| Subject: | U.S. Archaeology in Crisis |
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| Date: | Wed, 28 Oct 2026 20:03:05 +0000 |
| From: | Archaeological Institute of America <info@archaeological.org> |
| Reply-To: | Archaeological Institute of America <info@archaeological.org> |
| To: | glenn@glennmeyer.net |
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Photo Credit: Alison Park Douglas |
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Archaeologists at Saqqara have discovered two small wooden figures in an unusual devotional pose inside a chamber above the tomb of a high-ranking Old Kingdom official. Their purpose remains uncertain, while bronze instruments found nearby present another puzzle about the burial and its owner.
Two small wooden figures discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb at Saqqara have raised intriguing questions about Old Kingdom burial rituals. Archaeologists found the figures in a vaulted chamber above the resting place of Weni, a senior royal official. Their unusual devotional posture and separation from the main burial room make them among the most remarkable discoveries from the excavation.
The Egyptian archaeological mission made the discovery northwest of the pyramid of King Merenre, where excavations revealed a mudbrick mastaba containing several burial shafts. Alongside the figures, the team recovered bronze instruments that may have served medical purposes, despite the absence of any evidence that Weni practiced medicine.
The archaeological mission, led by Dr. Amr El-Tayeb, discovered the figures while investigating the mastaba’s internal chambers. Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities described them as small wooden statues represented in a rare posture of worship or reverence.
Mohamed Abdel Badie, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the discovery would help researchers investigate how different spaces within Old Kingdom mastabas functioned. Although the ministry has yet to release photographs of the wooden figures, their unusual posture and location have already raised questions about their role in funerary rituals.
Inscriptions inside the decorated burial chamber identify Weni as a man who held several important positions within the royal administration. His titles included mayor, sem priest, overseer of royal expeditions, treasurer of the House of the North, sole companion, and lord of Elkab.
These titles suggest that Weni occupied a prominent place in the political and religious institutions of the Old Kingdom. They also provide an unusually detailed account of his official standing, allowing researchers to connect the objects recovered from the tomb with a named member of Egypt’s administrative elite.
Yet one group of objects does not fit neatly into that picture. Inside the burial shaft, the excavation team recovered several bronze instruments that Egyptian authorities believe may have had medical applications.
None of Weni’s surviving titles identify him as a physician, leaving the relationship between the instruments and their owner unclear. Further examination may establish whether the objects served a medical function or belonged to another category of tools placed in the tomb.
Another discovery from the excavation was a false door bearing the name of Sekhet Nebti, a woman whose religious titles included priestess of Hathor. False doors formed an important feature of Egyptian funerary architecture, symbolically linking the world of the living with that of the deceased.
The inscription provides additional evidence of women’s participation in religious institutions during the Old Kingdom. However, archaeologists have not established whether Sekhet Nebti had a personal or family connection with Weni.
Examination of Weni’s skeletal remains has also revealed details about his health and the conditions he experienced during his lifetime. Researchers estimate that he died after the age of 50 and suffered from advanced dental disease affecting his teeth and surrounding tissues.
His bones also displayed changes consistent with repeated physical stress. These findings add a personal dimension to the inscriptions, revealing aspects of his life that the prestigious titles on the tomb walls do not describe.
Saqqara served as one of ancient Egypt’s most important cemeteries, particularly for the officials and elite families associated with Memphis. The newly discovered mastaba lies within the funerary landscape surrounding the pyramid of Merenre, a ruler of the Sixth Dynasty.
Hisham El-Leithy, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the discovery provides new information about mastaba architecture, religious practices, and the social position of their occupants. The relatively well-preserved inscriptions allow researchers to examine these questions through the burial of an identified official rather than an anonymous tomb.
The excavation team is continuing its investigation of the complex, including the architectural relationship between its chambers, the inscriptions, and the objects recovered during the dig. These studies could clarify how the burial spaces functioned and whether different parts of the mastaba served distinct ceremonial purposes.
