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Ancient Egyptian necklace found in Siberia


Big Bad Voodoo

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272817/Ancient-Egyptian-necklace-skeleton-virgin-priestess-Siberian-burial-mound.html#axzz2JrgyesBD

Extraordinary brightly-coloured glass jewellery believed to be from Ancient Egypt has been found in a 2,400-year-old burial mound in Siberia.

Nicknamed 'Cleopatra's Necklace' by the Russians who found it, the jewellery was discovered on the skeleton of a 25-year-old woman, believed to have been a virgin priestess.

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As one of comentators on dailymail said:

Wow, a very rare find........ a 25 year old female virgin!

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How do they know if she was a virgin or not. The beads look like African sandbeads. One would think a Virgin Priestess would have jewels and not common sandbeads

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As one of comentators on dailymail said:

Wow, a very rare find........ a 25 year old female virgin!

I'm wondering how they knew that too,but I'm sure there are ways....

;)

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How do they know if she was a virgin or not.

What they most probably mean with 'virgin' is whether she had given birth or not.

Now how do they know if she had given birth?

From "Talking Bones - The Science of Forensic Anthropology" by Peggy Thomas, 1995, p.44/46:

"At the front of the pelvis, six or seven inches below the belly button, the two halves called inominates meet and form the pubic symphysis. Between them. there is a small piece of cartilage that cushions the two bones. During pregnancy a hormone is released that softens the cartilage between the pubic symphysis so that the two bones actually separate during delivery. After delivery the cartilage hardens again. Each softening, separation, and hardening causes pits called scars of parturition to form on the bone. By reading the extent of the scarring on the symphysis an anthropologist can tell if a woman had given birth or not."

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How do they know if she was a virgin or not. The beads look like African sandbeads. One would think a Virgin Priestess would have jewels and not common sandbeads

They don't know if she is a virgin. They found alongside her artifacts suggesting she was a priestess, and sometimes in antiquity priestess roles required that they remain virginal. It's just conjecture.

As for the beads: "Intricate: The beads were created using the 'Millefiori technique' where glass canes or rods are combined to produce multicoloured patterns"

Not at all a common item for people in Siberia.

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How do they know if she was a virgin or not. The beads look like African sandbeads. One would think a Virgin Priestess would have jewels and not common sandbeads ..............

Cos they reconstructed her face from the skull.....and she was absolutely minging !

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It's a huge stretch in the first place to call these "Egyptian" beads. I've viewed hundreds if not thousands of examples of Egyptian jewelry myself, and these don't look particularly Egyptian in style to me. Glass manufacturing was certainly being done in the timeframe quoted in the article (c. 400 BCE) but the same sort of glasswork was being done at that time all over the Mediterranean world. I am not as well versed in the cultures of that timeframe in Europe, but it would be reckless to dismiss the possibility of a European origin, as far as that goes.

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It's a huge stretch in the first place to call these "Egyptian" beads. I've viewed hundreds if not thousands of examples of Egyptian jewelry myself, and these don't look particularly Egyptian in style to me. Glass manufacturing was certainly being done in the timeframe quoted in the article (c. 400 BCE) but the same sort of glasswork was being done at that time all over the Mediterranean world. I am not as well versed in the cultures of that timeframe in Europe, but it would be reckless to dismiss the possibility of a European origin, as far as that goes.

I was waiting for you to chime in !

I was wondering how I could know more than real live archeologists ,but it doesn't look Egyptian at all .

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They don't know if she is a virgin. They found alongside her artifacts suggesting she was a priestess, and sometimes in antiquity priestess roles required that they remain virginal. It's just conjecture.

As for the beads: "Intricate: The beads were created using the 'Millefiori technique' where glass canes or rods are combined to produce multicoloured patterns"

Not at all a common item for people in Siberia.

That depends on what you consider to be a virgin.

Nowadays we say a woman is a virgin when she had never had sex in her life, and that we can't know of course when examining a skeleton.

These are modern times and we use contraceptives, but people very probably did not know about contraceptives back then. So in case of a woman having sex meant becoming pregnant and giving birth.

And that they can see proof of by examining the pelvis.

.

Edited by Abramelin
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That depends on what you consider to be a virgin.

Nowadays we say a woman is a virgin when she had never had sex in her life, and that we can't know of course when examining a skeleton.

