A monumental tomb across from the Step Pyramid of Djoser has reopened to visitors after 15 years of renovations. The Southern Tomb is part of the expansive mortuary complex built by Djoser’s royal architect Imhotep in Saqqara, a necropolis just outside the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis. Built between 2667 and 2648 B.C., the Southern Tomb is a mastaba, a rectangular tomb with a flat roof (the step pyramid was made by stacking six mastabas on top of each other).

The limestone building you see on the surface is the figurative tip of the iceberg. Underneath the visible tomb is a labyrinthine warren of passages cut down into the living rock 100 feet below the surface. The long corridors are punctuated by false doors engraved with the hieroglyphics and inlaid with tiles of blue faience. At the base of the central funeral shaft is a massive pink granite sarcophagus, a smaller version of the one inside the burial room of the step pyramid.

It’s not certain what the purpose of the tomb was. Djoser’s body was buried in his glorious pyramid. It may have had an unknown symbolic purpose.  Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, hypothesizes that it was the most glamorous and expensive canopic jar ever, a great monument built to contain his internal organs.

Restoration of the Southern Tomb began in 2006, part of the same comprehensive research and restoration of the necropolis that also shored up the dangerously precarious Step Pyramid, which reopened to visitors last year. The corridors, walls and ceilings under the mastaba were stabilized and new flooring and lighting installed. The granite sarcophagus was also recomposed.

Archaeologists have unearthed an iron axe and machete dating to the Byzantine era in the ancient city of Assos in northwestern Turkey. The team found the tools while excavating the remains of dwellings which contained numerous daily use items like pottery and a small iron grill.

Excavation leader Professor Nurettin Arslan:

“One of the iron objects we found this year is a large iron knife, which we believe is a machete. It was found in Byzantine structures that we call the gymnasium (the training ground for athletes). The second one is an ax-type material that assumingly was used specifically for shaping and chopping wood. Both tools are quite important in terms of preserving their form well despite the long years that they have spent underground. They constitute an important example for the materials used in production in Assos.”

The axe and machete are largely intact, missing only organic parts like the handles. They stand out from the other objects recovered from the Byzantine layers as they are mostly pottery and found in fragments that the archaeologists have to piece together. The pots were used for cooking food — boiling grains and legumes, for example — as well as for serving it and storing it.

Founded on a hill overlooking the Aegean by colonists from the island of Lesbos around 1000 B.C., Assos had the only good natural harbour in 50 miles, so it was crucial to trade in the southern Biga Peninsula for thousands of years. It has been continuously populated since its founding. The name of the modern village is Behramkale, but Assos is still referred to by its ancient name in common parlance, and is a popular seaside resort town thanks to its picturesque Aegean location and extensive surviving ancient remains, which include a spectacular 6th century B.C. Doric temple of Athena on the crag overlooking the sea, the Hellenistic-era (6th-4th century B.C.) defensive walls and the dock which is still in use today.

Its most famous resident was Aristotle who founded his first school of philosophy there in 348 B.C. after departing Athens and the Academy in the wake of Plato’s death. He lived there three years, a valued advisor of King Hermias and soon his son-in-law when he married the king’s daughter Pythias.

A quick word about Hermias who was a remarkable individual. He first appears on the historical record as a slave to a banker named Eubulus who became ruler of Assos and Atarneus when the Persian aristocrat who owned them used them as collateral for a loan and then defaulted. Hermias was a valued member of the household and as a youth was educated at Plato’s Academy which is where he first met and become fast friends with Aristotle. Eubulus died shortly after Hermias’ return to Atarneus, leaving Hermias as his successor.

Philip II of Macedon saw an opportunity in the new despot of Assos and Atarneus. He wanted an alliance with Hermias to get access to that invaluable port for a future invasion of Asia Minor and Persia, so he dispatched Aristotle to grease the skids with Hermias. It worked. Hermias and Philip formed a diplomatic and military alliance.

The alliance did not work to Hermias’ advantage in the end. Indeed, it led directly to his agonizing death. When Artaxerxes III of Persia began eyeing an invasion of Asia Minor to reclaim lost territories, the Greeks got nervous. Athens told Philip that if he even looked at Asia Minor funny, they’d join the Persians against him. Philip decided discretion was the better part of valour and withdrew his military support, abandoning Hermias to his fate.

