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    Church in Egyptian Desert Reveals Early Christian Burial Practices

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    A basilica from the 4th century held a surprising number of tombs with women and children, researchers found.More than a decade ago, archaeologists began to excavate one of the world’s oldest Christian churches in the middle of a forbidding Egyptian desert. Delayed by war, political unrest and a global pandemic, the dig has turned out to be a revealing and confounding look at how early Christians buried their dead.Built on an oasis sometime in the fourth century, the church held a surprisingly large number of corpses: 11 bodies in two crypts and six in separate tombs. Typically, in that period, leaders like priests and bishops would have been buried in a church, while others would have been relegated to cemeteries. But in this desert outpost, most of the remains belonged to women and children.“The fact that there are so many tombs right inside the church is remarkable,” said David Frankfurter, an Egyptian religion scholar at Boston University who was not involved in the project.Whereas ancient Egyptian funeral practices tended to be lavish and grandiose, early Christian burials favored simplicity. The bodies in the church were wrapped in linens, and only two were inside coffins. Bundles of rosemary, myrtle and palm leaves were left with one body, and one child was buried with a bronze cup. Otherwise, the tombs were sparse.The team — led by David Ratzan, a scholar of ancient civilizations at New York University, and Nicola Aravecchia, an archaeologist at Washington University in St. Louis — began excavations at the church in 2012. But political upheaval, as well as the accidental killing of several tourists by the Egyptian military in a nearby area of the Western Desert, kept the researchers out of Egypt for many years. Only in 2023 was the team allowed to return to Egypt and finish its work, as described in a book published in September.The remains of a female from Tomb 10, Room 3, about 50–65 years old, who lived a comparatively élite lifestyle and ate a refined diet.The NYU Amheida ExcavationsA Bronze vessel found associated with a child’s coffin in Tomb 9 in Room 2, the northern crypt in the church.The NYU Amheida ExcavationsWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Hajj Deaths, Egypt Suspends 16 Companies

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      The action against 16 tour companies came as governments look into whether many travelers were not properly registered to make the journey into the desert.After hundreds of pilgrims died in the scorching desert heat during the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, the Egyptian government announced on Saturday that it had suspended the licenses of 16 tour companies that had facilitated travel for some pilgrims to Saudi Arabia.At least 450 people have died during this year’s pilgrimage, in which travelers endured maximum temperatures that ranged from 108 degrees to 120 degrees Fahrenheit (42 to 49 degrees Celsius). But the actual number of fatalities is expected to climb as governments get more accurate tallies of the deaths. (Egypt, for one, has officially acknowledged only 31 deaths.)In announcing the suspension of the 16 travel companies, the Egyptian government said the businesses failed to offer the pilgrims important services like medical care. It said the companies did not provide the pilgrims with “appropriate accommodation,” which caused them to suffer from “exhaustion due to the high temperatures.”Reuters reported that some travel agencies may not have officially registered for the pilgrimage, to get around the high costs of package tours. And, Reuters said, companies were being blamed for letting pilgrims travel to Saudi Arabia on personal visas, rather than hajj visas, which provide access to medical care and the holy sites.Mahmoud Qassem, a member of Egypt’s Parliament, said the travel companies “left the pilgrims stranded and turned off their mobile phones” so they could not hear the travelers’ calls for help.There were also complaints that pilgrims were not given access to enough cooling stations or water amid the intense heat.The number of unregistered visitors — in addition to the intense desert heat — could have left Saudi Arabia unprepared for dealing with such a large influx of people.Tunisia’s government has said that the death toll of pilgrims from that country was expected to rise from the 49 reported on Friday, as the number of people traveling on tourist visas became more clear.The hajj has been the site of several tragedies, including a stampede in 2015 that killed more than 2,200 people. In recent years, with rising temperatures, many pilgrims have also succumbed to heat stress.The Saudi government has said that during this year’s hajj, more than 1.8 million Muslims traveled to Mecca, 1.6 million of them from outside Saudi Arabia.Hager Al-Hakeem contributed reporting from Luxor, Egypt. More

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      Six Bodies Found in Mojave Desert in Southern California

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      A call for a wellness check led the authorities to the gruesome discovery.A call for a wellness check led the authorities in Southern California to make a gruesome discovery this week: They found six bodies at a remote crossroads in the Mojave Desert.Deputies with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department found most of the bodies around 8:15 p.m. Tuesday in an isolated area off Highway 395 outside of El Mirage, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. A sixth body was discovered early Wednesday morning, Mara Rodriguez, a Sheriff’s Department spokewoman, said at a news conference.The spot where the bodies were found is so isolated, Ms. Rodriguez said, that the Sheriff’s Department sought help from the California Highway Patrol’s Aviation Division.Aerial footage shared by television news crews shows an area dotted with bushes and evidence markers near the scene. Video captured by TV news had blurred out parts of the video because of graphic images.Neither the age nor the sex of the people whose bodies were found were immediately known, Ms. Rodriguez said. The cause and manner of death were also still under investigation, and it was unclear how long the people had been dead.Detectives did not release information about the call for the wellness check that had led them to the bodies, nor have they said what condition the bodies were found in.“I don’t have enough info even to speculate,” said Gloria Huerta, another Sheriff’s Department spokesperson.Members of the Sheriff Department’s Special Investigations Division are assisting with the case.Asked whether bodies had been found in the desert before, Ms. Huerta said: “I know that we’ve had cases before just because we have a large desert area. To this magnitude, I can’t remember.“I’ve been with the department for 25 years, and I haven’t seen that,” she continued. “But it is a pretty large, desolate desert area. There’s no buildings, that I saw. No businesses or anything like that. So, that’s the best I could describe it. It’s just an open area.”As of late Wednesday afternoon, the bodies had not yet been moved from the scene, according to Ms. Huerta.“We’re doing the best we can to get through the evidence collected and get it processed, and, you know, hopefully, come to a conclusion on this case,” she said. More