Secret HistoryS


Pharoah

Sensational discovery: Egyptian priestess' burial chamber unearthed after 4,000 years

box in chamber
© Antiquities/FacebookBurial chamber containing the remains of an ancient Egyptian priestess
A burial chamber containing the remains of an ancient Egyptian priestess has been unearthed after nearly 4,000 years.

Named Idy, her remains were found in a coffin within another coffin in a tomb in the city of Asyut, Egypt, just about 200 miles south of Cairo.

The excavations took place between Aug. 18 and Sept. 17.

Idy was the daughter of Djefai-Hapi I, a wealthy regional Egyptian governor who lived around 1880 BC. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a Facebook post that he was "one of the most important rulers of the territories in ancient Egypt."

"Djefai-Hapi I was deified in ancient times and his tomb was an integral part of the cultural memory of ancient Egypt for more than 2000 years," Professor Jochem Kahl, an archeologist at Freie Universität Berlin who led the discovery, said, according to the Daily Mail.

Star of David

Gilbert Bigio: Israel's man in Haiti and the architect behind the US migrant crisis

GilBig
© UnknownGilbert Bigio
In December 2022, Canada imposed strict sanctions on Gilbert Bigio, frequently referred to as "Haiti's only billionaire" and the deeply impoverished country's "richest man." He, along with two other super-wealthy Haitian citizens, was accused by Ottowa of using his outsized influence and power in the country "to protect and enable the illegal activities of the armed criminal gangs" that have been tearing Port-au-Prince apart for years. Since then, Bigio has remained at liberty and unpunished - meanwhile, Haiti has slid ever further into catastrophe.

Markedly, no other Western country - notably the sanctions-happy U.S. - followed Canada's lead. While wave upon wave of UN-mandated peacekeepers from every corner of the world have been deployed to Haiti in recent years, they have been unable to quell - and often exacerbated - the violence that has left the country without a functioning state or civil society. Kenya, currently leading an international "anti-gang" initiative in Port-au-Prince, recently called for the effort to be transformed into a dedicated U.N. peacekeeping operation.

For his part, Latin American & Caribbean Studies Professor Danny Shaw has zero doubt that Bigio and others like him are fundamentally responsible for encouraging and facilitating Haiti's collapse.

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Experts to uncover secret of Urartian statue found at Garibin Tepe in Turkey

basalt stone statue
© Anadolu Agency
In an area where rescue excavations were conducted last year, archaeologists discovered a basalt stone statue from the Urartian period that weighed approximately one tonne during the archaeological excavations in Van's Tuşba district.

In 2023, archaeologists found the first monumental statue of its kind in the region during rescue excavations at Garibin Tepe. This fascinating discovery, which is roughly 2 meters long and 1 meter wide, was discovered in a historical site only 3 kilometers from Ayanis Castle and 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the city center.

This year, the excavation was concentrated on the southern portion of the hill and was headed by Van Museum under the scientific direction of Professor Mehmet Işıklı from the Department of Archaeology at Atatürk University.

Professor Işıklı stated: "This is a monumental three-dimensional statue that we have never encountered before. We are very excited, and after preliminary studies, we hope to gain more detailed information."

The statue, believed to have a broken neck, is noted for its impressive size and craftsmanship. After detailed examinations by a team from Ankara, the mystery of the basalt statue is expected to be solved.

Professor Işıklı stated that the Urartian civilization is one of the least understood areas because it has very few known sculptural works.

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Archaeologists discover 4,000-year-old Bronze Age settlement hidden in Saudi Arabian oasis

A Bronze Age settlement hidden on the Arabian Peninsula reveals secrets about the slow growth of urbanization in the region.
Bronze Age Settlement
© Charloux et al., 2024, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0A virtual 3D reconstruction of al-Natah, a Bronze Age settlement in Saudi Arabia.
A small 4,400-year-old town in the Khaybar Oasis of Saudi Arabia hints that Bronze Age people in this region were slow to urbanize, unlike their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, a new study finds.

Archaeologists discovered the site near the city of Al-'Ula in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and called it "al-Natah." The settlement covered about 3.7 acres (1.5 hectares), "including a central district and nearby residential district surrounded by protective ramparts," the researchers said in a statement. But the town, which was occupied starting around 2400 B.C., was small, with a population of only around 500 people, the team noted in a study, published Wednesday (Oct. 30) in the journal PLOS One.

