A publicity still with Claudette Colbert in the 1934 film "Cleopatra."
EGYPTOMANIA A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy By Ronald H. Fritze Illustrated. 444 pp. Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press. $35.
Egypt has exerted a peculiar charm since ancient times. The Greeks and Romans deferred to it as a far older civilization, whose monuments and writing seemed both baffling and magical. Egyptian culture appeared to have emerged fully formed and to have disappeared almost as suddenly, but its 3,000-year history cast a long shadow over later centuries and is felt even today. This afterlife of ancient Egypt is the subject of Ronald H. Fritze's wide-ranging "Egyptomania."
Conventional wisdom sees the modern fascination with the land of the pharaohs taking shape from the Renaissance onward, stimulated by the trophies that had been brought to imperial Rome and later enhanced by Napoleon's short-lived Egyptian campaign, an incursion that created a vogue for decorative arts and monumental architecture of a decidedly "Oriental" flavor. Like Gothic chapels or Chinese pagodas, Egyptian art was embraced as an exotic foil to the classical style, but unlike the Gothic or Greek Revival, it lacked a coherent rationale and had little staying power. By the end of the 19th century, Egyptomania had become a branch of Orientalism.
Fritze offers a broader interpretation of the subject, going back to the Greek historian Herodotus and forward to Cecil B. DeMille and Tutankhamen, a reproduction of whose golden funerary mask adorns the book's cover. Unfortunately, Fritze tends to blur the line between Egyptomania and Egyptology, which is rather like blurring that between astrology and astronomy. The text is freighted with a history of the pharaohs and digressions on Hermeticism and Rosicrucianism that take us away from the main theme. Plots of novels and films are dutifully outlined, and the book suffers from being long on description and short on analysis. What it does convey well is the disjunction between the actuality of Egypt and later interpretations of it: Before hieroglyphics were deciphered by Champollion and other linguists in the 1820s, the reality of ancient Egypt was literally a closed book.
Fritze reminds us that what fascinated later artists and their public was not what Egyptologists considered important. Largely self-nourishing, Egyptomania was often detached from its original sources, and the stream of dime novels and films about mummies and their curses have, according to scholars, more to do with Western guilt over imperialism than with the supernatural. Even the artifacts exhumed from Tutankhamen's tomb with great fanfare beginning in 1922 did not, in fact, add much to our knowledge of ancient Egypt, although they were responsible for the museum world's first blockbuster traveling exhibition, which toured the West from 1972 to 1981.
"Egyptomania" has interesting chapters on travelers in the 19th century, when everyone from Gustave Flaubert to Ulysses S. Grant descended on the Nile. Fritze is particularly engaged with alternative Egyptology, which has embraced various wacky theories — including the notion that the pyramids were built with the help of space aliens and that the animal-headed gods so popular among the Egyptians were really human-animal hybrids created by those same industrious aliens. Here the author's earlier research into false history and pseudo-religions stands him in good stead, although whether all of this falls under the rubric of Egyptomania is debatable.
Fritze seems more comfortable with literary rather than visual sources, and the book's sparse illustrations bear that out. Above all, what's lacking here is a sense of the mystery and allure that informed Piranesi's Egyptian coffeehouse interior or the geometrical abstraction of Boullée's cenotaph honoring Newton or the majestic stage sets designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel for Mozart's "Magic Flute." And yet, although more rigorous criteria would have made for a more arrestingly presented case, "Egyptomania" does document an enduring fascination with its subject, based, as the author points out, "on the fact that it is both comfortably familiar and intriguingly exotic."
Bruce Boucher is the director of Sir John Soane's Museum in London and the author of "Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time."
A version of this review appears in print on December 4, 2016, on page BR23 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Like an Egyptian. Today's Paper|Subscribe
The Egypt Exploration Society invites applications for grants to support fieldwork and research in Egypt. The total value of the funds available will be in the region of £40,000; the maximum that any single project will be allocated is £20,000.
The closing date for applications is 5 pm (GMT) on Saturday 31 December 2016. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered. Interviews will not be held; applications will be considered by the Society's Fieldwork & Research Committee in January 2017 and applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application no later than 28 February 2017.