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The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Jonathan (Jonny) Russell, Brown University: Medicalized technologies: ingredient patterns in ancient Egyptian therapeutic recipes as informants on food processing diversity Friday October 23, 2026, 4 PM Pacific Daylight Time Note the time and day change!! MELC Lounge/Rm 254 Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall), UC Berkeley This is a hybrid lecture, both in-person and virtual (Zoom). The lecture will not be recorded. MELC is not requiring registration, so to attend this lecture, click on the following join link at the time of the lecture: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/2071243853?pwd=1dq3SwaoPnJCLGwKQs1sbTLG4Nobd0.1  Plate I from Papyros Ebers (Leipzig, 1875), edited by Georg Ebers. Original artifact preserved at the Leipzig University Library. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:G._Ebers_(ed.),_Papyros_Ebers,_1875_Wellcome_L0016592.jpg About the Lecture: Much has been written on ancient Egyptian food processing technologies, especially in the domains of brewing and baking (for which Samuel 2000 remains a valued survey). Certain aspects of these technologies, such as the varieties of yeast cultures used, remain somewhat elusive. Others, such as milk processing, have received little to no attention. These lacunae are, in many cases, the result of the kinds of source material commonly consulted to elucidate ancient processes – tomb depictions and archaeological remains being chief among them. Notably, medical texts list a wealth of food or food-adjacent products as ingredients in medicinal recipes but have been less appreciated in understanding food processing. The many constellations of ingredients are, after all, notoriously challenging if not impossible to translate, and modern analyses are often mired by a compulsion to identify pharmacological activity as the primary motivation for their initial selection. This lecture takes a fresh look at these problems. It will first explore a sample of representative manuscripts, such as Papyrus Hearst (in Berkeley!), Ebers, and a demotic manuscript in Vienna: all of which are compilations of recipes, or “recipe compendia”. It will then examine the social and ritual contexts of the recipes recorded in these manuscripts, to better understand both by and for whom the recipes were used. Following a careful analysis of recipe data, the new hypothesis that many entries can be considered “medicalized” receptions of known processing technologies will be presented and explored. Focusing on recipes that manipulate brewing and cheese processing as case studies, the lecture will demonstrate how aspects of these processes are “fossilized” in various ways within medicalized recipes. In addition to offering new insights into healing practices, the presented results suggest more significant variety in food processing than presently assumed.  About the Speaker: Since 2024, Jonathan (Jonny) Russell has been assistant professor of Egyptology at Brown University, where he teaches classes in ancient Egyptian history, Middle and Late Egyptian, hieratic, and demotic, as well as in Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine and magic. Armed with a knowledge of Akkadian, his research explores the similarities and differences in contents and social contexts of healing manuscripts from Egypt and Mesopotamia, and how observations modify impressions of knowledge transmission across ancient communities in Northeast Africa and Western Asia. He is presently working on a monograph titled Variety and Versatility in Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian Specialist Healing: A Comparative Study, in addition to a new English-language anthology of therapeutic compendia from Middle Kingdom to Roman Period Egypt. Jonny submitted his PhD thesis to Leiden University (The Netherlands) in 2023 – a project which was funded by the Dutch Scientific Research Organisation (NWO) and titled: Towards a Historical Contextualisation of Ancient Egyptian Perspectives of the Inner Body, Sickness, and Healing. Before coming to Brown, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the History of Pharmacy and Medicine at the Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany), where he began exploring the intersections between food and therapeutic technologies. Visitor Parking: Keep in mind that restricted parking at UC Berkeley ends at 5 p.m. For Friday, October 23, 2026, here are the best visitor-parking options near UC Berkeley’s Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall): Lower Sproul Parking Garage, 2465 Bancroft Way; RSF Garage, 2299 Bancroft Way.More visitor parking information can be found at https://pt.berkeley.edu/visitor-parking. About Northern California ARCE: For more information, please visit https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://bsky.app/profile/khentiamentiu.bsky.social, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/membership/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up. |
by Redazione 14/10/2026
In Egypt, a monumental head of Ramses II, the remains of a second royal statue, and a block of pink granite bearing hieroglyphic inscriptions have been unearthed during emergency archaeological excavations conducted at Behbeit el-Hagar, in Egypt’s Gharbia Governorate, in the Nile Delta. The discovery was announced by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.The investigation began after a local resident spotted an engraved stone block while working on a plot of land he owned, in front of his home, and reported the find to archaeologists. An initial site inspection confirmed its archaeological significance. The relevant inspectorate then initiated legal procedures and formed a specialized team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities to conduct the excavations.
