Discovery News: Archaeorama News

Podcast: A Greek Mummy

"A Greek Mummy," a new episode of "One The Phone: Archaeorama interview podcast series", is available on the iTunes Store and on this blog.

Archaeorama's friend Dan Kirsch joined me in this production as I interviewed Dr. Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich and one of the world's top mummy experts.

In this podcast, we talk about the first real piece of evidence of embalming in ancient Greece. Dating to 300 A.D., when the Romans ruled Greece, the partially mummified remains belong to a middle-aged woman who led a privileged life.

A GREEK MUMMY -- Length: 00:07:00 -- Rossella Lorenzi and Dr. Frank Rühli, head of the Swiss Mummy Project at the University of Zurich and one of the world's top mummy researchers, talk about a middle aged woman whose mummy is the first real piece of evidence of embalming in ancient Greece.

Written and produced by Rossella Lorenzi. Narrated by Dan Kirsch.

Image courtesy of Christina Papageorgopoulou

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Ötzi the Iceman Was A Herdsman

A new research on Ötzi the Iceman: analysis of his clothes suggests he tended sheep and cattle.

Here is my article and here is a video clip about this Neolithic mummy. It's taken from one of my past interviews with Dr. Eduard Egarter. He talks about what is like being the official caretaker of the world's oldest intact human mummy.

New Technology Helps Reassemble Fragments Of Lost Past

For decades archaeologists in Greece have been trying to reconstruct wall paintings from Thera -- now known as Santorini-- an island civilization that was buried under volcanic ash more than 3,500 years ago.

The Herculean task -- more than a century of further work at the current rate -- soon may get much easier, thanks to an automated system that works like a ''virtual archaeologist.''

Developed by a research team from Princeton University, in the US, the technology has been presented this week at the Association of Computing Machinery's annual SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles.

While other computer systems rely on expensive equipment that had to be operated by computer experts, the new technology uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware and is designed to be operated by archaeologists and conservators rather than computer scientists.

The system employs a combination of powerful computer algorithms and a processing system that mirrors the procedures traditionally followed by archaeologists.

"We mimic the archaeologists' methods as much as possible, so that they can really use our system as a tool," said Szymon Rusinkiewicz, an associate professor of computer science whose research team led the Princeton effort.

The system is still being perfected, but it already has yielded promising results on real-world examples: when tested on some fragments from a large wall painting, it found 10 out of 12 known matches, and two more previously unknown.

"When fully developed, this system could reduce the time needed to reconstruct a wall from years to months. It could free up archaeologists for other valuable tasks such as restoration and ethnographic study," Rusinkiewicz said.

To watch a video about this technology, just click on this picture of Santorini's water- filled volcanic caldera (photo courtesy of Kim O'Connor)

Source: Princeton University.

Who Cares of Augustus' Baths

Many celebrations these past weeks. First there was my dog Romeo's 11th birthday, then my own birthday on the lucky day of 08-08-08. Today I'm celebrating 10 years of writing for Discovery News.

Ten beautiful years in which I learnt a lot, met so many interesting people,  and reported on so many archaeological discoveries.

I lost count of the number of news stories I wrote, but I do remember the first one. It was about the discovery of the fabled springs of Chiusi, where  the Roman emperor Augustus might have taken the waters in the attempt to cure his liver.

Digging in Tuscany, in a region known as Mezzomiglio, David Soren of the University of Arizona in Tucson, discovered that the water of the ancient spring comes from exactly the same source that today feeds the modern health spas of Chianciano. Indeed, the town's three cold-water springs account for the  promotional motto: "Chianciano, fegato sano" (It's Chianciano for a healthy liver).

It was a fascinating story (just click on the thumbnail image to read it). Ten years later, I returned to the site of the discovery. To my disappointment, I found nothing.  No trace of the fabled spas. No trace of past excavations. No trace of anything, really.

When I asked David Soren what happened, the disappoinment was even bigger.

"The dig at Chianciano finished two years ago. We discovered about nine phases of occupation, with the biggest and most important one under the Roman Emperor Trajan about AD 114. We wanted to continue doing it, but there was not so much interest locally. It is not possible to visit the site and see anything much because we were required to fill it back at the end of each campaign," Soren told me.

Sadly, there's no happy ending for this anniversary posting. Soren made three different proposals to create an archaeological park in this unique site-- with no success.

Why would local authorities not be interested in promoting the largest man-made cold water spa in all of ancient Italy?

