A collaboration between Google and an Oakland, California-based nonprofit called CyArk titled “The Open Heritage Project” is offering a new opportunity to anyone with a web connection or a virtual reality headset to visit and explore some of the world’s most celebrated heritage sites without leaving home. The researchers also believe that the project will also help preserve site records or even aid in reconstruction if they undergo future damage.

The Open Heritage Project has now published online their realistic 3D models of 26 heritage locations in 18 countries, including the 1,000-year-old Temple of Kukulcan in the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico as well as parts of the Roman city of Pompeii, buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D and the Native American cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in southern Colorado.

 The CyArk CEO John Ristevski explained in an interview published online by a number of news outlets that Google approached the non-profit organization about opening up their archives to a much broader audience, and that was what they had been wanting to do for a long time.  In fact, the 26 locations are a fraction of more than 200 heritage sites that CyArk has documented around the world since 2003, using digital photography, aerial drones, and a 3D laser scanning technology known as LIDAR (for light detection and ranging).  Detailed 3D models of the unique buildings and ancient artifacts, maps, and high-resolution 360-degree photographs from the 26 locations can be viewed directly on the Open Heritage website with just a web browser, thanks to a new VR interface developed by Google for the project. However if you have a VR headsets you can immerse yourself in a (3D) realistic wrap-around view.

The project’s list of the heritage sites range from ancient wonders, like Pompeii and Chichén Itzá, to relatively modern heritage sites like the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, built in the 18th century.  CyArk is now planning to add nine more locations, including the Washington Monument and the World War I battleground at Flanders Fields in Belgium, in the next few months with many more to be added to their list.  CyARK recognizes that many of the locations in the Open Heritage project is hard to visit in person, because of their remoteness or because authorities limit access to them. One of the least accessible is Chavín de Huántar, a pre-Inca religious site in north-central Peru that is situated at an elevation of almost 4,000 meters [13,000 feet]. Reaching the site requires a 10-hour bus ride from Lima and as a result not too many tourists visit the site.

While the Open Heritage website makes it easier for people to experience heritage sites in virtual reality, CyArk got its start 15 years ago with a different goal and that was to make a permanent record of ancient locations that are under threat from natural events or desecration.  CyArk’s founder, Ben Kacyra, who is an expatriate Iraqi engineer living in California, learned of the destruction of Afghanistan’s 1,500-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, and decided that he wanted to create three-dimensional digital records of the world’s heritage sites in case they were damaged or destroyed.  It is quite obvious that Kacyra’s foresight has now paid off and many people around the world can benefit from it by being able to see these beautiful heritage sites from thousands of miles away using the internet. 

In addition, these records are helping researchers in reconstructing heritage sites which have been damaged. CyArk’s detailed digital records are now being used in reconstruction work at Bagan, and virtual reality versions of the Bagan temples can be seen on the Open Heritage website.

A mummified body found near a shrine in Tehran could be of the early 20th-century Iranian monarch Reza Shah, a polarising figure whose reappearance would be problematic for the country’s present Islamic leaders.
Local media have published conflicting reports about this week’s discovery at Abdol-Azim shrine, close to a former royal mausoleum south of the capital where the shah had been buried.
Conservative news agencies sympathetic to the leadership rejected suggestions that the remains were of the former ruler, but many believe the denials may be linked to fears of royalist nostalgia taking hold at a time when the Islamic Republic is struggling to defend its achievements since the revolution.
The mausoleum was destroyed after the 1979 revolution, which deposed the Pahlavi dynasty, when an extremist cleric led a group who climbed its tower and destroyed it in a rampage using pneumatic drills. The cleric, Sadegh Khalkhali, later known as the “hanging judge” due to his infamous killings, expressed regret in his memoir that he was unable to find Reza Shah’s body.
It is still not clear if the mummified body is that of Reza Shah, but the location of the discovery and the resemblance between an image of the mummy and a photograph of Reza Shah before his burial have given credence to the claim.
Chants in support of Reza Shah, not heard for decades, featured strongly in weeks of unrest across Iran earlier this year, demonstrating the extent of public discontent about the state of the country under the ayatollahs.
“Reza Shah, bless your soul,” people chanted during protests over economic grievances that took on a political dimension as they spread to as many as 80 cities.

Scientists have deciphered what they describe as a 1,500-year-old ‘magical papyrus’ that was discovered near the pyramid of the Pharaoh Senwosret I.

The text dates to a time when Christianity was widely practiced in Egypt.The  unnamed person(s) who wrote the incantations in Coptic, an Egyptian language that uses the Greek alphabet, invoked God many times.  

“God of Seth, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Israel, watch over everyone who suffers. My word, may it come to pass with power,” reads part of the translated papyrus.

 May every spirit that is in the air obey me,” the papyrus user asks God.

