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Sarcophagi buried for 2,500 years unearthed in Saqqara
- Ozzie_osman 6y agoI grew up near Saqqara (few miles away). It's amazing that there are still things to be discovered there. We would actually often hear that artifacts would be discovered and just sold/smuggled. But i guess there is just so much stuff buried near and around Saqqara that there is still more to discover.
- toyg 6y agoIt’s the same in Roma or Napoli. Despite thousands of years of literal looting, there is still loads of amazing stuff buried underneath.
- vital 6y agoAncient Architects' (a YouTube channel) summary - https://youtu.be/GYr3PBzNyI0 https://youtu.be/GYr3PBzNyI0
- qwertox 6y agoInteresting comments on that page.
- hourislate 6y agoZahi Hawas has quite the reputation of being a phony. Many lay blame directly at him for refusing to allow the exploration and analysis of some ancient sites and artifacts that would run counter to the narrative he supports. An example is that a civilization that existed before the Egyptians is responsible for things like the Sphinx and Great Pyramids. He also refuses access to certain areas of these sites to prevent further exploration from what I understand. I know many folks can't stand him and say he is full of shit. I don't know enough about the subject to have a strong opinion but would like to understand what is gained from not allowing more exploration of the tunnels and rooms under the Sphinx, etc.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pcan77 6y agoThis is the wrong year for this LOL
- ceejayoz 6y agoWhat’s one more curse at this point?
- jagannathtech 6y agoYou never know... so always be careful of what you wish for
- ardit33 6y agoon a more practical side, i wonder if by unearthing older stuff, old variants of the plague get unearthed as well....
- irrational 6y agoMight as well get them all done at once?
- dmosley 6y agoFor the love of god(s) and what is left of the world; Stop. Opening. Mysterious. Tombs. P.s. please. Save it until next year.
- qwertox 6y agoWhy do we think that it is just fine that we open these tombs? I do have a problem with that attitude. If they had been found 500 years ago, we'd probably have almost nothing of real value from a scientific point of view. Are we so much better nowadays that we can allow us to alter the state of the tomb without significantly destroying it?
- viach 6y agoWhat are the alternatives? As soon as these tombs found you can either open them now or set up 24/7 security around. The latter will be difficult to justify economically.
- liability 6y ago"Somebody will loot it, so it may as well be us"? If that's the best we can do, maybe we should stop looking for them in the first place. Let the corpses lay in peace, our modern approach to this lacks dignity.
- unlaxedneurotic 6y agoI think the issue is that someone somewhere is always going to look for it. Robbers have been there for centuries. If they find it first, it's going to end up in the black market. I'm not saying whether its right or wrong. It is just how it is.
- moron4hire 6y agoI'm sure they keep records to return the property, should the next of kin come forward to claim it...
- ALittleLight 6y agoIt's not really looting it if everything is recorded, carefully studied, and what's learned is made available to the public via museums. Looting would be something smashing in the door to run in and grab a handful of artifacts and or a mummy body part and selling it to a private buyer. Big difference. Maybe it lacks dignity in that it's not what the ancient Egyptians would've preferred for us to do with their remains - but I think it's fair to set some statute of limitations on that kind of thing.
- d3ntb3ev1l 6y agoWhat could go wrong opening them in 2020
- antman 6y agoWe should thank the advances in signal processing, ground penetrating radars and LIDARs that have given us such a plethora of new archeological discoveries we see in the media. Egypt's climate and lack of wood which made it expensive and unreachable as a building material, as particularly helpful factors for the preservation history. Through Egyptian sources that have a more detailed chronology historical analysis of surrounding areas is also assisted. Egypt is a magestical place and I am eagerly waiting for the completion of the new Cairo museum to revisit it.
- mothsonasloth 6y agoI think cryogenically frozen people will be the mummies for the futur. Imagine you're in the year 4000 and you goto a museum. "Here in the 2000s museum we have the head of Walt Disney, he was a famous warlord who destroyed his enemies and demanded caricatures of animals like the extinct Mouse and Dog to be drawn. He had many castles built around the old world in places like Florida, France and China"
- tokai 6y agoWont they rot when the power goes out?
- kaielvin 6y agoThey are preserved in liquid nitrogen. There is no need for electricity, although the liquid nitrogen must be refilled once in a while (something like once a month I think). Liquid nitrogen is pretty simple and cheap to produce. Now of course if society collapses before we are able to bring those people back to life, then they will indeed rot.
- onion2k 6y agoWalt Disney was cremated.
- rootsudo 6y agoI read the post in jest/sarcasm, but I am aware many people do think he really was frozen. So 50/50?
- ransom1538 6y agoYou missed the point of the post.
- onion2k 6y agoNo I didn't.
- virtuallynathan 6y agoI wonder what the “more secrets” are. I suspect with the discovery of Göbekli Tepe, and other older sites, we may discover the current timeline for ancient Egypt doesn’t go back far enough. The Turin kings list is pretty interesting. Some geologists suggest the Sphinx may be older than Egyptology suggests at present: https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoThey create enigmatic press releases on a schedule, with the aim of increasing interest and tourism. There are literally millions of preserved burials in Egypt.
- gibolt 6y agoI feel we are quite lucky that Egypt is a relatively stable country throughout the time that modern tools have become available to find ancient burial sites. They are able and incentivized to use proper scientific methods and slow exhuming to preserve as much information about an ancient human culture as possible. Considering how much political and societal turmoil has been and still is in the surrounding regions, all of these finds could have easily been pilfered and lost as they had been through Egypt's earlier history.
- fakedang 6y agoIf you look at it, it's largely due to the nature of unrest in Egypt vs elsewhere in the region. Egypt's unrest is largely formed by local Egyptians, who are otherwise extremely proud of their cultural past dating back to the Nile Valley civilization, a past that was also widely celebrated within the Western world. Places like Syria and Lebanon on the other hand have had massive foreign influence and foreign players influencing their rebellions. Of course they wouldn't give a damn about what happens to those relics. Not to mention, local Phoenician/Syrian/Babylonian cultures aren't as popular worldwide as their Egyptian counterparts, hence there isn't as much dedication towards preserving them - sometimes even the local population partakes in the destruction, especially if the relics in question are of another faith. It would be a different world altogether perhaps, had the Hanging Gardens of Babylon or the Roman infrastructure in the Levant were preserved well. Ironically, one of the major proponents of reviving interest in Babylonian culture in the recent past was Saddam Hussein, who engaged in rebuilding most of the city of Babylon.
- cbanek 6y agoI've always been fascinated with Egyptology. What really amazes me about this is the picture with the gorgeously painted sarcophagus! It's still stunning, in a picture, and from so long ago.
- dandare 6y agoI know sometimes archaeologists leave at least a portion of new discoveries unopened for future generations with better technology. Does this practice have a name? Is there some standard or is it up to each individual team / government to act in this prudent fashion?