The residential area had a large amount of pottery and grinding stones, as well as the remains of at least 50 dwellings that may have been made of earthen materials. The central area had two buildings that may have been used as administrative areas, the team wrote in the paper. In the western part of the central area, a necropolis was found. It has large and high circular tombs that archaeologists call "stepped tower tombs."

No examples of writing have been found so far at the site, study lead author Guillaume Charloux, an archaeologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), told Live Science in an email. Researchers have unearthed only a few traces of cereals, but based on finds at other sites it's likely that al-Natah's people grew crops near the site, Charloux said.

The town and its nearby areas were surrounded by a 9-mile-long (14.5 kilometers) wall, which would have provided defense from raids carried out by nomads, the team wrote in an earlier paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The town was abandoned sometime between 1500 and 1300 B.C., but researchers aren't sure why this happened. "It's a pertinent question that I can't really answer at the moment," Charloux said, noting that "we have very few clues about the last phase of occupation."

Gold mine

The Ukrainian war for lithium

Lithium field
© euronews.comLithium fields
The geopolitics of rare earths and precious metals require constant observation in order to understand some global events in greater detail.

Why lithium attracts so much attention

There are moments in History that are characterized by a strong economic component, so predominant that we are said to be facing a revolution, passing through the ever dramatically present moment of war. Since the end of the 19th century that the world has been witnessing wars over oil; now, however, we have been a few years into those over rare earths, among which lithium, a mineral indispensable for smartphones and especially electric cars, plays a privileged role.

Foreign Office documents, examined by a British historian and journalist, show that the UK organized from top to bottom the overthrow of President Evo Morales in order to seize Bolivia's lithium reserves. Nothing new under the sun: the U.S.-Great Britain axis has been dirty business for centuries already, and this is hardly the first planned subversion or export of democracy by bombs and coups.

Comment: Geopolitics - the ground floor of greed and possession.


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Mystery of the world's oldest map on a nearly 3,000-year-old Babylonian tablet finally solved

Ancient Map
© Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin
A recent British Museum video reveals that the "oldest map of the world in the world" on a clay tablet from Babylon was deciphered to reveal a surprisingly familiar story.

The oldest globe ever found is the Imago Mundi, a Babylonian map of the world. This map is a Babylonian clay tablet with a schematic world map and two inscriptions written in the Akkadian language. The probably seventh century BC is when this map was created. It shows a small part of the world as the ancient Babylonians knew it, and it was found in the southern Iraqi city of Abu Habba (Sippar).

The ancient artifact was acquired by the British Museum in 1882 but remained a mystery for centuries until curators found a missing part and transcribed its cuneiform.

The cuneiform tablet from the 6th century BC shows an aerial view map of Mesopotamia — the land "between the rivers" in modern-day Iraq — and what the Babylonians believed lay beyond the known world at the time.

After centuries of deciphering, the ancient tablet provides insight into the Babylonians' beliefs about the known world at the time.

The tablet has several paragraphs of the cuneiform on its backside and above the map diagram describing the creation of the Earth and what its writer believed existed beyond it.

Researchers confirm the circle around Mesopotamia suggests that Babylonians believed the area was the center of the world. There also shows the river Euphrates cutting through ancient Mesopotamia.

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High-altitude Silk Road cities discovered in Uzbek Mountains

A lidar view of Tugunbulak
© SAIElab/J. Berner/M. FrachettiA lidar view of Tugunbulak, the site of a nearly 300-acre medieval city in Uzbekistan, with crest lines.
Archaeologists have discovered two lost medieval cities in the eastern mountains of Uzbekistan that were important hubs on the ancient Silk Road. More importantly, these lost twin cities may have sustained themselves in a frightening landscape of metallurgy and trade.

The settlements, which are thought to have flourished between the sixth and the eleventh centuries, were discovered using remote sensing with lasers mounted on drones at an elevation of over 2 km above sea level. Merely 3% of the global populace currently resides above this elevation. Cusco, Peru, and Lhasa, Tibet, are two uncommon examples.

