Second phase of Grand Egyptian Museum finalized in March

Egypt State Information Service

Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni said the Grand Egyptian Museum near the Cairo-Alexandria desert road is being carried out on 117 feddans and is expected to be the biggest in the world.

The second phase includes a center for renovating antiquities, a warehouse, an electricity station and a fire station, in addition to a number of buildings, said Hosni.

He added that the project costs 550 million US dollars including 100 million in self-finance and 300 million dollars as a Japanese soft loan to be repaid after a 20-year grace period, in addition to 150 million collected from donations and local and international contributions.

Mystery of the mummy from KV55

Guardians.net

Thanks to Huib Benne for sending me the link to this page. It is Zahi Hawass's take on this particular issue, with some detailed background information about the Amarna period and a description of some of the key contents of KV55.

The contents of KV55 offer some clues to who the mystery mummy might have been. Although the tomb had been badly damaged over the centuries by floods that periodically inundate the Valley of the Kings, many intriguing artifacts were found inside. Apart from the coffin containing the mysterious mummy, the most spectacular objects were panels from a gilded wooden shrine that had been built to protect the sarcophagus of Queen Tiye, the mother of Akhenaten. Originally, the shrine had borne the name and image of Akhenaten along with that of the queen, but these were erased in ancient times.

Other objects from KV55 included small clay sealings bearing the name of Tiye’s husband Amenhotep III, and Tutankhamun, who may have been her grandson. There were also vessels of stone, glass and pottery, along with a few pieces of jewelry, inscribed with the names of Tiye, Amenhotep III and one of Amenhotep III’s daughters, Princess Sitamun. Four ‘magical bricks’ made of mud were also found in the tomb, stamped with the name of Akhenaten himself. A beautiful set of calcite canopic jars made for Akhenaten’s secondary wife Kiya rested in a niche carved into the southern wall of the burial chamber.

New Book: Pharaonic Inscriptions from the Southeastern Desert of Egypt

Eisenbrauns (temporary)
Eisenbrauns (permanent)

Pharaonic Inscriptions from the Southeastern Desert of Egypt by Russell D. Rothe, William K. Miller, and George (Rip) Rapp

Forthcoming April 2008

The University of Minnesota Eastern Desert Expedition had its beginnings in 1975, when co-authors George (Rip) Rapp, T. H. Wertime, and J. D. Muhly visited cassiterite (tin ore) mines in the southern Eastern Desert of Egypt. Near the farthest west of these mines, they were shown a group of pharaonic inscriptions by M. F. el-Ramly of the Egyptian Geological Survey and Mining Authority. The inscriptions were photographed, and the photos were given to an Egyptologist to translate. Much later, in 1991, senior author Russell D. Rothe read about the photos in a footnote in an unrelated article. After obtaining copies of the photos from Rapp, he translated the inscriptions with the help of co-author William K. Miller and others. Over the next decade, Rothe, Rapp, and Miller traversed the 60,000-sq.-km area between the Nile and the Red Sea, mostly on foot, photographing inscriptions and systematically surveying the entire region. The results of their investigations of the inscriptional remains found in this vast, mountainous desert are here published for the first time; the corpus will be an important addition to our knowledge of the range and scope of the activities of the ancient Egyptians, especially outside the Nile Valley.

Egyptomainia: Hieroglyphs encircle theatre columns

Ventura County Star

The culmination of nine months of work and a ton of dedication, an unusual art project is now on permanent display at the Roxy Stadium 11 Theatre in Camarillo.

The work of local artist Tammy Carlson, the project is a series of six giant lobby pillars adorned with Egyptian hieroglyphics, animals and symbols, to match the decor of the theater at 5001 Verdugo Way.

Daily Photo - General photos of the Faiyum

To all who saw the earlier photo, there was a problem with it (thanks to "L" for pointing it out). Here's something else instead. The Faiyum has been in the news quite a bit recently, thanks to a recent Neolithic and due to work by ECHO to raise awareness of the threat to existing archaeolgical sites. Here are some general photos of the Faiyum, ancient and modern. They were scanned from prints on a somewhat elderly scanner several years ago, and this shows in the quality, which is fairly poor.