According to Hisham El-Leithy, secretary general of the Council, the first artifact discovered is the head of a statue of Ramses II, approximately 1.60 meters tall. The pharaoh is wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. A fragment of the upper part of the dorsal pillar was also discovered, bearing the king’s Horus name, “Horus Ka Nakht Mery Maat.” The dimensions of the head suggest that the statue, including the base, may have originally stood about 8.5 meters tall.
The second discovery consists of the main body of a royal statue approximately 2.40 meters long, missing its legs and base, and hypothetically attributed to Ramses II himself. The ruler wears the royal nemes headdress, the upper portion of which is missing. The head still retains clearly recognizable facial features, similar to those of the first statue. About one meter north of this latest find, a 1.30-meter-long block of pink granite was discovered. The hieroglyphic inscriptions preserve two royal titles of Ramses II: “Nesu Bity,” king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and “Sa Ra,” son of Ra.
The Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, Sherif Fathy, emphasized the importance of the discovery for understanding the site’s history and thanked the citizen who reported the stone, highlighting the public’s role in preserving cultural heritage. Excavations and studies will continue to clarify the relationship between the artifacts and to reconstruct the history and architectural development of the area. Behbeit el-Hagar is a significant archaeological site in the Egyptian Delta, known primarily for the remains of a large temple dedicated to the goddess Isis and for the numerous granite architectural elements that attest to the site’s religious and monumental importance in ancient Egypt.
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| Egypt: A citizen reports an engraved stone; excavations reveal two royal statues, one of which is of Ramses II |
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A tomb dating back to the time the Romans controlled Egypt contains a funerary poem in ancient Greek.
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Amenhotep III's tomb has been reopened to the public after undergoing significant restoration in Egypt. Initially unearthed during Napoleon’s expedition in 1799 and thoroughly excavated in 1915, the tomb still showcases remarkable wall paintings and hieroglyphs, despite extensive looting. Amenhotep III, who ruled for an impressive 38 years, was responsible for erecting numerous grand monuments. His mummy is currently housed at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Cairo.
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Two young men gaze out from a circular wooden panel no thicker than a finger, their faces painted nearly two millennia ago for a journey into the afterlife.
Now, after three weeks of painstaking work by Egyptian and Italian conservators, the rare portrait known as the “Two Brothers” is ready for a new journey: its first trip out of Egypt, to an exhibition in Rome.
The panel will be a centrepiece of “The Power of Portraiture: Egypt and Rome — Faces of the Fayum,” opening at Rome’s Ara Pacis Museum on Nov. 5 and running until May 2, 2027.
At about 62 centimetres (24 inches) across and less than a centimetre thick, it is unusually large and circular for a Fayum portrait. It depicts two men side by side, painted in encaustic — a technique that uses pigments mixed with hot wax.
Fayum portraits are among the most striking painted images to survive from the ancient world. Usually made on thin wooden panels, they were placed over the faces of mummies, bringing together Egyptian funerary customs and artistic traditions shaped by Greek and Roman influence.
The “Two Brothers” portrait was in fragile condition before the latest work. Wood-boring insects had damaged its wooden support, parts of the paint layer were unstable, and an earlier repair had left sections of one man’s mouth and chin in the wrong position.
Conservators stabilised weakened areas, treated insect tunnels beneath the paint and carefully repositioned the misplaced fragments using fine supports. They said they followed a minimal-intervention approach intended to preserve the painting’s authenticity and evidence of its history.
Ultraviolet examinations also revealed traces in the men’s hair that may point to the use of a transparent varnish to deepen dark tones, officials said — a clue to painting techniques used in Roman-era Egypt.
The restoration brought together staff from Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and specialists from Rome-based Fabrica Conservazione e Restauro. Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Minister Sherif Fathy described the project as an example of cultural cooperation and an opportunity to share expertise in preserving heritage.
For the Rome exhibition, the portrait will join nearly 60 painted portraits from Egyptian museum collections, including works from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Kom Oshim and Hurghada. The show will feature more than 110 objects in all, among them funerary shrouds, masks, marble portraits, plaster casts and jewellery.
Egyptian works will be displayed alongside objects from international collections including the Louvre, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Organisers say the exhibition will place Fayum portraits within the broader cultural world in which they emerged, rather than treating them as an isolated artistic phenomenon.
