Ancient Egyptians believed the burial tomb should contain everything needed for the afterlife,
so Kings were buried with gold, food, beer, weapons, even pets! But what about Ladies
of the Court? Where they at, tho?
One of the most famous Pharaohs of Egypt was (and is) King Tut. But Tutankhamun's mother,
Nefertiti is a far more intriguing political and cultural figure to Egyptologists. She
is legendary for her beauty, but also because she, and her husband Akhenaten, turned Egypt
toward the cult of Aten the Sun God and away from polytheism.
Nefertiti died before Tut, and no one knew where she was buried (though they've been
looking for decades) and technology may have finally revealed Nefertiti was hiding in plain
sight this whole time! In a paper titled "The Burial of Nefertiti?" Lead researcher Nicholas
Reeves writes that he believes Nefertiti is buried IN TUT'S TOMB. Or more accurately,
Tut was buried in Nefertiti's. He believes there is a secret chamber behind an elaborately
painted wall in Tut's burial chamber which houses the legendary Queen.
Tut's tomb is highly trafficked by tourists, so to protect the original from human destruction,
a Spanish company took high-resolution photos of the hieroglyphs and paintings and created
a reconstruction. Looking at those photos, Reeves discovered fissures in the wall which
might hide secret doors. Obviously, they couldn't go in and break down the walls, so instead,
the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities scanned the room with infrared thermography. Essentially,
scientists and engineers measured the surface temperatures of the walls with infrared cameras;
two sections of the walls were cooler, meaning there is space behind them! Reeves believes
one is a storeroom, and the other -- NEFERTITI'S LOST BURIAL CHAMBER.
More research is needed before they can determine if Nefertiti's Tomb is back there, or if they'll
cut into the wall to find her, but wow. This could be huge. I love the idea that technology
is making archaeologists drool. In a "Scan Pyramids" joint effort by Cairo University,
the University of Laval in Quebec and Nagoya University in Japan, researchers pointed these
infrared thermography scanners at the Great Pyramid at Giza; and after only two weeks
may have found ANOTHER undiscovered tomb! While normally, variation in external stone
temperatures are only about point-1 to point-5 degrees, in one area the stones were SIX degrees
different. The researchers think they can use lasers, drones and infrared scanners to
get a picture of the internal structure of the pyramid without drilling and destroying
part of the historical building.
Advances in technology help archaeologists gather information about ancient and fragile
artifacts without destructively manipulating them by cutting them open or moving ancient
bones. The lasers they mention are probably LIDAR -- or Light Detection and Ranging tech.
Using laserlight, archaeologists can get super-accurate measurements of historical sites, which let
them create 3-D models. These computer models can reveal details about construction, building
techniques, especially sensitive bits, or areas for further exploration.
Drones and robots can also help get scans or images from hard-to-reach places; back
in the 90s, a tiny crawling robot was sent into a tiny, undisturbed burial chamber in
the Great Pyramid.
Even satellites are put to work in the hunt for our history. 400 miles (644km) above the
Nile's shores, infrared satellite pictures revealed 17 buried pyramids, 3,000 settlements,
and 1,000 tombs across Egypt. This took many hundreds of hours of trial and error, but
newer techniques are looking at AI systems to find these settlements… Though there's
no substitute for getting in there with a brush, magnifying glass and phalanges; archaeologists
are finding technology to be a powerful ally. I love this stuff.
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What's your favorite story from world history? King Tut? The sacking of Carthage by Rome?
The Huns in China? How about the history of ancient alcohol? We've got that last one for
you… some scientists made wine using this ancient recipe and they tasted it… Want
to know what it tasted like? Watch this oldie but a goodie!