Peter Kinney articles

Secrets etched in stone don't disappear. They wait patiently, sometimes for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian rulers knew this well. Their messages, carved into desert rocks, speak directly to us today.

Ancient civilizations approached passing differently. While today’s embalmers use just enough preservative for a dignified farewell, the Egyptians went all in. For them, passing to the afterlife required perfect preservation. And this find near Saqqara transports the process back to its origins. A rock-cut tomb had been turned into an industrial–style embalming/mummification area. It shows how ancient Egyptian undertakers combined incredible techniques to get the job done. Mummification and embalming weren’t the same, though. Modern embalming slows decay briefly for mourning and burial, using fluid preservatives and sometimes removing organs. Mummification, however, was a second step they took, aimed at achieving permanence and stopping decay entirely. Remember us saying Egyptians went all in? Well, they did, and mummification is all the proof we need.

Did you hit an intersection recently and think your navigation lost its mind? Turns out it's just the newest layout popping up across the country.

Few discoveries stop Egyptologists in their tracks, but this one did. During a routine excavation near Djoser’s Step Pyramid, archaeologists brushed aside centuries of dust and uncovered a sealed coffin containing a tightly rolled papyrus. When carefully unrolled, it stretched an astonishing 52 feet—the first full Book of the Dead papyrus uncovered in Egypt in over a hundred years. If ancient Egyptians believed words had power, these had clearly held their own. The document belonged to a man named Ahmose, possibly an official or priest, whose burial dates to around 50 BC. Despite its age, the papyrus’s hieroglyphs remain vividly inked in black and red, depicting prayers, spells, and rituals meant to guide the deceased through the afterlife. Each line echoes an ancient belief—that the soul’s journey didn’t end with passing; it simply changed form.

Dust hung in the air, and hope clung to every traveler heading west. Life wasn’t easy, but it was raw and real. These were the moments that shaped everyday life on the rugged frontier.

Blaine Gibson has spent the last decade combing beaches for fragments of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, to find truth for the families of the missing passengers.

Four and a half millennia after Khufu’s builders sealed the Great Pyramid, scientists have slipped a tiny camera through its ancient stones and spotted something remarkable. A narrow corridor, untouched since antiquity, lies hidden above the pyramid’s main entrance. What purpose it once served remains a puzzle, but its discovery adds a new layer to Egypt’s greatest mystery. Keep reading to see how modern tech cracked an ancient secret.

You never really know what the tide will bring. Maybe something shiny, perhaps something older than you’d guess. These weathered finds remind us that history just drifts back when the sea feels like sharing.