These are modern times and we use contraceptives, but people very probably did not know about contraceptives back then. So in case of a woman having sex meant becoming pregnant and giving birth.

And that they can see proof of by examining the pelvis.

Folks in the past weren't stupid. They knew that squirting sperm inside a woman made babies, and they naturally knew about contraception, from the simple pull out to all sorts of herbal concoctions and even spermicides placed into the vagina (as well as non-effective ones like rituals and amulets). See:

http://listverse.com/2010/11/14/10-ancient-methods-of-birth-control/

or http://books.google.com/books/about/Contraception_and_Abortion_from_the_Anci.html?id=1vS85LtlsnIC

And they were quite strict about virginity in women. They naturally knew of the existence of the hymen, and in many cultures the elite were very insistent on marrying intact women so as to ensure the babies were definitely their own.

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And we get called conservative. :nw:

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Folks in the past weren't stupid. They knew that squirting sperm inside a woman made babies, and they naturally knew about contraception, from the simple pull out to all sorts of herbal concoctions and even spermicides placed into the vagina (as well as non-effective ones like rituals and amulets). See:

http://listverse.com...-birth-control/

or http://books.google....id=1vS85LtlsnIC

And they were quite strict about virginity in women. They naturally knew of the existence of the hymen, and in many cultures the elite were very insistent on marrying intact women so as to ensure the babies were definitely their own.

Well, if they find these herbs in that Siberian culture, then you are right. I know South American indians use certain herbs from the Amazon jungle as contraceptive. But you can't be sure about the importance of virginity in that particular Siberian cultrue. Perhaps they didn't give a damn.

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Daily Mail account is stolen from English edition of Siberian Times. Here is link to original article, and is more imformative.

http://siberiantimes...siberian-grave/

This is about her being a virgin:

'The Chultukov Log necropolis also has a collection of elaborate hair pins, decorated with griffins, wolves and solar symbols.These pins not only carried the information about the mythology of that time, but signalled the status of the person. All hair pins were found in hairdos of married women.

'Our lady didn't have one. It's very interesting, though I can't say it definitely meant that she was a virgin'.

So it had nothing to do with the conclusion of a forensic anthropologist.

.

Edited by Abramelin
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It's a huge stretch in the first place to call these "Egyptian" beads. I've viewed hundreds if not thousands of examples of Egyptian jewelry myself, and these don't look particularly Egyptian in style to me. Glass manufacturing was certainly being done in the timeframe quoted in the article (c. 400 BCE) but the same sort of glasswork was being done at that time all over the Mediterranean world. I am not as well versed in the cultures of that timeframe in Europe, but it would be reckless to dismiss the possibility of a European origin, as far as that goes.

In the 15th century BCE, extensive glass production was occurring in Western Asia, Crete and Egypt, you are correct. However glass making grinded to a halt during what is called the Bronze Age collapse and It picked up again in its former sites, in Syria and Cyprus, in the 9th century BCE. As to in Egypt in particular, it did not revive until it was reintroduced in Ptolemaic Alexandria, which was around 350BCE, if memory serves.

In all honesty the glass doesn't look particularly Egyptian, nor is there any particular evidence it actually came from there. Seen how glass making was rather spread all over the mediteranian, it could have come from anywhere really.

I was waiting for you to chime in !

I was wondering how I could know more than real live archeologists ,but it doesn't look Egyptian at all .

Same idea here lol

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It seems like these are "eye beads", which were widely manufactured in the Near and Middle East at the time in question. Here are some examples from 4th-century Persia:

10_Persian_Achaemenid_Period._539-330_BC._stratified_eye_bead_.PERSIA.4th_century_BC_2.jpg

Given that the Persians had conquered well into Central Asia (followed by the Macedonians), it's easy to imagine the necklace being traded with neighboring Scythians, and eventually making its way to more distant Scythians in the Altai Mountains.

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It seems like these are "eye beads", which were widely manufactured in the Near and Middle East at the time in question. Here are some examples from 4th-century Persia:

10_Persian_Achaemenid_Period._539-330_BC._stratified_eye_bead_.PERSIA.4th_century_BC_2.jpg

Given that the Persians had conquered well into Central Asia (followed by the Macedonians), it's easy to imagine the necklace being traded with neighboring Scythians, and eventually making its way to more distant Scythians in the Altai Mountains.

As trade objects that makes perfect sense, probably quite valuable at the time too.

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