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Burial chamber of an ancient Egyptian priestess is discovered after 4k years
- gnabgib 2y agoSource article (referenced as the source, and the photos/fb quote lifted from): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14048371/burial-chamber-ancient-Egyptian-priestess-coffin.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14048371/bur... Source-source article: https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/cairo/news/20241013_Lady-Idy.html https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/cairo/news/20241013_Lady-I... Original source (German): https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/aegyptologie/aktuelles/Grab-der-Idy.html https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/aegyptologie/aktuelles/...
- card_zero 2y agoThat second link needs dy.html on the end. In fact all the links have been truncated to their visible length. https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/cairo/news/20241013_Lady-Idy.html https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/cairo/news/20241013_Lady-I...
- gnabgib 2y agoOh thanks! Copy-paste fail (from another post of this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42071429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42071429), too late for me to edit, but the working links: Source article (referenced as the source, and the photos/fb quote lifted from): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14048371/burial-chamber-ancient-Egyptian-priestess-coffin.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14048371/bur... Source-source article: https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/cairo/news/20241013_Lady-Idy.html https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/sites/cairo/news/20241013_Lady-I... Original source (German): https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/aegyptologie/aktuelles/Grab-der-Idy.html https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/aegyptologie/aktuelles/...
- adonovan 2y agoThanks. The Post’s site is collapsing under the weight of the worst kind of lurid advertising. It is hard to find the news—you even have to expand the section if you don’t want to see only ads.
- dang 2y agoFixed in the parent comment now. Thanks!
- dang 2y agoOk, we've changed to the first link from https://nypost.com/2024/11/06/science/egyptian-priestess-mummy-unearthed-from-extraordinary-tomb-after-4000-years/ https://nypost.com/2024/11/06/science/egyptian-priestess-mum..., since the latter points to this and it seems to have the most information. Thanks!
- lock-the-spock 2y agoInteresting is also the mistranslation of "Dame", a lady from a wealthy family, as 'princess'. This is a governor's wife, not a princess.
- fred_is_fred 2y agoDid the article change? I see priestess, not princess.
- layer8 2y agoThe original article says (the German equivalent of) priestess and contains no indication that she was married.
- slater 2y agoAlas: "Idy’s remains were robbed of jewelry and metal objects, though the other grave goods appeared to have no interest to the thieves"
- snthpy 2y agoAny pictures of the 11m high chamber? I'm really intrigued by that because that height seems really excessive given the difficulty of carving that it of rock so they must have thought it was really important.
- defrost 2y agoThere are multiple chronologies and uses here; the necropolis complex also had use as an early quarry - following strata of "softer" rock to carve out blocks for use elsewhere. See: https://phys.org/news/2020-02-necropolis-asyut-important-element-egypt.html https://phys.org/news/2020-02-necropolis-asyut-important-ele... for a view from the distance and more general notes.
- snthpy 2y agoInteresting. That makes sense. Thanks!
- rhabarba 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- farseer 2y ago[flagged]
- tolerance 2y agoAdditionally, what factors contribute to how society deems the practice appropriate?
- alsetmusic 2y agoIn a docu that I watched in which the ethics of displaying mummified remains, a talking head (likely an Egyptologist or anthropologist, I don’t recall) made the argument that these rulers wanted to be remembered for all time, thus this was a form of granting that. I’m not particularly persuaded, but it’s an interesting concept.
- dang 2y agoPlease don't start nationalistic flamewars on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- smeeger 2y agoyou dont censor such things when its anti western
- dang 2y agoI know it always feels like the mods are against you* (or whatever side you agree with), but that's an illusion. Look closer and you'll see that it isn't true—for example, I've posted the same "please don't" reply to plenty of comments disparaging Western countries. * https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22always%20feels%22%20mods%20by%3Adang&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- danans 2y agoIn the context of sites like Göbleki Tepe and the sites of the Natufian culture, which reach back 15k years, Ancient Egypt (and their contemporaries in Mesopotamia) are very recent. It's crazy how our perspective on the age of "civilization" has shifted so much recently.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoI find it very interesting how long it took us to assemble the constituent ingredients of sedentary cities into what we recognize today. Almost as if the sedentary lifestyle were inherently undesirable to people living at the time.
