"Discovery" is a big word. Egypt is currently in full-dig mode, because of the political and economic situation. I'm not a scholar, but I bet there are dozens of sites like this that are already well-known, and are simply waiting to be "opened up" when local authorities need some good press and/or a shot of foreign cash to "protect priceless artefacts". This is, coincidentally, one of those times. And guess what, surprise surprise, "foreign dignitaries" are given little tours - I bet a metaphorical hat was passed at the end.
In the end, the question is always how well this stuff can be preserved once unearthed. In a country like Egypt, even the ground is not safe - once a place is marked, the risk of illegal digging happening is fairly high. But showering them with money comes with strings attached (including the chance of large portions ending up in someone's pocket). Sigh.
Its likely that the "foreign dignitaries" either paid for the work already (in exchange for access to research material) or by sponsoring museum tours on these or other objects.
The majority of digs are done (paid for) by foreign universities, with oversight and eventual ownership of the items by the Museum of Cairo. Most foreign digs that I know of are paused, and have been since 2011/2012 - the ousting of Mubarak. The "season" for excavation limited, and a disruption of a few years was enough for a heavy uptick in looting.
A lot of important (but less newsworthy) sites are now bare - funding for security is not limitless, and without even annual oversight very hard to maintain. Sites of greater value ($ value) are more closely guarded, and perhaps even less likely to be looted if the Egyptians are leading the dig.
I have no direct sources (and haven't looked), I've only heard secondhand from my wife who works in a related field.
I find it much more interesting to think it was just discovered. As either is speculation I will go with what is more intriguing and interesting rather than what makes ancient history look like a scam.
What if the tombs and mummification's where ancient attempts at doing something like current cryonics. And we are just going there, unearthing them, and not fulfilling our future part of the deal? :-p
Well mummification involves removing the brain and major internal organs so at least physically it probably won't work.
I think the goal was to have a good time in the afterlife. And I guess by disturbing their graves we've prevented that from happening :-) Or, they had already enjoyed a few millennia there and don't mind the change...
On a serious note it is surprising to see them just let large groups of people in to touch and snap pictures
They didn't believe in "life after death" like Christians do. After death, your soul got rigorously tested. And if it passed the tests, you got to the afterlife. It was actually a lot more complicated, in that they thought that there seven souls, but whatever.
Bottom line, though, was that survival in the afterlife depended on the integrity of your mummy. They removed the brain and internal organs because mummification didn't work, otherwise.
Then they should have left instructions we could read! But in all seriousness, this brings up a pretty good point if you plan to freeze yourself. You better make sure that your wishes are recorded in a way that could be understood by future people (or aliens?) who may find you and no longer know how to read any current modern language.
I think it's a perfectly valid question and one suited for hacker news. I understand that the cost of freezing isn't much off from the price of a funeral. But we don't have the cultural rituals to support it as a common option at the moment -- or laws that would let a person get frozen before medically dying.
4000 years old and it's already the Fifth Dynasty. In another professional life I was a classicist, and I thought I dealt with old stuff there, but Egypt is just so impossibly ancient it makes the Greeks look like a bunch of Johnny Come Latelies. Deep time...
Forgetting about the Minonian and Cycladic civilizations? Greek mainland didn't develop until later, naturally, but it started in the thousands of little islands, the Aegean archipelago, and the big one, Crete. The Minonians had established trade routes with the Egyptians during the 5th dynasty, IIRC. DNA evidence revealed they were there as early as 9000 B.C., with cultural influence between the Minonians and Egyptians going both ways.
It's all about the Big Rivers - Nile, Euphrates, Huang He... they fed complex human civilizations thousands of years before the rise of Mediterranean tribes.
I dislike when articles like this (or any, really) embed images from Instagram. I have all Facebook domains blocked in my hosts file, so all I ever get is broken DOM elements.
