An unusual limestone relief in the stores Swansea University’s Egypt Centre has been identified as a depiction of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut. Egyptologist Dr. Ken Griffin was going through photographs of artifacts in the stores for a handling session with second year students when he came across a black and white picture of a relief that caught his eye. He selected it for the session. When it examining it with the students he recognized the iconography as very similar to that used in depictions of the fifth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty (ca. 1478-1458 B.C.) and one of only five women known to have held that exalted position in all of Egyptian history.

The relief is in two pieces, offset from each other, irregularly shaped and incomplete. The pieces have been glued together at a join point that makes sense in the frontal view, but which leaves the top piece with this oddly orphaned back view depicting the profile of a bearded man from the nose down. The back bottom piece is rough, bearing the tell-tale marks of having been chiseled off its original location, so any finish at all on the top back

The front side depicts the head of a figure whose face is unfortunately missing, with the remains of a fan directly behind. Traces of hieroglyphs are also present above the head. The iconography of the piece indicates that it represents a ruler of Egypt, particularly with the presence of the uraeus (cobra) on the forehead of the figure.[…]

Having visited Egypt on over fifty occasions, Dr Griffin quickly recognised the iconography as being similar to reliefs within the temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri (Luxor), which was constructed during the height of the New Kingdom. In particular, the treatment of the hair, the fillet headband with twisted uraeus, and the decoration of the fan are all well-known at Deir el-Bahri. Most importantly, the hieroglyphs above the head—part of a formulaic text attested elsewhere at the temple—use a feminine pronoun, a clear indication that the figure is female. […]

Yet the mystery of the precious find doesn’t end there. On the rear of the upper fragment, the head of a man with a short beard is depicted. Initially there was no explanation for this, but it is now clear that the upper fragment had been removed and recarved in more recent times in order to complete the face of the lower fragment. The replacement of the fragment below the figure would also explain the unusual cut of the upper fragment. This was probably done by an antiques dealer, auctioneer, or even the previous owner of the piece in order to increase its value and attractiveness. It was eventually decided at an unknown date to glue the fragments together in the original layout, which is how they now appear.

Research into the archives has so far not been able to explain how and when this important piece got the Frankenstein treatment. The fog of time and the lack of rigorousness in private collecting makes it unlikely that we’ll ever know the full story.

The Egypt Centre has housed the university’s small collection of Egyptian artifacts since 1998. It is both a museum open to the public and an important learning resource of Swansea’s Department of Classics and Ancient History. The artifacts were originally amassed by pharmacist Sir Henry Wellcome, whose ability to hoard antiquities and collectibles was on a par with the most profligate and indiscriminate William Randolph Hearst. After his death, the objects were managed by a trust who distributed to various museums and institutions. A few things remains, stored in the Petrie Museum, until 1971 when 92 crates of Egyptiana were delivered to what was then called the University College Swansea.

A few stand-out pieces were displayed, first in the Chemistry Department, then in the Classics Department, and the small collection grew, enhanced by donations from individuals and other museums. In the mid-1990s, Sybil Crouch, manager of the Taliesin Arts Centre, proposed that a dedicated museum space be created to house the collection properly and after much work and fund-raising, the Egypt Centre was born as a wing of the Taliesin Arts Centre.

The Hatshepsut relief was part of that original 1971 shipment from the Wellcome Collection, but there is so documentation regarding where it came from or when or from whom Henry Wellcome acquired it. The marks on the back of the uncarved bottom piece and the thinness of the limestone (it’s less than two inches thick) point to it having been removed from a temple or tomb wall. It’s very likely to have been part of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri, and it may be possible to find the spot from whence it was removed, with a little bit of luck and help from the Polish Archaeological Mission to Egypt which has been documenting, excavating and conserving the temple since 1961.

Meanwhile, the relief is now on permanent display at the Egypt Centre.

Archaeologists excavating in the Huanchaco district of Trujillo, northwestern Peru, have discovered 77 tombs of the Chimú civilisation containing the remains of 47 individuals, including 12 children and one neonate believed to have been ritually sacrificed. Fractures in the ribs and cutting marks on the thorax of the children suggest attempts were made to cut their hearts out, likely as a sacrificial offering. One of the children was wrapped in a cloth and buried with 39 spondylus shells, warm-water molluscs that the Chimú are believed to have associated with the arrival of the rains. Bringing precipitation to the north coast may have been part of the religious purpose of the sacrifice. Also found in the burial ground were the remains of 40 camelids, 115 Chimú pottery vessels, metal artifacts and fishing tools.

