owenjarus's blog

Researchers have discovered that 19 objects in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art are from King Tut’s tomb, and an agreement has been struck that will see them be returned to Egypt.

The research indicates that Howard Carter kept a few pieces which were bequeathed to the Met after his death in 1939. The artefacts are quite small and at the time it was not known that they were from the tomb itself. 

“Fifteen of the 19 pieces have the status of bits or samples,” read a Supreme Council of Antiquities Press release.

“The remaining four are of more significant art-historical interest and include a small bronze dog less than three-quarters of an inch in height and a small sphinx bracelet-element, acquired from Howard Carter’s niece, after they had been probated with his estate.” They also include “part of a handle and a broad collar accompanied by additional beads.”

New research on a 2,400 year old star table shows that the Ancient Egyptians kept close tabs on the Big Dipper, monitoring changes in the constellation’s orientation throughout the course of an entire year.

The Big Dipper is composed of seven stars and is easily viewable in the northern hemisphere. Its shape looks like a ladle with a scoop attached. Ancient Egyptians represented it as an ox’s foreleg.

If a person were to observe the constellation at the exact same time every night they would see it gradually move counter-clockwise each time they saw it.

A new study shows that Tutankhamun, Egypt’s famous “boy-king” who died around the age of 18, suffered a “massive crushing tearing injury to his chest” that likely would have killed him. 

X-rays and CT scans have previously shown that the pharaoh’s heart, chest wall, the front part of his sternum and adjacent ribs, are missing. In Ancient Egypt the heart was like the brain and removing it was something that was not done.

“The heart, considered the seat of reason, emotion, memory and personality, was the only major organ intentionally left in the body,” writes Dr. Robert Ritner in the book Ancient Egypt.  

A new discovery made by Dr. Zahi Hawass and his team shows that an ancient pharaoh made serious efforts to save the Sphinx.

At Giza his team found the remains of a mudbrick enclosure wall that would have surrounded the Sphinx, perhaps protecting it from sand blown by wind.

Made of mudbrick, the first section runs to the east of the Sphinx for 86 meters north-south and is 75 cm tall.

The second section is 46 meters long, 90 cm in size, and runs east-west along the perimeter of Khafre’s valley temple. The two sides converge in the southeast.

Archaeologists are already aware of a wall that runs to the north of Sphinx, now they know that it is part of a larger enclosure.

Toronto is the place to be this week for fans of ancient Egypt. Especially if you’re interested in the gruesome ways that two of its pharaohs might have died.

King Tut: Death by Hippo?

This Wednesday, at 7 pm at the U of T campus, Dr. Benson Harer of California State University at San Bernardino will argue that King Tut was mauled to death by a hippo – his lecture is titled "What really killed King Tut: The Hippo Heresy."

Dr. Harer is a medical doctor and adjunct professor of Egyptology at California State – so he brings a unique perspective to this issue.

Acrobats from Burma, workers from Central or West Asia, and a mausoleum design inspired by work in the Middle East – the Mauseoleum of China’s First Emperor was a cosmopolitan place says Dr. Duan Qingbo, the man in charge of excavating it.

The mausoleum was created about 2,200 year ago and served as a tomb for Qin Shi Huang – the first emperor of China. While the emperor’s tomb is largely unexcavated, archaeologists have found thousands of life-size terracotta figures nearby. It’s believed that this army was created to serve the emperor in the afterlife.

Capital punishment is widely seen as an anachronism in today's society.

Banned throughout Europe, few democratic countries continue to practice it, with one of the few exceptions being that of the United States.

On Friday wikileaks posted the “largest classified military leak in history,” nearly 400,000 documents that were dated from May 2004 to March 2009.

Each of these postings is a “SIGACT” – a document detailing a specific action in the war. Brief and loaded with military jargon these reports can be a bit intimidating. Some of the details were blanked out by wikileaks after the Pentagon protested that they posed a risk to security operations.

I went through the reports with an eye to what they can tell us about how the war affected Iraq’s antiquities. The reports related to artefacts and ruins tend to be quite brief - the details are often lacking, blanked out or obscured by complex military jargon. However they do tell some interesting stories. 

A team of researchers - excavating a 2,700 year old temple at the ancient city of Tayinat in southeastern Turkey - have discovered evidence that its inhabitants prominently displayed a tablet which bore a pledge of loyalty to the heir of an Assyrian king.

At their height the Assyrians controlled an empire that stretched from southern Iraq to the Mediterranean coast. In their art and writing, “the Assyrian king was portrayed as supreme ruler of the known world and viewed with absolute authority as the earthly representative and human embodiment of (the Assyrian god) Ashur,” said Professor Tim Harrison of the University of Toronto. He leads the Tayinat excavations. 

In 399 BC the Greek philosopher Socrates, by then around the age of 70, was executed in his home state of Athens.

He was prosecuted for the rather dubious crimes of “not acknowledging the gods the city acknowledges” and “subverting the youth of the city”.  

His case was brought to court and prosecuted by a man named Meletus Meletou. After a one day long trial (the norm back then) he was found guilty by a jury of 501 peers - and sentenced to death.

Modern day historians suspect that this trial was politically motivated. Indeed Socrates is said to have referred to himself as the “gadfly” of Athens and wasn’t afraid to engage in critical thought and challenge old ideas.