The Great London [Search results for Middle East] 

An international research partnership is revealing the first mosasaur fossil of its kind to be discovered in Japan. Not only does the 72-million-year-old marine reptile fossil fill a biogeographical gap between the Middle East and the eastern Pacific, but also it holds new revelations because of its superior preservation. This unique swimming lizard, now believed to have hunted on glowing fish and squids at night, is detailed in an article led by Takuya Konishi, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of biological sciences. The article is published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, a publication of the Natural History Museum in London.

The fossil marine reptile, Phosphorosaurus ponpetelegans (a phosphorus lizard from an elegant creek), existed during the Late Cretaceous Period just before the last of the dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. Compared with some of their mosasaur cousins that could grow as large as 40 feet, this species is relatively small, about 3 meters, or 10 feet long. This unique discovery in a creek in the town of Mukawa in northern Japan reveals that they were able to colonize throughout the northern hemisphere.

"Previous discoveries of this particular rare mosasaur have occurred along the East Coast of North America, the Pacific Coast of North America, Europe and North Africa, but this is the first to fill the gap between the Middle East and the Eastern Pacific," explains Konishi, a member of the research team that also was represented by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology (Canada), University of Alberta, Brandon University, Hobetsu Museum (Japan), Fukuoka University and the town of Mukawa.

Because the fossil was so well preserved, the creature revealed it had binocular vision -- its eyes were on the front of the face, providing depth perception. This was a new discovery for this fossil species. The discovery reveals that the eye structure of these smaller mosasaurs was different from their larger cousins, whose eyes were on either side of their large heads, such as the eye structure of a horse. The eyes and heads of the larger mosasaurs were shaped to enhance streamlined swimming after prey that included fish, turtles and even small mosasaurs.

"The forward-facing eyes on Phosphorosaurus provide depth perception to vision, and it's common in birds of prey and other predatory mammals that dwell among us today," says Konishi. "But we knew already that most mosasaurs were pursuit predators based on what we know they preyed upon -- swimming animals. Paradoxically, these small mosasaurs like Phosphorosaurus were not as adept swimmers as their larger contemporaries because their flippers and tailfins weren't as well developed."

As a result, Konishi says it's believed these smaller marine reptiles hunted at night, much like the owl does compared with the daytime birds of prey such as eagles. The binocular vision in nocturnal animals doubles the number of photoreceptors to detect light. And, much like owls with their very large eyes to power those light receptors, the smaller mosasaur revealed very large eye sockets.

Also, because fossils of lantern fish and squid-like animals have been found from the Late Cretaceous Period in northern Japan, and because their modern counterparts are bioluminescent, the researchers believe that Phosphorosaurus may have specifically targeted those glowing fish and squids at night while their larger underwater cousins hunted in daytime.

"If this new mosasaur was a sit-and-wait hunter in the darkness of the sea and able to detect the light of these other animals, that would have been the perfect niche to coexist with the more established mosasaurs," says Konishi.

Painstaking Preservation

The fossil, enclosed in a rock matrix, was first discovered in 2009, in a small creek in northern Japan. Revealing what was inside the matrix while protecting the fossil was a painstaking process that took place at the Hobetsu Museum in Mukawa. The calcareous nodule would be dipped at night in a special acid wash, and then carefully rinsed the next day, as the two-year process freed the bones from the matrix. To further protect the fossil, special casts were made of the bones so that the researchers could piece together the remains without damaging the fossil.

"It's so unusually well-preserved that, upon separating jumbled skull bones from one another, we were able to build a perfect skull with the exception of the anterior third of the snout," says Konishi. "This is not a virtual reality reconstruction using computer software. It's a physical reconstruction that came back to life to show astounding detail and beautiful, undistorted condition."

Future Research

Konishi says future research will examine how this new mosasaur fits in the evolutionary family tree of mosasaurs.

Author: Dawn Fuller | Source: University of Cincinnati [December 08, 2015]

On the outskirts of Beijing, a small limestone mountain named Dragon Bone Hill rises above the surrounding sprawl. Along the northern side, a path leads up to some fenced-off caves that draw 150,000 visitors each year, from schoolchildren to grey-haired pensioners. It was here, in 1929, that researchers discovered a nearly complete ancient skull that they determined was roughly half a million years old. Dubbed Peking Man, it was among the earliest human remains ever uncovered, and it helped to convince many researchers that humanity first evolved in Asia.

Since then, the central importance of Peking Man has faded. Although modern dating methods put the fossil even earlier—at up to 780,000 years old—the specimen has been eclipsed by discoveries in Africa that have yielded much older remains of ancient human relatives. Such finds have cemented Africa's status as the cradle of humanity—the place from which modern humans and their predecessors spread around the globe—and relegated Asia to a kind of evolutionary cul-de-sac.

But the tale of Peking Man has haunted generations of Chinese researchers, who have struggled to understand its relationship to modern humans. "It's a story without an ending," says Wu Xinzhi, a palaeontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. They wonder whether the descendants of Peking Man and fellow members of the species Homo erectus died out or evolved into a more modern species, and whether they contributed to the gene pool of China today.

Keen to get to the bottom of its people's ancestry, China has in the past decade stepped up its efforts to uncover evidence of early humans across the country. It is reanalysing old fossil finds and pouring tens of millions of dollars a year into excavations. And the government is setting up a US$1.1-million laboratory at the IVPP to extract and sequence ancient DNA.

The investment comes at a time when palaeoanthropologists across the globe are starting to pay more attention to Asian fossils and how they relate to other early hominins—creatures that are more closely related to humans than to chimps. Finds in China and other parts of Asia have made it clear that a dazzling variety of Homo species once roamed the continent. And they are challenging conventional ideas about the evolutionary history of humanity.

"Many Western scientists tend to see Asian fossils and artefacts through the prism of what was happening in Africa and Europe," says Wu. Those other continents have historically drawn more attention in studies of human evolution because of the antiquity of fossil finds there, and because they are closer to major palaeoanthropology research institutions, he says. "But it's increasingly clear that many Asian materials cannot fit into the traditional narrative of human evolution."

Chris Stringer, a palaeoanthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, agrees. "Asia has been a forgotten continent," he says. "Its role in human evolution may have been largely under-appreciated."

Evolving story

In its typical form, the story of Homo sapiens starts in Africa. The exact details vary from one telling to another, but the key characters and events generally remain the same. And the title is always 'Out of Africa'.

In this standard view of human evolution, H. erectus first evolved there more than 2 million years ago. Then, some time before 600,000 years ago, it gave rise to a new species: Homo heidelbergensis, the oldest remains of which have been found in Ethiopia. About 400,000 years ago, some members of H. heidelbergensis left Africa and split into two branches: one ventured into the Middle East and Europe, where it evolved into Neanderthals; the other went east, where members became Denisovans—a group first discovered in Siberia in 2010. The remaining population of H. heidelbergensis in Africa eventually evolved into our own species, H. sapiens, about 200,000 years ago. Then these early humans expanded their range to Eurasia 60,000 years ago, where they replaced local hominins with a minuscule amount of interbreeding.

A hallmark of H. heidelbergensis—the potential common ancestor of Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans—is that individuals have a mixture of primitive and modern features. Like more archaic lineages, H. heidelbergensis has a massive brow ridge and no chin. But it also resembles H. sapiens, with its smaller teeth and bigger braincase. Most researchers have viewed H. heidelbergensis—or something similar—as a transitional form between H. erectus and H. sapiens.

Unfortunately, fossil evidence from this period, the dawn of the human race, is scarce and often ambiguous. It is the least understood episode in human evolution, says Russell Ciochon, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. "But it's central to our understanding of humanity's ultimate origin."

The tale is further muddled by Chinese fossils analysed over the past four decades, which cast doubt over the linear progression from African H. erectus to modern humans. They show that, between roughly 900,000 and 125,000 years ago, east Asia was teeming with hominins endowed with features that would place them somewhere between H. erectus and H. sapiens, says Wu.

"Those fossils are a big mystery," says Ciochon. "They clearly represent more advanced species than H. erectus, but nobody knows what they are because they don't seem to fit into any categories we know."

The fossils' transitional characteristics have prompted researchers such as Stringer to lump them with H. heidelbergensis. Because the oldest of these forms, two skulls uncovered in Yunxian in Hubei province, date back 900,000 years >^{1, 2}>, Stringer even suggests that H. heidelbergensis might have originated in Asia and then spread to other continents.

But many researchers, including most Chinese palaeontologists, contend that the materials from China are different from European and African H. heidelbergensis fossils, despite some apparent similarities. One nearly complete skull unearthed at Dali in Shaanxi province and dated to 250,000 years ago, has a bigger braincase, a shorter face and a lower cheekbone than most H. heidelbergensis specimens>3, suggesting that the species was more advanced.

Such transitional forms persisted for hundreds of thousands of years in China, until species appeared with such modern traits that some researchers have classified them as H. sapiens. One of the most recent of these is represented by two teeth and a lower jawbone, dating to about 100,000 years ago, unearthed in 2007 by IVPP palaeoanthropologist Liu Wu and his colleagues>4. Discovered in Zhirendong, a cave in Guangxi province, the jaw has a classic modern-human appearance, but retains some archaic features of Peking Man, such as a more robust build and a less-protruding chin.