Applications will be considered for archaeological fieldwork, survey, aspects of excavation and post-excavation research and scientific analyses; architectural and/or epigraphic recording and analysis; and artefact and art-historical research. We particularly encourage applications that include field training opportunities and/or means of engaging local communities in Egypt. Research on secondary sources will not be eligible, other than as an integral element of the other categories. In general, projects which are wholly concerned with cultural heritage management or the construction of permanent infrastructure, or whose budgets include a substantial investment in these issues in either absolute or relative terms, will not be eligible, but can be considered as an integral element of wider projects; additional applications may also be considered where fieldwork necessitates urgent heritage management or infrastructure works.
Conditions
Applicants should be members of the Society, in good standing, and:
- UK citizens, or
- affiliated to a UK institution, or
- the current Field Director of a major project that has been EES-funded within the past five years (i.e. excludes Centenary Award projects).
Applications should normally be submitted by the proposed Field Director, who should have a doctorate in Egyptology, archaeology or a suitable related discipline from a recognised educational institution, and substantial fieldwork training and experience, or can demonstrate an appropriate track record of Egyptological research.
An applicant may submit only one application in each financial year.
Applications will not be accepted from individuals who have previously directed Society projects unless that work has been published to the satisfaction of the Society, and appropriate financial reports on that work have been submitted, and any unused funding repaid.
The work described in the application made to the Society must be undertaken in the period April 2017 to October 2018.
The Society will expect grant recipients to disseminate the results of their funded research as quickly as possible and by all available appropriate means - online reports/blogs, presentations to EES members and/or donors and/or partner institutions, articles for the EES Newsletter/Egyptian Archaeology/Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, etc. We strongly encourage those operating in Egypt with the Society's support to make use of social networks to share news and images from their activities in the field.
The application form is available for download here. All applications must be submitted via email to: application@ees.ac.uk.
This is one of a series of blogs written as an assignment by the 2015-16 Year 3 and MA students taking a course on "Supernatural Beings and Demons of Ancient Egypt" offered by Kasia Szpakowska at Swansea University.
Have you seen this demon?
Description:
This demon has a distinguishable iconography in which it can be seen as a hybridised being — an anthropomorphic, seated body with the head of a turtle. Within its hands it holds two daggers (be careful, this could be a dangerous being!) and is often seen protecting a gate within the netherworld. It could be classed as a guardian-demon.
Turtle-headed demon within the third gate of the netherworld. Lepsius Todtenbuch, Pl. LX BoD 144
The turtle can be identified as the Trionyx triunguis, a large growing and dangerous animal even in ancient Egypt. The female was able to grow large enough to be able to eat small Nilotic crocodiles, one of the most dangerous and feared animals to the ancient Egyptians! From the Middle Kingdom, the turtle is mentioned in funerary texts, for example CT368, which was used to protect the deceased from eating excrement in the afterlife.
"Get back Faeces! But Faeces is not my name. My name is Re, my name is aiHy Re on my two thrones. If you tell me to eat this, then Re will eat turtle."
Eating turtle for Re is equal to eating faeces for humans, a rather negative connotation.
The turtle also has association with the chaotic god Apophis, specifically in the 'Book of Overthrowing Apophis.' Apophis was symbolic of evil and chaos, quite the opposite to the nature of the guardian-demon. As can be seen in the p. Bremner-Rhind, the turtle is used as the determinative in the name of Apophis — "Apophis-enemy-turtle."
Name of Apophis with the determinative of the turtle. p. Bremner-Rhind.
It is evident that this missing demon is harnessing the negative and chaotic aspects of the turtle, which is used in its iconography, in order to protect the deceased in the afterlife. If you happen to cross it in the netherworld, at least you now know its name!
May respond to:
wnm-HwA.wt nt pH.wj=f — "the one who eats the excrement of his rear." The entity has been called this at least twice. Two Greco-Roman papyri attest this epithet: p. MMA 35.9.21 and p. Turin 1791, whilst the Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen identifies this epithet with a guardian of the third gate in the netherworld. The name, however, can be traced back to the coffin texts, more specifically CT1102.
Last seen:
There have been very few sightings of this demon, but those, which have been detailed, include Book of the Dead 144, found on two Theban papyri of the Ptolemaic period: p. Leiden T 16 and p. Turin 1791.
p. Leiden T 16, BoD 144
p. Turin 1791, BoD 144
Wooden statues, which resemble the description and previous sightings of the demon, can be found in the British Museum: EA50704, EA61416, both of the New Kingdom.
