Ancient owl-shaped slate engraved plaques, dating from around 5,000 years ago in the Iberian Peninsula, may have been created by children as toys, suggests a paper published in Scientific Reports. These findings may provide insights into how children used artefacts in ancient European societies.
Around 4,000 engraved slate plaques resembling owls – with two engraved circles for eyes and a body outlined below – and dating from the Copper Age between 5,500 and 4,750 years ago have been found in tombs and pits across the Iberian Peninsula. It has been speculated that these owl plaques may have had ritualistic significance and represented deities or the dead.
Now, Juan Negro and colleagues re-examined this interpretation and suggest instead that these owl plaques may have been crafted by young people based on regional owl species, and may have been used as dolls, toys, or amulets. The authors assessed 100 plaques and rated them (on a scale of one to six) based on how many of six owl traits they displayed including two eyes, feathery tufts, patterned feathers, a flat facial disk, a beak, and wings. The authors compared these plaques to 100 modern images of owls drawn by children aged 4 to 13 years old, and observed many similarities between the depictions of owls. Owl drawings more closely resembled owls as children aged and became more skilful.
The authors observe the presence of two small holes at the top of many plaques. These holes appear impractical to pass a cord through in order to hang the plaque, and lack the expected lack wear-marks if this was their use. Instead they speculate that feathers could be inserted through the holes in order to resemble the tufts on the heads of some regional owl species, such as the long-eared owl (Asio otus).
The authors propose that, rather than being carved by skilled artisans for use in rituals, many of the owl plaques were created by children, and more closely resembled owls as the children’s carving skills increased. They may represent a glimpse into childhood behaviours in Copper Age societies.
Excavating ancient DNA from teeth, an international group of scientists peered into the lives of a once thriving medieval Ashkenazi Jewish community in Erfurt, Germany. The findings, shared today in the Journal Cell, show that the Erfurt Jewish community was more genetically diverse than modern day Ashkenazi Jews.
About half of Jews today are identified as Ashkenazi, meaning that they originate from Jews living in Central or Eastern Europe. The term was initially used to define a distinct cultural group of Jews who settled in the 10th century in Germany's Rhineland. Despite much speculation, many gaps exist in our understanding of their origins and demographic upheavals during the second millennium.
“Today, if you compare Ashkenazi Jews from the United States and Israel, they’re very similar genetically, almost like the same population regardless of where they live,” shared geneticist and co-author Professor Shai Carmi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU). But unlike today’s genetic uniformity, it turns out that the community was more diverse 600 years ago.
Digging into the ancient DNA of 33 Ashkenazi Jews from medieval Erfurt, the team discovered that the community can be categorized into what seems like two groups. One relates more to individuals from Middle Eastern populations and the other to European populations, possibly including migrants to Erfurt from the East. The findings suggest that there were at least two genetically distinct groups in medieval Erfurt. However, that genetic variability no longer exists in modern Ashkenazi Jews.
The Erfurt medieval Jewish community existed between the 11th and 15th centuries, with a short gap following a 1349 massacre. At times, it was a thriving community and one of the largest in Germany. Following the expulsion of all Jews in 1454, the city built a granary on top of the Jewish cemetery. In 2013, when the granary stood empty, the city permitted its conversion into a parking lot. This required additional construction and an archaeological rescue excavation.
“Our goal was to fill the gaps in our understanding of Ashkenazi Jewish early history through ancient DNA data,” explained Carmi. While ancient DNA data is a powerful tool to infer historical demographics, ancient Jewish DNA data is hard to come by, as Jewish law prohibits the disturbance of the dead in most circumstances. With the approval of the local Jewish community in Germany, the research team collected detached teeth from remains found in a 14th-century Jewish cemetery in Erfurt that underwent a rescue excavation.
