A University of South Florida researcher has unearthed the first physical evidence of hallucinogenic substances in an ancient Egyptian ceremonial vessel, validating centuries-old accounts of ancient Egyptian rituals. Through sophisticated chemical analysis, researcher Davide Tanasi examined one of the world's few surviving specimens of these mysterious cups.

The vessels, including one donated to the Tampa Museum of Art in 1984, feature the distinctive head of Bes, an ancient Egyptian deity or guardian demon associated with protection, fertility, healing, and purification. The research, published in Nature, resolves a 2,000-year-old Egyptian enigma.

"Our findings are unprecedented in this field of research," Tanasi said. "We've achieved the first-ever complete chemical signature identification of the liquid contents from an ancient Egyptian vessel, including the plants utilized by the Egyptians, each possessing psychotropic properties.

"Scholars have long debated the purpose of these vessels and their contents," Branko van Oppen, curator of Greek and Roman art at the Tampa Museum of Art said. "There was considerable uncertainty whether these vessels served everyday purposes, religious functions, or magical rituals."

Tanasi, conducting this research as part of the Mediterranean Diet Archaeology project, collaborated with fellow researchers at the Universities of Trieste and Milan in Italy to perform chemical analyses and DNA testing.

The analysis revealed a complex mixture of psychedelic substances, bodily fluids, and alcohol – a combination that Tanasi believes was integral to a magical ceremony reenacting an Egyptian myth, presumably connected to fertility. The concoction was enhanced with honey, sesame seeds, pine nuts, and grape juice, the latter commonly employed to give the mixture a blood-like appearance.

"Religion represents one of the most compelling aspects of ancient civilizations," Tanasi said. "This research provides scientific evidence supporting elements of Egyptian mythological accounts, helping illuminate ceremonial practices near the Great Pyramids of Giza that have remained largely enigmatic until now."

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Discovered in 1935 near the tomb of Senmut in Luxor, Egypt, the "Screaming Woman" mummy baffled researchers for a long time.

The 48-year-old woman was buried in a wooden coffin. She was well-preserved, and embalmed 3,500 years ago with expensive imported ingredients like juniper oil and frankincense resin.

According to a recent study, published in the journal Frontiers of Medicine, she may have died "screaming from agony." The researchers used CT scans and X-ray analysis.

Her mouth was stretched open, possibly due to cadaveric spasm, a rare form of muscular stiffening occurring at the moment of death, preserving the facial expression of agony.

The examination revealed she had mild arthritis, lost some teeth, and was 1.54m tall, with no signs of periodontal disease or cavities.

While the cause of death is inconclusive, theories include a heart attack, stroke, or excruciating pain, based on evidence of cardiovascular disease in mummies from that time period.

Sources: KPBS, CBS News, PopSci, Newsweek, Independent, CNN Español, Live Science, CNN, Sky News, NY Post, El Pais, Ars Technica, Science News, El Cordillerano, Daily News Egypt, Gizmodo, Alagoas 24 Horas, Times of India, La Voz, ABC News

This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.

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Researchers have used digital technology to take the first accurate look inside the mummy of King Amenhotep I, which has remained unwrapped in modern times, according to a study published on Tuesday.

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The scans revealed details about the appearance and mummification the 18th Dynasty king, who ruled Egypt from about 1,525-1,504 BCE and was the son of New Kingdom founder Ahmose I.

Amenhotep's mummy, adorned with decorations on its linen wrapping and its funerary mask, was found along with those of other kings and queens in a cache in Luxor in 1881 and transferred to Cairo.

Because of efforts to preserve the decoration, it was one of few royal mummies not to be physically unwrapped and examined in the modern era, according to the study in Frontiers in Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal.

In 2019, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass and Cairo University professor Sahar Saleem used a computed tomography (CT) machine to "digitally unwrap" the mummy before it was moved to a new collection at Cairo's National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

The results of their study, published on Tuesday, showed that Amenhotep's face resembled that of his father, and estimated his age at death to be 35 years, though no cause of death was clear, according to a statement from Egypt's antiquities ministry. It appeared to show that he was the first king to be embalmed with his forearms crossed on his body, and proved that his brain was not removed, unlike those of most New Kingdom kings.

The scans also revealed 30 amulets or pieces of jewelry buried with the mummy, including a belt of 34 gold beads, showing that 21st Dynasty priests who rewrapped the mummy took care to preserve its ornaments, the ministry statement said.

During the reburial, the Theban priests re-attached Amenhotep's head and repaired other postmortem injuries likely inflicted by tomb robbers, according to the study.

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Egypt on Tuesday showcased an ancient tomb structure belonging to the cemetery complex of King Djoser, a pharaoh who lived more than 4,500 years ago, following extensive restorations of the site.

