"Japanese researchers plan to bombard the Great Pyramid of Giza outside Cairo with cosmic rays to confirm if there is a mysterious internal 'chamber' that a previous survey detected." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"The team from Kyushu University expects to arrive in Egypt soon to scan the massive structure, built around 2500 B.C. and believed to be the tomb for the pharaoh Khufu.
"'The previously discovered cavity is way too large from an archaeological perspective,' said Sakuji Yoshimura, who heads the overall research project involving other universities. 'We are very keen to verify the findings.'"
Note: This hidden chamber is the so-called Big Void discovered in 2017. According to Wikipedia, "its existence was confirmed by independent detection with three different technologies: nuclear emulsion films, scintillatorhodoscopes, and gas detectors." The Japanese team disputes the theory that the Void is some kind of construction space left behind when the pyramid was built and plan to confirm its existence using "a newly developed muon detector."
"Tripolitania [was the] name given to an area of western Libya containing the three cities of Sabratha, Oea [modern Tripoli], and Lepcis ('Tripolis') and their hinterlands (1). Founded as Phoenician or at least Punic [Carthaginian]emporia [trading places], they provided sheltered harbors on an otherwise inhospitable shore, but owed their importance largely to trans-Saharan trade and the considerable olive-oil production of their hinterlands." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised).
(1) Sabratha and Oea were founded by the Phoenicians, Sabratha around 500 BC, Oea around 700 BC. Lepcis, later known as Leptis Magna, was founded by the Berbers and Carthaginians in the 7th century BC. All three cities were eventually incorporated into the Roman empire as part of the province of Africa. The cities were part of Tripolis, a district of ancient Tripolitania.
Tripolitania was subject to Carthage until the Carthaginians were defeated by the Romans in the Punic Wars. After that, the area was "in theory subject to the Numidian kings until the Jugurthine War(2)." according to the OCD. The Roman province of Tripolitania, created by the Roman emperor Diocletian, "fell to the Vandals in 455 and was recovered by the Byzantines in 533." The city of Sabratha disappeared during the Arab invasions of the region (643-4 AD).
The Roman ruins at Leptis Magna are really spectacular.
"The exceptionally well-preserved ruins of Lepcis [Leptis Magna], excavated since 1920, include -- apart from the Severan buildings -- the Augustan forum, theater, and market, the amphitheater and adjacent circus, and the Hadrianic baths. The small but virtually intact 'Hunting Baths,' [see below] so named from a venatio fresco in its frigidarium, are of great interest; several rich villae maritimae [seaside villas?] are known in its hinterland." (OCD)
The Hunting Baths at Leptis Magna are particularly interesting because they were apparently built for the private use of a guild of wild-beast hunters whose job was to provide African animals to the amphitheaters in Italy.
Comment: Given a choice between living in modern Libya and the Roman province of Tripolitania, I'd pick Tripolitania without hesitation despite its turbulent history. Modern Libya has been almost completely destroyed, thanks to the idiotic policies of the Obama Administration, particularly the evil witch Hillary Clinton., and cities like Sabratha have been overrun by "refugees" trying to reach Europe. We were told that the overthrow of Kaddafi was necessary to "free the people;" instead, the Obama Administration with its mindboggling incompetence set off a chain of chaotic events that turned Libya into a slave-market hell and threatens to completely destroy western Europe.
"In ancient Egyptian art, people often can be seen sporting cones on their heads. Now, for the first time, archaeologists have revealed evidence that they actually existed outside of artwork." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Two head cones made of wax and fabric have been uncovered in graves in Amarna, a city built by the pharaoh Akhenaten and inhabited for some 15 years ending in 1332 BC, according to findings published in the journal Antiquity. The city is home to thousands of graves, including those of ordinary people."
Video from Dec. 14, 2019.
"The ancient Egyptians were known for their spectacular headwear, from double crowns worn by pharaohs to the striped nemes headcloths immortalized by Tutankhamun’s golden death mask. But some of the items worn by the ancients have long defied explanation. Take, for instance, head cones: mysterious, elongated domes found adorning the heads of prominent figures in an array of 3,550- to 2,000-year-old works of art." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.