Artaxerxes hired the Greek mercenary general Mentor to capture Hermias. Aristotle, horrified that Philip had abandoned his friend, frantically wrote to Mentor hoping to get him to switch sides. His arguments fell on deaf ears. Hermias was imprisoned and sent to Susa where he was tortured to extract information about Philip’s invasion plans. Hermias, who definitely had the goods on Philip, refused to talk. He was loyal to the end, even to the disloyal Philip, and died in 341 B.C. His last words were “tell my friends that I have done nothing shameful or unworthy of philosophy.”

Aristotle felt the loss keenly. He dedicated a memorial monument at Delphi to Hermias and wrote a hymn honoring his steadfastness in the face of betrayal.

And now for you Atarneus’ pride,
Trusting in others’ faith, has nobly died;
But yet his name
Shall never die, the Muses’ holy train
Shall bear him to the skies with deathless fame,
Honouring Zeus, the hospitable god,
And honest hearts, proved friendship’s blest abode.

Two 8th century Maya stele have been installed in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of New York. On loan from the Republic of Guatemala, the relief carvings of two Maya rulers, one male, one female, replace statues of the 12th-dynasty pharaoh Amenemhat II and the goddess Athena that have been in Great Hall for years.

Stela 5 from Piedras Negras, a Classic Maya urban center on the border with what is now Chiapas, Mexico, that was modest in population but so rich in engravings documenting the chronology and accomplishments of its rulers that it played a key role in the deciphering of Maya script in the late 1950s. The stela is a life-sized representation of King K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II (ca. 664-729 A.D.) who is seated on a throne while receiving a nobleman. The throne is lined with a jaguar skin, its head staring unseeing at the viewer. Above the king is an anthropomorphic mountain with an open jaw from which deities emerge. Its glyphs include a date: November 2nd, 716.

The other stela in the Great Hall is number 24 from the El Naranjo site in Petén. It depicts queen regent Ix Wak Jalam Chan (ca. 670s-741 A.D.), who like another great Maya queen, Lady Snake Lord, held her own power rather than acting as mere queen consort.

One of the most powerful women known by name from the ancient Americas, Ix Wak Jalam Chan (Lady Six Sky) arrived in the city of Sa’aal, now near the border between Belize and Guatemala, in 682. The daughter of a powerful ruler in a centuries-old dynasty, she married into the local ruling family, securing a critical political alliance. Ruling as regent in place of her infant son, the queen led military campaigns to conquer neighboring cities in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. This monument records her triumph: she appears with a captive underfoot and a bowl of ritual implements in her arms.

The hieroglyphic caption also indicates that she is impersonating a goddess. The artists portrays Lady Six Sky with spiritually charged regalia, including a woven skirt with jade beads, an elaborate belt assemblage featuring a supernatural watery being and Spondylus shell, and a feathered headdress, emphasizing the fluidity of identity between human leaders and gods. With this portrait, she underscored both her strategic prowess in warfare and her divine right to rule.

The government of Guatemala sharing two other important pieces from Piedras Negras with the Met, but not for display. As part of the loan agreement, the Met’s conservators will turn their keen eyes on one of Piedras Negras’ exceptional relief panels and a Throne 1, an elaborately carved stone throne that is widely considered a masterpiece of Maya sculpture. The spectacular throne was commissioned by the last king of Piedras Negras around 800 A.D. and it is covered with inscriptions detailing the dynastic succession of the previous kings of Piedras Negras.

The stele will be standing watch in Great Hall until August 2024, representing the art of the ancient Americas while The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the Met’s gallery dedicated to African Art, Ancient American art and Oceanic art, is closed for an expansive redesign and reconceptualization.

A 4,000-year-old Bronze Age wood coffin has been discovered in a golf course pond in Yorkshire. It contains human remains and an axe with a stone head and complete wooden handle in a condition so impeccable it could easily be confused for a tool of modern manufacture.

Workers were digging up a pond at Tetney Golf Club in July of 2018 with a mechanical excavator when they hit against the prehistoric coffin. They stopped what they were doing and called in an archaeologists from the University of Sheffield who arrived the next day to behold a muddy pit 12 feet deep with a wood coffin broken into several large pieces on the bottom. The wood, preserved for thousands of years in the waterlogged soil, was in immediate danger of drying out and falling apart from exposure to the air and the oppressive heat of the summer.

