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At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation. During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers. The ancient climate shift and its effects are detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal Science. When the rains came Some 12,000 years ago, the only place to live along the eastern Sahara Desert was the Nile...

"If you go to St Mark's cathedral in Venice, there's a medieval depiction showing people using the three great pyramids of Giza as granaries in Joseph's story," says John Darnell, a professor of Egyptology at Yale University. The belief was also popularised by Saint Gregory of Tours, a sixth century Frankish bishop, who wrote: "They are wide at the base and narrow at the top in order that the wheat might be cast into them through a tiny opening, and these granaries are to be seen to the present day." The Book of John Mandeville, a popular 14th Century travel...

So the left is all abuzz over Ben Carson’s 1998 speech in which he expressed an, admittedly, exotic view on the purpose of Egyptian pyramids. (This is a another hard-hitting click-bait piece by BuzzFeed cub reporter Andrew Kaczynski, so no link because I try not to reward bad behavior.) At the 1998 commencement for Andrews University, a school associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Carson also dismissed the notion that aliens were somehow involved in the construction of the pyramids. “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said. “Now all the archeologists think...

The device enters rooms and chambers through a 3.5 centimetre hole drilled through a wall by researchers outside. It is made up of two robots, a tubular machine equipped with a high definition camera and a probe that explores the structure via a small, inflatable blimp. After the first robot has taken a series of reconnaissance images, the drone is pushed through the drilled hole before inflating itself within the chamber. Packed with an array of sensors and cameras, the remote-controlled device collects data and takes photos or video without causing damage to the fragile building. After it has completed...

The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study. Physicists at the University of Amsterdam investigated the forces needed to pull weighty objects on a giant sled over desert sand, and discovered that dampening the sand in front of the primitive device reduces friction on the sled, making it easier to operate. The findings help answer one of the most enduring historical mysteries: how the Egyptians were able to accomplish...

Of all the chambers in the Great Pyramid, the subterranean chamber is the largest, as well as the most mysterious. It is 46 feet long, 27 feet wide, hewn into the limestone bedrock, and difficult to describe. The descending passagewayÂ’s entrance to the subterranean chamber is near the floor at the northeast corner. A six-foot-wide square pit shaped like a funnel has been tunnelled in the middle of the floor, near the east wall. This square-shaped pit is actually the mouth of a shaft that is eleven feet deep, although in 1816 the Italian explorer Count Caviglia drilled into the...

A bus full of foreign tourists was bombed Sunday near Egypt's famed pyramids of Giza, injuring several passengers, authorities said. The explosion happened as the tour bus was driving past the Grand Egyptian Museum, close to the pyramids in Giza, officials said.

A roadside bomb hit a tourist bus on Sunday near the Giza Pyramids, wounding at least 17 people including tourists, Egyptian officials said. The officials said the bus was traveling on a road close to the under-construction Grand Egyptian Museum, which is located adjacent to the Giza Pyramids but is not yet open to tourists. The bus was carrying at least 25 people mostly from South Africa, officials added. Security forces cordoned off the site of the explosion and the wounded were taken to a nearby hospital, they said. They said the explosion damaged a windshield of another car. Footage...

Could be. It makes sense.

A 4,500-year-old cemetery has been discovered southeast of the famous Giza Pyramids, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities announced this morning (May 4). Several tombs and burials were discovered in the cemetery, with one of the oldest tombs holding the remains of two individuals — one named "Behnui-Ka" and another named "Nwi." Their sarcophagi were found intact and their remains are likely inside; however, no information on them has been released. Analysis of the tomb's artifacts and hieroglyphic inscriptions revealed that the two men lived almost 4,500 years ago, during what historians often call the Fifth Dynasty, a time after the...

Tourism and Antiquities police managed to arrest an offender for illegally excavating two trenches inside his house near the Giza Pyramids to search for monuments, according to reports on Tuesday. The illegal excavation in Nazlet al-Samman area led to the discovery of an ancient burial site including six incomplete wall-relief statues, a statement by the General Administration of Tourism and Antiquities Police revealed. The statement did not specify the age of the items discovered. Law No. 117 of 1983 imposes a prison term of 5 to 7 years and a fine of not less than LE 5,000($284) and not more...

