Cambridge University Will Repatriate Benin Bronzes The Charity Commission has granted consent for the University of Cambridge to return 116 artefacts to Nigeria. The objects, known as the Benin Bronzes, were taken by British armed forces during the sacking of Benin City in 1897, the university said. The legal ownership of the items will be …

Study Suggests Walking May Be Linked to Treetop Foraging The ancestors of humans may have begun moving on two legs to forage for food among the treetops in open habitat, researchers have suggested, contradicting the idea that the behaviour arose as an adaptation to spending more time on the ground. The origins of bipedalism in …

Jewelry Recovered from 18th Dynasty Tomb in Upper Egypt A British mission from Cambridge University working at Tell El-Amarna necropolis in Minya governorate in Upper Egypt discovered a small collection of gold and steaтιтe (soapstone) jewellery in an 18th Dynasty (1550 to 1292 BC) cemetery. Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, …

Ireland to return mummified remains and sarcophagus to Egypt Mummified human remains and a sarcophagus is among the ancient objects that an Irish university says it plans to repatriate to Egypt. All of the artifacts being returned by the University College Cork (UCC) date from between 100AD and 975BC. An inscription on the wooden sarcophagus, …

Denisovan Genes May Have Boosted Modern Human Immunity When modern humans first migrated from Africa to the tropical islands of the southwest Pacific, they encountered unfamiliar people and new pathogens. But their immune systems may have picked up some survival tricks when they mated with the locals—the mysterious Denisovans who gave them immune gene variants …

Why the discovery of Cleopatra’s tomb would rewrite history It couldn’t have been a case of better timing. Egyptologists celebrating the centenary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, now have a promising new archaeological discovery that appears to have been made in Egypt. Excavators have discovered a tunnel under the Taposiris Magna temple, …

Rare Archaeological Discoveries In The Sacred Animal Necropolis In Saqqara Egypt is a land of great interest to anyone interested in archaeology and ancient history, but at present times the Coronavirus outbreak doesn’t allow us to admire the treasures of the land of the Pharaohs. However, we can still use online resources to learn more …

New Dates Obtained for Ethiopia’s Early Christian Churches Archaeologists have made an important discovery in the Kingdom of Aksum, a major ancient power in Northeastern Africa, identifying two churches from shortly after the Aksumite’s conversion to Christianity. These are some of the first churches in the Kingdom reliably dated to this key period. The Aksumite …

Huge funerary building and Fayoum portraits discovered in Egypt Fayoum The Egyptian archaeological mission working in the Gerza archaeological site in Fayoum revealed a huge funerary building from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods, as well as a number of Fayoum portraits. These are the first mummy portraits discovered at Fayoum during an archaeological dig since …