A few days ago, a group of archaeologist revealed the ancient drawing of Mongoose, a colorful pelican and various bats on the wall of 4,000-year-old tombs in Egypt. The tombs are residing at the Beni Hassan Cemetery.
According to Lockwood Press, the tombs were excavated and detailed in publication over a century ago by archaeologist Percy Newberry and his colleagues. Now using modern day technology Evan and other archeologists at Macquarie University's Australian Centre for Egyptology are re-surveying the tombs.
After re-surveying the tombs archeologist Evan wrote, they found many new scenes which were not mentioned in Newberry's reports. He again said that no other images of leashed mongooses are known in Egyptian art. The identification of animals on Newberry's report was incorrect.
A detailed analysis by Evan's team suggested that the animal is morphologically identical to the Egyptian mongoose. This tomb belonged to Baqet I a provincial governor, who ruled during the 11th Dynasty. Archeologist teams did not find the proper reason why an ancient Egyptian artist drew a leashed mongoose on Baqet I's tomb.
But they assumed that the leashed mongoose shown on the tomb may have been used to scare birds. This method helped the Egyptian hunters to hunt them. Another 4000-year-old tomb of Baqet II is decorated with an image of a pelican revealed by Evan's team, reported by Live Science.
They uttered that Newberry never recorded the pelican. The images of the pelican "shows awareness of subtle behavior details". Actually, the pelican-drawn on the tomb appears to be in "midhop as it becomes airborne".
Not only this, still researchers are recording and analyzing the others creatures too. In one tomb, they found the ancient picture of various bats that Newberry was not aware of. Representation of bats is a very rare case in ancient Egypt.
Moreover, the researcher found one painting, for instance, shows no fewer than 29 birds and three bats. They are still confusing why so many animals, especially birds, are shown in the tombs at Beni Hassan. However, the team is still analyzing the bats and birds images which will be described detail in future journal articles, Evan said.
