Tag Archives: Egypt

Gold motifs from Tutankhamun’s tomb hint at Levantine influence

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Photographer: Christian Eckmann

Photographer: Christian Eckmann{credit}RGZM, DAI Cairo and University of Tübingen{/credit}

Tutankhamun’s tomb is the gift that keeps on giving, it seems, as archaeologists continue to uncover new “treasures” after examining, for the first time, embossed gold applications on artifacts recovered from the famed tomb.

The objects, along with the tomb itself, were previously unearthed by English archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922 and, for decades, had been stowed away in the Egyptian Museum. Now, archaeologists from Tübingen University have painstakingly restored and analyzed the motifs adorning the tomb a century after the historical discovery. And according to their observations, the art on the motifs – images of battling animals and goats – is foreign to Egypt and betrays strong Middle Eastern, specifically levantine, aesthetic influence.

“Presumably these motifs, which were once developed in Mesopotamia, made their way to the Mediterranean region and Egypt via Syria,” says Peter Pfälzner, leader of the team of archaeologists and conservators. According to the lead archaeologist, the images from the Pharaoh’s tomb resemble those previously found on a tomb in the Syrian Royal city of Qatna, discovered during a dig in 2002.

“This again shows the great role that ancient Syria played in the dissemination of culture during the Bronze Age.”

The next step, says Pfälzner, lies in solving the riddle of how the foreign motifs came to be adopted in Egypt to begin with.

The origins of cats

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One of the cat skeletons excavated from a site in Egypt.

One of the cat skeletons excavated from a site in Egypt.{credit}© Hierakonpolis Expedition{/credit}

A new study reveals some fascinating insights into the origin story of the cat, arguably the internet’s most favorite creature and a cherished companion to countless humans.

Paleogeneticist Claudio Ottoni and his peers from KU Leuven and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences have been collecting DNA from several archaeological sites in an attempt to track down the origins and trace the ancient journeys of the domestic cat.

The scientists unearthed over 200 cat skeletons from sites in Africa, Europe and the Near East and scrutinized DNA from feline skin, hair, bones and teeth that date back to between 100 and 9,000 years ago.

The result? A revelation about how cats dispersed in the ancient world. According to the study, the domestic cat we know today originated in ancient Egypt and the Near East.

Back then, the cats had stripes, not spots – the latter cropped up during the Middle Ages, but not before. The Middle Ages is also when the cat’s coat color had started to become variant.

The ancient felines were domesticated some 10,000 years ago, mostly by farmers wishing to chase away rodents from their fields. When the farmers moved, the cats moved with them. They also spread across the old world through trade, hopping on ships to protect stocks from vermin, and jumping from one port to the next, eventually covering long distances, and traveling far and wide. Now, the domestic cat is present on all continents except Antarctica.

The cats can all be traced back to one Felis silvestris, also known as the African wildcat, originally a feral, territorial and solitary hunter. Both the Near Eastern and Egyptian populations of Felis silvestris, according to the study, contributed to the gene pool of the domestic cat at different historical times.

 

Weird birds

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Egyptian vultures exhibit strange mud-coloring rituals.

Egyptian vultures exhibit strange mud-coloring rituals.{credit}Manuel de la Riva{/credit}

Scientists have discovered that Egyptian vultures engage in a peculiar “mudding” ritual that is one among a set of unique behaviors that not only distinguish the vultures from other birds of prey, but also, quite frankly, make them look a little “weird” in comparison.

In a new research paper in the journal Ecology, scientists Thijs van Overveld, Manuel de la Riva and José Antonio Donázar of the Estación Biológica de Doñana, Sevilla, Spain, describe the coloring ritual in detail, opining that the behaviour, where the birds dip their heads, necks and even chest in red soil, essentially bathing their upper bodies in mud, might represent a complex communication technique through which the birds relay social information.

Nature Middle East chats with Overveld about the intriguing mud bathing ritual, and what it tells us about the North African birds.

NME: What does knowing about this coloring ritual add to the body of knowledge we have about the bird?

Overveld: The situation of Egyptian vulture is not very good, and currently classified as critically endangered, so few birds are left and we actually know very little about their behaviour. What we do know is that the Egyptian vultures are among the most peculiar birds worldwide. The vulture has a unique behavioural reportoire, such as stone throwing to open eggs; it also eats excrement of ungulates which turns their face into yellow.

Our work adds a new, and unusual behaviour to their behavioural reportoire, which so far has only been described in its close relative, the Bearded vulture.

NME: What are some of the observations that you have made about the birds?

Overveld: These birds have a far more complex social life than previously assumed. Since these birds are non-vocal, we don’t rule out that mud bathing may be used to signal certain social information.

The most intriguing part of the painting behavior is the amount of individual variation.

