OF THE
TIMES
"Many foreign missions searched for this city and never found it," said Hawass, a former antiquities minister. The team began excavations in September 2020, between the temples of Ramses III and Amenhotep III near Luxor, some 500 kilometres (300 miles) south of Cairo.
"Within weeks, to the team's great surprise, formations of mud bricks began to appear in all directions," the statement said.
"What they unearthed was the site of a large city in a good condition of preservation, with almost complete walls, and with rooms filled with tools of daily life."
After seven months of excavations, several neighbourhoods have been uncovered, including a bakery complete with ovens and storage pottery, as well as administrative and residential districts.
Amenhotep III inherited an empire that stretched from the Euphrates River in modern Iraq and Syria to Sudan and died around 1354 BC, ancient historians say.
He ruled for nearly four decades, a reign known for its opulence and the grandeur of its monuments, including the Colossi of Memnon -- two massive stone statues near Luxor that represent him and his wife.
"The archaeological layers have laid untouched for thousands of years, left by the ancient residents as if it were yesterday," the team's statement said.
The team said they were optimistic that further important finds would be revealed, noting they had discovered groups of tombs reached through "stairs carved into the rock", a similar construction to those found in the Valley of the Kings.
Fertilizing the air with carbon dioxide to promote plant growth
ONE of the principal constituents making up the body of a plant is carbon, representing about one-half of its organic substance. The opinion that this carbon is derived from the soil has long been abandoned, modern investigation having shown atmospheric carbonic acid to be absorbed by means of the chlorophyll or green matter of the leaves and decomposed into its elements, the carbon, in conjunction with the root sap and atmospheric moisture, being worked into organic compounds.
Whereas atmospheric air at present is relatively poor in carbonic acid, of which it contains only about .03 per cent, at an early period in the development of our planet, when this was covered with the luxuriant forests our coal deposits are derived from, it comprised incomparably greater quantities of this gas. This fact suggested the idea of heightening the fertility of the soil by increasing its carbonic acid content and thus producing conditions resembling those of antediluvian ages.
Comment: See also: Dead or alive? Washington ups bounty to $10M on Daesh leader Mawla