Egypt sarcophagus: Mystery black tomb opened in Alexandria | Hacker News Reader

Egypt sarcophagus: Mystery black tomb opened in Alexandria

bbc.co.uk

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This article is god awful, here is a slightly better one.

http://earth-chronicles.com/science/the-first-details-of-the...

According to that article they poured most of the red liquid into the street, which seems absurd to me.

>According to that article they poured most of the red liquid into the street, which seems absurd to me.

Sounds like they knew what it was.

"The stinking reddish liquid turned out to be sewage that penetrated the sarcophagus through a small crack and completely flooded it from the inside."

The writing of the article you are linking is really bad. It seems like it was translated from another language into English by a machine.

This was also my first thought, however they claim that was just sewage:

"The stinking reddish liquid turned out to be sewage that penetrated the sarcophagus through a small crack and completely flooded it from the inside. At the nearest inspection it was found out that in this ignoble vein the heavily decomposed remains of not one, but three people floated."

The second paragraph of that is actually just one massive sentence :|

Yes, what a waste. They could have bottled the red liquid up into a carbonated energy drink instead.

https://twitter.com/juliareinstein/status/102035701680670720...

We know better nowadays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia:

”Merchants in apothecaries dispensed expensive mummia bitumen, which was thought to be an effective cure-all for many ailments. Beginning around the 12th century when supplies of imported natural bitumen ran short, mummia was misinterpreted as "mummy", and the word's meaning expanded to "a black resinous exudate scraped out from embalmed Egyptian mummies". This began a period of lucrative trade between Egypt and Europe, and suppliers substituted rare mummia exudate with entire mummies, either embalmed or desiccated. After Egypt banned the shipment of mummia in the 16th century, unscrupulous European apothecaries began to sell fraudulent mummia prepared by embalming and desiccating fresh corpses. During the Renaissance, scholars proved that translating bituminous mummia as mummy was a mistake, and physicians stopped prescribing the ineffective drug.”

It says they took samples of it even though it was just sewage

This article got me wondering...how is the law structured around this sort of thing? Generally speaking, it's highly illegal to dig up and open a grave since we generally have respect for a person's final resting place and this has been codified into law. So what are the rules surrounding this?

I assume special legal approval must be granted similar to what is required, for example, when a body needs to be exhumed as part of an ongoing investigation?

It's an archaeological dig as such it is done under special circumstances. Basically the permit is granted before the dig is started and it will list the conditions that apply to that dig if they are not already regulated as standard by a law.

If you dig on your own private property and find such artifacts you are most likely required to stop. Most countries consider historical artifacts to be owned by the state (just like natural resources) and the special conditions mentioned above will apply.

In the US you do actually own the things in your ground (unless you gave away mineral rights, a thing that is kinda common in mining areas). (NPR did a thing on this a while ago about a farmer who ended up owning a huge T-Rex fossil.)

You own them as long as they don't fall under NAGPRA and there are no human remains. Even then, most states have laws restricting what you're able to do with a site.

In many European countries finding a pot of gold buried in your back yard means you have to hand it over to the authorities and maybe get a "finder's fee". You're not allowed to keep or sell such historical artifacts regardless of their monetary value.

I don't know what happens when human remains are involved. Common sense tells me that they would never become the "property" of the land owner.

And of course there is a chance that some artifacts are treated differently than others. A T-Rex fossil is 100% naturally occurring while minted coins or a sarcophagus are not. They may have even been at some point property of the state and as such could be treated as national patrimony.

I have been told that this is also true in my home state- Minnesota. Land owners do not automatically retain mineral rights when they purchase property.

> you are most likely required to stop

Seems unenforceable.

Edit: The creative potential of a public service announcement makes me smile though.

The old Turks would be great at tunneling. So they would bury their gold underground in tunnels eons ago. In Jordan, This was so common that you were likely to find gold during construction projects or while digging in your backyard. So if a worker found gold, he would be required to hand it over. So he wouldn't dig it out during the day. Only at night. Helicopters would roam around at night specifically to find diggers at night with their lanterns and lamps looking for gold.

Not per se because there's no active monitoring. But the value of most artifacts is in displaying them or selling them (even for the raw materials, like melted as gold/silver bars). So something with purely historical value is harder to hide. Which means sooner or later there's a good chance it can be traced back to you.

But yeah, if you plan on keeping them for your personal collection I guess nobody ever has to know. Except a few of your best friends or family who definitely won't tell a soul, ever :D.

Yes, in general there is a legal approval needed for exhumation, but in this case the identity of the bodies is unknown, so in order to put a name next to their remains and uncovering some parts of history, archaeologists are allowed to open the tombs and hence to exhume the bodies found inside.

In Europe, a burial site only is a burial site for 200 years. There are separate laws for archaeological digs.

As there is no political entity called "Europe", by definition there can't be such rule / law.

This is a case where a snarky reply is unneeded, and you could simply do some basic research.

It looks like there is official permission in London to exhume some graves for re-use after 75 years, and it's generally accepted that a grave is only owned for a 100 years (that seems to come from the Burial Act of 1857 in the UK).

