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Skeletons That Spotlight Plight Of Ancient Commoners
Posted: 03/19/2013 11:28 am EDT
Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Published: 03/18/2013 12:58 PM EDT
While an Egyptian pharaoh built majestic temples filled with sparkling treasures, the lower classes performed backbreaking work on meager diets, new evidence suggests.
An analysis of more than 150 skeletons from a 3,300-year-old cemetery at the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna reveals fractures, wear and tear from heavy lifting, and rampant malnutrition amongst the city's commoners.
The discovery, detailed in the March issue of the journal Antiquity, could shed light on how the non-elites of ancient Egyptian society lived.
Overnight city
For a brief, 17-year period, the center of Egypt was Amarna, a small city on the banks of the Nile, about 218 miles (350 kilometers) south of Cairo.
The pharaoh Akhenaten relocated his capital city to Amarna to build a pure, uncontaminated cult of worship dedicated to the sun god Aten. [Gallery: Sun Gods and Goddesses]
In a few years, temples, court buildings and housing complexes sprung up. At one time, 20,000 to 30,000 court officials, soldiers, builders and servants lived in the city.
But after Akhenaten's death, the next pharaoh, Tutankhamun, promptly rolled up the experiment. The city, which lacked good agricultural land, was soon abandoned.
Because the Egyptians occupied Amarna for such a short time, the city provides archaeologists with an unprecedented insight into what people's lives looked like at a specific moment in history, said study co-author Anna Stevens, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.
Hard life
About 10 years ago, a surveyor investigating a region in the desert near Amarna discovered an ancient cemetery. The site contained hundreds of skeletons and skeletal fragments from lower-class Egyptians. [See Photos of the Ancient Egyptian Cemetery]
Archaeologists have unearthed graves with hundreds of skeletons at the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna.
Click link below for full article...
Disease three-quarters of adults contracted
Posted: 03/19/2013 11:28 am EDT
Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Published: 03/18/2013 12:58 PM EDT
While an Egyptian pharaoh built majestic temples filled with sparkling treasures, the lower classes performed backbreaking work on meager diets, new evidence suggests.
An analysis of more than 150 skeletons from a 3,300-year-old cemetery at the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna reveals fractures, wear and tear from heavy lifting, and rampant malnutrition amongst the city's commoners.
The discovery, detailed in the March issue of the journal Antiquity, could shed light on how the non-elites of ancient Egyptian society lived.
Overnight city
For a brief, 17-year period, the center of Egypt was Amarna, a small city on the banks of the Nile, about 218 miles (350 kilometers) south of Cairo.
The pharaoh Akhenaten relocated his capital city to Amarna to build a pure, uncontaminated cult of worship dedicated to the sun god Aten. [Gallery: Sun Gods and Goddesses]
In a few years, temples, court buildings and housing complexes sprung up. At one time, 20,000 to 30,000 court officials, soldiers, builders and servants lived in the city.
But after Akhenaten's death, the next pharaoh, Tutankhamun, promptly rolled up the experiment. The city, which lacked good agricultural land, was soon abandoned.
Because the Egyptians occupied Amarna for such a short time, the city provides archaeologists with an unprecedented insight into what people's lives looked like at a specific moment in history, said study co-author Anna Stevens, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.
Hard life
About 10 years ago, a surveyor investigating a region in the desert near Amarna discovered an ancient cemetery. The site contained hundreds of skeletons and skeletal fragments from lower-class Egyptians. [See Photos of the Ancient Egyptian Cemetery]
Click link below for full article...
Disease three-quarters of adults contracted