[HN Gopher] Archaeologists Discover 'Lost Golden City of Luxor'
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Archaeologists Discover 'Lost Golden City of Luxor'
Author : TrueJane
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-08-20 09:26 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.dw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.dw.com)
| mzs wrote:
| photo slideshow mentions this parade from April:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-56508475
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| If it was in the US the woke mob would have tried to get the
| parade cancelled because those Pharo's had slaves.
| redm wrote:
| Theres a good nat geo article on it too.
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/lost-gold...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That article adds `style="overflow-y: hidden; position: fixed"`
| to the main body tag when you scroll down (once); you'll need
| to delete that to reenable reading it.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Thanks, that's a much better article.
| haspoken wrote:
| https://archive.is/a0xYl
| andreime wrote:
| Thank you!
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > The ancient city, reported to be the largest ever found in
| Egypt, dates back to the era of king Amenhotep III, who ruled the
| ancient kingdom from 1391 to 1353 BC
|
| To give some idea of how old Egypt is, Amenhotep III was the 9th
| king of the 18th Dynasty. By the time he ruled, the Great Pyramid
| of Giza was over 1000 years old.
|
| Also what is interesting is that some of our greatest finds are
| because of the Egyptian ruling class trying to erase the
| "apostasy" of Akhenaten from their memory. Thus Luxor and king
| Tut were heavily censored which probably led to their being
| passed over by grave robbers, which meant when they were finally
| discovered, we had a more intact find. I find it ironic that the
| pharaohs and cities that the ancient Egyptians tried to censor,
| may end up being the most well known as we go forward.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Can you tell me what censored means in this context?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| In short, later rulers attempted to wipe out all memory of
| Akhenaten after he tried to abandon the traditional Egyptian
| polytheistic model. It's pretty fascinating stuff.
|
| From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten:
|
| > As a pharaoh, Akhenaten is noted for abandoning Egypt's
| traditional polytheism and introducing Atenism, or worship
| centered around Aten. The views of Egyptologists differ as to
| whether Atenism should be considered as a form of absolute
| monotheism, or whether it was monolatry, syncretism, or
| henotheism. This culture shift away from traditional religion
| was not widely accepted. After his death, Akhenaten's
| monuments were dismantled and hidden, his statues were
| destroyed, and his name excluded from lists of rulers
| compiled by later pharaohs. Traditional religious practice
| was gradually restored, notably under his close successor
| Tutankhamun, who changed his name from Tutankhaten early in
| his reign. When some dozen years later, rulers without clear
| rights of succession from the Eighteenth Dynasty founded a
| new dynasty, they discredited Akhenaten and his immediate
| successors and referred to Akhenaten as "the enemy" or "that
| criminal" in archival records.
| BatFastard wrote:
| Turn off! when headline has "ancienct" as part of their headline
| tells me something is wrong.
| unkulunkulu wrote:
| I read it as 'Lost Golden City of Linux'
| marlowe221 wrote:
| If only...
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I mean, they did name it LuXOR.
| fortani wrote:
| Zahi Hawass, the archaeologist who found it has an interesting
| past based on past comments.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26974453
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| I always wanted to ask something from archeologists: why did
| ancient people bury these cities instead of e.g. living in them,
| or demolishing them?
| breakbread wrote:
| https://www.exurbe.com/the-shape-of-rome/
|
| I think post has what you need.
| jsrcout wrote:
| That was fascinating, and informative!
| toyg wrote:
| As the sibling comment says, cities are not buried - they are
| subsumed by material that accretes on top of existing
| structures.
|
| Say you lay a road in a town, then the road starts developing
| holes; to even it out, you place a new layer on top. Over
| decades, this process raises the road so significantly that,
| when buildings are demolished, they get rebuilt at a higher
| level or their ruins are simply covered by new roads. Rinse and
| repeat for centuries, and you end up with Rome.
|
| If instead you just abandon the settlement (like it happened in
| many Egyptian / Greek / Roman towns, like Volubilis in
| Morocco), then nature will do its thing, pushing detritus over
| the ruins, or growing plants that will slowly create new layers
| of organic material that eventually turns to dirt. Towns near
| rivers or coasts might be claimed by waters once people stop
| maintaining their protection. Etc etc.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I want to point out the survivorship bias present here too.
| Only buried cities can survive millennia to be discovered
| later. Abandoned cities that were in erosion prone places are
| in little bits at the bottom of the slope. Cities that weren't
| abandoned can have buildings that are thousands of years old
| and actively lived in and maintained.
|
| I spent some time in an Italian hill town that has been
| continuously inhabited since the Romans. At the same time I
| visited Pompeii. Most of the buildings in the center were Roman
| and had identical construction to Pompeii. They were living
| "ruins" and therefore could not be discovered because they had
| never been lost. There was a Roman Theater in that town that
| had been partially built into homes and partially quarried for
| building materials. There had been a set of giant marble masks
| originally in the theater, but now scattered around the town
| built into other building. Conservation of matter, it doesn't
| go anywhere unless someone carries it away.
| ithkuil wrote:
| What is the name of town?
| tinco wrote:
| Not sure about this particular city, but for cities in general
| I think it's usually because they're just absolutely destroyed.
| I was just listening to Dan Carlin's King of Kings podcast and
| in there is the poignant story of a greek general traveling
| through what is modern Syria I believe. While traveling through
| the desert the general comes across an abandoned city unlike
| he's ever seen, and unrivalled by any city of his time. Its 11
| miles of walls were 10 meters thick and 30 meters high. There
| was no one around to inform him of what the city was named.
|
| Now it is believed that the city was the capital of some
| (Assyrian?) kingdom, that just 200 years earlier was basically
| the capital of the civilised world and had stood for hundreds
| of years. It was destroyed by a particularly cruel horde, and
| everyone in it was slaughtered, the fields around it salted,
| the goods and artefacts taken.
