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Monday, August 29, 2022

Nile Riverbed Clues Help Explain The Mystery Of Egypt's Pyramid Construction | IFLScience

https://www.iflscience.com/nile-riverbed-clues-help-explain-the-mystery-of-egypts-pyramid-construction-65096

Nile Riverbed Clues Help Explain The Mystery Of Egypt's Pyramid Construction

No, it wasn't aliens.

author

Tom Hale

Senior Journalist

Aug 29, 2022 12:00 PM
An artist's illustration shows how a now-defunct arm of            the River Nile known as the Khufu branch expected to the            pyramids.
An artist's illustration shows how a now-defunct arm of the River Nile known as the Khufu branch once reached the pyramids. Image credit: Alex Boersma/PNAS.

The construction of Egypt's great pyramids of Giza some 4,500 years ago is one of the world's greatest achievements. Among the many questions and complexities surrounding the pyramids, however, is how their vast "building blocks" were hauled to the construction site. It turns out, we can thank a long-lost branch of the River Nile.

When we imagine the pyramids of Giza today, we expect to see them surrounded by a vast plain of sand with the Greater Cairo metropolis sprawling behind them. The main body of the Nile is currently some 8 kilometers (5 miles) away, which is a vast distance if you're lugging huge quantities of stone across the sand.

Over 4,000 years ago, however, a now-defunct arm of the Nile known as the Khufu branch could be found carving just past the site of the Giza pyramid complex. It's long been suspected that the Khufu branch was a vital vein of ancient Egpyt, aiding its workers to transport materials to the pyramids from elsewhere. However, its history has remained little understood. 

As reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from France managed to gain a detailed history of this river section from pollen grains extracted from the floodplain. 

Map shows how the Khufu Branch of the                  River Nile In Egypt formerly reached the edges of the                  Great Giza pyramid complex.
Map shows how the Khufu branch of the River Nile In Egypt formerly reached the edges of the Great Giza pyramid complex. Image credit: PNAS


By tracking the growth and demise of over 61 different plants along the flood plain, they showed the rise and fall of water levels in the river's branches over 8,000 years of ancient Egyptian history. 

Most notably, it showed that the waters of the Khufu branch rose significantly during the African Humid Period, which spanned from 14,800 years ago until 5,500 years ago. 

However, water levels of the Khufu branch appear to have been relatively high for some time after the African Humid Period, allowing the river to remain navigable until the Great Pyramid of Giza, dedicated to pharaoh Khufu, was constructed around 4,500 years ago.

At some point, it's possible this lost arm of the Nile may have reached as far as the Great Sphinx of Giza, which stands proud at the front of the complex.

While it's clear that the Khufu branch of the Nile could have helped transport construction materials closer to the Giza pyramid complex, many other details around the pyramids' construction are still uncertain. 

The Great Pyramid of Giza originally stood at 146.6 meters (481 feet) tall, consisting of over 2.3 million large stone blocks weighing 6 million tonnes in total. Theories exist, but there's currently no solid idea of how the colossal blocks were placed one on top of another in a highly complex structure featuring a warren of inner passages and tombs.

And no, it certainly wasn't with the aid of aliens. 


Humans
ancient ancestors

  • history,

  • archaeology,

  • ancient egypt,

  • ancient ancestors

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Sunday, August 28, 2022

Northern Cal. Egyptology Lecture Sept. 11: Funerary Papyri as Social Reflections of the Living and the Dead

The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Marissa A. Stevens, UCLA:



Funerary Papyri as Social Reflections of the Living and the Dead

Sunday, September 11, 2022, 3 PM Pacific Time
Room 20 Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall)
UC Berkeley


Please note that no Zoom meeting is scheduled for this lecture.

Glenn Meyer
ARCE-NC Publicity Director



Image courtesy of Dr.
Marissa A. Stevens

About the Lecture:

Twenty-first Dynasty funerary papyri – consisting of texts and images from the Book of the Dead, the many Underworld Books, and other cosmographic scenes – have always fascinated Egyptologists for what they reveal about Egyptian afterlife beliefs and their understanding and conceptualization of the underworld.  But these documents are also social objects.  The creation, ownership, and use of these papyri can shed much light about the deceased who reap the religious benefit of the texts and on the family of the deceased, who also benefit from these objects in social and ideological ways.  Studying these papyri as objects of social life, we can learn about temple life, titles and rank, family structure, inheritance, and social status of the deceased and the families they left behind.  Funerary papyri were therefore used as a form of social competition, and reveal much about the mindset of the elite priests of 21st Dynasty Thebes.  
 
