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Thieves Find Cemetery of Pharaoh's Dentists
junglee_iitk writes with news of an important archaeological find from Egypt. Grave robbers located a tomb and were arrested while digging; what they found turns out to be the graves of three dentists who took care of a Pharaoh's teeth. The graves are located in the shadow of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, said to be Egypt's oldest, and are around 4,000 years old. From the article: "Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt's ruins intensively for more than 150 years, [a senior archaeologist] believes only 30 percent of what lies hidden beneath the sands has been uncovered." Yahoo has a few pictures of the dig.
Its also amazing how grave robbers seem to find all the good stuff before the archeologists.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
So they were grave digging of grave diggers? Why is this even in /.?
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
That led archaeologists to the three tombs, one of which included an inscription warning that anyone who violated the sanctity of the grave would be eaten by a crocodile and a snake...
Mummy, the crocodile returns!!!
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
three dentists who took care of a Pharaoh's teeth.
Of course, they only had the teeth because the thieves ancestors stole the rest of the body. They took them to court and cried "I want my mummy!", but for some reason the judge kept it under wraps.
They left just the teeth. That's got to bite.
Have you read my journal today?
Did they find her?
NM
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
If you do not support saving these remains, you must be some sort of anti-dentite.
Where were you when the voynix came?
So, it's a story of how the lower quality beat the higher quality, even though they flatly deny that such a thing is possible. No wonder the thieves were arrested. Their discovery defies some ivory-tower's resident and must be abolished before physics itself fails. Woe to us all!
Have you read my journal today?
Dr. Zahi Hawass is just so damn cool. And he has the coolest title too (Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities). I strongly recommend checking out his website (broken English warning here).
It would be extremely interesting if a jar of ancient human semen were to be discovered.
With our modern techniques, we may be able to extract viable DNA from said sperm, and use it to fertilize an egg from a woman today.
While the ethics of doing so could be debated forever without a definitive conclusion, from strictly a scientific standpoint it would prove invaluable. We'd be able to directly analyze an individual who is, in essence, four millennia old. The immune system of this person would potentially be drastically different from ours today, so the research here would be particularly enlightening.
"It's easier to go through a lot of sites if you can use a bulldozer instead of a toothbrush (figuratively)"
If I hear someone saying that through the office door in the waiting room at the dentist's, I'm out of there.
Where were you when the voynix came?
The graves of George Washington's crack dental team are probably safe.
It's not stealing, it's lost property - The original claimants are dead and no records of heredity exist to tie modern individuals to them. While the country claims that these are artifacts that belong to the people, ordinary things that are buried by people who later die are fair game.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Not counting all the old magazines from 1990 B.C. Geesh, this article about the delta flooding is at least five years older than the dig site...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Still hasn't paid.
Yet Native American remnants - while not specifically tied to any particular individual - are accepted as cultural heritage and thus belong to the respective tribes. Why is this any different? Just because they are older remains does not mean that they don't belong to Egypt as a nation. I'm not trying to be difficult, just to raise a contextualizing situation.
"Tu fui, ego eris" - Virgil
While I agree with the gyst of your argumentm, I would suggest that you not attempt using that line of reasoning after digging up a corpse in a cemetery in London, no matter how long it may have been buried.
All the old Pharoahs in the tombs
Didn't brush enough, dont you know
It led to tooth decay (oh whey oh)
Teeth falling out like a hockey Joe.
All the king's dentists by the Nile
Don't even know 'bout filling holes
Gold incisors (oh whey oh)
Go in after the old get pulled.
Plier bites without nitrous pipes say:
Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh
Yank like an Egyptian.
whats a "grave robber" anyway... I mean, isn't archeology grave robbing? Is it defined by what you do with the loot. if you sell it to a museum vs. a private collector its not grave robbing? And .. well if you steal from a 2000 year old pile O' dust
John 3:16
2 Kings 2:23
"Yet Native American remnants - while not specifically tied to any particular individual - are accepted as cultural heritage and thus belong to the respective tribes. Why is this any different?"
In the US if you own the land, you own the sub-terranean rights (within limits). e.g. If you find a gold mine under your home, the gold is yours. As for the Native American artifacs - that's a special provision like gambling on their reserves. So as not to add insult to injury, there have been attempts made to "do the right thing" now that we've already chased them off land that was once theirs. Many Native American can trace their ancestery back to a particular tribe and it's a much more clear picture that they, as a group, should inherit tribal property.