The researchers also discovered that the founder event, which makes all Ashkenazi Jews today descendants of a small population, happened before the 14th century. For example, teasing through mitochondrial DNA, genetic materials we inherit from our mothers, they discovered that a third of the sampled Erfurt individuals share one specific sequence. The findings indicate that the early Ashkenazi Jewish population was so small that a third of Erfurt individuals descended from a single woman through their maternal lines.
At least eight of the Erfurt individuals also carried disease-causing genetic mutations common in modern-day Ashkenazi Jews but rare in other populations—a hallmark of the Ashkenazi Jewish founder event.
“Jews in Europe were a religious minority that was socially segregated, and they experienced periodic persecution,” described co-author David Reich of Harvard University. Although antisemitic violence virtually wiped-out Erfurt’s Jewish community in 1349, Jews returned five years later and flourished into one of the largest in Germany. “Our work gives us direct insight into the structure of this community.”
The team believes the current study helps to establish an ethical basis for studies of ancient Jewish DNA. Many questions remain unanswered, such as how medieval Ashkenazi Jewish communities became genetically differentiated, how early Ashkenazi Jews related to Sephardi Jews, and how modern Jews relate to ones from ancient Judea.
While this is the largest ancient Jewish DNA study so far, it is limited to one cemetery and one period of time. Nevertheless, it was able to detect previously unknown genetic subgroups in medieval Ashkenazi Jews. The researchers hope that their study will pave the way for future analyses of samples from other sites, including those from antiquity, to continue unraveling the complexities of Jewish history.
“This work also provides a template for how a co-analysis of modern and ancient DNA data can shed light on the past,” concluded Reich. “Studies like this hold great promise not only for understanding Jewish history, but also that of any population.”
The research team, of over 30 scientists, included HU’s Shamam Waldman, a doctoral student in Carmi's group, who performed most of the data analysis.
IMAGE: WILLIAM G. HAAG PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY REBECCA SAUNDERS AND COLLEAGUES CONDUCTED AN EXCAVATION OF LSU CAMPUS MOUND B IN 2018.view more
CREDIT: LSU
The LSU Campus Mounds sit on high ground overlooking the Mississippi River floodplain and have been a gathering place and destination for people for thousands of years. They are some of the oldest mounds in Louisiana and North America. Recent papers have offered alternate interpretations of their age. Knowing the approximate age of the mounds provides significant insight into the people who built the mounds. Archaeologists have built “culture histories” describing prehistoric ways of life and the way lifestyles have changed through time. In other words, knowing the age of the mounds provides context into the way of life of the people who built and used the LSU Campus Mounds.
Archaeological data from Louisiana and the southeastern U.S. indicate that between 5,000 and 7,000 years ago—a time archaeologists call the Middle Archaic—bands of about 20-50 people lived off the land and moved seasonally to take advantage of the availability of different food resources. This lifestyle greatly differed from those who were here 11,000 years ago.
“We know a lot about what people were doing in the North American Middle Archaic period and their lifestyle,” said Heather McKillop, the Thomas & Lillian Landrum Alumni Professor in the LSU Department of Geography & Anthropology and co-author on the paper published in SAA, the Magazine of the Society for American Archeology. “It’s very exciting that we have these earthen mounds preserved here at LSU. As we study them, we need to tie the mounds to the people who built them.”
As populations grew within the large bands of families, central meeting spots were built where multiple bands congregated to exchange information, trade and potentially find mates. And when people get together, what do they tend to do?
“They eat, they dance, they perform rituals that tie them to the past and help them see their way into the future. Building something on the landscape that symbolizes this seems to be an essentially human thing. Human beings do this all over the place, and in the southeastern United States, the landmark tends to be earthen or shell mounds,” said Rebecca Saunders, the William G. Haag Professor of Archaeology at LSU and co-author.
So, the LSU Campus Mounds fit within a way of life where many bands of people built earthen mounds as they were hunting, gathering and moving around the landscape in Louisiana and in the region visiting their mound sites as well as the mound sites of other bands of people.
