Two Ancient Egyptian Kingdom Tombs in Luxor, Egypt, Are Now Open

Two tombs of unidentified officials dated to Egypt’s New Kingdom era have been opened at Luxor’s Draa Abul-Naglaa necropolis years after they were initially discovered by German archaeologist Frederica Kampp in the 1990s.

The opening of the tombs was announced at an international conference attended by the governor of Luxor, the minister of social solidarity, the director-general of the International Monetary Fund, members of the international media, foreign ambassadors, members of parliament, and the Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany.

“It is a very important discovery because both tombs contain very rich funerary collections, and one of them has a very distinguished painted statue of a lady in the Osirian shape,” with this most recent discovery being the third Draa Abul-Naga alone.

“It seems that our ancient Egyptian ancestors are bestowing their blessing on Egypt’s economy as these discoveries are good promotion for the country and its tourism industry,” El-Enany told Ahram Online.

Mostafa Waziri, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and head of the Egyptian excavation mission, explains that both tombs were given special numbers by German archaeologist Frederica Kampp in the 1990s.

The first tomb, named “Kampp 161,” was never excavated, while excavation work on the second, “Kampp 150,” was undertaken by archaeologist Kampp short of entering the tomb itself.

The tombs had been left untouched until excavation started during the recent archaeological season. Most of the items discovered in Kampala 161 are fragments of wooden coffins.

The most notable discoveries are a large wooden mask that was originally part of a coffin, a small painted wooden mask, a fragment of a gilded wooden mask in poor condition, four legs of wooden chairs that were among the deceased’s funerary equipment, as well as the lower part of a wooden Osirian shaped coffin decorated with a scene of goddess Isis lifting up her hands.

“The owner of Kampp 150 is not yet known, but there are two possible candidates,” Waziri told Ahram Online.

He said that the first possibility is that the tomb belongs to a person named Djehuty Mes, as this name is engraved on one of the walls.

The second possibility is that the owner could be the scribe “Maati,” as his name and the name of his wife “Mehi” are inscribed on 50 funerary cones found in the tomb’s rectangular chamber.

The tomb has only one inscription on one of its northern pillars. It shows a scene with a seated man offering food to four oxen, with the first kneeling in front of the man, who is giving it herbs. The scene also depicts five people making funerary furniture.

The entrance of the long hall is inscribed with hieroglyphic text with the name “Djehuty Mes.” The ceiling of the chamber is inscribed with hieroglyphic inscriptions and the cartouche of King Thutmose I.

The objects uncovered inside include 100 funerary cones, painted wooden masks, a collection of 450 statues carved in different materials such as clay, wood and faience, and a small box in the shape of a wooden coffin with a lid.

The box was probably used for storing an Ushabti figurine 17 cm tall and 6 cm large. Also found was a collection of clay vessels of different shapes and sizes, as well as a mummy wrapped in linen with its hands on its chest in the Osirian form studies, suggest that the mummy, which was found inside the long chamber, could be of a top official or another powerful person.

Archeologists of Egypt Discover Pharaoh’s Boat in Perfect Condition

Archeologists of Egypt uncovered a boat claimed to have been “perfectly preserved” by Pharaoh Khufu himself, which led to verified theories of how ancient civilization constructed their wonders.

Probably the most famous and well-known of Egypt’s many ancient landmarks and includes the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx of Giza. 

The Great Pyramid of Giza, or the Pyramid of Khufu, is a spectacle of the three still existing pyramids today, who marvel at how a society over 4,500 years ago managed to build such a colossal structure. 

But archeologists were able to slowly combine what this ancient civilization looked like and how ingenious and brilliant people have worked together, thanks to a find made more than half a century ago.

Amazon Prime’s “Secrets of Archaeology revealed some of those secrets. The 2014 series explained: “On this plateau, set on the edge of the desert, the story of the pyramids achieved its finest hour.

“It is here that we best appreciate the grandeur and majesty of these constructions, and the organizational skills and methods used to erect them.