Most Chinese palaeontologists—and a few ardent supporters from the West—think that the transitional fossils are evidence that Peking Man was an ancestor of modern Asian people. In this model, known as multiregionalism or continuity with hybridization, hominins descended from H. erectus in Asia interbred with incoming groups from Africa and other parts of Eurasia, and their progeny gave rise to the ancestors of modern east Asians, says Wu.

Support for this idea also comes from artefacts in China. In Europe and Africa, stone tools changed markedly over time, but hominins in China used the same type of simple stone instruments from about 1.7 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. According to Gao Xing, an archaeologist at the IVPP, this suggests that local hominins evolved continuously, with little influence from outside populations.

Politics at play?

Some Western researchers suggest that there is a hint of nationalism in Chinese palaeontologists' support for continuity. "The Chinese—they do not accept the idea that H. sapiens evolved in Africa," says one researcher. "They want everything to come from China."

Chinese researchers reject such allegations. "This has nothing to do with nationalism," says Wu. It's all about the evidence—the transitional fossils and archaeological artefacts, he says. "Everything points to continuous evolution in China from H. erectus to modern human."

But the continuity-with-hybridization model is countered by overwhelming genetic data that point to Africa as the wellspring of modern humans. Studies of Chinese populations show that 97.4% of their genetic make-up is from ancestral modern humans from Africa, with the rest coming from extinct forms such as Neanderthals and Denisovans>5. "If there had been significant contributions from Chinese H. erectus, they would show up in the genetic data," says Li Hui, a population geneticist at Fudan University in Shanghai. Wu counters that the genetic contribution from archaic hominins in China could have been missed because no DNA has yet been recovered from them.

Many researchers say that there are ways to explain the existing Asian fossils without resorting to continuity with hybridization. The Zhirendong hominins, for instance, could represent an exodus of early modern humans from Africa between 120,000 and 80,000 years ago. Instead of remaining in the Levant in the Middle East, as was thought previously, these people could have expanded into east Asia, says Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, UK.

Other evidence backs up this hypothesis: excavations at a cave in Daoxian in China's Hunan province have yielded 47 fossil teeth so modern-looking that they could have come from the mouths of people today. But the fossils are at least 80,000 years old, and perhaps 120,000 years old, Liu and his colleagues reported last year>6. "Those early migrants may have interbred with archaic populations along the way or in Asia, which could explain Zhirendong people's primitive traits," says Petraglia.

Another possibility is that some of the Chinese fossils, including the Dali skull, represent the mysterious Denisovans, a species identified from Siberian fossils that are more than 40,000 years old. Palaeontologists don't know what the Denisovans looked like, but studies of DNA recovered from their teeth and bones indicate that this ancient population contributed to the genomes of modern humans, especially Australian Aborigines, Papua New Guineans and Polynesians—suggesting that Denisovans might have roamed Asia.

Maria Martinon-Torres, a palaeoanthropologist at University College London, is among those who proposed that some of the Chinese hominins were Denisovans. She worked with IVPP researchers on an analysis>7, published last year, of a fossil assemblage uncovered at Xujiayao in Hebei province—including partial jaws and nine teeth dated to 125,000–100,000 years ago. The molar teeth are massive, with very robust roots and complex grooves, reminiscent of those from Denisovans, she says.

A third idea is even more radical. It emerged when Martinon-Torres and her colleagues compared more than 5,000 fossil teeth from around the world: the team found that Eurasian specimens are more similar to each other than to African ones>8. That work and more recent interpretations of fossil skulls suggest that Eurasian hominins evolved separately from African ones for a long stretch of time. The researchers propose that the first hominins that left Africa 1.8 million years ago were the eventual source of modern humans. Their descendants mostly settled in the Middle East, where the climate was favourable, and then produced waves of transitional hominins that spread elsewhere. One Eurasian group went to Indonesia, another gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans, and a third ventured back into Africa and evolved into H. sapiens, which later spread throughout the world. In this model, modern humans evolved in Africa, but their immediate ancestor originated in the Middle East.

Not everybody is convinced. "Fossil interpretations are notoriously problematic," says Svante Paabo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. But DNA from Eurasian fossils dating to the start of the human race could help to reveal which story—or combination—is correct. China is now making a push in that direction. Qiaomei Fu, a palaeogeneticist who did her PhD with Paabo, returned home last year to establish a lab to extract and sequence ancient DNA at the IVPP. One of her immediate goals is to see whether some of the Chinese fossils belong to the mysterious Denisovan group. The prominent molar teeth from Xujiayao will be an early target. "I think we have a prime suspect here," she says.

Fuzzy picture

Despite the different interpretations of the Chinese fossil record, everybody agrees that the evolutionary tale in Asia is much more interesting than people appreciated before. But the details remain fuzzy, because so few researchers have excavated in Asia.

When they have, the results have been startling. In 2003, a dig on Flores island in Indonesia turned up a diminutive hominin>9, which researchers named Homo floresiensis and dubbed the hobbit. With its odd assortment of features, the creature still provokes debate about whether it is a dwarfed form of H. erectus or some more primitive lineage that made it all the way from Africa to southeast Asia and lived until as recently as 60,000 years ago. Last month, more surprises emerged from Flores, where researchers found the remains of a hobbit-like hominin in rocks about 700,000 years old>10.

Recovering more fossils from all parts of Asia will clearly help to fill in the gaps. Many palaeoanthropologists also call for better access to existing materials. Most Chinese fossils—including some of the finest specimens, such as the Yunxian and Dali skulls—are accessible only to a handful of Chinese palaeontologists and their collaborators. "To make them available for general studies, with replicas or CT scans, would be fantastic," says Stringer. Moreover, fossil sites should be dated much more rigorously, preferably by multiple methods, researchers say.

But all agree that Asia—the largest continent on Earth—has a lot more to offer in terms of unravelling the human story. "The centre of gravity," says Petraglia, "is shifting eastward."

Author: Jane Qiu | Source: Nature 535, 22–25 (14 July 2016) doi:10.1038/535218a [July 15, 2016]

The ice sheet covering Greenland is four times bigger than California -- and holds enough water to raise global sea-level more than twenty feet if most of it were to melt. Today, sea levels are rising and the melting of Greenland is a major contributor. Understanding how fast this melting might proceed is a pressing question for policymakers and coastal communities.

To make predictions about the future of the ice sheet, scientists have tried to understand its past, hoping to glean what the ice was doing millions of years ago when the Earth was three or more degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now. But our understanding of the ice sheet's complex behavior before about 125,000 years ago has been fragmentary at best.

Now, two first-of-their-kind studies provide new insight into the deep history of the Greenland Ice Sheet, looking back millions of years farther than previous techniques allowed. However, the two studies present some strongly contrasting evidence about how Greenland's ice sheet may have responded to past climate change -- bringing new urgency to the need to understand if and how the giant ice sheet might dramatically accelerate its melt-off in the near future.

The two new studies were published in the journal Nature, including one led by University of Vermont geologist Paul Bierman.

Ice On the East

In >the first study Bierman and four colleagues -- from UVM, Boston College, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Imperial College London -- examined deep cores of ocean-bottom mud containing bits of bedrock that eroded off of the east side of Greenland. Their results show that East Greenland has been actively scoured by glacial ice for much of the last 7.5 million years -- and indicate that the ice sheet on this eastern flank of the island has not completely melted for long, if at all, in the past several million years. This result is consistent with existing computer models.

Their field-based data also suggest that during major climate cool-downs in the past several million years, the ice sheet expanded into previously ice-free areas, "showing that the ice sheet in East Greenland responds to and tracks global climate change," Bierman says. "The melting we are seeing today may be out of the bounds of how the Greenland ice sheet has behaved for many millions of years."

Since the data the team collected only came from samples off the east side of Greenland, their results don't provide a definitive picture of the whole Greenland ice sheet. But their research, with support from the National Science Foundation, provides strong evidence that "an ice sheet has been in East Greenland pretty much continuously for seven million years," says Jeremy Shakun, a geologist at Boston College who co-led the new study. "It's been bouncing around and dynamic -- but it's been there nearly all the time."

Contrasting Results

The >other study in Nature -- led by Joerg Schaefer of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Columbia University, and colleagues -- looked at a small sample of bedrock from one location beneath the middle of the existing ice sheet and came to what appears to be a different conclusion: Greenland was nearly ice-free for at least 280,000 years during the middle Pleistocene -- about 1.1 million years ago. This possibility is in contrast to existing computer models.

"These results appear to be contradictory -- but they may not be," UVM's Bierman says. He notes that both studies have "some blurriness," he says, in what they are able to resolve about short-term changes and the size of the ancient ice sheet. "Their study is a bit like one needle in a haystack," he says, "and ours is like having the whole haystack, but not being sure how big it is."

That's because Schaefer and colleagues' data comes from a single point in the middle of Greenland, pointing to a range of possible scenarios of what happened in the past, including several that challenge the image of Greenland being continuously covered by an extensive ice sheet during the Pleistocene. In contrast, Bierman and colleagues' data provides a record of continuous ice sheet activity over eastern Greenland but can't distinguish whether this was because there was a remnant in East Greenland or whether the ice sheet remained over the whole island, fluctuating in size as the climate warmed and cooled over millions of years.

"It's quite possible that both of these records are right for different places," Bierman says. "Both of these studies apply a similar innovative technique and let us look much farther into the past than we have been able to before."