“We know of at least 13 other sites in Louisiana with earthen mounds built between 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, which indicates that different communities were exploring this idea of building mounds during this period of time,” said Louisiana State Archaeologist Chip McGimsey, who is the lead author of the paper and director of the Louisiana Division of Archaeology.
Hundreds of mounds have been destroyed by landowners, farmers and corporations. These include sites, such as the Monte Sano mounds just upriver from the LSU Campus Mounds, which were built about 7,500 years ago but were destroyed in the 1960s.
“The LSU Campus Mounds are probably the best protected mounds because they are on the campus of LSU and LSU has made a very strong commitment to preserving them. Most of the other mounds are on private land and landowners can do what they’d like with them,” McGimsey said.
Differing interpretations
Earlier this year, LSU geologists published a paper, “The LSU campus mounds, with construction beginning at ∼11,000 BP, are the oldest known extant man-made structures in the Americas.” The LSU archaeologists’ new paper published this month is a response to it.
In this new paper, the archaeologists write: “[The geologists’] interpretation of the age and construction sequence for both mounds represents a significant departure from current archaeological understandings of the origins of mound building in North America. If confirmed, this site would change how archaeologists think about the early history of North America.”
“We’re not questioning the dates but we’re questioning the interpretation and the lack of inclusion of other datasets. This disagreement in no way detracts from the significance and importance of the LSU Campus Mounds. While we would argue they are not the oldest person-made earthworks in North America, they are still some of the very oldest and part of what is a remarkable history of mound-building in North America that has its origins here in Louisiana. The LSU Campus Mounds are part of that tradition,” McGimsey said.
The archaeologists raise the point that 11,000 years ago, people roamed in small groups over large expanses of land throughout North America hunting Ice Age animals such as mammoths, mastodons and ancient bison. There is no other evidence that people were building mounds at this time.
The archaeologists also question the interpretation that the first LSU Campus Mound was built to about half of its current height and then abandoned for about 1,000 years, before the final stage was added. Soil scientists and archaeologists have studied multiple sediment cores taken from the top to the bottom of both mounds. They conclude that if there had been a hiatus of about 1,000 years, there would be color, textural and chemical changes on the exposed surface. None of these changes were observed in the cores. Instead, it appears the mounds were built as a continuous process.
“This process has been shown to not necessarily take very long. If you have a group of people who were coming here seasonally and were building these mounds, it would not take thousands of years to build,” McKillop said.
While the geologists believe the microscopic fragments from burned cane and rush plants called phytoliths found in the mounds may have been remnants from intense, potentially ceremonial fires, the archaeologists point out that phytoliths are commonly found in soil in the area. High densities of phytoliths can occur naturally because wild cane must burn occasionally like forest undergrowth for the health of the ecosystem. Thus, the archaeologists argue the phytoliths could have already been in the soil that was used to build the mounds. The archaeologists also point out that if routine, intense ceremonial fires occurred at the LSU Campus Mounds, as the geologists suggest, there should be obvious changes in soil texture and color where the fires burned.
In addition to raising these points, the archaeologists encourage other researchers to pursue further study of the site and outline specific questions that can provide further clarity about the LSU Campus Mounds.
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Meta-analysis
ARTICLE TITLE
The Age and Construction of the LSU Campus Mounds: Consideration of Ellwood and Colleagues
IMAGE: TIN FROM THE MUŠISTON MINE IN CENTRAL ASIA’S UZBEKISTAN TRAVELED MORE THAN 2,000 MILES TO HAIFA, WHERE THE ILL-FATED SHIP LOADED ITS CARGO BEFORE CRASHING OFF THE EASTERN SHORES OF ULUBURUN IN PRESENT-DAY TURKEY.view more
CREDIT: MAP PROVIDED BY MICHAEL FRACHETTI/WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS
More than 2,000 years before the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean, another famous ship wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern shores of Uluburun — in present-day Turkey — carrying tons of rare metal. Since its discovery in 1982, scientists have been studying the contents of the Uluburun shipwreck to gain a better understanding of the people and political organizations that dominated the time period known as the Late
Now, a team of scientists, including Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, have uncovered a surprising finding: small communities of highland pastoralists living in present-day Uzbekistan in Central Asia produced and supplied roughly one-third of the tin found aboard the ship — tin that was en route to markets around the Mediterranean to be made into coveted bronze metal.
