Ancient World Review

The Temple of Hathor At Dendera

"[The] Dendera temple complex ... is located about 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) south-east of Dendera, Egypt. It is one of the best-preserved temple complexes in Egypt." (Wikipedia) "... The all overshadowing building in the Complex is the main temple, namely Hathor temple (historically called the Temple of Tentyra). The temple has been modified on the same site starting as far back as the Middle Kingdom, and continuing right up until the time of the Roman emperor Trajan. The existing structure was built no later than the late Ptolemaic period. The temple, dedicated to Hathor, is one of the best preserved temples in all Egypt. Subsequent additions were added in Roman times."

Note: "Dendera was Hathor's oldest temple in Upper Egypt, dating back at least to the Fourth Dynasty [~2613 - 2494 BC]." (Wikipedia)

"More temples were dedicated to Hathor than to any other Egyptian goddess. During the Old Kingdom her most important center of worship was in the region of Memphis, where "Hathor of the Sycomore" was worshiped at many sites throughout the Memphite Necropolis." (Wikipedia)

The Dendera "Light Bulb": "Beneath the Temple of Hathor at Dendera there are inscriptions depicting a bulb-like object which some have suggested is reminiscent of a 'Crookes tube' (an early lightbulb). Inside the 'bulbs' a snake forms a wavy line from a lotus flower (the socket of the bulb). A 'wire' leads to a small box on which the air god is kneeling. Beside the bulb stands a two-armed djed pillar, which is connected to the snake, and a baboon bearing two knives." Source: Ancient Egypt Online.

"Hathor was a goddess of joy, feminine love, and motherhood. She was worshiped by both royalty and the common people. She was thought to have supported women in childbirth and also looked after music, dance, and fertility. She was a goddess of miners as well." Source: Ancient Origins.

"The goddess was known as the Mistress of the West, Mistress of Turquoise, and Mistress of Foreign Lands. The oldest information about her comes from the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613 -2494 BC), but there is some information suggesting that her cult may be older. She was also worshiped by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom (c. 1550 – 1069 BC)."

Related: Ancient Goddesses of Love and Fertility.

Philae Temple Of Isis, Agilkia Island, Aswan, Egypt

Agilkia Island is located in the reservoir of the Old Aswan Dam. Constructed between 1899 and 1902, the dam threatened to periodically flood the temple complex located on the island of Philae. The temple complex, which included the impressive temple of Isis shown in the video as well as numerous smaller shrines (1), was dismantled and reconstructed on Agilkia Island during the construction of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s, an impressive feat of cultural preservation.

(1) In addition to "the temple of Isis with its birth-temple in the first court, there were smaller temples or shrines of Arensnuphis, Mandulis, Imuthes [Imhotep] ... Harendotes (a form of Horus) and Augustus (in the Roman style), besides unnamed ones. There were also monumental gateways, and the island was protected by a stone quay ... with the necessary staircases, &c., and a Nilometer. The most beautiful of all the buildings is an unfinished kiosque inscribed by Trajan, well known under the name of  'Pharaoh's Bed.' Graffiti of pilgrims to the shrine of Isis are dated as late as the end of the sth century A.D." Source: "PHILAE." LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia. © 2003, 2004 LoveToKnow. (There may be some textual corruption in this quote since it's from the Wayback Machine. I tried to correct the obvious errors.)

Video from Nov. 2018.

Note: Interestingly, two of the gods with temples at Philae, Arensnuphis and Mandulus, were Nubian deities.

Prehistoric Humans In Ethiopia Fled To The Mountains During Last Ice Age

"People in Ethiopia did not live in low valleys during the last ice age. Instead they lived high up in the inhospitable Bale Mountains where they had enough water, built tools out of obsidian and relied mainly on giant mole rats for nourishment.Researchers provides the first evidence that our African ancestors had already settled in the mountains during the Palaeolithic period, about 45,000 years ago." Source: Science Daily.

Footage of giant mole rats begins around 2:18.