About the Speaker:



Dr. Marissa Stevens is the Assistant Director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World.  Trained as an Egyptologist who studies the materiality, social history, and texts of the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period, she completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Combining art historical and linguistic approaches, her research interests focus on how objects can solidify, maintain, and perpetuate social identity, especially in times of crisis when more traditional means of self-identification are absent.



Parking is available in UC lots all day on weekends, for a fee. Ticket dispensing machines accept debit or credit cards. Parking is available in lots around the Social Sciences Building, and in lots along Bancroft. A map of the campus is available online at http://www.berkeley.edu/map/

About ARCE-NC:

For more information, please visit https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, http://www.arce-nc.org/lectures.htm, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, or https://khentiamentiu.org. 
To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://www.arce.org/general-membership and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up.


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Thursday, August 25, 2022

Memphis Seizes Ancient Egyptian Artifact | U.S. Customs and Border Protection

https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/local-media-release/memphis-seizes-ancient-egyptian-artifact

Memphis Seizes Ancient Egyptian Artifact

Release Date

NEW ORLEANS - On Wednesday, August 17, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers at the port of Memphis, TN intercepted an ancient Egyptian artifact shipped from Europe. The shipment was manifested as an antique stone sculpture over 100 years old, and sent from a dealer to a private buyer in the U.S.

CBP worked with subject matter experts at the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology to determine that the artifact was authentic. It is an Egyptian canopic jar lid of the funeral deity named Imsety. Canopic jars were used to hold the internal organs of mummies and Imsety specifically protected the deceased's liver. The lid is likely from the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, 1069 BC to 653 BC, making it potentially 3,000 years old.

The artifact is on a list of items protected by bilateral treaties and falls under the CPIA 19 USC 2609; designated archaeological materials of cultural property imported into the U.S. subject to seizure and forfeiture. CPIA is the congressionally passed Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983, and restricts importing some archaeological and ethnological materials into the country. The shipper also made contradictory statements regarding the declared value of the item, and CBP seized it. It was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations for further examination and to determine it's provenance.

Imsety canopic jar lid
Imsety canopic jar lid

The New Orleans Field Office covers ports of entry throughout the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Tennessee.    

Follow CBP on Twitter @CBPGulfCoast and @DFONewOrleans

  • Last Modified: August 25, 2022
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Abraham Rosenvasser: The Argentinian who helped save the treasures of Nubia | Middle East Eye

https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/argentina-abraham-rosenvasser-egyptologist-who-saved-nubia-treasures

Abraham Rosenvasser: The Argentinian who helped save the treasures of Nubia

Born in a small Jewish colony in Latin America, the Egyptologist saved hundreds of artefacts during the construction of the Aswan dam
Rosenvasser was a polyglot and Egyptologist who led an Argentinian mission to Sudan (Illustration/Haroon James)
By in
Cairo, Egypt

Born in 1896 in the tiny Argentinian town of Colonia Mauricio, around 300 kilometres from the capital Buenos Aires, Abraham Rosenvasser would make his name on the other side of the world, in the deserts of Nubia in southern Egypt and northern Sudan.

Considered the father of Egyptology in Argentina, Rosenvasser was the leader of an Argentinian mission, which in the early 1960s took part in the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt. There he rescued hundreds of artefacts, cementing his place among the roll-call of great Egyptologists.

"His personality was extremely sober," remembers Elsa Feher, a physicist and Rosenvasser's daughter. "He had come from a very harsh place, time and moment."

Rosenvasser's parents were originally from a village in what is now Ukraine. But in 1891 they had to flee their home and ended up putting down roots in a small Jewish colony in inland Argentina, where they were allocated a 180-hectare plot of land to farm.

During his childhood in the colony, Rosenvasser used to ride to school on horseback with two of his brothers, Benjamin and Jacobo. With the exception of a library they had in the settlement, he grew up in an environment marked by harsh living conditions and austerity. It was not until he was ready for secondary school, which was not available where he lived, that Rosenvasser moved to Buenos Aires, in a leap that soon changed his life.