The research, published on November 30 in Science Advances, was made possible by advances in geochemical analyses that enabled researchers to determine with high-level certainty that some of the tin originated from a prehistoric mine in Uzbekistan, more than 2,000 miles from Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo.
But how could that be? During this period, the mining regions of Central Asia were occupied by small communities of highlander pastoralists — far from a major industrial center or empire. And the terrain between the two locations — which passes through Iran and Mesopotamia — was rugged, which would have made it extremely difficult to pass tons of heavy metal.
Frachetti and other archaeologists and historians were enlisted to help put the puzzle pieces together. Their findings unveiled a shockingly complex supply chain that involved multiple steps to get the tin from the small mining community to the Mediterranean marketplace.
“It appears these local miners had access to vast international networks and — through overland trade and other forms of connectivity — were able to pass this all-important commodity all the way to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.
“It’s quite amazing to learn that a culturally diverse, multiregional and multivector system of trade underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age.”
“To put it into perspective, this would be the trade equivalent of the entire United States sourcing its energy needs from small backyard oil rigs in central Kansas.”
Michael Frachetti
Adding to the mystique is the fact that the mining industry appears to have been run by small-scale local communities or free laborers who negotiated this marketplace outside of the control of kings, emperors or other political organizations, Frachetti said.
“To put it into perspective, this would be the trade equivalent of the entire United States sourcing its energy needs from small backyard oil rigs in central Kansas,” he said.
About the research
The idea of using tin isotopes to determine where metal in archaeological artifacts originates dates to the mid-1990s, according to Wayne Powell, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Brooklyn College and a lead author on the study. However, the technologies and methods for analysis were not precise enough to provide clear answers. Only in the last few years have scientists begun using tin isotopes to directly correlate mining sites to assemblages of metal artifacts, he said.
“Over the past couple of decades, scientists have collected information about the isotopic composition of tin ore deposits around the world, their ranges and overlaps, and the natural mechanisms by which isotopic compositions were imparted to cassiterite when it formed,” Powell said. “We remain in the early stages of such study. I expect that in future years, this ore deposit database will become quite robust, like that of Pb isotopes today, and the method will be used routinely.”
Aslihan K. Yener, a research affiliate at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and a professor emerita of archaeology at the University of Chicago, was one of the early researchers who conducted lead isotope analyses. In the 1990s, Yener was part of a research team that conducted the first lead isotope analysis of the Uluburun tin. That analysis suggested that the Uluburun tin may have come from two sources — the Kestel Mine in Turkey’s Taurus Mountains and some unspecified location in central Asia.
“But this was shrugged off since the analysis was measuring trace lead and not targeting the origin of the tin,” said Yener, who is a co-author of the present study.
Yener also was the first to discover tin in Turkey in the 1980s. At the time, she said the entire scholarly community was surprised that it existed there, right under their noses, where the earliest tin bronzes occurred.
Some 30 years later, researchers finally have a more definitive answer thanks to the advanced tin isotope analysis techniques: One-third of the tin aboard the Uluburun shipwreck was sourced from the Mušiston mine in Uzbekistan. The remaining two-thirds of the tin derived from the Kestel mine in ancient Anatolia, which is in present-day Turkey.
Findings offer glimpse into life 2,000-plus years ago
By 1500 B.C., bronze was the “high technology” of Eurasia, used for everything from weaponry to luxury items, tools and utensils. Bronze is primarily made from copper and tin. While copper is fairly common and can be found throughout Eurasia, tin is much rarer and only found in specific kinds of geological deposits, Frachetti said.
