News from the ancient world
New archaeological discoveries in Egypt, newest first: 19 stories.
Bronze Age · c. 2280 BC · Saqqara, Giza Governorate, Egypt
The Old Kingdom official was buried beside King Merenre's pyramid, and although his tomb held the instruments, no inscription in his burial chamber calls him a doctor.
Byzantium · 4th century AD · Ain el-Sabil, Dakhla Oasis, New Valley Governorate, Egypt
The 4th-century AD mudbrick settlement at Ain el-Sabil had a street grid, a central church, a fortress and an earlier house that may have served as a church.
Greece & Rome · Late Ptolemaic to Byzantine · Muharram Bey, Alexandria, Alexandria Governorate, Egypt
Rescue excavations in central Alexandria found a site occupied from the Ptolemaic to the Byzantine period, with marble statues of Bacchus, Asclepius and possibly Minerva.
Bronze Age · c. 2500 BC · Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt
Radar, ultrasound and resistivity scans by the ScanPyramids team located two air-filled cavities behind a polished granite patch, supporting the idea of a second entrance.
Bronze Age · 13th century BC · Tell El-Faraoun (Imet), Sharqia Governorate, Egypt
The five-to-six-ton figure was probably carved in the royal capital Pi-Ramesse and later moved to Imet for reuse in a local temple.
Greece & Rome · Roman period · Oxyrhynchus (El Bahnasa), Minya Governorate, Egypt
At Oxyrhynchus in Minya, a Spanish-Egyptian team also found jars of cremated human remains buried with cat bones, a rare practice in the area at that time.
Greece & Rome · 2nd century BC to 6th century AD · Tell el-Farama (Pelusium), North Sinai, Egypt
First taken for a council chamber, the 35-metre brick basin at Pelusium, fed by a branch of the Nile, is now identified as a sanctuary used for nearly 800 years.
Greece & Rome · c. 1st century BC · Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
A papyrus about 2,000 years old in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology preserves part of Empedocles' poem Physica on vision and perception.
Byzantium · 5th century AD · Al-Qalaya, Hosh Issa, Beheira, Egypt
The 13-room building at Al-Qalaya in Beheira has a prayer room, a hall for visitors, wall paintings of monks and a Coptic epitaph.
Greece & Rome · 3rd century BC to 11th century AD · Athribis (Nagaa Sheikh Hammad), Sohag, Egypt
The Egyptian-German mission says Athribis has now yielded 43,000 ostraca since 2005, including more than 130 that deal with astronomy and the zodiac.
Greece & Rome · 1st–3rd century AD · Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt
About 30 inscriptions in three ancient Indian languages, left in six tombs in Roman times, include eight signatures by a man named Cikai Korran, probably from southern India.
Iron Age · c. 1070–715 BC · Qurna, Luxor, Luxor Governorate, Egypt
The coffins still hold their mummies, date to Egypt's Third Intermediate Period, and most bear titles, chiefly 'singer of Amun', instead of their owners' names.
Stone Age · c. 10,000–5500 BC · Umm Araka Plateau, near Serabit el-Khadim, South Sinai, Egypt
Red animal paintings on the ceiling of a sandstone shelter near Serabit el-Khadim open a sequence of images that runs into the Islamic period.
Iron Age · Third Intermediate Period, Twenty-second Dynasty · Tanis (San al-Hagar), Egypt
A French team found 225 figurines inscribed for the Libyan king at the foot of an uninscribed sarcophagus, which probably belonged to him.
Bronze Age · c. 2445–2421 BC · Abu Ghurab, Abusir, Giza Governorate, Egypt
An Italian team has cleared more than half of the 4,400-year-old Fifth Dynasty building, which groundwater kept out of reach after its location was identified in 1901.
Stone Age · c. 3300 BC · Badari, Asyut Governorate, Egypt
Wear marks and six coils of leather thong indicate that a 63-millimetre copper alloy tool from a Predynastic grave was spun with a bow about 5,300 years ago.
Byzantium · c. AD 712/713 · St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, South Sinai, Egypt
Written around AD 712/713 in Syriac and later translated into Arabic, the 'Maronite Chronicle of 713' survives in one damaged 13th-century copy at St Catherine's Monastery.
Bronze Age · c. 3000 BC · Wadi Khamila, South Sinai, Egypt
Found in Wadi Khamila by an Egyptian antiquities inspector, the scene carries an inscription naming the god Min as ruler of the copper region, a Bonn Egyptologist says.
Byzantium · 5th–6th century AD · Al-Qarya bi-al-Duweir, Tama, Sohag Governorate, Egypt
Excavators in Upper Egypt found a fifth- or sixth-century AD monastic complex with a church, vaulted rooms thought to be monks' cells and Coptic inscriptions.