Bluebird

Victorian kitchen discovery

Now there's an Aga with a saga: Victorian kitchen that has remained untouched for 60 years discovered in stately home renovation

• The treasure trove of Victorian items included a 19th-century cook book
• Also found were pastry cutters and antique fire extinguishers
  

By JAYA NARAIN

Last updated at 9:23 PM on 15th September 2011

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037644/Victorian-kitchen-remained-untouched-60-years.html#ixzz1mfOSns3l

 

Shrouded in a thick layer of dust and hidden under piles of junk, a complete Victorian kitchen lay forgotten for more than a generation.

Archie Graham-Palmer and his wife Philippa discovered the incredible time capsule when they began rummaging in the basement of the family home.

They found an entire kitchen kitted out as if the cook had just stepped out for a breath of air.

The old cooker in the Victorian kitchen, which has been uncovered after decades of gathering dust

Cooking utensils from the Victorian era remain in place on the walls, shelves and sideboards

House proud: Archie Graham-Palmer and wife Phillippa discovered the relic in the basement of their home 

The kitchen's entrance had been blocked since the Second World War with a collection of unwanted belongings

The kitchen was stocked with everything the staff needed to prepare meals for the household

As well as a full cooking range, they discovered kettles, pots, pans, pastry cutters, antique fire extinguishers and jelly moulds.

 

There was a spit for roasting pigs on, as well as a table and benches in the middle of the room which could easily seat 20 staff.

CEFN LEA PARK'S HISTORY

The current house at Cefn Lea Park was built around the turn of the 19th century, the previous building on the site having been destroyed by fire in 1794.

In the 18th Century it had been the home of the Griffiths family before passing on to the prominent Kenyon family of Gredington.

The house was sold in 1830 at an auction held at the Wynnstay Arms Hotel. It was bought by Rev Nathaniel Roberts whose wife, Frances, was daughter of John Matthews, attorney of Chester.

However, another fire that same year meant that the house needed extensive renovations. 

What we see today is likely to date from this period.

On Frances' death in 1850, Cefn Park passed to Sir William Henry Roger Palmer, Bt, of Kunure Park, Dublin, who was married to Frances' sister Eleanor. It subsequently went to their son, Sir Roger William Henry Palmer in 1854.

The kitchen is thought to date back to the 1830s when the house had a full complement of servants.

Unused for more than 100  years, the kitchen was apparently briefly recommissioned during the Second World War because it offered protection from air raids. 

But it was mothballed after the war and became a dumping ground.

Cefn Park near Wrexham, North Wales, has been passed down through the family since it was bought in 1830.

Mr Graham-Palmer, 41, who  worked in commercial forestry, moved back to the family home  this year to take over the estate from his  father.

With his wife, Philippa, 37, he began investigating the nooks and crannies that had been left undisturbed for decades.

‘The basement had been a dumping ground for years,’ he said. ‘We discovered that the room was as it would have been.

‘We even found a cookbook. Most of the recipes would have needed an army of cooks.’

He and his wife intend to preserve the kitchen because of its links to the estate’s Victorian past and it is being redecorated in colours  from the era.

 

 

Archie Graham-Palmer and his wife Philippa discovered the below-stairs kitchen in the 200-year-old stately home in Cefn Park

 

The bells with which the servants were summoned, as well as an unidentified weighted pulley system, remain mounted on the walls

 

 

 

The Cefn Park house is surrounded by 50 acres of land near Wrexham

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037644/Victorian-kitchen-remained-untouched-60-years.html#ixzz1mfOJuZNB

 

Release the Kraken

Kraken sea monster found? Researcher is mocked for theory

October 11, 2011 |  1:53 pm

 

 

Paleontologist Mark McMenamin knew he would face lots of skepticism when he presented an admittedly outrageous theory this week at a geologists convention.

His theory involves fossils found at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada that have long perplexed experts. The size of a school bus, the fossils are believed to be the remains of ichthyosaurs, ancient reptiles akin to today's sperm whales. But how did they get there? Further, the remains seemed to be arranged in an appealing geometric pattern, almost like a work of art. Who or what would have done that, and more important, why?

McMenamin, a Mount Holyoke College professor, believes he has the answer. He posits that a kraken-like sea monster -- basically a giant octopus -- attacked these whale-like creatures and dragged them to its watery lair millions of years ago, during the Triassic Era.

But that's not the most intriguing part of his theory. McMenamin believes that this creature then took some enjoyment from arranging the remains of its victims.