“The workers here were organized into teams that hauled blocks of stones on huge sledges mounted on logs of wood. “Each team was made up of about 1,000 men organized along military lines and led by a master mason and various underlings.

“They were not slaves, they earned a regular wage, bed, and board and it is thanks to their work that these immense structures were ever completed.”

The series continued, explaining the clever tactics used by the ancient society to haul together in the building process. It added: “Even today, such imposing buildings would involve complex engineering problems.

“The Great Pyramid of Cheops, which was the first one to be built in Giza around 2500BC, has a base that covers over 12 acres (48,500 square meters). “More than 2,300,000 blocks of stone were needed to build the base and weighed between two and 200 tonnes each.

“It may sound incredible, but this was once a lush green land, with neither desert nor buildings. “Irrigation canals linked the areas to the Nile, and some of the stones used in buildings were transported on these canals.”

The documentary went on to reveal how evidence of this was discovered more than 50 years ago. It added: “A boat made with cedarwood built almost 5,000 years ago was discovered here in 1954 near the Pyramid of Cheops, still in a perfect state of preservation.

“Archaeologists found it belonged to the pharaoh Cheops himself, 140 feet long, equipped with 12 oars and was probably used by Cheops when he traveled along the Nile. “On those occasions, his subjects could get a glimpse of their Pharaoh and pay homage to him.”

At completion, the Great Pyramid was surfaced with white “casing stones” — slant-faced, but flat-topped, blocks of highly polished white limestone.

However, in 1303, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which were taken away 50 years later to be used in the building of mosques and fortresses in Cairo.

Many other theories have been proposed regarding the pyramid’s construction techniques, disagreeing on whether the blocks were dragged, lifted, or even rolled into place. 

The Greeks believed that slave labor was used, but modern discoveries made at nearby workers’ camps associated with construction at Giza suggest it was built instead of thousands of skilled workers. 

Czech archaeologist, Miroslav Verner, claimed that the labor was organized into a hierarchy, consisting of two gangs of 100,000 men, divided into five zaa or phyle of 20,000 men each, which may have been further divided according to the skills of the workers.

Researchers “shocked” to discover 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy was a pregnant woman

A mummified fetus identified within the leathery womb of an ancient Egyptian pregnant mummy was preserved for more than 2,000 years. Now, scientists have described the unusual processes that led to its preservation.

The Warsaw Mummy Project was launched in 2015 by a team of bio-archaeologists from the University of Warsaw. Their website says they aim to “thoroughly examine human and animal mummies from ancient Egypt at the National Museum in Warsaw.”

In April 2021, the BBC announced that a team of Warsaw Project researchers published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science revealing the first documented case of a pregnant ancient Egyptian mummy and its mummified fetus.

The 2,000-year-old mummy, currently on display at the National Museum in Warsaw, was at first believed to be the remains of Hor Djehuti, a High Priest of Amun from the time of Ahmose I who lived at the beginning of the 18th Dynasty (1539 to 1292 BC).

However, in 2016, the Warsaw Project announced that the mummy was in fact that of an embalmed pregnant woman who was in the 26th to 30th week of her pregnancy when she died and was mummified!

Back in April 2021 we covered the publication of the scientist’s first study of the pregnant mummy .

At that time, Dr. Wojciech Ejsmond, lead author from the Polish Academy of Sciences, told The Sun that while mummies of babies were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, this was the first time a pregnant woman has been preserved with soft tissue.

In April, Dr. Ejsmond said “more research is needed.” Now, the same team is back in the headlines having done the aforementioned research on the mummified fetus and they say the mysteries of the pregnant mummy only exist because of an unusual chemical process that led to the fetus being “pickled” and trapped in time.

Professor Ożarek-Szilke is co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project. In a new paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science , the bio-archaeologist explained that to dry the pregnant woman’s dead body the embalmers covered her with natron, a natural compound of sodium salts that was used extensively in prehistory across Egypt, Middle East and Greece.

The powder was mostly used like baking-soda in cooking, medicine and agriculture, but it also had applications in glass-making and mummification.

