“I need to inform the public that recent reports published in newspapers, news agencies and TV news announcing that the twin brothers Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni unearthed remains of the Persian army of Cambyses are unfounded and misleading,” Zahi Hawass secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has written in his personal blog. Reports had earlier announced that the remains of an army led by Persian King Cambyses II had been discovered by the Castiglioni brothers in a small oasis not far from Siwa where some 50,000 warriors are said to have been drowned in a great sandstorm 2,500 years ago.
Hawass said that as the Italian brothers had not been granted legal permission to excavate in Egypt their claims of having made a discovery was not credible.
Photos allowed
A recent statement by the Egyptian Culture Ministry declared that it was allowed for tourists visiting Egypt to take photographs in open monuments area, but not inside the ancient tombs. The purpose of the ban is to save the paintings in the tombs from the effects of camera flash which can be detrimental to the age-old colours.
The SCA’s Dr Hawass said that any official who bans tourists from taking pictures in open areas such as the Pyramids or the temples at Luxor would be prosecuted, since these photos represent part of the precious memories of a visit to Egypt.
Egypt recorded 12,855 million tourists and USD10.99 billion in tourism revenue in 2008, according to a report issued by Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS), and expects to increase tourists numbers to 14 million and tourism revenue to USD12 billion in 2011.
Mesopotamian gift
The archaeological mission from the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Cairo has unearthed a fragment of a seal impression at Tell al-Dabaa in the Nile delta. It bears cuneiform script in the Akkadian language and dates to the last decades of the Old Babylonian Kingdom. Sealings of this type were impressions made on lumps of wet clay to seal the contents of a box or bag as part of an administrative system. This impression of a foreign seal implies that the sealed object was a trade item or a gift brought to Egypt from Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq).
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said the sealing was found inside a pit which cuts into layers of the Late Period in the Tel al-Dabaa archaeological site in Sharqiya governorate, 120 km north-east Cairo.
Dr Hawass said that the inscription includes the name of a top governmental official who served during the Old Babylonian era specifically under the reign of King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC).
“This is the second cuneiform inscription of this type to be found,” Hawass pointed out, adding that a fragment of a baked clay letter in cuneiform was unearthed on the same site last year in a well of the palace of the Hyksos King Khayan (1653-1614 BC). The Hyksos were foreigners from western Asia who ruled northern Egypt for around 100 years.
Dr Manfred Bietak, the head of the mission, said that both inscriptions are of great archaeological importance as they are the oldest Akkadian texts to be found in Egypt. “They are evidence that the Hyksos had foreign relations and far reaching connections in the Near East that stretched as far as southern Mesopotamia,” concluded Bietak.
Tell al-Dabaa is an important site in the Nile Delta and is already famous for the evidence it has yielded of Egypt’s vibrant foreign contacts with Nubia, the Near East and Crete.
Heart disease of old
Researchers have found signs of heart disease in 3,500-year-old mummies following CT scans which were conducted on 22 mummies kept in the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo.
“We think of heart disease as being caused by modern risk factors, such as fast food, smoking and lack of exercise, but the findings show that these aren’t the only reasons arteries clog,” said Dr Randall Thompson, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City. Dr Thompson was on the team which conducted the scans. The subjects were from 1981 BC to 334 AD. Half were thought to be over 45 when they died; the average lifespan was under 50 back then.
Sixteen mummies had heart and blood vessel tissue to analyse. Definite or probable hardening of the arteries was seen in nine. One mummy had evidence of a possible heart attack but scientists do not know if it was fatal. Nor can they tell how much these people weighed; mummification dehydrates the body, but all were of high social status, and many served in the court of the Pharaoh or as priests or priestesses.
“Rich people consumed meat as well as salted meat which was very popular then so maybe they had hypertension,” Thompson said.