world-of-mummies

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The head of a person now known as the Deal Warrior, after their discovery in Deal, Kent. The individual was found with the remains of a sword, shield, and coral brooch, along with the copper crown shown above; this is the earliest example of a crown being used in Britain, dating to c. 250-150 BCE. Due to similarities with later Romano-British burials, it has been suggested that the individual was a druidic priest.

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The man from Osterby is the skull of a bog body from the Köhlmoor, south-east of Osterby near Eckernförde, Schleswig Holstein, Germany. The skull was found on 26 May 1948 by the brothers Otto and Max Müller from Osterby on their father's plot of land while cutting peat. It lay at a depth of around 65 to 70 cm below the surface of the bog at the time. Max Müller noticed the remains of fur hanging down from his spade. The two then searched through the fallen peat and recovered parts of the skull and the cloak.

The most striking feature of the head is the hairstyle with the exceptionally well-preserved hair, which is tied into a so-called suebic knot above the right temple. The man's long hair was divided vertically into two strands at the back of his head. The left strand was placed around the left side of the head, low over the forehead, on the right side of the head. The right strand was placed above the right ear at the temple, over the left strand and both were twisted with a sharp right twist. This strand was looped and the loose end of the strand was pulled through in a loop shape. This Suebi knot is described by the Roman historian Tacitus in chapter 38 of his Germania as a typical characteristic of free men among the Suebi, a Germanic tribe.

The man from Osterby was dated to the Roman Imperial period due to his characteristic hairstyle. By C14 dating of a hair sample, his date of death could be narrowed down to between 75 and 130 AD.

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Ancient Roman Horse Cemetery Discovered in Germany

An ancient Roman cemetery uncovered in southern Germany has revealed more than 100 horse skeletons, shedding new light on the role of animals in ancient military life, and one burial is drawing particular attention.

Archaeologists began excavating a site in Stuttgart in the summer of 2024 ahead of a planned construction project. Stuttgart, located in southwestern Germany, is about 400 miles southwest of Berlin.

Based on earlier finds in the area, including scattered horse bones, experts expected to uncover remnants of a Roman cavalry presence. What they discovered went far beyond expectations.

The State Office for Monument Preservation at the Baden-Württemberg Regional Council announced on April 16 that a vast Roman graveyard had been unearthed.

Dating back around 1,800 years, the cemetery contained over 100 horse skeletons, making it one of the largest known Roman military horse burial sites in the region.

Graveyard linked to a Roman cavalry unit

Archaeologists believe the horses belonged to a Roman cavalry unit stationed in the area during the second century A.D.

Historical records suggest the unit had about 500 riders, which would have required a herd of at least 700 horses to support daily operations, travel, and military campaigns.

Most of the horses appeared to have died from natural causes, injury, or illness. There were no signs of a mass death event, such as battle or disease, said Sarah Roth, the site’s lead archaeologist. The burials were generally simple, with no special markings or artifacts.

One burial reflects a personal connection

A single horse was found buried with two ceramic jugs and an oil lamp placed near its leg – items commonly associated with human graves in Roman culture.

Roth said the burial appeared to mimic that of a person and pointed to a strong emotional bond between the animal and its owner. “Even after around 1800 years, the mourning over the death of this one animal is still evident,” she explained in the statement.

The human skeleton raises social questions

The team also uncovered a lone human skeleton at the edge of the site. Officials believe the individual may have been an outsider, excluded from formal Roman burial grounds.

The contrast between the simple human grave and the symbolically rich horse burial has raised new questions about the social values of the time.

Further research planned as site closes

Although excavations at the site are now complete, researchers believe the cemetery may be larger than currently documented.

Further analysis of the remains is underway to better understand the Roman military’s dependence on horses and the cultural practices surrounding their care and burial.

By Nisha Zahid.

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Mummies in the Capuchin catacombs of Palermo, Italy. The monks began mummifying their brothers in 1599

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Lady of the Krakow Crypt who was poisoned by her father on her wedding day for marrying a man he disapproved of. She lies in her wedding dress. The year was 1787.

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The lavishly adorned skeleton of St. Munditia, an early Christian martyr - Paul Koudounaris

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Heritage News of the Week

Discoveries!

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered the 3,200-year-old tomb of a possible military commander who may have served during the reign of Ramesses III. Inside the man's tomb, archaeologists found a gold ring containing the name of Ramesses III, along with bronze arrowheads.

2,200-year-old shackles discovered at ancient Egyptian gold mine

Two sets of iron ankle shackles found at an archaeological site in Egypt are revealing the "significant human cost" of gold mining undertaken to fund Ptolemy I's military campaigns, according to new research.

