A rare bone hand axe made by Homo erectus has been discovered in Ethiopia. The tool was unearthed in the Konso Formation of southern Ethiopia in a sedimentary layer dating to the early Acheulean era around 1.4 million years ago. Comparison of the bone to other samples identified it as coming from the femur of a hippopotamus.

The team has discovered other Homo erectus hand axes at the site, but they are all made of stone. Only one other bone hand axe made by Homo erectus in this period has ever been found before. It was discovered in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and was made of elephant bone.

The hand axe is five inches long and was expertly flaked and chipped to create a sharp, straight cutting edge. This is difficult enough to accomplish with stone, requiring precision and understanding of how it will break. The difficulty level increases exponentially with bone as it doesn’t sheer off as predictably as flint, say. You also need a blank of significant size, a large chunk of bone from a large animal.

The hippo hand axe shows evidence of use. The edge near the tip has rounded and there are microflake scars, wear polish and striations. The striations are mostly oblique along the edge indicating the tool was used in the lengthwise motions of cutting/sawing typical of butchering.

Along with a variety of stone tools now recognized at several East African sites, the bone hand ax “suggests that Homo erectus technology was more sophisticated and versatile than we had thought,” [University of Tokyo researcher Gen] Suwa says. Taken together, these finds show that, perhaps several hundred thousand years earlier than previously known, the H. erectus toolkit consisted of items requiring a series of precise operations to manufacture, such as stone and bone hand axes, as well as simpler tools that could be made relatively quickly.

A burial chamber containing two mummies that were originally covered in gold leaf has been unearthed at Taposiris Magna on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. The tomb was sealed, but water penetration left the remains in poor condition and largely disintegrated the gold leaf. For them to have been buried in such rich outerwear, they must have been individuals of high rank. This is being promoted as a key clue to the location of the tomb of Cleopatra. Spoiler: yeah no.

The head of the excavation, Kathleen Martínez, is actually a lawyer. From her own reading in her time off from running her legal practice Dominican Republic, Martínez developed a theory that Cleopatra’s tomb was at Taposiris Magna and persuaded Zahi Hawass to let her look for it. When she first pitched the idea to him in 2005, she said to give her two months and she’d find the elusive tomb of Cleopatra. Fourteen years of excavations later, the only thing connected to Cleopatra that has been found are 200 gold coins bearing her profile.

Very little archaeological material directly related to Cleopatra has survived, most of it consisting of coins issued during her reign. The written sources have no information about the location of her tomb. Plutarch’s description of her mausoleum focuses on the riches it contained and the great drama of her and Mark Antony’s final days. He does say that Octavian allowed Cleopatra to be embalmed and entombed with Mark Antony in the royal tomb, but nothing about where it was.

Alexandria itself was hit hard by natural disasters. What was once the royal palace of Alexandria is under water now, as is much of the ancient city, and what didn’t sink was cannibalized for building materials. The dynastic tomb of the Ptolemies was built inside the palace precinct.

Located 20 miles west of Alexandria, Taposiris Magna was an important port town in Ptolemaic Egypt. A large limestone temple was constructed there by Ptolemy IV Philopator (r. 221-204 B.C.), who also built the dynastic tomb in Alexandria. It was dedicated to Osiris (hence “Taposiris”) and was believed to one of the spots where Osiris’ dismembered body parts were buried after his murder by his brother Set.

Martínez’ theory is that Cleopatra built a mausoleum for herself and Mark Antony in the temple precinct because she identified strongly with the goddess Isis, consort of Osiris, and would have wanted them buried together as incarnations of the deities. As for how she would have accomplished this without Octavian’s knowledge when he ordered her buried with Mark Antony in Alexandria, she arranged it with priests before her suicide. Once Octavian moved on, the priests moved both bodies to a secret tomb under the Taposiris Magna temple courtyard.

In a decade and a half of excavations, not only has the fabled tomb not turned up, but in all fairness, neither have any others. The chamber with the pair of mummies is the first tomb ever found inside the temple.

The mummies have been X-rayed, establishing that they are male and female. One suggestion is they were priests who played a key role in maintaining the pharaohs’ power. One bears an image of a scarab, symbolising rebirth, painted in gold leaf.

In conclusion, two priests were found buried at a temple that continues to show no evidence whatsoever of the presence of the tomb of Cleopatra.

The Edict of Diocletian, aka the Edict on Maximum Prices, was issued in 301 A.D. in a failed attempt to control the runaway inflation that plagued the empire after decades of currency debasement during the Crisis of the Third Century. It established maximum wages for labor and maximum prices for more than 1,200 products from kidney beans to timber to the famous purple dyed silk (150,000 denarii a pound for that bad boy, more than twice the price of gold). Today the edict survives in fragmentary inscriptions only, but enough of it is extant to serve as a uniquely rich source of information about Roman economics, trade goods and buying power.

Among the products on the list are different types of glass. Alexandrian clear glass is the most expensive at 24 denarii a pound, 30 for cups and vessels. Judaean clear glass cups and vessels cost 20 denarii a pound. Pliny noted in Natural History that “the highest value is set upon glass that is entirely colourless and transparent, as nearly as possible resembling crystal” and Alexandrian was the top of the line in clear glass.

Roman-era glass furnaces have been discovered in the Levant, producers of the Judaean glass. No such furnaces have been found in Egypt so archaeologists have long debated whether the so-called Alexandrian glass was really made there. Researchers have only been able to generally infer ancient glass is Egyptian because it doesn’t match the products from the Syro-Palestinian furnaces and from higher concentrations of titanium dioxide found in Egyptian sand. The first criterion is passive at best, and the second excludes high quality sand deliberately chosen for its low levels of iron oxides (and therefore titanium dioxide) that was available to Egyptian glassmakers during the Roman period.

That obstacle has now been surmounted with the help of the rare element hafnium. Researchers subjected Roman glass sherds to strontium, neodymium and hafnium isotope analyses. They found distinct hafnium isotope signatures in the glasses made with Egyptian sand and the ones from the Syro-Palestine coast.

“Hafnium isotopes have proved to be an important tracer for the origins of sedimentary deposits in geology, so I expected this isotope system to fingerprint the sands used in glassmaking”, states Gry Barfod. Professor at Aarhus University Charles Lesher, co-author of the publication, continues: “The fact that this expectation is borne out by the measurements is a testament of the intimate link between archaeology and geology.”

Hafnium isotopes have not previously been used by archaeologists to look at the trade in ancient man-made materials such as ceramics and glass. Co-author Professor Ian Freestone, University College London, comments, “These exciting results clearly show the potential of hafnium isotopes in elucidating the origins of early materials. I predict they will become an important part of the scientific toolkit used in our investigation of the ancient economy.”

The results of the study have been published in the journal Scientific Reports and can be read here.