World News
Egypt reveals new secrets: 2,000-year-old mummification workshops exposed
Reading Time: 2 minutes
Sylvie Claire / May 29, 2023
Egypt unveiled on Saturday two workshops dedicated to the mummification of humans and animals at Saqqara, in the necropolis of Memphis, the capital of the Old Kingdom of the Pharaohs, “the largest and most complete” discovered to date.
The site of Saqqara, 15 kilometers south of Cairo and the famous pyramids of the Giza Plateau, is a Unesco World Heritage site, famous for the Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser. The two workshops, one dedicated to the embalming of human mummies and the other to the embalming of “sacred animals”, date from the 30th dynasty and the Ptolemaic period, i.e. between 2,400 and 2,000 years ago, explained Mostafa Waziri, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The room dedicated to human mummification is “divided into several rooms equipped with layers of stone covered in plaster, with gutters at the ends, measuring two metres by 50 centimetres, on which the bodies were placed”, he explained.
Egyptian archaeologists discovered mummification instruments, earthen vessels and ritual objects, as well as in the area dedicated to animals. The ancient Egyptians mainly embalmed cats, but also crocodiles, and in March, Cairo announced the discovery of over 2,000 mummified ram heads, as well as mummies of sheep, dogs, goats, cows, gazelles and mongooses.
Two tombs, belonging to the chief scribe of the 5th dynasty, 4,400 years ago, and to a priest of the 18th dynasty, which ruled Egypt 3,400 years ago, were also unearthed. Both contain scenes of daily life and hieroglyphic inscriptions, according to the Ministry of Antiquities.
Egypt regularly announces archaeological discoveries, described by some experts as “announcement effects” of more political and economic than scientific significance. The country of 105 million inhabitants, which is in the throes of a serious economic crisis, is counting on the tourism sector (two million jobs and over 10% of GDP) to put its finances back on track. Its government is counting on 30 million tourists a year by 2028, compared with 13 million before Covid-19.
Continue Reading
Reading Time: < 1 minutes
Sylvie Claire / September 23, 2023
At least 25 people, including two children, died when a bus crashed into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica, in southern Peru, the authorities announced in a revised death toll on Monday evening.
An initial police report put the death toll at 20, with a further 35 injured. A statement from the Ministry of Health later that morning put the death toll at 24. Finally, at the end of the day on Monday, the death toll stood at “25 dead and 34 wounded”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The accident occurred on Sunday night, when the bus carrying over 50 passengers from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region ran off the road.
Images show the damaged bus lying on its side near a river below the ravine, debris and personal belongings strewn all around.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expressed her “condolences to the families” from New York, where she will be attending the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations. The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, for its part, urged the government to “carry out a serious investigation” to prevent such accidents from happening again.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 people dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are frequent in Peru, mainly due to speeding and poor road maintenance, especially in mountainous areas.
Reading Time: < 1 minutes
Sylvie Claire / September 17, 2023
In Japan, the number of people aged 100 has reached a record level: the world’s third-largest economy now has 92,139 people aged 100 or over. That’s 1,613 more than a year ago, reported the Ministry of Health in Tokyo on Friday.
For over half a century, the number of people aged 100 has been rising every year. Due to a low birth rate and almost non-existent immigration, no other industrial state is aging as fast as this East Asian country.
Japan’s population is also shrinking at a record pace. Last year, the number of Japanese fell by 801,000, the biggest drop since comparable data have been recorded. There are now 122.4 million.
When the Japanese Ministry of Health began compiling statistics in 1963, there were 153 centenarians. Twenty-five years later, there were over 10,000. According to the latest figures, around 88% of centenarians are women. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy for women is around 87 years, and 81 for men.
Reading Time: < 1 minutes
Steph Deschamps / September 17, 2023
The death toll from the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 2,946, the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday evening. A further 5,674 people were injured.
The previous death toll was 2,901. The death toll is expected to rise further. Hopes of finding survivors are now very slim. Rescue workers have not yet been able to reach all the villages affected in the Atlas Mountains.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the country on Friday night. The epicenter was located some 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300,000 people in and around Marrakech were affected by the disaster.
World News2 days ago
At least 25 dead in a bus accident in Peru
Entertainment2 days ago
The Young and the Restless mourns the death of actor Billy Miller
World News1 week ago
