Investigations on an egyptian coffin and mummified head from Burgdorf Museum, Switzerland - A case of a historical puzzle

In the Burgdorf Museum of Ethnology, a mummy rests in a coffin. According to the inventory book, it was purchased from the Cairo Egyptian museum in 1926. The coffin was now examined by Egyptologists and the mummy was radiocarbon dated and examined by Anthropologists. The aim of the study was to compare the results and to check whether mummy and coffin actually belong together. The skull was examined morphological-anthropologically and by CT as a “blank sample”. Coffin and skull imply that the individual was female. The coffin dates to the Ptolemaic period. Only skull bones are preserved, the ethmoid is damaged. CT images Show resinous substances, bone fragments and brain remnants inside the skull. The ethmoid bone was probably foraminated during the mummification process and thus ended up inside the skull. The individual was mummified between the New Kingdom and the Ptolemaic period. Due to its style, it is most probable that the coffin comes from the Gamhud necropolis. The Burgdorf museum of ethnology inventory book chronicles were largely falsified by the examinations. There is a time gap between coffin and the mummy, there are two possible interpretations: the body was mummified with older linen, or the mummy and the coffin do not belong together. The authors strongly advise further investigations.

Chronology of Lake El'gygytgyn sediments – a combined magnetostratigraphic, palaeoclimatic and orbital tuning study based on multi-parameter analyses

A 318-metre-long sedimentary profile drilled by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) at Site 5011-1 in Lake El’gygytgyn, Far East Russian Arctic, has been analysed for its sedimentologic response to global climate modes by chronostratigraphic methods. The 12 km wide lake is sited off-centre in an 18 km large crater that was created by the impact of a meteorite 3.58 Ma ago. Since then sediments have been continuously deposited. For establishing their chronology, major reversals of the earth’s magnetic field provided initial tie points for the age model, confirming that the impact occurred in the earliest geomagnetic Gauss chron. Various stratigraphic parameters, reflecting redox conditions at the lake floor and climatic conditions in the catchment were tuned synchronously to Northern Hemisphere insolation variations and the marine oxygen isotope stack, respectively. Thus, a robust age model comprising more than 600 tie points could be defined. It could be shown that deposition of sediments in Lake El’gygytgyn occurred in concert with global climatic cycles. The upper �160m of sediments represent the past 3.3 Ma, equivalent to sedimentation rates of 4 to 5 cm ka−1, whereas the lower 160m represent just the first 0.3 Ma after the impact, equivalent to sedimentation rates in the order of 45 cm ka−1. This study also provides orbitally tuned ages for a total of 8 tephras deposited in Lake El’gygytgyn.

Late Weichselian local ice dome configuration and chronology in Northwestern Svalbard: early thinning, late retreat

The chronology and configuration of the Svalbard Barents Sea Ice Sheet (SBSIS) during the Late Weichselian (LW) are based on few and geographically scattered data. Thus, the timing and configuration of the SBSIS has been a subject of extensive debate. We present provenance data of erratic boulders and cosmogenic 10Be ages of bedrock and boulders from Northwest Spitsbergen (NWS), Svalbard to determine the thickness, configuration and chronology during the LW. We sampled bedrock and boulders of mountain summits and summit slopes, along with erratic boulders from coastal locations around NWS. We suggest that a local ice dome over central NWS during LW drained radially in all directions. Provenance data from erratic boulders from northern coastal lowland Reinsdyrflya suggest northeastward ice flow through Liefdefjorden. 10Be ages of high-elevation erratic boulders in central NWS (687–836 m above sea level) ranging from 18.3 ± 1.3 ka to 21.7 ± 1.4 ka, indicate that the centre of a local ice dome was at least 300 m thicker than at present. 10Be ages of all high-elevation erratics (>400 m above sea level, central and coastal locations) indicate the onset of ice dome thinning at 25–20 ka. 10Be ages from erratic boulders on Reinsdyrflya ranging from 11.1 ± 0.8 ka to 21.4 ± 1.7 ka, indicate an ice cover over the entire Reinsdyrflya during LW and a complete deglaciation prior to the Holocene, but apparently later than the thinning in the mountains. Lack of moraine deposits, but the preservation of beach terraces, suggest that the ice covering this peninsula possibly was cold-based and that Reinsdyrflya was part of an inter ice-stream area covered by slow-flowing ice, as opposed to the adjacent fjord, which possibly was filled by a fast-flowing ice stream. Despite the early thinning of the ice sheet (25–20 ka) we find a later timing of deglaciation of the fjords and the distal lowlands. Several bedrock samples (10Be) from vertical transects in the central mountains of NWS pre-date the LW, and suggest either ice free or pervasive cold-based ice conditions. Our reconstruction is aligned with the previously suggested hypothesis that a complex multi-dome ice-sheet-configuration occupied Svalbard and the Barents Sea during LW, with numerous drainage basins feeding fast ice streams, separated by slow flowing, possibly cold-based, inter ice-stream areas.

An optimized multi-proxy, multi-site Antarctic ice and gas orbital chronology (AICC2012): 120--800 ka

An accurate and coherent chronological framework is essential for the interpretation of climatic and environmental records obtained from deep polar ice cores. Until now, one common ice core age scale had been developed based on an inverse dating method (Datice), combining glaciological modelling with absolute and stratigraphic markers between 4 ice cores covering the last 50 ka (thousands of years before present) (Lemieux-Dudon et al., 2010). In this paper, together with the companion paper of Veres et al. (2013), we present an extension of this work back to 800 ka for the NGRIP, TALDICE, EDML, Vostok and EDC ice cores using an improved version of the Datice tool. The AICC2012 (Antarctic Ice Core Chronology 2012) chronology includes numerous new gas and ice stratigraphic links as well as improved evaluation of background and associated variance scenarios. This paper concentrates on the long timescales between 120–800 ka. In this framework, new measurements of δ18Oatm over Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11–12 on EDC and a complete δ18Oatm record of the TALDICE ice cores permit us to derive additional orbital gas age constraints. The coherency of the different orbitally deduced ages (from δ18Oatm, δO2/N2 and air content) has been verified before implementation in AICC2012. The new chronology is now independent of other archives and shows only small differences, most of the time within the original uncertainty range calculated by Datice, when compared with the previous ice core reference age scale EDC3, the Dome F chronology, or using a comparison between speleothems and methane. For instance, the largest deviation between AICC2012 and EDC3 (5.4 ka) is obtained around MIS 12. Despite significant modifications of the chronological constraints around MIS 5, now independent of speleothem records in AICC2012, the date of Termination II is very close to the EDC3 one.

News from an Old Excavation: Two Hitherto Unnoticed Measure Capacity Signs on an Egyptian Stone Vessel of the Middle Kingdom from Royal Tomb II at Byblos

Excavated by French Egyptologist P. Montet in the 1920s, Royal Tomb II at Byblos (Bronze Age Gubla) yielded a significant number of Egyptian objects of the Middle Kingdom. Among these finds is a stone vessel with lid that carries the cartouche of a king named Amenemhat, often believed to be Amenemhat IV of the late Middle Kingdom. Hitherto unnoticed by the scholarly community, however, are two Egyptian measure capacity signs on the stone vessel itself. Since measure capacity signs on stone vessels dating to the Middle Kingdom are only rarely attested even in Egypt, the signs on the stone vessel from Royal Tomb II at Byblos therefore contribute considerably to our understanding of the use and application of such signs. The article deals with the examination of these signs and tries to correlate them with the actual capacity of the vessel.