Manchester mystery

The 4,000-year-old statue of Neb-senu stands 10" tall and has been on display in England's Manchester Museum for 80 years. The sudden buzz about it spinning on its own in its glass case would not have been blogworthy except for the sterling reputation of the museum as one of the premier centers for Egyptology in the world. The staff has been pragmatic about it and has suggested that the cause may be vibrations from foot traffic inside or street traffic outside the building, but the statuette is the only piece that has shifted and it's never done so in decades. Curator Campbell Price recounts, "Most Egyptologists are not superstitious people. When I first noticed that one of our Middle Kingdom statuettes (Acc. no. 9325) had been turned around 180 degrees to face the back of its case in our new Ancient Worlds galleries, I wondered who had changed the object’s position this without telling me. The Egyptians themselves would have appreciated the concern to make visible for passers-by the text on its back pillar – a prayer for offerings for the deceased. Yet the next time I looked into the case, the statue was facing in another direction – and a day later had yet another orientation. None of the other objects in the display had moved. The case was locked. And I have the only key." Thoroughly puzzled, he set up an 11-hour time-lapse video (WATCH IT HERE) so that people could see for themselves...

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Egyptian iron

The tube-shaped bead above was made of iron by the ancient Egyptians c. 3,300 B.C.E. - thousands of years before the earliest evidence of iron smelting in the region. It was found with 8 others in a cemetery south of Cairo in 1911, and by 1928 scientists were already speculating that the metal was of celestial origin. Diane Johnson of the Open University in Milton Keynes, U.K., borrowed the bead from the Manchester Museum to seek a definitive answer. She and her colleagues used scanning electron microscopy and computed tomography to analyze the trinket without having to cut it apart. Nickel content of as much as 30% and a distinctive crystalline structure pointed to its origins in a meteorite which had once been part of an asteroid dating back to the origins of the solar system. The handful of iron artifacts found in ancient Egypt were hammered from fragments in meteorites and placed in high-status graves. “The sky was very important to the ancient Egyptians. Something that falls from the sky is going to be considered as a gift from the gods,” says team member Joyce Tyldesley of the University of Manchester. Campbell Price of the Manchester Museum (not a member of the team) points out that during the time of the pharaohs meteorites were believed to be bits of the bones of the gods themselves.

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An engineer's opinion

Cintec International in Newport, South Wales, U.K., has undertaken several projects to strengthen and restore ancient Egyptian monuments, including the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid south of Cairo. Structural engineer Peter James, tasked with securing the Bent Pyramid's "cladding" (the smooth exterior facing), has arrived at a new theory of how it crumbled: thermal movement. With temperatures fluctuating from an average of 3°C (37⁰F) at night to an average of 40°C (104°F) during the day, the daily expansion and contraction of the limestone would explain the blocks grinding down, shifting, and detaching. "Multiply this endless movement by the number of days that the pyramid has been erected and you have the reason why all the outer casing has moved to the extremities, where it has buckled or displaced against blocks moving in the opposite direction and then fallen off." As construction techniques became more refined, the voids between the stones disappeared and the pyramids were less able to absorb the ebbs and flows. This would explain why the ancient Egyptians began building their tombs underground in the Valley of the Kings. But it also puts a stop to the long-held belief that the outer casing of the pyramids was looted for the limestone. Opportunists would have carried away the stone blocks only after they had fallen from the structure naturally.

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Cheetah dream

I had a very strange dream about cheetahs the other night. I was visiting a college campus on which the big cats were allowed to roam during the day, but as a precaution – since they fed at night – they were rounded up at dusk. I accompanied the groundskeeper on foot and each time we encountered a cheetah, he would coax it into a giant burlap bag he was dragging behind him. The animal would immediately fall asleep once it was inside the bag, which already contained a pile of 9 sleeping cheetahs when I woke up! With some exceptions, cheetahs are known to be very tolerant of humans and have been kept as pets by some historic figures, including Genghis Khan, Charlemagne, and Akbar the Great. They were used for hunting by the ancient Egyptians and ancient Persians. I remembered an Art Deco image of a woman walking a cheetah on a leash by the Russian-born French artist Erté (1892-1990), found it here, and am pleased to add it to Quigley's Cabinet!