From-Sudan-To-Egypt-documentary
Ricardo Preve's documentary is centred on Rosenvasser's experiences in Sudan and southern Egypt (Esto del Cine)

There he began to immerse himself in the study of subjects such as Egyptology, the origins of monotheisms, the East and its ancient languages, ethics and morality. Along the way, he taught himself how to read hieroglyphs by studying from an English manual in the mornings. He also spoke German, French, English and Italian, in addition to Spanish.

In 1933, Rosenvasser had a stroke of luck when a small fragment of an undeciphered papyrus found in a museum in Argentina came into his hands. Thanks to what he had been able to learn about hieroglyphs, he  discovered that it was part of the tale of Sinuhe, considered one of the finest works of ancient Egyptian literature.

This finding earned Rosenvasser the respect of international Egyptologists and ultimately the opportunity to travel to Nubia, where he was given the task of saving the Aksha temple, built by Ramesses II, one of the greatest pharaohs of the New Kingdom.

Part of what Rosenvasser was able to recover is now on display at a museum in the city of La Plata, near Buenos Aires – the only ancient Egyptian collection of such magnitude in Latin America.

The story of how these remains travelled from the desert of northern Sudan to Argentina is the focus of a new documentary by the renowned Argentinian filmmaker Ricardo Preve, From Sudan to Argentina, which delves into the singular figure of Rosenvasser.

"His was a project that takes us back to our common humanity," Preve told Middle East Eye. "The project of archaeologists who wanted to save our stories of the past."

From Argentina to Sudan

When Egypt decided to start building the Aswan High Dam in 1960 to regulate the flooding of the Nile, Unesco launched an international appeal to mobilise and save the archaeological treasures of the area, which were threatened by the great Lake Nasser that would form behind the massive infrastructure.

In all, 40 archaeological missions from around the world organised salvage campaigns and worked in the region for 20 years to excavate, dismantle, move and in some cases reconstruct 20 monuments of great value, according to the La Plata museum.

One of the monuments at risk was the Temple of Aksha, built around 1250 BCE on a stretch of the western bank of the Nile as it flows through Sudanese Nubia.

"Aksha was one of the first temples, perhaps the first, where the deification of Ramesses as a god is documented in Nubia," Elba Perla Fuscaldo, an Argentinian Egyptologist and a disciple of Rosenvasser, told Middle East Eye.

Abraham-Rosenvasser-EstoDelCine
Rosenvasser saved more than 1,200 artefacts during his work at Aksha (Esto del Cine)

Although most of these missions came from Europe and the US, one of the countries that responded to Unesco's call was Argentina, which formed a mission led by Rosenvasser.

"When the Unesco call came, he jumped at the chance. Here was an opportunity to spend some time in a place that had always been in his mind," Feher said.

The expedition carried out three campaigns, between 1961 and 1963. The first was carried out jointly with a French mission led by Egyptologist Jean Vercoutter. But from the second year, it was the Argentinian team and its Sudanese partners that took on the responsibility of excavating the temple and the surrounding settlements and cemeteries.

"Rosenvasser was foundational for Egyptological studies in Latin America, because this was the first time that a Latin American Egyptologist was commissioned to undertake such an endeavour," Alejandro Parada, director of the Library of the Academia Argentina de Letras, where Rosenvasser's library is kept today, told Middle East Eye.

"In a sense, it put on the international scene that, in this southern cone of Latin America, in countries that sometimes seem to be falling off the map, there was a very important construction of academic Egyptological thought," he added.

To reach the Aksha settlement, Rosenvasser and his team first had to cross the 11,000 km from Buenos Aires to Khartoum, Preve's documentary shows. And once they were in the Sudanese capital, they had to take a small plane to Wadi Halfa, in the far north of the country, and finally a car to drive another 50km across the desert.

Temple-of-aksha-wikimedia-Clemens Schmillen
A relief found at the Temple of Aksha, where Rosenvasser led the salvage team (Wikimedia/Clemens Schmillen)

"If you look at it, we are exactly 180 degrees off longitude, we are at the world's maximum opposite. Imagine what it must have been in 1961 to fly from Buenos Aires to Wadi Halfa," Preve said. "And in fact, Rosenvasser's journey is even more incredible, because it starts in Carlos Casares, which is 300km from Buenos Aires."

In addition to Rosenvasser, who was in charge of the works and reading and interpreting the hieroglyphs, the Argentinian mission included a different architect and an archaeologist each year, so a total of five Argentinians ended up working at the site. Feher said her father was also assisted by some 40 Sudanese workers, as well as foremen, boatmen to cross the Nile and home service, with whom he had a close relationship.