The Endangered Faiyum

www.faiyum.com

Geoffrey Tassie has written a paper, posted on the above page, which looks at the modern threat to the archaeology of the Faiyum. Here's his introduction:

As already highlighted in the ECHO news article Faiyumi Sites to be placed on Tourist Map, the Faiyum Depression has been selected for development. These plans were originally formulated in 2005, by the Minister of Tourism, Ahmed el-Maghrabi and the Minister of Environment, Engineer Maged George. These plans were devised to boost environmental tourism, particularly in the Western Desert, the Bahariya Oasis and the Faiyum. These plans for the development of eco-tourism are also intended to encourage the development of communities and aid economic progress in the surrounding areas. This proposed development of the north Faiyum is compounded by the building of the 1,200 km Desert Development Corridor “superhighway” running from El-Aleman in the north to Lake Nasser in the South. A rail-track will run parallel to the superhighway. Twelve East-West connectors are planned to connect the superhighway to the main centres of population, one of which is the Faiyum Branch connector. This project is designed to promote the development of the desert north of the Faiyum depression by establishing sites for tourism, new communities and agricultural areas. It also would allow an extension to the west of the Depression for the establishment of industries such as cement production.

See the above page for the full paper.

If anyone who visits the page that I've linked to looks around the rest of that site, I should throw in a quick warning - the site is one of mine (Predynastic Faiyum) and it suffered some problems when it was moved to a new host some time ago. Many of the original images are missing, including all of the maps, leaving empty boxes in their places. Also, I haven't updated the site in a couple of years. As far as I can see, on most of the pages nothing is greatly out of date. One or two bits need to be added - Noriyuku Shirai has published some useful papers in the last couple of years, and his findings need to be incorporated. The later Predynastic pages are probably somewhat antiquated too. Apologies but I will be working on it!

New Book: Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science

The University of Manchester

About half way down the page:

Edited by the Director of the KNH Centre, Rosalie David, the book aims to show how the team's investigative methods are being used for new international research into disease evolution and ancient Egyptian pharmacy.

Highlighting the unique resource of Manchester's Egyptian Mummy Tissue Bank, the book looks at the progress of ancient DNA research and the treatments available for conserving mummified remains.

"The main aims of this book are to show how biomedical and scientific techniques have led to a new understanding of some aspects of ancient Egyptian society," said Rosalie.

"There has been a remarkable increase in the number of scientific studies on mummies over the past two decades and people are now aware of the information that can be gained from such investigations, in terms of explaining the cultural context of human remains and in adding knowledge to how disease has evolved from ancient to modern times."

Ten years of EEF email traffic

Congratulations and thanks to Aayko Emya and his team of contributors for all their hard work on the archive at the Egyptologists' Electronic Forum. Here's Aayko's email to the EEF group:

The forum's archives (sorted by topic) have been updated for the whole of 2007:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/4482/archeef.html

Based on a suggestion by Max Yakovlev, 10 years of EEF traffic have been gathered into two files for easy download.

Even if you have in the past downloaded most of the archives, you may still want to download these batches, as small errors have been cured, like prefixes and spaces in file names (which prevented files to list alphabetically) or duplicate file names (which caused overwriting).

Split over two files as that is probably easier for people on dial-up. Files are Zipped and have a password (yebu), as they are only meant for subscribers, not accidental tourists.

EEFYR1-5 (1998-2002), 5.6 MB
http://www1.tip.nl/~t017001/EEFYR1-5.zip

EEFYR6-10 (2003-2007), 7.2 MB
http://www1.tip.nl/~t017001/EEFYR6-10.zip

EEFIntro&Index, 90 kB
http://www1.tip.nl/~t017001/EEFIntro&Index.zip
(Read 'EEF Archives' file to start.)

Do remember that the copyright of each post belongs to the poster, so the whole or parts of these archives are not to be copied to other venues.

Hot air balloon collision over Luxor

news.com.au

THREE hot air balloons carrying 60 tourists crashed around the Egyptian Nile resort town of Luxor overnight, injuring seven passengers, a security offical said.

Six Colombians and a British national were injured.

"Three balloons, carrying a total of 60 tourists, crashed in three different locations," the official said. "The injured were taken to hospital and some are being treated for broken bones," the source said.

The tourists were on a popular balloon tour over some of Egypt's most renowned archaeological sites near the Valley of the Kings.

"The reasons behind the crashes are unclear," the official said.

