archaeology news for Feb 9-Feb 14

[archersangel]

"Screaming mummy" mystery solved

Archaeologists think they have solved the mystery of the “screaming mummy”, an ancient Egyptian corpse preserved with its mouth open in a silent scream.

Known as “Unknown Man E”, the identity of the body found in the Deir el-Bahari tomb complex in Egypt has long eluded researchers.

However, DNA analysis of the remains suggests they belong to Prince Pentewere, a son of the pharaoh Ramses III who was involved in a conspiracy to murder his father.

Serpent Mound Might Depict a Creation Story

A new interpretation of Serpent Mound, based on American Indian mythic stories portrayed in a remarkable series of pictographs from Picture Cave in Missouri, is offered by James Duncan, Carol Diaz-Granados, Tod Frolking and me in a paper published online last month in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. We argue that images of serpents and other supernatural beings on the walls of Picture Cave help us make sense of those parts of Serpent Mound that weren’t restored.

One group of pictographs shows a serpent facing a humanoid female with her legs spread apart next to a large oval that might be the symbolic “toothy mouth” of the Great Serpent — lord of the Beneath World. Duncan and Diaz-Granados think this panel illustrates part of a Dhegiha Siouan creation story: the moment when First Woman mated with the Great Serpent in order to acquire his life-giving powers, which she then used to create all life on Earth.