Category: Ancient

Look on my Face, ye Mighty, and despair!

Ancient, Modern(ish), Multimedia

The face of Pharaoh Ramesses II at the end of his life and at the height of his reign has been digitally reconstructed. Researchers created two realistic portraits of Ramesses II using a CT scan of his mummy as the departure point. The latest computed tomography data was used to create a 3D virtual model of Ramesses’ skull and forensic software used to reconstruct the pharaoh’s face as he looked when he died at age 90. Age regression techniques created a second portrait as he would have looked when he was around 45 years old.

Ramesses II was born around 1303 B.C. and was just 24 years old when his father Seti I died making him pharaoh. He reigned for 66 years, a warrior king who enlarged Egypt’s empire and built or expanded some of its most important monuments, including the Temple of Karnak. His mummy was discovered in 1881 and is now in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization in Cairo.

Cairo University radiology professor and mummy expert Sahar Saleem, who in 2019 used CT scans and digital imaging software to virtually unwrap the mummy of Pharaoh Amenhotep I, worked with Liverpool John Moores University’s Face Lab, a multidisciplinary research group that uses forensic techniques to recreate the faces of historical figures as accurately as possible from skulls, death masks or portraits. Their subjects range from top-of-the-bill notables like King Richard III and Robert the Bruce to complete unknowns like the Goucher Mummy and a medieval Norwegian woman.

For the latest facial reconstruction, Saleem made a three-dimensional virtual model of the pharaoh’s head and skull from new CT scan data — effectively, thousands of X-rays assembled into a 3D image — which Wilkinson then used to reconstruct his face with computer software used in criminal investigations.

Next, Wilkinson used computer-generated imagery (CGI) techniques to add skin, eye and hair textures, based on what Saleem reported would have been common among Egyptians at the time — which showed what the pharaoh may have looked like when he died — and finally used the age regression software to show how he had likely appeared decades earlier. “The age regression was challenging, as this was in 3D,” she said.

Wilkinson explained that the field of estimating the face of someone from their skull is dominated by two approaches: “facial approximation,” which uses average data, templates and biological profiles to produce an “average” face, which might result from several different skulls; and “facial reconstruction,” a more detailed attempt to determine what a particular person looked like, based on anatomical standards, measurements and morphological analysis. A related term is “facial depiction,” which adds colors and textures, she said.

In this case, the team used the more detailed approach. “The face of Rameses II was produced using 3D facial reconstruction and then a 3D facial depiction process,” Wilkinson said.

(Credit and apologies for the title go to Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was inspired by a fallen colossus of Ramesses II to write the verse I butchered in his poem Ozymandias.)

Bronze Age well with offerings found in Bavaria

Ancient

Archaeologists in Germering, Upper Bavaria, have unearthed the well-preserved remains of a wooden well from the Bronze Age filled with ritual deposits. It is more than 3,000 years old.

“It is extremely rare for a well to survive more than 3,000 years so well. Its wooden walls have been completely preserved at the bottom and are still partly damp from the groundwater. This also explains the good condition of the finds made from organic materials, which are now being examined more closely. We hope this will provide us with more information about the everyday life of the settlers of the time,” adds Dr. Jochen Haberstroh, responsible archaeologist at the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments.

Inside the well, archaeologists discovered 26 bronze garment pins, amber beads, two metal spirals, an animal tooth wrapped in metal to make a pendant, and more than 70 ceramic vessels. The vessels are high quality, finely wrought, decorated bowls, cups and pots. These were not everyday use objects, but rather expensive wares typically found in graves from the Middle Bronze Age (1800-1200 B.C.). The condition they were found in at the bottom of the well indicates they were lowered carefully into the water, not dropped or thrown.

The remains of Bronze Age settlements have been found before in the Germering area, and more than 70 wells ranging in date from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages. The newly-discovered well would originally have been more than five meters (16.4 feet) deep, significantly deeper than the others, evidence that it was in use at a time when the water table had dropped likely due to an extended period of drought. The hardships of the drought may have spurred the residents to sacrifice their valuables in the well to appease their emotionally unavailable deities.

Since the beginning of 2021, archaeologists have been working in advance of construction work for a letter distribution center on the area where the well has now been discovered. The excavations are among the largest area excavations of the past year in Bavaria. In the meantime, the scientists there have been able to document around 13,500 archaeological finds, mainly from the Bronze Age and the early Middle Ages. Some of the finds are currently being examined and conserved at the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments. After completion of the subsequent restoration work, these are expected to be made accessible to science and the public at the end of the year in the Germering City Museum.

4001 Roman coins on display 50+ years after discovery

Ancient, Museums, Treasures

The Treasure of Garonne, an assemblage of 4001 Roman coins that went down with a shipwreck in the 2nd century A.D., has gone on display at the Museum of Aquitaine Bordeux. This is the first time all 4001 coins have been exhibited to the public. The coins are sestertii made of orichalcum, a brass-like alloy of zinc and copper, ranging in date from the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.) to that of Antoninus Pius (138-161 A.D.). It is the largest and most significant Roman coin treasure in France.