As for Ancient Egypt - Even their enemies are long gone... The thousands of years in between do make a difference. The citizens of modern day Egypt are neither cultural hiers nor literal hiers ancient Egypt more so than any other people in the region.
While Egypt, as a sovereign nation, is certainly free to make reasonable propery laws and enforce them, and they should be followed by their citizens and guests in their country... I can see why others would consider it finders-keepers.
--Aaron Greenberg
The grave robbers, meanwhile, are recovering from severe whip lacerations received from a mysterious, independent archeologist who was first on the scene.
Why would a jar with some semen in it be any more likely to contain DNA than all the other remains? In fact, if sperm were somehow miraculously well preserved in and of itself, you could probably recover some from the appropriate organs in the mummified remains (unless they had the testicle jar, but I never heard of that one). Anyway, non-gamete DNA for cloning would hypothetically be more interesting anyway than fertilizing a modern egg with half DNA from 4 millenia go. If you're going to make something like that, why only care about half the old DNA when you could have the whole thing? Even without cloning analysis can be done on the DNA versus today for a bulk of the scientific interest anyway, well, comparison for some of what we know today, archival for studies later when more is understood.
DNA may very well already have been extracted and studied, I have no idea, but sperm/semen is much more boring than a full set of chromosomes in a single package.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
As if the stack of old Highlights magazines in the entryway were not clue enough...
Zahi Hawass; either he's omnipresent, or is a media hound, because it seems any documentary or photo shoot about Egyptian archeology has him in it. Maybe he just likes fame as much as archeology.
g ypttombs//im:/061022/481/d9433cbb7dc24106bdf87f124 dd60323
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/sc/102206e
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I, for one, welcome our new Dentist Overlords.
So, I have a question. Not an archaeologist, nor a seismologist, nor anything else. Layman here.
But don't they have the means now to map things which lie below the surface? I believe I've heard or read that they have satellites that can do that to some extent now. Also, I saw a show on the Discovery Channel where they planted small charges in a grid pattern in some Greek island while looking for the origin of the Atlantis myth, detonated them, and then created an image based on how well sound propagated through subsoil strata.
If that's so, then why can't they do something like that in the Nile river valley? Surely it's gotta be cheaper and faster and safer to uncover the past that way than to dig randomly or wait for a bunch of grave-robbing turkeys to make finds first.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Pharohs' Dentists Found in Egyptian Cavity :)
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
If you take something out of a tomb, whether to
sell it, or display it in a museum, it's still
grave robbery.
My Heart Is A Flower
I used to have two dentists (cleaning monthly [still go there every month] and one was orthodentist for braces and stuff). Three? That's just crazy. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's unlikely that the grave robbers were the owners of the land in question. Presumably, much of this land belongs to the Egyptian state, or to private owners; in either case, this is no different from stealing a property from a house or government office.
Moreover, most countries have laws about what can and can't be done with ancient artifacts, which have a protected status analogous to that of endangered species. Saying it's "not stealing" and thus "fair game" is as specious saying it's okay to shoot an endangered animal on someone else's land since wild animals, unlike domestic ones, don't belong to anybody.
.sig withheld by request
You might not own the mineral (subsurface) rights for your land, since mineral rights are seperate from surface rights. Ditto for the air rights.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara is closer to 5,000 years old than 4,000, as any educated person knows and a quick google would have told you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Djoser/
4,000 years would put it outside the Old Kingdom dates and the major pyramid-building era altogether. But hey, it all happened a long time ago, and anything that happened a long time ago practically happened on the same date!
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
Do you hover every time you visit a cemetary? I suppose you would like us to also hover over any grave that's ever been made (which would mean hovering for all eternity unless we visit another planet), so as not to (potentially) damage it?
How, exactly, do you propose to stop other people grave robbing, those who wreck the tombs, the history, all evidence and the artifacts, FOR THE GOLD AND THE MONEY before "real" scientists (who quite often go out of their way to make sure that virtually every body that can be is preserved and respected to the utmost degree and then usually re-buried in a ceremony as close to traditional as possible, as close to their original burial place as possible?) come along and carefully preserve every bit they can. Look at the photos in the article - the BODYGUARD guarding the tomb now that it's been discovered - think he'd be there if there were no scientists around to fight for the rights of the dead?