And that's not even the most intriguing part of his theory.

McMenamin believes that the remains are not just serendipitous;  he believes that they were intentionally arranged to mirror the suckers running up and down and the sea monster's tentacles.

In other words, this could be the world's first self-portrait, and a sign of just how clever and self-aware these Kraken-like sea creatures could be.

McMenamin expected his theory to raise eyebrows. But, after advance word got out, he was surprised to see people streaming into his session at the geologists' gathering to hear the theory for themselves. "That's never happened before, I can tell you that," he told The Times.

He also wasn't expecting so many jokes.

"That theory is kraken me up," one wag told McMenamin. "Smokin' kraken?" was the headline on a dismissive story at Discovery.com.

McMenamin says he's not the least bit offended. Such skepticism and batting around of theories is an integral part of the scientific process. He says his theory can stand up to it all.

"We were expecting a very skeptical response to this, and rightly so. It is a kind of bold theory," he said.

The key to the site, he said, "is the double row pattern" of fossils arranged in a deliberate fashion. The remains from one or more animals were sorted for size and arranged from smallest to largest, not unlike that distinctive pattern on an octopus' tentacle.

"There is a puzzle piece fit to it," he said. "I cannot conceive of a physical process that would do it, it's some kind of intentional process," he said. And it's not a prank, either, because the excavation of the site, which has been well documented and photographed, has puzzled experts from the beginning.

If you have doubts about the ability of an octopus-like creature to take on a whale, you could take a spin through the "Clash of the Titans" or "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

Or you could check out this famed  -- and non-fictional -- video of an octopus taking down a shark at the Seattle Aquarium: 

ALSO:

--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

Photo: Remains shaped in a deliberate geometric pattern.  Credit: Mark McMenamin

Paleontologist Mark McMenamin knew he would face lots of skepticism when he presented an admittedly outrageous theory this week at a geologists convention.

His theory involves fossils found at Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada that have long perplexed experts. The size of a school bus, the fossils are believed to be the remains of ichthyosaurs, ancient reptiles akin to today's sperm whales. But how did they get there? Further, the remains seemed to be arranged in an appealing geometric pattern, almost like a work of art. Who or what would have done that, and more important, why?

McMenamin, a Mount Holyoke College professor, believes he has the answer. He posits that a kraken-like sea monster -- basically a giant octopus -- attacked these whale-like creatures and dragged them to its watery lair millions of years ago, during the Triassic Era.

But that's not the most intriguing part of his theory. McMenamin believes that this creature then took some enjoyment from arranging the remains of its victims.

And that's not even the most intriguing part of his theory.

McMenamin believes that the remains are not just serendipitous;  he believes that they were intentionally arranged to mirror the suckers running up and down and the sea monster's tentacles.

In other words, this could be the world's first self-portrait, and a sign of just how clever and self-aware these Kraken-like sea creatures could be.

McMenamin expected his theory to raise eyebrows. But, after advance word got out, he was surprised to see people streaming into his session at the geologists' gathering to hear the theory for themselves. "That's never happened before, I can tell you that," he told The Times.

He also wasn't expecting so many jokes.

"That theory is kraken me up," one wag told McMenamin. "Smokin' kraken?" was the headline on a dismissive story at Discovery.com.

McMenamin says he's not the least bit offended. Such skepticism and batting around of theories is an integral part of the scientific process. He says his theory can stand up to it all.

"We were expecting a very skeptical response to this, and rightly so. It is a kind of bold theory," he said.

The key to the site, he said, "is the double row pattern" of fossils arranged in a deliberate fashion. The remains from one or more animals were sorted for size and arranged from smallest to largest, not unlike that distinctive pattern on an octopus' tentacle.

"There is a puzzle piece fit to it," he said. "I cannot conceive of a physical process that would do it, it's some kind of intentional process," he said. And it's not a prank, either, because the excavation of the site, which has been well documented and photographed, has puzzled experts from the beginning.

If you have doubts about the ability of an octopus-like creature to take on a whale, you could take a spin through the "Clash of the Titans" or "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."

Or you could check out this famed  -- and non-fictional -- video of an octopus taking down a shark at the Seattle Aquarium: 

ALSO:

--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

Photo: Remains shaped in a deliberate geometric pattern.  Credit: Mark McMenamin

If I had the acreage, I'd build a dry stone wall

Design

Dazzling Ingenuity of the Dry Stone Wall

By ALICE RAWSTHORN

Published: October 9, 2011

LONDON — It began with the runaway cows. When the photographer Mariana Cook and her family returned to their home on Martha’s Vineyard one afternoon, they found more than 50 cows grazing on their lawn. Part of the dry stone wall that divided their property from a neighboring field had collapsed, and the cows had forced their way through.

