The 3,500-year-old remains of a settlement have been found by an oasis in Egypt, revealing evidence of desert trade routes during the early days of the Egyptian civilization.

The settlement at Umm el-Mawagir in Egypt’s Kharga Oasis, more than 300 miles (500 kilometres) south of Cairo, has been excavated for the past year by a Yale University expedition, whose initial findings suggest it was an administrative post with massive baking facilities, possibly to feed local troops.

“The amount of bread production was pretty amazing,” said John Darnell, head of the expedition, citing discoveries of ovens, bread moulds and storerooms at the site, far out of proportion to its size.

“It’s probably a good bet they were basically baking enough bread to feed an army, literally,” he said.

The site was home to a few thousand inhabitants and also includes remnants of mudbrick buildings, similar to those used for administrative purposes in the Nile Valley to the east, suggesting close contact between the two regions.

[Full story]

A substantial Egyptian settlement has been found in Kharga Oasis, Egypt.

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny, announced that the settlement is dated to the Second Intermediate Period (ca.1650-1550 BC) and was discovered during excavation work as part of the Theban Desert Road Survey. This project serves to investigate and map the ancient desert routes in the Western desert.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the newly discovered settlement is 1km long from north to south and 250m wide from east to west. It lies along the bustling caravan routes connecting the Nile Valley of Egypt and the western oasis with points as far as Darfur in western Sudan. Hawass continued that archaeological evidence at the site indicated that its inhabitants were part of an administrative center and they were engaged in baking on a massive scale.

[Full story]

Experts are exploring the depths of Lake Qarun, south of Cairo, with remote sensing radar in an attempt to find sunken artifacts.

Antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass said the work was launched a few days ago. “It is the first time ever that the antiquities department carries out an archaeological mission in Lake Qarun.”

Khaled Saeed, who heads the department of pre-historic affairs at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the team under his supervision hopes to pinpoint “huge basalt rocks” at the bottom of Lake Qarun.

According to Saeed, the discovery of the rocks was first made by Egyptian-American scientist Faruq al-Baz, a veteran of NASA’s Apollo programme, five years ago.

Baz, who now runs the Centre for Space Studies at Boston University, was carrying out a satellite survey of Egypt’s Western Desert when he and his team discovered in the Lake Qarun area “a large number of huge blocks of rock.”

[Full story]

A dig at the abandoned Roman city of Silchester has unearthed a bronze relic of the god of secrecy and silence: Harpocrates.

A battered and corroded thumb-sized piece of bronze has turned out to be a unique find, the earliest representation of an Egyptian deity from any site in Britain – and appropriately, after almost 2,000 years hidden in the ground, it is Harpocrates, the god of secrecy and silence.

The little figure was found at Silchester, site of an abandoned Roman city in Hampshire, in last summer’s excavation, but his identity was only revealed in months of careful conservation work. His Greek and Roman designation as Harpocrates, the god of spymasters, is actually a transcription error.

“In Egyptian mythology the figure is known as Horus, the child of Isis and Osiris,” said Professor Mike Fulford of the University of Reading, director of the Silchester excavation. “He is often shown with his finger in his mouth, a gesture that in Egypt represented the hieroglyph for his name, but was misinterpreted by the Greeks and Romans, resulting in his adoption as the god of silence and secrecy.”

[Full story]

Two rock-hewn painted tombs have been uncovered at Saqqara, Egypt.

The tombs, one of which was intact and contained offering jars and other grave goods, belonged to a senior official called Shendwa and his son, Khonsu, according to the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Both men lived in the Sixth Dynasty, more than 4,200 years ago, the council said in an e-mailed statement, citing Hosni and the country’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass.

Located 20 miles south of Cairo, Saqqara is best known for the step-pyramid of Djoser, the world’s oldest known monument built using dressed stone.

Tourism, which accounts for 12.6 percent of jobs, is one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency and brought in $10.76 billion in revenue last year, according to the tourism ministry.

[Full story]