"Archaeologists batted theories back and forth for years, speculating on the purpose of these curious cones. Some contended they were scented lumps of ointment designed to be melted, then used to cleanse and perfume the body. Others insisted the cones were part of a burial ritual, entombed with their wearers to confer fortune or fertility in the afterlife. And many doubted whether the cones were real at all: Perhaps, they argued, the cones were restricted to the two-dimensional realm of wall paintings—pure artistic symbolism denoting special status like halos in Christian art, as Colin Barras writes for Science magazine.
"Now, after years of doubt, the naysayers have (probably) been proven wrong. Reporting yesterday in the journal Antiquity, a team led by Anna Stevens of Australia’s Monash University unearthed two real-life head cones in graves at the archaeological site of Amarna, Egypt. Head cones, it appears, did exist—and, at least in some cases, they joined their wearers in death."
King Tut's father, Amenhotep IV, was a mystic and religious revolutionary who turned his back on the traditional Egyptian gods -- not to mention the powerful priesthood associated with them -- and decreed that Aten, the sun god, was the only god who could be worshiped in the country. Known as the "heretic pharoah," Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and built a new capitol city at Amarna north of Thebes, forcibly relocating the population of Thebes to populate his new city.
Video from 2016.
Akhenaten dedicated Armana to the worship of the deified disk of the sun and set himself up as the leader of the new monotheistic cult, living in splendid isolation and basically ignoring the defense and administration of Egypt. His neglect (and later persecution) of the other gods created a lot of enemies. Cities like Thebes -- and the priests who controlled them -- owed their wealth and political power to their temples, which attracted both private and official benefactions. Akhenaten's revolution wasn't just religious but also political and economic. My impression is that he was oblivious to the disastrous effects his revolution -- and his isolation -- had on the rest of his country.
Akhenaten's neglect of the ordinary affairs of Egypt led to its decline and threatened its security. Near the end of his reign, other empires like the Hittites were encroaching on Egyptian territory. When Akhenaten died around 1330 BC, his city at Amarna was destroyed and depopulated and the new rulers began a comprehensive program to restore the traditional gods and their sacred cities.
The moral of the story, if there is one, is that religious fanatics, idealists and true believers, no matter how inspired, make bad leaders. Akhenaten is a classic example.
There are various resources available for learning ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Dozens of books on how to read and write hieroglyphs can be found on Amazon and Ancient Egypt Online offers several online tutorials (scroll to bottom of the page).
"The tombs of ancient Egypt have yielded golden collars and ivory bracelets, but another treasure — human DNA — has proved elusive. Now, scientists have captured sweeping genomic information from Egyptian mummies. It reveals that mummies were closely related to ancient Middle Easterners, hinting that northern Africans might have different genetic roots from people south of the Sahara desert." Source: Nature (2017).
This is huge news. The opening paragraph in this Nature article is worded very carefully, but if you keep reading, the story of who the ancient Egyptians were and where they originated comes into sharp focus. We now have solid evidence that the ancient Egyptians were Indo-Europeans, not sub-Saharan Africans:
"Both types of genomic material showed that ancient Egyptians shared little DNA with modern sub-Saharan Africans. Instead, their closest relatives were people living during the Neolithic and Bronze ages in an area known as the Levant. Strikingly, the mummies were more closely related to ancient Europeans and Anatolians than to modern Egyptians." (Emphasis added)
This study is truly groundbreaking. The Afrocentrists won't like it so they'll probably ignore it altogether, but no one has ever taken their heavily politicized Black Egypt mythology seriously. Afrocentrists have never seemed to be able to grasp the concept that "Africa" doesn't mean "black." North Africa was always part of the Mediterranean world. The Sahara desert formed a natural barrier that basically divided the continent in two, both geographically and genetically.
Modern Egyptians do have some black African ancestry, but the mixture appears to have occurred fairly recently. According to the researchers who conducted this latest DNA study, "there was probably a pulse of sub-Saharan African DNA into Egypt roughly 700 years ago. The mixing of ancient Egyptians and Africans from further south means that modern Egyptians can trace 8% more of their ancestry to sub-Saharan Africans than can the mummies from Abusir el-Meleq."
Note: I might be wrong about this, but I think Abusir el-Meleq is ancient Bousiris, aka Abusir (?), the location of a large necropolis where the mummies used in this DNA study were discovered.