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The structure − known as the Southern Tomb − is largely underground and includes a labyrinth of corridors, decorated with hieroglyphic carvings and tiles. A central funeral shaft houses a massive granite-clad sarcophagus from Egypt's Third Dynasty.

However, the pharaoh was not actually buried there but in the famed Step Pyramid nearby. The two structures make up part of the Saqqara complex near Cairo − one of the country's richest archeological sites. The Step Pyramid is the oldest known pyramid and one of the first examples of monumental architecture from the ancient world, according to UNESCO. It is believed to have been the inspiration for the Pyramids at Giza.

Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism said the opening this week of the tomb structure marked the completion of restoration work that started in 2006 and included reinforcing of the underground corridors, refurbishing the carvings and the tiled walls, and installing lighting. As of Tuesday, the tomb opened to the public.

In addition to the Southern Tomb, the Saqqara plateau hosts at least 11 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid, as well as hundreds of tombs of ancient officials and other sites that range from the 1st Dynasty (2920 BCE-2770 BCE) to the Coptic period (395-642).

The Saqqara site is part of the necropolis of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis that includes the famed Giza Pyramids, as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1970s.

Egypt has publicized a string of recent archaeological finds over the past year in an effort to revive its key tourism sector, which was badly hit by the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. The sector was also dealt a further blow by the global coronavirus pandemic.

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Divers have discovered rare remains of a military vessel in the ancient sunken city of Thônis-Heracleion – once Egypt's largest port on the Mediterranean – and a funerary complex illustrating the presence of Greek merchants, the country said on Monday.

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The city, which controlled the entrance to Egypt at the mouth of a western branch of the Nile, dominated the area for centuries before the foundation of Alexandria nearby by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE.

Destroyed and sunk along with a wide area of the Nile delta by several earthquakes and tidal waves, Thônis-Heracleion was rediscovered in 2001 in Abu Qir bay near Alexandria, now Egypt's secon- largest city.

The military vessel, discovered by an Egyptian-French mission led by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM), sank when the famed temple of Amun it was mooring next to collapsed in the second century BCE.

A preliminary study shows the hull of the 25-meter (82-foot) flat-bottomed ship, with oars and a large sail, was built in the classical tradition and also had features of Ancient Egyptian construction, Egypt's tourism and antiquities ministry said.

In another part of the city, the mission revealed the remains of a large Greek funerary area dating back to the first years of the 4th century BCE, it said.

"This discovery beautifully illustrates the presence of the Greek merchants who lived in that city," the ministry said, adding that the Greeks were allowed to settle there during the late Pharaonic dynasties.

"They built their own sanctuaries close to the huge temple of Amun. Those were destroyed, simultaneously and their remains are found mixed with those of the Egyptian temple."

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Workers dig and ferry wheelbarrows laden with sand to open a new shaft at a bustling archaeological site outside of Cairo, while a handful of Egyptian archaeologists supervise from garden chairs. The dig is at the foot of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, arguably the world's oldest pyramid, and is one of many recent excavations that are yielding troves of ancient artifacts from the country's largest archaeological site.

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As some European countries re-open to international tourists, Egypt has already been trying for months to attract them to its archaeological sites and museums. Officials are betting that the new ancient discoveries will set it apart on the mid- and post-pandemic tourism market. They need visitors to come back in force to inject cash into the tourism industry, a pillar of the economy.

But like countries elsewhere, Egypt continues to battle the coronavirus, and is struggling to get its people vaccinated. The country has, up until now, received only 5 million vaccines for its population of 100 million people, according to its Health Ministry. In early May, the government announced that 1 million people had been vaccinated, though that number is believed to be higher now.

In the meantime, authorities have kept the publicity machine running, focused on the new discoveries.

In November, archaeologists announced the discovery of at least 100 ancient coffins dating back to the Pharaonic Late Period and Greco-Ptolemaic era, along with 40 gilded statues found 2,500 years after they were first buried. That came a month after the discovery of 57 other coffins at the same site, the necropolis of Saqqara that includes the step pyramid.

"Saqqara is a treasure," said Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anany while announcing the November discovery, estimating that only 1% of what the site contains has been unearthed so far.

"Our problem now is that we don't know how we can possibly wow the world after this," he said.

If they don't, it certainly won't be for lack of trying.

In April, Zahi Hawass, Egypt's best-known archaeologist, announced the discovery of a 3,000-year-old lost city in southern Luxor, complete with mud brick houses, artifacts and tools from pharaonic times. It dates back to Amenhotep III of the 18th dynasty, whose reign (1390–1353 BCE) is considered a golden era for ancient Egypt.