- marssaxman 2y agoA sedentary lifestyle is also inherently undesirable for some people living in our time, but most of us have little choice in the matter!
- danans 2y agoFwiw, sedentary in the archaeological context doesn't mean "couch potato". It just means a society stays at a fixed location (vs constantly migrating). Sedentary hunter gatherer societies exist where the environment can support them.
- burnte 2y agoAgriculture took thousands of years of work in selectively breeding crop plants. For a long time it produced little food for a lot of effort, so until it became easier reliably grow good food plants, it was not widely practiced.
- Qem 2y agoAlso while there was a lot of megafauna around, probably there was little incentive to settle and care for crops. It was better to chase the beasts.
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- irrational 2y agoIt sounds like tomb robbers found it in a lot less than 4k years.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y agoI heard - and I wish I remembered where, but possibly when I heard Dr Zahi Hawass speak one time - that much of the grave robbing actually happened within a few years of the tombs being sealed in the first place. So it could still be 4k years since they were last opened.
- Insanity 2y agoSuper interesting. I have been reading Cleopatra: A Life, recently, and it is amazing to think that the Egyptian civilization is measured in millennia. For reference, this tomb is about 2 millennia older than the rule of Cleopatra. Complete side note, but the other articles on that news website are full of clickbait and sensational news. So kind of surprised to also find this article on there.
- gaoshan 2y agoAs soon as I see "dailymail" I, correctly, reasonably and thoughtfully IMO, start doubting whatever is linked.
- vkazanov 2y agoDailymail is dailymail but this particular article is boring. Things like this happen every year, thanks to both the tomb building tradition and the climate of the region. Middle kingdom did thrive about 4k years ago, this is the height of the classic Egyptian culture. Numerous tombs were escavated already. Thr comment you replied to reasonably noted how the culture survived for 2.7k years. They kept track of every pharaoh they had, as well as dynasties, and key events. This is amazing. Not the boring tomb. Although I love tombs.
- kosmozaut 2y agoIt is indeed amazing. Like, the death of Cleopatra in 69 BC is closer to our present day than it is to the building of the great pyramid of Khufu (~2600 BC).
- vkazanov 2y agoWhat's even more interesting is that even the great pyramid itself wasn't the beginning of it all, they built it in the later Old Kingdom period. And we know so much because of the unusual culture of having to carve out one's achievements on the tombstone. In fact, serious people of the Nile cared more about the afterlife than life itself.
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- ChrisRR 2y agoSurely there must have been a better source for this than the daily mail
- GJim 2y ago[flagged]
- nopelynopington 2y agoCan we please stop linking to this hateful rag of a paper, find any other source for this story. Daily mail is trash. Edit: I see someone down voted me and I expected as much. But I stand by my comments.
- elric 2y agoTwo remarks: Those bird illustrations are amazing. Both in terms of detail and in terms of preservation. And: how does one die of a congenital foot defect?
- anshumankmr 2y agoI hope we find some more undisturbed ones like Tutankhamen's one, at least in my lifetime.
- MrDrDr 2y agoReading this after another article about a pre-historic discovery, made me feel 4000 years was not that long ago. This got me thinking, how long is enough before its ok to dig up our dead?
- loudmax 2y agoThat is a reasonable question. I think the answer has a lot to do with why the dead are being dug up. If the dead are being exhumed by archeologists seeking to make information about our ancestors available to everyone, that's very different from grave robbers looking for gold.
- lostlogin 2y agoBut is it ok? If an archaeologist goes down to the local cemetery and digs someone up, runs a DNA test and publishes the results (‘oh, and I found a gold ring!’) it’s clearly not ok. The line is there somewhere, I’d suggest it was seen as ok from 150-200 years or older.