New Method

Both teams of scientists used, "a powerful new tool for Earth scientists," says Dylan Rood, a scientist at Imperial College London and a co-author on the Bierman-led study: isotopes within grains of quartz, produced when bedrock is bombarded by cosmic rays from space. The isotopes come into being when rock is at or near Earth's surface -- but not when it's buried under an overlying ice sheet. By looking at the ratio of two of these cosmic-ray-made elements -- aluminum-26 and beryllium-10 caught in crystals of quartz, and measured in an accelerator mass spectrometer -- the scientists were able to calculate how long the rocks in their samples had been exposed to the sky versus covered by ice.

>Paul Bierman, a geologist at the University of Vermont and his colleagues --f rom UVM, Boston College, 
>Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and Imperial College London--wanted to develop a better understanding 
>of the ancient history of the huge ice sheet that covers Greenland, like this portion of the ice sheet shown from 
>a helicopter on a Bierman-led expedition there. The team studied deep cores of ocean-bottom mud containing 
>bits of bedrock that eroded off of the east side of Greenland. Their results show that East Greenland has been 
>actively scoured by glacial ice for much of the last 7.5 million years--and indicate that the ice sheet on the 
>eastern flank of the island has not completely melted for long, if at all, in the past several million years. Their 
>field-based data also suggest that during major climate cool-downs in the past several million years, the ice sheet 
>expanded into previously ice-free areas, "showing that the ice sheet in East Greenland responds to and tracks
> global climate change," Bierman says. "The melting we are seeing today may be out of the bounds of how 
>the Greenland ice sheet has behaved for many millions of years." [Credit: Joshua Brown/UVM]
This isotope technique has been used for several decades for measuring land-based erosion, but this is its first application to ocean core samples, said Lee Corbett, a postdoctoral researcher at UVM and co-author with Bierman. "This has never been attempted with marine sediments," she says. Their results overcome a basic problem of trying to discern the deep history of ice from bedrock: every time an ice sheet retreats and then grows back, it scours away the bedrock and the isotope record of its own past. "It's hard to discern an ice sheet's cycles on land because it destroys the evidence," she says, "but it dumps that evidence in the oceans, archived in layers on the bottom."

Now Corbett, Shakun, and others are applying this isotope technique to additional cores taken from around the coast of Greenland to get a more complete and in-focus picture of the whole ice sheet's long history. And they have already applied the new isotope technique far beyond Greenland -- particularly in exploring the much larger, more mysterious ice sheets covering Antarctica.

"These two apparently conflicting -- but not necessarily conflicting -- studies in Nature really force the issue that we don't know enough about how ice sheets work over deep time," Bierman says. "We must recognize the importance of advancing polar science to understand how our world works. And, right now, because we're pumping huge plumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we really need to know how our world works."

The dynamics of Antarctica's giant ice sheet is full of questions and the disastrous potential. "But there's enough sea-level rise tied-up in Greenland alone to put a lot of cities and long stretches of coastline underwater," says Paul Bierman, "including Donald Trump's property in Florida."

Source: University of Vermont [December 07, 2016]

Human teeth discovered in southern China provide evidence that our species left the African continent up to 70,000 years earlier than prevailing theories suggest, a study published on Wednesday said.

Homo sapiens reached present-day China 80,000-120,000 years ago, according to the study, which could redraw the migration map for modern humans.

"The model that is generally accepted is that modern humans left Africa only 50,000 years ago," said Maria Martinon-Torres, a researcher at University College London and a co-author of the study.

"In this case, we are saying the H. sapiens is out of Africa much earlier," she told the peer-reviewed journal Nature, which published the study.

While the route they travelled remains unknown, previous research suggests the most likely path out of East Africa to east Asia was across the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East.

The findings also mean that the first truly modern humans -- thought to have emerged in east Africa some 200,000 years ago -- landed in China well before they went to Europe.

There is no evidence to suggest that H. sapiens entered the European continent earlier than 45,000 years ago, at least 40,000 years after they showed up in present-day China.

The 47 teeth exhumed from a knee-deep layer of grey, sandy clay inside the Fuyan Cave near the town of Daoxian closely resemble the dental gear of "contemporary humans," according to the study.

They could only have come from a population that migrated from Africa, rather than one that evolved from an another species of early man such as the extinct Homo erectus, the authors said.

The scientists also unearthed the remains of some 38 mammals, including specimens of five extinct species, one of them a giant panda larger than those in existence today.

No tools were found.

"Judging by the cave environment, it may not have been a living place for humans," lead author Wu Liu from the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing told AFP.

The study, published in the journal Nature, also rewrites the timeline of early man in China.

Up to now, the earliest proof of H. sapiens east of the Arabian Peninsula came from the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, and dated from no more than 40,000 years ago.

The new discovery raises questions about why it took so long for H. sapiens to find their way to nearby Europe.

"Why is it that modern humans -- who were already at the gates -- didn't really get into Europe?", Martinon-Torres asked.

Wu and colleagues propose two explanations.

The first is the intimidating presence of Neanderthal man. While this species of early human eventually died out, they were spread across the European continent up until at least some 50,000 years ago.

"The classic idea is that H. sapiens... took over the Neanderthal empire, but maybe Neanderthals were a kind of ecological barrier, and Europe was too small a place" for both, Martinon-Torres said.

Another impediment might have been the cold.

Up until the Ice Age ended 12,000 years ago, ice sheets stretched across a good part of the European continent, a forbidding environment for a new species emerging from the relative warmth of East Africa.

"H. sapiens originated in or near the tropics, so it makes sense that the species' initial dispersal was eastwards rather than northwards, where winter temperatures rapidly fell below freezing," Robin Dennell of the University of Exeter said in a commentary, also in Nature.

Martinon-Torres laid out some of the questions to be addressed in future research, using both genetics and fossil records.

"What are the origins of these populations, and what was their fate? Did they vanish? Could they be the ancestors of later and current populations that entered Europe?"

She also suggested there might have been "different movements and migrations" out of Africa, not just one.

Besides the prehistoric panda, called Ailuropoda baconi, the scientists found an extinct species of a giant spotted hyaena.

An elephant-like creature called Stegodon orientalis and a giant tapir, also present, were species that may have survived into the era when the Chinese had developed writing, some 3500 years ago.

The cache of teeth nearly went unnoticed, Wu told AFP.

He and his Chinese colleagues discovered the cave -- and its menagerie of long-deceased animals -- in the 1980s, but had no inkling that it also contained human remains.

But 25 years later, while revisiting the site, Wu had a hunch.

"By thinking about the cave environment, we realised that human fossils might be found there," he told AFP by email. "So we started a five-year excavation."

Author: Marlowe Hood | Source: AFP [October 14, 2015]

The FBI is warning collectors that buying Iraqi and Syrian artifacts could help fund ISIS activities, as the militant group has been plundering important historic sites and selling stolen items on the black market.

"We now have credible reports that US persons have been offered cultural property that appears to have been removed from Syria and Iraq recently," said Bonnie Magness-Gardiner, the FBI's Art Theft Program manager, in a statement.

The announcement follows a May US Special Operations raid on an ISIS operative's home, which recovered over 400 stolen artifacts, many from the National Museum of Iraq.

The FBI, however, is only the latest group to speak out against smuggling in the region, and the warning should come as no surprise to anyone in the market for Middle Eastern antiquities.

The Syrian government, for instance, condemned neighboring Turkey this past March for turning a blind eye to the import of looted antiquities. Satellite imagery shows hundreds of illegal excavations at Dura-Europos, a 2,300-year-old city and archaeological site known as the "Pompeii of the Syrian desert," and at other cultural properties in the region.

In October, UNESCO confirmed that ISIS was partially funding its activities through the sale of such stolen artifacts, the blood diamonds of the Middle East. The following month, US lawmakers proposed creating a cultural property protection czar position, that would look to preserve the world's endangered cultural sites.

“This is the greatest scale of looting we have seen since the Second World War," former Christie's director Robert Jenrick told the Art Newspaper in January, as the UK looked to crack down on smuggling following the discovery of $58 million-worth of stolen Middle Eastern artifacts.

UNESCO's United Nations Security Council Resolution 2199, passed in February, is attempting to place new legal measures in order to stop ISIS from funding itself through antiquities trafficking.

"Every person needs to know that the purchase of property from Iraq is punishable, but also that it supports and finances terrorist activities," German state minister Maria Boehmer told the UN this May, during a General Assembly meeting.

In June, the International Council of Museums released an emergency red list of Iraqi cultural items threatened by terrorist activities, in an attempt to thwart trafficking. Syria has had an emergency red list since 2013.

Nevertheless, looted objects have been found in London antiques shops as recently as last month.

ISIS's cultural destruction, particularly the brutal attack on sculptures at the Nineveh Museum in Mosul, Iraq, have been widely condemned. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and the United Nations have also denounced such acts as war crimes.

The FBI's ISIL Antiquities Trafficking document contains the following message:

Please be cautious when purchasing items from this region. Keep in mind that antiquities from Iraq remain subject to Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions under the Iraq Stabilization and Insurgency Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR part 576).

Purchasing an object looted and/or sold by the Islamic State may provide financial support to a terrorist organization and could be prosecuted under 18 USC 233A.

Robust due diligence is necessary when purchasing any Syrian or Iraqi antiquities or other cultural property in the U.S. or when purchasing elsewhere using U.S. funds.

"Check and verify provenance, importation, and other documents," Magness-Gardiner told the FBI. "What we're trying to say is, don't allow these pieces that could potentially support terrorism to be part of the trade."