 

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Beefy builders

Egyptologist Richard Redding of the University of Michigan has done some meat math to determine the extent to which bureaucracy played a role in building the pyramids at Giza. The pyramid-builders - who were not slaves – lived just 1,300' (400m) south of the Sphinx. Based on animal bones at slaughter sites nearby, he estimates that the workforce consumed more than 4,000 pounds of meat each day - about 11 cattle and 37 sheep or goats, supplemented by an equivalent amount of fish and other sources of protein. This means that the ancient Egyptians would have needed to maintain a herd of 21,900 cattle and 54,750 sheep and goats to keep up regular delivery to the Giza workers. To support the animals and the herders would have necessitated an area of 465 square miles (1,205 square km) – about 5% of the present-day Nile Delta. This investment of land, livestock, and "support staff" ensured the 6 lbs of meat they needed each week to contribute half of the 67g of protein they had to eat every day to perform hard labor. This daily total was calculated by Redding using modern statistics, but adjusting for the smaller body size of ancient Egyptians. "They were young males, who ate exceptionally good food and had good medical care and were working for the good of society," Redding says of the thousands of workers who spent 20 years constructing the Great Pyramids. "They probably got a much better diet than they got in their village."

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Mummy medicine

If you haven't read much about ancient Egyptian mummies, you may be shocked to learn that in centuries past, they were ground up into a fine powder dispensed by pharmacists to be topically applied or orally ingested as a treatment for ailments as diverse as upset stomach, gout, and epilepsy. Mumia (or mummia) was 1st prepared in the 12th c., was in common use by the 15th c., and reached great popularity by the 17th c. "Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams," wrote Sir Thomas Browne in 1841. Mummy powder was in such demand that the supply of ancient Egyptians slowed and contemporary corpses were substituted. Mumia was still available as recently as the early 20th c.

Fast forward to 2012, when scientists are again looking to mummy as a cure. They fear that our (over)use of antibiotics has ravaged our intestinal flora, which in turn has changed our metabolism, damaging our immune system and contributing to obesity. Cecil Lewis of the University of Oklahoma is comparing the bacteria in the poop of ancient mummies - who lived before the age of antibiotics - to our own gut bacteria so they can figure out what has changed. "My first hypothesis would be that chlorinated water and antibiotics fundamentally changed human microbiomes," says Dr. Lewis, who adds, "It's too early to tell if it's a good idea to repopulate our guts with bacteria. But it's certainly an important idea that requires investigation." And presumably a more sophisticated method than ingesting mumia...

1st image) An apothecary vessel inscribed "MUMIÆ" once contained powdered mummy and is now a specimen in the pharmacy collection of the Museums für Hamburgische Geschichte, 2nd image) Alisa Eagleston and Elizabeth Cornu, conservators from the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum, cover the 2,500-year-old mummy of an Egyptian man named "Irethorrou" after being scanned at the Stanford Medical Center.

These are some of the many posts I have written about ancient Egypt, if you care to read on: Ancient Egyptian perfume, Rediscovery of ancient Egypt, Raiding ancient Egypt, Ancient Egyptian finds, The nurse and the sphinx, Mummy toes, Ramesses' repatriation, Mummies guarded, The mummies in question, and Egyptian obelisks elsewhere.

"The whole of Egypt is crying."

Another cultural catastrophe in Egypt. Protesters are blaming the military for the fire that broke out in the Institut d'Egypt over the weekend during clashes in Tahrir Square. It was not just any building - it housed tens of thousands of historic books and documents, most of which are now beyond repair (click here for photos of the interior of the Institute before it burned and a video that shows the building in flames). "The burning of such a rich building means a large part of Egyptian history has ended," said the Institute's director Mohammed al-Sharbouni. Likely unsalvageable is an original copy of the handwritten 24-volume oversized Le Description de l'Egypte, compiled by scientists who took part in the expedition to Egypt led by Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) in the late 18th c. The French emperor established the Institute in 1798 as a research center with sections dedicated to mathematics, physics and natural history, political economy, and literature and the arts. Luckily, there are 4 other handwritten copies of The Description of Egypt and it has been reproduced and digitized, but much of the material is irreplaceable. Dozens of academic and lay volunteers, along with 10 assigned soldiers, have been assessing the damage - caused by the fire that raged for 12 hours and the water it was doused with - and are trying to salvage what they can (another view of the damage here). Stacks of rare 200-year-old manuscripts are described as little more than charcoal debris. At least 16 truckloads with around 50,000 of the estimated 192,000 books, journals, and writings have been moved to Cairo's main library. The effort to try and save what's left of the charred manuscripts is being led by the library's director Zein Abdel-Hady, who said, "I haven't slept for two days, and I cried a lot yesterday. I do not like to see a book burned. The whole of Egypt is crying." The body of work that was destroyed was essential for researchers of Egyptian history, Arabic studies, and Egyptology, so scholars worldwide cry with him. In monetary terms, the collection was worth tens of millions of dollars. In cultural terms, priceless.