The graves date to around 1,200 to 1,400 A.D., the later centuries of the Chimú culture which ruled the northern coastal area of Peru from around 850 A.D. until they were conquered by the Inca in 1470, shortly before the arrival of the Spanish. It was heavily influenced by its direct predecessor, the Moche culture whose decline overlapped with the rise of the Chimú, and some of its crafts (textiles in particular) suggest the influence of the even more ancient Wari culture.

Their greatest urban center was Chan Chan, 2.5 miles northwest of Trujillo, the capital of the Chimú empire of Chimor and the largest city in pre-Columbian South America. Its estimated population at its peak was 40,000-60,000 people. Today it is an archaeological site approximately eight square miles in area with more adobe buildings than any other city in the Americas. It is the second largest grouping of adobe structures in the world.

Huanchaco, about 2.5 miles from Chan Chan, was its main port, as it was for the Moche before them, the Inca after them and for Spanish Trujillo after them. It’s also the place where ceviche was invented and long may it be blessed for having gifted this delicacy to the world. Pottery fragments and fishing weights, hooks and needles from earlier cultures — the Salinar (400-200 B.C.), Virú (150 B.C.-500 A.D.), Moche (600-700 A.D.) — were found at the burial site as were the remains of ancient structures, evidence that the neighborhood was an inhabited urban area for a thousand years before being abandoned. The Chimú residents of Chan Chan later converted it to use as a location for burials and associated rituals.

The excavation is an archaeological rescue project to salvage historically significant material in advance of an expansion of potable water and sewage works. So far the dig has uncovered an area of 3,200 square meters (.8 of acre) over eights city streets. By the time the excavation ends in June, that figure is expected to double. Once whatever can be recovered is recovered, the city will request a Certificate of No Archaeological Remains (CIRA) and the water and sewage works will go forward as planned.

For now the archaeological material is being stored in a rented house in Las Lomas, the neighborhood where the excavation is taking place. Some of it will be transported to the National University of Trujillo (UNT) for conservation and further study. The city hopes to raise funds to build a museum close to the find site where the discoveries can be exhibited and secured in proper conservation conditions.

A bronze vessel unearthed from a Qin dynasty tomb still contains a hefty amount of liquor, archaeologists have discovered. The tomb was discovered in a cemetery of commoners’ graves in Yan village, located in China’s Shaanxi province near Xianyang, the ancient capital of the Qin Dynasty. The burials date from the late Warring States period (5th century-221 B.C.) through the Qin Dynasty (221-207 B.C.), and although they have been extensively looted over the centuries, numerous artifacts were found interred in the graves. The bronze kettle was one of several highly significant objects among them.

It is a sacrificial vessel, buried for ritual reasons. Interring wine as a sacrificial offering for the dead was a common practice at the time. The jug’s mouth was sealed tight with a coarse hessian fabric, made of jute or sisal fibers, and tied with plant material. It was so effective at blocking air from entering the vessel that even after more than two thousands years, the liquid inside was still fluid when archaeologists removed the stopper. About 300 ml (10 fl oz) of liquid remained. When researchers extracted it, they found it was a cream-colored milky fluid that had undergone a fermentation process in antiquity.

According to Zhang Yanglizheng, an assistant researcher at SPIA, the 300ml of milky-white liquid possess alcoholic substances such hydroxyproline and glutamate. This would suggest that it possesses similar qualities and features to modern-day fermented wine.

The discovery not only reflects the level of wine making in Qin’s capital Xianyang, a prefecture in modern-day Shaanxi Province, at the time, but also shows that the Qin people inherited certain rites and ceremonies from the Western Zhou (1046–771 BCE) period, Zhang explained.

Glutamate and hydroxyproline are non-proteinogenic amino acids. Testing also found small amounts of proteins and fatty acids in the liquor which indicate this ancient tipple was similar to today’s yellow rice wine.

Another important piece unearthed in the excavation of the cemetery was a bronze sword. Just shy of two feet long (60 cm), the weapon has octahedron-shaped divots in the middle, which were meant to make the weapon easier to wield and thereby increase its effectiveness in battle. Dents and dings along the edge of the sword indicate that it did indeed see use on the battlefield, and a lot of it at that.

Also found in one of the tombs was a turtle shell, specifically the plastron or bottom half of the shell that covers the animal’s abdomen. It is 14 cm (5.5 inches) long and has a dozen squares punched out of the shell. There are burn marks along the edge. These features are characteristic symbols used by fortune-tellers to divine the future.

The research team is hoping these artifacts and the hundreds of others discovered in the burial ground will shed new light on the social history of people living under the Qin dynasty. Most artifacts of significance that have been recovered from the tombs of the elite. Discovering them in commoners’ graves gives archaeologists a whole new opportunity to examine the daily life of non-nobles in China’s first empire.