The contents of an ancient Egyptian bone bundle have been unwrapped. Can you guess what animal this bone could have belonged to?
Elsewhere in the news section on this site readers might have come across information about a mystery bone bundle.
For 83 years the identity of the bones have remained a mystery, but Tom Hardwick and David Craven, Egyptologist and Geologist respectively at Bolton Museum, recently decided to re-open the investigation, hoping to find an answer.
Although most of the fossilised remains were small, fragmented pieces, one bone in the collection was distinctive enough to work with. Using their expertise and knowledge in this area, Tom and David studied the bone and are now sure they can now reveal what it once belonged to.
Images of the bone have been examined by experts around the world so that their findings can be confirmed and once this is the case, all will be revealed.
What bone is it?
In the meantime staff at the museum want people to let their imagination run wild and enter a competition about the mystery bones. They would like people to send in suggestions of what they think the bones might be from. There will be a prize for the right answer or the suggestion closest to the answer. [Source]
To enter, simply send in your answer, along with your name, address, age and telephone number to:
Mystery Bone Competition Bolton Museum & Archive Service
Le Mans Crescent Bolton BL1 1SE
Entries must be received no later than 5th May 2007.
Bone Bundle
Mystery Bone
Bone Bundle Mystery to be Unwrapped?
Are the contents of a curious bundle of bones found at an Egyptian site about to reveal their ancient secret?
Early in 1923 the British Egyptologist Guy Brunton discovered several tons of fossilised bones and worked ivory objects deposited in the shafts of tombs at the site of Qau el-Kebir in Middle Egypt.
The fossil bones, up to 2 million years old, were mainly of hippo, crocodile, hartebeest, boar, horse and buffalo. Human bones were also found. Most of the bones had been polished by the action of the river.
In 1923/24 Sir Flinders Petrie discovered another cache of fossilised bones at Qau. This included several bundles of bones wrapped in linen.
In his publication of the site Brunton promised there would be a special memoir dedicated to the bones, but it never appeared. The bones disappeared off the scientific map.
In 1998, prompted by Adrienne Mayor, Andrew Currant of the Natural History Museum in London located what were the original crates of bones from Qau.
In 1999 David Reese located some of the lost bundles. They were right here at Bolton Museum! In the late 1970s the Petrie Museum in London disposed of part of its collection of ancient Egyptian linen. Angela Thomas, the then Keeper of Egyptology at Bolton, collected the unwanted specimens, which included a couple of the bone bundles. One is still wrapped, but the other had been opened to show its contents. The bundles were recorded in Adrienne Mayor’s book The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times.
For 83 years the identity of these bones has been a mystery, but now Tom Hardwick and David Craven, Egyptologist and Geologist respectively at Bolton Museum, have re-opened the investigation.
Most of the bone material in the unwrapped bundle is fragmentary, and not all is black and river polished as originally reported. But one distinctive bone from the bundle may yield an identification.
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Posted by Djehuti (Member # 6698) on :
Great find Myra. I too am very curious as to what these bones belonged to.
Btw, where do you go to get all the latest egyptological news? I try to find egyptological reports to post in this forum but they're either old or not that interesting.
Posted by Myra Wysinger (Member # 10126) on :
Hi Djehuti:
These are my two main sources. This is where I get information for about 95% of my posts for Egypt Search.
Egyptology Blog, I noticed they do not post on weekends, but that's OK. They make up on Monday.
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