopotamus bones and teeth that probably belonged to sheep or goat.

The Aleppo Citadel (Syria); By Flickr User Travlr

The god Hadad was mentioned in texts from Mari, Ebla and most other ancient Eastern sites, as old kingdoms uses to make offering to the god of storms in his main temple at the centre of the Amorite kingdom centered in Aleppo.

Head of the excavations department at the Aleppo Department of Archaeology and Museums Yousef Kanjo said the temple was discovered in 1929-1930, and later a Syrian-German expedition began work in the site in 1996, uncovering most of the temple over 12 seasons.

The expedition found out that the temple dates back to the third millennium BC, and is one of the largest temples of that period to be discovered in Syria and the East in general, and there is a strong likelihood that parts of it remain undiscovered.

Kanjo said that the temple sheds light on important periods in the history of the city, particularly its religious significance during the time of the Yamhad Kingdom, with documents from Mari and Ebla indicating that Aleppo was a significant religious center.

He also noted that the temple bears similarities to other temples found in Ein Dara, Tal Halaf and Karkmeish in design and sculptures, but the one in Aleppo is the most intact, which encouraged the Aleppo Department of Archaeology and Museums to establish a museum dedicated to it on the site itself.

Member of the Syrian-German expedition Mohammad al-Miftah the temple was renovated at various points during the middle of the third millennium BC (the Bronze Age), when the Hittite influence began to show in the temple, with sculptures and relief carvings replacing polished stone, in addition to the construction of a large statue of Hadad near the eastern wall.

The temple was vandalized after this and was later rebuilt in the 11th century BC, while the 10th century witnessed modifications and additions to the sculptures, with most of the old stones being used for different purposes. At this point, the temple contained a mixture of Assyrian, Hittite and Aramaic cultures.

The temple fell into disuse afterwards, losing its religious significance by the Hellenistic period when a large hole was dug in it and its stone was used to build other structures. However, the statue of Hadad was left intact and the hole was sealed, preserving many of the sculptures from harm and theft until major digs during the Byzantine caused damage to the eastern side of its main entrance.

These discoveries at the Temple of Hadad are a testament to the deep-rooted and ancient history of Aleppo Citadel, which makes it a living witness to the periods and ages from the third millennium BC.

Source: Global Arab Network

The site, in the southern province of Dhi Qar, is in the desert near ancient Ur, the biblical birthplace of Abraham.

An ancient Sumerian table that found at the 2,000 year-old Site; Source: France 24

“There are walls and cornerstones carrying Sumerian writings, dating back to the era of the third Sumerian dynasty,” said Abdul Amir al-Hamdani, head of the provincial government’s archaeology department.

Hamdani said the artefacts, which included sickles and knives, largely dated back to around 2000 BC, during the rule of King Amarsin, the third king of the third Sumerian dynasty.

He said the site “changes our perceptions about the Sumerian settlements, because they used to be near water or rivers, and this one is located in the desert.”

The newly discovered site lies around 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Nasiriyah, the capital of Dhi Qar, and is close to the ancient city of Ur.

Ur of the Chaldees was one of the great urban centres of the Sumerian civilisation of southern Iraq, and remained an important city until its conquest by Alexander the Great three centuries before Christ.

Source: France 24