BM EA50704: Turtle-headed demon statue.
BM EA61416: Another turtle-headed demon statue.
The final sightings can be found on sarcophagi, primarily of the Third Intermediate Period, coming from the 21st dynasty and 22nd dynasty, one of which (Cairo J. E. 87297) even belonging to the pharaoh Psousennes I:
BM EA30721
BM EA6666
Cairo J. E. 87297
Cairo J.E. 87297. Montet, Tanis II, pl. LXXXVI.
but also, the demon can be seen in a unique female form, dated to the Ptolemaic Period.
CGC29315
If you have any information regarding this demon, please contact
The Tribe of Dan, one of the 12 "Israelite tribes," may have started as no such thing. New archaeological evidence suggests that the Danites originated with mercenaries hired from the Aegean and Syria by the Egyptian overlords of Canaan to keep order.
According to the Bible, after the Israelites conquered Canaan, the land was split between the tribes – with the exception of the tribe of Dan. Bitter at their lot, the tribe went northward, conquered and destroyed the city of Laish (also called Leshem), then rebuilt it and renamed it after their ancestor (Judges 18:1-29).
"And the coast of the children of Dan went out too little for them: therefore the children of Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and dwelt therein, and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their father" (Joshua 19:47).
Tell el-Qadi had been identified previously as the biblical city of Dan. Now recent excavations have uncovered a large neighborhood from the 12-11th century B.C.E. that shows compelling Aegean influences.
The discoveries have rekindled a longstanding academic brawl over the origin of the Danites. Were they really just a tribe of Israel that was left in the cold, found a conveniently isolated city and conquered it? Do they have anything to do with a mysterious kingdom called Danuna mentioned in ancient writing found in Turkey? Or maybe with the Denyen – a faction of invading Sea Peoples, according to ancient Egyptian sources? Or with the Danaoi, one of the Greek tribes? Or are these all one and the same? The findings at Tell el-Qadi (now Tel Dan) suggest they could well be.
The city of Dan was built on a mound near the southern foot of Mount Hermon, the tallest mountain in the Golan Heights. Certainly by the standards of the arid Middle East, the area is lush and fertile, well-watered by natural springs. The city's position was also strategic, smack on a key trading route between Tyre and Damascus.
Illustration: Early Iron Age neighborhood in Dan, which showed evidence of multiple cultural influences.Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology
The first settlement there dates back 7,000 years, to the Neolithic period. Among the earliest mentions of the city are Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts going back nearly 4,000 years, to the 19th century B.C.E. The site remained more or less continuously occupied through to the end of the Roman period
By the Middle Bronze Age, around 2000 B.C.E., it had become a mighty city, surrounded by massive ramparts, called Laish (La-EESH). By the Late Bronze Age, Laish had established sprawling trade connections with the countries and coastal cities throughout the eastern Mediterranean, including Sidon and Tyre to the north, Egypt to the south, and to the west, Cyprus – and Mycenaean Greece.
Aegean influences: Weapons and gods
Laish's ties with the Aegean seem to have been strong as far back as the 14th century B.C.E., as attested by the discovery of a tomb built with rough stones in a style akin to that found in Enkomi, in today's Cyprus, and in Ugarit, on the coast of today's northern Syria.
In the tomb, the archaeologists found more than 100 ceramic vessels that proved, by chemical analysis, to mostly originate in the Argolid in Greece, the center of Mycenaean culture during the Bronze Age.
This was a time in which the Egyptians were expanding northwards. As Canaan became a province of Egypt, Laish became part of their administrative system.
The excavations at Tel Dan began in 1966 under the direction of Avraham Biran and continued until 1999. After a hiatus of several years, Dr. David Ilan of the Hebrew Union College renewed excavating and, based on old material and new findings, he began to suspect that an old theory about Danite origins, first proposed by Michael Astour and Yigal Yadin in the 1960s, might be right, though their idea was at odds with the biblical narrative. Namely, that the Danites didn't begin as a tribe of Israel at all, but originated in the Aegean world.
Among the Aegean influences in the city of Dan, Ilan identified pithoi (large storage vessels) in several of the houses, along with pottery, figurines and ritual items originating in the Aegean, Syria and Egypt.
The finds indicate that the peoples living in Dan were a mixed bunch who brought their eating habits, grooming practices, weapons of choice, and their gods with them to the city.
