
Egypt sarcophagus: Mystery black tomb opened in Alexandria - gadders
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-44893804
======
soared
This article is god awful, here is a slightly better one.

[http://earth-chronicles.com/science/the-first-details-of-
the...](http://earth-chronicles.com/science/the-first-details-of-the-autopsy-
of-the-black-sarcophagus-from-alexandria.html)

According to that article they poured most of the red liquid into the street,
which seems absurd to me.

~~~
notatoad
Yes, what a waste. They could have bottled the red liquid up into a carbonated
energy drink instead.

[https://twitter.com/juliareinstein/status/102035701680670720...](https://twitter.com/juliareinstein/status/1020357016806707201?s=09)

~~~
Someone
We know better nowadays.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia):

 _”Merchants in apothecaries dispensed expensive mummia bitumen, which was
thought to be an effective cure-all for many ailments. Beginning around the
12th century when supplies of imported natural bitumen ran short, mummia was
misinterpreted as "mummy", and the word's meaning expanded to "a black
resinous exudate scraped out from embalmed Egyptian mummies". This began a
period of lucrative trade between Egypt and Europe, and suppliers substituted
rare mummia exudate with entire mummies, either embalmed or desiccated. After
Egypt banned the shipment of mummia in the 16th century, unscrupulous European
apothecaries began to sell fraudulent mummia prepared by embalming and
desiccating fresh corpses. During the Renaissance, scholars proved that
translating bituminous mummia as mummy was a mistake, and physicians stopped
prescribing the ineffective drug.”_

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turc1656
This article got me wondering...how is the law structured around this sort of
thing? Generally speaking, it's highly illegal to dig up and open a grave
since we generally have respect for a person's final resting place and this
has been codified into law. So what are the rules surrounding this?

I assume special legal approval must be granted similar to what is required,
for example, when a body needs to be exhumed as part of an ongoing
investigation?

~~~
close04
It's an archaeological dig as such it is done under special circumstances.
Basically the permit is granted before the dig is started and it will list the
conditions that apply to that dig if they are not already regulated as
standard by a law.

If you dig on your own private property and find such artifacts you are most
likely required to stop. Most countries consider historical artifacts to be
owned by the state (just like natural resources) and the special conditions
mentioned above will apply.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> you are most likely required to stop

Seems unenforceable.

Edit: The creative potential of a public service announcement makes me smile
though.

~~~
nashashmi
The old Turks would be great at tunneling. So they would bury their gold
underground in tunnels eons ago. In Jordan, This was so common that you were
likely to find gold during construction projects or while digging in your
backyard. So if a worker found gold, he would be required to hand it over. So
he wouldn't dig it out during the day. Only at night. Helicopters would roam
around at night specifically to find diggers at night with their lanterns and
lamps looking for gold.

------
pbhjpbhj
>"Despite that, the site has now been cleared of people amid fears the
sarcophagus could release lethal toxic fumes, Egypt's state-owned newspaper
Al-Ahram says."

In the previous paragraph the interviewee is claiming to have put his head in
the tomb, from the pictures it seems like he was wearing nothing more than a
dust-mask.

So either they're lying as to why they've cleared the area, or analysis of the
contents has shown something troubling?

I'm surprised they didn't put a probe in to sample the internal gases prior to
opening -- doesn't seem too much of a stretch to imagine a dangerous gas could
have built up (eg from embalming chemicals), and the gaseous environment could
surely give useful archaeological information in some cases (?).

~~~
close04
The dust masks are pretty standard when working in any such site. Nothing to
do with protection against a potential chemical or biological hazard. It
simply wouldn't help.

But the site was most likely evacuated because of the smell and the fact that
the local workers were reluctant to work in conditions that most of them
considered to be dangerous. I would call it a needless precaution, definitely
not a real danger. When a myth is too entrenched in people's minds fighting it
will bring no benefit. It's easier to go along out of an excess of precaution
and then go back to work when "all is safe".

~~~
Cthulhu_
Didn't a bunch of people that visited Tutanchamun's tomb die? Mold spores
iirc, or is that an urban legend?

~~~
stryan
This was discussed in the article. The financial backer for the expedition
died from an infected mosquito bite but nothing else went wrong.

> "We don't know of even a single case of either an archaeologist or a tourist
> experiencing any negative consequences [from bacteria or tomb moulds],"

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lolive
I wonder what cool story Lovecraft could elaborate from such a news.

~~~
jsonne
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's thoughts went immediately to something
like this.

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TamoC
i can't believe people are still pushing the story about the curse. Not very
nice from BBC to promote it,too.

~~~
sschueller
A cursed tomb can be a another civilization's deep geological repository [1]
of nuclear/toxic waste.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_geological_repository)

~~~
klmr
Not an ancient Egyptian tomb, no.

~~~
cornholio
Or so we were led to believe. There's clearly a single possible explanation to
all this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I thought Egyptian sarcophaguses were healing/brainwashing devices. A buildup
of a toxic substance must be caused by a malfunction.

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Udik
Turns out that the sarcophagus was full of surströmming.

~~~
loxs
Human surströmming

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unclepresent
How did they make this tomb. Even ignoring weight factor, what type of saw
could they employ to cut it from the block?

Right now companies use diamond wire blades to cut granite and it is not so
fast and easy. Can not imagine ancients Egyptians could produce even steel

Also where have they got a granite in this part of Egypt... Aswan query known
for having black granite deposits is 600 miles away.

~~~
stan_rogers
"Diamond wire blades" are just a (much) faster and longer-lasting version of
wet cord and sand, which is known to have been used since antiquity.
Perforating and wedging - breaking along the dotted line, as it were - is an
equally ancient technique. Just because it's a lot of hard work doesn't mean
people weren't willing to do it.

~~~
sverige
> Just because it's a lot of hard work doesn't mean people weren't willing to
> do it.

Especially willing to do it if the choice was made by a slave who knew it was
literally do it or die.

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bytematic
So jealous of the people who get to make these discoveries. Even finding the
small items of some ancient rural family seems so cool to me.

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patrickg_zill
So is there anything left of DNA, perhaps in bone marrow? I would "guess"
there isn't.

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2845197541
But how did sewage water get in there?

~~~
loxs
Most probably it's not "sewage" water but "corpse decomposition water"

~~~
m23khan
corpse decomposition water won't last 2000+ years especially if not frozen.
Probably the coffin was porous or had crack from where the sewage water seeped
into the coffin from a nearby leaking sewage pipeline.

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i6mi6
To me it seems staged as hell. I believe it had been opened prior to “the
opening”.

