Ancient Empires

[SubGod22]

Two Lost Cities Discovered Along the Silk Road Alters What We Know About the Iconic Ancient Trade Route

A pair of lost cities in the highlands of Uzbekistan recently found by archaeologists using lidar demonstrate that the bounty of the Silk Road trade was so lucrative, it allowed urban populations to flourish without agriculture to support them.

Tugunbulak and Tashbulak were two mountain settlements that flourished between the 8th and 11th centuries CE nominally under the control of a Turkic state known as the Qarakhanids that held influence over a slice of Central Asia spanning from the Aral Sea to the Taklamakan Desert.

Along with his colleagues, Michael Frachetti, lead author of the paper on the discovery and lead excavator on the sites since 2011, carried out the first lidar survey in the history of Central Asian archaeology to make the discovery. Lidar stands for Light Detection And Ranging and uses laser-based technology to map landscapes from the air.

It’s one of the most consequential technological innovations in the history of archaeology and has been used all throughout the world to find evidence of past habitation where today only nature remains.

Typically, lidar is used when trees block the view of any eyes looking down upon a landscape, but archaeologists speaking with Science remarked with astonishment how nuanced the lidar survey’s topographical readings were, and how much more they revealed compared to looking down from above on what is essentially an open field.

Tugunbulak occupies approximately 120 hectares (1.2 sq. kilometers) and shows evidence of over 300 unique structures, which vary in size from 30 to 4,300 sq. meters. More specifically, the researchers identified watchtowers connected with walls along a ridge line, evidence of terracing, and a central fortress surrounded by walls made of stone and mudbrick.

Tashbulak, meanwhile, occupies 12–15 hectares (0.12–0.15 km2). Frachetti and colleagues note that even the smaller city follows urban planning similar to concurrent cities in medieval Central Asia, namely it includes a central citadel made of an elevated mound surrounded by dense architecture and walled fortifications. They suggest that there are at least 98 visible habitations, which share a similar shape and size to those in Tugunbulak, and hypothesize that both cities were built to exploit the surrounding mountain terrain for defense as well as the abundant ores and pastures the highland region provides.

Both sites sit at or above 6,000 feet (2,000 meters) above sea level. Even today with all of humanity’s power to move and shape the landscape, only 3% of the global population dwells at that elevation or higher.

“High-altitude urban sites are extraordinarily rare in the archaeological record because of a unique set of landscape challenges and technological demands that must be overcome for people to form large communities in mountainous areas,” writes Zachary W. Silvia, a professor at Brown University’s the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, who wasn’t involved in the study.

It's amazing how much new information we're getting from Lidar.

Can't wait for the next cool discovery that Lidar is going to give us.

[SubGod22]

This was interesting.

Archaeologists Uncover Gateway to Ancient Greek Temple Alongside the Nile in Egypt

Ongoing excavations at a sprawling temple 125 miles north of Luxor have unearthed a towering discovery: a temple pylon measuring 150 feet wide made of sandstone blocks.

It was found at the Athribis site dating to the Ptolemy dynasty when Egypt was ruled by the descendants of one of Alexander of Macedon’s generals, where excavations are currently in their 21st year.

The discovery by a joint Egyptian-German team is considered a “significant milestone” that will pave the way for further excavation at the temple site, where even after uncovering walls carved with high relief, halls, dozens of rooms, pillars and pillar bases, and over 1,200 hieroglyphic inscriptions, the majority remains buried.

“The slope angle of the towers suggests the original height of the pylon could have been up to 18 meters, rivaling the dimensions of the Luxor Temple pylon,” said Dr. Mohamed Ismail Khaled, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Mohamed Abdel Badie, head of the Central Administration for Upper Egypt Antiquities and head of the Egyptian side of the mission, stated that on the interior walls of the gate, hieroglyphic inscriptions were found depicting a Ptolemaic king welcoming Repyt, the lion-headed goddess and patron of the Athribis temple.

[SubGod22]

Sounds like we may be learning a bit more about the Phoenicians down the road.

Divers Recover Ancient Shipwreck Amazingly Preserved for 2,600 Years Beneath Spanish Waters

The famous king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar II was lately enthroned when a group of Phoenician sailors watched their boat sink in shallow water off the coast of Spain.

Now, that very boat is the subject of an underwater archaeology expedition, as experts prepare to extract it for study and eventual museum placement.

The sailors would have been beside themselves watching the boat go down in just 7 feet of water, but before they could recover it and bring it to the shore around 65 yards away, a storm suddenly descended on La Playa de la Isla in the town of Mazarron, southeastern Spain.