Cultic chamber with bird bowl
Among the more tantalizing discoveries was a modest rectangular building containing a small chamber—a holy-of-holies—in the corner. Ilan has identified this as a cultic structure of a type common in the Aegean. Similar buildings have been found in Enkomi and Kition in Cyprus, and at Phylakopi, on the island of Milos in Greece; locally, the same type was found at the Philistine site of Tel Qasile (in Tel Aviv).
Postulated cultic site in a room that featured mud-brick benches by the walls.Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology
The excavators at Dan also found vessels decorated with Aegean-style birds, chalices, offering bowls, a model silo, and curious brain-shaped stones that may have been used in ritual.
Ilan postulates that these Aegean-style artifacts in Dan suggest the presence of worshippers hailing from the Aegean—perhaps the Denyen, Danuna (or Danaoi in Greek), in short, one of the ancient Greek tribes. The Denyen/Danuna were also one of the so-called "Sea Peoples" of Aegean origin who invaded Egypt, as described in Ramesses III´s mortuary temple relief (1175 B.C.E.).
Typically Danunite pottery vessel, featuring a bird.Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology
Surrounding the putative cultic structure, the excavators uncovered an industrial area featuring furnaces, crucibles, blowpipe nozzles, scrap metal, and slag from bronze smelting.
“We found all kinds of broken objects from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages that they melted and recast into new bronze objects, tools and weapons,” Ilan says. “They were scavengers and recyclers who were desperate for metal. These were crisis years.”
The mysterious proliferation of 'Dan'
Whether or not the Danites of ancient Israel originated in a Sea People will take more proving. Meanwhile, we can say that a slab carved in Luwian script from the 8th century B.C.E., some 2800 years ago, discovered in southern Turkey, attests to the existence of a Danunian Kingdom.
Given the indications of very strong cultural ties between Dan and the Aegean world, Ilan believes that Michael Astour and Yigal Yadin were correct: the people of Dan originated, at least in part, with the Denyen/Danuna/Danaoi of the Aegean coastal region, probably in the coastal region where Turkey and Syria meet today.
“The most famous Danite in the Bible is Samson, a quite essential archetype of a Greek hero: He is very strong, his power resides in his long hair, he tells riddles and he hangs out with Philistine women,” Ilan points out.
Yet more oblique evidence may be found in the song of Deborah, describing the tribes' various roles: “And Dan, why did he stay with the ships,” (Judges 5:17). Dan was apparently the only Israelite tribe that had ships, and was conspicuously absent from giving support to Barak against the forces of Sisera. The writer of Judges seems to hint that the Danites originated elsewhere and were different from the other tribes.
The arrival of the Danuna mercenaries
If Aegean mercenaries came to Dan, they would have been hired. The ones who would have hired them were the Egyptian overlords of Canaan, to help them keep order in the land.
Archaeological evidence of ancient Egyptian control over Canaan has been found throughout Israel.
The Egyptians began raiding the Canaanite lands for plunder and slaves in the 15th century B.C.E., though there was a hiatus in the 14th century: Egypt was undergoing a period of instability and seems to have neglected this area, allowing the Hittite kingdom, based in what is now modern Turkey, to become a major player in the region.
Recognizing this threat in the 13th century B.C.E., the Egyptians seemed to have changed their policy in Canaan.
“The Egyptians were worried about the Hittites in the north, who were expanding, encroaching on their borders and making deals with vassal kings in Syria and Lebanon,” Ilan explains.
Instead of having local proxy rulers, who tended to be unreliable and rebellious, the pharaohs decided to meet the mounting threat of the Hittites by establishing a series of small forts and administrative residences across Canaan. Aside from that at Beth Shean, these have been found in the archaeological sites of Tel Afek, Deir al-Balah, Tel Sharia, and in Tel Lachish.
In Tel Dan itself, the archaeologists found Egyptian cooking pots, a razor blade, and "practice arrowheads" made out of bone that look Egyptian, Ilan told Haaretz. He believes that Laish (Dan) was under Egyptian control during much of the Late Bronze Age.
Egyptian-style razor blades found at Tel Dan.Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology
But the outposts of the Egyptian empire were not manned solely by Egyptians, Ilan believes. They staffed these places with professional soldiers from the Aegean, Cyprus, Syria, Turkey, Libya, Nubia, and other countries. Much like Roman legionnaires, these soldiers would commit to serve the Egyptian crown for life. And like the legionnaires, they may have been given land grants at the end of their service.