That discovery was followed by a made-for-TV parade celebrating the transport of 22 of the country's prized royal mummies from central Cairo to their new resting place in a massive facility farther south in the capital, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

The Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh is now home to an archaeological museum, as is Cairo's International Airport, both opened in recent months. And officials have also said they still plan to open the massive new Grand Egyptian Museum next to the Giza Pyramids by January, after years of delays. Entrance fees for archeological sites have been lowered, as has the cost of tourist visas.

The government has for years played up its ancient history as a selling point, as part of a years-long effort to revive the country's battered tourism industry. It was badly hit during and after the popular uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak and the ensuring unrest. The coronavirus dealt it a similar blow, just as it was getting back on its feet.

In 2019, foreign tourism's revenue stood at $13 billion. Egypt received some 13.1 million foreign tourists – reaching pre-2011 levels for the first time. But in 2020, it greeted only 3.5 million foreign tourists, according to el-Anany.

At the newly opened National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, Mahmoud el-Rays, a tour guide, was leading a small group of European tourists at the hall housing the royal mummies.

"2019 was a fantastic year," he said. "But corona reversed everything. It is a massive blow."

Tourism traffic strengthened in the first months of 2021, el-Anany told The Associated Press in a recent interview, though he did not give specific figures. He was optimistic that more would continue to come year-round.

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"Egypt is a perfect destination for post-COVID in that our tourism is really an open-air tourism," he said.

But it remains to be seen if the country truly has the virus under control. It has recorded a total of 14,950 deaths from the virus and is still seeing more than a thousand new cases daily. Like other countries, the real numbers are believed to be much higher. In Egypt, though, authorities have arrested doctors and silenced critics who questioned the government's response, so there are fears that information on the true cost of the virus may have been suppressed from the beginning.

Egypt also had a trying experience early on in the pandemic, when it saw a coronavirus outbreak on one of its Nile River cruise boats. It first closed its borders completely until the summer of 2020, but later welcomed tourists back, first to Red-Sea resort towns and now to the heart of the country  – Cairo and the Nile River Valley that hosts most of its famous archaeological sites. Visitors still require a negative COVID-19 test result to enter the country.

In a further cause for optimism, Russia said in April that it plans to resume direct flights to Egypt's Red Sea resort towns. Moscow stopped the flights after the local Islamic State affiliate bombed a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula in October 2015, killing all on board.

Amanda, a 36-year-old engineer from Austria, returned to Egypt in May. It was her second visit in four years. She visited the Egyptian Museum, the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization and Islamic Cairo, in the capital's historic center.

She had planned to come last year, but the pandemic interfered.

"Once they opened, I came," she said. "It was my dream to see the Pyramids again."

El-Rays says that while he's seeing tourists starting to come in larger numbers, he knows a full recovery will not happen overnight.

"It will take some time to return to before corona," he said.

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An ancient Egyptian mummy once believed to be the remains of a male priest is actually the embalmed body of a woman in the third trimester of pregnancy, Polish scientists said on Friday.

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Marzena Ozarek-Szilke, an anthropologist at the Warsaw Mummy Project, was examining a CT scan of a mummy at the National Museum in the Polish capital when she spotted something peculiar.

"When I looked at the lesser pelvis of our mummy I was interested in what was inside... I thought I saw a tiny foot," Ozarek-Szilke said.

She asked her husband, an archaeologist who also worked on the project, to take a look.

"My husband looked at the picture and as a father of three, he said: 'Well, that's a foot'. At that moment ... the whole picture started to come together," Ozarek-Szilke told Reuters.

The mummy came to Poland in the 19th century when the nascent University of Warsaw was creating an antiquities collection. For decades, it was thought the mummy belonged to an ancient Egyptian priest named Hor-Dehuti. However, in a discovery revealed in the Journal of Archaeological Science on Thursday, scientists at the Warsaw Mummy Project said the mummy was in fact a woman in her twenties who was between 26 and 28 weeks pregnant.

The cause of death is not clear, but Ozarek-Szilke said the pregnancy may have had something to do with it.

"It is possible that the pregnancy itself contributed to the death of this woman. Now we have modern medicine, women who are between 20 and 30 weeks pregnant and something happens to the pregnancy, they have a chance to be rescued. It used to be impossible," she said.

The discovery sheds some light on the little-known role of children in ancient Egypt and the religious beliefs of the time, but also raises many questions, according to Wojciech Ejsmond, co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project.

"What was the status of this child in the Egyptian religion? Did it have a soul, could it go to the afterlife on its own, could it be reborn in the afterlife... if it was not yet born?"