“Finding tin was a big problem for prehistoric states. And thus, the big question was how these major Bronze Age empires were fueling their vast demand for bronze given the lengths and pains to acquire tin as such a rare commodity. Researchers have tried to explain this for decades,” Frachetti said.
The Uluburun ship yielded the world’s largest Bronze Age collection of raw metals ever found — enough copper and tin to produce 11 metric tons of bronze of the highest quality. Had it not been lost to sea, that metal would have been enough to outfit a force of almost 5,000 Bronze Age soldiers with swords, “not to mention a lot of wine jugs,” Frachetti said.
“The current findings illustrate a sophisticated international trade operation that included regional operatives and socially diverse participants who produced and traded essential hard-earth commodities throughout the late Bronze Age political economy from Central Asia to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.
Unlike the mines in Uzbekistan, which were set within a network of small-scale villages and mobile pastoralists, the mines in ancient Anatolia during the Late Bronze Age were under the control of the Hittites, an imperial global power of great threat to Ramses the Great of Egypt, Yener explained.
The findings also show that life 2,000-plus years ago was not that different from what it is today.
“With the disruptions due to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, we have become aware of how we are reliant on complex supply chains to maintain our economy, military and standard of living,” Powell said. “This is true in prehistory as well. Kingdoms rose and fell, climatic conditions shifted and new peoples migrated across Eurasia, potentially disrupting or redistributing access to tin, which was essential for both weapons and agricultural tools.
“Using tin isotopes, we can look across each of these archaeologically evident disruptions in society and see connections were severed, maintained or redefined. We already have DNA analysis to show relational connections. Pottery, funerary practices, etc., illustrate the transmission and connectivity of ideas. Now with tin isotopes, we can document the connectivity of long-distance trade networks and their sustainability.”
More clues to explore
The current research findings settle decades-old debates about the origins of the metal on the Uluburun shipwreck and Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. But there are still more clues to explore.
After they were mined, the metals were processed for shipping and ultimately melted into standardized shapes — known as ingots — for transporting. The distinct shapes of the ingots served as calling cards for traders to know from where they originated, Frachetti said.
Many of the ingots aboard the Uluburun ship were in the “oxhide” shape, which was previously believed to have originated in Cyprus. However, the current findings suggest the oxhide shape could have originated farther east. Frachetti said he and other researchers plan to continue studying the unique shapes of the ingots and how they were used in trade.
In addition to Frachetti, Powell and Yener, the following researchers contributed to the present study: Cemal Pulakat at Texas A&M University, H. Arthur Bankoff at Brooklyn College, Gojko Barjamovic at Harvard University, Michael Johnson at Stell Environmental Enterprises, Ryan Mathur at Juniata College, Vincent C. Pigott at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Michael Price at the Santa Fe Institute.
The study was funded in part by a Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Award, in addition to a research grant from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory.
Peer-Reviewed Publication A multimethod archaeological study of a spider monkey sacrificed at Teotihuacàn, located approximately 25 miles from Mexico City, provides the earliest evidence of primate captivity and translocation in the Americas over 1,500 years ago.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma’s Laboratories of Molecular Anthropology and Microbiome Research led the genetic analysis of the spider monkey’s skeleton. The OU team includes study co-authors Courtney Hofman, Ph.D., President’s Associates Presidential Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences, with graduate student Robin Singleton and laboratory technician Karissa Hughes.
“Geoffrey’s spider monkeys are not found near Teotihuacàn today,” Hofman said. “Ancient DNA analysis of this spider monkey sought to identify the subspecies of the spider monkey, which can provide insight into ancient trade networks.”
“We were able to confirm that the spider monkey was most closely related to two endangered populations, the Mexican and the Yucatan spider monkey subspecies,” she added. “Using additional lines of evidence, including isotopic analysis, we hypothesized that this animal was of the Mexican subspecies, which today lives in parts of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras. The presence of this animal in the central Mexican city of Teotihuacàn suggests that there was greater interaction with the Maya than previously understood and perhaps this spider monkey was a diplomatic gift.”