Book Review: The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy

This is a very informal review of John Bierman's The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy, the Real English Patient by John Bierman (Penguin 2004). As a review, it is a trifle long - but that's the advantage of owning your own blog :-)

For those who are wondering about the Egypt connection, Laszlo Almasy was a conspicuous character in the exploration of Egypt's Western Desert in the early 1930s, and was employed by Axis forces for his eastern Sahara knowledge during WWII. His connection with Egypt lasted until his death in 1951 when he was Director of the Cairo Desert Institute. His name was used in Michael Ondaatje's novel (and the subsequent film) The English Patient, but his life has only an ephemeral relationship with that fictional character.

In The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy, John Bierman sets about trying to demystify some of the details surrounding the Hungarian whose life became so closely entwined with Egypt, the informal British desert explorers of the 1930s and the wartime activities of both Allied and Axis forces in Egypt and Libya during World War II.

John Bierman was a newspaper editor before becoming BBC correspondent. He also made documentary films and has written many non-fiction books, including Alamein: War Without Hate with Colin Smith. He dedicates this book to members of the Long Range Desert Group. There is a splendid review of his career in his obituary on The Guardian website.

In the prologue Bierman introduces us to Almasy at a party at the Royal palace in Cairo, not long before Almasy's death, and shows us something of the cultural and political post-war context of the time. Bierman explains some of the confusion over the identity of Almasy arising from the film The English Patient, although he never explains why Ondaatje felt the need to give his fictional character the name of a real person. It is made clear that finding facts about Almasy's life was by no means straight forward, and that there are many questions that remain unanswered.

The first chapter describes Almasy's upbringing priveledged but fragmented upbringing in a Hungarian castle, his education in Britain (where he learned to fly), his involvement in the Hungarian army, his role in an attempt to return the exiled Hungarian king to the throne (when Almasy claims he was awarded the title "Count") and his involvement, via successes in motor rallying, with the car manufacturer Steyr. Steyr recruited him as a representative to establish their brand in the Middle East, sending him to Cairo.

The remaining chapters are rivetting, telling the story first of Almasy's rediscovery of the Darb el Arabin (the 40 Days trail), his involvement with the informal Zerzura Club, his obsession with the Lost Army of Cambyses, his role in WWII, and his post war years. It is clear that Almasy really did become obsessed with the desert and its myths at a very early stage and that this coloured everything that followed in his life.

Chapter 11, dealing with the years 1932 to 1936 describes how Almasy was associated closely with both the Germans in Egypt (some of whom were thought to be spies) and the British. He offered information of potentially military significance about the desert to both Italian and Egyptian governments. Unsurprisingly, all officials were suspicious of him. I wondered as I was reading if it was Almasy's obsession with returning to the desert that had led him to woo friends in all camps. This would seem to have been short sighted, even naïve, but is given support at the end of Chapter 13 when Almasy is quoted saying that his main interest in serving Rommel was to acquire resources to enable him to continue his search for the lost army.

When the Second World War broke out, everything changed and those who had been involved in light hearted exploration of the desert now provided much needed expertise and data for engaging in desert warfare in Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad. Almasy was seconded to the German forces whilst his former friends created and formed the Long Range Desert Group to repulse Axis efforts to penetrate further east.

Almasy did not survive long following the war. He was tried in Hungary as a war criminal by the invading Russian army, but was smuggled out of the country with the help of the British governement and returned to Cairo. In Cairo he gave flying lessons to make ends meet, and was finally given his dream role as head of the Desert Institute. Unfortunately his health had always been something of a trial due to ailments from his desert years and the effects of torture at the hands of the Russian army following their capture of Hungary. He collapsed suddenly and died only days later, rambling about Cambyses in his delerium.

Bierman brings places, people and events to life. His writing clear, lively and to the point. Chapters are assembled in a way that pulls the reader along in a fascinating tour through Almasy's world. I have been reading a number of travelogues of the western Sahara recently, and it is a refreshing change to read something that is devoid of literary self indulgence.

Everything is put into a its historical context (without which the story would fall apart). Bierman uses a number of sources including Almasy's own writing, official documents, the writings of his contemporaries and interviews with those who knew him. Bierman does an excellent job of providing an objective view of a man who was both complex and elusive. He also clears up many of the urban myths surrounding Almasy. Where there has more than one interpretation of events the author offers each with his own helpful reality-check to sort out which might be the most plausible explanation.

The overall impression that I came away with is that Almasy was a troubled man whose upbringing was partly responsible for a tendency to escapism and a desire for adventure and recognition. He seems to have been reserved and somewhat isolated, even slightly disconnected from reality - but not an unfeeling man. He comes across as obsessive, and always seems to be striving for something that he cannot quite reach.

