Secret HistoryS


Pharoah

New evidence suggests King Tutankhamun's gold mask was made for heretic queen Nefertiti

Nevine El-Aref
AhramOnline
Tue, 24 Nov 2015 17:19 UTC
Tutankhanum Mask
© The Independent, UKTutankhanum's famous gold death mask may have been intended for his step-mother, Nefertiti.
Before being published in a scientific journal in December, British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves, from Arizona University, sent Al-Ahram Weekly an advance copy of his article on the original name inscribed on Tutankhamun's mask.

Entitled "The Gold Mask of Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten" Reeves relates that an essay was behind his first doubts about King Tutankhamun's possession of his iconic gold mask, now under restoration at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square.

In the paper Reeves wrote several years ago, in an essay which is yet to appear, he sought to demonstrate that the famous gold mask from King Tutankhamun's tomb (KV 62) had been created not for the boy king but for the use of a female predecessor named Ankhkheperure Neferneferuaten (Queen Nefertiti) who was King Akhenaten's co-regent.

"The evidence in favour of this conclusion was, and still is compelling," Reeves said, adding that he was able to muster for it no inscriptional support. Detailed scrutiny, both of the mask itself and of photographs, furnished not the slightest hint that the multi-columned hieroglyphic inscription with cartouche might pre-date Tutankhamun's reign.

"Happily, this reluctant presumption of the mask's textual integrity may now be abandoned," Reeves pointed out in the paper, asserting that "a fresh examination of the re-positioned and newly re-lit mask in Cairo at the end of September 2015 yielded for the first time, beneath the hieroglyphs of Tutankhamun's prenomen, lightly chased traces of an earlier, erased royal name."
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Document

Unique ancient manuscripts found in Tibet


XinHua Net
Fri, 27 Nov 2015 12:52 UTC
Tibetan script
© NewsX.comTibetan script.
Historians scouring the ruins of a Tibetan monastery have found 30 ancient manuscripts, including one detailing a kind of musical score never seen before.

The manuscripts, dating from the 13th to 18th century and found in Maizhokunggar County, mostly refer to noted Buddhist sutra "Perfection of Wisdom," said Palbar Tsering, director of the regional ancient books protection center, on Thursday.

The scores, consisting of groups of curves and syllabic symbols, have been identified as the music for chams, religious dances usually staged during important festivals to greet gods and dispel demons.

Experts will try to decipher them so the music can be played to the public, raising awareness of old Buddhist customs, Palbar Tsering said.
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Sherlock

Ancient underground city in Cappadocia will "rewrite history"


Hürriyet Daily News
Tue, 24 Nov 2015 00:00 UTC
Image
© AA Photos
An underground city found in Turkey's touristic Cappadocia will "rewrite the history of the city", according to the mayor in the Central Anatolian Nevşehir province, adding they had discovered people had permanently lived in the underground city, unlike other cities which were mostly carved into rocks for temporary protection.

Hasan Ünver, the mayor of Nevşehir, where Cappadocia is located, said the new findings at the ancient underground city in the province would rewrite history.

"When the works are finalized the history of Cappadocia will be rewritten," said Ünver, adding the findings found during the excavations dated back as the Hittite era.

"We have reached significant discoveries; new long tunnels and spaces where people lived all together. Places where linseed oil was produced, chapels and tunnels combining various living spaces in the underground city were found," said Ünver.
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Book 2

Archaeologist pieces together story of the mysterious Zhang Zhung people of Tibet

Mark Miller
Ancient Origins
Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:47 UTC
Image
© John Vincent BellezzaA repoussé golden death mask dating to before 200 AD; John Vincent Bellezza says it is "perhaps of western Tibet provenance" It measures 15 cm (6 inches) by 12 cm (4.7 inches).
Many centuries ago, high in the mountains of western Tibet, the Zhang Zhung people established a civilization complete with technological advancements, rich art and a pantheon headed by a supreme god with strange and wonderful origins.

John Vincent Bellezza, a senior research fellow with the Tibet Center of the University of Virginia, has been studying the archaeology of the Iron Age people of western Tibet and their gods and cultures for more than 25 years.

His blog states: "Until the author's [Professor Bellezza's] intensive exploration of Upper Tibet in the 1990s and 2000s, very little was known about Zhang Zhung. The Tibetans themselves had forgotten what they had once achieved and the Chinese Communists were unaware of what lay on the extremes of the Plateau."
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Sherlock

Early Native Americans raised turkeys, but not to eat

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Wed, 25 Nov 2015 14:00 UTC
Image
© Edward CurtisPortrait of "Three Horses," a headdress made of feathers.

There is little doubt that Native Americans at a Utah site appropriately called Turkey Pen Ruins raised turkeys, but new research concludes that they rarely ate them, and instead raised the large birds for their coveted feathers.

The study involved extensive analysis of amino acid signatures resulting from diet that can be detected in human hair. The research, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, represents one of the first analyses of human hair from the American Southwest.

The findings indicate that Native Americans from the Ancestral Pueblo Tradition (also sometimes known as the Anasazi) heavily relied upon corn, showing that "about 80 percent of the calories and protein came from maize," co-author R.G. Matson from the University of British Columbia Department of Anthropology told Discovery News.
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Sherlock

Glastonbury legend was "fabricated by 12th century monks desperate to raise cash"

Victoria Ward
The Telegraph, UK
Tue, 24 Nov 2015 09:15 UTC
Image
© AlamyGlastonbury Abbey: Not the stuff and myths and legends
Archaeologists find that Glastonbury's links to Jesus and King Arthur were concocted to attract pilgrims

It is a revelation that will strike a blow to the heart of the generations of pilgrims drawn to Glastonbury for its Christian legend and new age myths.