Follow-ups

Nuremberg Chronicle 4/20/11
Rare original King James Bible found in an English village church. Lincoln's signature found on the wall of an Illinois university.

All about birds lately 4/12/10 Bike trail near Chicago will run through rattlesnake habitat. The Egyptian cobra missing from the Bronx Zoo was found.

Over the moon 4/5/11 Canadian prisoner "roughed up" by dangerous cow. Farm animals found inside an Iowa home. Montana cow gives birth to rare set of triplets. Dotty the donkey receives award for saving sheep.

April fools 4/1/11 A 35-year-old man drove his car through the front window of a Massachusetts driving school. Mark Wright commented on this post, "You're right: they're very common - but not only in Florida. After recovering from being hit by a car that crashed into the Maryland convenience store I was exiting, I started StorefrontCrashes.com to track and discuss these accidents. Thanks for helping shine some light on this surprisingly stealthy safety problem!"

All aboard! 3/29/10 The day after this post, it was reported that an 8' mako shark had jumped into a boat in the Gulf of Mexico.

Acid alternative 3/24/11
My friend Angie writes, "I think it's actually a strong alkaline rather than acid.......and the remaining liquid is neutral enough to be flushed safely. The boffins at the Mayo have been using the technique for quite some time..."

A flamingo fell down 3/20/10 The flamingos in a Swedish zoo were massacred by the anteaters.

Fossil sex 3/19/11 Largest fossilized spider found in Mongolia. Discovery of the oldest flying insect imprint in Massachusetts.

Electroplating the dead 3/17/11 Thanks to Chase for this explanatory note: "While the thought of ending up on a knick-knack shelf in some hoarder's livingroom appeals to me may I point out a fatal flaw in Dr. Varlot's (!) method? Using a thin, usually copper, coating that acts as a base for electroplating an object is standard procedure HOWEVER his next step will leave a bit to be desired if used on a corpse, especially a nice juicy one. Putting the dearly departed into a vacuum will result in an at best really distorted sack of bio matter and an awful lot of precious body fluids sloshing about. The end result might look like your uncle Joe if viewed in a dark room and you squint a lot but that kind of takes the shine off the whole electroplating business, so to speak. Considering the price of silver nowadays I would do my research carefully. For those of us with limited budgets there is the alternative of a good inexpensive nickle plating that any autobody shop worth their salt can do for a couple of hundred bucks. "

Metaphor 3/12/11 A baby porpoise stranded in a rice paddy by the Japanese tsunami has been returned to the sea. Before and after images of the devastation in Japan, and the sound of the earthquake.

St. Catherine of Siena 3/8/11 In response to this post, Sue writes, "I think she looks very sweet, even as a mummy. It always delights me when something I've led you to is used on your blog."

Birds and dogs 3/4/11 Jackdaw befriends British schoolboy. Dog saves owner from Japanese tsunami. Fashionable bird on the Paris runway. Guide dog gets a guide dog. Man in Afghanistan kills birds and small mammals to keep runways safe. Owl rescued from engine after being hit by car, but had to be euthanized. Pet dog found alive in the rubble a month after a fire in Boston. Old bird lays new egg. Cache of 8 million dog mummies found in Egypt. The Transylvanian naked neck chicken a.k.a. the "churkey." A family in Florida is besieged by red-shouldered hawks. A bird in the dishwasher in Cleveland. Stolen ostrich runs home in Romania. British man opens hotel for chickens. In case you missed it on the news, here's the live link to a bald eagle's nest in Iowa.

Mummies guarded 1/30/11 Jasmine Day, author of The Mummy's Curse, wanted me to spread the word about this petition to protect the ancient Egyptian monuments, one of which has already been destroyed.

Lethal cocktail 1/25/11 The DEA seized Georgia's supply of thiopental. Execution drug import papers questioned in Arizona.

Stuck 11/24/10 An Ohio man was found stuck to the chair he had sat in for 2 years. Philadelphia woman trapped on her toilet for days.