 

Mariana Cook

"My Wall in Snow," taken in Martha's Vineyard by Ms. Cook.

Multimedia

Interactive Feature

For the Love of Walls

 

Mariana Cook

In Ollantaytambo, Peru. The walls, which have been built for thousands of years, subscribe to the old school Modernist design concept that "form follows function."

The wall was built in the traditional way, from interlocking stones, which were carefully selected in terms of shape, texture and weight to stay securely in place within a self-supporting structure. It had been there for as long as Ms. Cook could remember, but it was only when she examined it with her neighbor, the cows’ owner, that she realized how intriguing it was, structurally and aesthetically. She started to take pictures of the wall in different seasons and embarked on an eight-year project to photograph other dry stone walls all over the world.

Ms. Cook’s photographs have been published in a book , “Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries,” together with essays by farmers, historians and an archaeologist on the history of dry stone walls in different countries. As well as revealing the beauty and longevity of the walls, the book tells a remarkable design story.

Robust, enduring and environmentally sensitive, a dry stone wall is a dazzling example of design ingenuity and of the possibility of making something useful from found objects that are usually ignored or discarded. A well-built wall can last for over a century, and requires less maintenance than a hedge or fence. It is made solely from found materials and removes no nutrients from the surrounding soil, while providing shelter for rabbits, mice and other wildlife. Insects thrive among the stones, as do lichen and mosses. A dry stone wall is also a model of the old school Modernist design concept that “form follows function.” Its beauty is usually coincidental, because every design decision taken during construction is determined by efficiency.

Dry stone walls have been built for thousands of years, ever since the start of the Neolithic Age in 7,000 B.C., when the first farming communities emerged in Greece. It was then that people began to supplement the food they found from hunting and foraging in the wild by cultivating their own plants and animals. They needed to find a means of sealing off their land to identify it as their own, and to prevent their livestock and poultry from straying, and predators from stealing their crops. Building a physical barrier was an obvious solution, and in many places, the only readily available construction materials were stones.

Other Neolithic innovations were driven by the same principle of “necessity is the mother of invention,” but most have been superseded over the centuries as new materials and production techniques have emerged. The dry stone wall is an exception. Even today it is designed and made in almost exactly the same way as it was some 9,000 years ago. Like the walls themselves, the underlying design principles have survived because they still work.

The most ancient walls photographed by Ms. Cook belong to the Hagar Qim Temple, which was built in Malta between 3,600 and 3,200 B.C., long before Stonehenge, and is now one of the world’s oldest religious sites. Among the others are the 15th-century Inca walls in Peru, whose immense stones were melded together so meticulously, that early Spanish colonialists described them as technical marvels in their reports back to Spain.

Most of the walls in the book are “working walls,” originally built by — or for — farmers on rocky terrain in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the United States and Mediterranean islands like Malta and Sicily. All of them were constructed for similar reasons, generally because the farmers needed to enclose their land and lacked other materials to do so, or wanted to remove unwanted stones to cultivate the soil. It is no coincidence that dry stone walls tend to be built in rocky places where trees are scarce and the climate extreme: scorching sunshine in the Mediterranean Basin; icy winds and rain on the hills of northern England and the islands off the Scottish and Irish coasts.

Would-be dry stone wall builders can now learn the craft on courses, but most of the older walls were built by instinct, sometimes with the help of advice passed on by word of mouth. Yet many of those walls demonstrate considerable skill and flair. The limestone walls on the Irish island of Inis Meain are unusually expressive with different shapes and sizes of stones positioned to create exquisite patterns. Useful features have been added to the walls there and elsewhere, such as sheep creep passageways, big enough for a sheep to squeeze through, but not cows, and step stiles that people can use to climb over.

“Working walls” also evoke their location. They tend to be built from stones found nearby, and often reflect the history of the place. Sometimes that history can be ugly. The dry stone walls in Kentucky are often called “slave walls,” because many of them were built by African-American slaves working on the farms. My own childhood memories of the picturesque dry stone walls around a remote village in the Yorkshire Dales were ruined when I discovered that they too were partly constructed by slaves. A Jamaican sugar baron had brought them to England in the 18th century and sent them out on the hills to build walls for weeks at a time with minimal provisions. Many of the slaves died there.