The ancient Romans seem to be the problem here. From what I understood, Chianciano doesn't want to be associated with ancient Roman history. Famous for its Etruscan roots, the town simply wants to "focus more on the Etruscan culture and not to emphasize the Romans," Soren told me.

So, if you want to see how the fabled spa looked like, you'd better go to the University of Arizona in Tucson. There, Soren has created a virtual reconstruction where you can "see and hear the ripples of Chianciano's legendary baths."

"It is a fantastic, total immersion experience. You can wander around inside the buildings, along the grass. I wanted to do a version of this in Chianciano, but there again hasn't been so much interest... There are so many rich an wonderful Etruscan tombs in Chianciano that all of the interest is focused on that. Our site is  late Etruscan to Roman and doesn't fit their theme," Soren said.

Was Mummy King Tut A Daddy?

Some of the top mummy experts believe so. "I go for Tut as father!," Robert Connolly, a scientist who carried serological analysis on the mummified remains of two female fetuses buried in the tomb of Tutankhamun, told me.

Egyptologists have long debated whether these mummies were the stillborn children of King Tut and his wife Ankhesenamun or if they were placed in the tomb with the symbolic purpose of allowing the boy king to live as newborns in the afterlife.

Never publicly displayed, the two tiny fetuses will soon undergo CT scans and DNA testing to determine possible diseases and their relation to the famous pharaoh.

To know more about this fascinating story, just read my article . To experience the legendary treasure, just as it was when it was first discovered, I strongly suggest the exhibition "Tutankhamun: his tomb and his treasures" at Zurich's Toni Areal, which is basically a walk-in reconstructon of the tomb complex .

More than 1,000 items of Tutankhamun’s burial treasure have been faithfully reconstructed by Egyptian artisans over five years.
Why replicas? Basically, because you can't move the original items. Just think that the insurance for the original gold mask of the Pharaoh, weighing eleven kilograms, currently costs six billion US dollars, making it the most valuable work of art in history.

Here is a slideshow of some items on display -- and here is a video

Picture: Rossella Lorenzi/Semmel Concerts

Giza Pyramids Getting Fenced In

Good news for tourists to Egypt. From now on, a trip to the Giza’s Pyramids will be a more relaxed experience: no more hawkers relentlessly offering camel rides, T-shirts and pharaonic trinkets.

A 12-mile (20 km) fence, complete with infra-red sensors, security cameras and alarms, has been erected to create an exclusion zone around the three Giza pyramids and the Sphinx.

"It was a zoo. Now we are protecting both the tourists and the ancient monuments," Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

Under the new scheme, tourists enter through a new brick entrance building and pass through several gates equipped with metal detectors and X-ray machines .

The fence, which reaches a height of 13ft (4 metres) at some points, is the first step in a project that begun seven years ago to modernise the 5,000-year-old site. A new lighting system, a cafeteria, and a visitors centre and bookshop will also be installed.

Picture: courtesy of Dr. Sabry Abd El Aziz /SCA

Is Cleopatra Buried in Paris?

Cleopatra VII, the great Cleopatra, the big nose of geopolitical power, is in Paris. It is a matter of justice, because what would be better for a woman like her? Specifically, she is buried in the gardens of the National Library of France, at its old headquarters of the Rue Vivienne, near the Louvre and the Palais Royal. That is what Juan Angel Torti, former Chilean journalist and possibly the most elegant retiree in Paris, has been sustaining for years. This former reporter for Agence France-Presse, whose headquarters is a stone’s throw from where the Egyptian queen supposedly lies, looks forward to the moment when archaeologists reach access to the end of the 120 meters long tunnel at the temple of Tabusiris Magna, 50 kilometers from Alexandria, where the sarcophagi of Cleopatra and Marco Antonio are allegedly located. That is expected to happen later this year, as announced by the Egyptian authorities. But Torti is certain they are in for a big disappointment: "The tomb of Cleopatra is empty."

A full read of this article, published in lavanguardia.es and translated in English by Ben Morales-Correa, reveals that the mummy of Cleopatra came to Paris as part of a batch of three mummies given to Napoleon in his failed expedition to Egypt.

"They were among the few things that the future Napoleon I was able to draw from Egypt after the French defeat by the English. Those three mummies were exhibited at the National Library upon his return, to a wide audience. The whole world would see Cleopatra and all newspapers spoke of the event," Torti said.

Of course, the revolutionary theory isn't very popular with Egyptian authorities. In November, as the summer heat abates, they will employ a team of 12 archeologists, 70 excavators and radars to search for the hidden tomb at the temple of Tabusiris Magna.