|
| It was so thoroughly destroyed that 200 years later a well read
| and knowledgable general couldn't even place it or find anyone
| to tell him about it. The only thing that remains were the
| basically indestructible stone walls.
|
| I don't really have the mind for remembering history details,
| so I'm probably way off on some details, but I thought it was a
| cool story about how we've come to find these ancient ruins
| just all abandoned without even locals knowing what they are.
| Dan Carlin makes it really come alive, highly recommend
| listening to his stories.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| I think you're referring to the city of Ur, the "capital" of
| Mesopotamia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur
|
| And the guy who rediscovered it (from a European perspective)
| was an Italian called Pietro Della Valle:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Della_Valle
| astine wrote:
| Tinco is referencing a famous story by Xenophon who was a
| Greek mercenary who fought for the Persians. The city being
| references is believed to be Nineveh(1), which was indeed a
| capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire at one point. The ruins
| of Nineveh still exist, but they are in northern Iraq, not
| Syria.
|
| 1 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:
| tlg...
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| Oh! Then indeed it better fits the description. So many
| lost cities in the cradle of civilization...
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| In most cases, those ancient cities and temples weren't buried
| by the people. Egypt is a desert country. Over time, the wind
| carries the sand over everything. Also, many old cities and
| temples were flooded by the Nile.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| Is every place being slowly buried likewise? Is the planet
| slowing getting thicker? Where does all this material come
| from?
| speeder wrote:
| Replying your specific question, actually the planet is
| slowly getting rounder.
|
| A simplification of the process:
|
| Tectonic plate movements create mountains, as they climb on
| top of each other (and where space was opened, lava there
| turns into new rock)
|
| Then erosion carry material from high places, to low
| places.
|
| Thus over time places in high areas get "shorter", while
| places in low areas get "taller".
|
| Meanwhile some parts of tectonic plates are sinking again
| and melting again.
|
| But as the planet core cools down, this process get slower
| and slower, and erosion speed remains "constant", so over
| time the tendency is the planet get rounder and rounder,
| eventually the planet would have cooled 100% and no new
| mountains would form, while erosion would make all
| mountains become flat over time.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Human skin is 99.9% of the dust in most homes.
|
| (had to reply with a gross out amusement, it's not sand,
| it's dead people!)
| anoncow wrote:
| I used to believe that too. However, apparently there is
| more to it https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/what-is-
| dust-made-of/
|
| Also this video by Derek is very informative
| https://youtu.be/jn5M48MVWyg
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Human skin is 99.9% of the dust in most homes.
|
| Sure, ever since Thanos.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Organic matter largely comes from the air.
|
| Inorganic matter largely gets blown from other places, or
| washed down from mountain tops.
| rustymonday wrote:
| In the case of Egypt it's mostly wind-blown sand and dust.
| But deposition can also be caused by river sedimentation
| during floods.
|
| In non-desert areas, dead biomass (fallen leaves, etc.)
| creates soil. My parents had a stone path through their
| yard that they didn't maintain, and within a decade it was
| covered over with soil and grass grew over it.
|
| Over the course of a few thousand years, structures can be
| buried by several meters of earth.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The speed of deposition is super variable. In fluvial
| environments, I've seen reports of feet per year, which
| put recent sites (i.e. medieval) under 40+m of sediment.
| On the other hand, I've worked sites with long term
| 'stable surfaces', where layers thousands of years old
| were within centimeters or less of modern contexts.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| They didn't. The cities are buried by the natural accumulation
| of dirt. Nobody would do it on purpose - what would be the
| point?
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| toldinstone on YouTube did a video on this about why ancient
| time is buried. 3m51s watch, and interesting enough I
| remembered it to recommend to you :)
|
| "Why Ancient Rome Is Buried": https://youtu.be/fz4ZdXpri04
| fogihujy wrote:
| I wonder if there's any written records to be found. Written
| sources from that time is rather scarce since they were
| systematically destroyed a few decades later.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Why were they destroyed?
| TrueJane wrote:
| As i was reading several sources about that, i didn't see any
| written artefacts, only mummies, pottery, masks and walls
| itself
| INTPenis wrote:
| Who does their spell check? I found 4 errors so far and I'm not
| even done with the slideshow.
| Vrondi wrote:
| It is quite obnoxious that this slideshow doesn't have a date on
| it _anywhere_.
| pdpi wrote:
| It's dated 09.04.2021. Hidden away in a weird spot at the top
| right corner
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Funny, ancient Egypt has the same issue!
| twic wrote:
| Actually, from the Nat Geo article it seems this is a case
| where that is not true:
|
| > Though the size of the city has yet to be determined, its
| date is clear thanks to hieroglyphics on a variety of items.
| A vessel containing two gallons of boiled meat was inscribed
| with the year 37 -- the time of Amenhotep III and Akhenaten's
| speculated father-son reign.
|
| Therefore i'm afraid i must condemn your joke as inaccurate.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I stand by my joke, as everything is dated according to the
| current pharaoh, but it's not like they signed their
| letters with the position of the planets - the dates
| relative to today are reconstructed in various ways as one
| pharaoh being so many years after another.
|
| The wiki on Egyptian Chronology explains various scenarios
| where the dates have had to be changed sometimes by
| hundreds of years according to new evidence:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_chronology
| [deleted]
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| How cool is this? Whenever cities of ancient civilizations are
| revealed, it kind of gives me shivers. It makes one wonder what
| else is out there, buried under the sands for thousands of years.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Atlantis is maybe still waiting for its Schliemann.
|
| And who know what else undersea, in the jungle or dessert.
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