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Beaverland
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Wonders & Mysteries
of the Ancient World
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The Riddles of the Ancient World
Buried/Hidden Facts of Ancient Egypt
- Did the ancient Egyptians and the Indus people share the same ancestor? (The Riddles of the Ancient World)
- Etymology of Mummy—mumia
Mumia was prescribed for a range of ailments, including
abscesses, fractures, concussions, paralysis, epilepsy,
coughs, nausea, and ulcers. Not every medieval physician was convinced, however,
of its healing properties. The famous surgeon AMbroise Pare found the cure
worse than the complaint: “This wicked kinde of drugge, doth nothing to help the disease . . . it also
inferres many troublesome symptoms, as the paine of the heart or stomach, vomiting, and stinke of the mouth.”
Long after apothecaries ceased grinding up mummies for medicine,
people found other uses for them. In 19th-century Egypt they were still so abundant that peasants use them for firewood and
artists ground them up to make a pigment called Mummy Brown.
Mark Twain even claimed that in Egypt they were used as fuel for steam locomotives.
- Nakht—A Bad Boy-Weaver
Nakht died in Thebe after fulfilling his sentence at the stone workshop.
The grueling and unhealthy work of
dressing the stone for the skilled carvers to finish was meted out as punishment.
What had Nakht done to earn this harsh sentence?
- Cotton Mystery
A small ball of cotton was found in Mummy PUM-II (Pennsylvania University Museum Number 2)
According to conventional belief, cotton did not show up in the
Mediterranean world until around the time of Christ. Did its presence in the
wrappings mean the Egyptians had cultivated cotton hundreds of years earl;ier?
Or did it imply trade with one of the places where cotton was definitely grown in PUM-II’s time—India or South America?
- The Egyptian Labyrinth
Diodorus and Pliny both say it was the model for the Minoan
Labyrinth in Crete, Pliny adding that it had always been viewed by local Egyptioans
“with extraordinary hatred” and that some of its doors “caused a thunderous noise when
opened”. Pomponius Mela asked his readers to believe its walls contained 1,000 houses
and 12 palaces. Not until Sir Flinders Petrie excavated its pathetic debris in our own
age were any dependable facts brought to light (The Labyrinth, Geizeh and Mazguneh, London 1912).
- The Great Civilization before the Old Kingdom?
Gilgamesh and the Great Deluge
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