My only real moan is that there weren't enough dates scattered around. I became rather disorientated as to which year we were in - which was confusing when it was occasionally necessary for the narrative to jump back and forth in time. I had to back-track on a number of occasions to find out when we were, in order to get the sequence of events right. The lack of dates also occasionally gave me the illusion that everything happened in a shorter period than it actually did.

I wasn't expecting to like Almasy, and I still don't empathise with him, but I do have a much better understanding of who he was and what he actually did. If you are interested in this period of Egyptian history, and in Laszlo Almasy in particular, it is a very good read.

Book Review: Faith and Transformation

Journal of Folklore Research (Reviewed by William Hansen, Indiana University)

I've included this more for curiosity than anything else. It may be of interest to those who are studying amulets in Egypt due to the nature of the discussion about the nature of amulets in general:

Faith and Transformation: Votive Offerings and Amulets from the Alexander Girard Collection. Edited by Doris Francis. 2007. Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press. Published in Association with the Museum of International Folk Art.

Alexander Girard (1907-1993) was a graphic designer whose artistic productions were much influenced by folk art, which he collected enthusiastically from the 1930s to the 1970s. He organized his collection in accordance with his own interests, which were those of a professional artist. As he bluntly remarked, “I bought this stuff to spark my creativity” (8). His collection came to include over 100,000 pieces from a hundred countries.

Girard moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1953, the year in which the Museum of International Folk Art opened its doors. In 1978 the Girard Foundation Collection of Folk Art was donated to the state of New Mexico, and a Girard Wing was added to the museum, where Girard himself supervised the installation of a portion of his collection. When new construction was undertaken, the panels devoted to amulets and ex votos were put into storage. They were taken out again in 2007 as a component of the Girard Centennial Celebration, an event that, one assumes, served as the impetus for the making and the timing of the present book. . . .

The contributors’ emphasis throughout is emphatically synchronic, resulting in a certain temporal flatness. Now and then a reference is made to the Old World source of a New World practice or to the long history of a particular tradition. Amulets, for example, are found in the Egypt of today but also in ancient Egypt.

Book Review: Prinzeps und Pharao

Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Review by Jan Moje)

Friederike Herklotz, Prinzeps und Pharao. Der Kult des Augustus in Aegypten. Oikumene. Studien zur antiken Weltgeschichte, 4. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Antike, 2007.

Die Einnahme Alexandrias durch den römischen Konsul Octavian im Jahre 30 BC und die darauf folgende römische Okkupation Ägyptens stellte eine der wichtigsten Zäsuren in der Geschichte des Nillandes dar. Ab diesem Zeitpunkt war Ägypten kein eigenständiges Reich mehr, sondern eine Provinz des Imperium Romanum, über dessen Politik im fernen Rom entschieden wurde. Um die Herrschaft Roms gegenüber den Einheimischen zu sichern, war die Legitimation des römischen Kaisers als ägyptischer Herrscher besonders wichtig. Während die in Ägypten residierenden Ptolemäer als indigene Pharaonen interpretiert werden konnten, gestaltete sich die Lage in der Kaiserzeit schwieriger. Schon für Kaiser Augustus musste daher eine auch auf den ägyptischen Religionsvorstellungen fundierte Herrscherlegitimation gefunden werden.

Weekly Websites

Freer Sackler Online Collection - Ancient Egyptian Art
Freer and Sackler Galleries

An excellent photo gallery of the Ancient Egyptian Art collection from the Freer and Sackler Galleries in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.. For those of us who haven't been lucky enough to visit Washington, the above page provides a good collection of over 100 very fine photographs to browse. You can change how many images show at any one time, and as usual click on the small image to see the expanded version.

If you are interested in faience or glass there are some excellent examples. I haven't paid a great deal of attention to the glass-work in the past, but these pages have shown me the error of my ways.


Diary of a Dig - Excavations at Fustat in 1971
SaudiAramco World
By Elizabeth Rodenbeck

A 1974 account of an excavation in Cairo by one of the team members. She gives a day by day account, which is very engaging and gives a very vivid impression of how the excavation operated. Here's here introduction to the site, which puts her dig diary into context:

South and east of modern Cairo, between the old Roman fortress called Babylon and a cemetery known as the City of the Dead, lies a square mile or so of utter desolation. Nothing grows, there is nothing green. In every direction stretch endless low gray mounds.