Specimen swallowed 10/29/10 Chimpanzee meat on the black market in the U.K. Squirrel meat served in Edinburgh. Iguana meat siezed at the Texas-Mexican border. Raccoon meat stocked at South Carolina grocery store.

Lost languages 10/6/10 The last 2 speakers of a native Mexican language are not speaking to one another.

Double take 10/3/10 Another animal walking on its forelegs in China.

My monkey 9/14/10 A Virginia woman arrived for a court hearing with her monkey tucked into her bra. British monkeys given a car to play with.

Mirages 9/6/10 Optical illusion caused 3 suns to appear in sky over China. Then there were 2 suns seen in China's sky.

"Wonderful tombs" 8/23/10 Thousands of tombs in the Saudi Arabian desert are spotted on Google Earth images from space.

Ancient spirits 8/19/10 Ancient Nubians used beer as antibiotic.

Steampunk design 7/21/09 Thanks to Chase for the link to this post and this blog.

Churchill's choppers 7/16/10 A thrifty 19th c. Wisconsin widow retrofits her dead husband's dentures for her own mouth.

Zahi Hawass 7/15/10 It was reported in early March that Hawass would not stay on as chief antiquities official in the new Egyptian government. He resigned, but was reappointed by the end of the month. He is appealing a court ruling that sentences him to prison for a year.

Antique chocolates 6/10/10 A wedding cake from the 1890s!

Crafty bees 5/14/10 Founder of Burt's Bees cosmetics wants to donate land in Maine for a national park. Attacking bees close Phoenix intersection. Beekeeper describes attack.

"Comfort station" makeovers 5/4/10 Public restroom in Boston will reopen as a sandwich shop.

Corpses in strange places 4/6/10 In a grocery store (for a matter of minutes). A soccer game in Colombia (for hours). In her cubicle at work (for nearly a day). Riding around in the passenger seat of his friend's car (for 3 days). In an Orlando Walmart parking lot (for days). In the home of her son, a horror filmmaker (for a year). In his apartment in Sweden (for 3 years). In a hoarder's home. In the foyer of the home she shared with her adult twin sons. In the closet of the room her grandson was having sex in. In a pest control truck. On top of a 1,000' radio tower. In a New Mexico emergency room (after decomposition had already set in).

Auto-appendectomy 3/29/10 Leonid Rogozov had to remove his own appendix in 1961 while in Antarctica. The 1st U.S. research station at the South Pole was blown up.

He Pingping 3/16/10 Nepalese teenager Junrey Balawing (1st image) set to become world's shortest man in June.

Evelyn McHale 3/2/10 I got a welcome comment from Gary Wright: "Evelyn was my Aunt. That note sounds right to me because my Grandma was a bit of a fruitcake (God bless her soul). I was born in '49 but remember my mother (Helen) speaking of this tragic event."

Ironic deaths 2/4/10 Wrongly convicted man killed in workplace accident. Funeral home owner dies while transporting body.

Sinkholes 1/12/10 Florida woman's yard swallows her up.

Happy New Year! 1/1/10 Audio slideshow of world's only ice musician.

Gibson guitar 12/31/09 Swedish police seize a shotgun disguised as a guitar.

Smilodon 12/21/09 The mechanics of the saber-toothed tiger's bite.

Flying fish 11/29/09 It rained earthworms on a school in Scotland.

Cloaca 11/17/09 An art project involving the preserved poop of William S. Burroughs (1914-1997).

Stone/House 11/19/09 New Zealand earthquake dislodges 30-ton boulder. A 1,000-ton sandstone boulder crashed into a house in Montana.

Circus animals on the lam 11/13/09 A herd of goats wanders onto the I-5 in Sacramento. A deer crashes through a Minnesota couple's window and ends up in the closet. Loose llama on the attack in Cleveland. Raccoons chasing people from the Washington, D.C., metro. A fox was living on top of a skyscraper in London. Spider monkey killed in traffic in North Carolina. Komodo dragons escaped from an Indonesian zoo. Goat wanders into Idaho music store. Two cars stopped in England had 16 lambs inside. Tortoise stolen from zoo in Colorado. Five goats found wandering the streets of New Jersey.

White Bengal tiger 9/29/09 Woman drives off a tiger attacking her husband in Malaysia.

Creative cremains 7/24/09 The idea of mixing human ashes with paper pulp to make a book - a "bibliocadaver" - was just a joke. But Raven Collins will incorporate human ashes into a painted portrait. Man's ashes are stolen from church before funeral in California.