Thankfully, many “working walls” have a benign history. One of their charms is what they tell us about the hopes and expectations of the people who built them. Constructing a dry stone wall demands considerably more time and skill than other forms of enclosure, but the result can be depended upon to last longer. Each one represents a human investment in the future as a heroic effort to build something, which will define the landscape and protect the land for generations.

Something about mummies

Exhibition Review

Long Dead, Yet Somehow Vaguely Alive

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

Fourth graders from EastSide Charter School in Wilmington, Del., getting a special preview of the “Mummies of the World” exhibition at the Franklin Institute, check out the tattooed woman.

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Published: June 16, 2011

PHILADELPHIA — After a while, you get used to the trappings of death: the vacant, hollow stares; prongs of teeth protruding from desiccated gums; the shriveled flesh pulled like dried leather over jutting joints. And there’s a dreadful uniformity in those signs, whether you look at the remains of a 500-year-old dog that was found in 1953 in a peat bog in Germany or at an 800-year-old embalmed child from Peru who had been interred in a crunched and compact crouch.

Multimedia

Slide Show

Wrapped Up

What you don’t get used to in this haunting, engrossing and somewhat creepy exhibition, “Mummies of the World,” which opens at the Franklin Institute here on Saturday, are the trappings of life that are still evident in these mummified bodies, the hints of something before death, whether left intact by ice or bog or crypt, or jealously preserved using linen wrappings, various salts, tarlike paste and obsessive determination.

There is the silken, flaxen hair of an eighth-century Coptic Egyptian child, visible past the edges of an ancient embroidered tunic, or the oval tattoos on the skin above the bony breasts of a 13th-century Peruvian woman, or — almost nightmarishly touching — the dark, rolled flesh of an 8- to 10-month-old Peruvian child who died 6,500 years ago, at least 1,000 years before Egyptians were known to preserve their dead rulers for an eternity of posthumous pleasures.

The traces of life are everywhere here, in a show that describes itself as “the largest exhibition of real mummies and related artifacts ever assembled.” There are 150 objects on display, most on loan from German museums. They include not just the expected relics of ancient Egypt, but also unexpected relics of that time and place: mummies of a falcon, an ibis, a crocodile; a mummified foot separated from its companion limbs during an era when mummies were plundered for their parts; a startling Egyptian head from the Roman era, half wrapped in embalmer’s linen.

The sensations accumulate, for displayed here too are far less well-known mummies of South America, where, over thousands of years, multiple cultures honed embalming techniques, from the ancient Chinchorros in Peru to the 13th-century Chiu-chiu in Chile, leading up to the Incas, with their human sacrifices and death celebrations. And here, too, are the members of a single family from 18th-century Hungary, the ill-fated Orlovitses, who perished when tuberculosis ravaged the small town of Vac. Their bodies were rediscovered in 1994, naturally mummified, their paper-thin skin pocked with small holes left by stray bugs in a forgotten church crypt.

Aspects of life in these preserved bodies slip past their shrouds in eerie triumph. The harsh and forbidding environments of the desert, the bog, the crypt and the cave may easily extinguish life, but they also can act to preserve life’s aspects, creating natural mummies. But you also begin to suspect, after seeing meticulously prepared mummies from Egypt, South America, Oceana and northern Asia, that such deliberate preservation may not be an exception in the history of human cultures, but the rule.

Two other recent exhibitions have also incorporated mummies or the physical traces of the dead and dying body: the recent show of ancient Silk Road artifacts at the nearby Penn Museum and the exhibition about Pompeii at Discovery Times Square, where plaster molds show the shape of bodies as Vesuvius’s eruption engulfed them. But this exhibition is quite different.

Here we are asked again and again to confront the bodies themselves, and the quantity and variety are startling. This exhibition helped set attendance records in its previous showings at the Milwaukee Public Museum and the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Produced by American Exhibitions Inc., it is one of a recent genre of exhibitions created by for-profit companies that act as impresarios, arranging for the shows to travel to major museums. (The next stop for this one has not been announced, but the company has the license to display these objects through the summer of 2013.)

The exhibition originated from an event that also has elements of the strangely marvelous. Many of its artifacts come from a collection of 20 mummies at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim, Germany. They were presumed destroyed or lost during World War II but were rediscovered in 2004 in the museum vaults, inspiring a German exhibition of mummies from which this one developed.