Maybe we shouldn't sell people's houses when they die?
Maybe all their possessions should stay in the same place for ever and ever?
Maybe we should forget every bit of history we've ever learned from about 200 years ago previously, if we can't find documentary evidence of it? Let's forget all we know about the Romans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, pre-historic people, dinosaurs... After all none of them were a civilisation worth researching, remembering or revering? And none of them can help us answer questions such as evolution, or the ice ages, or the sudden dying-out of millions of species, or the natural cycles of the planet's ice ages, or global warming?
Go find out how they bury bodies in cemetaries in smaller (developed) countries - Every twenty or so years, parts of the existing cemeteries are covered in twenty feet of soil and new bodies are buried atop the older ones. Is that desecration to you?
*Of course* human graves should be respected at all times. "Real" grave robbers lack this respect. Archaeologists do not EVER lack respect for the bodies, civilisations or artefacts they find. That's WHY they fight to study them, preserve them, store them (in a safer place than an unguarded tomb that will be robbed within MINUTES), allow people to marvel at them BEFORE some git comes along and steals it (whether from a dig site, an undiscovered site or a museum itself) to sell to the highest bidder who only wants them as something "nice" to put on their mantlepiece.
A couple points, firstly you don't own the land, just a set of property rights to it; frequently these rights don't include mineral rights. What is and isn't included in the rights you own can frequently keep lawyers employed for long periods. The Native Americans Tribes are generally considered sovereign nations and what we actually own property rights wise is often the result of treaties between the Tribe and the USG. I doubt many Tribes transfered title of the scared sites to the USG, at least not unless they were under extreme duress.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"But it belongs to (country)! Why should (some other country) keep it?" In the end, none of this "belongs" to a country. History cuurered everywhere at the same time. (Duh!) For the most part, the political boundaries that marked these countries no longer exist, the political entities have vanished into oblivion, no living direct descendents who could claim even a moral ownership are known to survive, so for the most part the only meaningful designation is "world heritage" (which I believe to not be used nearly enough and most definitely not recognized nearly enough).
So, if object X is being, or would very likely be, damaged by being in country Y, I believe country Y has lost all right to the ownership of object X. I don't like the fact that Britain has the Elgin Marbles, but I like even less the fact that they'd be destroyed by pollution if they were ever returned. The Greece of back then no longer exists, any more than the Egypt of the Pharaohes exists today. In some cases, there simply isn't a country in which an object is truly safe. In that case, you document every last facet like crazy and hope. (You can't move the Great Pyramid and you certainly can't hide it, though reducing pollution might cut down on the deterioration.)
But what makes something "world heritage"? The object itself? Usually no. Except in some rare cases, the object has no value in and of itself. For inorganic objects, it is the information the object posesses - from the chemical structure through to any symbols or writings on it, and the information associated with it - where it was made, when, how and why, where it was found, the nature of the site, other items found there and their respective characteristics and associations, and so on. These are the things that have any lasting meaning. Once you know the object - totally - you can always make another using exactly the same materials, tools and methods.
For organic objects, it's tougher. If a bone is damaged or destroyed, there is next to nothing you can do. And time is rarely kind to anything of organic nature. Tutankamun is in very bad shape now and the remains will probably not survive a whole lot longer. Part of that is due to Carter's team, but part is due to Egypt having very high levels of acidic pollution and acid rain. You can't expect much to survive under such brutal conditions.
The other problem with organics is that there's much less information you can obtain. With luck, you can extract mtDNA, maybe even use modelling to produce an impression of what the person looked like. Bodies found in peat bogs and ice fields give slightly more information, perhaps yielding clues of fashion, food and culture that artifacts alone can't. We learned a lot from "Pete Marsh" and the iron-age traveller murdered in the alps, but such finds are almost never in any kind of context, so there is very little you can do to connect them with what was happening at that time. "Pete Marsh" - Lindow Man - might date anywhere from prior to the Roman invasion to a hundred years after the Boudicca Rebellion, making it very hard to know what sort of context is involved.