But a four-year academic study has unceremoniously debunked the series of oft-repeated myths that have cemented Glastonbury Abbey's reputation as one of the most romantic religious sites in the UK.

The feet immortalised in William Blake's poem Jerusalem never did walk on its green and pleasant land, King Arthur's grave is little more than a pile of a rubble and the oldest church in England was not built by Jesus's disciples but by monks desperate to raise some cold, hard cash.

The groundbreaking study, by 31 archaeology experts, discovered that the creative monks, faced with a financial crisis when their abbey burnt down in 1184, also dreamt up the legend that Jesus had visited the site as a boy with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, whose walking stick transformed into a tree that flowers every year at Christmas and Easter.
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Sherlock

Archaeologists in Croatia discovered sunken 3,500-year-old town


Xinhua News Agency
Tue, 24 Nov 2015 10:03 UTC
Image
© Slobodna Dalmacija
Croatian archaeologists recently announced they had discovered a 3,500-year-old sunken town and a port in the Adriatic Sea near Zadar, a southern coastal city.

"We found the remains of a large settlement and a port in the sea between the islands of Ricula and Galesnjak in the Pasman Channel last year. After radiocarbon analysis finished this month, we could say that the remains were probably built around 1500 B.C.," Mato Ilkic, head of the archaeological research team at Zadar University, told Xinhua in a telephone interview.

They unearthed various findings during two research explorations in a small part of the settlement, covering a total area of nearly two hectares, Ilkic said.

The most valuable findings were the very rare wood objects from 3,500 years ago, he said.
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Sherlock

"Dongzhi Man" - China's latest ancient human fossil find


Xinhua News Agency
Fri, 20 Nov 2015 18:14 UTC
Image
© XinhuaThe fossilized skull of Homo erectus discovered at the site of the grotto of Hualong, in the district of Dongzhi, in the Chinese province of Anhui.
Chinese archaeologists have discovered an "uncommonly well-preserved" fossilized skull of Homo erectus in east China, providing more valuable material in the study of the evolution and distribution of early man.

The fossil is the latest discovery from the Hualongdong archaeological site in Dongzhi County, Anhui Province, which the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) has been combing through since summer 2006.

This is proving to be another important site for Homo erectus after findings were made in Zhoukoudian, where Peking Man lived, Lantian in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Anhui's Hexian County, and Nanjing in the eastern Jiangsu Province, said Liu Wu, the IVPP researcher in charge of the excavation.

The skull at the center of this discovery, named "Dongzhi Man", was found along with an assortment of stone implements, other human teeth and bone fragments, as well as more than 6,000 bone fossils belonging to vertebrate animals including stegodon, giant tapir and giant pandas.
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Sherlock

1,700-year-old ring depicts nude cupid, the homewrecking god

Owen Jarus
LiveScience
Mon, 23 Nov 2015 13:43 UTC
Image
© K. Hinds and Hampshire Cultural TrustA 1,700-year-old gold ring with a stone showing Cupid carrying a torch would've been worn on the finger of a man or woman at a time when the Roman Empire controlled England.
An intricately carved gold ring containing a stone engraved with an image of Cupid — a god associated with erotic love — has been discovered near the village of Tangley in the United Kingdom.

In the engraving, Cupid (also known by his Greek name, "Eros") is shown standing completely nude while holding a torch with one hand. The ring dates back around 1,700 years, to a time when the Roman Empire controlled England. The ring was discovered by an amateur metal detectorist. Researchers who studied it say that it may have been worn by a man or a woman and is engraved with spiral designs that contain bead-shaped spheres.

The image of Cupid is engraved on a stone made of nicolo, a type of onyx that is dark at the base and bluish at the top. The image on the stone "depicts a standing naked adolescent with crossed legs, leaning on a short spiral column; the short wings which sprout from his shoulders identify him as Cupid," Sally Worrell, national finds adviser with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, and John Pearce, senior lecturer in archaeology at King's College London, wrote in an article published recently in the journal Britannia.
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Magnify

Hobbits were a separate species, ancient chompers show

Charles Q. Choi
LiveScience
Wed, 18 Nov 2015 20:45 UTC
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© Professor Peter Brown, University of New EnglandEndocasts of the skulls of a hobbit (left) and a modern human (right). Research by Dean Falk of Florida State University and colleagues has suggested features of the hobbit's skull more closely resembled that of a normal human than a microcephalic.
An ancient, 3-foot-tall (0.9 meters) human whose diminutive stature has earned it the nickname "hobbit" has puzzled evolutionary scientists since its little bones were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores. Some have suggested the individual was a Homo sapien with some miniaturizing disorder.

Now, teeth from the hobbit suggest it belonged to a unique species rather than a modern human with a growth disorder. The new research also suggests hobbits may share a direct ancestor with modern humans.

The 18,000-year-old fossil remains of the hobbit were discovered in 2003. Since then, scientists have suggested that the hobbit, which had a brain about the size of a grapefruit, was a unique branch of the human lineage Homo, dubbed Homo floresiensis. However, other researchers have argued the hobbit was really a modern human with microcephaly, a condition that leads to an abnormally small head, a small body and some mental retardation.
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