Archaeologists in Egypt have unearthed what they describe as a city that dates back more than 5,000 years, containing houses, tools, pottery and huge graves. It lies by the River Nile, close to the Temple of Seti the First in Abydos. Experts say the size of the 15 newly discovered graves indicates the high social standing of those buried. Read more
Egyptian artworks trace ecological collapse over 6,000 years
Depictions of animals in ancient Egyptian artifacts have helped scientists assemble a detailed record of the large mammals that lived in the Nile Valley over the past 6,000 years. A new analysis of this record shows that species extinctions, probably caused by a drying climate and growing human population in the region, have made the ecosystem progressively less stable. Read more
A 4,000-year-old Egyptian statue expected to raise about £6m has sold for £15.76m at Christie's of London. Northampton Borough Council auctioned the Sekhemka limestone statue to help fund a £14m extension to Northampton Museum and Art Gallery. However, Arts Council England had warned the council its museum could lose its accreditation status. Read more
Climate change caused empire's fall, tree rings reveal
A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna, forthcoming in the June issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science. Read more
The oldest-known representations of a pharaoh are carved on rocks near the Nile River in southern Egypt, researchers report. The carvings were first observed and recorded in the 1890s, but only rediscovered in 2008. In them, a white-crowned figure travels in ceremonial processions and on sickle-shaped boats, perhaps representing an early tax-collecting tour of Egypt. Read more
Police in Italy say they have recovered a 2,000-year-old Egyptian sphinx stolen from a cemetery near Rome, about to be smuggled out of the country. Read more
Burial site revealing ancient Egyptian funerary rites uncovered
In the course of routine excavation work at the tomb of the first Middle Kingdom governor of the Hare Nome or province, the nomarch Ahanakht I at the Deir Al-Barsha site in Minya, Belgian archaeologists from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven stumbled on what is believed to be an important burial going back to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. Read more
This year, 2011, was indeed different for Egypt. A few days after the revolution broke out on 25 January, eventually toppling president Hosni Mubarak and his regime, the police force faded into the background and many of Egypt's most important monuments and archaeological sites were left vulnerable to attacks by vandals, thugs and thieves. The first victim of the turmoil was the Egyptian Museum on the rim of the revolutionary hotspot, Tahrir Square. On Friday 28 January thieves broke into the museum through a skylight and removed 48 artefacts from their showcases. By good fortune, 29 of the missing items were recovered soon afterwards, many of them handed in by members of the public. Read more
Using a new technology known as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), a team of Belgian scientists and Professor John Coleman Darnell of Yale have determined that Egyptian petroglyphs found at the east bank of the Nile are about 15,000 years old, making them the oldest rock art in Egypt and possibly the earliest known graphic record in North Africa. The dating results will be published in the December issue of Antiquity (Vol. 85 Issue 330, pp. 1184-1193). The site of the rock art panels is near the modern village of Qurta, about 40km south of the Upper-Egyptian town of Edfu. First seen by Canadian archaeologists in the early 1960s, they were subsequently forgotten and relocated by the Belgian mission in 2005. The rediscovery was announced in the Project Gallery of Antiquity in 2007. The rock art at Qurta is characterised by hammered and incised naturalistic-style images of aurochs and other wild animals. On the basis of their intrinsic characteristics (subject matter, technique, and style), their patina and degree of weathering, as well as the archaeological and geomorphological context, these petroglyphs have been attributed to the late Pleistocene era, specifically to the late Palaeolithic period (roughly 23,000 to 11,000 ago). This makes them more or less contemporary with European art from the last Ice Age - such as the wall-paintings of Lascaux and Altamira caves.
Nekhen (Greek: 'city of hawks', Strabo xvii. p. 817, transliterated as Hierakonpolis, Hieraconpolis, or Hieracompolis; Arabic: Al-Kom Al-Amar) was the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt at the end of the Predynastic period (c. 3200-3100 BC) and probably, also during the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100-2686 BC). Some authors suggest occupation dates that should begin thousands of years earlier. Read more