Unpromising? Perhaps. But those heaps of dirt are worth another look, for they are not just dirt. They are the rubbish dumps of Cairo, and have been for the last 800 years. Underneath them, sometimes as much as 18 feet down, lie the foundations and remains of a city that flowered 1,000 years ago, Fustat, City of the Tent, founded in the 7th century by the Muslim conquerors of Egypt.

For some 500 years after the Arab conquest of Egypt, Fustat flourished as a center of commerce and trade which extended east to China and west to Spain. In the 10th century, however, the Fatimids came to Egypt from Tunisia to found a city nearby: Cairo, soon to be the center of a new caliphate and a new empire.

Careers for Women in Ancient Egypt
BBC History

Thanks to David Petersen for sending me the link to this six-page overview of the role of women in ancient Egyptian society by Dr Joann Fletcher:

Whilst the concept of a career choice for women is a relatively modern phenomenon, the situation in ancient Egypt was rather different. For some three thousand years the women who lived on the banks of the Nile enjoyed a form of equality which has rarely been equalled.

In order to understand their relatively enlightened attitudes toward sexual equality, it is important to realise that the Egyptians viewed their universe as a complete duality of male and female. Giving balance and order to all things was the female deity Maat, symbol of cosmic harmony by whose rules the pharaoh must govern.

The EEF Guide to Internet Resources for Ancient Egyptian Texts
Egyptologists' Electronic Forum
Thanks to Michael Tilgner's recent email on EEF directing attention to this excellent resource - a useful reminder that is is there and freely available.

Sand accumulation and groundwater in the eastern Sahara (PDF format)
Episodes, Vol.21 No.3 1998
By Farouk el-Baz

Nearly all sand dune fields in the eastern Sahara are located within topographic depressions. The sand, mostly composed of quartz grains, occurs south of limestone plateaus that border the Mediterranean seacoast, over which the wind blows southward. The source of the sand is the “Nubian Sandstone,” which is exposed throughout the southern part of the eastern Sahara. Satellite images, particularly radar data, reveal that sand-covered, northward-trending courses of dry rivers end at the depressions. The sand appears to have been deposited, most likely in lake beds, during wet climates. Alternating dry climatic episodes resulted in sculpturing these deposits into sand dunes and sheets by southward flowing wind. The depressions must have hosted great volumes of surface water during the wet climates. Much of that water would have seeped into the underlying rock through primary and/or secondary porosity. It follows that areas of large accumulations of sand may host vast groundwater resources.

A Rebuttal to El-Baz
Episodes Vol 21, No.4 1998
By Rushdi Said

The great sand accumulations of the eastern Sahara have been the subject of a large number

of studies since the pioneering work of the early explorers of the Western Desert of Egypt and northern Sudan (Hassanein, Prince Kamaleldin Hussein, Newbold, Shaw, Ball, Beadnell, Clayton, Almasy, Bagnold and others of the early to mid years of the 20th century). The work of these early pioneers elucidated the distribution and geomorphology of these dune belts and helped to clarify the mechanics of their accumulation, a subject which was ably treated and summed up by Bagnold in 1941 in his classic “Physics of blown sand and desert dunes”. Much has been added to our understanding of these sand accumulations of the Western Desert of Egypt since these early works. The intensive programs of applied research which were carried out in the Western Desert of Egypt since the 1960’s after the search for mineral, oil and ground water reserves helped to lay down a solid foundation for the geology of that desert (for a review and bibliography the reader is referred to the compendium on the Geology of Egypt (1990) edited by the present author and written by a large number of scholars). In addition, the extensive work on the geomorphology and prehistory that was carried out in that desert during the same period brought to the fore a wealth of data on the stratigraphy and climatological history of the Quaternary of that desert (for a review and bibliography the reader is referred to the work of Wendorf and Schild, 1996 and in press).

All this information does not seem to have been of any relevance to El-Baz when he was searching for a source for the sand of the large dune belts of the eastern Sahara in the article recently published in Episodes, V.21, No.3 (1998), pp. 147–151.

Daily Photo - Last set of satellite photos

And yet more. I am rather partial to satellite views. These are from The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth website. The last lot, I promise! Click on the link beneath the image to go to the page where the full sized image is shown, together with details.

Kom Ombo

Eastern Desert Wadis

Aswan High Dam

Gebel Uweinat

Lake Qarun, Faiyum

More re false portal discovery

National Geographic (Steven Stanek)

Mucho, mucho happiness. I was hoping that Nevine El-Aref would make some sense of all these reports in one of her Al Ahram Weekly slots later this week, but the National Geographic, in the form of Steven Stanek, has gone a long way to doing the job.