Author: Sarah Cascone | Source: Artnet News [August 28, 2015]

Cutting-edge genome technology in Trinity College Dublin has cast more light on a mystery that has perplexed archaeologists for more than a decade. The origins of a set of Roman-age decapitated bodies, found by York Archaeological Trust at Driffield Terrace in the city, have been explored, revealing a Middle Eastern body alongside native British.

Archaeologists have speculated that the skeletons belonged to gladiators, although they could also have been soldiers or criminals. Several suffered perimortem decapitation and were all of a similar age – under 45 years old. Their skulls were buried with the body, although not positioned consistently – some were on the chest, some within the legs, and others at the feet.

Although examining the skeletons revealed much about the life they lived – including childhood deprivation and injuries consistent with battle trauma – it was not until genomic analysis by a team from Trinity College Dublin, led by Professor of Population Genetics, Dan Bradley, that archaeologists could start to piece together the origins of the men.

The Trinity College team recently published the first prehistoric Irish genomes and this analysis by Trinity PhD Researcher, Rui Martiniano, also breaks new ground as it represents the first genome analysis of ancient Britons.

From the skeletons of more than 80 individuals, Dr Gundula Muldner of the University of Reading, Dr Janet Montgomery of the University of Durham and Malin Holst and Anwen Caffel of York Osteoarchaeology selected seven for whole genome analyses. Despite variation in isotope levels which suggested some of the 80 individuals lived their early lives outside Britain, most of those sampled had genomes similar to an earlier Iron Age woman from Melton, East Yorkshire. The poor childhood health of these men suggests that they were locals who endured childhood stress, but their robust skeletons and healed trauma, suggest that they were used to wielding weapons.

The nearest modern descendants of the Roman British men sampled live not in Yorkshire, but in Wales. A man from a Christian Anglo-Saxon cemetery in the village of Norton, Teesside, has genes more closely aligned to modern East Anglia and Dutch individuals and highlights the impact of later migrations upon the genetic makeup of the earlier Roman British inhabitants.

However, one of the decapitated Romans had a very different story, of Middle Eastern origin he grew up in the region of modern day Palestine, Jordan or Syria before migrating to this region and meeting his death in York.

"Archaeology and osteoarchaeology can tell us a certain amount about the skeletons, but this new genomic and isotopic research can not only tell us about the body we see, but about its origins, and that is a huge step forward in understanding populations, migration patterns and how people moved around the ancient world," says Christine McDonnell, Head of Curatorial and Archive Services for York Archaeological Trust.

"This hugely exciting, pioneering work will become the new standard for understanding the origins of skeletons in the future, and as the field grows, and costs of undertaking this kind of investigation fall, we may be able to refine our knowledge of exactly where the bodies were born to a much smaller region. That is a remarkable advance."

As well as Trinity College Dublin, the multi-disciplinary scientific analysis involved scientists from the University of York and The York Archaeological Trust, as well as the universities of Durham, Reading and Sheffield, University College London and the University Medical Centre in Utrecht. The research also included experts from York Osteoarchaeology Ltd, City of York Council and the Natural History Museum.

The Roman skeletons sampled were all male, under 45 years old and most had evidence of decapitation. They were taller than average for Roman Britain and displayed evidence of significant trauma potentially related to interpersonal violence. All but one would have had brown eyes and black or brown hair but one had distinctive blue eyes and blond hair similar to the single Anglo-Saxon individual.

The demographic profile of the York skeletons resembles the population structure in a Roman burial ground believed to be for gladiators at Ephesus. But the evidence could also fit with a military context—the Roman army had a minimum recruitment height and fallen soldiers would match the age profile of the York cemetery.

Professor Dan Bradley, Trinity, said: "Whichever the identity of the enigmatic headless Romans from York, our sample of the genomes of seven of them, when combined with isotopic evidence, indicate six to be of British origin and one to have origins in the Middle East. It confirms the cosmopolitan character of the Roman Empire even at its most northerly extent."

PhD Researcher and lead author, Rui Martiniano, Trinity, said: "This is the first refined genomic evidence for far-reaching ancient mobility and also the first snapshot of British genomes in the early centuries AD, indicating continuity with an Iron Age sample before the migrations of the Anglo-Saxon period."

Professor Matthew Collins, of the BioArCh research facility in the Department of Archaeology at York, who co-ordinated the report on the research, "These genomes give the first snapshot of British genomes in the early centuries AD, showing continuity with the earlier Iron Age and evidence of migrations in the Anglo-Saxon period."

The paper is published in >Nature Communications.

Source: Trinity College Dublin [January 20, 2016]

The United Nations agency UNESCO will use more monitoring by satellites to protect threatened ancient archeological sites, it announced.

UNESCO and UNITAR-UNOSAT (United Nations Institute for Training and Research- United Nations Operational Satellite Applications Program) signed an agreement to better protect the world's cultural and natural heritage sites by using geospatial photographic capabilities, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said Wednesday at a conference in London. The agreement comes as ancient sites in the Middle East are under assault by terrorist organizations which include the Islamic State (IS).

IS overtook the 2,000 year-old archaeological site at Palmyra, Syria, a city of Greek and Roman ruins, in May and has threatened to destroy it. Bokova said IS has destroyed mausoleums, temples and statues around the area on a wide scale, and planted explosives within the ancient city. It previously destroyed Assyrian ruins and artifacts in Syria.

Monitoring by satellite could reduce and document the extent of destruction, prepare reconstruction and provide evidence for international courts of justice, she added.

"We are very worried about Libya, being a divided country. We have a small office there and are working with the local governments and mayors. We are very concerned about the expansion of Isis (IS) and youth radicalization. We are worried about Somalia. This (the satellite program) is our response to extremism," Bokova said.

The agreement was signed Wednesday in Bonn, Germany.

Author: Ed Adamczyk | Source: UPI [July 02, 2015]

The leopard (Panthera pardus), one of the world's most iconic big cats, has lost as much as 75 percent of its historic range, according to a paper >published in the scientific journal PeerJ. Conducted by partners including the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, international conservation charities the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Panthera and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Cat Specialist Group, this study represents the first known attempt to produce a comprehensive analysis of leopards' status across their entire range and all nine subspecies.

The research found that leopards historically occupied a vast range of approximately 35 million square kilometers (13.5 million square miles) throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Today, however, they are restricted to approximately 8.5 million square kilometers (3.3 million square miles).

To obtain their findings, the scientists spent three years reviewing more than 1,300 sources on the leopard's historic and current range. The results appear to confirm conservationists' suspicions that, while the entire species is not yet as threatened as some other big cats, leopards are facing a multitude of growing threats in the wild, and three subspecies have already been almost completely eradicated.

Lead author Andrew Jacobson, of ZSL's Institute of Zoology, University College London and the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative, stated: "The leopard is a famously elusive animal, which is likely why it has taken so long to recognize its global decline. This study represents the first of its kind to assess the status of the leopard across the globe and all nine subspecies. Our results challenge the conventional assumption in many areas that leopards remain relatively abundant and not seriously threatened."

In addition, the research found that while African leopards face considerable threats, particularly in North and West Africa, leopards have also almost completely disappeared from several regions across Asia, including much of the Arabian Peninsula and vast areas of former range in China and Southeast Asia. The amount of habitat in each of these regions is plummeting, having declined by nearly 98 percent.

"Leopards' secretive nature, coupled with the occasional, brazen appearance of individual animals within megacities like Mumbai and Johannesburg, perpetuates the misconception that these big cats continue to thrive in the wild—when actually our study underlies the fact that they are increasingly threatened," said Luke Dollar, co-author and program director of the National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative.

Philipp Henschel, co-author and Lion Program survey coordinator for Panthera, stated: "A severe blind spot has existed in the conservation of the leopard. In just the last 12 months, Panthera has discovered the status of the leopard in Southeast Asia is as perilous as the highly endangered tiger." Henschel continued: "The international conservation community must double down in support of initiatives — protecting the species. Our next steps in this very moment will determine the leopard's fate."

Co-author Peter Gerngross, with the Vienna, Austria-based mapping firm BIOGEOMAPS, added: "We began by creating the most detailed reconstruction of the leopard's historic range to date. This allowed us to compare detailed knowledge on its current distribution with where the leopard used to be and thereby calculate the most accurate estimates of range loss. This research represents a major advancement for leopard science and conservation."

Leopards are capable of surviving in human-dominated landscapes provided they have sufficient cover, access to wild prey and tolerance from local people. In many areas, however, habitat is converted to farmland and native herbivores are replaced with livestock for growing human populations. This habitat loss, prey decline, conflict with livestock owners, illegal trade in leopard skins and parts and legal trophy hunting are all factors contributing to leopard decline.

Complicating conservation efforts for the leopard, Jacobson noted: "Our work underscores the pressing need to focus more research on the less studied subspecies, three of which have been the subject of fewer than five published papers during the last 15 years. Of these subspecies, one—the Javan leopard (P. p. melas)—is currently classified as critically endangered by the IUCN, while another—the Sri Lankan leopard (P. p. kotiya)—is classified as endangered, highlighting the urgent need to understand what can be done to arrest these worrying declines."

Despite this troubling picture, some areas of the world inspire hope. Even with historic declines in the Caucasus Mountains and the Russian Far East/Northeast China, leopard populations in these areas appear to have stabilized and may even be rebounding with significant conservation investment through the establishment of protected areas and increased anti-poaching measures.

"Leopards have a broad diet and are remarkably adaptable," said Joseph Lemeris Jr., a National Geographic Society's Big Cats Initiative researcher and paper co-author. "Sometimes the elimination of active persecution by government or local communities is enough to jumpstart leopard recovery. However, with many populations ranging across international boundaries, political cooperation is critical."