In general it seems that yes, given sufficient time, the tricky legal problems of exhuming become quite a bit more simple.

The "no one cares anymore" solution to put it simply

I disagree.

It doesn't make sense to say "in Europe" when talking about laws. Eventually "European Union", but the fact that the parent used "Europe" is a signal that it could be simply fake information or a misinformed claims.

Saying "in Europe" is the result of lazyness OR misinformation. In both cases it results on an over-generalization, which can be dangerous. The "snarky reply" is being down voted while it is ACTUALLY TRUE and adds something to the conversation.

For people without downvote right, the only way to disagree is to post a comment, which is then downvoted... See the problem there?

It really makes you wonder how many facts, stories or anecdotes are voluntary or involuntary made up on HN.

Quite a few documentaries show or talk about the process in Egypt. Filing detailed reports on where and what you plan to do, what you do if you find things and so forth.

Depending on what you want to do it can take a long time was the impression I got, particularly if the existing history or science doesn't support your theories.

At least in the documentaries I've seen it seemed like Egyptian authorities in that area were highly knowledgeable and thoughtful. I hope those were accurate. They were willing to send things out of the country to be examined further provided they were returned and such. It seems like a good process there. I don't think that is the case in all countries who understandably have other problems to deal with :(

For a Native American perspective on this happening in North America, check out the book God is Red, by Vine Deloria.

>"Despite that, the site has now been cleared of people amid fears the sarcophagus could release lethal toxic fumes, Egypt's state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram says."

In the previous paragraph the interviewee is claiming to have put his head in the tomb, from the pictures it seems like he was wearing nothing more than a dust-mask.

So either they're lying as to why they've cleared the area, or analysis of the contents has shown something troubling?

I'm surprised they didn't put a probe in to sample the internal gases prior to opening -- doesn't seem too much of a stretch to imagine a dangerous gas could have built up (eg from embalming chemicals), and the gaseous environment could surely give useful archaeological information in some cases (?).

The dust masks are pretty standard when working in any such site. Nothing to do with protection against a potential chemical or biological hazard. It simply wouldn't help.

But the site was most likely evacuated because of the smell and the fact that the local workers were reluctant to work in conditions that most of them considered to be dangerous. I would call it a needless precaution, definitely not a real danger. When a myth is too entrenched in people's minds fighting it will bring no benefit. It's easier to go along out of an excess of precaution and then go back to work when "all is safe".

Sure, and H2S poisoning is rather diabolical. In that exposure nukes odor receptors quickly, so victims don't realize that they're receiving fatal doses.

Didn't a bunch of people that visited Tutanchamun's tomb die? Mold spores iirc, or is that an urban legend?

This was discussed in the article. The financial backer for the expedition died from an infected mosquito bite but nothing else went wrong.

> "We don't know of even a single case of either an archaeologist or a tourist experiencing any negative consequences [from bacteria or tomb moulds],"

The linked article mentions that one of the people involved died due to an infection after a mosquito bite in the same time period, but that there's no known case where anyone was injured due to stuff in the tomb.

I wonder what cool story Lovecraft could elaborate from such a news.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's thoughts went immediately to something like this.

i can't believe people are still pushing the story about the curse. Not very nice from BBC to promote it,too.

The rhetorical question about does it contain a curse, and the quote from Waziri, are clearly not serious. Nobody here is pushing or promoting that as a theory - that's an ludicrously uncharitable reading of this article.

Potential exposure to some dangerous bacteria growing inside the confined space seems like a decent hypothesis, though. Especially when the inside released a foul odor upon being opened.

It's a hot tub full of mummy juice, so it's always going to be nasty.

Getting upset about this seems equally ridiculous tbh. It's just some lighthearted fun.

A cursed tomb can be a another civilization's deep geological repository [1] of nuclear/toxic waste.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository

Not an ancient Egyptian tomb, no.

Or so we were led to believe. There's clearly a single possible explanation to all this.

I thought Egyptian sarcophaguses were healing/brainwashing devices. A buildup of a toxic substance must be caused by a malfunction.

That would not be far fetched, actually. Their technology clearly rivals anything we have today. 5 of the pyramids contain graphite waveguides that produce small amounts of focused nuclear radiation. The base contain piezoelectric water transducers. The Nile moved too far away to make them active however so they are quite safe for humans.

I would let people know about a curse. If I were a scientist, I would want to study the site and determine if any containers that have a functional virus, mold or other hazards to human and animal life.

Perhaps I spent too much time watching Star Trek.

Turns out that the sarcophagus was full of surströmming.

Human surströmming

How did they make this tomb. Even ignoring weight factor, what type of saw could they employ to cut it from the block?

Right now companies use diamond wire blades to cut granite and it is not so fast and easy. Can not imagine ancients Egyptians could produce even steel

Also where have they got a granite in this part of Egypt... Aswan query known for having black granite deposits is 600 miles away.