The members of the Argentinian mission lived during the season in modest adobe houses they rented from local people, with a roof made of palm leaves and no exterior windows.

Working days were intense for Rosenvasser, first in the excavation and, once the sun had set, recording all the inscriptions his team had found and transcribing them in detail in his notebook. However, he always found time in the morning to drink his mate, a traditional South American caffeine drink, the documentary recalls.

"He would get up very early, work before breakfast, then go back to the excavations, then take a very long nap and then back to work in the afternoon," said Feher, who went to visit her father and mother, Pauline de Rosenvasser, in Aksha during the first season. Feher was going through a turbulent emotional time, after divorcing her first husband.

"There in the dunes, we talked about the heart. My father would clean the stones with his paintbrush while I told him about my love affairs," she smiled. "It was all an immense adventure, but it had its logic, it didn't come out of nowhere."

From Nubia to La Plata

By the end of its expedition, in 1963, the Argentinian mission had been able to save 1,200 pieces from Aksha, Preve said. Of these, the best-preserved half remained in Sudan and is now in the National Museum of Sudan, in Khartoum, as shown in his documentary. The other half, as stipulated by Unesco, was divided between the Argentinians and the French, who helped at the beginning of the works. And Preve believes that the part taken by France is now in the city of Lille, although he does not know whether it can be visited.

In fact, Rosenvasser's original plan was to move and rebuild the Temple of Aksha on a higher site in Nubia, as was done with Abu Simbel. Yet technical difficulties and the condition of the temple made this impossible, according to the booklet of the La Plata museum. So, the 300 or so pieces donated by the government of Sudan to Argentina found their way to La Plata, whose university covered part of the costs of Rosenvasser's mission, together with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet).

To get there, the pieces had to be taken from Aksha to Wadi Halfa, and then to Port Sudan, in the east of the country. From there they were shipped to London and then all the way to Buenos Aires, as the documentary shows. Feher said the pieces were moved from Wadi Halfa to Port Sudan by train, bypassing Khartoum.

Museo_de_la_Plata-Wikimedia
The Museum of La Plata has the most important collection of Egyptian artefacts in Latin America (Wikimedia)

The collection now in the Museum of La Plata includes more than 40 sandstone blocks with reliefs and inscriptions from the time of the Pharaoh Ramesses II, and many pieces unearthed during excavations, especially ceramics of different types and periods. In addition to these relics, there is a smaller collection consisting of two coffins with their respective mummies and a number of figures and amulets.

These objects were acquired in 1888 from Cairo's Boulaq Museum, today's Egyptian Museum, by the former governor of the province of Buenos Aires and founder of La Plata, Dardo Rocha. It is believed that it was also Rocha who acquired the Buenos Aires papyrus deciphered by Rosenvasser.

Preve noted that since the fateful fire at the National Museum of Brazil in 2020, during which millions of objects, including hundreds from ancient Egypt, were lost, the collection in La Plata has become even more important.

'Rosenvasser was passionate about anything that had to do with Egyptology. And he kept working until he passed away'

Elba Perla Fuscaldo, student of Abraham Rosenvasser 

"The collection that Rosenvasser brought to La Plata is the only place in Latin America where history students can see some of this," he said. "And due to sad circumstances, the value of this cultural heritage has increased even more."

In addition to the collection at the museum in La Plata, Rosenvasser also donated his library, including his books on ancient Egypt and the Middle East, to the Academia Argentina de las Letras, thus extending his legacy.

"In the 1990s and early 2000s, 22 percent of those who came to the library consulted his collection. So, this collection helped to form the new generation of Egyptologists and specialists in Oriental studies," said Parada, the library director. "It was crucial because he laid the foundations of Egyptology in Argentina."

One of Rosenvasser's first students and disciples, Fuscaldo, also ended up working on archaeological sites in Egypt between 1993 and 2007, becoming one of the first to do fieldwork in the region since Rosenvasser travelled to Aksha.

"Rosenvasser was passionate about anything that had to do with Egyptology. And he kept working until he passed away," she said.

In Sudan, Preve noted, those most interested in the country's history and the world of archaeology still remember today that without Rosenvasser the Aksha temple and the artefacts he helped rescue would remain 130 metres underwater, consumed by Lake Nasser.

