"What's left of the mummy that day, brother?" “Oh well! I haven't forgotten. Come on. ” "Well, what's the use of discovering these?" Brother, past. The purpose is to know where I came from, what the ancestors were like, how they lived. ”
“Well. I understood, but now let's see what he will give. ” “Look at this very recent article. Keep reading. ”
Infrared Ancient Egyptian Mummy Tattoos Revealed:
Archaeologist Anne Austin discovered the ink on women. He used infrared light, it could reveal things that the naked eye cannot see. "It's magical to work on an ancient tomb and suddenly see a tattoo on a paralyzed person," Austin said. He works at the University of Missouri. As he noted, this technique is transforming the idea of tattooing in ancient Egypt into reality.
In 2016 and 2019, Austin's team tested mummies from a site called Deir el-Medina. This ancient Egyptian city was home to people who built and decorated royal tombs. Seven of the mummies had tattoos. Everyone was at least three thousand years old.
In the most interesting case, the infrared photos revealed thirty tattoos on different parts of a mummy. Austin said, “The cross-shaped patterns on his arm are not found in any of the other well-known tattooed mummies and most of his tattoos look like hieroglyphs. These are the symbols used in ancient Egyptian writing. The tattoos indicate that this woman may have a special religious personality. ”
The other woman had a tattoo on her neck. It depicts a human eye. It is an ancient Egyptian symbol for protection. He has a tattoo of a sitting baboon on each side of his neck.
These discoveries challenge an old notion of tattooing on ancient Egyptian women related to fertility. Instead, tattoos could be associated with the role of women as physicians or priests, Austin suggested. He announced his team's findings at a scientific meeting on November 22.
"Everything about discovering new tattoos is amazing," said Kerry Muhlestein. He is an Egyptian scholar at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. "Researchers know very little about this ancient Egyptian practice," he noted.
Until now, scientists knew about six tattooed mummies from ancient Egyptian sites. The first was a female mummy found in 1891. Recently, two mummies with tattoos were revealed in infrared imaging at the British Museum in London. These people lived in Egypt about 5,100 years ago.
Tattoos vary widely in Egyptian mummies. More tattooed mummies could help ancient researchers determine how these symbols were used.
The DNA of African mummies connects these people to the Middle East:
Ancient mummies have acquired a new resource - DNA. In a part of North Africa, in Egypt, the roots of 90 families of genetically modified corpses seem to extend to the Middle East. They seem to have very little in common with the ancient peoples throughout the rest of Africa.
Researchers now say that this means that the ancient Egyptians were now relatives in the Middle East and probably in Europe.
An Egyptian mummy provided the first sample of ancient human DNA in 1975. But scientists were skeptical about how reliable DNA is. This is because the chemicals used in the mummies of corpses can damage DNA. Egypt's steamy weather could also cause that. And, there was some concern that some of the tested samples may have been mixed with DNA from those who worked on them when they were first discovered.
Schweinmann was studying the genetics of ancient germs at the University of Tebingen in Germany. He was really an expert in finding old DNA. And to do that, he used the latest technology for DNA sequencing - to read its genes and map the building blocks.
These researchers have extracted and analyzed two types of DNA. The mitochondrial type is the genetic material that goes from a mother directly to her child. The other type, from the cell nucleus, is exchanged from both parents.
Researchers have focused on sampling teeth and bones. These hard body parts store more DNA than muscle-like soft tissues. Scientists screened for the highest quality samples and then tested for any signs of contamination with modern DNA.
As a result of their hard work, the team obtained usable mitochondrial DNA from 90 mummies. Also found readable samples of three nuclear DNA.
The mummies date from 138 BC to 428 AD. All the mummies came from a popular cemetery in central Egypt. Known as Abu-El-Melik, the site was the center of a religious community loyal to Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the dead. The site was excavated in 1905 by Judeo-German archaeologists. At that time he found evidence of Greek influence in the tombs.
He did, however, offer a few details about individual graves. And most of his research did not survive the ravages of World War II.
The new analysis reveals the genetic relationship between Greece and the Middle East. This is not surprising since Egypt was then a hub for travel and business. Today's Egyptians, however, are more closely associated with sub-Saharan Africans in the south. These genetic links were significantly absent in mummy DNA. Their absence suggests that foreigners from sub-Saharan Africa later moved to the region, the researchers say.
Schweinman's team described their results on May 30 at Nature Communications.
The new analysis has many open questions. The mummies found in Abusir El-Melik come from a variety of social classes. Nevertheless, researchers have shown that the people of a single site cannot be counted to reflect all the people of ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, studies have shown that mummies can give an idea of the genetic roots of that nation.
Source Link: Science Bee
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