Another important result of this study is that it reveals where the ancient Egyptians came from originally and by extension gives us a general picture of how north Africa was settled. Neolithic and Bronze Age people from southwest Asia, the Anatolian peninsula, eastern Europe and the region around the Black Sea migrated down along the Mediterranean coastline into north Africa and apparently settled throughout the area between the Med and the Sahara desert. At one time the region was green and lush, but desertification forced them to concentrate in the Nile Valley where they laid the foundations of the Old Kingdom.
This study is being described as a first, but I'm not sure that's completely accurate. Years ago a DNA study was conducted on the mummy of King Tut which may have confirmed his European ancestry. As far as I know the full study was never released, though several reports claimed that Tut's DNA showed that he was "disabled, malarial and inbred." The Egyptian government apparently suppressed the full test results, but iGENEA, a Swiss genomics company, "started a Tutankhamen DNA project based on what [they said were] genetic markers that appeared on a computer screen during a Discovery Channel special on the famous pharaoh's genetic lineage," according to a 2011 Live Science story which dismissed the project as "unscientific".
According to iGENEA, King Tut belongs to haplogroup R1b1a2 which "arose about 9.500 years ago in the surrounding area of the Black Sea. The migration of this haplogroup into Europe started at the earliest with the spread of agriculture since 7.000 BC. It is very probable that it is also connected to the Indoeuropeans who spread over Europe a little later in several waves of migrations."
That sounds pretty accurate. Maybe the iGENEA study was unscientific, but in light of these new DNA results they may have been right after all, at least in general.
Comment: Many of the sources I've read about this story use semantic tricks in their lead paragraphs to soften the impact of the DNA results. For example, Science Daily concludes its opening summary of the research with the sentence "[t]he study found that modern Egyptians share more ancestry with Sub-Saharan Africans than ancient Egyptians did." Technically, that's true, but the sentence is deliberately worded to obscure the most important finding. To get the full picture you have to dig deeper into the article, but that's typical with subjects which have become contaminated with modern identity politics. I have a feeling that this news won't get a lot of exposure in the modern indoctrination camps that still try to pass themselves off as universities.
This video from March 2019 presents a moment in STEM history that apparently never happened.
"Merit Ptah was an ancient Egyptian physician, often revered as the world's first female doctor. She was thought to live nearly 5,000 years ago...but she likely never existed, according to new findings." Source: Live Science (Dec. 2019)
"'Merit Ptah was everywhere,' from online posts about women in STEM and popular history books to computer games, Jakub Kwiecinski, a medical historian and instructor at the University of Colorado's School of Medicine, said in a UC statement. 'And yet, with all these mentions, there was no proof that she really existed.'"
Note: It looks like Merit Ptah was invented in 1938 by "a Canadian feminist called Kate Campbell Hurd-Mead" who wrote a book about female doctors. (Wikipedia) "... The International Astronomical Union named the impact crater Merit Ptah on Venus after her."
Note: In the video above, a laser is being used to "map individual bones and artifacts" in a middle Bronze Age cremation urn discovered in Hungary.
It appears that it may now be possible to actually tell the difference between men and women based on their ashes and bone fragments:
"Ancient cremated human remains, despite being deformed, still retain sexually diagnostic physical features, according to a new study. The authors provide a statistical approach for identifying traits that distinguish male and female remains within a population. " Source: Science Daily.
Next video shows the micro-excavation of another Bronze Age cremation urn. I'm not sure where this one was discovered.
"'Yahweh came from Sinai' (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:18). It is in Sinai that Moses first encounters Yahweh; it is back to Sinai that Moses leads Yahweh’s people from Egypt; and it is from Sinai that, two years later, on Yahweh’s order again, Moses sets off with them to conquer a piece of the Fertile Crescent.
"But where is Sinai, with its Mount Horeb [the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments]? Exodus unequivocally places it in the land of Midian ...
"And where is Midian? Greek authors unanimously place it in northwestern Arabia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba [see map]. Even Paul the Apostle, who spent three years in Arabia, knew that 'Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (Galatians 4:25). It was not before the 4th century that the biblical Sinai was misplaced in the Egyptian peninsula, probably for geopolitical reasons (Egypt was within the control of the Roman Empire, unlike Arabia, under Persian influence). But placing the biblical Sinai west of the Gulf of Aqaba didn’t make any sense, since that region had always belonged to Egypt (archeology has confirmed it). Why would the Israelites have settled there when chased by the Egyptian army?" Source: "The Arabian Cradle of Zion," by French historian Laurent Guyenot, The Unz Review. Image from World Atlas.