So little was known about those mummies that a “German Mummy Project” was undertaken, using the latest scientific tools for analysis. That project also gives this exhibition its theme; the investigations are described in text panels and with touch-screen expositions. In a bit of overreaching, the exhibition presenters have coined the term “mummyologist” and trademarked it. But these studies, whether done by mummyologists™ or not, are fascinating, and the research can be explored in more detail in an excellent catalog of companion essays.

Through the analysis of one Peruvian child, for example, it was learned that the mummy’s preservation was more than an accident of climate. The skin bore traces of copal, a tree resin, which was evidence of deliberate embalming. Through CT scans, researchers have learned that in life mummies have suffered many illnesses and indignities as well.

One mummy showed evidence of a congenital heart problem. Another had signs of bone malformation. Yet another, of a woman in the Hungarian tomb, showed advanced tuberculosis, which she probably passed on to her husband and son, who are also displayed here. Analysis of hair in some Peruvian mummies found traces of nicotine and coca and signs of a fish- or plant-based diet. Worn teeth in an Egyptian mummy hinted at a diet of hard, coarse grains. DNA analysis has been used to guess at regions of origin.

But such research is not the core of the exhibition’s appeal; in some ways, the show suffers from being too cursory in part of its survey. We have to work too hard to get a sense of the different cultures in South America that have produced these mummies; we don’t readily understand what is known and what is surmised about their practices. Much more is understood about Egyptian mummies, but the exhibition compresses thousands of years to make a single vivid impression. The exhibition wants credit for scientific seriousness, but it doesn’t want to lessen the theatrical impact.

This is not really the exhibition’s fault. The two most astonishing mummies here — the crouching, tattooed woman and the ancient infant — come from a museum in Detmold, Germany; only guesses can be made about their South American origins. They were disinterred during centuries when archaeological and anthropological approaches were far more cavalier than they are today.

The recently discovered core collection here also shows that historical analysis has long been eclipsed by talismanic impressions. These mummies were purchased by the Mannheim museum in 1917 from heirs of the artist Gabriel von Max (1840-1915), whose collection of mummies and skulls must have been related to his fascination with parapsychology, hypnosis, somnambulism and spiritualism. His paintings combine kitsch spirituality, a fascination with the primitive and a preoccupation with his large family of pet monkeys. What importance could the provenance of mummies have had to him when, even now, their visual and emotional impact remain so profound?

There is no escaping the magical and mythical here, either. We learn, for example, that the word mummy comes from the Arabic mumiya, referring to bitumen or asphalt, which was thought to have medicinal properties. It turns out that many of the oils and resins used in embalming are similar in character to mumiya (or mumia). So after the 12th century, a desire for this curative compound not only helped inspire a covetous mummy cult but also gave these corpses their now common name. Countless mummies were pulverized into powders believed to preserve life before death, if not afterward.

A vintage bottle of mumiya is on display here, along with a contemporary tube of “Mumijo Crème,” claiming the same ingredients. There is also a 1924 Merck pharmaceutical catalog in which “Mumia vera aegyptic” — true Egyptian mummy extract — is sold just a page before the catalog offers “Vaseline Pennsylvania.”

And who can avoid thinking that even in historical detail there are elements of the fantastical, at least when it comes to mummies? The early-17th-century corpse of Baron von Holz is here; so is the mummified Baroness. Both were interred in Sommersdorf Castle in Southern Germany. And both, we are told, were given to the exhibition by Dr. Manfred Baron von Crailsheim, their living descendent — on “private loan.”

Mummies of the World: The Exhibition

WHEN AND WHERE Through Oct. 23. The Franklin Institute, 222 North 20th Street, Philadelphia.

MORE INFORMATION (215) 448-1200, fi.edu.

WHERE TO EAT

Rose Tattoo Cafe, 19th and Callowhill Street, Philadelphia; (215) 569-8939, rosetattoocafe.com.

Kite and Key, 1836 Callowhill Street, Philadelphia; (215) 568-1818, thekiteandkey.com.

Chauvet Cave film

'Cave of Forgotten Dreams' becomes highest-grossing independently released documentary of 2011

June 12, 2011 |  1:27 pm

“Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” Werner Herzog’s 3-D documentary about an expedition into a French cave, has quietly been discovered by some moviegoers.

The film, which first premiered in late April in only five theaters, has since collected $3.7 million, making it the highest-grossing independently released documentary of the year, according to distributor Sundance Selects. That means it’s not being compared to concert films such as Justin Bieber’s “Never Say Never” or the nature documentary “African Cats,” both of which were released by major studios and supported by big marketing campaigns.

