4,400 year old Egyptian tomb discovered in the Saqqara pyramid complex | Hacker News Reader

4,400 year old Egyptian tomb discovered in the Saqqara pyramid complex

bbc.co.uk

275 pointsopen-source-ux57 comments

Letting a horde of journalists rush to photograph the tomb at once seems like a terrible idea. That goes against the most basic precaution you could take to protect archeological artifacts. What kind of professional archeologist would let that happen?

We’re not dealing with the British Museum here. Money changed hands through informal channels, though no journalists will publicly acknowledge what happens. The Egyptian government has underfunded antiquities greviously for years, and this has not been a stable system like the West is accustomed to at any time in modern history.

You ever see the way artifacts are treated at the British Museum? Despite all the signs, people can't help but put their hands all over everything.

These things can be done in an organised and controlled fashion - one has to hope that those in charge did so. There's no particular reason to assume that "a horde" of journalists were allowed to rush in, though.

Fundamentally it's a judgement call for the archaeologists as to whether the tomb is in good enough condition and the photographers are trustworthy enough.

> There's no particular reason to assume that "a horde" of journalists were allowed to rush in, though.

Look at the video, it is ridiculous. People are walking on each other feet there.

> Fundamentally it's a judgement call for the archaeologists as to whether the tomb is in good enough condition and the photographers are trustworthy enough.

The flashes alone should be a concern. That's also not a good way to get a good photograph. They should know better.

You'd expect and perhaps understand this happening at a celebrity gathering. But it is not like the statues are going to bust a move soon here.

Crikey, yes. I hadn't seen the video - that's pretty bad.

Fingers crossed this was a one-off, I guess.

It most definitely is a one-off, that's the whole problem.

Pardon my ignorance, but what can flashes do?

Flash light has very high uv content which can fade the pigments. The effect is similar to a picture that fades because it’s been exposed to sunlight.

I doubt that a day of journalists making pics would have any measurable effect. It’s more a problem if hordes of tourists take pics every day.

I don't think I'm being overly dramatic to say that the antiquities governance in Egypt is a bloated, top heavy and mostly useless bureaucracy which - in the end - only has a cursory interest in archeology - aside from keeping the money rolling in.

It's all about giving high paying, long term jobs to political allies and family members and less about preserving one of the most fascinating cultures the world has ever seen.

War on smuggling.

I'm intrigued but this is ambiguous, could you make a complete sentence?

So... ironically very similar to the ancient Egyptian priesthood they nominally protect?

I'm not an ancient Egyptian expert but considering their culture was obsessed about the past to the point they created these ancient tombs, i would imagine they had maybe just a little more respect for their ancestors.

Cultures change over 4,000+ years enough to be unrecognizable.

A few rounds of immigration from the romans and subsequent conquerers tends to change your culture. Doesn't dismiss the fact that ancient Egyptians had a culturural context that anchored to the past as opposed to the present/future.

I have my doubts.

Seriously - to achieve high-ranking status in a human organization is to become embroiled in politics. At some point in the hierarchy, politics becomes the main function of your position. As a result, people who are skilled at politics are disproportionately represented at the highest ranks of every organization, and those people are very rarely the "true believers".

I worked at a trucking company for seven years. I was in process improvement, and my focus was in improving efficiency, reducing losses and damages, and being able to measure the impact of organizational changes. The levels below me were concerned with moving individual pieces of freight and their relationship with individual customers. The levels above me were focused on reducing costs and increasing both profit and revenue - I couldn't have cared less about overall revenue, generally speaking. The levels above that were concerned with trends in the competitive marketplace and long-term growth. Above that? Managing to nudge the entire organization in one direction or another in service to one or more very long-term initiative.

Basically, the higher you go in an organization, the less actually matters about what the organization does, at least from your perspective. Leading a priesthood, managing a trucking company, writing legislation, maintaining a bureaucracy... there's a lot of overlap in skills.

As an Egyptian, I can assure you nobody in our entire government body knows what they're doing.

> Letting a horde of journalists rush to photograph the tomb at once seems like a terrible idea.

Its a good idea if your tourism industry is feeling the slump from terrorist bombings, revolutions, political instability. Any publicity is to revive tourism is good.

I'm still wondering about the secret tunnel in the Great Pyramid of Giza with double false door that was found with a robot. They never further researched what's on the other side of the second false door.

Also it is known based on radar screenings there are some empty spaces under the Sphinx, quite likely very ancient chambers. I wish they would dig bellow the Sphinx to find out what's actually there.

I guess it would cost a lot of money and be time consuming and risky so they won't do it (in both cases). Pity that we might not know what may be there.