Three false doors that served as portals for communicating with the dead are among ancient burial remains recently unearthed in a vast Egyptian necropolis, an archaeological team announced.

The discoveries date back to Egypt's turbulent First Intermediate Period, which ran roughly between 2160 and 2055 B.C.

The period is traditionally thought to have been a chaotic era of bloodshed and power struggles, but little is known based on archaeological evidence.

In addition to the false doors, the Spanish team found two funerary offering tables and a new tomb in the former ancient capital of Herakleopolis—today referred to by its Arabic name Ihnasya el-Medina—about 60 miles (96 kilometers) south of Cairo.

Previous excavations had uncovered tombs that had been deliberately burned and ransacked in antiquity, but experts are unsure if the damage was done by military conquerors or pillaging thieves.

The latest finds, along with the team's new studies of the site's charred remains, could offer a fresh look at the poorly understood First Intermediate Period.

The necropolis "is a very big site in a town that was very important in Egypt, but there is a lot that is still unknown," said excavation leader Carmen Pérez Díe of the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, Spain.

"In this place any discovery is very important, and I think [our excavations] will help write a new page for the history of Egypt."

See the above two-page story for complete details.

Pyramids of Egypt - one grand plan?

Discovery Channel News (Rossella Lorenzi)

Two of the pyramids of Giza, the last surviving wonder of the ancient world, were conceived as a single project--a sort of grandiose stage show to represent the final and most important part of a pharaoh's journey to the afterlife, an Italian study has concluded.

It is widely believed that the pharaohs Khufu, his son Khafre and grandson Menkaure built their pyramids on the edge of a desert plateau at Giza between 2600 and 2450 BC.

But according to Giulio Magli of the mathematics department at Milan's Polytechnic University, astronomical alignments and the landscape indicate that the two main pyramids, those identified with the tombs of Khufu and Khafre, were not built in different stages. On the contrary, they were planned as a single, grand project.

See the above page for the full story, which is accompanied by an entertaining "pyramidology" slide show. The photos in the slideshow are good, and are accompanied by explanatory captions which take the reader on a whistle-stop tour of pyramid studies.

Egyptian Revival in Hollywood

The Eloquent Peasant

An excellent and fascinating essay by Margaret Maitland about the Hollywood revival of ancient Egypt, with some good photos. I enjoyed this considerably. Here's her introduction:

As an Egyptologist, I understand from first-hand experience how captivating Egyptian culture can be, and I find it interesting to contemplate the ways in which Egyptomania seized upon the minds and imaginations of people in the 19th and early 20th centuries and manifested itself in art, architecture, and advertising ranging from the absurd to the sublime. It spread throughout the Western world and beyond, from Europe and North America to Russia and South Africa. There are certainly numerous examples of the craze in London (see my Egyptological map of the city), but some other interesting examples have been featured on the internet lately.

See the above for the full story.

British museums advised to dispose of unused art

New York Times

A very brief article about If you are asked for a username and password type "egyptnews" in both fields.

The Museums Association, founded in 1889 to represent Britain’s museums and galleries, reversed a 30-year ban on selling art and urged its 1,500 members on Monday to get rid of objects that are gathering dust, the BBC reported. “Museums typically collect a thousand times as many things as they get rid of,” Mark Taylor, the association’s director, said in a posting on its Web site (museumsassociation.org.). “Wonderful collections can become a burden unless they are cleared of unused objects.” The association told its members to give unused art to other museums or public institutions or, in exceptional circumstances, to sell it.

The full Museums Association post can be found on their website, together with a download of their new policy, the Disposable Digest (8 pages), and their advice for accomplishing this, the Disposable Toolkit (24 pages) - both in PDF format.

I know very little about museum management but it is my understanding that some museums would actually have to change their constitution in order to dispose of items, and this can be a fairly major process, which usually has to be preceded by a period of consultation and research.

The British Museum actually has its own Act of Parliament (The British Museum Act 1963), which has some fairly firm things to say about the conditions under which items may be disposed. I know even less about amending an Act than I do about museum management, but I bet that it is no walk in the park (and expensive too!).

Responses to this proposal should be quite interesting to follow.

British Museum collections online

Computer Weekly (Rebecca Thomson)

The British Museum is making its entire collection available on the web with one of the world's biggest museum online collection databases.

