Early Western Civilization Egyption Tomb 5 Egyptologists Had Lost Inte

Early Western Civilization Egyption Tomb 5 Egyptologists had lost interest in the site of tomb 5, which had been explored and looted decades ago. Therefore, they wanted to give way to a parking lot. However, no one would have ever known the treasure that lay only 200 ft. from King Tut's resting place which was beyond a few rubble strewn rooms that previous excavators had used to hold their debris. Dr. Kent Weeks, an Egyptologist with the American University in Cairo, wanted to be sure the new parking facility wouldn't destroy anything important. Thus, Dr. weeks embarked in 1988 on one final exploration of the old dumping ground. Eventually he was able to pry open a door blocked for thousands of years, and announced the discovery of a life time. "We found ourselves in a corridor," he remembers. "On each side were 10 doors and at end there was a statue of Osiris, the god of the afterlife." The tomb is mostly unexcavated and the chambers are choked with debris, Weeks is conv inced that there are more rooms on a lower level, bringing the total number to more than 100. That would make tomb 5 the biggest and most complex tomb ever found in Egypt, and quite conceivable the resting place of up to 50 sons of Ramesses II, perhaps the best known of all the pharaohs, the ruler believed to have been Moses'nemesis in the book of Exodus. The Valley of the Kings, in which Tomb 5 is located, is just across the Nile River from Luxor, Egypt. It is never exactly been off the beaten track. Tourism has been brisk in the valley for millenniums: graffiti scrawled on tomb walls proves that Greek and Roman travelers stopped here to gaze at the wall paintings and hieroglyphics that were already old long before the birth of Christ. Archaeologists have been coming for centuries too. Napoleon brought his own team of excavators when he invaded in 1798, and a series of expeditions in 19th and early 20th centuries uncovered one tomb after another. A total of 61 burial spots had been found by the time the British explorer Howard Carter opened the treasure-laden tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. Britain's James Burton had burrowed into the site of Tomb 5 in 1820, and decided that there was nothing inside. A dismissive Carter used its entryway as a place to dump the debris he was hauling out of Tut's tomb. In the late 1980s, came the proposed parking area and Weeks' concern. His 1988 foray made it clear that the tomb wasn't dull as Burton said. Elaborate carvings covered walls and referred to Ramesses II, whose own tomb was just 100 ft. away. The wall inscriptions on the companion crypt mentioned two of Ramesses'52 known sons, implying some of the royal offspring might have been buried within. Then, came last month's astonishing announcement. For treasure, the tomb probably won't come to close to Tut's because robbers apparently plundered the chamber long time ago. No gold or fine jewelry has been found so far, and Weeks does not expect to find a ny riches to speak of. The carvings and inscriptions Weeks and his friends have seen, along with thousands of artifacts such as beads, fragments of jars that were used to store the organs of the deceased, and mummified body parts which tell historians a great amount about ancient Egypt during the reign of its most important king. "Egyptians do not call him Ramesses II," Sabry Abd El Aziz, director of antiquities for the Qurna region said. " We call him Ramesses al-Akbar which means Ramesses the Great." During his 67 years on the throne stretching from 1279 B.C. to 1212 B. C., Ramesses could have filled an ancient edition of the Guinness Book of Records all by himself: he built more temples, obelisks and monuments; took more wives(eight, not counting concubines) and claimed to have sired more children (as many as 162, by some accounts) than any other pharaoh in history. He presided over an empire that stretched from present-day Libya to Iraq in the east, as far north as Turkey an d southward into the Sudan. Today, historians know a great deal

Motivations Behind Imperialism essays

Motivations Behind Imperialism essays The motivations behind imperialism imposed by the growing superpowers include strategic and cultural imperialism, nationalism, economic considerations, and the idea of survival of the fittest. Strategic imperialism is the concern of a nation for the control of key waterways, ports, and military outposts. In other words, this means anything that may benefit a nation during times of war or strife. Cultural imperialism combines both religion and race. Some Westerners felt that it was the responsibility of the white race to rule over others. Religious reasons are another motivation. Christian missionaries wanted to spread Christianity out to Asia and Africa, as they had done earlier in Latin America. Nationalism is a citizens love of his country and the willingness to sacrifice for it. This creates the urge to compete with other nations to become the most powerful. Economic considerations also come into play. A growing country may find the need for new markets, cheap labor, industrial raw materials, agricultural products, and places for investment in areas around the world. Finally, survival of the fittest, in the respect of imperialism, is the ideology that the stronger and superior cultures will control or even eliminate the weaker, inferior cultures. Great Britain was motivated primarily by strategic, economic, and cultural purposes. First of all, they were contained on a small island with a growing population, but limited resources. With the growing need of these resources, the British sought to expand outwards, moving out to Africa (particularly Egypt and South Africa) and Asia (India). They used these areas primarily for textile manufacturing. Cheap labor cultivated and harvested cotton, which in turn was transported back to England, where it was then processed into cloth. Strategically, the British sought these and other territories in order to compete with their enemies. This expansion made it s...