Source: PeerJ [May 03, 2016]

A 2,200 year-old “an upright stone slab bearing a commemorative inscription” was unearthed at the Mediterranean coast, Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty announced Thursday.

The stele, which was discovered at Taposiris Magna archaeological site on Lake Mariout, southwest of the Mediterranean city of Alexandria,  “dates to the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (204B.C-180B.C) of the Ptolemaic Dynasty (332 B.C.-30 B.C) that has ruled Egypt after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.” said Damaty in a statement on the ministry’s Facebook page.

The stele, measuring 1.05 X 0.65X0.18 meters, was discovered by an archaeology mission of the Catholic University of Santo Domingo in collaboration with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), he added.

“It consists of two registers carved in two different scripts; the upper one features over 20 lines of hieroglyphic inscriptions bearing the cartouches [oval shapes bearing royal names only] of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes, his sister Princess Cleopatra I, his mother Queen Arsinoe III and his father King Ptolemy IV Philopator,” said Damaty adding that archaeologists are currently working on transliterating the text.

The bottom register features a 5-line demotic script that seems to be a translation of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, said Damaty.

Demotic language was used by ordinary people while hieroglyphic was used by royals, high officials, priests and the elite of the ancient Egyptian society.

The famous Rosetta stone, currently displayed in the British Museum in London, dates back to the reign of the same Greek king but was carved in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek scripts, according to Damaty.

Chief of the Dominican Egyptian archaeology mission, Dr. Kathleen Martinez said that the mission, has been working at Taposiris Magna for six years, has made a lot of significant discoveries related to the history of Alexandria. “Some of the major discoveries are tombs of Nobles, a number of statues of goddess Isis in addition to many bronze coins belonging to Queen Cleopatra VII, the famous Cleopatra of Anthony,” said Martinez.

Author: Rany Mostafa | Source: The Cairo Post [February 12, 2015]

The highly anticipated exhibition From Ancient to Modern: Archaeology and Aesthetics, opens at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) on February 12, 2015. With some 50 outstanding ancient objects, and more than 100 related documents, photographs, and drawings, this groundbreaking exhibition examines the fascinating process through which archaeological objects are transformed from artifacts to artworks and, sometimes, to popular icons, as they move from the sites of their discovery, to be publicized by mass media and exhibited by museums.

From Ancient to Modern: Archaeology and Aesthetics displays a series of spectacular early Mesopotamian objects alongside rich documentation, opening a window onto the ways in which archaeological finds of the 1920s and 1930s were transformed from artifacts into works of art. This process raises fundamental and critical questions: What biographies were initially given to these objects by their discoverers? How were these objects filtered through the eyes and voice of the press before they were seen by the public? How were the objects’ biographies affected by or reflective of the tastes of the time? How were the items presented in museums and received by artists of the period?

And finally, how do they continue to influence artistic practice today? The goal of Archaeology and Aesthetics is to demonstrate that these biographies do not begin and end in antiquity, or span the period from their discovery to the present, but continue to be written—through scholarly inquiry and reconsideration, through museum displays and the relationships they create between object and viewer, and through the ways in which they inspire artists of our time. The modern unearthing of an object is in fact the starting point for a multiplicity of approaches, each creating a better understanding of both the artifact and the people who produced it.

Archaeology and Aesthetics begins with a gallery devoted to a number of early Mesopotamian archaeological sites. Concentrating on the city of Ur and several sites in the Diyala River Valley, the display comprises many now-iconic objects, including a wide array of Sumerian stone sculptures, spectacular jewelry in a variety of precious and exotic materials, and such luxury items as ostrich-egg vessels and bronzes.

These exceptional artifacts are shown with field notebooks, excavator’s diaries, archival photography, and original newspaper clippings, among other archival items, illustrating the ways in which the finds were carefully described and presented to the press, the general public, and the academic community. Selected objects are followed as they are strategically presented to an international audience, effecting their transformation from archaeological artifact to aesthetic item.

The exhibition continues with a gallery devoted to twentieth- and twenty-first-century artistic responses to ancient Mesopotamian objects. As these artifacts began to make their way into museums across pre-World War II Europe and North America, artists including Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, and Willem de Kooning drew inspiration from what they saw as a new kind of energy and vision inherent to the material.

Today, many artists return to the archaeological object to explore its role as a window onto human history and cultures rather than as an aesthetic object. Archaeology and Aesthetics demonstrates this approach with work by Jananne al-Ani, who was born in Kirkuk, Iraq, and lives in London, and by the Chicago-based Michael Rakowitz, who is of Iraqi-Jewish heritage. Both create art expressive of the traumatic loss of human heritage caused by wars and the spreading conflict in the Near and Middle East.

“From Ancient to Modern: Archaeology and Aesthetics” runs through June 7 at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.

Source: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World [February 15, 2015]

The stories of Roman lives are written their bones: diet, disease, childbirth and trauma all leave their mark. Individual skeletons can tell rich tales, but the fullest information comes from large groups, when we can look at populations. So what can we learn about about a Roman community from their skeletons?

Whether they were a slave

Slavery was ubiquitous in the Roman world, and some of its agonies are preserved on skeletons: those working in and living near Roman mines in Jordan were exposed to lead and copper at levels that would have been toxic, and caused a range of illnesses. The remains of people who were likely to have been slaves have also been found still wearing iron shackles, for instance in a subterranean room of a villa in Pompeii, and near the silver mines of Laurion in Roman-era Greece.

Whether they played sports

Among the human remains from ancient Herculaneum, which was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius at the same time as Pompeii, were a possible boxer, with typical fractures to his hands and nose, and a javelin-thrower whose bones reveal the same elbow problems experienced by modern athletes.

How they died, who they loved

At Dura-Europos in Syria, remains of Roman and Sasanian troops trapped in a siege mine beneath the walls of the ancient city reveal the brutal and violent reality of ancient conflict, including gas warfare. In the nearby cemetery, families were buried together in underground tombs, with women and children placed together.

Where people came from

Even places like Roman Britain were diverse. Scientific methods (such as isotope analysis), as well as the study of graves and grave goods (the objects buried with a body) can tell us where a person was likely to have come from, or where they had links to. For instance, work on the cemeteries of Roman York has shown that people buried there came from other places in Britain, and much further afield in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

The extent of childhood illnesses

In the Roman world, children often didn’t make it to adulthood. Roman cemeteries such as Poundbury in Dorset include many children with rickets, scurvy and anaemia – survival rates were staggeringly low by modern Western standards. Infant and early childhood mortality was high in the Roman period, with 45% of children unlikely to survive past five years of age.

So we can learn a lot about how a Roman may have lived from her or his remains, but, while skeletons are biological, bodies are cultured and contextual; they can be modified to fit ideals of beauty, status, or gender. Ultimately, Roman skeletons tell us that culture is a significant factor in determining difference: underneath it all, we’re pretty much the same collection of 206 interlocking parts.

Dr Jen Baird and Dr Tim Reynolds from the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck College, University of London, will be talking in depth about Roman skeletons at a Guardian Live/Birkbeck event on 21 November.

Authors: Dr Jen Baird and Dr Tim Reynolds | Source: The Guardian [November 14, 2015]

French President Francois Hollande and archaeological officials have used an exhibit in Paris of two preserved ancient Egyptian cities as a defiant example that the world will not be cowed by Islamic State militants who recently destroyed ancient Syrian heritage sites in Palmyra and killed a local archaeologist.

The exhibit at Paris' Arab World Institute, Osiris, Egypt's Sunken Mysteries, presents about 250 ancient objects that were recovered after a French archaeologist discovered the legendary cities Thonis/Heracleion and Canopus underwater over a decade ago.

Much like the mystery of ancient Atlantis, the cities had been lost somewhere between myth, history and legend — that is, until French archaeologist Franck Goddio made his landmark discovery in 2000 uncovering the sites in their watery grave near Alexandria. They had miraculously been preserved by sea sediment for nearly 2,000 years.

"This exhibit is an incredible achievement," Goddio told The Associated Press. "For years, these cities seemed lost to the world — submerged because of natural calamities like earthquakes and big tides... And now here they are — being shown to the public for the first time. Some objects only came out of the water last year and others have never left Egypt before."

The underwater excavation is ongoing with a team of 50, and Goddio estimates that only as little as 3 percent of the ancient cities have been uncovered so far.

Hollande, who inaugurated the exhibit this week, alongside the Egyptian minister of antiquities and minister of tourism, said that the message of this exhibit went far beyond Egypt — and said it showed how the will to preserve world heritage is stronger that the wish to annihilate it.

"This exhibit is a message, a fighting message that we have preserved these artifacts, a message of hope at a time when the Middle East is undergoing such drama," he said.

In the last weeks, Islamic State militants destroyed the two-millennia-old temple of Bel, The Temple of Baalshamin, as well as three ancient tower tombs in the central city of Palmyra — what UNESCO has called an "intolerable crime against civilization."

Hollande also paid his respects to the "sacrifice" of Khaled al-Asaad, the former director of the destroyed Palmyra heritage sites and one of the most important pioneers in Syrian archaeology in the 20th century, who was killed by Islamic State militants.

The exhibit was presented in collaboration with the Egyptian government, with officials keen to use this as a way to show that there's another face to the Arab world as the one being projected by militants.