Getting back to thieves vs. archaeologists - IMHO, it's not a binary thing. I would argue that the "absolute" thief is one who destroys information in search of money, even if that involves destroying the thing they're trying to find. (When archaeologists started paying money per fragment of Dead Sea Scroll recovered, some of the locals cut fragments up so that they could get more money.) I would argue that the "absolute" archaeologist obtains all information, even if that means never reaching the object. (We now have GPR scans of Edward the Confessor's tomb, but reaching it would destroy countless artifacts and could potentia
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
There was no evidence of Laura Croft having been any where near the site, and when asked about the dust covered dental molds, Representatives of Ms. Croft stated that said molds had been purchased in ... um.. Bangladesh.
The point at which you realize the need to ask, is precisely the point at which true learning begins
...was all the piles of well worn and dog eared Readers digest and cosmopolitain near the the sargophaguses.
Minor nitpick: Egypt itself still has a sizable minority of Coptic Christians (most of the 10% who aren't Muslims, according to Wikipedia).
But otherwise you're dead on. The Coptic language, used for services in the Coptic church, is the direct descendant of the ancient Egyptian language.
To address the original poster's question, though, there are a number of reasons why modern Egyptians aren't going to complain about archaeologists and other official tomb robbers:
Seriously, you might want to do a bit of research before posting, it might answer your questions! I will admit, it does seem like he is all over the place, but given his job, one would expect him to be...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
... just shove a thumb up its arse. Blimey!
yeah... I knew that. But in the simple case, or shall I say "Fee Simple" case, you own the entire "Bundle of Rights". Most single family residential homes are sold that way (at least in NJ). Of course it isn't always so. Take the New York City's Met-Life Building built over railroad tracks and and a street - they acquired air-rights to build it.
--Aaron Greenberg
In a mummy's dentist cemetary
Don't want to live my life again.
oh no.
Did they find any zero point module ?
Well, This is my first submission so all I can say is, it is easy to submit on digg because you have to give 2-3 sentence long statement. It took me a lot time to find all this stuff and make it readable by reformatting it (though it was changed heavily before getting accepted).
"3 out of 4 dentists recommended Xy chewing gum..."
Do you hover every time you visit a cemetary?
My hovercraft is full of eels.
I suppose you would like us to also hover over any grave that's ever been made (which would mean hovering for all eternity unless we visit another planet), so as not to (potentially) damage it?
That's quite a logical leap you've made from my assertion that digging around in graves,
for the purpose of removing stuff, whether for study or profit, is grave robbery.
How, exactly, do you propose to stop other people grave robbing,
Liberal application of venomous snakes.
those who wreck the tombs, the history, all evidence and the artifacts, FOR THE GOLD AND THE MONEY before "real" scientists (who quite often go out of their way to make sure that virtually every body that can be is preserved and respected to the utmost degree and then usually re-buried in a ceremony as close to traditional as possible, as close to their original burial place as possible?) come along and carefully preserve every bit they can.
Like Tut?
Look at the photos in the article - the BODYGUARD guarding the tomb now that it's been discovered - think he'd be there if there were no scientists around to fight for the rights of the dead?
Think he'd be needed if they kept people out of there in the first place?
Maybe we shouldn't sell people's houses when they die?
We used to have an estate tax, so the gov't could seize it.
Maybe all their possessions should stay in the same place for ever and ever?
Ever been to the Biltmore Estate?
Maybe we should forget every bit of history we've ever learned from about 200 years ago previously, if we can't find documentary evidence of it? Let's forget all we know about the Romans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, pre-historic people, dinosaurs...
Sounds liek a plan...
After all none of them were a civilisation worth researching, remembering or revering? And none of them can help us answer questions such as evolution, or the ice ages, or the sudden dying-out of millions of species, or the natural cycles of the planet's ice ages, or global warming?
Global warming is caused by a decrease in pirates. If you aren't going to be armed with basic facts, I'm not going to argue with you. It would be pointless.
Go find out how they bury bodies in cemetaries in smaller (developed) countries - Every twenty or so years, parts of the existing cemeteries are covered in twenty feet of soil and new bodies are buried atop the older ones. Is that desecration to you?
Composting is good for the soil.
*Of course* human graves should be respected at all times. "Real" grave robbers lack this respect. Archaeologists do not EVER lack respect for the bodies, civilisations or artefacts they find. That's WHY they fight to study them, preserve them, store them (in a safer place than an unguarded tomb that will be robbed within MINUTES), allow people to marvel at them BEFORE some git comes along and steals it (whether from a dig site, an undiscovered site or a museum itself) to sell to the highest bidder who only wants them as something "nice" to put on their mantlepiece.