As opposed to rehosting (stealing?) the picture from its original source? It is after all an embedded instagram post of the Official Ministry of antiquities in Egypt showing a shot from inside the site.
Of course, the Ministry of Antiquities should stop using the service the rest of the world finds perfectly acceptable but that 1% of vocal HN'ers are rabidly opposed too.
Not to knock IG, but any entity, especially a governmental branch, should be the canonical source for what they produce. It’s fine to use services like IG, but when it goes away or people stop using it (hello, MySpace) you’re left with link rot. By all means, get it out there, but don’t hand over the pink slip with the valet key.
That is ironic. I bet in next 1000 years these tombs with all their hieroglyphic story will stay as-is, but digital material about their discovery may be gone in 10.
Boycotts rarely work. We'd be better off raising awareness of Facebook's misdeeds and using that to awareness to build a grass roots campaign for policy change. In parallel with that, we should be having a discussion about what sort of legislation would be most effective at curtailing Facebook's (and everyone else's) bad behaviour.
Or maybe, people could choose not to use services that don't respect their privacy if they care about privacy? Surely, that's not expecting too much from people?
Either the service is acceptable or the service is unacceptable (harmful). What percentage of HN'ers you think oppose/like it seems largely irrelevant.
>the rest of the world finds perfectly acceptable but that 1% of vocal HN'ers are rabidly opposed too.
Perfectly acceptable, but yet they screech about how Facebook steals their data and demands that the government do something about it. I think they do have problems with the service: they'd like to get the full advantages without having to bear any cost for them.
Article title is "Archeologists Discover a Perfectly Preserved 4,000-Year-Old Tomb in Egypt" - which I surmise due to some title restriction yielded the "4k" abbreviation. Let's remember - there are people who depend upon text to speech. Let's think of them when it comes to abbreviations and how they sound phonetically when used outside the AV domain.
4000 years ago is also around the earliest estimated age of the Llangernyw Yew tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llangernyw_Yew
One subject in which the abvitiation of years is not recommended, for phonetics alone.
Agreed that as a unit prefix which is prepended for an abbreviation within the audience here, it's a bit of a go to. But with the number 4, the connotation wavers on first sight, even here due to AV biasing at play. Let alone the phonetic fun that combination yields.
Sorry as I spent most of the day pedanting over UI's and clearly not switched out of that mode - my bad. Sorry.
Some you need to add a space, as in "4 k" as "4k" sounds different. Talking old kit here, but still used. Heck, even Stephen Hawkins used an old voice kit audio interface, whilst the front end got many upgrades, he stuck with the old texas voice chip affair as people ended up associating it with him. He had a choice of upgrading, BT even reproduced a synthesis of his original voice that could be used, but he stuck with what worked well for him for years. Some people, don't have those choices though. But then legacy tech is and always will be a PITA support wise, in any field of development.
"Discovery" is a big word. Egypt is currently in full-dig mode, because of the political and economic situation. I'm not a scholar, but I bet there are dozens of sites like this that are already well-known, and are simply waiting to be "opened up" when local authorities need some good press and/or a shot of foreign cash to "protect priceless artefacts". This is, coincidentally, one of those times. And guess what, surprise surprise, "foreign dignitaries" are given little tours - I bet a metaphorical hat was passed at the end.
In the end, the question is always how well this stuff can be preserved once unearthed. In a country like Egypt, even the ground is not safe - once a place is marked, the risk of illegal digging happening is fairly high. But showering them with money comes with strings attached (including the chance of large portions ending up in someone's pocket). Sigh.
Its likely that the "foreign dignitaries" either paid for the work already (in exchange for access to research material) or by sponsoring museum tours on these or other objects.
The majority of digs are done (paid for) by foreign universities, with oversight and eventual ownership of the items by the Museum of Cairo. Most foreign digs that I know of are paused, and have been since 2011/2012 - the ousting of Mubarak. The "season" for excavation limited, and a disruption of a few years was enough for a heavy uptick in looting.
