THE UNIVERSITY DARY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2008
NEWS
5A
INTERNATIONAL
New pyramid discovered
Archaeologists found pyramid under burial site in Egypt
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass walks around the site of a newly discovered pyramid at Saqara near Cairo, Egypt, on Tuesday.
BY KATARINA KRATOVAC ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAQQARA, Egypt — Archaeologists have discovered a new pyramid under the sands of Saqqara, an ancient burial site that has yielded a string of unearthed pyramids in recent years but remains largely unexplored.
The 4,300-year-old monument most likely belonged to the queen mother of the founder of Egypt's 6th Dynasty, and was built several hundred years after the famed Great Pyramids of Giza, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told reporters in announcing the find yesterday.
The discovery is part of the sprawling necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, about 12 miles south of Giza.
All that remains of the pyramid is a 16-foot-tall structure that had been buried under 65 feet of sand.
"There was so much sand dumped here that no one had any idea there was something buried underneath," said Hawass.
Hawass' team had been excavating at the location for two years, but only determined two months ago that the structure, with sides about 72 feet long, was the base of a pyramid. The pyramid is the 118th discovered so far in Egypt, and the 12th to be found in Saqqara. Most are in ruins; only about a dozen pyramids remain intact across the country.
Archaeologists also found parts of the pyramid's white limestone casing — believed to have once covered the entire structure — which enabled them to calculate that the complete pyramid was once 45 feet high.
"To find a new pyramid is always exciting," said Hawass. "And this one is magical. It belonged to a queen."
Hawass said he believes the pyramid belonged to Queen Sesheshet, who is thought to have played a significant role in establishing the 6th
Dynasty and uniting two branches of the feeding royal family. Her son, Teti, ruled for about a dozen years until his likely assassination, in a sign of the turbulent times.
The pyramids of Teti's two wives, discovered 100 years ago and in 1994 respectively, lie to next it, part of a burial complex alongside the collapsed pyramid of Teti himself.
The Egyptian team is still digging and is two weeks from entering the burial chamber inside the pyramid, where Hawass hopes they will find proof of its owner — a sarcophagus or at least an inscription of the queen, he said.
Finding more than that is unlikely, as robbers in antiquity looted
the pyramid, he said, pointing to a gaping shaft on the structure's top, a testament of the plunder.
Yesterday, workers scurried back and forth, carrying large rocks and bags heaped with sand away from the site.
Using an air brush, one worker cleaned sand from stunning hieroglyphic details on the white limestone casing, while archaeologists studied the inscriptions and students drew blueprints of the pyramid's base.
Dieter Wildung, a leading Egyptologist and head of Berlin's Egyptian Museum, said it was common in the Old Kingdom for kings to build pyramids for their queens.
POLITICS
Obama opts to start fresh President-elect will not meet with foreign leaders yet
BY LIZ SIDOTI ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO — Leaders around the world flooded Barack Obama with congratulatory calls when he won the presidency last week. But they'll have to wait a while for personal visits.
The president-elect has no objections.
city. Obama's aides plan to keep tabs on — and possibly participate in — the summit where world powers hope to craft remedies to the global financial crisis.
pains to meet with any foreign dignitaries when they travel to Washington this weekend for an economic summit hosted by President Bush.
"We have one president at a time, and it's important that the president can speak for the United States at the summit" John Podesta, Obama's transition chief, told reporters Tuesday, Podesta.
O b a m a plans to stay
"He wants a clean, clear demarkation between the Bush administration and the Obama administration."
THOMAS MANN
Brookings Institution scholar
in Chicago to prepare for January's transfer of power, even though Washington is a quick flight away and world leaders are clearly interested in his economic views. No meetings are scheduled in either
however noted that Obama had urged such a summit during the presidential campaign.
nations and emerging economies would meet in Washington this Saturday; Obama has consistently said not to expect his presence.
Advisers repeatedly stress that Obama won't be president until inaugurated on Jan. 20. Left
Before the election, Bush announced that the world's 20 largest industrialized
unsaid are other possible motivations for him to stay in Chicago this weekend.
"He wants a clean, clear demarkation between the Bush administration and the Obama administration." said Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution public policy center.
Obama assailed Bush throughout his campaign for pushing "failed policies" and the Democrat pledged that he would bring a new direction after eight years of GOP rule. Obama will inherit the worst economic conditions in the United States since the Great Depression, and keeping some distance from Bush will allow him to chart his own economic course.
"The last thing he wants to do is get pulled into that summit and, more generally, be pulled into a situation where he's called upon to make early commitments and express opinions on matters before he's got his economic team fully together and before he has the authority of the office," Mann said.
NATIONAL
Hawaii distributes state coins
New quarter is the last of the 50-state coin program
BY AUDREY MCAVOY ASSOCIATED PRESS
HONOLULUU — Still reveling in the election of the first Hawaiiborn U.S. president, the islands marked the issuance of its state quarter — the last in the 50-state quarter program.
Hawaii's banks began distributing the quarter Monday to hundreds of coin collectors in lines snaking down Bishop Street, the
heart of the downtown business district.
Adults had to buy the coins in $10 rolls, but Gov. Linda Lingle and U.S. Mint Director Ed Moy handed out free coins to children.
"We ask each of you to take the Hawaii quarter with you around the world and be ambassadors of aloha," said Jonathan Johnson, head of the Hawaii State Quarter Commission.
Don Horner, president of the
Hawaii Bankers Association, reassured waiting collectors that the banks had enough coins for everyone. The U.S. Mint plans to make 520 million Hawaiian coins before it ends the program.
The quarter shows King Kamehameha the Great, the Hawaiian warrior who united the Hawaiian islands under his rule in the early 1800s, a map of the main Hawaiian islands and the state's motto in Hawaiian.