"What is going on in Syria, like the destruction of Palmyra and in Iraq, this kind of thinking is not the real beliefs of the area. This exhibit shows it. This preservation of culture here in Paris shows that it's just a minority who somehow took the lead that are doing this damage," said Mohamed Abdelmaguid, the general director of the Central Department of Underwater Antiquities in Egypt.

The many thousands expected to visit the Osiris exhibit in the coming months, as it travels to London's British Museum, might not be drawn for their knowledge of current affairs, and be just be attracted by beauty of the artifacts.

The objects — like a beautiful and imposing 5-meter (16-feet) granite statue of the god Osiris, tools, and ritualistic objects — are in often near-perfect condition, and offer a rare public glimpse into the vast achievements of the ancient world.

The exhibit runs until Jan. 31.

Author: Thomas Adamson | Source: Associated Press [September 10, 2015]

A project for the deciphering of ancient papyri found in Graeco-Roman Egypt has recruited armchair archaeologists from around the world with amazing results.

The Ancient Lives project is a collaboration between the University of Oxford, the Egypt Exploration Society, the Citizen Science Alliance and others asking for anyone who can identify Greek letters to work on-line and decipher the writing on digital scans of papyri from Oxyrhynchus in Upper Egypt. Then, scholars, with the use of special online tools, carry out the translation. The latest finds were presented yesterday by Dirk Obbink, associate professor in Papyrology and Greek Literature from the University of Oxford.

The papyri, dating mainly from the 1st Century BC to the 7th Century AD, when Egypt was occupied by the Greeks and Romans, were discovered by Victorian archaeologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in January 1897, at what turned out to be a rubbish dump at Oxyrhynchus, an ancient city about 160m south-west of Cairo. The excavations yielded 700 boxes of documents which were shipped to Oxford for study, owned by the Egypt Exploration Society in London.

Transcribing them, however, was really time-consuming, allowing experts to transcribe over 5,000 out of the 500,000 documents between 1898 and 2012. That’s when the Ancient Lives project was piloted, asking citizen scientists from all over the world to help scientists decipher the writing on the papyri online. The project went fully live in 2014 and with the use of algorithms to help experts assess the accuracy of the work by volunteers, it has allowed a variety of individuals across the globe to participate.

The Oxyrhynchus fragments have revealed personal documents of various use, from tax assessments, grocery lists and mariage certificates, ancient remedies, to court records and pieces of literature by Sappho Euripides and Homer. Fragments of a lost tragedy by Sophocles, Andromeda, have also been found.

The results were announced by Dirk Obbink at a talk in London, held at the Royal Geographical Society and organised by the World Monuments Fund Britain.

For more on this story see:

• The Art Newspaper, http://theartnewspaper.com/news/news/armchair-archaeologists-reveal-details-of-life-in-ancient-egypt/ (29/02/2016) 

• The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ancient-egypt-citizen-scientists-reveal-tales-of-tragedy-unearthed-from-centuries-old-rubbish-dump-a6905541.html (01/03/2016)

The Tarkhan Dress, a V-neck linen shirt currently on display in the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, has been confirmed as the world’s oldest woven garment with radiocarbon testing dating the garment to the late fourth-millennium BC.

Radiocarbon testing conducted in 2015 by the University of Oxford’s radiocarbon unit, and published this week on Antiquity’s Project Gallery, has established that the dress was made between 3482-3102 BC with 95% accuracy.

Although the dress was thought to be Egypt’s oldest garment, and the oldest surviving woven garment in the world, the precise age of the dress was uncertain as previous carbon dating proved too broad to be historically meaningful. The new results both confirm the dress’s antiquity and also suggest that it may be older than previously thought, pre-dating the First Dynasty.

The team from the University of Oxford, led by Dr Michael Dee, measured a 2.24mg sample of the dress to determine how much radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon, remained in the linen. From this they were able to provide an indicative date for when the linen was woven. Linen, from which the Tarkhan Dress is made, is especially suitable for radiocarbon dating as it is composed of flax fibres that grow over a relatively short time.

Dr Alice Stevenson, Curator at the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, said: “The survival of highly perishable textiles in the archaeological record is exceptional, the survival of complete, or almost complete, articles of clothing like the Tarkhan Dress is even more remarkable. We’ve always suspected that the dress dated from the First Dynasty but haven’t been able to confirm this as the sample previously needed for testing would have caused too much damage to the dress.

Although the result is a little less precise than is now routinely possible through radiocarbon dating, as the sample was so small, it’s clear that the linen for the dress was made at the cusp of the First Dynasty or even earlier.”

Originally excavated by Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1913 from a First Dynasty tomb at Tarkhan, an Egyptian cemetery located 50km south of Cairo, the dress lay undiscovered with various other textiles until 1977 when the bundle was sent to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for conservation work.

The dress itself is made from three pieces of sturdy hand-woven linen with a natural pale grey stripe with knife-pleated sleeves and bodice. The hem is missing so it’s not possible to know the precise length of the dress, but the dimensions indicate that it fitted a young teenager or a slim woman. Although the exact context of its use remain unclear, there are visible signs of wear indicating that it was worn in life.

The Tarkhan Dress is on display at the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.

Source: University College London [February 20, 2016]

The southern Turkish province of Muğla's Datça Municipality has initiated a project to repatriate the historical artifacts belonging to the ancient Greek city of Knidos back to the district. Artifacts such as the 'Lion of Knidos' and the 'Demeter of Knidos', which are displayed at the British Museum in London as well as the artifacts displayed at the Marmaris and Bodrum museums are planned to be restored to their original site.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Datça Municipality Mayor Gürsel Uçar said they are determined to regain the artifacts and they will apply to the Culture and Tourism Ministry for assistance. He said the artifacts unearthed in Knidos, in present-day Datça, are stored at the Marmaris Museum and Bodrum Museum as well as in storage at Middle East Technical University and Selçuk University. He added that the artifacts should be displayed and stored where they are excavated.

The municipality previously contacted the ministry, and they were assured that the small museums in the region will be closed and a new museum in Datça will be built. However, Uçar stressed that there has been no development since.

"We are determined to display the artifacts unearthed in Datça at their original site," Uçar said. Datça has two protected areas called Reşadiye and the Old Datça Neighborhood.

The latter draws thousands of tours every year thanks to Knidos. However, the municipality also wants to make Reşadiye a tourist attraction with a museum where they can display the artifacts from Knidos.

"We decided on a 20 hectare area in Reşadiye for the museum building. Although Reşadiye was taken under protection, the region does not have the necessary historical atmosphere. We want to develop Reşadiye and build a museum in the region," Uçar said.

Tourist guide and an official of Datça Municipality's Department of Culture, Osman Akın, told AA that thousands of artifacts have been unearthed in Knidos, and a huge part of these artifacts are displayed in museums in the UK. He said the 'Lion of Knidos' and 'Demeter of Knidos' sculptures are still showcased in the British Museum in London.

"The worst thing is that the other artifacts unearthed in the ancient city are not displayed in Datça either," Akın said. He added that the sculptures in the British Museum belong to Datça, and they had to make the replicas of the sculptures in order to remind people that these artifacts were excavated from Knidos.

"The British Museum is considered one of the most important archaeology museums in the world. When you enter the museum from the first entrance, the 'Lion of Knidos' welcomes you to the museum. It is a huge sculpture that weighs 11 tons and is 8 meters tall," he said.

The king of Knidos commissioned the 'Lion of Knidos' sculpture after their naval victory under the command of Admiral Conon. The sculpture was taken out of its original site by British officer and archaeologist Sir Charles Newton in 1855 on a battleship.

Source: Daily Sabah [December 09, 2015]

The Greek government has finally acknowledged that the British Museum is the lawful owner of the “Elgin Marbles”. That, at least, is the logical conclusion of the recent news that Greece has dropped its legal claim to the Parthenon Sculptures.

The surprise announcement came only 48 hours after Amal Clooney and the team at London’s Doughty Street Chambers sent the Greek government a 150-page report admitting that there was only a 15% chance of their success in a British court, and that Greece should consider pursuing the claim at the International Court of Justice. However, quite understandably, the Greek government has decided that what Clooney is really saying is that they have no case.

The Syriza government is keenly aware that British courts are recognized the world over for their experience in resolving international disputes, including those involving British interests and institutions. So, quite reasonably, the new Greek government has concluded that an international court will probably not reach a different conclusion. Nikos Xydakis, culture minister, has therefore announced that Greece will drop its legal claim and pursue “diplomatic and political” avenues instead.

This is unsurprising, as — contrary to the widespread misconception — there was nothing illegal about the way in which Lord Elgin saved the Parthenon Sculptures from acute ongoing destruction. The mauling had started when the Greek church smashed up a large number of the ancient temple’s carvings in the fifth century. The Venetians then blew up chunks of the building in 1687. And in the 1800s, when Lord Elgin arrived in Athens, the occupying Ottomans were grinding the sculptures up for limestone and using them for artillery target practice.

Elgin had intended to commission casts and paintings of the sculptures, but when he saw firsthand the ongoing damage (about 40% of the original sculptures had been pulverised), he acquired an export permit from the Ottoman authorities in Athens, and brought as many as he could back to safety in Britain. It was a personal disaster which bankrupted him, but it has meant that, since 1816, the British Museum has been able to share with its visitors some of the best-preserved Parthenon Sculptures in the world.