Natron acts as a natural disinfectant and desiccating (drying) agent and it was the primary ingredient used in the ancient Egyptian mummification process .

After removing the organs and packing the internal cavities with dry natron, the body tissues were preserved. Then, the cadaver was packed with dry Nile mud, sawdust, lichen and dry cloths to make it more flexible in the afterlife.

The scientists wrote in the new study that when the natron was spread over the pregnant woman “it caused formic acid and other compounds” to manifest inside the woman’s uterus, creating the perfect conditions for preserving the fetus.

Gardeners know all too well, as do doctors, that acid and alkaline levels (pH) in nature determines the success of all organic growth. PH is a measure of the relative amount of free hydrogen and hydroxyl ions in water: with the more free hydrogen ions making for greater acidity.

During life, high pH (acid) in your blood it’s called alkalosis, while low pH is called acidosis, and both can lead to severe kidney complications. In the case of the mummified pregnant woman the increased acidity served to preserve the fetus.

Because of several chemical processes related to decomposition, say the scientists, the pH level inside the woman’s body shifted from an alkaline to a more acidic environment.

The new paper explains that these acids caused the minerals trapped within the tiny fetal bones to dry out and over time they “mineralized” or “pickled.”

Dr. Ożarek-Szilke explained that the scans of the ancient Egyptian mummified fetus show the fetus’ “mineralized skull,” which developed the fastest. The hands and feet also appear on scans but these never formed with bones, but left behind only dried tissues.

Site Of Ancient Egyptian “Great Revolt”, Recorded On Rosetta Stone, Finally Discovered

Archaeologists have long known about the Great Revolt, a battle between the ancient Egyptians and the Ptolemaic Kingdom that lasted from 207 B.C. to 184 B.C., because it is mentioned on the Rosetta Stone and in other historical texts. But now, archaeologists have finally discovered the exact location of one of the revolt’s battles.

In 2009, archaeologists began excavating a site known as Tell el-Timai, where an ancient Greco-Roman industrial city called Thmouis was located on the Nile Delta of northern Egypt.

The excavations were part of the Tell Timai Archaeological Project, an ongoing program by the University of Hawaii to learn more about Thmouis and the role it played in ancient Egypt. The team’s findings were published Dec 2022 in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

The excavations revealed evidence that Thmouis was “ground zero” of a violent conflict, but at first the researchers weren’t certain which one.

Over the next decade, they unearthed the remains of numerous buildings that had been burned to the ground, as well as a cache of artifacts that included weapons like ballista stones along with coins and a headless statue depicting the Ptolemaic queen Arsinoë II.

They also discovered an abundance of unburied ancient human remains strewn about the city, according to the study.

“At first I was seeing things that piqued my curiosity and began to realize that we were looking at the destruction layer,” study first author Jay Silverstein, project co-director of Tell Timai and an archaeologist and senior lecturer at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, told Live Science. “And then we started finding bodies.”

The Ptolemaic period (304 B.C. to 30 B.C.) was started by Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian generals. The Rosetta Stone contains a decree written in 196 B.C., during the reign of pharaoh Ptolemy V, when the Great Revolt was ongoing. 

Both before and after the Ptolemies gained control, ancient Egyptians were meticulous when it came to burying the dead, even creating “elaborate underground embalming workshops,” like the one recently discovered in Saqqara.

“In Egypt, people pay a lot of attention to burying people, so to have people unburied tells you a lot,” Silverstein said. “All these findings were sending a message that there was some event here in history and we had to figure out what it was.”

However, the identities of the deceased are unclear. “The unburied dead could be Greeks who lived at Thmouis who were overtaken by the violence of the insurrection, or they could be Egyptians who died defending the town,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Dating the battleground

Using some of the artifacts plucked from the site, including coins pulled from beneath a home’s floorboards, along with the discovery of an abandoned kiln complex where pottery was produced, archaeologists could better pinpoint the time period of the battle based on when the coins were minted.