Note: "Ethiopia is ... considered one of the earliest sites of the emergence of anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens," according to Wikipedia. "The oldest of these local fossil finds, the Omo remains [next video], were excavated in the southwestern Omo Kibish area and have been dated to the Middle Paleolithic, around 200,000 years ago. Additionally, skeletons of Homo sapiens idaltu were found at a site in the Middle Awash valley. Dated to approximately 160,000 years ago, they may represent an extinct subspecies of Homo sapiens, or the immediate ancestors of anatomically modern humans. Homo sapiens fossils excavated at the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco have since been dated to an earlier period, about 300,000 years ago."

Even though the ice sheets never reached this far into Africa, the climate was radically transformed. There was less moisture in the air, for one thing, leading to a loss of vegetation in low-lying areas. "People had already begun living for long periods of time on the ice-free plateaus of the Bale Mountains about 45,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene Epoch. By then the lower valleys were already too dry for survival." (Science Daily)

Related: How did the ice age affect southern Africa? (PDF)

Archaeologists Shed Light On Neolithic Culture In Egypt's Western Desert

Video from 2017.

"Very little is known about Neolithic Egypt, the precursor to the subsequent civilisation of Pyramids and Pharaohs we all know today. The often-inaccessible sites conceal their mysteries, lying beneath the Nile’s former flood plain or in outlying deserts." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"An international group of scientists has reported the discovery of burial sites that date back to an ancient culture that existed in the Libyan desert and enabled the rise of ancient Egypt, publishing some of their findings in the African Archaeological Review."

Note: Ancient Egypt had its origins in the dramatic climate changes which followed the end of the last Ice Age:

"Post-Pleistocene climatic improvement in the Northern Hemisphere after ca. 9550 BC allowed human populations to recolonize large parts of North Africa in what is today the Sahara Desert. In the Egyptian Western Desert, the beginnings of human occupation date as early as ca. 9300 BC. Occupation continued until the middle of the third millennium BC when final desertification of the area no longer afforded human occupation." (African Archaeological Review)

Video from 2009.

Related: The Desertification of the Egyptian Sahara during the Holocene (the Last 10,000 years) and Its Influence on the Rise of Egyptian Civilization (Abstract)

Sahara Desert Was Tropical 6,000 Years Ago

Video from 2017.

"As little as 6,000 years ago, the vast Sahara Desert was covered in grassland that received plenty of rainfall, but shifts in the world's weather patterns abruptly transformed the vegetated region into some of the driest land on Earth. Now a researcher is trying to uncover the clues responsible for this enormous climate transformation -- and the findings could lead to better rainfall predictions worldwide." Source: Science Daily (2016).

Notes: The Sahara was probably turned into a desert by a change in the position of the Hadley Cell, "an atmospheric circulation pattern in the tropics that produces winds called the tropical easterlies and the trade winds," according to Windows To The Universe.

"The Hadley circulation is a tropical atmospheric circulation that rises near the equator. It is linked to the subtropical trade winds, tropical rainbelts, and affects the position of severe storms, hurricanes, and the jet stream. Where it descends in the subtropics, it can create desert-like conditions." (Science Daily)

This theory fits in with the general picture we have of how Egypt was first inhabited. Six-thousand years ago -- roughly 4,000 BC -- the northern African grasslands were populated by small bands of Stone Age hunter-gatherers (the Neolithic period in predynastic Egypt is thought to have started around 6,000 BC). Then, when the trade winds and rain belts shifted, transforming the Sahara into a desert, these prehistoric peoples migrated to the Nile region where the Archaic or Early Predynastic Period started after the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt around 3000 BC.

