[url]http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/11/africa/nefertiti-tomb-tutankhamun/index.html[/url]
[quote]Nefertiti has continued to capture our collective imagination throughout the ages. Yet no trace has been found of the legendary "beautiful one" who ruled across Egypt at her husband's side... until, possibly, now.
Nicholas Reeves, a British archaeologist at the University of Arizona believes he has found her resting place hidden in plain sight -- in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
The bold new theory comes after extensive analysis of high resolution images published online last year by Factum Arte, a Madrid-based art restoration specialist who helped create a facsimile of King Tut's burial chamber in Luxor. In the scans, Reeves spotted cracks in the walls that could indicate two previously unrecognized "ghost" doorways lay behind.
"The implications are extraordinary, for, if digital appearance translates into physical reality, it seems we are now faced not merely with the prospect of a new, Tutankhamun-era storeroom to the west; to the north (there) appears to be signaled a continuation of tomb KV 62 (Tutankhamun's tomb), and within these uncharted depths an earlier royal interment -- that of Nefertiti herself."[/quote]
more images are on the page itself, but imo this would be one of the most sensational discoveries in Egyptology this decade at least. Admittedly they wont be excavating there for a few more years while they do more testing, but there's that.
Every archaeologist in my department is jerking off to this news. Seriously that's the craziest circumstances for finding a Egyptian royal's tomb ever.
Almost wish they'd put archaeology on hold until ISIS is handled. Any big discoveries in that area become good targets for ransom or destruction.
[QUOTE=Grenadiac;48445848]Almost wish they'd put archaeology on hold until ISIS is handled. Any big discoveries in that area become good targets for ransom or destruction.[/QUOTE]
ISIS doesn't have much of a hold in Egypt. Egypt is a modern and liberal country, by regional standards, and they don't have most of the socio-economic issues that drive ISIS support elsewhere.
Plus, they've got a relatively-strong, relatively-organized army, and enough people that would be threatened by ISIS that they'd have good support for defense.
[QUOTE=gman003-main;48445936]
Plus, they've got a relatively-strong, relatively-organized army, and enough people that would be threatened by ISIS that they'd have good support for defense.[/QUOTE]
Isn't that the same army that performed a coup and has been executing supporters of the democratically elected muslim president after he tried to reshape the cabinet to solidify his party's power? I'm pretty sure a lot of minorities there have been courting ISIS and extremist orgs to strike back at the neo-police state.
[QUOTE=Major_Vice;48446365]Isn't that the same army that performed a coup and has been executing supporters of the democratically elected muslim president after he tried to reshape the cabinet to solidify his party's power? I'm pretty sure a lot of minorities there have been courting ISIS and extremist orgs to strike back at the neo-police state.[/QUOTE]
The situation is complicated.
As best as I can understand it:
In 2011 there was a revolution against Mubarak, who was genuinely a shitty leader. The military took charge but didn't try to put anyone in power, they basically just kept the country running while elections happened.
Various political shenanigans went on that removed most moderate candidates. The last ones remaining were one closely affiliated with Mubarak, and another from the Muslim Brotherhood, which sounds scary but a) their rhetoric isn't significantly worse than the crazier Repubicans put out and b) they're nowhere near as bad as ISIS or al-Quaeda.
The MB candidate, Morsi, won, because the other option was "basically the guy we just kicked out", but he started making distinctly dictatorial moves, which led to continued protests.
The protests continued to grow and probably would have reached the point of revolution had the military not launched a second coup. There have been continued shenanigans, with the head of the military resigning to run for president, successfully.
However, these have been short-term political upsets. ISIS has gained support in Iraq because of the long-term instabilities - most of the population in Iraq or Syria [I]doesn't know what a stable, democratic government looks like[/I] because they've never been in one. ISIS is able to get supporters only because they genuinely seem like a better option, because they seem like the [I]only[/I] option. ISIS is something people join because they have nothing left to lose. Egypt has the cultural knowledge of how a government is supposed to work - they will be much harder to convert to ISIS's brand of anarcho-fundamentalism.
It's like how, post-WW2, Germany went from a bombed-out wasteland escaping from a decade-plus dictatorship to a full, modern country, basically as fast as they could put up new buildings. [I]They knew what it was supposed to look like, and how it was supposed to work.[/I] Egyptians know how to build a functioning society, and they sort-of know how democracy works, well enough that they think they have [I]something to lose[/I] by joining ISIS.
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