Records for around 260,000 objects will be available by the end of 2009. These will contain curatorial research and cataloguing information, and there will also be 110,000 images that viewers can "super-zoom" in on.

The newly launched Museum website also has a new, fully integrated online shop, and now covers all aspects of the museum's activities.

See the above for more about the technology.

St Catherine's National Park

Egyptian Gazette

N.B. The story on this page will expire shortly.

In mid-South Sinai lies the Saint Catherine's Protected Area, one of the areas of the world with the greatest biological diversity.The basis of this National Park's rationale is the conservation of biological diversity or bio-diversity.

In an area of 5,750 square kilometres, the biological diversity has increased over geological time, while global biological diversity is being lost at a rate many times faster than ever before, largely as a result of human activities.The Prime Minister's Decree No. 940 of 1996 stipulates that the Saint Catherine's area is a natural reserve, under the management of the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA). St. Catherine's National Park occupies much of the central part of South Sinai, a mountainous region of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock, which includes Egypt's highest peaks (the mountains of St. Catherine's, Moussa, Serbal, Umm Shomer and Tarbush).

St. Catherine's Mountain is the highest peak in Egypt, 2,624 metres above sea level. The Sinai massif contains some of the world's oldest rocks - around 80 per cent of them are 600 million years old.This high altitude ecosystem supports a surprising diversity of wild species; some found nowhere else in the world. The mountains are relic outposts for the Sinai rose finch from Asia, the ibex and wolf from Europe, and the striped hyena and Tristram's grackle which came from Africa. Several species are unique to the National Park, including two species of snakes and about 20 plant species, such as a beautiful native primrose. Around 1,000 plant species, representing almost 40 per cent of Egypt's total flora, are found in this region. These include many endemic species. Half of the 33 known Sinai endemics are found in the St. Catherine's area. Many of these are rare and endangered. Small orchards are scattered in wadis, particularly at higher elevations. The white-crowned black wheatear is very characteristic of the area. There are 46 reptile species, 15 of which are found nowhere else in Egypt.

See the above page for the full story.

Daily Photo - Visible Earth

Staying with the theme of satellite imagery, today's photographs are taken from NASA's Visible Earth website. Each of the links under the photo takes you to a page of explanatory text about the image, and you can view the same image in different formats.

Egypt

Egypt and Nubia, with sun glint off the Nile

Dust storm over eastern Sudan

Alexandria

No blog today

Back tomorrow or Thursday!
Cheers
Andie xx

A fragile oasis uneasily welcomes tourist dollars

Los Angeles Times (Daniel Williams)

In Siwa, where Cleopatra came to bathe, visitors' cash has brought a splurge of construction, jobs and change.

As the putt-putt of motorbikes eclipses the clip-clop of donkey hooves, tourist guide Sayid Abu-Seif has decided that development in Siwa, his oasis home in western Egypt, is moving too far, too fast.

"It used to be quiet here," said Abu-Seif, 27. "You could hear the birds. Now it begins to sound like a city."

His unease is shared by other Siwans and outsiders concerned about the preservation of a fragile place out of time. A conundrum familiar to Shangri-Las the world over has arisen in this ancient island in the sand: What price change?

In the case of Siwa, where Cleopatra came to bathe, what danger does development hold for its clean air, abundant springs and languorous pace of life among the date groves?

The question is doubly vexing in a country where every livable space is exploited.

See the above page for the full story.

More re discoveries at Beni Suef

Actualidad Terra

This piece adds a few details to previous reports on the discovery. My rough interpretation of this piece is fragmented - partly because of my rusty Spanish but partly because the story itself seems a bit vague. If anyone can do a better job of it please let me know. I'll post anything else that I find.

The Spanish team are from the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid under the direction of Carmen Pérez Die. They uncovered three false portals and offering tables from rock cut tombs dating to the First Intermediate period, in the Beni Suef area. Zahi Hawass stated that the false portals were found in a tomb which had been destroyed and set alight in the past. Other finds include the remains of mud-brick and limestone tombs and ceramic fragments which probably date to the Old Kingdom. There's a photograph on the above page.

Un equipo de expertos del Museo Arqueológico Nacional de Madrid ha descubierto a unos 120 kilómetros al sur de El Cairo un conjunto de antigüedades faraónicas que datan de hace más de 4.000 años, informó hoy la prensa egipcia.