This system of rule was highly advantageous to the Egyptians, since the foreigners had no allegiance to the local population, allowing the Egyptians to maintain a “Pax Egypta”.
“This would explain the layers of mixed cultural material at Tel Dan, with elements from Syria, Egypt, Cyprus, and the Aegean,” says Ilan. “We also have dozens of Egyptian cooking pots! These people served the Egyptians and the Egyptian army but they also included merchants doing business,” he adds.
As is the nature of things, Ilan believes that these foreigners married local Canaanite women, a theory supported by the local (Canaanite) cooking vessels found inside the houses. And their children were… something new.
But in the late 12th century B.C.E, in part of a thundering collapse of civilization throughout the Middle East, the Egyptians withdrew from Canaan. The erstwhile mercenaries, however, remained. David Ilan believes that these people who stayed behind at Tel Dan—Danuna, Egyptians, Canaanites and various other hybrid people—created a new amalgam society, and it is these who would become the Danites of biblical lore.
Dogs, monkeys, cats: 2,000-year-old pet cemetery uncovered in Egypt
Traci Watson, Special for USA TODAY , WUSA4:55 PM. EST December 01, 2016
A nearly 2,000-year-old pet cemetery holding the remains of dogs, monkeys and scores of cats has been uncovered in an ancient Egyptian town, archaeologists say.
A few animals still wore iron collars when they were laid to rest, and the graves of two young cats include ostrich-shell beads. Some of the beasts’ bodies were nestled under mats or pottery jars, signaling they were deliberately buried rather than just discarded as trash, researchers argue.
The careful treatment of the animals’ bodies suggests an “emotional (relationship) between men and pets as we know it today,” says Marta Osypińska of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the author of a new study in the journal Antiquity.
It’s not uncommon to find pets buried in ancient Egypt, but most were interred with or near their owners. The only humans buried near these pets were two people buried three centuries after the animals, Osypińska says.
Osypińska and her colleagues stumbled across the pets while excavating a trash dump just outside the ruins of Berenike, an ancient Egyptian port town along the Red Sea. The place was animal-centric from the beginning, originally serving as a way station for African elephants bound for battlefields.
The pet burials date to the first and second centuries A.D., when the town was a busy trading center and the Romans held sway.The Romans loved their pets, especially their dogs, and one grave at Berenike holds a young dog probably imported from either Rome or Greece. A heavily built animal similar to a mastiff, its belly held a final meal of fish and goat meat, and its skeleton shows it suffered from a painful bone cancer still common among dogs today. Its body had been wrapped in a basket and covered with pieces of broken pottery, clear evidence it was “a very loved animal,” says the University of Delaware’s Steven Sidebotham, who directs research at Berenike.
Elsewhere in Egypt, researchers have found vast animal cemeteries, among them a catacomb holding an estimated 8 million mummified dogs. Pilgrims would purchase such mummies as religious offerings, and animals interred at ritual burial grounds may have been bred solely for sacrifice and mummification. So it’s possible Berenike animals were likewise interred for some ritual purpose, says Wim Van Neer of Belgium’s Natural History Institute, who has done research at Berenike in the past.
The burials are “a very nice find,” says Salima Ikram of The American University in Cairo, but she wonders whether some of the animals were considered rubbish, given their location in a trash heap. She also points out that pet ownership is well known from ancient Egypt. Wall paintings depict pet cats, and ancient Egyptians have been found buried with pet dogs, monkeys and even a gazelle.
Osypińska responds the Berenike cats show no signs of having had their necks twisted, unlike the mummified cats buried for ritual reasons. She adds that most of the animals show signs of attentive burial – a deliberately dug grave pit, for example, or careful positioning of the body.
Though the Berenike animals were not the first pets in Egypt, they’re notable because of the conditions in which they were kept, Sidebotham says.
Berenike was “way out on the edge of nowhere,” he says, a site so remote and harsh that most food was imported from hundreds of miles away. “What makes this unique is (despite) the very rough circumstances in which these people are living, they still manage to find the time and effort to have companion animals with them.”
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | November 30, 2016 11:30am ET
A child walks between looting pits dug at the ancient Egyptian site of Abusir el-Malek.