Spontaneous human combustion 6/9/09 A mysterious recent occurrence in which a man was "engulfed in flames" for no known reason.

Elusive animals 6/4/09 Images of rare Javan rhinoceros caught by motion-sensor camera. Frog in India reemerges after a century. New rodent discovered in Brazil.

Rossetti's menagerie 5/1/09 A depressed wombat.

Prosimians 4/25/09 Tarsier's resemblance to Yoda (2nd image). Richard Branson plans to create lemur colony on undeveloped Caribbean island he owns.

Bears in the news 4/24/09 Australian customs surprised by bear's head. Swedish boy accidentally disturbs, and is attacked by, hibernating bear. Berlin's Knut died and people are protesting plans to preserve and exhibit his remains in a museum.

Robo-animals 4/9/09 Miniature horse in Texas given artificial leg. Florida orthodontist repairs turtles' shells. A turtle rescued in Florida had eaten so much debris in the ocean that it "pooped plastic for a month." A pet turtle causes a house fire in Brooklyn.

Cyclops 4/3/09 One-eyed baby dies shortly after birth.

Centenarians - and then some 3/26/09 Frank Buckles, the last living U.S. World War II veteran, died at 110. North Carolina native Hollace Wells died at 102. Twins reach 100 in Oregon. Frank Neuhauser, winner of 1st national spelling bee, died at 97. Houdini's last surviving stage assistant, Dorothy Young, died at 103. Buster Martin, marathon runner at 101, died. Sally Gordon retires at 102 "while she's still young." U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown is still hearing federal cases at the age of 103. World's oldest man Walter Breuning died aged 114, so title passed to Jirouemon Kimura at 114.

Disturbingly young parents 2/14/09 A grandmother at age 23.

First U.S. face transplant! 12/17/08 First full face transplant in U.S. performed in Boston.

Traumatic skull injuries 11/25/08 Chinese man had a knife in his skull for 4 years. Scientists believe they may be able to predict future antisocial behavior in scans of children's brains.

Amputation 10/19/08 Sleeping man run over by mulching machine. Man dies after falling into pasta machine. Canadian man's prosthetic leg is stolen from his house and California man's prosthetic leg is stolen from his backyard. Patient with only one limb injures nurse. America's most injured soldier D.J. Skelton redeploys to Afghanistan. One-legged college wrestler has perfect season and wins national title. Outstanding penmanship awarded to student born with no hands.

Egyptian obelisks elsewhere

I was surprised to learn, on a program about the unfinished obelisk in Aswan (1st image) that there are more ancient Egyptian obelisks in Italy than there are in Egypt. Among these ancient monuments are the pair that originally stood in Heliopolis and are now each known as "Cleopatra's Needle." One was erected in London in 1878 and the other was transplanted to New York in 1881.* Both granite obelisks - 68' tall and weighing 224 tons - had been moved to Alexandria, Egypt, by the Romans in 12 B.C. To secure a "needle" for New York, railroad magnate William Vanderbilt (1821-1885) donated $100,000 to finance the transport of the obelisk after it was given as a gift to the United States by an Egyptian official. Under the direction of an off-duty U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, the obelisk (2nd image, as it stood in Egypt) was shifted to the horizontal and moved to the port, where it was put into the hold of the steamship Dessoug (4th image). The needle left Alexandria on June 12th, 1880, spent more than a month at sea, and was brought up the Hudson River.
A team of 32 horses pulled the obelisk from the river bank and over a specially-built trestle bridge from Fifth Avenue to its destination across from the recently-built Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Masons, 9,000 strong, presided over the October 2, 1880, cornerstone-laying ceremony, which was watched by an estimated 50,000 spectators. Cleopatra's Needle has stood in Central Park (3rd image) ever since. Despite evidence that the obelisk base had been worn or chipped away by the time it was re-erected, and a statement from the New York Department of Parks & Recreation that the monument has been monitored and has shown no significant ongoing erosion, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass has sent a sternly worded letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that reads in part as follows:

"I am glad that this monument has become such an integral part of New York City, but I am dismayed at the lack of care and attention that it has been given. Recent photographs that I have received show the severe damage that has been done to the obelisk, particularly to the hieroglyphic text, which in places has been completely worn away. I have a duty to protect all Egyptian monuments whether they are inside or outside of Egypt. If the Central Park Conservancy and the City of New York cannot properly care for this obelisk, I will take the necessary steps to bring this precious artifact home and save it from ruin....I strongly urge you to focus your efforts on saving this obelisk and preserving it for future generations. I am confident that you can find the resources in New York City to conserve this monument properly and pay this treasure the respect that it deserves."

