On February 16, 1923, in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist
Howard Carter (above) entered the sealed burial chamber of the
ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen.
Despite rumors that a curse would befall anyone who disturbed
the tomb, its treasures were carefully catalogued, removed and
included in a famous traveling exhibition called the “Treasures
of Tutankhamen.” The exhibition’s permanent home is the
Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
(AP) – Archaeologists in Norway announced Tuesday that they
have discovered an ancient artifact believed to be the oldest of
its kind with inscriptions dating back 2,000 years.
The runestone, a flat, brown sandstone block covered in
scribbles, is believed to contain some of the earliest words
recorded in Scandinavia, the Museum of Cultural History
in Oslo, Norway, told the Associated Press. Those words,
the museum noted, are “among the oldest runic inscriptions
ever found” while the artifact itself is believed to be “the
oldest datable runestone in the world.”
Researchers inspect a runestone found at Tyrifjorden,
Norway, on Jan. 12 at the Museum of Cultural History
in Oslo.
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A warehouse along the Savannah River
is holding historical treasures that evidence suggests remained
lost for more than 240 years — a cache of 19 cannons that
researchers suspect came from British ships scuttled to the river
bottom during the American Revolution.
The mud- and rust-encrusted guns were discovered by accident
when a dredge scooping sediment from the riverbed last year as
part of a $973 million deepening of Savannah’s busy shipping
channel surfaced with one of the cannons clasped in its metal
jaws. The crew soon dug up two more.
Archaeologists guessed they were possibly leftover relics from
a sunken Confederate gunship excavated a few years earlier in
the same area, according to Andrea Farmer, an archaeologist
for the Army Corps of Engineers. But experts for the U.S. Navy
found they didn’t match any known cannons used in the Civil
War. Further research indicates they’re likely almost a century
older and sank during the buildup to the Revolutionary War’s
bloody siege of Savannah in 1779.
Fort Jackson just outside Savannah, Ga.
Painting of The Siege of Savannah.
British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discovered
a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of
the Kings in Egypt on November 4, 1922.
When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient
Egyptian tombs had been discovered, though the little-known
King Tutankhamen, who had died when he was 18, was still
unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive
search for “King Tut’s Tomb,” finally finding steps to the burial
room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb
of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26,
1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered
the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously
intact.
Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon at the opening of
King Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings,
Egypt, 1922. Screen print from a photograph.
KING TUTANKHAMUN
On February 16, 1923, in Thebes, Egypt, English archaeologist Howard Carter (above) entered the sealed burial chamber of the ancient Egyptian ruler King Tutankhamen.
Because the ancient Egyptians saw their pharaohs as gods, they carefully preserved their bodies after death, burying them in elaborate tombs
containing rich treasures to accompany the rulers into the afterlife. In the
19th century, archeologists from all over the world flocked to Egypt, where
they uncovered a number of these tombs. Many had long ago been broken
into by robbers and stripped of their riches.