I have been repeating the experiments in the last week, and the interest in the mud (and disinterest) is striking. We are just at the beginning of our work, so it is difficult to give a clear answer. We can rule out some options like social status, for instance; sanitary benefits also seem unlikely because some birds don’t use mud when it’s in front of them, but we cannot give an answer to why they do it.

NME: Is it as strange as it sounds? Is it atypical in any way?

Overveld: The bird is clearly a special case among birds generally, but most interesting, it’s a vulture that is general regarded as a filthy animal. This has been quite different in the past, given that many societies treat them as sacred animals. As you know, they have been providing essential ecosystem services by eating dead animals and thereby avoiding the spread of diseases.

The significance of our work is two-fold, we decsribe a behaviour that may tell us more about how [the birds] live and their adaptations, while meanwhile, we show that a highly threatened bird – with remarkable behaviors unique among birds worldwide – is disappearing.

NME: How does the coloring happen? What do the birds do exactly?

Overveld: When birds notice red mud, something happens. Some birds can stare or gaze at the mud for 20 minutes, only to scratch the mud and leave. Others step in the bowl and start to scratch, look at it very carefully and then typically swipe both sides of the head and neck in the mud.

The most important thing of our experiment is that we show birds get dirty on purpose. Some start with a bath in clear water and then go all the way in red mud.

The questions is why do some birds want to become so dirty, and why is it as if some birds look [like they’re about] to take the most important decision in their life before swiping their head [in the mud].

Currently we are describing in more detail the behaviour during different parts of the year in combination with experimental work to figure out whether they may signal other social cues we yet don’t know. They have a more social complex life than previously acknowledged so we currently don’t rule out any option.

The world finally has recorded the strange mud bathing rituals of the Egyptian vultures.

Scientists have finally recorded the strange mud bathing rituals of Egyptian vultures.{credit}Thijs van Overveld{/credit}

If you’re curious about how Egyptian vultures bathe in mud, and would like to see the ritual in action, check out the following videos, courtesy of Overveld and colleagues: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3. According to the researchers, the videos are the first ever recordings of this specific mudding behavior.

2014 Year in Review: Nature Middle East highlights

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In retrospect, 2014 was a mixed bag for the region – with some significant research produced on one hand, but on the other, in some countries, education, health and sectors in academia received some hard blows as a result of conflict and war.

In Syria for instance, the risk of infectious diseases is at its highest, warned a study published in PLOS Pathogens. The crisis was branded “a public health emergency of global concern” – with vaccine-preventable diseases not only reappearing in Syria but spreading to other countries with the outpouring of refugees, such as Lebanon and Iraq, which itself is reeling from years of damage to infrastructure and a myriad of health disasters.

Outbreaks of polio were reported – years after the Middle East was deemed “clean” – with WHO, UNICEF and ministries of health rushing to contain it. But even the largest vaccination campaign in the region’s history couldn’t reach its target as hundreds of thousands of children remain vaccinated, especially with access to hot zones barred.

Measles and rubella continue to be a burden in Syria, and in one instance, the vaccine killed instead of saved. At least 15 children died last September after being administered vaccines that were wrongly formulated, probably turning families away from seeking it and leaving many children unprotected.

Also in Syria, the lack of medical personnel is forcing untrained volunteers to tend to the injured and sick in hospitals.

Adding insult to injury, a study in The Lancet this year says that civilians aren’t even a priority for hospitals in a country like Syria, torn by civil wars. Fighters take up the majority of the available spots. In other hospitals, doctors risk their lives when they treat patients from the “opposite camps.”

In Iraq, the Islamic State (IS) is spreading its own brand of terror – taking over big universities and closing them down, including the historic University of Mosul. The education hubs are now used as makeshift camps for the militants. An independent Baghdad-based research tells Nature Middle East that soon conducting quality research in Iraq will be impossible. Skilled professors are already migrating in droves, in fear for their lives. “Many won’t come back even if the conflict ends,” says the researcher.

The International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) conservation agriculture project that helps local farmers increase food production has been in jeopardy in Iraq since IS takeover. Insecurity, fuel shortages and lack of necessary equipment is breaking them, they decry.

Nearby, an estimated 3,900 schools in Syria had been destroyed or closed down during the first two years of the war. By April 2013, “22% of the country’s 22,000 schools [were] rendered unusable,” according to UNICEF.

The year 2014 also saw a comeback by Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which killed and inflected hundreds worldwide across 19 countries, with most of the infections concentrated in Saudi Arabia, where the virus was first discovered.

Nature Middle East was lucky to exclusively speak to the Egyptian virologist who first identified the virus, telling us the story of “patient zero” who died from an acute respiratory condition which was later revealed to be MERS itself. The mystery of MERS’ transmission was not lifted in 2014, but at least some countries are speeding up research into antiviral drugs that could contain it, or hinder its spread. Still, the fact remains, there are no anti-MERS drugs on the market so far.

In fact, overall things have been going south – health wise – for many in the region; not counting conflict victims and health complications due to war. A silent yet lethal predator, diabetes, has been preying upon the masses – with 35 million diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the region.