During the excavation, they pulled fragments of imported Greek wares and shards of pottery, whose styles helped them determine that the ceramics probably dated to the Ptolemaic Kingdom, Silverstein said.

Within the kiln complex, archaeologists were surprised to find the remains of a man inside a kiln with his legs sticking out.

“I think it’s possible that he had crawled into a non-functioning kiln to try to hide [during the attack],” Silverstein said.

Historical texts also confirm that the kilns were shut down near the end of the Early Ptolemaic period, when the Egyptians unsuccessfully tried to liberate themselves from Ptolemaic rule during the Great Revolt.

The kilns that remained and were unearthed during the excavation were all “truncated at a uniform level,” offering more evidence that an attack happened at the site, according to the study. 

“The evidence of conflict and destruction at northern Thmouis is unequivocal, and the timing is well-placed  and thus coincides with the Great Revolt,” the study authors wrote in their paper.

Child Buried With 142 Dogs in Ancient Egyptian Necropolis

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of 142 non-ritually buried dogs, covered in blue powder, in an elite Egyptian tomb. It is believed they were drowned in a reservoir flood.

Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, the Faiyum Oasis necropolis contains a group of ancient Egyptian tombs located approximately 62 miles (100 kilometers) southwest of Cairo. The tombs feature well-preserved paintings and inscriptions from the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE) through the Ptolemaic Period (305-30 BCE), illustrating the day-to-day activities of ancient Egypt.

An article by Heritage Daily explains that archaeologists from CEI RAS have been excavating 4th century BC to 7th century AD burials at Faiyum for several years.

In 2021, an international team of archaeologists uncovered a large tomb dating back to the New Kingdom period (1550-1070 BC) that contained the remains of “142 dogs,” buried alongside the tomb’s owner, who is believed to have been an elite 8 or 9 year old girl.

Four Legged Family Members, Or Working Dogs?

The discovery of the 142 dogs’ remains offers newfound insights into ancient Egyptians’ relationship with canines, both as pets and working dogs, which is an important aspect of their culture that is not well understood.

The researchers said the dogs were “ carefully buried ,” with many of them lying on their sides, facing the tomb’s human inhabitant. According to an article in Greek Reporter , this suggests the dogs were highly valued and possibly even considered members of the family.

Different dog breeds were identified in the tomb, with some of the races resembling modern-day breeds, such as greyhounds and salukis, while others were wild pariah dogs.

This discovery indicates that Egyptians bred dogs for specific jobs, like hunting, herding, and companionship. To learn more about their breeds and origins, the archaeologists are now planning a study of the 142 dogs’ DNA.

They All Died Together, But Not By A Human Hand

In ancient cultures, it was not uncommon for animals to be buried alongside their owners, which were often regarded as companions and served as status symbols. In ancient Egypt, dogs were highly valued and were sometimes mummified and buried with their owners in tombs or cemeteries. But not in this case.

This discovery of 142 dog remains is significant, in that it has the potential to provide new insights into the culture and society of ancient Egypt, and how they interacted with animals. Zoologist Galina Belov , from the Centre for Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Egyptology Department, examined the dogs and found that they all died at the same time, with “no evidence of violence”.

Accidental Death by Drowning?

At Dayr al-Barsha, a Coptic village in Middle Egypt, the remains found in shafts and burial chambers included dogs, foxes, eagle owls, bats, rodents, and snakes.

However, these animals were not ritually buried, but rather trapped in the shafts by accident. And it would seem that an accident was also the cause of death of the 142 dogs discovered last year.

According to a report on News AM , the researchers identified traces of “blue clay” over the dog’s remains, which are thought to have come from an ancient Egyptian reservoir.

This discovery suggested the dogs had been involved with a flooded water source in which they might have drowned. In conclusion, it is thought that maybe the child had been caring for the animals, but an even bigger mystery surrounds “the linen bag” found on the girl’s head!