Credit: Photo courtesy of Egypt Heritage Taskforce
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will sign an agreement with Egypt today (Nov. 30) that will restrict the importation of Egyptian artifacts to the United States.
"Under the agreement, the United States will impose import restrictions on archaeological material representing Egypt's cultural heritage dating from 5200 B.C. through 1517 A.D.," reads a statement from the U.S. Department of State. "Restrictions are intended to reduce the incentive for pillage and trafficking and are one of the many ways the United States is fighting the global market in illegal antiquities."
The agreement will be signed in a televised ceremony between Kerry and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. For years, the Egyptian government has been asking for an agreement to help curtail the widespread looting that has hit the country since the 2011 Egyptian revolution.
A Live Science investigation published in August revealed that since the 2011 revolution, more than $143 million worth of artifacts have been exported from Egypt to the United States. Interviews done with experts and officials during the investigation revealed that some of the artifacts may have been looted. Among other things, the sources told Live Science that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol does not have the resources to audit every artifact shipment and that it was difficult to prove that a particular shipment was being illegally imported. The claims made by the sources were backed up by documents and photos obtained by Live Science during the investigation.
Moreover, children died in unsafe tunnels while helping looters remove artifacts from an ancient cemetery, according to research done by members of Egypt's Heritage Task Force, which has been tracking looting in Egypt. Photos released by members of the task force showed the children working at the cemetery and in deep narrow tunnels.
How effective will the restrictions be?
It remains to be seen how effective the restrictions will be at keeping stolen Egyptian artifacts from reaching the United States. The U.S. has similar restrictions on imports from Iraq and Syria, but shipments of artifacts from those countries have still arrived.
For instance, despite import restrictions on Iraq, an "antiques" shipment (as it was labeled) with a declared value of $3.5 million passed through customs in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in August 2013, according to documents released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Neither the Census Bureau nor Customs and Border Patrol has revealed the exact contents of the shipment due to laws restricting the release of trade information.
Additionally, a Live Science investigation published in September revealed that some smugglers may have gotten around the Iraq and Syria restrictions by shipping artifacts to the U.S. through Turkey, which shares a border with both Syria and Iraq. The investigation revealed that since 2003, more than $283 million worth of artifacts have been exported from Turkey to the United States. Experts interviewed by Live Science said those shipments may have included artifacts looted in Syria and Iraq that were smuggled to Turkey before being sent to the United States.
The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities is set to ship on Wednesday a gift of a six-metre-tall replica statue of King Ramses II to Ecuador, to be erected in the country's capital Quito.
Amr El-Tibi, Executive Director of the Antiquities Replicas Unit at the ministry, told Ahram Online the statue is a gift to Ecuador from the Egyptian ministries of antiquities and foreign Affairs, and the Egyptian Tourism Authority.
The replica statue was carved by artisans in the ministry's replicas unit.
El-Tibi said the Ecuadorian government will rename Quito's Condado Square, Egypt Square, in appreciation of the gift.
He added that the large statue took 60 days to carve, from a mixture of granite and other materials designed to withstand the Ecuadorian climate.
The statue is a replica of the statue of Ramses II that used to stand in Ramses square in downtown Cairo, but will stand in the grand hall at the Grand Egyptian Museum when it opens in 2017.
A pair of unimpressive mummified legs on display in an Italian museum may belong to one of antiquity's most beautiful women, according to an international team of researchers who have analyzed the more than 3,200-year-old remains for the first time.
Consisting of fragmented thigh bones, kneecap and a proximal tibia part (the upper portion of the bone where it widens to help form the knee joint), the body parts are likely those of Queen Nefertari.
Not to be confused with Nefertiti, who lived one Dynasty earlier, Nefertari was the first and favorite wife of the mighty warrior pharaoh Ramses II, who reigned between 1290-1224 BC during the early 19th Dynasty.
"She is the only queen from the Ramesside era to have been likely identified so far," Egyptologist Michael Habicht at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland, told Seeker.
The study, detailed in the journal PLOS ONE, indicates the ancient Egyptian beauty was very slim and tall. The information helps reconstruct the life of one of the most intriguing figures of ancient Egypt.
"Nefertari is one of the truly great and important queens of Egypt and plays in the league of Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Cleopatra," Habicht said.