One of the cities - Tugunbulak, sat more than 2,000m (6,600 ft) above sea level. The Tugunbulak was about 120 hectares in area and was estimated to have been home to tens of thousands of people, making it comparable in size to Samarkand at the time.

The second city, Tashbulak, was smaller. It did, however, attract researchers due to its large cemetery, which contained 400 graves of men, women, and children. Among them are some of the oldest Muslim burial sites in the region.

The researchers team believes Tugunbulak and the smaller city, Tashbulak, were bustling settlements between the 8th and 11th centuries, during the Middle Ages when the area was controlled by a powerful Turkic dynasty.

Attention

Erdogan's nemesis is dead, but the problem remains

Gulen
© Chris Post/APFethullah Gulen
Though Fethullah Gulen is gone, his movement is likely to remain a tool of Western influence on Türkiye.

Turkish Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom Ankara's authorities accused of orchestrating the failed 2016 coup attempt, has passed away at the age of 83 in the United States, where he had spent the final years of his life. His death was reported by Turkish media and Herkul, a website associated with the preacher and his movement.

According to Herkul, which had published Gülen's sermons and speeches for many years, he passed away on Sunday evening in a hospital where he had been receiving treatment. In his final years, Gülen struggled with a series of serious health issues, including kidney failure and diabetes, which significantly weakened him.

Residing in Pennsylvania for many years, Gülen was a figure of immense interest not only in religious circles but also in Türkiye's political landscape, where his movement was seen as a national security threat after the attempted coup. The Turkish government had repeatedly demanded his extradition, accusing him of creating a "parallel state" and engaging in subversive activities against the Turkish leadership.

Comment: See also:


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Iraq excavation uncovers 478 artifacts including cuneiform tablets, and cylindrical seals

Iraq Excavation
© Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH)
The Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) announced that 478 artifacts were uncovered during an excavation expedition in the historic province of Babylon.

The Director of the Excavations Department accompanied the Missions Follow-up Committee to site 19/3 in Sector 38 of Al-Fayyadiya district to examine the work of the archaeological mission in the Babil governorate, according to a statement released by SBAH.

Under the direction of archaeologist Quhtan Abbas Hassan Aboud, the mission has uncovered information that provides fresh insights into ancient Mesopotamian life and culture.

During the visit, the head of the committee received a detailed explanation from the mission leader regarding the findings of the excavation. The Al-Fayadiya district's 19/3 excavation site is separated into two sectors, A and B. There are two layers of archaeological stratification in Sector A, which is 6 dunums (roughly 6,000 square meters) in size.

Archaeology

Advanced technology discovered under Neolithic dwelling in Denmark

neolithic railroad denmark
© Radiocarbon (2024). DOI: 10.1017/RDC.2024.79(a) Reconstruction drawing of the house. (b) Overview photo of the cellar feature (seen from the east, about the same orientation as the reconstruction drawing). (c) Detail photo of the cellar wall, marked by red lines, seen from the west. Drawing and photos: Museum Lolland-Falster
Railroad construction through a farm on the Danish island of Falster has revealed a 5,000-year-old Neolithic site hiding an advanced technology — a stone paved root cellar.

Archaeology researchers from the Museum Lolland-Falster, along with Aarhus University, Denmark, have analyzed the site in a paper, "Stone-Paved Cellars in the Stone Age? Archaeological Evidence for a Neolithic Subterranean Construction from Nygårdsvej 3, Falster, Denmark," published online in the journal Radiocarbon.

The emergence of the Funnel Beaker Culture around 6,000 years ago brought the Scandinavian region's first switch to agriculture and domesticated animals (sheep, goats, cattle), leading to a more sedentary lifestyle. With the new way of life came the region's first construction of houses, megalithic tombs (dolmens), and landscape-altering structures, a huge shift away from the highly mobile hunter-gatherer strategy of the Late Mesolithic.

Excavations at the site, Nygårdsvej 3, uncovered two phases of house construction. Both structures were built using a common Funnel Beaker Culture design (the Mossby-type), where interior posts provide support for a large double-span roof. Phase one included 38 post holes, while phase two had 35, indicating that a significant amount of architectural planning was involved.