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The Hyksos were a foreign dynasty that ruled parts of Egypt between approximately 1638-1530 BCE, the first instance of Egypt being ruled by individuals of a foreign origin. The common story is that the Hyksos were invaders from a far-off land, but this idea has been drawn into question. Archaeological evidence does link Hyksos culture with an origin in the Near East, but exactly how they rose to power is unclear. ...Stantis and colleagues collected enamel samples from the teeth of 75 humans buried in the ancient Hyksos capital city of Tell el-Dab'a in the northeast Nile Delta. Comparing ratios...

Militants belonging to the ‘State of Sinai’ group in Egypt have promised to “kill more Copts” after murdering a 27-year-old Coptic man because of the tattoo of a cross on his wrist. Bassem Herz Attalhah, also known as Haythem Shehata, was on his way home from work in El-Arish, capital of North Sinai governorate, on Saturday evening (13 January), with his brother Osama and neighbour and friend Mohamed, when they were stopped by three armed men, aged between 23 and 25. “We thought they were policemen because they weren’t masked… They were wearing black jackets,” Osama, 38, told World Watch...

Archaeologists have found a 3,500-year-old Egyptian town buried under the earth in the country’s northeastern region of the Nile delta. The city, discovered by a team of Austrian archaeologists in Tell El-Dab’a, is likely to be Avaris, the capital of Hyksos rulers who ruled Egypt from 1664 B.C. to 1569 B.C., Egyptian Cultural Minister Farouk Hosni was quoted as saying by Xinhua. Meanwhile, Zahi Hawaas, an eminent Egyptian archaeologist and secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) said radar imaging showed the outlines of streets, houses and temples of the underground town and a whole view of its...

A team of archaeologists digging at Tel-Habuwa, near the town of Qantara East and three kilometres east of the Suez Canal... chanced upon a cachet of limestone reliefs bearing names of two royal personalities and two seated statues of differing sizes. The larger statue is made of limestone and belongs to a yet unidentified personage, but from its size and features archaeologists believe that it could be a statue of Horus, the god of the city. In 2001 archaeologists unearthed remains of a mud-brick temple dedicated to this deity. The second is a headless limestone statue inscribed on the back...

A team of archaeologists excavating a palace in the ancient city of Avaris, in Egypt, has made a gruesome discovery. The archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of 16 human hands buried in four pits. Two of the pits, located in front of what is believed to be a throne room, hold one hand each. Two other pits, constructed at a slightly later time in an outer space of the palace, contain the 14 remaining hands. They are all right hands; there are no lefts. "Most of the hands are quite large and some of them are very large," Manfred Bietak,...

CAIRO: Egyptian archaeologists have discovered what they say was the ancient headquarters of the pharaonic army guarding the northeastern borders of Egypt for more than 1,500 years, the government said on Wednesday. The fortress and adjoining town, which they identify with the ancient place name Tharu, lies in the Sinai peninsula about 3km northeast of the modern town of Qantara, Egyptian archaeologist Mohamed Abdel Maksoud said. The town sat at the start of a military road joining the Nile Valley to the Levant, parts of which were under Egyptian control for much of the period, the government's Supreme Council for...

History: Fiction or Science? by Anatoly T. Fomenko

Determining a reliable calendrical age of the Santorini (Minoan) eruption is necessary to place the impact of the eruption into its proper context within Bronze Age society in the Aegean region. The high-resolution record of the deposition of volcanically produced acids on polar ice sheets, as available in the SO42-time series from ice cores (a direct signal), and the high-resolution record of the climatic impact of past volcanism inferred in tree rings (a secondary signal) have been widely used to assign a 1628/1627 age to the eruption. The layer of ice in the GISP2 (Greenland) ice core corresponding to...

A New Chronology Synopsis of David Rohl's book "A Test of Time" by John Fulton The concept of time for us today is taken to be an absolute unchangeable system. We measure time from the fixed point of Christ's birth so that this is the one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seventh year since he was born. The ancients, however, could not look forward to Christ's birth; instead, they worked on a regnal dating system where events happened in the Nth year of the reign of a particular king. For most of the Old Testament, we can find a good...

Massive Egyptian fort discovered Mon, 23 Jul 2007 Egypt announced on Sunday the discovery of the largest-ever military city from the Pharaonic period on the edge of the Sinai desert, part of a series of forts that stretched to the Gaza border. "The three forts are part of a string of 11 castles that made up the Horus military road that went from Suez all the way to the city of Rafah on the Egyptian-Palestinian border and dates to the 18th and 19th dynasties (1560-1081 BC)," antiquities supreme Zahi Hawwas said in a statement. Teams have been digging in the...

There is a saying that when it comes to the Bible, "for those who believe, no explanation is necessary, while for those who don't believe, no explanation is possible." But what of the many people who fall somewhere between these two certainties? Such people owe it to themselves to see The Exodus Decoded, a 90-minute documentary by Canadians James Cameron (the director of Titanic, Aliens and The Terminator) and investigative journalist and producer Simcha Jacobovici. The film will be screened at 6 p.m. this evening as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The Exodus Decoded claims...

Battlements Found at Egypt's Ancient East Gateway Wed Jun 30, 2004 01:52 PM ET CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - An Egyptian archaeological team has uncovered battlements from Pharaonic times at the ancient eastern gateway to Egypt in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, the Culture Ministry said Wednesday. The find includes three fortifications built in the area of Tharu, an ancient city which stood on a branch of the Nile that has long since dried up, a ministry statement said. The battlements stand on the ancient Horus Road, a vital commercial and military artery from ancient Egypt to Asia. The discoveries,...