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![]() | Now at the American Museum of Natural History, a new “Mummies” exhibition explores how two civilizations on opposite sides of the globe, ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian Peru, both embraced mummification. Though mummies are linked to Egypt, it was Peru’s Chinchorro people who first began mummifying their dead, some 7,000 years ago. The Gilded Lady has a face adorned with a thin layer of gold. CT scanning reveals she likely died in her 40s of tuberculosis, and had curly hair and an overbite. | ![]() |
![]() | An old piano, made by Broadwood & Sons in London in 1906 contained far more than the new owners bargained for ... a hoard of gold coins dating from 1847 to 1915.![]() |
![]() | The oldest coin in the hoard dates back to 1847, and bears the face of Queen Victoria. The hoard's true value is unknown but is described as a 'life-changing sum of money’. |
![]() | The finder said he cut off one of the fingers to take to a metals expert, thinking it might have been made of gold. Unbeknownst to him, one of his brothers severed another finger for his own checks. This was then melted down by a jeweller. Researchers say it is very, very rare to find a statue which is not in marble or in stone, but in metal. Some 5,000 years of history lie beneath the sands of the Gaza Strip, which was ruled at various times by ancient Egyptians, Philistines, Romans, Byzantines and crusaders. Alexander the Great besieged the city and the Roman emperor Hadrian visited. | ![]() |
![]() | In 2015 Spanish archaeologists digging in Egypt unearthed a female mummy still wearing her jewels. The mummy was discovered in the necropolis below the temple of Pharaoh Thutmosis III (1490-1436 B.C.), on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor. The find dates to the Middle Kingdom (2137-1781 B.C.) For nearly four millennia, the “Lady of the Jewels,” eluded tomb raiders, her sarcophagus trapped under a collapsed roof. | ![]() |
![]() | The archaeologists were cleaning and restoring several tombs in the necropolis that had been already looted in antiquity when they realized that in one of the chambers of tomb XIV, part of the roof had already collapsed before robbers entered it. “A large boulder, which had fallen down before the tomb was looted, had crushed and buried a previously untouched coffin with all its content,” Egyptologists Myriam Seco, director of the Thutmosis III Temple Project, said in a statement. | ![]() |
![]() | “These spectacular findings confirm that an elite necropolis is located under the mortuary temple of Thutmosis III. Wealthy and important individuals of the Middle Kingdom and their families were buried there,” Seco said. | ![]() |
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![]() | More ingots of orichalcum, the ancient metal that was purported to be mined at the mythical island of Atlantis, have emerged from the seas of Sicily. | ![]() |
![]() | In early 2015 a team of marine archaeologists discovered 39 ingots scattered across the sea floor near a 2,600-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Sicily. The ingots were made from orichalcum, a rare cast metal which ancient Greek philosopher Plato wrote was from the legendary city of Atlantis. | ![]() |
![]() | For centuries, experts have debated the metal’s composition and origin. According to the ancient Greeks, orichalcum was invented by Cadmus, a Greek-Phoenician mythological character. Cadmus was the founder and first king of Thebes, the acropolis of which was originally named Cadmeia in his honor. Orichalcum has been thought to be a gold-copper alloy, a copper-tin, or copper-zinc brass, or a metal no longer known. | ![]() It had been theorized that orichalcum was an alloy of gold and silver. |
![]() A fresco found in an ancient Minoan house at Akrotiri, showing a procession of boats | X-ray fluorescence analysis conducted in Italy indicates the ingots were made from a mixture of zinc (15-20 per cent), charcoal and copper (75-80 per cent) with traces of nickel, lead and iron. Today, some scholars suggest that orichalcum is a brass-like alloy, which was made in antiquity through the process of cementation, which was achieved through the reaction of zinc ore, charcoal and copper metal in a crucible. The latest discovery of the orichalcum ingots that had laid for nearly three millennia on the sea floor may finally unravel the mystery of the origin and composition of this enigmatic metal. The Minoan eruption of Thera, also referred to as the Santorini eruption, was a major catastrophic volcanic eruption which is estimated to have occurred in the mid-second millennium BCE. |
![]() | The eruption was the largest volcanic event on Earth in recorded history. The eruption devastated the island of Thera (Santorini), including the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri. There is some evidence that the myth of Atlantis, described by Plato, is based upon the Santorini eruption. | ![]() |