• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Cache Of Gold Jewelry Found In Ancient Egyptian “Heretic” Burial

December 16, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

Proving once again that nobody in the ancient world got blinged up quite like the Egyptians, an archeological dig in the Eighteenth Dynasty necropolis of Tell El-Amarna has turned up a treasure trove of ornate gold jewelry. Hidden for the last 3.500 years, the collection originally belonged to a young woman from the city of city of Amarna, or Akhetaten – the capital city of the controversial Pharaoh Akhenaten.

“Her burial is located at the Amarna North Desert Cemetery in the low desert west of the North Tombs,” said Anna Stevens, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, Heritage Daily reports. 

Advertisement

“It includes a small number of burial shafts, tombs, and pit graves,” she added, all of which helped the team date her burial to the late 18th Dynasty – around 1550 to 1292 BCE. This is a particularly intriguing time in Egyptian history: it was the reign of Akhenaten, also known as Amenhotep IV.

While his reputation is now eclipsed in the popular imagination by his son Tutankhamun, Akhenaten was infamous in his own day. That’s because he rejected the traditional Egyptian pantheon of gods in favor of one single new deity: the sun god Aten. 

“Akhenaten’s religious reforms were not entirely new, but his exclusion of the cult of other deities marks a break with traditions,” explains University College London’s Petrie Museum. “This is why he is sometimes referred to as the ‘heretic pharaoh’ and sometimes characterized as the ‘first individual in human history’.”

Tell al-Amarna, where the burial was found, was the capital of Egypt during the reign of King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV). Image credit: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

Tell al-Amarna, where the burial was found, was the capital of Egypt during the reign of King Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV). Image credit: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities

So disliked was this upheaval to Egyptian society that after Akhenaten’s death, his capital city was abandoned. The country reverted back to worshiping many gods, old temples were restored, and many of the new monuments devoted to Aten were torn down by subsequent Pharaohs. 

Nevertheless, the woman’s burial in this location suggests she must have been important: her body was uncovered in the Tombs of the Nobles at Amarna, a cemetery designed for courtiers and elites of the city during its heyday. 

Even more eye-catchingly, she was found with a range of gold ornaments and jewelry, including a gold necklace made of petal-shaped pendants, and three gold rings. These latter items are engraved with hieroglyphs: two are inscribed with the name “Tawi,” translating to “Lady of the Two Lands” – archeologists suggest this refers to the Upper and Lower Kingdoms which together constituted the kingdom of Egypt.

Advertisement

The other ring features an image of the god Bes, who, together with his feminine counterpart Beset, was worshipped as a protector of the household. He was particularly associated with mothers, children, and childbirth – a period of life that was fraught with danger at the time, and had people reaching for just about any lucky charms they could find to help them survive it.

The discovery is a result of the ongoing Amarna project, a joint venture between the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the University of Cambridge. The group has been active in the area since 2005 – though archeological interest in Amarna goes all the way back to the 18th century.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Salesforce wants to make it easier to do business after the pandemic
  2. Microsoft now lets you sign-in without a password
  3. New Besties? German Greens, FDP cosy up to build coalition
  4. The Woman Who Was Wrongfully Convicted Of Murdering Her Baby, And Saved By A Biochemist

Source Link: Cache Of Gold Jewelry Found In Ancient Egyptian "Heretic" Burial

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pachycephalosaur Fossil Pushes Back These Dinosaurs’ Emergence By 15 Million Years
  • The Hole In The Ozone Layer Is Healing And On Track For Full Recovery In The 21st Century, Thanks To Science
  • First Sweet Potato Genome Reveals They’re Hybrids With A Puzzling Past And 6 Sets Of Chromosomes
  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version