Comment: Whether you agree with Laurent Guyenot in general, he's right about one thing, at least. The idea that the biblical Mount Sinai / Mount Horeb is located on the Sinai peninsula doesn't make any sense at all. If the Jews were fleeing Egypt, why would they settle on Egyptian territory? Assuming this is actual history we're talking about here -- a very big assumption -- they would have left Egypt altogether and crossing the Gulf of Aqaba into Arabia would have been a good way to put some distance between them and the pharaoh. If that's what actually happened -- if the real Mount Sinai is in Arabia and not on the Sinai peninsula -- it would overturn centuries of accepted religious doctrine:
"The biblical Mount Sinai is one of the most important sacred places in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. The summit [in Egypt] has a mosque that is still used by Muslims, and a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is 'Moses' cave', where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments." (Wikipedia)
The supposed Mount Sinai in Egypt. Is this just a pile of rocks in the middle of the desert?
I'm not sure how many Christians, Jews and Muslims still accept the idea that Mount Sinai is in Egypt. Some Christians, at least, have come around to the belief that the mountain is in Saudi Arabia and the idea seems to be gaining in popularity. The UNZ Review article quoted above points out the effect this is having on Middle Eastern politics:
"The growing popularization of the Arabian Sinai cannot be unrelated to the NEOM project announced in October 2017 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: a high-tech, ultra-connected, transnational mega city and economic zone, covering 10,230 square-miles (about the size of Massachusetts), which happens to correspond roughly to ancient Midian."
There's a lot that could be said about the Saudis, the NEOM project and the war in Yemen, among other things, but never mind all that. The UNZ Review article is as much about the current politics of the region as it is about the actual location of the mountain where YHWH gave Moses the ten commandments, but I'm just interested in the ancient history here. I'm not going to comment one way or another about the political stuff, but I will say that there is something deeply sinister about the NEOM project.
Getting back to where Mount Sinai is actually located, it would be interesting to know if the conventional wisdom has been wrong all these years, but I'm not sure how anybody could prove that this or that pile of granite in the desert is the biblical mountain. You would need an ancient map or some kind of non-biblical documentary evidence to do that and nothing of the sort has been discovered as far as I know. But even if the question could be settled conclusively, what difference would it make?
Scholarly interest aside, the importance of all this depends on whether you believe that the Old Testament stories are true. Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe that YHWH appeared on a mountaintop in the form of a burning bush and gave Moses a list of commandments. I don't believe that YHWH exists in the first place and Moses himself is probably a mythological character:
"The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is a mythical figure, and while, as William G. Dever writes, 'a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.', archaeology cannot confirm his existence. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure." (Wikipedia)
The Exodus itself, the founding myth of the Israelites, probably never happened as well:
"The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel, which formed as an entity in the southern Transjordan region by the 13th century BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture. There is no evidence that the Israelites were ever enslaved in ancient Egypt or even lived there and scholars broadly agree that the Exodus has no historical basis. There is a widespread agreement that the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch, the biblical books which contain the Exodus narrative, took place in the Middle Persian Period (5th century BCE), although the traditions behind it are older and can be found in the writings of the 8th-century BCE prophets." (Wikipedia)
In light of all this, the question of where Mount Sinai was located seems pretty much irrelevant.
Is The Real Mount Sinai In Saudi Arabia?
"'Yahweh came from Sinai' (Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalms 68:18). It is in Sinai that Moses first encounters Yahweh; it is back to Sinai that Moses leads Yahweh’s people from Egypt; and it is from Sinai that, two years later, on Yahweh’s order again, Moses sets off with them to conquer a piece of the Fertile Crescent.
"But where is Sinai, with its Mount Horeb [the mountain where God gave Moses the 10 commandments]? Exodus unequivocally places it in the land of Midian ...