Cairo (AFP) - The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is showcasing for the first time the earliest writing from ancient Egypt found on papyrus, detailing work on the Great Pyramid of Giza, antiquities officials said Thursday. The papyri were discovered near Wadi el-Jarf port, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of the Gulf of Suez town of Zafarana, the antiquities ministry said. The find by a French-Egyptian team unearths papers telling of the daily lives of port workers who transported huge limestone blocks to Cairo during King Khufu's rule to build the Great Pyramid, intended to be his burial structure. One document...

A loud explosion was heard near the pyramids of Giza, as a blast hit tourist bus. Two dead and 12 injured, according to Egyptian Foreign Ministry.

There is a lot more to Climate Change than the dire predictions that we will be eating each other by now. The Sahara Desert was once lush and green. Then the weather systems shifted and the once fertile land turns to desert. The Sphinx is believed to have the face of Khafra of the 4th dynasty during the Old Kingdom which was carved perhaps around 2500BC. Some believe that the Sphinx predates the Egyptians and was actually a lion because there appear to be what some claim are water erosion marks. If true, then the original Sphinx may have existed...

Archaeologists have long wondered exactly how the ancient Egyptians constructed the world's biggest pyramid, the Great Pyramid. Now, they may have discovered the system used to haul massive stone blocks into place some 4,500 years ago. They discovered the remains of this system at the site of Hatnub, an ancient quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. The contraption would have been used to transport heavy alabaster stones up a steep ramp, according to the archaeologists working at the site, from the Institut français d'archéologie orientale (French Institute for Oriental Archaeology)in Cairo and from the University of Liverpool in England....

Archaeologists have discovered a stunning sphinx statue at an ancient temple in southern Egypt. The sandstone statue was discovered during a project to reduce groundwater at Kom Ombo temple in Aswan. The statue likely dates back to the Ptolemaic period, between 305 B.C. and 30 B.C., according to Dr. Mostafa Waziri, general secretary of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. In a Facebook post, Waziri explained that the statue was found in the southeastern side of the temple, where two sandstone reliefs of King Ptolemy V were discovered two months ago. Sphinx statues, which have a lion’s body and a human...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian archaeologists draining water from a temple in the southern city of Aswan have uncovered a sandstone sphinx likely dating to the Ptolemaic era, the antiquities ministry said on Sunday.

Work on the Al-Kabbash Road project, linking the temple complexes of Luxor and Karnak – which date back to around 1400 BCE, when Luxor was known as the ancient city of Thebes – is due to be finished later this year. However, the discovery of the statue has brought a temporary stop as the statue cannot currently be moved. Not very much is known about it yet, and photos are limited. According to the Director General of Antiquities at Luxor, Dr Mohamed Abdel Aziz, speaking to news site Youm, the workers found a statue of a “lion’s body with a human head”,...

Everybody interested in finding the true history of the Giza pyramids and The Sphinx, will have no doubt heard the theory proposed by Geology professor, Robert Schoch and the late, great John Anthony West, that The Sphinx was originally a lion that was subject to water erosion. The theory states that this could only have happened between 5,000 and 10,500 BC, a time period that is far earlier than the orthodox date attributed to the construction of the Sphinx, which is 2558 to 2532 BC. Robert Temple, in his book The Sphinx Mystery, believes the Sphinx was carved as Anubis...

Consider this.....History in written by the victors....I was watching a great series on Netflix.... "The Pyramid Code" which provides a much more reasonable explanation of things Egypt than the standard "tales" We keep being told the Pyramids were tombs built by Pharaohs, but there were never any mummies found in the Great Pyramid..... Another thought that was raised was that there were great Female Pharaohs that reigned over great years of peace, but who were then almost erased by religious leaders, MEN, who followed them.. To this end I offer the suggestion that all Egyptologists ignore: That the nose of...