Known for the impressive wall paintings of her lavishly decorated tomb in the Valley of the Queens, which depict her timeless beauty in unusually lifelike form, Nefertari was highly educated and played an active role in foreign politics.
However, little is known about her demise.
"We know that she gave birth to four sons and four daughters and that she attended the opening ceremony of the rock-cut temples of Abu Simbel in the year 24 of Ramses II's reign. After that event, she disappeared from history," Habicht said.
Egyptologists estimate she probably died around her husband's 25th year of reign, having reached an age of about 40 to 50 years.
Nefertari's tomb, known as QV66, was heavily plundered in antiquity and her mummy was ripped to pieces and tossed around by the ancient robbers.
When Italian diplomat and archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli opened the queen's burial in 1904, he found a series of broken remains, including fragments of the pink granite sarcophagus that once held Nefertari's mummy, a pair of sandals and two fragmented mummified legs.
Housed at the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, the remains have now been investigated in a multidisciplinary study.
"Although no absolute certainty exists, the results speak in favor of an identification of the remains as Nefertari's," lead author Frank Rühli, head of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, told Seeker.
Anthropometric reconstruction and assessment of the size of the knees revealed they belonged to a woman whose stature ranged between 165 cm (5 foot 5 inches) and 168 cm (5 foot 6 inches).
The body height was also independently estimated by professor Maciej Henneberg at the University of Adelaide, Australia, who obtained the same results — a stature of about 165 cm.
"Data about women from the New Kingdom and 3rd Intermediate Period show she was probably taller than 84 percent of the women of her time," Rühli said.
Analysis of the materials used for embalming showed they were consistent with Ramesside mummification traditions, while X-rays of the left knee pointed to possible traces of arteriosclerosis, suggesting the legs belonged to an elderly person.
"The accumulated evidence could point to an individual between 40 and 60 years old," Rühli and colleagues wrote.
A pair of sandals found in Queen Nefertari's tombCredit: Michael Habicht
The mystery over the mummified legs, however, is not completely solved. The authors admit the identification can't be done with absolute certainty as some analysis failed. Moreover, QV66 is not an original undisturbed burial situation.
DNA testing was inconclusive since the samples turned to be contaminated and not suitable for analysis, while radiocarbon dating of the remains yielded odd results — the remains would predate the assumed lifespan of Queen Nefertari's by some 200 years.
"A discrepancy between radiocarbon dating and Egyptian chronology models has long been debated. Indeed, some question on the chronological model of the New Kingdom may now arise," Habicht said.
"For the future, we strongly suggest radiocarbon dating of other royal and non-royal remains of the Ramesside era, in order to validate or disprove the chronology," he added.
Nefertari's tomb also contained a pair of sandals made of vegetal material — grass, palm leaf and papyrus — in a style typical of the 18th-19th Dynasties.
According to the researchers, the fine quality and shape of the sandals suggest they were royal footwear.
They estimated the shoe size to be 39-40 (US size 9), fit an individual of Nefertari's stature.
André Veldmeijer, visiting research scholar at the American University in Cairo, agrees on the sandal' size.
"The area of the foot, if the sandal would fit neatly, would reach slightly beyond the front strap, say about 24-25 cm (9.4-9.5 inches) This would indeed result in size somewhere 39 to 40," Veldmeijer, an authority on ancient footwear, told Seeker.
He noted, however, that is not certain the sandals would fit exactly.
"For example, the footwear from King Tut's tomb fall in two sizes without intermediate size. So, it seems that footwear was not really made to fit," Veldmeijer said.
Rühli and colleagues examined the possibility that remains from a burial of the 17th or 18th Dynasty were washed in the tomb after it was open. However, tomb QV66 is on higher ground at the side of the Valley of the Queens, while the burials from the 17th and 18th Dynasty are mostly at the bottom of the valley.
"Mudslide and heavy rains would have washed remains out of the valley but unlikely upwards and towards the end of the valley," the researchers noted.
"The most likely scenario is that the mummified knees truly belong to Queen Nefertari. We have the fact that the remains were found in her tomb, together with objects naming her alone and no one else," Habicht said.
The Tribe of Dan, one of the 12 "Israelite tribes," may have started as no such thing. New archaeological evidence suggests that the Danites originated with mercenaries hired from the Aegean and Syria by the Egyptian overlords of Canaan to keep order.