Oldest Egyptian Papyrus Describes Transportation Of Stones Probably Used In Construction Of Great Pyramid

"A logbook that contains records detailing the construction [see below] of the Great Pyramid of Giza has been put on public display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo." Source: Live Science (2016)

The discovery of this papyrus was made in 2013:

"Following notes written by an English traveler in the early 19th century and two French pilots in the 1950s, [French archaeologist] Pierre Tallet made a stunning discovery: a set of 30 caves honeycombed into limestone hills but sealed up and hidden from view in a remote part of the Egyptian desert, a few miles inland from the Red Sea, far from any city, ancient or modern. During his first digging season, in 2011, he established that the caves had served as a kind of boat storage depot during the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, about 4,600 years ago. Then, in 2013, during his third digging season, he came upon something quite unexpected: entire rolls of papyrus, some a few feet long and still relatively intact, written in hieroglyphics as well as hieratic, the cursive script the ancient Egyptians used for everyday communication. Tallet realized that he was dealing with the oldest known papyri in the world." Source: The Smithsonian (2013).

These logbooks are called the Diary of Merer. According to Wikipedia, they "record the daily activities of stone transportation from the Tura limestone quarry to and from Giza during the 4th Dynasty." The Live Science headline is kind of misleading because the logbooks don't actually describe the construction of the Great Pyramid or even mention what the stones were to be used for:

"Though the diary does not specify where the stones were to be used or for what purpose, given the diary may date to what is widely considered the very end of Khufu's reign, Tallet believes they were most likely for cladding the outside of the Great Pyramid." (Khufu is believed to have commissioned the construction of the pyramid). Next video shows the logbooks on display in Cairo in 2016. No English translation available.

Related: The Port, the Papyrus and the Great Pyramid. This was a lecture delivered by Pierre Tallet at the Nelson-Atkins Art Gallery (Kansas City, Mo) in 2017. His accent is a little hard to understand.

Ancestors Of Modern Humans Interbred With "At Least Five Different Archaic Human Groups" After Leaving Africa

Video from 2017. Closed-captions helpful.

"Genetic analysis has revealed that the ancestors of modern humans interbred with at least five different archaic human groups as they moved out of Africa and across Eurasia." Source: Science Daily.

"While two of the archaic groups are currently known -- the Neandertals and their sister group the Denisovans from Asia -- the others remain unnamed and have only been detected as traces of DNA surviving in different modern populations. Island Southeast Asia appears to have been a particular hotbed of diversity."

Note: When anatomically-modern humans left Africa "at least four other groups of archaic humans" were already living in Europe and Asia:

"'Island Southeast Asia was already a crowded place when what we call modern humans first reached the region just before 50,000 years ago,' [according to one researcher]. 'At least three other archaic human groups appear to have occupied the area, and the ancestors of modern humans mixed with them before the archaic humans became extinct."

Note: The difference between modern humans and archaic humans isn't very clear. According to Wikipedia, "The category archaic human lacks a single, agreed upon definition." Archaic humans "are distinguished from anatomically modern humans by having a thick skull, prominent supraorbital ridges (brow ridges) and the lack of a prominent chin." Their brain sizes overlap with modern humans, so they were probably just as smart (or dumb) as we are. Some authorities argue that archaic humans were the first to develop language and there is evidence that Neanderthals made stone tools and they may have known how to make fire. Whatever their differences, though, they couldn't have been that dissimilar if they were interbreeding with modern humans.

What Is A Modern Human?

Video from 2013.

"[Christopher Stringer] is one of the leading proponents of the recent African origin hypothesis or 'Out of Africa' theory, which hypothesizes that modern humans originated in Africa over 100,000 years ago and replaced, in some way, the world's archaic humans, such as Homo floresiensis and Neanderthals, after migrating within and then out of Africa to the non-African world within the last 50,000 to 100,000 years." Source: Wikipedia.

It now appears that Stringer is rethinking the Out of Africa theory, at least to some extent:

"I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the 'Out of Africa' model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin." Source: Edge (2011?).

Stringer apparently still believes that modern humans evolved in Africa, but "the exact processes involved in our African origin are still unclear. We don't know exactly when it happened, we don't know exactly where it happened" and "our picture is still limited in terms of the sites that have been excavated and the information we've got from them."

