Ranga’s Blog

Mini-Lego versions of Abu Simbel and the Sphinx:

Source: Kristi “McWii,” Lego Abu Simbel, flickr (Feb. 7, 2013); Kristi “McWii,” Lego Sphinx, flickr (Feb. 7, 2013).

An Italian archaeological mission has accidently [sic] uncovered a collection of five private rock-hewn Third Intermediate Period tombs while brushing sand from parts of King Amenhotep II’s temple, located on the northern side of the Serapaeum on Luxor’s west bank.
Each tomb includes a deep shaft leading to a burial chamber containing a [...]

Matija Grguric has recreated Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple in Lego:

Source: Matija Grguric, Hatshepsut Temple, Flickr (June 3, 2012).

Archaeologists [from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium] have discovered an 4,000-year-old tomb in Upper Egypt containing a sarcophagus inscribed with ancient funeral texts as well as ritual objects, Egypt’s archaeological treasures minister said Monday.
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The tomb dates from ancient Egypt’s First Intermediate period (2181-2055 BC) and is an unusual find, [...]

Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by archaeologists working in Turkey. Researchers working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tushan, believe that the language may have been spoken by deportees originally from [...]

There are about 1.3 billion cows in the world today. That makes just a bit of a change from 10,500 years ago, when the first population of domesticated cattle was likely just eighty head. That’s the new finding from a team of British, French, and German researchers, who extracted DNA from cow bones found at [...]

During recent excavations [at Karnak], the first elements of an administrative structure (doorjamb and fragmentary limestone lintel) dating from the Seventeenth dynasty have been uncovered. The hieroglyphic inscription is of first importance giving the identity of the builder of the structure whose name is Senakht-en-Re. This is the first contemporary document of this king [...]

A new tomb, KV64, has been found in the Valley of the Kings:
[T]he tomb [which] dates back to the 22nd Dynasty (945-712 BC) [belongs to] the daughter of Amun Re, [a] lecture priest in Karnak temples and also the singer of the God Amun Re.
The tomb’s occupant was apparently identify by hieroglyphics on [...]

Carney and colleagues used scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray analyses to detect the melanosomes [in an Archaeopteryx feather], then compared this data to similar feathers in a database of 87 modern bird species. The feather, he says, was most probably black. While the full colour pattern of Archaeopteryx has yet to be uncovered, Carney [...]

Stone Age cave paintings of white horses with black spots may have depicted real animals, rather than spirit horses, as sometimes assumed. … Arne Ludwig of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, and colleagues have analysed DNA extracted from the remains of ancient horses in Siberia, eastern and [...]