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April 22, 2016

Queen Hatshepsut's Building Blocks Discovered

Ancient stone blocks depicting Queen Hatshepsut have been discovered on Egypt's Elephantine Island, providing insights into the early years of her reign, Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities announced this week. The blocks may have been part of a building that served as a way station for an ancient Egyptian deity.

On several of the blocks, Queen Hatshepsut was represented as a woman, according to the Ministry, suggesting that the blocks and building it came from were erected during the early part of the first female pharaoh's reign, which lasted from 1473 B.C. to 1458 B.C. Later in her reign, the queen was depicted as a male.

Mentions of Queen Hatshepsut were erased and monuments bearing her image were defaced after her death, and her female figure was replaced with images of a male king: her deceased husband Thutmose II. It is believed that her co-ruler and stepson/nephew Thutmose III ordered the change. [Photos: The Beautiful Sarcophagus of an Egypt Pharaoh]

It was unusual for a woman to become pharaoh of Egypt. As Egyptologist Ian Shaw noted in his book "Exploring Ancient Egypt" (Oxford University Press, 2003), "In the history of Egypt during the dynastic period (3000 to 332 B.C.) there were only two or three women who managed to rule as pharaohs, rather than wielding power as the 'great wife' of a male king."

And she was a builder: In his National Geographic feature on Hatshepsut "The King Herself," Chip Brown wrote about her legacy, and said she was "one of the greatest builders in one of the greatest Egyptian dynasties." During her reign, Hatshepsut erected and renovated many temples and shrines to the gods.

In fact, the newfound blocks likely were part of a previously unknown building of Queen Hatshepsut that was discovered this year by the German Archaeological Institute, said Mahmoud Afify, head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector, in the Ministry of Antiquities' statement on Facebook. In previous excavation seasons at the same site, members of the Swiss Institute also discovered some blocks that may have come from the same building.

The building would have served as a way station for the festival barque of the god Khnum, said Felix Arnold, field director of the Elephantine Island mission. In ancient Egypt, "barques," or sacred boats, were used to help carry the dead to the afterlife.

Based on the discoveries thus far, in the same statement, the Ministry of Antiquities described the building's construction as a chamber for the barque of the god Khnum, which is surrounded by pillars on all four sides.

"On the pillars are representations of several versions of the god Khnum, as well as other gods, such as Imi-peref 'He-who-is-in-his-house,' Nebet-menit 'Lady-of-the-mooring-post' and Min-Amun of Nubia," according to the Ministry statement on Facebook. "The building thus not only adds to our knowledge of the history of Queen Hatshepsut, but also to our understanding of the religious beliefs current on the Island of Elephantine during her reign."

By Kacey Deamer
With many thanks to Live Science
Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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April 18, 2016

Rock's Greats Line Up For A Gig For The Ages (Or Aged)

It is a festival line-up that might have relegated Woodstock to a footnote in history if promoters had managed to put it together 40 years ago.

The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, The Who, Neil Young and Roger Waters from Pink Floyd are all being lined up for a three-day rock spectacular in the California desert in October. Negotiations between the six headline acts and the organisers of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival are said to be nearly complete and an announcement is expected soon.

“It’s so special in so many ways,” Elliot Roberts, Young’s manager, told the Los Angeles Times. “You won’t get a chance to see a bill like this, perhaps ever again.”

The regular Coachella festival took place at the weekend and featured a headline slot for the reunited Guns N’ Roses. It has become the best attended and highest-grossing music festival in the world, taking £60 million last year, and has previously hosted McCartney and Waters. The one-off festival, pencilled in for October 7 to 9, would be staged by Goldenvoice, an offshoot of AEG Live, which owns the O2 Arena in London.

Of the Coachella acts, only The Who and Young played in 1969 at Woodstock, which became a symbol of optimism and the power of rock music.

With many thanks to The Australian

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When Did The Dinosaurs Become Extinct?

A new claim queries dinosaur extinction date.

UK boffins claim dinosaurs were plodding down the path to extinction millions of years before the meteor impact that's widely believed to have wiped them out.

Until now, most experts have believed dinosaurs were flourishing just before disaster struck in the form of a huge asteroid or comet that smashed into the Earth off the coast of Mexico.
However, new research suggests more dinosaur species were vanishing than new ones were emerging up to 50 million years earlier.

Giant long-necked plant-eaters such as Diplodocus were lost at the fastest rate, while meat-eating relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex were in more gradual decline.

The scientists, whose findings are based on sophisticated statistical analysis and fossil evidence, believe the meteor impact 66 million years ago finished off a process that was already well under way.

Lead researcher Dr Manabu Sakamoto, from the University of Reading, said: "While the asteroid impact is still the prime candidate for the dinosaurs' final disappearance, it is clear that they were already past their prime in an evolutionary sense.

"Our work is groundbreaking in that, once again, it will change our understanding of the fate of these mighty creatures.

"While a sudden apocalypse may have been the final nail in the coffin, something else had already been preventing dinosaurs from evolving new species as fast as old species were dying out.

"This suggests that for tens of millions of years before their ultimate demise, dinosaurs were beginning to lose their edge as the dominant species on Earth."

For unexplained reasons, possibly linked to the break-up of continental land masses and sustained volcanic activity, dinosaurs stopped producing enough new species to replace those that disappeared, said the scientists.

As a result they were unable to recover from the environmental crisis caused by the meteor impact, which blacked out the sun with millions of tonnes of dust, cooled the global climate, and caused widespread vegetation loss.

Giant plant-eating dinosaurs with huge appetites would not have been able feed themselves, and their predators in turn would have been left hungry.

A long gradual dinosaur decline may have set the stage for mammals, according to the researchers whose findings appear in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences.

Co-author Dr Chris Venditti, also from the University of Reading, said: "The decline of the dinosaurs would have left plenty of room for mammals, the group of species which humans are a member of, to flourish before the impact, priming them to replace dinosaurs as the dominant animals on Earth."

With many thanks to The Australian

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