"And where is Midian? Greek authors unanimously place it in northwestern Arabia, on the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba [see map]. Even Paul the Apostle, who spent three years in Arabia, knew that 'Sinai is a mountain in Arabia' (Galatians 4:25). It was not before the 4th century that the biblical Sinai was misplaced in the
Egyptian peninsula, probably for geopolitical reasons (Egypt was within the control of the Roman Empire, unlike Arabia, under Persian influence). But placing the biblical Sinai west of the Gulf of Aqaba didn’t make any sense, since that region had always belonged to Egypt (archeology has confirmed it). Why would the Israelites have settled there when chased by the Egyptian army?" Source: "The Arabian Cradle of Zion," by French historian Laurent Guyenot, The Unz Review. Image from World Atlas.
Comment: Whether you agree with Laurent Guyenot in general, he's right about one thing, at least. The idea that the biblical Mount Sinai / Mount Horeb is located on the Sinai peninsula doesn't make any sense at all. If the Jews were fleeing Egypt, why would they settle on Egyptian territory? Assuming this is actual history we're talking about here -- a very big assumption -- they would have left Egypt altogether and crossing the Gulf of Aqaba into Arabia would have been a good way to put some distance between them and the pharaoh. If that's what actually happened -- if the real Mount Sinai is in Arabia and not on the Sinai peninsula -- it would overturn centuries of accepted religious doctrine:
"The biblical Mount Sinai is one of the most important sacred places in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions. The summit [in Egypt] has a mosque that is still used by Muslims, and a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone. At the summit also is 'Moses' cave', where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments." (Wikipedia)
The supposed Mount Sinai in Egypt. Is this just a pile of rocks in the middle of the desert?
I'm not sure how many Christians, Jews and Muslims still accept the idea that Mount Sinai is in Egypt. Some Christians, at least, have come around to the belief that the mountain is in Saudi Arabia and the idea seems to be gaining in popularity. The UNZ Review article quoted above points out the effect this is having on Middle Eastern politics:
"The growing popularization of the Arabian Sinai cannot be unrelated to the NEOM project announced in October 2017 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman: a high-tech, ultra-connected, transnational mega city and economic zone, covering 10,230 square-miles (about the size of Massachusetts), which happens to correspond roughly to ancient Midian."
There's a lot that could be said about the Saudis, the NEOM project and the war in Yemen, among other things, but never mind all that. The UNZ Review article is as much about the current politics of the region as it is about the actual location of the mountain where YHWH gave Moses the ten commandments, but I'm just interested in the ancient history here. I'm not going to comment one way or another about the political stuff, but I will say that there is something deeply sinister about the NEOM project.
Getting back to where Mount Sinai is actually located, it would be interesting to know if the conventional wisdom has been wrong all these years, but I'm not sure how anybody could prove that this or that pile of granite in the desert is the biblical mountain. You would need an ancient map or some kind of non-biblical documentary evidence to do that and nothing of the sort has been discovered as far as I know. But even if the question could be settled conclusively, what difference would it make?
Scholarly interest aside, the importance of all this depends on whether you believe that the Old Testament stories are true. Call me a skeptic, but I don't believe that YHWH appeared on a mountaintop in the form of a burning bush and gave Moses a list of commandments. I don't believe that YHWH exists in the first place and Moses himself is probably a mythological character:
"The modern scholarly consensus is that the figure of Moses is a mythical figure, and while, as William G. Dever writes, 'a Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in the southern Transjordan in the mid-late 13th century B.C.', archaeology cannot confirm his existence. Certainly no Egyptian sources mention Moses or the events of Exodus–Deuteronomy, nor has any archaeological evidence been discovered in Egypt or the Sinai wilderness to support the story in which he is the central figure." (Wikipedia)
The Exodus itself, the founding myth of the Israelites, probably never happened as well:
"The consensus of modern scholars is that the Bible does not give an accurate account of the origins of Israel, which formed as an entity in the southern Transjordan region by the 13th century BCE from the indigenous Canaanite culture. There is no evidence that the Israelites were ever enslaved in ancient Egypt or even lived there and scholars broadly agree that the Exodus has no historical basis. There is a widespread agreement that the composition of the Torah or Pentateuch, the biblical books which contain the Exodus narrative, took place in the Middle Persian Period (5th century BCE), although the traditions behind it are older and can be found in the writings of the 8th-century BCE prophets." (Wikipedia)
In light of all this, the question of where Mount Sinai was located seems pretty much irrelevant.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Ancient Africa, Ancient Israel, Ancient Literature, Ancient Middle East, Arabia, Commentary, Culture, Current Affairs, Egypt, Hidden History, Religion, Videos | Permalink