Checkout The Pyramid Code series. They bring to light research and theories that tell quite a different story about what Giza may of been and was used for.

Shouldn't we keep a couple of these unopened for the future? Maybe open one every time we make a radical progress in some measurement technique?

Is this already a thing?

Usually, but sometimes they're going to decay anyway because of shifting groundwater. C.f. this video as an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAqPZ3NqVFk

Come on, man. Stop posting these conspiracy videos around this thread. They really don't have a place here.

The video is actually a lot more interesting than the original article.

I believe it is so, at least here in Denmark where any new hole in the ground is potentially an uncovered settlement.

I recently had a chance to visit the dig at “Ringborgen” near Køge. They only dug as little as possible and with a very directed effort: answering questions such as “what is the age”, “did they have fireplaces”, “are the signs of buildings” etc. once they got the “data” they cover the site again and preserve until new questions need answers (which potentially involves new methods).

In this case they had learned that the found settlement in Køge was build and deserted in a quite short time span. This raised a question with regards to other possible sites in Denmark: are there other sites with this pattern of it being deserted quickly? So old sites might now be redug.

Sources: had an excellent tour at the site in Køge; a friend who works as archaeologist.

I recall there is a known "tomb" of a ceremonial ship next to the great pyramids. They started displaying its twin back in '82 (amazing exhibit [1]), but have left the other in place.

I also suspect that the Egyptians have a stash of known tombs that they periodically "discover" in order to keep their tourism market in the news

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

In the desert southwest of the US, there are thousands of Anasazi sites that haven't been excavated. Archaeologists have intentionally left them alone so that future scientists may be able to open fresh sites using new techniques and equipment. The problem is that these places become susceptible to pot hunters because they usually aren't protected. Once they've desecrated a site, it becomes worthless to science.

> these places become susceptible to pot hunters

For those (like me) who are unfamiliar with the term[1]:

> (archaeology) A person who seeks artifacts for their personal collection or to sell without regard to their cultural importance.

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pothunter

The inner part of the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor, said to contain rivers of mercury depicting the rivers of China, etc., is still unopened: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Mausoleum_of_the_First_Qin_Emper...

Wow, that's a really interesting page. One of the most surreal photos I've seen in a long time:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Xi...

... yes, surreal indeed. Even more so when you learn that no two statue is the same. Each has a unique face, hair, etc...

Can you please give direct links to Wikipedia instead of that "Wikiwand" service with ads and mixed content warnings? It can disappear in the future and make your links broken.

If you are interested in learning about the ancient Egyptian civilization, I recommend this book that I just finished (with basically no prior knowledge on the subject)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8536070-the-rise-and-fal...

https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Fall-Ancient-Egypt/dp/0553384902

In college and high school I was taught they used radar years ago to find what was thought to be all of the remaining tombs. Anyone know why this one hadn't been found yet?

My experience with “found” in egypt means “hasnt been completely sacked by raiders 200 years ago”

I would love to be proven wrong this time

The article states that the tomb has been, "untouched for 4,400 years". Other articles (e.g., [0]) have explicitly stated that the tomb has not been looted.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-archaeology/egypt-u...

So the technology has improved quiet a bit since then, now they are using muon scans! But I think they might have just been referring to hidden chambers in the places we know about

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/m...

I felt like looking to google drive of an ancient man. I really would like to read about the meanings of the objects found in those walls.

It really looks in good shape (and color)!

Regarding the meaning of objects found I want to share this humorous story in which future archaeologists find a motel room and they believe to have found a great tomb similar to that of Tutankhamun:

"Motel of the Mysteries"

http://sultanaeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Motel...

haha, great example :) I generally think in the way the story points to. the reason we tend to give sacred meanings to ancient findings is because of our search for the meaning of life, I think. Finding details about their daily life would be more interesting and useful, however.

Egyptian funerary practice is pretty formulaic. A quick glance at the inscriptions, and I spot some traditional offering formulae. Here's a translation from the register on the right in the picture with the label beginning 'Priests were important people':

"An offering the king gives to Osiris, foremost of the westerners, lord of Djedu, a voice offering [of bread and beer] for him at every festival and every day..."

and then it cuts off. I'd expect the inscription to continue stating that these offerings are for the spirit of the tomb's owner, along with a list of some of his offices. I spot similar offerings to Anubis. I spot the epithet "venerable", indicating that the tomb owner had a funerary cult.

'The tomb was found in a buried ridge'

It is commendable how researchers do not give up digging, quite literally. I also understand this is intensely a resource (time and money) consuming process. However I wonder why and how this was not discovered until now. Can't we disperse autonomous devices/robots that discover hollow spaces deep underground using SONAR or other vibration techniques?