Linen Indicated High-Status in Ancient Egypt

A similar linen bag was found on another head at the same necropolis, but on an executed man with an arrow in his chest. By 3600 BC, Egyptians had begun to mummify the dead by wrapping them in linen bandages or strips with plant extracted embalming oils, and the linen was adhered to the body using gum, as opposed to a glue.

Linen dressings provided the body physical protection from the elements, and depending on how wealthy the deceased’s family was, the departed could be dressed with an ornamental funeral mask and shroud.

However, in this case, the deceased girl with the linen bag on her head was laid amongst almost 150 dogs, which while not being gold, also indicated elite status, as someone had to pay for the feed and upkeep of all these animals.

Perfectly-preserved ‘bog beetles’ nearly as old as Egypt’s pyramids

Two thumb-size beetles found preserved in an English bog may look as though they died as recently as yesterday, but in reality they’re nearly as ancient as Egypt’s pyramids, new research finds.

The two oak capricorn beetles (that belonged to the genus Cerambyx) date back 3,785 years, according to radiocarbon dating. That means these beetles perished inside a piece of bogwood just as the last woolly mammoths were dying out on Siberia’s Wrangel Island, half a world over.

“These beetles are older than the Tudors, older than the Roman occupation of Britain, even older than the Roman Empire,” Max Barclay, curator of beetles at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, said in a statement.

“These beetles were alive and chewing the inside of that piece of wood when the pharaohs were building the pyramids in Egypt. It is tremendously exciting.”

The bog beetles have been part of the NHM collection since the late 1970s, after a farmer discovered the lifeless beetles in a piece of wood on his farm in East Anglia, on the eastern coast of England known for its Bronze and Iron Age settlements, as well as its bogs.

These waterlogged bogs have low-oxygen, highly-acidic conditions known for preserving organic matter, including dead bodies, Live Science previously reported.

As far as I know, the story is this: A farmer in eastern England was cutting up wood he’d found while doing some deep ploughing and discovered these insects inside; dead, of course,” Barclay told the BBC. “This was a huge piece of waterlogged oak, and he sent us a sample.”

The donation caught the attention of curators, who identified the insects as oak capricorn beetles — named for their long curved antennae, which look like the horns of the alpine ibex (Capra ibex). 

Cooling temperatures from climate change may have caused the oak capricorn beetle to go extinct in England, but not in Southern and Central Europe, where they live today, Barclay said in the statement.

“This is a beetle that is associated with warmer climates,” he said. “Possibly it existed in Britain 4,000 years ago because the climate was warmer, and as the climate cooled and the habitats destroyed, it became extinct.”

“Now, with global warming, there are indications that it could return to Britain in the future,” Barclay added.

Granted, the beetles will have to find the right habitat. Oak capricorn beetles, which live for just three to five years, lay their eggs in the deadwood part of very old, unshaded living trees, according to a fact sheet from the European Union. The adults can fly, albeit poorly, and are usually found within one-third of a mile (500 meters) of their tree. 

“It is quite extraordinary to hold something in your hand that looks like it was collected yesterday but is actually several millennia old,” Barclay said. 

3,300-Year-Old Egyptian Hairstyles Revealed They Wore Extensions!

Egyptian Discovery: Many women these days view their hair as a kind of accessory with which to play, changing its look, colour and even length depending on the season, their outfit, and whether they are feeling casual or sombre, or they’re just in the mood for a different look.

Hairstyles are part of fashion, every bit as important to a woman’s look as the shoes she wears or the purse she carries.

Nowadays, even women with short hair aren’t prevented from wearing a long, curly look – they simply add extensions and give their appearance a whole new vibe.

Most women today imagine that extensions (and other changes they can make) are recent innovations, a far cry from their grandmother’s day, when the only option was a bottle of peroxide, and that was only if they wanted to look like a bombshell movie star. Choices in those days, say 75 years ago, were truly limited, at least when it came to colour.

But as the saying goes, nothing on this earth is really new. And the ancient Egyptians, a truly advanced and sophisticated group, proved that repeatedly with everything from burial techniques that preserved bodies to hairstyles, colours and curls.