Nawa Sugiyama, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, is the first author. In addition to the OU team, co-authors include researchers from Arizona State University; the Archéologie des Amériques in Paris, France; the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute; the RIKEN Institute in Kobe, Japan; and Washington State University.
A gold coin long dismissed as a forgery appears to be authentic and depicts a long-lost Roman emperor named Sponsian, according to a new study led by a University College London (UCL) researcher
IMAGE: SPONSIAN GOLD COIN, C.260-C.270 CE (OBVERSE)view more
CREDIT: THE HUNTERIAN, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.
A gold coin long dismissed as a forgery appears to be authentic and depicts a long-lost Roman emperor named Sponsian, according to a new UCL-led study.
The coin, housed at The Hunterian collection at the University of Glasgow, was among a handful of coins of the same design unearthed in Transylvania, in present-day Romania, in 1713. They have been regarded as fakes since the mid-19th-century, due to their crude, strange design features and jumbled inscriptions.
In the new study, published in PLOS ONE, researchers compared the Sponsion coin with other Roman coins kept at The Hunterian, including two that are known to be genuine.
They found minerals on the coin’s surface that were consistent with it being buried in soil over a long period of time, and then exposed to air. These minerals were cemented in place by silica – cementing that would naturally occur over a long time in soil. The team also found a pattern of wear and tear that suggested the coin had been in active circulation.
Lead author Professor Paul N. Pearson (UCL Earth Sciences) said: “Scientific analysis of these ultra-rare coins rescues the emperor Sponsian from obscurity. Our evidence suggests he ruled Roman Dacia, an isolated gold mining outpost, at a time when the empire was beset by civil wars and the borderlands were overrun by plundering invaders.”
The Roman province of Dacia, a territory overlapping with modern-day Romania, was a region prized for its gold mines. Archaeological studies have established that the area was cut off from the rest of the Roman empire in around 260 CE. Surrounded by enemies, Sponsian may have been a local army officer forced to assume supreme command during a period of chaos and civil war, protecting the military and civilian population of Dacia until order was restored, and the province evacuated between 271 and 275 CE.
Coinage has always been an important symbol of power and authority. Recognising this and unable to receive official issues from the mint in Rome, Sponsian seems to have authorised the creation of locally produced coins, some featuring an image of his face, to support a functioning economy in his isolated frontier territory.
When the coins were discovered in the early 18th century, they were thought to be genuine and classed alongside other imitations of Roman coins made beyond the fringes of the empire. However, from the mid-19th century, attitudes changed. Coins from the hoard were dismissed as fakes because of the way they looked. This has been the accepted view until now.
The new study is the first time scientific analysis has been undertaken on any of the Sponsian coins. The research team used powerful microscopes in visible and ultraviolet light, as well as scanning electron microscopy and spectroscopy – studying how light at different wavelengths is absorbed or reflected – to study the coins’ surface.
Only four coins featuring Sponsian are known to have survived to the present day, all apparently originally from the 1713 hoard. Another is in Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania. High magnification microscopic analysis performed there, following the research on the coin at The Hunterian, has revealed similar evidence of authenticity.
Curator of Numismatics at The Hunterian, Jesper Ericsson, said: "This has been a really exciting project for The Hunterian and we’re delighted that our findings have inspired collaborative research with museum colleagues in Romania. Not only do we hope that this encourages further debate about Sponsian as a historical figure, but also the investigation of coins relating to him held in other museums across Europe."
The interim manager of the Brukenthal National Museum, Alexandru Constantin Chituță, said: "For the history of Transylvania and Romania in particular, but also for the history of Europe in general, if these results are accepted by the scientific community they will mean the addition of another important historical figure in our history.
