{"id":3947,"date":"2017-11-21T23:56:24","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T23:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/?p=3947"},"modified":"2017-11-23T00:33:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-23T00:33:39","slug":"gold-motifs-from-tutankhamuns-tomb-hint-at-levantine-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/2017\/11\/gold-motifs-from-tutankhamuns-tomb-hint-at-levantine-influence.html","title":{"rendered":"Gold motifs from Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb hint at Levantine influence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photographer:<\/a>

Photographer: Christian Eckmann{credit}RGZM, DAI Cairo and University of T\u00fcbingen{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Tutankhamun\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The objects, along with the tomb itself, were\u00a0previously\u00a0unearthed by English archaeologist Howard Carter in 1922 and, for decades, had been\u00a0stowed away in the Egyptian Museum.\u00a0Now,\u00a0archaeologists from T\u00fcbingen University have\u00a0painstakingly restored and analyzed\u00a0the motifs adorning the tomb a century after the historical discovery. And according to their observations, the art on the motifs – images of\u00a0battling animals and goats – is foreign to Egypt and betrays strong Middle Eastern, specifically levantine, aesthetic influence.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresumably these motifs, which were once developed in Mesopotamia, made their way to the Mediterranean region and Egypt via Syria,\u201d\u00a0says Peter Pf\u00e4lzner, leader of the team of archaeologists and conservators. According to the lead archaeologist, the images from the Pharaoh’s tomb resemble those previously found\u00a0on a tomb in the Syrian Royal city of Qatna, discovered during a dig in 2002.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis again shows the great role that ancient Syria played in the dissemination of culture during the Bronze Age.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next step, says Pf\u00e4lzner, lies in solving the riddle of how the foreign motifs came to be adopted in Egypt to begin with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tutankhamun\u2019s tomb is the gift that keeps on giving, it seems, as archaeologists continue to uncover new \u201ctreasures\u201d after examining, for the first time, embossed gold applications on artifacts recovered from the famed tomb.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37911,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[445779,18,28,199,25,445781],"class_list":["post-3947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-science","tag-bronze-age","tag-egypt","tag-pharaoh","tag-syria","tag-tomb","tag-tutankhamun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37911"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}