*A 3rd "Cleopatra's Needle" stands in Paris, but this obelisk originally stood in front of the Temple of Luxor, where it's companion remains.

The mummies in question

The ancient mummies that were damaged a week ago in Egypt's political uprising - along with the 70 objects that were also vandalized - become the symbol of the world's concern for Egypt's cultural heritage. Pictured above are the heads lying on the floor with scattered broken bones. They remain unidentified, but researchers speculated - based on a cartonnage case that had also been thrown to the floor - that they were the mummies of King Tutankhamun's great-grandparents. "We all feared they could be Yuya and Thuya, but the pictures proved they weren't," said blogger Kate Phizackerley. In fact, the bones in the photo apparently do not belong to the heads, which are Late Period fragmentary mummies used to test the CT scanner and stored near the machine. "Quite certainly we are talking of non-royal mummies," asserted Swiss paleopathologist Frank Rühli. My friend Australian Egyptologist and anthropologist Jasmine Day, whose book The Mummy's Curse: Mummymania in the English-Speaking World I reviewed, concurs: "Many of the royal mummies have distinct facial features and even intact hair. The damaged mummies and bones appear to have been knocked accidentally - or tossed vindictively - off a table or shelf in the darkened storeroom." Even though they are not the bodies of pharaohs, they certainly deserved more respect. As Day observes, "It is tragic to see Egyptian mummies treated once more in the cavalier and cruel fashion in which tens of thousands of their fellows were once treated by ancient Egyptian tomb robbers and Victorian souvenir hunters. I never thought I would witness such things in my lifetime." While I was writing this post, news broke that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak will likely step down tonight.

Mummies guarded

I had been planning a post about guarding the modesty of mummies, but with the civil unrest in Egypt there is news that the mummies themselves were in jeopardy.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, reports (video here) that vandals broke into Cairo's Egyptian Museum on Friday evening and destroyed 2 mummies. They also damaged several ancient artifacts, some of which can be repaired, and cleared out the gift shop. To protect the artifacts, Egyptian citizens, police, and tourists formed a human chain around the museum. The would-be thieves were arrested and jailed, but the danger to the mummies has not passed. Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party headquarters is located right next door and was torched by protesters. Dr. Hawass said, "What scares me is that if this building is destroyed, it will fall over the museum." The Egyptian Museum is now protected by military guards (1st image) and armored tanks, and security has been stepped up at the Luxor Museum and at ancient sites like Karnak Temple and the Pyramids of Giza.

The earlier news that British museums were covering up the mummies on exhibit for fear of offending pagans and others pales in comparison. Manchester University Museum removed the head of Worsley Man, an Iron Age bog body, from display, and covered up the ancient Egyptian mummies of Asru and Khary (2nd image, Keeper of Egyptology Rosalie David with an ancient mummy). Other museums have darkened display cases, closed caskets, or removed human remains entirely. Dr. Tiffany Jenkins states, "The profession is overreacting to the claims of small minority groups....Unfortunately, it will penalise the millions of people who enjoy learning from the display of human remains." The majority of visitors agree, according to their comments. The three mummies at the Manchester Museum were uncovered only after a public protest.

Scratchings

Petroglyph, n.
Cultural Anthropol. and Archaeol.
[comb. form¹ + GLYPH n., probably after HIEROGLYPH n.PETROGRAPH n.] Compare earlier

A rock carving, esp. a prehistoric one.

1854 G. R. GLIDDON in J. C. Nott Types of Mankind III. iii. 686 The petroglyphs of these three dynasties,..are now preserved for posterity, so long as the pyramids of Geezeh shall endure. 1870 Athenæum 12 Feb. 233 In addition to these petroglyphs there are menhirs, cairns, and duns, while crannoges occur in most of the lochs. 1926 Bulletin 26 June 12/3 This theory was confirmed by the rude petroglyphs they passed, picture phrases chiselled in the rock. 1952 V. G. CHILDE New Light on Most Anc. East ii. 23 Petroglyphs, like microliths, attest hunting over many areas now uninhabitable.