After “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” the next highest-grossing documentary this year has been “The Last Lions,” a National Geographic release that took in only $631,925 during its short run. And “Pom Wonderful Presents the Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” which had the advantage of a well-known director in filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, collected a weak $602,479.

Herzog also made the much-talked about documentary “Grizzly Man,” which centered on a man who traveled yearly to Alaska to study bears and was eventually mauled to death by one. That film ultimately grossed $3.2 million.

To make “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” Herzog traveled to a different type of remote locale. He was granted exclusive access to the 32,000-year-old Chauvet cave, whose limestone walls are painted with images of animals such as bison and horses.

--Amy Kaufman

The bones of Mona Lisa

Is this the skeleton of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa'?

(13)

May 27, 2011 |  1:09 pm

The seemingly never-ending quest for the true identity of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" took a notable step forward Friday when the Italian media reported that a skeleton found in a former convent in Florence could be the remains of Lisa Gherardini del Giocondo -- the 16th century woman who is believed to have been the model for the world's most famous painting.

The skeleton is believed to be female, but more tests are required to be certain, according to reports. Researchers in Italy used historical records, including Gherardini's death certificate that was discovered a few years ago, to locate the remains.

Gherardini, who died around 1542, is believed to have married a merchant named Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo. Some say that he commissioned Da Vinci to paint the portrait of his wife to celebrate the birth of a child. After his death, Gherardini is believed to have entered a convent.

The painting's Italian title -- "La Gioconda" -- refers to the subject's married name.

Bologna University anthropologist Giorgio Gruppioni told Italian media that the skeleton was whole and connected, but had partially collapsed. He added that further excavation will be needed to confirm the hypothesis that it is the remains of Gherardini.

Giza Pyramid reveals new clues

Mysterious markings discovered at Great Pyramid of Giza

By Nuala Calvi, for CNN

May 28, 2011 5:43 a.m. EDT

Markings deep inside the Great Pyramid of Giza could shed light on the monument's secret chambers and tunnels.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Marks found in tiny chamber at the end of a passage date from 4,500 years ago
• The painted hieroglyphs and stone markings were filmed using a robot camera
• Scholars hope they will explain why the mysterious shafts were built

London, England (CNN) -- A robot explorer has revealed ancient markings inside a secret chamber at Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza.

The markings, which have lain unseen for 4,500 years, were filmed using a bendy camera small enough to fit through a hole in a stone door at the end of a narrow tunnel.

It is hoped they could shed light on why the tiny chamber and the tunnel -- one of several mysterious passages leading from the larger King's and Queen's chambers -- were originally built.

The markings take the form of hieroglyphic symbols in red paint as well as lines in the stone that may have been made by masons when the chamber was being built.

The big question is the purpose of these tunnels.
--Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University

RELATED TOPICS

• Pyramids of Giza
• Egypt
• Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities

According to Peter Der Manuelian, Philip J. King Professor of Egyptology at Harvard University, similar lines have been found elsewhere in Giza. "Sometimes they identify the work gang (who built the room), sometimes they give a date and sometimes they give guidelines to mark cuttings or directional symbols about the beginning or end of a block," he said.

"The big question is the purpose of these tunnels," he added. "There are architectural explanations, symbolic explanations, religious explanations -- even ones relating to the alignment of the stars -- but the final word on them is yet to be written. The challenge is that no human can fit inside these channels so the only way to do this exploration is with robots."

Pictures of the markings have been published in the Annales du Service Des Antiquities de l'Egypte, the official publication of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, following an international mission led by the Minister for Antiquities.

The robot explorer that took the images is named Djedi, after the magician whom Pharaoh Khufu consulted when planning the layout of the Great Pyramid. It was designed and built by engineers at the University of Leeds, in collaboration with Scoutek UK and Dassault Systemes, France.

A close-up view of the red marks on the floor in the pyramid

Although robots have previously sent back pictures from within the pyramid's tunnels, Djedi's creators say it is the first to be able to explore the walls and floors in detail, rather than just take pictures looking straight ahead, thanks to a "micro snake" camera.

The camera also scrutinized two copper pins embedded in the door to the chamber at the end of the tunnel. In a statement, Shaun Whitehead, of Scoutek UK, said: "People have been wondering about the purpose of these pins for over 20 years. It had been suggested that they were handles, keys or even parts of an electrical power plant, but our new pictures from behind the pins cast doubt on these theories.

"We now know that these pins end in small, beautifully made loops, indicating that they were more likely ornamental rather than electrical connections or structural features. Also, the back of the door is polished so it must have been important. It doesn't look like it was a rough piece of stone used to stop debris getting into the shaft."