Ejsmond said scientists would study the mummy further to determine the cause of death and establish why the fetus was left in the body.

"We must be open to all possibilities," he said.

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A discovery from the Tel Lachish excavation in Israel could be the earliest known example of alphabetic writing in Israel and casts doubt on existing hypotheses about the spread of the alphabet, archaeologists believe.

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According to an article published last week in the Cambridge University journal Antiquity, a team of researchers that included Dr. Haggai Misgav of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem discovered a pottery fragment at Tel Lachish that dates from 1,450 BCE that could be the "missing link" in the development of alphabetic writing.

"This shard is one of the earliest examples of early alphabetic writing discovered in Israel," said co-author Dr. Felix Hoflmayer, who noted that the very existence of the inscription prompted them to "re-think" the appearance and spread of alphabetic writing in the Near East.

The fragment was discovered in 2018, but it was only now reported for the first time. The piece is only some 4 cm. (1.5 inches) long, and appears to have been part of the rim of a bowl imported from Cyprus. The inner part of the fragment is inscribed with a group of diagonal letters in a dark ink. Two lines of three letters each have been discerned, the team wrote.

The writing has been identified as proto-Canaanite, whose letters are based on Egyptian hieroglyphs. Although the partial nature of the fragment has presented difficulty in deciphering the writing, the researchers believe that they have identified the words "slave" or possibly a person's name containing the same letters, and the early Hebrew word "nefet" (honey). However, the experts noted that the meaning of the words could change depending on whether they were read from right to left or left to right.

So why does this small bit of Cypriot pottery play such a huge part in our understanding of the development of the alphabet? The new find casts doubt on previous hypotheses that the alphabet was spread throughout the region by the dominant Egyptian culture.

Archaeologists working in Sinai in 1905 discovered a written inscription that they dated to 1,800 BCE, and additional inscriptions dating to 1,300 have been discovered in the Levant. But until the shard from Tel Lachish, there was a gap of several hundred years between the inscription from Sinai and others in the Levant region, from where the alphabet is believed to have spread throughout what we now know as the Middle East and developed into systems of writing that included early Hebrew script.

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American and Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed what could be the oldest known beer factory at one of the most prominent archaeological sites of ancient Egypt, a top antiquities official said Saturday.

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Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the factory was found in Abydos, an ancient burial ground located in the desert west of the Nile River, over 450 kilometers (280 miles) south of Cairo.

He said the factory apparently dates back to the reign of King Narmer, who is widely known for his unification of ancient Egypt at the beginning of the First Dynastic Period (3150 BCE-2613 BCE).

Archaeologists found eight huge units – each is 20 meters (about 65 feet) long and 2.5 meters (about 8 feet) wide. Each unit includes some 40 pottery basins in two rows, which had been used to heat up a mixture of grains and water to produce beer, Waziri said.

The joint mission is co-chaired by Dr. Matthew Adams of the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Deborah Vischak, assistant professor of ancient Egyptian art history and archaeology at Princeton University.

Adams said the factory was apparently built in this area to provide royal rituals with beer, given that archaeologists found evidences showing the use of beer in sacrificial rites of ancient Egyptians.

British archaeologists were the first to mention the existence of that factory early 1900s, but they couldn't determine its location, the antiquities ministry said.

With its vast cemeteries and temples from the earliest times of ancient Egypt, Abydos was known for monuments honoring Osiris, ancient Egypt's god of underworld and the deity responsible for judging souls in the afterlife.

The necropolis had been used in every period of early Egyptian history, from the prehistoric age to Roman times.

Egypt has announced dozens of ancient discoveries in the past couple of years, in the hope of attracting more tourists.

The tourism industry has been reeling from the political turmoil following the 2011 popular uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The sector was also dealt a further blow last year by the coronavirus pandemic.

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Journalist Sameera Khan tweeted that Gadot should be "ashamed."

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Still another outraged user of social media wrote, "The level of disrespect if unbelievable. You [Gadot] are ISRAELI. Portraying and ARAB figure. This is not going to end well."

Cleopatra − the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt − was not, in fact, Arab, as Egypt was not an Arab country in the 1st century BCE, when she ruled. Egypt was not conquered by the Arabs until the 7^th century CE.

Yet another Twitter user said he "couldn't wait to boycott this bullsh***."

One woman tweeted that Gadot's color was less of interest than the "problem" of "letting Israeli be involved in telling stories about Middle Eastern history."

A user named Johanna M. did not mince words and called Gadot a "genocidal Zionist" and a "basic bit*h."

On Monday, Gadot tweeted after announcing the project that she hoped that women and girls all over the world "who aspire to tell stories will never give up on their dreams and will make their voices heard, by and for other women."

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