Archeologit is a description. They have the same financial imperatives as everybody else.
I will opine that given the fact that archeologist don't get rich, the temptation to sell
a few pieces for some rich fukc's mantlepiece collection can be quite great. Food and shelter will always trump the sancitity of some civilisations artifacts. Do you think the
museum in Iraq was looted by rich collectors? I don't. I think it was looted by poor, poeple who saw an opportunity to feed themselves for a while by stealing some rocks and selling them to people who have more money than sense.
We know that there are mummies in the valley. We've seen them. Leave them alone before they come back to life and raise a zombie horde to eat our brains.
OK, look. We (humans) started bury
My Heart Is A Flower
They have been identified as Al-Moe, Asak Larry, and Kulaph Curly. Their tomb entrance was covered in the heiroglyph for "Nyuck Nyuck".
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
I wonder if the punishment of the thieves could carry this threat on. It would be interesting if the penalty for grave robbers would be to feed them to crocodiles and snakes.
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
The International Court of Justice, the African Union, and even the United States, are other examples of where members have voluntarily sacrificed absolute authority in favour of having separation of powers and outside agencies to which certain responsibilities can be delegated.
I see no contradiction, then, in doing this for world heritage. It is merely an extension of an arrangement that has generally worked rather well. (It is only when powers cease to be seperate, and absolute authority forms, that serious problems arise. Total and irrevocable seperation of powers won't eliminate war, but it would likely eliminate a great many wars.)
Your example of oil is an interesting one, for many reasons. Britain's North Sea oil reserves were badly mismanaged, through absolutism. America did just as badly but has escaped the worst of the suffering for now. In many poor countries where oil is to be found, you see exploitation and environmental destruction on a horrendous scale, usually with the consent of the Government there. The same is true for gold mining, where miners are exposed to a range of utterly lethal chemicals (often in the drinking water) with the consent of those in authority. I can't be certain of it, as I've not been there to ask those living in such conditions, but I'd be willing to hazard a guess that if they could earn the same or more AND keep their arms, legs and brain intact, they'd not give a damn who "owned" these resources.
Absolute ownership of the land is indeed a part of the "Nation-State" concept, but that concept is slowly being torn down as worn-out and decayed, susceptable to corruption and inherently economically unstable. America was the first of the modern nations to look for alternatives. States have some powers, the Federal Government has others. The judges, legislators and civil servants are all totally distinct - well, in theory. That's a six-way split of authority with minimal overlap. It's by no means perfect and it could probably do with being split further, but the US - by outlasting all other superpowers - has shown that the Nation-State is inferior by design to a more collaborative system. It just has to figure out how to get a collaborative system that's any good.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The destruction of the two standing Buddhas was a terrible disaster for archaeologists and historians. Partly because, as we know from the vicious infighting in these disciplines over whether the Seven Wonders ever existed, there is a tendancy to ignore documented evidence if there's no visible evidence. If the Taliban find the Sleeping Buddha before the archaeologists do, they may be able to eliminate any proof it ever existed as we only have the vaguest of hints of a third giant statue near the location of the first two. We have no idea where it is or what other archaeological finds might be located around it, but being buried means that it is possible it is in far better condition - maybe with the original paints intact - than the two standing statues were.
Importance level: High. Enough of the paints survived on the two standing statues to make educated guesses as to the composition, but it's hard to be certain when you're dealing with microscopic flakes that have been exposed to any number of chemicals in the air and rain (or in the rock itself), where you can't be sure how many layers there were, or even how well the paint was mixed, and where photosensitive chemicals might have done almost anything (except tap-dance) in that sort of timeframe.
(Ok, so the importance is only high for people with an interest in Afghan history, Buddhist history, Silk Road history, monumental carvings, archaeology in general, ancient technology, or who would quite fancy being able to only paint the outside of their house once every five hundred years and still have it look good.)
It is also important to consider that people are less careful with those things that they feel no ownership of, have no understanding of, and are devoid of any connection towards. That's to be expected and should surprise nobody. But, by implication, negligence or destructive tendancies towards historic artifacts is most likely when the individual or society are totally disconnected with history. Making the ownership explicit and universal can only help to empower communities.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)