Rare Viking-era bracelet uncovered on Öland

The bracelet is extremely well-preserved due to the oxygen-poor environment of the wetland which helped prevent corrosion. Both ends of the bracelet depict animal heads and the length is decorated with intricate rows of dots.

Ancient sculptures didn’t just look good—they also smelled heavenly, study finds

New research suggests statues were scented with perfumes, oils, and flower arrangements.

Roman water conduit exposed beneath Slovak castle

Archaeologists from Trnava University were baffled by a discovery they made while working at Rusovce Manor House outside of Bratislava.

Archaeologists unearth burials from the Schmalkaldic War

Archaeologists from the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation have unearthed burials from the Schmalkaldic War that correspond to details in a 1551 historical painting.

Archaeologists make several major discoveries in ancient Liternum

Recent excavations under the Superintendency for the Metropolitan Area of Naples have been focusing a study on the city’s necropolis, located a short distance from the Forum and Amphitheatre.

Ancient well dating back to 7th century AD discovered on Failaka Island

An ancient well, dating back to the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods, has been discovered on Failaka Island, providing valuable insights into the region’s past.

Smallest human relative ever found may have been devoured by a leopard 2 million years ago

The left hip and leg bones from a young female Paranthropus robustus discovered in South Africa show she was extremely short — and ended up as a leopard's lunch.

Large mammoth bone discovery in Lower Austria

Archaeologists from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) have uncovered the remains of at least five mammoths during excavations in Langmannersdorf an der Perschling, located in the Austrian state of Lower Austria.

Researchers define the borders of El Argar, the first state-society in the Iberian Peninsula

Recent research conducted by scholars from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology has identified the economic and political boundaries that delineated El Argar, the first state structure in the Iberian Peninsula, approximately 4,000 years ago.

Bulgar-Golden Horde period complex discovered in Alekseevsky

Excavations in preparation for the construction of a highway project has revealed two burial grounds and a settlement dating from the 10th–14th centuries AD.

European hunter-gatherers boated to North Africa during Stone Age, ancient DNA suggests

DNA recovered from archaeological remains of ancient humans who lived in what is now Tunisia and northeastern Algeria reveals that European hunter-gatherers may have visited North Africa by boat around 8,500 years ago.

Rare Roman-era columbariums discovered in Şanlıurfa

Rare Roman-era columbariums were discovered in Senem Caves in the Haliliye district and in the garden of a citizen in Bozova.

“Structurally sound” historic vessels discovered beneath fishpond

Preliminary studies indicate that both vessels remain structurally sound. However, archaeologists are still analysing the construction materials to determine the age and type of wood used.

5,000-year-old fortress discovered in Romania using LiDAR technology

The fortress, obscured by centuries of dense vegetation, was mapped with precision using drones equipped with LiDAR, which emits laser pulses to create high-resolution terrain models.

“Pompeian Gray” discovered in Pompeii excavations: a unique color in the Roman world

A recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science has revealed the discovery of a new color in the chromatic repertoire of the Roman world: Pompeian Gray.

Museums

The gift from Bloomberg Philanthropies is the largest private donation and largest archive of archaeological material given to the museum to date. The artefacts were discovered during construction of Bloomberg's European headquarters in the City of London between 2012 and 2014.

Anti-plague amulets and IOUs: the excavation that brings Roman London thundering back to life

With sandals that look fresher than last year’s Birkenstocks, gossipy messages recovered from writing tablets and 73,000 shards of pottery, London Museum’s new collection is like falling head-first into the first century

Victorian museum opens 'calm space' for visitors

The Sunflower Room at Blists Hill Victorian Town in Telford has been created for people with special educational needs and disabilities, health conditions, and parents who need to breastfeed or bottle-feed children in a quiet place.

National Trust freezes recruitment after £10m jump in costs

The National Trust has frozen all but essential recruitment and is pausing some projects as it faces a £10m jump in labour costs this year as a result of higher employment costs stemming from last autumn’s budget.

The secret life of LA’s small museums

With a fair dose of whimsy, Also on View draws attention to museums off the beaten track, centering the region’s rich diasporic fabric and cultural niches.

British Museum tops UK attractions list, but the effects of the pandemic still linger on

Official figures have revealed that the British Museum was – for the second year in a row – the UK’s most-visited attraction in 2024. While visitor numbers for cultural attractions are rising, however, the sector remains fragile.