The rescue archaeology operation revealed that the wood pieces were part of a log coffin, the carved trunk of a fast-growing oak tree. It was made with the “split timber” technique, in which the trunk is cut vertically into two halves, or two near-halves, with one side larger than the other. The larger half would then be hollowed out. The smaller half could be made into a lid. Only a part of the lid of this coffin has survived.

Plants were used to cushion the body, then a gravel mound was raised over the grave; practices that were only afforded to people with a high status within Bronze Age society.

So far, yew or juniper leaves have been found within the coffin and further work is planned to discover more about how plants were used in this burial practice, and the time of year the burial took place.

Bronze Age log coffins are extremely rare; about 65 of them have been discovered in Britain. It was a brief-lived funerary practice that fell out of favor almost as quickly as it appeared about 4,000 years ago, and even if it had been more common, the decomposition of organic remains would destroy most of them.

Osteological analysis of the human remains found that he was  a tall man for his time, about 5’9″, and died in his late 30s or early 40s. Osteoarthritis in his bones indicates he did heavy work. He was a man of importance in his community. Carving out a person-sized log was time-consuming and resource-intensive; only the elite could afford so lavish a burial. The axe buried with him is also evidence he was a person of social rank. It is not a practical tool, but rather a ceremonial object, likely a symbol of authority. It is even more rare than the coffin. Only 12 from this period have been found in Britain.

The pieces of the coffin and the axe were transported to cold storage at the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth to arrest the decay and give researchers the opportunity to study them before the drying and stabilization process caused any changes. They were in cold storage for a year before being moved to the York Archaeological Trust for preservation.

The largest piece is from one end of the coffin. It is almost eight feet long and weighs half a ton. The entire coffin is estimated to have been just under 10 feet long and just over three feet wide. Preserving the large, heavy coffin wood is going to take at least two years. The axe is expected to take about a year to preserve. When they are fully conserved, the coffin and axe will go on display at The Collection Museum in Lincoln near where they were discovered.

See conservator Ian Panter working on the coffin and axe in this video:

The skeletal remains of a woman have been found under the west walls of the Wolseong Palace site in Gyeongju, South Korea, not 20 inches away from where the bones of a man and woman were discovered in 2017. The young woman’s burial dates to the 4th century and she may have been interred there as part of a foundation sacrifice.

When the remains of the two bodies were discovered, some raised the possibility that their deaths could have been accidental. But, the Cultural Heritage Administration concluded that the evidence — the remains showing no signs of struggle and the discoveries of animal bones and objects used for ancestral rites in the same area — clearly points that the pair died as part of a sacrificial ceremony.

“Now with the additional discovery, there’s no denying Silla’s practice of human sacrifice,” said Choi Byung-heon, professor emeritus of archaeology at Soongsil University, adding that the specific location of where the remains were discovered is also important.

According to Choi, the remains of three Silla people were laid on top of the bottommost layer of the fortress’s west wall, right in front of where the west gate would have been located.

“After finishing off the foundation and moving onto the next step of building the fortress, I guess it was necessary to really harden the ground for the fortress to stand strong. In that process, I think the Silla people held sacrificial rites, giving not only animals but also humans as sacrifices,” said Choi.

When the skeleton was found in April of this year, archaeologists first thought it was a child due its diminutive stature (135 cm, or 4’5″). Upon further examination, she was confirmed to be a young adult around 20 years old when she died. Isotope analysis of her teeth found she had suffered from chronic malnutrition which likely stunted her growth. The couple unearthed in 2017 were older in age but younger in date — around 50 years old when they died in the 5th century. They were also small in stature and had suffered extended nutritional deficiencies. This suggests all three of the deceased buried under the west wall were of low social rank.

An intact  pot was found near her head. It was X-rayed and found to contain a second vessel, a small bowl, inside the neck. Archaeologists believe the larger pot contained a liquid, perhaps alcohol. Similar pots were found at the feet of the couple. These are not the typical grave goods found in Silla burials from this period, which underscores that these were not typical burials.

Wolseong was the primary residence of Silla kings in Gyeongju, the kingdom’s capital city, until the fall of the Silla Dynasty in 935. According to a 12th century Korean history, Wolseong was built as a royal fortress by King Pasa in 101 A.D., but no archaeological evidence has been found to confirm so early an origin. Indeed, Accelerator Mass Spectrometer data narrowed down initial construction to the early 4th century and continuing for about 50 years.