The “Two Brothers” portrait’s unusual double composition makes it especially distinctive among the works. Its upcoming appearance in Rome will offer visitors a close look at the face, and the artistic exchanges, of Roman-era Egypt.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California chapter, and the UC Berkeley Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Jonathan (Jonny) Russell, Brown University: Medicalized technologies: ingredient patterns in ancient Egyptian therapeutic recipes as informants on food processing diversity Friday October 23, 2026, 4 PM Pacific Daylight Time Note the time and day change!! MELC Lounge/Rm 254 Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall), UC Berkeley This is a hybrid lecture, both in-person and virtual (Zoom). The lecture will not be recorded. MELC is not requiring registration, so to attend this lecture, click on the following join link at the time of the lecture: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/2071243853?pwd=1dq3SwaoPnJCLGwKQs1sbTLG4Nobd0.1 Plate I from Papyros Ebers (Leipzig, 1875), edited by Georg Ebers. Original artifact preserved at the Leipzig University Library. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:G._Ebers_(ed.),_Papyros_Ebers,_1875_Wellcome_L0016592.jpg About the Lecture: Much has been written on ancient Egyptian food processing technologies, especially in the domains of brewing and baking (for which Samuel 2000 remains a valued survey). Certain aspects of these technologies, such as the varieties of yeast cultures used, remain somewhat elusive. Others, such as milk processing, have received little to no attention. These lacunae are, in many cases, the result of the kinds of source material commonly consulted to elucidate ancient processes – tomb depictions and archaeological remains being chief among them. Notably, medical texts list a wealth of food or food-adjacent products as ingredients in medicinal recipes but have been less appreciated in understanding food processing. The many constellations of ingredients are, after all, notoriously challenging if not impossible to translate, and modern analyses are often mired by a compulsion to identify pharmacological activity as the primary motivation for their initial selection. This lecture takes a fresh look at these problems. It will first explore a sample of representative manuscripts, such as Papyrus Hearst (in Berkeley!), Ebers, and a demotic manuscript in Vienna: all of which are compilations of recipes, or “recipe compendia”. It will then examine the social and ritual contexts of the recipes recorded in these manuscripts, to better understand both by and for whom the recipes were used. Following a careful analysis of recipe data, the new hypothesis that many entries can be considered “medicalized” receptions of known processing technologies will be presented and explored. Focusing on recipes that manipulate brewing and cheese processing as case studies, the lecture will demonstrate how aspects of these processes are “fossilized” in various ways within medicalized recipes. In addition to offering new insights into healing practices, the presented results suggest more significant variety in food processing than presently assumed. About the Speaker: Since 2024, Jonathan (Jonny) Russell has been assistant professor of Egyptology at Brown University, where he teaches classes in ancient Egyptian history, Middle and Late Egyptian, hieratic, and demotic, as well as in Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine and magic. Armed with a knowledge of Akkadian, his research explores the similarities and differences in contents and social contexts of healing manuscripts from Egypt and Mesopotamia, and how observations modify impressions of knowledge transmission across ancient communities in Northeast Africa and Western Asia. He is presently working on a monograph titled Variety and Versatility in Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian Specialist Healing: A Comparative Study, in addition to a new English-language anthology of therapeutic compendia from Middle Kingdom to Roman Period Egypt. Jonny submitted his PhD thesis to Leiden University (The Netherlands) in 2023 – a project which was funded by the Dutch Scientific Research Organisation (NWO) and titled: Towards a Historical Contextualisation of Ancient Egyptian Perspectives of the Inner Body, Sickness, and Healing. Before coming to Brown, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the History of Pharmacy and Medicine at the Philipps-Universität Marburg (Germany), where he began exploring the intersections between food and therapeutic technologies. Visitor Parking: Keep in mind that restricted parking at UC Berkeley ends at 5 p.m. For Friday, October 23, 2026, here are the best visitor-parking options near UC Berkeley’s Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall): Lower Sproul Parking Garage, 2465 Bancroft Way; RSF Garage, 2299 Bancroft Way.More visitor parking information can be found at https://pt.berkeley.edu/visitor-parking. About Northern California ARCE: For more information, please visit https://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://arce-nc.org, https://www.youtube.com/@NorthernCaliforniaARCE, https://bsky.app/profile/khentiamentiu.bsky.social, and https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://arce.org/membership/ and select “Berkeley, CA” as your chapter when you sign up. |
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