The team's next task is to look at the chamber's far wall to check whether it is a solid block of stone or another door.

"We are keeping an open mind and will carry out whatever investigations are needed to work out what these shafts and doors are for," said Whitehead. "It is like a detective story, we are using the Djedi robot and its tools to piece the evidence together."

R.I.P. 50-Foot Woman

Mummified body of former Playboy playmate Yvette Vickers found in her Benedict Canyon home

Vickers' body was found by a neighbor in a mummified state that suggests she may have been dead for close to a year, police say. She appeared in 1950s B-movies such as 'Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.'

 

May 2, 2011 |  2:21 pm

Yvette Vickers, an early Playboy playmate whose credits as a B-movie actress included such cult films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead last week at her Benedict Canyon home. Her body appears to have gone undiscovered for months, police said.

Vickers, 82, had not been seen for a long time. A neighbor discovered her body in an upstairs room of her Westwanda Drive home on April 27. Its mummified state suggests she could have been dead for close to a year, police said.

The official cause of death will by determined by the Los Angeles county coroner's office, but police said they saw no sign of foul play.

Vickers had lived in the 1920s-era stone and wood home for decades, and it served as the background for some of her famous modeling pictures. But over time it had become dilapidated, exposed in some places to the elements.

Susan Savage, an actress, went to check on Vickers after noticing old letters and cobwebs in her elderly neighbor's mailbox.

"The letters seemed untouched and were starting to yellow," Savage said. "I just had a bad feeling."

After pushing open a barricaded front gate and scaling a hillside, Savage peered through a broken window with another piece of glass taped over the hole. She decided to enter the house after seeing a shock of blond hair, which turned out to be a wig.

The inside of the home was in disrepair and it was hard to move through the rooms because boxes containing what appeared to be clothes, junk mail and letters formed barriers, Savage said. Eventually, she made her way upstairs and found a room with a small space heater still on.

She was looking at a cordless phone that appeared to have been knocked off its cradle when she first saw the body on the floor, she said. Savage had known Vickers but the remains were unrecognizable, she said.

She remembered her neighbor as an elegant women in a broad straw hat, dressed in white, with flowing blond hair and "a warm smile."

"She kept to herself, had friends and seemed like a very independent spirit," Savage said. "To the end she still got cards and letter from all over the world requesting photos and still wanting to be her friend."

Savage said the neighbors felt terrible.

"We've all been crying about this," she said. "Nobody should be left alone like that."

Space flotsam on the black market

 

Black-Market Trinkets From Space

Mario Di Martino

The Kamil crater in southern Egypt was initially discovered during a survey of satellite images.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: April 4, 2011

 

Ebay and other Web sites pulse with hundreds of sales pitches. “The pieces below have an exceptional patina,” a site called Star-bits.com said of 10 pictured fragments.

 

A 60-gram fragment of the Gebel Kamil meteorite.

The ads are for chunks of meteorites, bits of asteroids that have fallen from the sky and are as prized by scientists as they are by collectors. As more meteorites have been discovered in recent years, interest in them has flourished and an illegal sales market has boomed — much to the dismay of the people who want to study them and the countries that consider them national treasures.

“It’s a black market,” said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist at Case Western Reserve University who directs the federal search for meteorites in Antarctica. “It’s as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal.”

The discovery of a rich and historically significant meteorite crater in southern Egypt, just north of the Sudanese border, has shown the voracious appetite for new fragments. Just as scientists appeared to be on the cusp of decrypting the evidence to solve an ancient puzzle, looters plundered the desolate site, and the political chaos in Egypt seems to ensure that the scientists will not be going back anytime soon.

The mystery began thousands of years ago with Egyptian hieroglyphs, which refer to the “iron of heaven.” Archaeologists have long debated whether the Egyptians made artifacts from iron meteorites that fell to Earth in fiery upheavals. The main evidence came from ancient knife blades of iron that had high concentrations of nickel — a rare element in the Earth’s crust that was considered a signature of extraterrestrial origin.

But doubts grew as investigators found terrestrial sites rich in nickel that ancient peoples could have mined. And scientists in Egypt never found an impact crater and a nearby lode of meteorites.

Then in June 2008, Vincenzo de Michele, an Italian mineralogist and former curator at the Natural History Museum of Milan who had explored the Egyptian desert for nearly two decades, was scanning the area on Google Earth when he saw something unusual.