"Diamond wire blades" are just a (much) faster and longer-lasting version of wet cord and sand, which is known to have been used since antiquity. Perforating and wedging - breaking along the dotted line, as it were - is an equally ancient technique. Just because it's a lot of hard work doesn't mean people weren't willing to do it.

> Just because it's a lot of hard work doesn't mean people weren't willing to do it.

Especially willing to do it if the choice was made by a slave who knew it was literally do it or die.

You might be surprised by how much can be done with a mere chisel. As for transportation, Aswan is on the Nile?

chisel made from steel may be but even then... try it on concrete or rock just for experiment (I tried).

But if chisel is made from cooper or iron ... good luck ... may be you have 10000 years in your life

This particular sarcophagus is from Ptolemaic-period Egypt, they had iron. But they managed to carve granite (and a bunch of other softer stones) before that, with copper and other tools. Not all of the techniques are known but a big part of the answer is that (unlike you!) they put long, sustained, organized effort into it'.

Any kind of blade material and sand will cut through most rocks with time and effort. I seen an old stone cutting mechanism that used a small water wheel, metal blades, and they just kept dumping sand under the blade as it got pushed back and forth by the water wheel. The metal caught sand bits which ground through similiar to diamond cutting blades today, just with sand. That example had multiple blades but I imagine a single blade would be faster although requiring extra attention in replacing the sand. I don't think egyptions used water wheels but it can also by done by hand albeit with a lot of effort, but they did have a lot of spare time in agricultural off seasons.

Right now companies use diamond wire blades to cut granite and it is not so fast and easy

The modern methods are done for speed and uniformity. If you're an ancient Egyptian, you probably have a lot more time to work on these things. Plus, you're probably not one person working on it.

Don't think of one guy banging rocks together. Think of a dozen skilled artisans with pretty good hand tools, and a longer-than-eight-hours workday.

And a big pool of potential "employees".

They were normal employees as far as we know now. Nile agriculture was based on the predictable flooding of the Nile which meant predictable times of the year when all those laborers had nothing to do. But if you worked on the pyramids or other projects during the off season would could get free food and/or pay.

If you're trying to invoke the old myth about slaves being used to build the pyramids, that was disproven a very long time ago.

Source? I have deep interest in ancient history.

https://www.livescience.com/32616-how-were-the-egyptian-pyra...

> Estimates given by various archaeologists for the size of the workforce at Giza tend to hover around 10,000 people for all three pyramids. These people were well-fed; in a study published in 2013, Richard Redding, the chief research officer at AERA, and colleagues found that enough cattle, sheep and goats were slaughtered every day to produce 4,000 pounds of meat, on average, to feed the pyramid builders. The finding was detailed in the book "Proceedings of the 10th Meeting of the ICAZ Working Group 'Archaeozoology of Southwest Asia and Adjacent Areas'" (Peeters Publishing, 2013). Redding used the animal bone remains found at Giza, and the nutritional requirements for a person doing hard labor, to make the discovery.

> Redding also found that animals were brought in from sites on the Nile Delta and kept in a corral until they were slaughtered and fed to the workers.

> The workers' meat-rich diet may have been an inducement for people to work on the pyramids, Redding said. "They probably got a much better diet than they got in their village," Redding told Live Science in 2013.

More: https://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-h...

Still more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-...

> Dieter Wildung, a former director of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, said it is "common knowledge in serious Egyptology" that the pyramid builders were not slaves. "The myth of the slaves building pyramids is only the stuff of tabloids and Hollywood," Wildung said. "The world simply could not believe the pyramids were build without oppression and forced labour, but out of loyalty to the pharaohs."

> Hawass said the builders came from poor families from the north and the south, and were respected for their work – so much so that those who died during construction were bestowed the honour of being buried in the tombs near the sacred pyramids of their pharaohs.

> Their proximity to the pyramids and the manner of burial in preparation for the afterlife backs this theory, Hawass said. "No way would they have been buried so honourably if they were slaves."

Kind of annoyed I can't find a single university website which says this using a quick google, but I guess most scholars don't make a big deal about common knowledge.

Thanks for the information.

Look up "Ancient Aliens debunked" on youtube. It's essentially a three-hour long feature about ancient technology and what could be done with it. Very cool.

edit: and yeah, they go into great detail when discussing ancient masonry. Basically, the ancients used sand (as an abrasive) and wooden saws to cut hard stone like granite.

So jealous of the people who get to make these discoveries. Even finding the small items of some ancient rural family seems so cool to me.

So is there anything left of DNA, perhaps in bone marrow? I would "guess" there isn't.

But how did sewage water get in there?

"The stinking reddish liquid turned out to be sewage that penetrated the sarcophagus through a small crack and completely flooded it from the inside."

http://earth-chronicles.com/science/the-first-details-of-the...

Most probably it's not "sewage" water but "corpse decomposition water"

corpse decomposition water won't last 2000+ years especially if not frozen. Probably the coffin was porous or had crack from where the sewage water seeped into the coffin from a nearby leaking sewage pipeline.

If that's the case - then it's quite precious. Analysis of this water would reveal a lot.

To me it seems staged as hell. I believe it had been opened prior to “the opening”.

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