So what's new in ancient rock art? I've come across 3 stories lately:

Neolithic rock art near Jubbah, Saudi Arabia (1st image)
This photo is featured on the National Geographic website as an example of new GigaPan technology that stitches thousands of closeup images into panoramas of 1,000-megapixel resolution. The result is an image that is ultra-zoomable (click on it to try it). Rock art expert Sandra Olsen of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh has teamed up with photographer Richard T. Bryant to document the ancient petroglyphs of Saudi Arabia. Olsen explains, "You can take a composite image of an entire cliff face and zoom in on a single grain of sand. You can see incredible details. It's a fantastic tool for spatial analysis. You can see which images overlie others and see the relationships between scenes—even while sitting in your own office. If you want to study how a petroglyph was made, sometimes there is an advantage to coming across images that were stopped in mid-creation," she said. "That's something that I didn’t observe initially because our time at the site was limited, and I didn't have time to do that kind of analysis. Instead I'm doing it on the computer."

Neolithic sandstone etching near Over, Cambridgeshire, England (2nd image)
This rock carved with concentric circles was found at the bottom of a quarry by a participant in a continuing education course offered by the University of Cambridge. Susie Sinclair reveals, ''I'm an accidental archaeologist so I didn't know what it was. It's really quite a beautiful object and amazing to think someone did this 4,500 years ago. Everyone who has seen it has interpreted it differently. It's a talking point whether it's a piece of art or a meaningless doodle. Some people think it is a pair of eyes or a map. I think it's more than just a doodle and I hope one day we'll find out.''

Neolithic underwater etchings near Manaus, Brazil (3rd image)
Extremely low water levels due to drought revealed these images of faces and snakes to a man fishing the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon river. The petroglyphs were photographed before they again disappeared under the water so that researchers could study the images. Eduardo Neves, president of the Brazilian Society of Archaeology, notes that the etchings were undeniable evidence that the region was occupied in ancient times by a significant number of people: "There has always been this idea that the Amazon was empty. The truth is that this hypothesis is not correct. In many parts of the Amazon we now have proof of settlements."

In an interesting sidenote, compare the description of the Cambridgeshire petroglyph as the Stone Age version of "a modern office worker's scribbles on a post-it note" to this headline regarding an exhibit about ancient writing that suggests, "Ancient tweets were made in stone and clay."

Mummy toes

I noticed, when I looked at the photos of vintage prosthetics I linked to in yesterday's post, that #15 still had a foot in it! Then I remembered hearing about an ancient Egyptian outfitted with a replacement toe...

When it was discovered on a female mummy (2nd image), there was some question whether the woman's missing toe had been replaced during life to make it easier for her to walk or after death to make her mummy complete. The so-called "Cairo toe" toe (1st image) was made of wood and leather, with a carved toenail, and was found in Thebes in 2000. An even older toe, the "Greville Chester Great Toe," was made of cartonnage and was found in 1881, also in Thebes. The U.K.'s Manchester University tested the functionality of both the Cairo toe (which dates from 1069-664 B.C.) and the Greville Chester toe (which dates from 1295-664 B.C.) by having toeless volunteers wear a replica. Although both toes showed signs of wear, the Greville Chester toe may have been more cosmetic, whereas the Cairo toe actually flexed in 3 places. Andreas Nerlich, a German pathologist who helped excavate and studied the Cairo toe, explained, "This prosthesis is very different from any other type of limb replacement for dead bodies. The big toe normally bears 40 percent of the weight when standing. In present days, loss can be compensated by adequate shoes. Egyptians had no shoes; they wore sandals. These were not able to compensate for the loss of a big toe." The stump of the toe in question had healed, indicating that the digit had been lost during life and also suggesting that the surgical skills of the healer-priests in ancient Egypt were more skilled than previously believed, with the ability to perform simple amputations and to cauterize the wounds to stanch the bloodflow and prevent infection.

The results of the Manchester study have apparently not yet been published, so it is unproven whether the Cairo toe - which predates the bronze Roman Capua leg (which dates from 300 B.C.) by hundreds of years - deserves to claim the title of the earliest known prosthesis. One Egyptian toe mystery has been solved, however. The left big toe of Pharaoh Akhenaten, which had been missing for 50 years, was rediscovered in a Liverpool University storeroom and reunited with the rest of the royal mummy in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Source: Nerlich, Andreas G. Albert Zink, Ulrike Szeimies, and Hjalmar G. Hagedorn. "Ancient Egyptian prosthesis of the big toe." In The Lancet, Vol. 356, Issue 9248 (12/23/2000).