What is usually missing in the emotion of the Elgin Marbles debate is that the British Museum is a universal museum, which tells the story of humanity’s cultural achievements from the dawn of time. In this, the work of the Ancient Greek department is world leading, and part of a network of museum classicists — including those from the New Acropolis Museum in Athens — who work together collaboratively, sharing their knowledge and passion for the classical world with the widest possible public.

Coincidentally, the British Museum (the nation’s largest tourist attraction) is currently hosting a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition of Greek sculpture, drawing on its own collection and generous loans from other museums all over the world to showcase the evolution of ancient Greek ideas about beauty and the human body. In this breathtaking visual story of the march of classical ideas about aesthetics, the Parthenon Sculptures take their place, contributing eloquently to the state of sculpture in the golden age of Athenian carving under Pheidias.

The overarching misconception we need to get over is that museum objects belong uniquely to the country in which they were created. If that was so, the world should empty out its leading museums of the foreign artefacts they have purchased or been donated. Athens would be no exception in this, and would be required to return their extensive collections of Egyptian, Chinese, Islamic, and South American art.

Of course, it is an absurd idea. The world is manifestly enhanced by museums and their depth of specialised knowledge. They are, above all, educational places that enrich us all. The fact that half the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon can be seen in Athens, with the remaining half split between London, Berlin, Munich, Würzburg, Copenhagen, the Vatican, and — thanks to the British Museum — the Hermitage in St Petersburg earlier this year, ensures that the widest possible audience is able to experience for themselves the unique and bewitching ability of fifth-century Athenians to convert rough stone into warm, living flesh.

Another page has turned definitively in the story of the Parthenon Sculptures. The idea that Lord Elgin or Parliament did something illegal has finally been dropped, and not before time. Now the debate can proceed in a less antagonistic manner, and everyone can acknowledge that it is a question of politics, not looted artefacts.

As the world has recently discovered from the tragic destruction of Assyrian art at Nimrud, Mosul, and elsewhere in the Middle East, the planet’s heritage does not last unless someone looks after it. And so far, in the case of the Parthenon Sculptures (and indeed its holdings of Assyrian sculpture), the British Museum continues to do the world an enormous service

Author: Dominic Selwood | Source: The Telegraph [May 14, 2015]

The destruction at the ancient city of Palmyra symbolises the suffering of the Syrian people at the hands of the terrorist group known as Islamic State (IS). Palmyra was a largely Roman city located at a desert oasis on a vital crossroad, and “one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world”. Its remarkable preservation highlighted an intermingling of cultures that today, as then, came to stand for the tolerance and multiculturalism that pre-conflict Syria was renowned for -– tolerance that IS seeks to eradicate.

Early in the conflict, the area was heavily fortified. Roads and embankments were dug through the necropolises and the Roman walls, and the historic citadel defences were upgraded. Yet the terrorists occupied and desecrated the city from May 2015, systematically destroying monuments such as the Temple of Baalshamin, the Temple of Bel, seven tower tombs, a large Lion goddess statue and two Islamic shrines. They ransacked the museum, tortured and executing the former site director Khaled al-Asaad in search of treasure to sell. According to satellite imagery analysis the site was heavily looted throughout it all.

Now the city has been recaptured, the first damage assessments are underway, and Syrian – and international – attention is already turning to restoration. This work will be greatly aided by the Syrians who risked their lives to transport the contents of the Palmyra museum to safety. The last truck pulled out as IS arrived, with bullets whizzing past.

Even as they were displaced, Syrians have worked to keep a detailed memory of the city alive. Syrian artists created artworks depicting the destruction. In a Jordanian camp, refugees made miniature models of the city and other cultural sites, even measuring out the number and position of Palmyra’s columns from photographs.

The international community is also playing its part. Groups like UNOSAT, the UN’s satellite imagery analysts have used satellite imagery to monitor the damage. On the ground, Syrian-founded NGOs like APSA have linked with universities to assess the site. Groups such as NewPalmyra and Palmyra 3D Model are using the latest technology to create open-access 3D computer models from photographs.

Others have gone even further. The Million Image Database Project at the Oxford Institute for Digital Archaeology distributed cameras to volunteers across the Middle East to collect 3D photos of sites. As well as creating 3D models, they will recreate full-scale artefacts, sites, and architectural features using their own cement-based 3D printing techniques. This will start with a recreation of the arch from Palmyra’s Temple of Bel, due to be unveiled in London in April 2016.

Ethics of restoration

As well as being used for research, education and enjoyment, this technology could recreate (and perhaps ultimately restore) what IS has destroyed. 3D printing can be done in any colour of shapeable material, and can be as obvious – or as unobtrusive – as desired. The group is also exploring using computer-guided tools to quickly carve their models into stone.

It wouldn’t be the first time such large-scale restoration has been undertaken. Historic central Warsaw, for example, was destroyed during World War II, and was almost completely reconstructed and is now a World Heritage site. Reconstruction is costly, but might be accomplished more quickly and cheaply using new digital techniques, showing the world that Syria values its cultural heritage.

But many argue that 3D printing fails to capture the authenticity of the original structures, amounting to little more than the Disneyfication of heritage. They also point out that the fighting is still ongoing: 370,000 Syrians are dead, millions are displaced, and perhaps 50%-70% of the nearby town has been destroyed. Given the pressing humanitarian needs, stabilisation alone should be the priority for now.

Rebuilding also fails to redress the loss caused by the extensive looting of the site, focusing only on the dramatically destroyed monuments. Perhaps most importantly, its worth asking whether returning Palmyra exactly to its pre-conflict state denies a major chapter of its history? There needs to be a wide-ranging discussion on the priorities for the immediate future and the nature of any future reconstruction.

As has happened after previous conflicts, there may need to be a memorial as a testimony to those beheaded in the arena, or tied to columns that were detonated, or to the former site director executed in trying to protect this site that was so important to him. These stories, and many more, are a part of Palmyra’s, and Syria’s, history.

One thing is clear: while Palmyra may hold great significance to the world, the final decision should belong to those who have lived alongside it, cared for it, managed it, fought for it, and protected it for generations: the Syrian people.

Author: Emma Cunliffe, University Of Oxford | Source: The Conversation [March 31, 2016]

A large wooden model boat from the Egyptian Middle Period 2123-1797 BC, sold for £161,000 at Bonhams Antiquities Sale in London yesterday. The boat had been estimated at £30,000-50,000.

Boats were an integral part of Egyptian everyday life and mythology and as such they were considered necessary in the afterlife. Usually two model boats were provided for each tomb, one showing the crew sailing south with the prevailing wind and the other with the crew rowing north.

The boat was originally bought by British army officer, Esmond Sinauer, in Egypt in the early part of the 20th century and passed by descent to the Scottish private collection from which it was consigned for sale.

In total the sale made more than £1,310,000.

Other highlights included:

• A late Egyptian Bronze Cat from around 664-30 BC estimated at £20,000-30,000 which sold for £137,000. The cat had been in the well-known collection of the Antiquities dealer Raymond Richardson who acquired it in the 1950s.

• A Roman Marble Mask of a Woman from the 1st century AD which sold for £102,500 having been estimated at £20,000-30,000.

• A Roman Marble torso of a man estimated at £30,000-50,000 which sold for £60,000.

Bonhams Senior Specialist in Antiquities, Siobhan Quin, said,” The wooden boat was an exceptionally fine work of particularly impressive dimensions which attracted a lot pre-sale interest, reflected in keen bidding in the sale room on the phones and on the internet. In a strong sale, a first-century bronze Egyptian cat also stood out, but many other pieces also exceeded their estimates.”

Source: Bonhams [December 01, 2016]

A DNA analysis of four ancient Roman skeletons found in London shows the first inhabitants of the city were a multi-ethnic mix similar to contemporary Londoners, the Museum of London said on Monday.

Two of the skeletons were of people born outside Britain -- one of a man linked genealogically to eastern Europe and the Near East, the other of a teenage girl with blue eyes from north Africa.

The injuries to the man's skull suggest that he may have been killed in the city's amphitheatre before his head was dumped into an open pit.

Both the man and the girl were suffering from periodontal disease, a type of gum disease.

The other two skeletons of people believed to have been born in Britain were of a woman with maternal ancestry from northern Europe and of a man also with links through his mother to Europe or north Africa.

"We have always understood that Roman London was a culturally diverse place and now science is giving us certainty," said Caroline McDonald, senior curator of Roman London at the museum.

"People born in Londinium lived alongside people from across the Roman Empire exchanging ideas and cultures, much like the London we know today," she said.

The museum said in a statement that this was "the first multidisciplinary study of the inhabitants of a city anywhere in the Roman Empire".

The Romans founded Britain's capital city in the middle of the first century AD, under the emperor Claudius.

Britain's University of Durham researched stable isotopes from tooth enamel to determine migration patterns.

A tooth from each skeleton was also sent to McMaster University in Canada for DNA analysis that established the hair and eye colour of each individual and identified the diseases they were suffering from.

McMaster University also examined the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to identify maternal ancestry.

The exhibition of the four skeletons, entitled "Written in Bone", opens on Friday.

Source: AFP [November 24, 2015]

The Museo Civico Archeologico is hosting Egypt. Millennia of Splendour. Beneath the two towers, the splendour of a civilisation that lasted thousands of years and has always fascinated the entire world, has sprung back to life: the Egypt of the pyramids, pharaohs and multiform gods, but also that of sensational discoveries, captivating archaeology, passionate collecting and rigorous scholarship.