In the Trump era, the UK sector’s commitments to equity and inclusion risk being quietly eroded

Museums must not allow the wider political context to undo progress, say Suzanne MacLeod and Richard Sandell

Which of your possessions belongs in a trans museum?

It’s time for major museums to stand up for trans and queer people in the public and among their employees — instead the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian have shuttered their diversity offices. That’s why community members are shifting focus back to small grassroots LGBTQ+ museums, archives, and galleries that have done this historical labor for their communities for decades.

Repatriation

The 350-year-old artifact is one of seven objects returned to the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo Native American tribe

Antiquities looted by notorious smuggling ring returned to Nepal

Works linked to the disgraced art dealer Subhash Kapoor are among the 20 objects seized by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit.

University scholar solves portrait theft mystery

An Exeter University art historian has solved the 70-year mystery over the theft of an original oil sketch, by Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck, from a stately home in Northamptonshire.

Heritage at risk

Palestinian experts and British archaeologists say more than two-thirds of heritage, cultural and archaeological sites in Gaza have been damaged

Trump administration seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding by shuttering this little-known agency

On March 14, 2025, the Trump administration issued an executive order that called for the dismantling of seven federal agencies “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” They ranged from the United States Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, to the Minority Business Development Agency. The Institute of Museum and Library Services was also on the list.

Act Now to Save IMLS

Trump names new director of museum agency he moved to dismantle

Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of seven federal agencies. Chief among them was the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provides critical funding to museums, libraries, and archives. Now, less than a week later, Trump appointed a new head of the agency, Keith E. Sonderling. “It is an honor to be appointed by President Trump to lead this important organization in its mission to advance, support and empower America’s museums and libraries, which stand as cornerstones of learning and culture in our society,” Sonderling said in a statement. “I am committed to steering this organization in lockstep with this administration to enhance efficiency and foster innovation. We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”

😬😬😬

Pentagon restores histories of Navajo Code Talkers, other Native veterans after public outcry

The Pentagon restored some webpages highlighting the crucial wartime contributions of Navajo Code Talkers and other Native American veterans on Wednesday, days after tribes condemned the action.

In Winnipeg, land defenders fight to save a sacred forest

The Lemay Forest — housing unmarked graves, protected birds and old trees. Now, it’s being threatened by a housing development

Alien fever dreams fuel Peruvian grave robbings

Leandro Rivera says he chanced upon the cave in Peru's remote Nazca region that contained hundreds of pre-Hispanic artifacts – including human bodies with elongated heads and what appeared to be only three fingers on each hand. The plateau is famous for the Nazca lines, incisions on the desert floor forming birds and other animals visible from the air. The ancient geoglyphs have long intrigued anthropologists and exert a powerful fascination over some believers in extraterrestrials. Nazca is also known for salt flats that dehydrate and preserve human and animal remains, making it the site of important archeological finds that have deepened modern understanding of ancient cultures – and attracted grave robbers.

Odds and ends

Kathryn Yusoff sparked a culture war with her latest book, suggesting slavery and white supremacy informed the work of geology’s founding fathers. Here, she and other experts suggest that attitudes have changed little since

A scholar and a hater: new podcast focuses on historical figures that suck

When the historian Claire Aubin gets together with her colleagues for drinks after a conference or academic meetup, the conversation always ends up one way. “We’re all sitting around a table, talking about our most hated historical figure,” she said. For Aubin, it’s Henry Ford, an ardent antisemite whom Hitler called “an inspiration”. She believes being a hater can aid in scholarship: “Disliking someone or having a problem with their historical legacy is worth talking about, and brings more people into learning about history.” That’s why Aubin, who spent last year lecturing in the history department at UC Davis and San Francisco State University and is about to begin a full-time postdoctoral fellowship at Yale, started This Guy Sucked, a history podcast about terrible men. In each episode, Aubin speaks to a historian about their biggest villain, from Ford and Voltaire to Plato and Jerry Lee Lewis.

More medieval texts were scribed by women than previously believed

A new study “provides statistical support for the often-overlooked contributions of female scribes over time,” said researcher Åslaug Ommundsen.

Did Michelangelo pull off art history’s greatest hoax With ‘Laocoön’?

The monumental sculpture stands as an exemplar of Hellenistic artistry—but not to everyone.

These are delightful

The 30,000 year old vulture that reveals a completely new type of fossilisation

A surprising discovery in the feathers of a fossil vulture from central Italy has revealed that volcanic deposits can preserve delicate tissue structures in unprecedented detail, offering new insights into the fossilisation process.