"I was really moved that from a country like mine, with so many problems that we have, someone had the courage to do this," he concluded.

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Wednesday, August 24, 2022

De Young museum's 'Ramses the Great' exhibit opens featuring Egyptian treasures - CBS San Francisco

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/ramses-the-great-egypt-exhibit-opens-de-young-museum/

De Young museum's 'Ramses the Great' exhibit opens featuring Egyptian treasures

SAN FRANCISCO – With 181 pieces from ancient Egypt, the "Ramses the Great" exhibit has opened at San Francisco's de Young museum.

It's considered one of the greatest collections to ever come to the United States, but one of the biggest attractions at the museum Wednesday was the man who put it all together.  

"You know, anything about ancient Egypt captures the hearts of people," explained Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former Minister of Antiquities. "If you ask a child the age of eight, you tell them 'Egypt,' they will say 'pyramids, the Sphinx, Tutankhamen, Ramses the 2nd, and mummies.'"

With that signature enthusiasm, Dr. Hawass walked through an exhibit that truly delivers the gold of the pharaohs.

ramses-the-great-de-young-082322.jpg
Opening day at the "Ramses the Great" Egypt exhibit at the de Young museum in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, August 23, 2022. CBS

"It shows his power," Hawass told KPIX 5 of the pieces. "That he could really explore the gold mines in Nubia, granite in Aswan, and alabaster in Middle Egypt."

For all of the incredible things to see here, it was hard to match the attention paid to the exhibit's curator.

"Oh, it was cool," said Adrian, a visitor who recognized the famed Egyptologist. "I was quite star struck, actually."

People stopped in their tracks for pictures. After decades on television, Hawass is, in the words of one visitor, the face of Egyptian archeology.

"I really think all of this came because of the passion that I had in the beginning of my career," Hawass said. "That passion gave me the idea that I talk about archaeology as if I'm talking about my lover."

Along with the Ramses tour, Hawass is also focusing that passion toward a push to bring some artifacts, like the Rosetta Stone, back home to Egypt.

"How the Rosetta Stone can be in the British Museum?" Hawass scoffed. "Now it's time that the monuments of Africa have to go back to the Africans."

Not just a showman and a promoter, Hawass said he considers himself a defender of antiquity. A job he clearly still relishes.

"If anyone attacks," Hawass laughed, "Or talks about how aliens built the pyramids, things like that, I'm the one who stands up and says 'No! This is not true.'"

The exhibit is already drawing crowds, with lines on a Tuesday, "Ramses the Great" runs through February.

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Northern Cal. Egyptology Lecture Sept. 11: Funerary Papyri as Social Reflections of the Living and the Dead

The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Marissa A. Stevens, UCLA:

 


Funerary Papyri as Social Reflections 
Of the Living and the Dead

Sunday, September 11, 2022, 3 PM Pacific Time
Room 20 Social Sciences Building (formerly Barrows Hall)
UC Berkeley


Please note that no Zoom meeting is scheduled for this lecture.

Glenn Meyer
ARCE-NC Publicity Director



Image courtesy of Dr.
Marissa A. Stevens

About the Lecture:

Twenty-first Dynasty funerary papyri – consisting of texts and images from the Book of the Dead, the many Underworld Books, and other cosmographic scenes – have always fascinated Egyptologists for what they reveal about Egyptian afterlife beliefs and their understanding and conceptualization of the underworld.  But these documents are also social objects.  The creation, ownership, and use of these papyri can shed much light about the deceased who reap the religious benefit of the texts and on the family of the deceased, who also benefit from these objects in social and ideological ways.  Studying these papyri as objects of social life, we can learn about temple life, titles and rank, family structure, inheritance, and social status of the deceased and the families they left behind.  Funerary papyri were therefore used as a form of social competition, and reveal much about the mindset of the elite priests of 21st Dynasty Thebes.  
 
About the Speaker:




Dr. Marissa Stevens is the Assistant Director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World.  Trained as an Egyptologist who studies the materiality, social history, and texts of the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period, she completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures. Combining art historical and linguistic approaches, her research interests focus on how objects can solidify, maintain, and perpetuate social identity, especially in times of crisis when more traditional means of self-identification are absent.

About ARCE-NC:

For more information, please visit https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, https://arce-nc.org/, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, or https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://www.arce.org/general-membership and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up.


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