A toe belonging to the mummy of Pharaoh Akhenaton has been returned to Egypt. It was taken in 1907 during an examination of the king’s bones, and was recently recovered by Frank Ruehli of the University of Zurich through “private initiative.” He handed the toe over in order to mark the occasion of the two countries signing an agreement, which is intended to establish tighter border controls and curtail the trade in looted antiquities.  This article has more information on the agreement itself. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s archaeology chief, says the document is significant because “most antiquities stolen from Egypt are smuggled through Switzerland.”  

And there’s a brief mention of a 3,300-year-old tomb of a royal scribe that was unearthed in the Nile delta. 

The remains of an 18-year-old sailor killed at Pearl Harbor have been identified by nuclear DNA testing, using the letters he’d written home to his mother. She had opened them from the side of the envelope, leaving the seal made by her son’s saliva intact and uncontaminated. 

Common Maya people living in what is now Belize during the Classic period embedded their family history in the floors of their homes, which they rebuilt every 40 to 50 years. A team led by Lisa J. Lucero of the University of Illinois discovered partial human skeletons and artifacts in symbolic arrangements in two home sites that were occupied between 450 and 1150 A.D. 

Four pairs of early eighteenth-century shoes, and two pairs of nineteenth-century shoes, were found within a wall at the Liedberg Palace in Germany. Experts aren’t sure why the shoes were placed in the wall, but they will clean and examine the shoes before they return them to their hiding place. 

Geomorphologist William Mahaney and his team looked for evidence of Hannibal’s trek across the Alps on elephants and horses, and compared what they saw on the ground with the writings of Polybius and Livy. He thinks he may have found the site where Hannibal’s army was blocked by a rock fall.  

Timbers from the HMS Somerset III were revealed on a beach in Provincetown, Massachusetts, during heavy storms last month. Paul Revere had to slip past the British warship before making his famous ride in 1775. The Somerset sank during a storm in 1778.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, April 14, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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