What we do now in expensive salons, techniques stylists imagine are cutting edge, are in fact as much as 3,300 years old, thanks to the Egyptians. Even extensions, which celebrities like Kim Kardashian tout as modern and fun, were worn by many women in ancient Egypt, and they were even buried wearing them, too.

Take the cemetery at the city of El-Amarna, for example. The cherished archaeological site, which has been undergoing exploration and excavation since 1977, revealed in 2014 examples of women who, thousands of years ago, wore intricate updos, extensions and even skull caps.

One skull was found six years ago with about 70 hair extensions still attached, and experts worked to recreate exactly what the Egyptian mummified body would have looked like when alive – hairdo intact.

The ongoing project is done by the Institute of Archaeological Research of Cambridge University in England, with the support and permission of the Ministry of Antiquities in Egypt.

The hairdos found indicate that women of ancient Egypt favoured complicated styles, ones that featured a variety of layers and lengths.

Several Egyptian skulls are so well preserved that archaeologists can get a clear, comprehensive picture of what trends and colours were fashionable back then. One skull shows that henna was likely used to cover grey hair on one woman, thereby giving her a more auburn shade, and probably a more youthful appearance.

These skulls and remains may be more than 3,000 years old, but the motivations behind the women’s choices were, it’s fair to say, timeless and still prevalent.

The Amarna Project continues to pull back the curtain on this ancient city, which citizens abandoned after the death of the pharaoh who built it.

The site consists of several zones, one of which is called Central City, where administration buildings, temples and palaces were built when the city was first constructed.

The pharaoh, Akhenaten, ruled from approximately 1353 until 1335 B.C. Historians say his greatest impact on his people was a change to their religion, moving it more fully to worshipping the sun.

Building Amarna was in keeping with those beliefs, but once the pharaoh passed away, citizens felt less compelled to stay in this city in the desert.

5,000-year-old wooden boat used by the pharaohs is discovered by French archaeologists

French archaeologists have discovered a 5,000-year-old wooden boat in an expedition in Egypt, it has emerged.

The significant discovery was made in Abu Rawash, west of Cairo, the antiquities ministry in Egypt said.

Mohammed Ibrahim, the antiquities minister, said: ‘It goes back to the era of Pharaoh Den, one of the First Dynasty kings’.

The six-metre long and 1.5-metre wide pharaonic solar boat ‘is in good condition,’ he added.

Its planks are now undergoing renovation before it is put on display in a museum.

The pharaohs believed that solar boats, buried close to them at death, would transport them in the afterlife.

According to Middle East Online, the boat’s wooden sheets were transported to the planned  National Museum of Egyptiamn Civilisation were they will be restored. 

One the museum is finished, it is expected they will be put on display at some point next year.

The group of French archeologists were working for the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO).

The group first started its excavation work in Abu Rawash in the early 1900s.

In 1954 an Egyptian archaeologist discovered what may be the Pharaoh Khufu’s 43-metre solar ship, made of cedar, in a Giza pyramid.

The 4,500 year-old intact vessel is on display near the pyramid.

It is one of the oldest, largest, and best-preserved vessels from antiquity and has been identified as the world’s oldest intact ship.

It is known as a ‘solar barge’, a ritual vessel to carry the resurrected king with the sun god Ra across the heavens.

Listen to the Recreated Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy

Media outlets have likened the sound to a “brief groan,” a “long, exasperated ‘meh’ without the ‘m,’” and “rather like ‘eeuuughhh’”

In the nearly 200 years since his mummy’s arrival at the Leeds City Museum in northern England, an ancient Egyptian priest named Nesyamun has slowly but surely revealed his secrets.

Employed as a high-ranking priest and scribe at the Karnak state temple in Thebes, Nesyamun performed rituals filled with both song and speech. Active during the turbulent reign of Ramses XI, who served as Egypt’s pharaoh between 1099 and 1069 B.C., he died in his mid-50s, likely due to a severe allergic reaction, and suffered from ailments including gum disease and heavily worn teeth. And, as evidenced by inscriptions on his coffin, Nesyamun hoped his soul would one day speak to the gods much as he had in life.