The nurse and the sphinx

Did you know that English nurse Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) sailed up the Nile and saw the sites of ancient Egypt? It was after her return that she famously treated the wounded soldiers from the Crimean War. Florence (2nd and 3rd images) was one of the earliest women to make such a journey when she accompanied friends Charles and Selina Bracebridge in the winter of 1849/1850. She described the sights revealed to her gaze, "And how she opened before us! The wind deadened to a perfect calm, the river spread out to a perfect lake; not, as before, with a current, but a glassy breathless lake; the Arabian hills retreated and hid themselves, as if in terror to approach the bed of death. Karnak and Luxor came in sight on the eastern bank; the head of the Colossi and the Ramesseum appeared out of the Libyan suburbs; there lay the imperial corpse of the spirit, which had gone out and animated the world. Hail to thee, poor glorious Egypt! Let our tears and our silence, and our reverence, be thine: for are no words to celebrate such a death as this. There she lay, in the stillness of death....Nothing can equal the first impression of seeing Thebes."

"I don't think I ever saw anything which affected me much more than this," is how she characterized the country in the letters she wrote and diary she kept. Like other visitors (1st image, Americans in 1913), she saw Sakkara, Karnak, Luxor, the Gizeh plateau, and Abu Simbel, about which she wrote, "Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty....the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined."

She contrasts the landscapes of Egypt with those of her home country: "While the earth in our country is rich and variegated with light, and crowded with animation, the sky above contrasts with its deadness. Here, on the other hand, the sky is radiant, the light is living, the golden light which seems to pour not only from the sun, but from all the points of the transparent blue heavens. One looks down, and the ungrateful earth lies there, hopeless and helpless, a dying, withered desert. This is what gives one a supernatural, mysterious feeling in Egypt....the heavens have all beauty."

Remarkably, not only are Florence Nightingale's impressions of Egypt recorded, so is her voice.

Kent Weeks

It's Wednesday, which means my favorite show Chasing Mummies will be on! Tonight is the season finale, and I can't look forward to seeing any reruns because I didn't miss a single episode. I enjoyed seeing Dr. Hawass's Achilles' heel 2 weeks ago: "I am afraid of bats," he revealed, as he ran screaming out of a tomb! Last week, I was surprised to learn that American Egyptologist Kent Weeks (1st image) is still at the forefront of the field. I was fascinated by his classic 1973 book X-Raying the Pharaohs,* which I picked up in a used bookstore some 25 years ago, and assumed he was retired by now. As it turns out, he was only in his 20s when he and coauthor James Harris, a geneticist and physical anthropologist, x-rayed the mummies in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. He still heads up the Theban Mapping Project, which he launched in 1978 to fill a need for a dependable and comprehensive atlas of the tombs and monuments in the region. The project now benefits from current technology, and offers not only "then and now" photographs (2nd and 3rd images) in an extensive image database, but interactive atlases and multimedia tours (4th image). If you would like to visit the tombs themselves with Dr. Weeks, book now - the tour leaves on November 1st!

*Note the penny price tag - you can pick up a copy of this classic for the cost of shipping and handling!

Egyptian-style tombs

Today's post was sparked by word from my friend and Egyptian scholar Dr. Jasmine Day that a documentary she features in can now be watched on-line:

Series: The Ancient World in London
Subject: Egyptian Revival Architecture
Length: 9 min.
Note: For best results, pause and let it fully load before watching.

In the video, Jasmine takes us on a tour of Kilmorey Mausoleum in West London (1st image). The tomb was built by Francis Jack "Black Jack" Needham, 2nd Earl of Kilmorey (1787-1880) as a memorial for his mistress Priscilla Hoste (1823-1854), whom he joined in the tomb many times before being laid to rest inside permanently. In fact, he had the mausoleum disassembled and reconstructed in a new location more than once - and constructed tunnels to it - so that he could visit her easily.

While looking this up, I discovered that American actor Nicholas Cage has acquired some Egyptian-style architecture of his own in the shape of a pyramid-shaped tomb in a New Orleans cemetery (2nd image). Despite his financial issues, which have prompted the sale of his mansion described as "eccentric in nature," Cage has commissioned the 9' tomb for his own future interment. In addition to fitting in with his other strange purchases, the pyramid is a symbol that features in his film "National Treasure."