Monday - January 20, 2014

a team of American Egyptologists discovered a previously unknown tomb.

Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient cemetery thought to contain the tombs of 16 pharaohs.

Now that really is news, even if the subject holds no interest for some.

If they found this after all this time; how much more must remain?

I have read that here in the UK alone, treasure hunters have discovered 75,000 objects of antiquity in just one year. People with metal detectors, amateurs actually, have unearthed items worth thousands. That’s nice I’ll say but, there must also be a thrill of some kind, knowing you’re handling something for the first time in 500 or a thousand years.

Valley of the other kings: Lost dynasty found in Egypt

By David Keys

A previously unknown, yet potentially very important, ancient Egyptian kingdom has been discovered by archaeologists working in the Nile Valley. 

Excavations at Abydos, 70 miles north-west of Egypt’s famous Valley of the Kings, have revealed the existence of an entire royal cemetery, now believed to be the final resting place of up to 16 mysterious pharaohs - an entire dynasty whose existence was up till now virtually unknown to the Egyptological world.

Bizarrely more than a century ago, in 1901-1902, a British team, led by the famous Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie, entered four of the tombs - but had no idea as to who they belonged to or even of their high-status. Ironically, the vital inscription revealing the existence of the lost kingdom and indicating the cemetery’s royal status, was in a tomb buried deep under the desert sand less than 20 metres from where they were digging. Almost a century later, in 1997, a Danish Egyptologist, Dr Kim Ryholt, deduced from a highly damaged ancient Egyptian papyrus, that a lost dynasty should theoretically have existed at Abydos between 1650 BC and 1600 BC - part of an era of political disunity known in Ancient Egyptian history as the Second Intermediate Period.

But there was no proof until the last few weeks when a team of American Egyptologists discovered a previously unknown tomb buried under three metres of sand. On entering it and illuminating its wall paintings for the first time in literally thousands of years, they deciphered a painted inscription which revealed the name and titles of an unknown pharaoh - the first physical proof that the mysterious lost kingdom and its ruling dynasty had actually existed.

The previously unknown ancient Egyptian ruler’s name was Senebkay - a spiritually-sounding composite word meaning ‘my soul is healthy’.

The tomb’s contents had been badly damaged by tomb robbers more than 2000 years ago, but the American Egyptologists, from the University of Pennsylvania , succeeded in piecing together some of the grave goods - and the lost pharaoh’s physical remains which had been scattered across the tomb’s floor when the robbers ripped his mummy apart in search of gold. The Egyptologists have now almost completely re-assembled his skeleton.

The pharaoh was 1.75 metres tall (quite substantial in ancient Egyptian terms) and died aged around 50 of unknown causes. Because two key hieroglyphic characters from his very long official throne name (quite different from his short birth name, Senebkay) survived in the damaged papyrus, studied by the Danish Egyptologist back in the 1990s, the American excavators at the site had been able to deduce that Senebkay was either the first or the second pharaoh in the lost dynasty.

LINK TO MORE AT SOURCE

And btw ... although nothing actually confirmed as written in blood and stone, some archaeologists here think a few bones recently found here in Winchester, might be those of King Alfred the Great.  The only English king I’m aware of with the title of ‘great.’ There’s some fascinating reading with regard to Alfred and his offspring. The archaeologists think if the remains are not Alfred then they are the remains of his son.

Over the almost 10 yrs I’been here, I have witnessed two digs in process in the immediate area.

Posted by peiper     on 01/20/2014 at 04:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Amazing Science and Discoveries • Archeology / Anthropology •  
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