“It is a wonderful thing for the Brukenthal National Museum, because the museum in Sibiu, Romania, is the holder of the only known coin belonging to Sponsian from the territory of Romania. I would like to express my gratitude to the colleagues from the Brukenthal Național Museum - History Museum Altemberger House and especially to the leader of the scientific team, Professor Paul N. Pearson from UCL, for their commitment, hard work and their impressive result."
Four gold coins analysed by researchers, including the Sponsian coin and other Roman coins previously dismissed as forgeries, are on display in The Hunterian at the University of Glasgow, while the Sponsian coin in the Brukenthal National Museum is also on public display.
Located in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa, it is precisely oriented to the sunrise of the winter solstice, in such a way that the sun's rays bathed with its light the place that was intended to house the statue of a governor of the city ofElephantine
IMAGE: LOCATED IN THE NECROPOLIS OF QUBBET EL-HAWA (ASWAN), IT IS PRECISELY ORIENTED TO THE SUNRISE OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE, IN SUCH A WAY THAT THE SUN'S RAYS BATHED WITH ITS LIGHT THE PLACE THAT WAS INTENDED TO HOUSE THE STATUE OF A GOVERNOR OF THE CITY OF ELEPHANTINE, WHO LIVED AT THE END OF THE XII DYNASTY, AROUND 1830 B. C.view more
CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF JAEN AND MALAGA
Researchers of the University of Malaga (UMA) and the University of Jaen (UJA) have discovered Egypt’s oldest tomb oriented to the winter solstice. Located in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan), it is precisely oriented to the sunrise of the winter solstice, in such a way that the sun's rays bathed with its light the place that was intended to house the statue of a governor of the city of Elephantine, who lived at the end of the XII Dynasty, around 1830 b. C.
This way, the tomb perfectly registered the whole solar cycle, related to the idea of rebirth. While the winter solstice meant the beginning of the sunlight victory over darkness, the summer solstice generally coincided with the beginning of the annual flooding of the Nile, hence both events had an important symbolism linked to the resurrection of the deceased governor.
Perfection in the orientation
In this paper, recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, the researchers explain that, in order to achieve perfection in the orientation, the Egyptian architect simply used a two-cubit pole, around one meter long, a square and some robes, with which he was able to perfectly calculate the orientation of the funerary chapel and the location of the statue of the governor.
Moreover, they explain that the Egyptian architect not only achieved the perfect orientation, but also designed its volume with great precision, as determined in a previous paper published by the UJA in 2020 and signed by, among others, Professor Antonio Mozas –also author of this article–, which revealed that the volume of the tomb was perfectly calculated to avoid being coincident with any previous tomb.
The tomb of this governor, catalogued with No. 33, and possibly built by Governor Heqaib-ankh, was excavated by the UJA between 2008 and 2018. From that time on, it has been architecturally studied by different specialists, among them, the Professor of Architecture at the UMA Lola Joyanes, who has been participating in this project since 2015, working on her own line of research since 2019.
The work this researcher of the UMA has performed in the necropolis involves everything related to architecture and landscape, particularly, their study through drawing and photogrammetry.
A specific software to reproduce the position of the sun
The Andalusian scientists reached these conclusions thanks to the identification of the period where the tomb was built, which allowed them to use a specific software (Dialux Evo) that reproduces the position of the sun with respect to the horizon in ancient times.
“This study demonstrates that Egyptians were capable of calculating the position of the sun and the orientation of its rays to design their monuments. Although the tomb No. 33 of Qubbet el-Hawa is the oldest example ever found, certainly it is not the only one”, say the scientists.
This research has been financed by the Government of Andalusia within its projects “A way to immortality: beyond the preparation for death during Middle Kingdom at Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan, Egypt)” of the University of Jaen and “Archaeology, Architecture and Landscape: typological evolution and state of conservation of tombs in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan, Egypt). Intervention criteria”.
Bibliography:
Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Vol. 22, No 2, (2022), pp. 209-235.