The exhibition ‘Egypt’, which is being held at the Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna, is not just an exposition of high visual and scientific impact, but also an unprecedented international enterprise: the Egyptian collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Netherlands – among the top ten in the world – and that of the Bologna museum – among the most important in Italy for the quantity, quality and state of conservation of its collections – have been brought together in an exhibition space measuring around 1,700 metres, filled with art and history.

500 finds, dating from the Pre-Dynastic Period to the Roman Period, gave been brought from the Netherlands to the Bologna museum. And, together with the masterpieces from Leiden and Bologna, the exhibition also includes important loans from the Museo Egizio in Turin and the Museo Egizio in Florence, creating a network of the most important Italian museums.

For the first time, the masterpieces of the two collections are being displayed side by side, including the Stele of Aku (Twelfth–Thirteenth Dynasty, 1976–1648 BC), the ‘major domo of the divine offering’, with a prayer describing the otherworldly existence of the deceased in a tripartite world divided into sky, earth and the beyond; gold items attributed to General Djehuty, who led the Egyptian troops to victory in the Near East for the great conqueror Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC); the statues of Maya, superintendent of the royal treasury of Tutankhamen, and Merit, a chantress of the god Amun, (Eighteenth Dynasty, reigns of Tutankhamen and Horemheb, 1333–1292 BC), the most important masterpieces in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden have left the Netherlands for the first time for the Bologna exhibition; and, among the numerous objects attesting to the refined lifestyle of the most wealthy Egyptians, a Mirror Handle (1292 BC) in the shape of a young woman holding a small bird in her hand.

Lastly, for the first time 200 years after the discovery of his tomb in Saqqara, the exhibition offers the unique and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the important Reliefs of Horemheb reunited: Horemheb was the head commander of the Egyptian army during the reign of Tutankhamen, then rising to become the final sovereign of the Eighteenth Dynasty, from 1319 to 1292 BC and the reliefs are divided between the collections in Leiden, Bologna and Florence.

Thousands of years of the history of a unique civilisation revealed in a major exhibition that brings together masterpieces from important world collections and tells of the pyramids and pharaohs, the great captains and priests, the gods and other divinities, and the people that made Egyptian history and that, thanks to discoveries, archaeology and collecting, never stop enchanting, revealing, intriguing, fascinating and charming generation after generation.

The Seven Exhibition Sections

The Pre-Dynastic and Archaic Periods – At the Origins of History: The transition from raw material to form, from the oral tradition to the written one and from prehistory to history was a fundamental moment for Egyptian civilisation. The Leiden collection is rich in materials documenting the central role played by nature during this long cultural and artistic evolution.

The exhibition opens with a selection of these objects, which are strikingly modern in style, including a vase from the Naqada IID Period (named for a site in Upper Egypt and datable between 3375 and 3325 BC) decorated with ostriches, hills and water motifs. The scene depicted on this vase takes us back to an Egypt characterised by a flourishing landscape later changed over time by climatic changes. Ostriches, here painted red, along with elephants, crocodiles, rhinoceros and other wild animals were common in the Nile region at the time.

The Old Kingdom – A Political/Religious Model Destined for Success and its Weaknesses: The historic period of the Old Kingdom (from the Third to the Sixth Dynasty, roughly between 2700 and 2192 BC) is known for the pyramids and for the consolidation of a bureaucracy at the apex of which stood an absolute sovereign, considered a god on earth and lord of all of Egypt.

This definition of State and its worldly and otherworldly rules, which were highly elitist, are well documented by funerary objects, of which the Leiden museum has a particularly rich collection, including a calcite (alabaster) table for offerings.

Offerings to the deceased were a fundamental part of the funerary ritual, ensuring life after death. The uniqueness of this table, which belonged to a high state official named Defdj, lies in its circular shape, which was unusual, as well as the repetition of the concept of the offering as indicated by the inscription, the sculpted receptacles and, most importantly, the central depiction corresponding to the hieroglyph hotep (offering), or a table upon which one places a loaf of bread.

The Middle Kingdom – The God Osiris and a New Perspective on Life in the Afterworld: The end of the Old Kingdom and the period of political breakdown that followed it led to major changes in Egyptian society, within which the individual had greater responsibility for his own destiny, including in the afterworld. Any Egyptian with the means to build a tomb complete with a sufficient funerary assemblage could now aspire to eternal life. The god Osiris, lord of the afterworld, became Egypt’s most popular divinity.

Many steles now in Leiden and Bologna came from his temple in Abydos, one of Egypt’s most important cult centres. Among them is that of Aku, major domo of the divine offering, who dedicated the stele to Min-Hor-nekht, the form of the ithyphallic god Min worshipped in the city of Abydos. Aku’s prayer to the god describes an otherworldly existence in a tripartite world: the sky, where the deceased were transfigured into stars, the earth, where the tomb was the fundamental point of passage from life to death, and the beyond, where Osiris granted the deceased eternal life.

From the Middle to the New Kingdom – Territorial Control at Home and Abroad: The defeat of the Hyksos, ‘princes from foreign lands’ who invaded and governed northern Egypt for a few generations, marked the beginning of the New Kingdom. An extremely aggressive foreign policy enriched Egypt, and this was one of its periods of greatest splendour. The social class of professional warriors rose to the top of the state hierarchy and spawned a number of ruling dynasties.

The wealth and prestige of these soldiers was also expressed in the production of sophisticated objects, including the gold items attributed to Djehuty, a general under the pharaoh Thutmose III. The Egyptian goldsmith’s art has survived in works of high artistic and economic value, an example being the pectoral element on view in the exhibition.

This piece is a sophisticated exemplar attributed to the tomb of General Djehuty, the man to whom the sovereign Thutmose III entrusted control of his foreign territories. Representing a blue lotus flower, a symbol of rebirth and regeneration, it must have served as the central element of an elaborate pectoral. The scroll engraved on the back suggests that the piece was given personally by Thutmose III.

The Saqqara Necropolis of the New Kingdom: The Leiden and Bologna museums can be considered ‘twins’ in a certain sense, since they house two important groups of antiquities from Saqqara, one of the necropolises of the city of Memphis. During the New Kingdom, this early Egyptian capital returned to its role as a strategic centre for the expansionist policy of the sovereigns of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

This is seen in the funerary monuments of high state officials who held administrative, religious and military roles, including the tombs of the superintendent of Tutankhamen’s royal treasury, Maya, and his wife, Merit, chantress of Amun, and that of Horemheb, head commander of Tutankhamen’s army and the pharaoh’s crown prince.

The statues of Maya and Merit arrived in the Netherlands in 1829 as part of the collection of Giovanni d’Anastasi. More than a century and a half would pass before, in 1986, a British/Dutch archaeological expedition identified the tomb from which they came, southeast of the pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. These statues, which are the greatest masterpieces in the collection of the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, left the Dutch museum for the first time to be displayed in the exhibition.

It should be noted that, when the Egypt Exploration Society of London and the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden began excavation work southeast of the Djoser pyramid in 1975, the goal was to find the tomb of Maya and Merit. It was therefore a great surprise when they instead discovered the burial of General Horemheb, who had capped off his stunning career by becoming the last sovereign of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

His tomb, which has a temple structure, is characterised by a pylon entrance, three large courts and three cult chapels facing onto the innermost court, which has a peristyle structure. This court is where most of the reliefs preserved in Leiden and Bologna were found, narrating Horemheb’s most important military feats against the populations bordering Egypt: the Asians, Libyans and Nubians.

The New Kingdom – Prosperity after the Conquest: Refined furnishings, musical instruments, table games and jewellery: these are just a few of the luxury goods attesting to the widespread prosperity enjoyed in Egypt as a result of the expansionist policy of the sovereigns of the New Kingdom. Through these sophisticated objects, it is possible to conjure up moments of everyday life, imagining what it was like living inside a royal palace or the residence of a high official. One example in the exhibition is a mirror handle in the graceful, sensual shape of a young women holding a small bird in her hand.

Egypt in the First Millennium: In the first millennium BC, Egypt was characterised by the increasingly clear weakness of its central power to the advantage of local governors who gave themselves the role of ruling dynasts. The loss of political and territorial power weakened Egypt’s defence capacity at its borders, opening the way for Nubian, Assyrian and Persian invasions. The temples remained strong centres of power, and managed a sizeable portion of the economy and the transmission of knowledge, taking on the role of a political intermediary between the ruling power and the devout populace.

Many of the masterpieces on view in the exhibition were part of the funerary assemblages of priests and came from important temple areas. Among them is the sarcophagus of Peftjauneith, which represents the likeness of the god Osiris, wrapped in a linen shroud and with a green face evoking the concept of rebirth. The refined decoration of this sarcophagus confirms the high rank of its owner (the superintendent of the possessions of a temple in Lower Egypt) in the temple sphere. Of particular note is the interior scene of the sky goddess Nut swallowing the sun every evening (to the west) to then give birth to it in the morning (to the east).

Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BC ended the ‘pharaonic’ phase of Egyptian history. The period of Greek domination was begun by his successors, the Ptolemies, the last of whom was the renowned Cleopatra VII.

The golden decline of Egypt would continue for many more centuries, beyond the Roman conquest in 31 BC up to Arab domination in the sixth century AD.

The dialogue between old and new, local and foreign that distinguished the Greco-Roman period brought a return to high artistic achievements, including the celebrated Fayum portraits, exquisite examples of which from the Leiden collection are on view in the exhibition

Source: Museo Civico Archeologico in Bologna [October 19, 2015]