The most interesting thing about this article is that Stringer seems to believe that there are different types of modern humans. These variations can be traced back to the probable interbreeding of modern humans with human ancestors like the Neanderthals. According to Stringer, "this means that in a sense some modern humans have got more archaic genes than others. [Emphasis added] That does seem to be so. So it leads us on to ask again: what is a modern human?" (1)

Stringer argues that "our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin," but the recent [2017] analysis of Graecopithecus frebergi fossils discovered in Greece and Bulgaria have called this into question. According to this new study "the birthplace of modern human beings may have been the eastern Mediterranean and not Africa..." (Ancient Origins) It's still too early to know whether this study is accurate, though, and some sources are already saying that there's not enough evidence to back the claim. Whatever the case, it's starting to look like the Out of Africa Theory is oversimplified, if not completely inaccurate.

(1) Stringer's conjecture that some modern humans have more archaic genes than others is a dangerous thing to say in today's toxic environment of political correctness. The idea that people aren't genetically identical is blasphemous. As for the Out of Africa Theory, the current orthodoxy regarding human origins is so mixed up with modern identity politics that a lot of people will resist the idea that it could be wrong no matter how much evidence is produced in the future.

The Lost City Of Heracleion

From what I've read, Heracleion was only known through various Greek sources until its discovery in 2000. According to Wikipedia, "Heracleion .., also known as Thonis ... was an ancient Egyptian city near Alexandria whose ruins are located in Abu Qir Bay, currently 2.5 km off the coast, under 10 m (30 ft) of water. Its legendary beginnings go back to as early as the 12th century BC, and it is mentioned by ancient Greek historians. Its importance grew particularly during the waning days of the Pharoahs. In the Late Period, when it was Egypt's main port for international trade and collection of taxes."

According to the BBC (2001), "[t]he archaeologists found a city almost untouched by time, full of colossal statues, hieroglyphic tablets and an extraordinary store of gold coins and jewellery.

"Among the most remarkable discoveries is a giant stone tablet that pinpointed the lost city's location."

Heracleion was a thriving port at one time. According to Franck Goddio, the marine archaeologist who discovered the city, "[t]he quantity and quality of the archaeological material excavated from the site of Thonis-Heracleion show that this city had known a time of opulence and a peak in its occupation from the 6th to the 4th century BC. This is readily seen in the large quantity of coins and ceramics dated to this period.

"The port of Thonis-Heracleion had numerous large basins and functioned as a hub of international trade. The intense activity in the port fostered the city’s prosperity. More than seven hundred ancient anchors of various forms and over 60 wrecks dating from the 6th to the 2nd century BC are also an eloquent testimony to the intensity of maritime activity here."

Sunken Ruins Of Cleopatra's Palace

This five-part series should play in sequence, but if it doesn't, parts 2 - 5 can be found here.

"Antirhodos ... was an island in the eastern harbor of Alexandria, Egypt, on which a Ptolemaic palace was sited. The island was occupied until the reigns of Septimius Severus and Caracalla and it probably sank in the 4th century, when it succumbed to earthquakes and a tsunami following an earthquake in the eastern Mediterranean near Crete in the year 365. The site now lies underwater, near the seafront of modern Alexandria, at a depth of approximately five metres (16 ft)." Source: Wikipedia.

"... In 1996, underwater archaeology in the harbour of Alexandria conducted by Franck Goddio located the island ... The excavations showed that the island had been occupied from before the founding of Alexandria and that it was totally leveled and prepared for construction around 250BC. The island was small (about 500 hectares or 1,200 acres) and fully paved, with three branches leading in different directions. The main branch was 300 metres (1,000 ft) long and had an esplanade facing the site of the Caesarium temple on the mainland seafront. On the esplanade Goddio uncovered the remains of a relatively modest (90 metres by 30 metres) marble-floored 3rd century BC palace, believed to have been Cleopatra's royal quarters."

Most of the artifacts have been removed to museums, but divers can still explore the palace. According to the Underwater Photography Guide, "The site is really shallow, just 5 to 8 meters, which gives you plenty of bottom time. You can see many of the columns of the palace, huge stones everywhere, big bowls used in ancient times to keep water or food and two Sphinxes ... You may also see stones with ancient Egyptian writings on [them] if the visibility is good enough (by good enough I mean more than 2 meters)."