A lot of important (but less newsworthy) sites are now bare - funding for security is not limitless, and without even annual oversight very hard to maintain. Sites of greater value ($ value) are more closely guarded, and perhaps even less likely to be looted if the Egyptians are leading the dig.
I have no direct sources (and haven't looked), I've only heard secondhand from my wife who works in a related field.
money well spent
I find it much more interesting to think it was just discovered. As either is speculation I will go with what is more intriguing and interesting rather than what makes ancient history look like a scam.
What if the tombs and mummification's where ancient attempts at doing something like current cryonics. And we are just going there, unearthing them, and not fulfilling our future part of the deal? :-p
Well mummification involves removing the brain and major internal organs so at least physically it probably won't work.
I think the goal was to have a good time in the afterlife. And I guess by disturbing their graves we've prevented that from happening :-) Or, they had already enjoyed a few millennia there and don't mind the change...
On a serious note it is surprising to see them just let large groups of people in to touch and snap pictures
They didn't believe in "life after death" like Christians do. After death, your soul got rigorously tested. And if it passed the tests, you got to the afterlife. It was actually a lot more complicated, in that they thought that there seven souls, but whatever.
Bottom line, though, was that survival in the afterlife depended on the integrity of your mummy. They removed the brain and internal organs because mummification didn't work, otherwise.
Then they should have left instructions we could read! But in all seriousness, this brings up a pretty good point if you plan to freeze yourself. You better make sure that your wishes are recorded in a way that could be understood by future people (or aliens?) who may find you and no longer know how to read any current modern language.
If that's the way you are thinking, probably spend most of that effort evaluating the entity that says it's gonna keep you frozen.
In a way they are, the Egyptian's had the Book of the Dead, there idea to optimise for the afterlife, I think this is what gave rise to magic spells.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Dead
The British Museum had an amazing exhibition about this several years ago.
A question that needs no answer
I think it's a perfectly valid question and one suited for hacker news. I understand that the cost of freezing isn't much off from the price of a funeral. But we don't have the cultural rituals to support it as a common option at the moment -- or laws that would let a person get frozen before medically dying.
It is impossible[0] to fulfill the deal since those mummies are information-theoretically dead[1].
[0] assuming the arrow of time is irreversible [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death
4000 years old and it's already the Fifth Dynasty. In another professional life I was a classicist, and I thought I dealt with old stuff there, but Egypt is just so impossibly ancient it makes the Greeks look like a bunch of Johnny Come Latelies. Deep time...
Forgetting about the Minonian and Cycladic civilizations? Greek mainland didn't develop until later, naturally, but it started in the thousands of little islands, the Aegean archipelago, and the big one, Crete. The Minonians had established trade routes with the Egyptians during the 5th dynasty, IIRC. DNA evidence revealed they were there as early as 9000 B.C., with cultural influence between the Minonians and Egyptians going both ways.
Not until there was writing. The Egyptians had writing 5200 years ago compared to Linear A 3800 years ago.
It's all about the Big Rivers - Nile, Euphrates, Huang He... they fed complex human civilizations thousands of years before the rise of Mediterranean tribes.
And the Amazon! We just haven't discovered it yet.
Meh. Göbekli Tepe called, it wants the kids to learn how to cultivate a lawn, and then .. get off it.
It's great that there is normal interesting archaeology news.
Hopefully the current curse of pseudoarchaelogy crap (looking in your direction discovery channel) will die out.
It's never aliens.
Can recommend the History of Egypt podcast:
https://egyptianhistorypodcast.com
Would be interesting to know how this one escaped the grave robbers.
Even today there are still whole pyramids buried in the sand. There's still a lot to be discovered out there.
I dislike when articles like this (or any, really) embed images from Instagram. I have all Facebook domains blocked in my hosts file, so all I ever get is broken DOM elements.