Essentially, we have the  highest prevalence level of  in the world – with 1 in every 10 people living with it. Type 2 is tied to lifestyle, while type 1 has to do with genetics, autoimmune and environmental factors – and the incidence of the latter is rising sharply.

The highest rate of type 1 diabetes is in Saudi Arabia, with a shocking incidence of 14,900 children living with the disease, approximately a quarter of those in the Middle East and North Africa.

But in slightly better news, the region has managed (so far) to evade Ebola, which transmits through direct contact with bodily fluids and gains access to the body through skin abrasions and mucous membranes. The virus, however, has culled many in the central parts of Africa, and has fatality rates of up to 90%.

In terms of research, the region has been more prolific. Nature Middle East‘s chief editor Mohammed Yahia writes about the freshly released Nature Index, which was released in November and tracks where high impact research is being conducted around the world, and it shows many positive trends in the region – with Saudi Arabia leading with 358 papers, followed by Egypt.

Examples of prominent regional research includes one showing how Neolithic North Africans began exploiting cereal crops at least 500 years earlier than previously thought, published in PLOS ONE. The earliest evidence of cereal crop domestication in North Africa comes from the Fayum area of middle Egypt, and dates back to around 4350 BC.

In Lebanon, researchers from the American University of Beirut identified an algae species that can be a possible source of superfood and cheap renewable energy. In neighboring Syria, it turns out, two areas have the world’s highest concentration of wild-growing crops. The potential for these crops, distantly related to today’s agriculturally produced crops, lies in their gene pool, and adaptability – something that can provide breeders with genes that could enhance crop resistance to stresses such as climate change, pests, and disease.

Other breakthroughs include: In Sudan, a stunning discovery of a 3,000-year-old skeleton with metastatic carcinoma challenges the notion that cancer is a modern disease, opening new horizons for specialists to research cancer’s etiology and evolution. The ancient Nubian is probably the first cancer victim in archaeological record. As well, dinosaurs lived in Saudi Arabia, it seems. Fossilized remains identify specific dinosaur species from millions of years ago in the Arabian Peninsula when the area was covered by lush vegetation.

That being said, this year was not easy on the region, and infrastructures that provide the backbone of scientific endeavors have bore the brunt of political upheavals. In terms of progress – if we choose to compare notes with developed countries – we’re only barely inching forward.

Independent or university-backed research in the Arab world, collaborations with world-class institutions notwithstanding, is not enough to help Arab-affiliated researchers catch up with an incredibly prolific West. Governments must step in, opines Nobel laureate Ahmed Zewail and the academic president of Zewail City of Science and Technology Sherif Sedky.

“Renaissance in the Arab world will not be possible without genuine government recognition of the critical role of science in development and policies providing commensurate funding for basic research and reform of rigid bureaucracy which thwarts progress,” the experts say.

And considering it’s politics that seems to be setting the region back, Zewail and Sedky’s words ring true.

It is essentially a tug of war – between competent scientists and experts who’re aspiring to propel this region into the future, and governments staggering to make ends meet for their people, giving science a cold shoulder in the process. The next year may not tell us who wins, but it may very well give us indications – through statistics above all – of who is tugging harder.

Tomb of ancient Egypt chief physician unearthed in Giza

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The massive tomb carries the mark of elevated status.

The massive tomb carries the mark of elevated status.{credit}Arab Republic of Egypt Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs{/credit}

The tomb of a top ancient Egyptian physician, who treated royals, was discovered in the Abusir necropolis, a site of excavations just 25 kilometres south of Cairo. A Czech archaeological mission unearthed the limestone tomb last week, confirming through press interviews and on its Facebook page that the tomb does indeed belong to the head of the physicians of the north and south of Egypt some 4,400 years ago.

Shepseskaf-Ankh, which translates to “Shepseskaf is living,” was associated with royalty, including a ruler of Egypt named Niuserre. The same site, which shelters the remains of 14 pyramids, served as the resting place of two other physicians from the fifth dynasty, as well as Old Kingdom rulers and a number of high temple priests close to the kings.

The architecture of the tomb, and its size, stretching across 21 by 14 meters and rising up 4 meters in height as well as housing an open court and eight burial chambers, gives away the high and noble status of the chief physician—who is believed to come from an elite Egyptian family, according to Ali Al-Asfar, deputy head of the ancient Egyptian section of the Ministry of State of Antiquities.

In one section of the tomb, a false door carries some of the ancient doctor’s prestigious titles, including Priest of Ra—the sun god—and Priest of Magic.

Miroslav Bárta, director of the archaeological team from the Czech Institute of Egyptology, told the National Geographic that he is pleased with the historical details contained in the tomb. “This microcosmos illustrates general trends that ruled the society of the day,” he said. “This is exactly the moment when the empire starts to break down due to rising expenses and increasing independence of powerful families.”