Several times in the papyrus God is called “the one who presides over the Mountain of the Murderer” a phrase that likely refers to a story in the Book of Genesis in which God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah, wrote Michael Zellmann-Rohrer, a researcher in the department of classics at Oxford University, who described the magical papyrus in the journal Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde. [Cracking Codices: 10 of the Most Mysterious Ancient Manuscripts]

The Book of Genesis says that God stopped Abraham before he actually sacrificed his son. However in this papyrus the story is described in such a way that it sounds as if the sacrifice wasn’t stopped wrote Zellmann-Rohrer noting that other texts from the ancient world also claim that the sacrifice was completed.  “The tradition of a literal sacrifice seems in fact to have been rather widespread,” Zellmann-Rohrer wrote.

The papyrus was uncovered during a 1934 expedition by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the papyrus is now at the Met but had never been deciphered or detailed in a scientific journal until now.

“The text surely belongs to a Coptic phase of habitation at the pyramid complex, noted by the excavators, which is marked by substantial burials,” wrote Zellmann-Rohrer in his paper. He told Live Science that it’s possible that the papyrus was put in one of the burials.

Zellmann-Rohrer became aware of the text while looking through the Met’s digital catalog of its holdings.

The papyrus is likely a copy of another text, possibly part of a book, Zellmann-Rohrer said. Based on the handwriting, the text seems to have been copied onto the papyrus by two or possibly three people, Zellmann-Rohrer wrote. He added that the writing “lacks professional proficiency” and that those who copied the text were likely not professional scribes.

The papyrus makes little reference to the New Testament, referring mainly to individuals mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The papyrus also mentions terms and names often used by followers of Gnosticism, a religion that incorporated some of the beliefs of Christianity, Zellmann-Rohrer said.

Those who copied the text onto the papyrus may have been Christians who “made use of a textual tradition that owed much to Jewish belief and lore and to Gnosticism,” Zellman-Rohrer said.

The papyrus never mentions the name of the person who used the artifact. One of the people who copied the text could also be the user, Zellmann-Rohrer said. It’s also possible that the user paid other people to copy it for them he added.

The magical papyrus is not currently on public display, the Met says on its website.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said that God told Isaac to sacrifice his son before God stopped him, but in fact, in the Book of Genesis, God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Originally published on Live Science.

When amateur archaeologist Rene Schön and his 13-year-old sidekick Luca Malaschnitschenko found a shiny piece of metal on a treasure hunt near Schaprode on the German Baltic Sea island of Rügen three months ago, they initially thought they had merely spotted a piece of tinfoil.
But it turned out to be part of the most significant single find of coins and ornaments linked to King Harald Bluetooth (910 – 987). He not only brought Christianity to Denmark in the 10th century, but was also the inspiration for today’s Bluetooth technology.
“It was the find of my life,” said Schön, who had to keep his discovery under wraps until now. At the weekend, he and Malaschnitschko joined professional archaeologists to dig up an area covering 400 square meters (4,300 square feet), unearthing braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor’s hammer, rings and up to 600 chipped coins.
More than 100 pieces date back to Bluetooth’s reign.
Schön’s find was not entirely down to luck, perhaps, as in the 1870s, pieces of gold jewelry believed to be linked to Bluetooth were found on the island of Hiddensee, which is next to Rügen.
Harald Gormsson, who was known as Bluetooth because he had one strongly discolored tooth, reigned over what is now Denmark, northern Germany, southern Sweden and parts of Norway from 958 to 986.
(Photo: STEFAN SAUER, AFP/Getty Images)

Archaeologists at James Madison’s Montpelier are getting a glimpse into the property’s past by using new technology that allows them to see things they’ve never before been able to see. “This is a dream come true for me; this is Christmas in April,” says Matthew Reeves, Montpelier’s director of archaeology.

This technology – called lidar – allows archaeologists to see paths through the woods that date back to the 1700s. They say these trails were walked every day by slaves.

Read more at NBC29.

In 1915, a team of American archaeologists excavating the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Deir el-Bersha blasted into a hidden tomb. Inside the cramped limestone chamber, they were greeted by a gruesome sight: a mummy’s severed head perched on a cedar coffin.
The room, which the researchers labeled Tomb 10A, was the final resting place for a governor named Djehutynakht (pronounced “juh-HOO-tuh-knocked”) and his wife. At some point during the couple’s 4,000-year-long slumber, grave robbers ransacked their burial chamber and plundered its gold and jewels. The looters tossed a headless, limbless mummified torso into a corner before attempting to set the room on fire to cover their tracks.
The archaeologists went on to recover painted coffins and wooden figurines that survived the raid and sent them to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1921. Most of the collection stayed in storage until 2009 when the museum exhibited them. Though the torso remained in Egypt, the decapitated head became the star of the showcase. With its painted-on eyebrows, somber expression and wavy brown hair peeking through its tattered bandages, the mummy’s noggin brought viewers face-to-face with a mystery.
To read the entire New York Times article………https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/science/mummy-head-fbi-dna.html