4400 years ago and we are rightfully in awe. What a way to leave a history.

Will my Geocities page be there 4400 years from now ? ;)

Doubtful your geocities page is around even now unless you backed it up or it got slurped by neocities.

Might already be on The Wayback Machine.

Aziz, LIGHT!

How do they possibly know the age of this tomb with certainty?

Often it’s a combination of radiocarbon dating and historical records. Though probably not in this instance, there are sometimes records found in other places that say this or that person lived at the same time as another, so that can help to date things like this. Radiocarbon dating is highly accurate and 4400 years isn’t that long ago, so it’s generally accurate at dating organic remains to within a few decades. It gets less accurate over longer periods of time, but 4400 years is well within that window.

The YouTube channel Ancient Architects is pretty good at covering the latest ancient history news:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9UGStJHZZM

From a cursory glance at the channel's descriptions and video titles it looks sort of sketchy, to be honest. Is that impression wrong?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCscI4NOggNSN-Si5QgErNCw/abo...

> Ancient history and civilisations channel brought to you by Matt Sibson, offering alternative interpretations on the most well-known ancient sites in the world. History isn't always as it seems.

https://www.patreon.com/ancientarchitects

> I find that most mainstream historical interpretations are full of holes, both historically and scientifically and I intend to look at all of the evidence and offer my own unique interpretation on ancient history and the countless ancient mysteries.

> From a cursory glance at the channel's descriptions and video titles it looks sort of sketchy, to be honest. Is that impression wrong?

I mean he's mostly looking for interesting stuff on Google Maps, then reading whatever information exists about whatever he's finding. So what he thinks things are sometimes changes from week to week as he reads new stuff. I wouldn't say it's sketchy per se, you just need to understand what it is and what it isn't. I think his own area of expertise is neolithic British monuments, so he isn't an expert in most of the things he's talking about, he's just an insanely smart guy who is very well read.

Thanks for the response. Would it be correct though to say the channel does not reflect mainstream academic views?

The creator of the YouTube channel describes himself on his Facebook profile as a geologist with an interest in Neolithic sites, but he does not appear to be an archaeologist, anthropologist, or any sort of professional historian:

https://www.facebook.com/pg/MattSibsonAuthor/about/

> Ancient history writer, geologist, currently re-writing the history of the Stonehenge landscape with new interpretations of Neolithic monuments.

While amateurs are capable of good work, and scientific consensus can change, eccentric ideas are more often wrong than right. Matt Sibson may mean well, but I would not consider his YouTube channel a reliable source given that the videos appear to diverge from the scientific establishment on a wide range of topics.

> I would not consider his YouTube channel a reliable source

I mean that's like saying Star Wars isn't a reliable source; you're judging something on the basis of something it isn't meant to be in the first place.

Like when something like this tomb is discovered then he'll report what the discovery is. And when someone proposes a possible location for Atlantis, he'll report what that person is proposing. But saying that his channel is unreliable become mainstream academics don't think Atlantis existed is disingenuous.

Is the Ancient Architects channel supposed to be a fictional work, as Star Wars is? As far as I can tell from your comments and the videos I've checked, the channel presents itself as a factual source. If I am wrong, that would be a relief.

The channel doesn't appear to be reporting fringe theories only for the sake of debunking them, à la Snopes. Rather, at least some of the videos seem to support the alternative hypotheses they present.

For example, this video was linked in your reply to another thread in this discussion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAqPZ3NqVFk

> Conspiracy: Silencing the Discovery of Egypt’s Lost Labyrinth | Ancient Architects

The most common theory among mainstream archaeologists is that the labyrinth at Hawara described in some ancient accounts refers to a mortuary temple that has since been largely dismantled, as evidenced by the remaining foundations. The video mentions the mainstream theory, but dismisses it in favor of the idea that evidence confirming the labyrinth still exists underground is being covered up.

Regarding Atlantis, I'm not sure how Ancient Architects's coverage of the topic supports the idea that it's a reliable source. The channel reports claims of Atlantis's existence very credulously, and even when it disagrees with certain specifics it instead presents its own theories regarding Atlantis or other lost ancient civilizations the YouTuber believes existed. These proposals tend to go against current scientific understanding, to say the least.

You could treat the channel as entertainment, I suppose, but I would not approve of it as an educational resource.

> I mean that's like saying Star Wars isn't a reliable source; you're judging something on the basis of something it isn't meant to be in the first place.

You described the channel as "pretty good at covering the latest ancient history news". It is being judged in part on the description that you gave. Unless you also describe Star Wars as pretty good ancient space news, then your comparison is extremely weak.

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