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Sealed tomb filled with paintings and inscriptions discovered in Egypt
- curioussam 2mo ago[dead]
- janandonly 2mo agoWhy would they? She was of Greek origin, a descendant from Alexander’s general Ptolemy.
- adolph 2mo agoHer family had been in Egypt for 250 years, that's a long time for genetic admixture. Otoh, Continuing the tradition established by previous Egyptian dynasties, the Ptolemies engaged in inbreeding including sibling marriage, with many of the pharaohs being married to their siblings and often co-ruling with them. Ptolemy I Soter (305–282 BC) [... 20 people ...] Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator (51–30 BC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty Edit to append a topical story: Birmingham native and civil rights activist Angela Davis, known as a part of the Black Power movement of the early 1970s, was shocked to learn that she is descended from a passenger on the Mayflower, one of the first settlers in America. https://www.al.com/life/2023/02/civil-rights-activist-angela-davis-learns-shes-a-descendant-of-mayflower-pilgrim.html https://www.al.com/life/2023/02/civil-rights-activist-angela...
- suddenlybananas 2mo ago>Her family had been in Egypt for 250 years, that's a long time for genetic admixture But Egyptians themselves weren't black either. There was one black dynasty from Kush, but "indigenous" Egyptians themselves weren't black.
- simonh 2mo agoIt is, and it's not impossible there was some, but we have pretty decent records of her ancestry, we know the Ptolemys were shocked by the idea of intermarrying with the local population, and we have busts and paintings and coin profiles of her, so we have evidence of what she looked like as well as pretty much anyone from that era. You can see several of these here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra
- sidewndr46 2mo agoThe part about sibling marriage is just so weird to read nowadays. When did humanity first figure out that inbreeding might be a bad idea?
- mcphage 2mo ago> When did humanity first figure out that inbreeding might be a bad idea? I suspect it was prior to recorded history.
- blue1 2mo agodid you forget the "/s" or is it a serious question?
- throw8394498383 2mo agoThere were black pharaos (current sudan conquered and ruled egypt)
- kjs3 2mo agoCleopatra was a Ptolemaic Greek descendant in a family so obsessed with blood purity that they married brothers to sisters to avoid mixing with 'native' Egiptians. You make the call.
- happa 2mo ago[flagged]
- killingtime74 2mo agoI was just thinking this, do we regularly breaking into tombs in the rest of the world? I guess some of the cathedrals themselves are tombs and are big tourist attractions.
- viciousvoxel 2mo agoYes, we regularly (for some definition of "regularly") uncover human burial sites (both as part of planned archaeological excavations and accidentally during construction) all around the world, including Europe, Asia, and the Americas. If you're asking specifically about tombs then the answer is also yes.
- cm2187 2mo agoMost cemeteries in Europe have been destroyed to make space for urbanisation. The underground of Paris is full of bones from those cemetaries (catacombs of Paris). It's fairly common as outside of a few aristocratic families, people keep a very short memory of their ancestry. I have a very vague knowledge of who my ancestors were back to the mid XIX century and nothing prior. Hard to have any emotional attachment to people you never heard about. So if no one cares, better to build a parking lot!
- nly 2mo agoSome cemeteries in London reuse graves after just 75 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Cemetery_and_Crematorium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Cemetery_and_Cr... I have very vivid memories as a child of walking through Brookwood Cemetary in south east England seeing a big machine crunching up headstones. Vast swathes of the place was flattened. The cheat code here seems to be "topple testing" for health and safety reasons. It's the UKs largest cemetery and in a shocking state: https://lostlcp.com/brookwood-cemetery-reburials/ https://lostlcp.com/brookwood-cemetery-reburials/
- jrapdx3 2mo agoThe value of exploring tombs for the purpose of illuminating ancient cultures is inestimable. It seems humans have always been happy desecrating burial sites if not for treasure then to prove dominance over another tribe or nation. Of course some exploitation is beyond permissible. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries there was an artist's pigment called Mummy Brown. It was sold for many decades, a rich, transparent brown unlike other brown pigments. It was made from actual mummies scrounged from unknown sources in Egypt. These were not the remains of royalty, rather these mummies were those of common people. Apparently until the early 20th century there was an ample supply of these remains to satisfy demand. Eventually the availability of mummies diminished and by 1915 the pigment quality became erratic and subsequently disappeared from the marketplace. Comparatively, respectful exploration of ancient tombs is a whole different program than things our species has demonstrated a willingness to do.
- inigyou 2mo agoThe other reason there are few mummies left is that we ate them.
- jrapdx3 2mo agoIf you doubt that it's true, do a bit of research and find out if it's so. Here's one source[0], there are others. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown
- fragmede 2mo agoThere's a difference between eating and using them as paint, though.
- vidarh 2mo agoThe article links to a source describing medicinal use.
- warumdarum 2mo ago
- glasffordd 2mo agoI was in Egypt in 2011, a couple months after the big riots. I was advised not to go and went anyway. It was well worth it. I went to the Great Pyramid at ten or eleven one morning and there were maybe a dozen people in the entire area. I went inside it completely alone, and the guard let me lie down inside the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber. I don't have a word for what the energy was like in there. Palpable to say the least. If I could do it over I'd have stayed in longer. I hired a driver and did the Red Pyramid and Saqqara the same way, alone. People can debate the ethics of opening tombs all day, but going inside one is something else. A new one still turning up in 2026 is just cool.
- derektank 2mo agoThere’s some debate as to whether the Red pyramid itself is even a tomb at all, given the same Pharaoh (Sneferu) also constructed the Bent and Meidum pyramids and there’s no evidence of a sarcophagus or other burial equipment in any of them. Which we wouldn’t know if we had never explored them.
- adithyassekhar 2mo agoWhat made you want to lie down in a sarcophagus? Weren’t you afraid of any ancient bacteria from the mummy?
- bombcar 2mo agoAny bacteria that survived that many thousands of years would just give you superpowers anyway, I've seen the documentaries.
- mcphage 2mo ago> Weren’t you afraid of any ancient bacteria from the mummy? I don't think we're certain that the sarcophagus ever contained a mummy.
- KyleTheDev 2mo agoYea, could've been a daddy, maybe just some person who didn't have kids. Who's to say.
- canada_dry 2mo agoAsked gpt to see if it could discern Egyptian hieroglyphs from the image of the tomb wall... https://i.postimg.cc/Pdw7sw-0W/image.png https://i.postimg.cc/Pdw7sw-0W/image.png The "possible standing figure" on the right seems plausible. Be interested in seeing what the actual painstaking restoration eventually reveals.
- quuxplusone 2mo agoIt's easier to just use your eyes, isn't it? The photo in the article is here: https://cdn.labrujulaverde.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/746350969_1442267397934802_5184557337149472405_n.webp https://cdn.labrujulaverde.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2026/07... There are two standing figures to the right (correctly identified by ChatGPT), and at least two kneeling figures with upraised arms stacked toward the left (ChatGPT puts the bottom figure's arms inside the "legs" of its bunny-shaped green circle). Scroll down in the article to see a close-up on the kneeling figures. There is no text visible in the photos from the article, although if you go on to read the text of the article you learn that text was found elsewhere in the tomb, such that we can confidently identify the owner's name (among other things).
- canada_dry 2mo agoMine was simply an exercise to see what gpt's vision would come up with vs. the expert analysis.