According to Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, the last queen of Egypt is buried right there, sharing her last resting place with Mark Antony, the Roman general who became her lover and had three children with her.

Here is what Dr. Sabry Abd El Aziz , Head of the Egyptology Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told me about the search:

World's Ten Oldest Jokes

The oldest recorded joke dates back to 1900 B.C, according to a research into the ten oldest gags carried by the University of Wolverhampton, UK, and commissioned by the TV satellite channel Dave.

Heading the top 10 is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq. Surprise, surprise...  the joke, inscribed in tablets, involves what else? Flatulence.

So here are the jokes. Perhaps I lack a sense of humor, or perhaps something got lost in translation,  but it seems to me that -- unless you're into toilet humor, oxen drivers or randy pharaohs --  these jokes are just not funny.

1. Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap (1900 BC – 1600 BC Sumerian Proverb Collection 1.12-1.13)

2. How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish (An abridged version first found in 1600 BC on the Westcar Papryus)

3. Three ox drivers from Adab were thirsty: one owned the ox, the other owned the cow and the other owned the wagon's load. The owner of the ox refused to get water because he feared his ox would be eaten by a lion; the owner of the cow refused because he thought his cow might wander off into the desert; the owner of the wagon refused because he feared his load would be stolen. So they all went. In their absence the ox made love to the cow which gave birth to a calf which ate the wagon's load. Problem: Who owns the calf?! (1200 BC)

4. A woman who was blind in one eye has been married to a man for 20 years. When he found another woman he said to her, "I shall divorce you because you are said to be blind in one eye." And she answered him: "Have you just discovered that after 20 years of marriage!?" (Egyptian circa 1100 BC)

5. Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his real name is nobody. When Odysseus instructs his men to attack the Cyclops, the Cyclops shouts: "Help, nobody is attacking me!" No one comes to help. (Homer. The Odyssey 800 BC)

6. Question: What animal walks on four feet in the morning, two at noon and three at evening? Answer: Man. He goes on all fours as a baby, on two feet as a man and uses a cane in old age (Appears in Oedipus Tyrannus and first performed in 429 BC)

7. Man is even more eager to copulate than a donkey - his purse is what restrains him (Egyptian, Ptolemaic Period 304 BC – 30 BC)

8. Augustus was touring his Empire and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. Intrigued he asked: "Was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?" "No your Highness," he replied, "but my father was." (Credited to the Emporer Augustus 63 BC – 29 AD)

9. Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said "I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died." (Dated to the Philogelos 4th /5th Century AD)

10. Asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut, the king replied: "In silence." (Collected in the Philogelos or "Laughter-Lover" the oldest extant jest book and compiled in the 4th/5th Century AD)

 

Alter Ego

This video clip came to my mind as I was writing about Khufu's boats and the Great Pyramid.  It's  taken from one of my past interviews with Dr. Zahi Hawass. I asked this great Egyptologist who he would wish to be if he believed in reincarnation. Here is the answer:

Archaeorama Podcast Debuts

Let's start the week with another ambitious project --  let's call it Archaeorama Podcast. 

We begin with "On The Phone", an interview podcast series in which some of the world's top archaeologists discuss their latest findings and projects. 

Archaeorama's friend Dan Kirsch joined me in this new challenge as I interviewed maritime archaeologist  Cheryl Ward and Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

In this first podcast, we talk about a glorious heap of beams and planks buried beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu 4,500 years ago.  The ancient wood fragments will soon be excavated and reassembled, Ikea style, into a unique pharaonic boat . 

The vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954. Painstakingly reconstructed, this ship now  stands resurrected in a museum built above the place where it was discovered.

Beautifully engineered, the boats reveal a level of skill that rivals the pyramids themselves. And like the pyramids, they raise many questions: What was their purpose? Was the embalmed Khufu taken to his pyramid in one of these ships? And why were there two boats?

But most of all, why did the ancient Egyptians first build and then disassemble and buried two expensive, full-sized royal ships at the base of the Great Pyramid?

Zahi Hawass and Cheryl Ward answer these questions in "On the Phone", Archaeorama's interview podcast series.

So here we go:

PUZZLE OF THE PYRAMID BOATS -- Length: 00:07:03 --  Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Dr. Cheryl Ward, associate professor of anthropology at Florida State University, talk to Rossella Lorenzi about two pharaonic boats buried beside the Great Pyramid  of Khufu (Cheops) at Giza.

Written and produced by Rossella Lorenzi. Narrated by Dan Kirsch.

Listen:

 

 

 

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