He told Mario Di Martino of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Turin, and together they formed an expedition that surveyed the desert site in February 2009. To their delight, the desolate area bristled with iron meteorites — more than 5,000 of them — and they named the crater Gebel Kamil, after a nearby mountain.

The team members signed a note of discovery and put it in a bottle at the crater’s bottom. The find was a first. It was the only meteorite crater ever discovered in Egypt — its mouth 15o feet wide — and the team vowed to keep it confidential as long as possible.

But a return expedition in February 2010, found that the bottle had disappeared. The secret was out.

A few months later, in June, meteorites from the crater showed up for sale at an annual show in Ensisheim, France. In a review, the International Meteorite Collectors Association called them arguably the world’s “most fascinating new iron find.” The Egyptian rocks, it added, “received a lot of attention.”

Popular or not, the meteorites were taboo. In Egypt and elsewhere, scientists say, it is illegal without a permit to remove meteorites from a country.

Yet scavengers have disseminated them widely: on Star-bits.com, one of many sites that sell a variety of meteorites, the 10 fragments with rich patinas are said to be from Gebel Kamil. The costliest of the 10 — a two-pound rock, just large enough to cover the fingers of a man’s hand — is priced at $1,600.Eric Olson of Star-bits defended the marketing as legitimate and beyond Egyptian law. “I didn’t buy them from the Egyptians,” he said in an interview. “I bought them second- and thirdhand.”

The scientists say they have relatively few samples compared with the booming illicit sales.

“We have at our disposal a very limited number of specimens to study and exhibit,” said Dr. Di Martino. He and other members of the Gebel Kamil crater discovery team, he added, don’t have the money to buy them on the flourishing black market.

Dr. Harvey of Case Western Reserve said the quandary applied to the scientific community as a whole. The rampant looting of meteorite sites and skyrocketing prices for the fragments, he said, “dramatically reduce who can get samples to do the research.”

The black market has exploded in size mainly because of a rush of new meteorites arriving from North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Starting in the late 1980s and 1990s, explorers and nomads discovered that dark-colored meteorites stood out against flat, featureless areas covered by sand and small pebbles. And dry desert air helped preserve the rocks from space.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/science/05meteorite.html

Ancient mummies and their arteries

Egyptian mummies prove ancient people also had hardening of the arteries

The mummy Maiherpri undergoes CT scanning. (Dr. Michael Miyamoto)

CT scans of Egyptian mummies show that many of them suffered from hardening of their arteries, researchers said Sunday. Cardiologists have generally believed that atherosclerosis is a byproduct of the modern lifestyle, caused by eating foods that are too high in fats, lack of exercise and smoking. The new findings indicate that "we may understand atherosclerosis less well than we think," Dr. Gregory S. Thomas, a cardiologist at UC Irvine, told a New Orleans meeting of the American College of Cardiology. It may be that humans "are predisposed to atherosclerosis," he said, "that it is part of our genetic makeup."

Thomas and his colleagues reported 18 months ago on a study of 16 mummies, in which they found hardening of the arteries in nine. Eight of those nine were older than 45 when they died. The oldest of the atherosclerotic mummies belonged to a woman known as Lady Rai, who had been a nursemaid to Queen Ahmose Nefertiti. She died at the age of 30 to 40 around 1530 BC, 200 years before the time of King Tut.

In the new study, Thomas and his colleagues in the U.S. and Egypt expanded the study to 52 Egyptian mummies dating from about 1981 BC to AD 364.  They were able to identify arteries and heart tissue in 44 of the mummies and observed calcification -- a clear sign of hardening of the arteries that is also seen in modern patients -- in nearly half of them. That included 20% of those who had died before the age of 40 and 60% of those who were older than 40 when they died. In the younger patients, the team typically observed calcification in only one major blood vessel, while in the older ones they found it in multiple vessels. In some, they found signs of calcification in the brain as well.

The most ancient mummy with hardening of the arteries was a princess whose name was thought to be Ahmose-Meyret-Anon, who lived between about 1580 and 1550 BC. "This is the first known case of atherosclerosis in arteries of the heart," Thomas said.

The Egyptians ate more fruit and vegetables and less meat than we do and their meat was leaner. They also led a more active lifestyle and were not thought to have smoked. Given that they developed atherosclerosis anyway, Thomas said, it becomes even more important to take measures to forestall development of the disease as long as possible, including stopping smoking, eating less red meat and losing weight.

The study was published online Sunday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging and will appear in the April print edition.

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times