American History Lessons Edited to Comply with Anti-DEI Standards (McSweeney's)

Jackie Robinson Overcomes [NO SPECIFIC OBSTACLE IN PARTICULAR] in Professional Baseball Baseball hall of famer Jackie Robinson is best known for [NOTHING IN PARTICULAR, OTHER THAN BEING A GREAT BASEBALL PLAYER]. Though most major league baseball teams at the time refused to sign Robinson because [THEY JUST DIDN’T LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB], Robinson finally became the first [PERSON NAMED JACKIE ROBINSON] to play Major League Baseball in 1947. Jackie Robinson paved the way for [OTHER PEOPLE WHO WERE DISLIKED FOR NO REASON] to play professional sports.

McSweeney's hitting a bit to close to home

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It has now been confirmed that the tomb found in 2022 is the tomb of Thutmose II

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The fourth-century church at Trimithis in the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt, the site of an extraordinary number of burials, including the remains of a female from Tomb 10, Room 3, about 50–65 years old, who lived a comparatively elite lifestyle and ate a refined diet.

Credit…The NYU Amheida Excavations

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Mummy of Hatshepsut

The mummy of Hatshepsut, one of Egypt's most famous female pharaohs, has been the subject of significant archaeological and forensic research. Hatshepsut reigned during the 18th Dynasty (around 1479–1458 BCE), and while her tomb and her many monuments were discovered, her mummy was not immediately identifiable. For years, the location of her final resting place remained uncertain.

Now in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization (NMEC), Cairo. JE 56264

Read more

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Just my five cents to it and to make a long story short, I have been working on this for a long time, because the portraits were my master's thesis and are now my PhD. These kind portraits are more based on Roman ancestral portraits (which you can see from the fact that these portraits are mostly from the imperial period) and with the invasion of Rome this tradition was brought into the funerary cult of the Greek Egyptians who used the death masks. It was more a display of power and money and not necessarily a cultic aspect that is shown here, which is why there are only a few - compared to the masks.

Chances are you’ve seen Fayum mummy portraits, the very realistic and warm panel paintings depicting the people of Roman Egypt between the 1st century BC and the 3rd century AD.

They’re breathtaking and very moving. Familiar faces, so human and so beautiful in their humanity. Most of them have been divorced from their purpose, torn from the bodies of the people they depict.

It is a different feeling entirely to see them in their original context.

This boy died before he could finish growing that mustache. Someone’s beloved son, crowned in golden laurels for all eternity, swaddled in linen. He is in there. The depiction of his face covers his face. The other portraits have lost their subject, greedily taken by those who wanted to admire their beauty without acknowledging the profound grief they represent.

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Museum of witchcraft 74

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2024, THE YEAR OF LOST FROZEN EXPLORERS BEING FOUND 😭😭😭

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Fantastic find. The cursive hieroglyphs of the Coffin Texts are beautiful here.

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Mummy of Queen Nodjmet

The mummy of Queen Nodjmet was found in the Deir el-Bahari Royal Cachette (DB320). The mummy had been given artificial eyes, made of white and black stones. The eyebrows are real hair and she wears a wig. Her body and parts of her face were coloured to give her a more lively appearance. Nodjmet was an ancient Egyptian noble lady and/or Queen of the late 20th Dynasty or early 21st Dynasty of Egypt, the wife of Herihor, High Priest of Amun at Thebes. She may have been a daughter of Ramesses XI. Early in her life, she held titles such as Lady of the House and Chief of the Harem of Amun. With her mummy, two Books of the Dead were found. One of them, Papyrus (EA10490), now in the British museum, belonged to “the King’s Mother Nodjmet, the daughter of the King’s Mother Hrere .

Source

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Oldest Case of Heart Failure Found in Ancient Mummy

The oldest case of acute decompensated heart failure has been found in 3,500-year-old mummified remains, a research team announced at the international congress of Egyptology in Florence.

Consisting of just a head and canopic jars containing internal organs, the remains were found in a plundered tomb by the Italian Egyptologist Ernesto Schiaparelli in 1904 in the Valley of the Queens, Luxor, and are now housed at the Egyptian Museum in Turin.

They belong to an Egyptian dignitary named Nebiri, a “Chief of Stables” who lived under the reign of 18th Dynasty pharaoh Thutmoses III (1479-1424 BC).

“The head is almost completely unwrapped, but in a good state of preservation. Since the canopic jar inscribed for Hapy, the guardian of the lungs, is partially broken, we were allowed direct access for sampling,” Read more.

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The reliquary containing the severed head of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), in Basilica San Domenico, Siena, Italy.