A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports fulfills the 3,000-year-old priest’s vision of the afterlife, drawing on CT scans of his surprisingly intact vocal tract to engineer an approximation of his voice.

The sound bite, created with a speech synthesizing tool called the Vocal Tract Organ, reconstructs “the sound that would come out of his vocal tract if he was in his coffin and his larynx came to life again,” says study co-author David Howard, a speech scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, to the New York Times’ Nicholas St. Fleur.

The clip itself is brief and vaguely underwhelming, capturing a single vowel sound media outlets have described as “resembl[ing] a brief groan,” “a bit like a long, exasperated ‘meh’ without the ‘m,’” “a sound caught between the words ‘bed’ and ‘bad,’” and “rather like ‘eeuuughhh.’”

Per the Washington Post’s Ben Guarino, Howard and his colleagues used a CT scan of Nesyamun’s vocal tract—a biologically unique speech-supporting tube that stretches from the larynx to the lips—to 3-D print a copy of his throat.

They then hooked this artificial organ to a loudspeaker and played an electronic signal mimicking the sound of a “human larynx acoustic output.” (Howard has previously used this technique on living humans, including himself, but the new research marks the first time the technology has been used to recreate a deceased individual’s voice, reports CNN’s Katie Hunt.)

Though the study serves as proof-of-concept for future voice recreation research, it has several practical limitations. As co-author and University of York archaeologist John Schofield tells Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky, Nesyamun’s supine burial position curbed the experiment’s scope.

Schofield explains, “The vocal tract has only one shape here—the shape as he lies in his sarcophagus—that produced just one sound.”

Another limiting factor, says Howard to CNN, was the priest’s lack of tongue muscles, which had long since wasted away. In truth, the speech scientist adds, the noise heard in the audio isn’t a “sound he would ever likely have made in practice because the bulk of his tongue isn’t there.”

Daniel Bodony, an aeroacoustics expert at the University of Illinois who was not involved in the study, tells the Post the team’s electronic approximation “sounds tinny” because Nesyamun’s mummy lacks fleshy, vibrating vocal folds capable of adding “richness and emotion” to one’s words.

In the future, the researchers may be able to overcome this and other obstacles by modifying their software to better approximate such factors as the size of the priest’s tongue and the position of his jaw. The team’s eventual goal is to move beyond singular vowel sounds to words and even full sentences.

“When visitors encounter the past, it is usually a visual encounter,” says Schofield to the Post. “With this voice we can change that. There is nothing more personal than someone’s voice.”

Still, some scholars—including Kara Cooney, an Egyptologist at the University of California, Los Angeles—have expressed concerns over the implications of the new study.

Though she acknowledges the work’s potential, Cooney tells the Times, “When you’re taking a human being and using so much inference about what they looked or sounded like, it can be done with an agenda that you might not even be aware of.”

Egypt says another trove of ancient coffins found in Saqqara

Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed another trove of ancient coffins in a vast necropolis south of Cairo, authorities said Monday.

The Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement that archaeologists found the collection of colorful, sealed sarcophagi buried more than 2,500 years ago at the Saqqara necropolis.

Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said more than 80 coffins were found.

Archaeologists also found colorful, gilded wooden statues, the ministry said. Details of the new discovery will be announced in a news conference at the famed Step Pyramid of Djoser, it said.

Egypt has sought to publicize its archaeological finds in an effort to revive its key tourism sector, which was badly hit by the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. The sector was also dealt a further blow this year by the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly and Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khalid el-Anany toured the area and inspected the new discovery, which came just over two weeks after the ministry revealed 59 sealed sarcophagi, with mummies inside most of them, in the same area of Saqqara.

The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis at Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis that includes the famed Giza Pyramids, as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1970s.

The plateau hosts at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, along with hundreds of tombs of ancient officials and other sites that range from the 1st Dynasty (2920-2770 B.C.) to the Coptic period (395-642).