Crossroads Roundup: Sarcophagus of Ramesses II, Maya Beekeepers, and Graffiti from the Napoleonic Wars

Our favorite stories on art, archaeology, folklore, and more from this past week.

Welcome to the Crossroads Roundup! This is our weekly roundup of news related to history, art, archaeology, and anything else that our readers might enjoy. While many of our essays are free, the Crossroads Roundup is for paid subscribers only. If you haven’t already, you can sign up below to gain access to the full archive, the Patron Podcast, and the Crossroads Roundup:

Hello Patrons! Before we dive into the news, I wanted to let you know that the next episode of the Patron Podcast will be premiering this week! This month’s episode features a fun, spooky, and slightly seasonally-inappropriate topic… but I think you’ll enjoy it nonetheless.

And now, onto the Roundup:

A fragment of Ramesses II’s sarcophagus. Photograph by Kevin Cahail.

Archaeologists from Sorbonne University have identified the sarcophagus of Ramesses II, otherwise known as Ramesses the Great.

Ramesses II was one of the most celebrated rulers of ancient Egypt; he ruled from roughly 1279 B.C. until his death at the age of 90. When he died, he was buried in his own tomb in the Valley of the Kings, but the tomb was soon after raided by grave robbers.

While many of the riches of his tomb were gone, Ramesses II’s mummy remained. He was placed in a simple wooden coffin and moved to several tombs, before finally resting in a Royal Cache next to Deir el-Bahari in the Theban Necropolis. From ancient texts, researchers gathered that the simple wooden coffin was a temporary measure, but it seems that no one got around to making him a new sarcophagus.

What happened to the original?