The first coins from the treasure were discovered accidentally in 1965 during dredging works on the Garonne river. Former University of Bordeaux professor Robert Étienne recognized that there were likely more coins to be found and organized a series of systematic excavations at several sites on the river over the next six years. Coins have continued to turn up in the decades since, donated by individuals and institutions, some even found at private construction sites trapped in sand from the Garonne that was being used as aggregate. One of the museum’s conservators found a coin when he was a child and he donated it so it could join its brethren in the comprehensive exhibition. The most recent donation of an orichalcum coin from the Treasure of the Garonne was just last month.

Charred pieces of wood found in the initial discovery indicate the coins were on a merchant ship traveling upriver from Burdigala (modern-day Bordeaux) between 170 and 176 A.D. The vessel caught fire and sank with its cargo, including thousands of orichalcum sestertii, many of which were visibly altered by contact with the fire. Estimates based on the ship’s cargo size suggest as many as 800 coins are still unaccounted for, snapped up by souvenir hunters during the initial find, embedded in the sediment still on the river bed or inadvertently built into random walls.

Recording and studying the massive number of coins has taken decades, which is why the complete treasure has never been on display until now. The coins have been invaluable in answering questions about the composition of orichalcum, particularly its zinc content and how it changed from the first century to the end of the second.

Hundreds of artifacts, human remains seized from two homes

Ancient, Looting

Police have recovered hundreds of archaeological artifacts, fossils and human remains in a raid on two homes in Alicante, southeastern Spain. With more than 300 archaeological objects and 200 bones, it is one of the largest collections of illegally acquired artifacts in the province.

Alicante was founded as a fortified town around 230 B.C. by Hamilcar Barca, Carthaginian general and father of Hannibal of elephants fame, but there is evidence of human settlement in the area going back to 5000 B.C. Greek and Phoenician traders had established several small trading ports in the area by 1000 B.C., and Punic power grew over the centuries. By the time Hamilcar built what he named Akra Leuké (Greek for “White Mountain”), Carthage was in a heated competition with Rome for control of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian peninsula, a competition it would soon lose. Scipio Africanus defeated Carthage in the Second Punic War and conquered Carthaginian Iberia in 206 B.C.

With so rich a history, it is sad but not surprising that Alicante has drawn the attention of looters. This latest investigation began last November when authorities heard of a group of paleontological remains inside a private home. After the first raid, the owner collaborated with the police and threw another looter under the bus, leading to the raid on the second home. An even larger collection of archaeological artifacts and bones were found there. Among the pieces seized are amphorae of Iberian, Phoenician and Punic origin, Neolithic millstones, Roman-era loom weights, more than 1,000 tesserae from a Roman mosaic, large numbers of fossils and ceramics ranging in date from the Bronze Age through the middle of the 20th century.

The owner of the second home claimed he had inherited everything from a deceased relative, and it seems like he wasn’t lying about a good portion of the collection, at least. But even so, the deceased relative had no legal title to any of this. This was confirmed in said relative’s own hand because he kept handwritten notebooks with maps noting the exact locations where he had stolen the items. Looters don’t usually take assiduous notes, from what I’ve seen, so this is a pretty remarkable record that is sure to be of enormous use to archaeologists.

The two men are under investigation for misappropriation of objects of historic, cultural or scientific value. The objects are currently being stored at the Archaeological Museum of Dénia. Researchers hope the notebooks documenting the finds will aid in identifying the objects’ ages and histories, and perhaps lead to the discovery of previously unknown archaeological sites.

Green sarcophagus repatriated to Egypt

Ancient, Looting, Museums

A wooden mummiform sarcophagus lid painted with a vibrant green face that was long on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences was repatriated to Egypt on Monday. The sarcophagus is 9.5 feet long and dates to the Late Dynastic Period (664-332 B.C.) of Egypt. It is covered with hieroglyph inscriptions painted in gold. It may have belonged to a priest named Ankhenmaat, but part of the inscription was lost so the name cannot be confirmed.

Most of the artifacts that have been repatriated to Egypt in recent years were trafficked in the aftermath of the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in January 2011. One salient example is the gilded cartonnage coffin of the Late Ptolemaic priest Nedjemankh, bought in 2017 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art from a shady dealer for $4 million and repatriated less than two years later when it was found to have been looted and trafficked with forged export documents.

At the time of the repatriation of Nedjemankh’s coffin, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. told the press that the investigation into its real origins had traced its movements from the initial theft in October 2011 to the United Arab Emirates to Germany (where it was restored) to auction in France where it was sold by dealer Christophe Kunicki to the Met and shipped to New York. This was orchestrated by a sophisticated multi-national organized crime network with active conspirators and shills in the high-end art and antiquities markets. Vance shared this information deliberately — usually the authorities are tight-lipped about on-going investigations — in order to put the museum industry on alert that they were going to have be pay attention to ownership history with a much sharper eye because this criminal organization’s loot was everywhere and more significant artifacts were going to be seized in the months and years to come.

That was both a threat and a promise, to paraphrase a line from every single action movie ever. Three plus years after Vance warned of what was to come, his successor Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg determined that the green sarcophagus was stolen and trafficked by the same criminal network that had targeted the gilded coffin, but the green coffin was looted before the uprising. It was looted from the Abu Sir Necropolis in North Cairo, smuggled into Germany in 2008 and from there into the United States. A private collector acquired it and then loaned the lid to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in 2013.