The storm buried it in sand and silt, entombing it in a remarkable state of preservation for 2,600 years, and that has now allowed archaeologists and historians at the University of Valencia to get a fantastic insight into the Mediterranean’s first great sailing culture.

“The wreckage can no longer remain where it is because its sand protection is now disappearing,” said Carlos de Juan, an archaeologist at the University of Valencia who led the excavation project, in a July 2024 statement.

“The wreckage has survived for centuries, but now it is time to roll up our sleeves and ensure that we can continue to enjoy this asset of cultural interest.”

Dubbed Mazarron II, she was extracted from the sea in twenty parts and taken to the laboratories of the Cartagena National Museum of Underwater Archaeology for reconstruction

Laden with a cargo of lead ingots, she will not only offer an insight into the shipbuilding techniques of the Phoenicians but also their metallurgical sophistication.

“It will tell us what types of wood were used to build the boat, where it was built, what navigation was like at the time, the degradation processes of the wood, the contamination that may have occurred in shallow waters,” said Agustín Díez, a historian at the University of Valencia who also worked on the project, in the statement.

The first step in preservation will be to extract the corrosive salt, replacing it with a resin that will fill all the hollows and cracks in the wood to ensure it doesn’t immediately rot away.

There's a near two minute video at the bottom of the article if you're interested.

[SubGod22]

And news out of Egypt.

4,100-year-old 'Stunning' Tomb of a Conjurer-Dentist Who Treated Pharaohs Discovered in Egypt

In a big week for Egyptian archaeology, the tomb of a “conjurer-doctor” was found in ancient Saqqara.

Dating back 4,100 years, the tomb was heavily decorated with paintings and hieroglyphic inscriptions in vivid colors.

In life, this individual was known as Tetinebefou, “conjurer of the goddess Serket,” “director of medicinal plants,” and “chief dentist.”

Serket was a goddess associated with scorpions and protection from their stings, while the title director of medicinal plants is known from only one other inscription from ancient Egypt. Any reference to dentistry is rare as well.

“He was certainly the main physician at the royal court, so he would have treated the pharaoh himself,” Philippe Collombert, leader of the Swiss-French team that excavated Tetinebefou’s tomb, said in an email to Live Science.

While the sarcophagus was absent, a stone coffin revealed more hieroglyphic inscriptions bearing the name and titles of Tetinebefou.

GNN has reported before on the medical capabilities of the ancient Egyptians, which included a successful surgery for a brain tumor. One imagines then that the titles this physician earned were likely based on merit.

There are a few pictures of the site and the art contained within.

[SubGod22]

Another Viking disovery

Metal Detectorist Stumbles Upon 1,200-Year-old Graves of Impressive Viking Women

A curious Viking age graveyard has been uncovered in southwest Norway containing jewelry and evidence of continental connections.

Three high-status women, though perhaps not Scandinavians themselves, were, or perhaps were not, interred there, and these uncertainties have raised interesting hypotheses.

Located near the coast in a Norwegian town called Fitjar at a farm called Skumsnes, the site was originally found by recreational metal detectives. Excavations took place in late 2024 and uncovered a variety of objects, such as a frying pan and textile equipment, that singled out the owners as women.

Jewelry and coins, including one of the first coins ever minted in Denmark, a necklace of glass beads, and a brooch that appears to have been made from a metal book clasp, also suggest the owners possessed noteworthy wealth and status.

“We think that the clasp in the first grave could very well have come from a Bible in England or Ireland,” says Søren Diinhoff, an archaeologist with the University Museum of Bergen, told Fox News Digital. “It had been ripped off and brought back to Norway where it eventually ended up as a woman’s brooch.”

Dating to the mid-9th century when the Viking age was in full swing, the provenance of some of the items almost certainly came through violent means. Other brooches made of trefoil appear to have been repurposed from the clasps of Carolingian sword belts, and, according to Diinhoff and a report from Science Norway, other items could have come from mainland Europe. 10 of the 11 coins found in the grave were minted by Louis I, a descendant of Charlemagne.

Were these items taken during a raid or did they come through trading? The word ‘Viking’ meant both trader and raider, and at different times in different places, the trader-raider balance varied.

One hypothesis is that the women themselves were from the continent, and perhaps married into the local population. However, it’s difficult to know because there are no human remains in the graves. To explain this, Diinhoff and others at first supposed the remains disintegrated in the moist soil—a common occurrence. Then, they changed their idea to the burial site being more of a memorial or cenotaph where offerings were left.

The Viking culture is an interesting one. There seems to have been a lot of recent discoveries over the past few years that have given historians much more data to work with.