History - Archeology - Mythology

Hieroglyphs written in red paint on the floor of a hidden chamber in Egypt's Great Pyramid are numerical signs. The builders of the pyramid simply recorded the total length of the southern shaft from the Queen's Chamber: 121 cubits. Multiples of 7, 9 and 11 cubits occur frequently in the design of the Great pyramid.

A robot was sent through the Great Pyramid of Giza and transmitted images showing hieroglyphs behind a mysterious door. Archaeologists hope the symbols might help them understand the purpose of shafts built within the pyramids. The Great Pyramid has long been rumored to have hidden passageways leading to secret chambers.

That age-old question, "where did life on Earth start?" now has a new answer. If the life between the mica sheets hypothesis is correct, life would have originated between sheets of mica that were layered like the pages in a book.

Plato was the Einstein of Greece's Golden Age and his work founded Western culture and science. Dr Jay Kennedy's findings are set to revolutionise the history of the origins of Western thought.

A team of evangelical Christian explorers claim they've found the remains of Noah's ark beneath snow and volcanic debris on Turkey's Mount Ararat (map). But some archaeologists and historians are taking the latest claim that Noah's ark has been found about as seriously as they have past ones—which is to say not very.

In this audio slide show, Dr. Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, tells Discovery News why the findings at Taposiris Magna (today called Abusir) are important.

King Tut, depicted here by a gold funerary mask, was a frail pharaoh, according to a new DNA study. Tutankhamun was beset by malaria and a bone disorder—and possibly compromised by his newly discovered incestuous origins, researchers say. (Read the full story: "King Tut Was Disabled, Malarial, and Inbred, DNA Shows.")Released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the report is the first DNA study ever conducted with ancient Egyptian royal mummies. It apparently solves several mysteries surrounding the 14th-century B.C. pharaoh, including how he died and who his parents were."He was not a very strong pharaoh. He was not riding the chariots," said study team member Carsten Pusch, a geneticist at Germany's University of Tübingen. "Picture instead a frail, weak boy who had a bit of a club foot and who needed a cane to walk."

The fortress-like Coptic monastery of St Anthony the Great stands at an oasis spring in the Red Sea Mountains, 155 km (100 miles) south east of Cairo. It was founded in the mid-4th century, on Saint Anthony's burial site. He, along with St Pachomius (the first monk to organise hermits into groups) were two of the first exponents of Christian monasticism, which originated in the Egyptian desert. The Coptic orthodox monastery, presided over by an abbot, is the oldest Christian monastery in the world. The church is one of Egypt's great treasures - some of the wall paintings here date from the 6th and the 9th centuries, and among them is a picture of the founder, St Anthony himself. He lived in a tiny cave, high above the desert, for 40 years soon after AD 300, and the monastery - really a city in the desert - was built in the 360s. Amazingly, the monks who live here still speak Coptic, a language directly descended from the language of the ancient Egyptians.

1,600-year-old St. Anthony's Monastery restoration took eight years to complete. The announcement comes a month after Egypt's worst incident of sectarian violence in over a decade. Amid the renovations, archaeologists discovered the remains of the original monk cells dating to the 4th century.