As opposed to rehosting (stealing?) the picture from its original source? It is after all an embedded instagram post of the Official Ministry of antiquities in Egypt showing a shot from inside the site.
Then perhaps the ministry of antiquities needs to stop using terrible services.
Of course, the Ministry of Antiquities should stop using the service the rest of the world finds perfectly acceptable but that 1% of vocal HN'ers are rabidly opposed too.
Not to knock IG, but any entity, especially a governmental branch, should be the canonical source for what they produce. It’s fine to use services like IG, but when it goes away or people stop using it (hello, MySpace) you’re left with link rot. By all means, get it out there, but don’t hand over the pink slip with the valet key.
That is ironic. I bet in next 1000 years these tombs with all their hieroglyphic story will stay as-is, but digital material about their discovery may be gone in 10.
Now we should all forgot about ethics and privacy because almost everyone find it acceptable, mostly because they doesn't care ?
Boycotts rarely work. We'd be better off raising awareness of Facebook's misdeeds and using that to awareness to build a grass roots campaign for policy change. In parallel with that, we should be having a discussion about what sort of legislation would be most effective at curtailing Facebook's (and everyone else's) bad behaviour.
Or maybe, people could choose not to use services that don't respect their privacy if they care about privacy? Surely, that's not expecting too much from people?
No, it's just mean almost everyone find it inline with their ethics but not yours.
Either the service is acceptable or the service is unacceptable (harmful). What percentage of HN'ers you think oppose/like it seems largely irrelevant.
>the rest of the world finds perfectly acceptable but that 1% of vocal HN'ers are rabidly opposed too.
Perfectly acceptable, but yet they screech about how Facebook steals their data and demands that the government do something about it. I think they do have problems with the service: they'd like to get the full advantages without having to bear any cost for them.
For most of the history of the web, news sites hosted their own images as sanctioned by the source.
Maybe you should send the site a list of domains you allow so they can tailor their articles for you?
This is an incredibly personal issue, who cares? You’ve made the internet harder for yourself to use...
They made the Internet harder to trust. Blocking certain domains has become almost a necessity.
What an entitled baby. No one cares. Unblock the domains if you want to see the images.
Oh thank God we've found some 4K stuff, got tired of the 720p tombs...
(Edit: got a feeling this will be downvoted to oblivion but couldn't help myself)
FWIW I like it
Article title is "Archeologists Discover a Perfectly Preserved 4,000-Year-Old Tomb in Egypt" - which I surmise due to some title restriction yielded the "4k" abbreviation. Let's remember - there are people who depend upon text to speech. Let's think of them when it comes to abbreviations and how they sound phonetically when used outside the AV domain.
4000 years ago is also around the earliest estimated age of the Llangernyw Yew tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llangernyw_Yew One subject in which the abvitiation of years is not recommended, for phonetics alone.
"k" is an internationally standardized prefix. Anyone on this site would know it means 1000.
Agreed that as a unit prefix which is prepended for an abbreviation within the audience here, it's a bit of a go to. But with the number 4, the connotation wavers on first sight, even here due to AV biasing at play. Let alone the phonetic fun that combination yields.
Sorry as I spent most of the day pedanting over UI's and clearly not switched out of that mode - my bad. Sorry.
4k should read out as "4" "kay" perfectly fine by text to speech software, which is just as unambiguous as the non-text-to-speech version.
Some you need to add a space, as in "4 k" as "4k" sounds different. Talking old kit here, but still used. Heck, even Stephen Hawkins used an old voice kit audio interface, whilst the front end got many upgrades, he stuck with the old texas voice chip affair as people ended up associating it with him. He had a choice of upgrading, BT even reproduced a synthesis of his original voice that could be used, but he stuck with what worked well for him for years. Some people, don't have those choices though. But then legacy tech is and always will be a PITA support wise, in any field of development.
How did it pronounce 4K for you- “four kay” or “fork” or something else? This seems a valid concern to me, something to think about.