Los arqueólogos españoles encontraron tres puertas 'falsas' de tumbas y fabricadas de roca, y dos mesas de ofrendas en la localidad de Egnasia, provincia de Bani Suef, precisó el ministro egipcio de Cultura, Faruq Hosni, citado por la prensa.

El hallazgo se produjo durante excavaciones llevadas a cabo últimamente por el equipo de arqueólogos que es encabezado por la reputada experta española Carmen Pérez Die, subrayó el ministro.

Las piezas datan del Primer Periodo Intermedio de la Época faraónica (2040-2191 a.C.).

See the above page for the full story.

Swaffham Museum funding crisis

EDP24

Swaffham Museum has launched an 11th hour survival appeal as a funding crisis means it might lose its professional staff or even close down.

The venue which houses a collection dedicated to the famous Egyptologist Howard Carter is currently undergoing a major facelift following an EU grant of £384,000.

But due to unexpected repair works most of the cash was used to underwrite additional costs, leaving little funds to pay full-time wages for the museum's curator and an education officer.

See the above page for the full story.

More re possible location of tomb of Imhotep

huliq.com

This is a story from earlier this year, but the Huliq site has just picked up on it, so here it is again for anyone who missed it the first time. Ian Mathieson believes that his team may have discovered where the deified architect Imhotep was buried in Saqqara, using geophysical survey techniques. Two underground tombs have been located, both of which are immense by the standards of anything in the vicinity. Unfortunately the current ban on new excavations, imposed by the SCA, means that his theories will not be investigated for the forseeable future. See the above page for more.

Fiction: Dietrich sequel

Statesman Journal

We heard from Northwest author William Dietrich, via e-mail, and he was pleased to announce a sequel to his 2007 historical thriller "Napoleon's Pyramids." The sequel, "The Rosetta Key," is due April 22. Here's what he shared with us:

"Napoleon's Pyramids," my sixth novel, is my most successful to date, doing well domestically and selling into 24 languages or countries.

"The Rosetta Key," my seventh, brings the adventure yarn built around Napoleon's 1798-99 invasion of Egypt and the Holy Land full circle.

While the two books are stand-alone reads, the first featured a bit of a cliff-hanger ending that had readers asking what happened next. "Rosetta Key" answers that.

Daily Photo - SIR-C/X-SAR Images of Egypt

SIR-C/X-SAR Images showing different parts of Egypt. Click on the image to see a bigger version of it on ths site. To see full descriptions which explain the images and help you interpret them just click on the link beneath image that you want to see details for - and even bigger versions of these images are available from those pages.

All of the images come from the a joint U.S.-German-Italian project that uses a highly sophisticated imaging radar to capture images of Earth. The technology used is Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) . Photographs on this site were taken using the instrument, which was flown on two flights in 1994. One was on space shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-59 April 9-20, 1994. The second flight was on shuttle Endeavour on STS-68 September 30-October 11, 1994. Enjoy!

Nile Delta, Rosetta Branch

Giza, with blow-up


SafSaf Oasis

The Great Sand Sea

Dakhleh Oasis

Light on Ramesses at Abu Simbel

Egypt State Information Service

It's that time of year again:

Some 7,000 tourists and Egyptians witnessed Friday 22/2/2008 the phenomenon of the sun falling perpendicular on the face of Ramses II statue in Abu Simbel temple, south Egypt.

Happening twice a year, the first rays of the rising sun reach 60 meters into the sacred inner sanctuary of the temple in Abu Simbel on February 22 and October 22 to illuminate the back wall of the innermost shrine and the statues of the gods seated there.

For twenty-four minutes, the sun shines on the statues of Ramses II, Amon Ra (the sun god), and Ra-Harakhtye, god of the rising sun.

Ptah, god of the netherworld and darkness, seated at the far left of the row of gods, remains dark on these occasions.

The Abu Simbel temple was cut into rock in the 13th century B.C. by the famous pharaoh Ramses II in honor of himself and the triad Amon-Ra, Ptah and Ra-Harakhte, together with a smaller temple dedicated to Ramses' wife Nefertari and the goddess Hathor.

False doors found in Beni Suef

Egypt State Information Service

The Supreme Council of Antiquities announced on 22/2/2008 that the Spanish archaeologists have unearthed three stone gates dating back to the first transition era (2191-2040 BC) in Ihnasia, Beni Sweif Governorate.

Zahi Hawwas, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquates said the “Deceptive Gates” – as they were known-have been removed from their original burial place, a graveyard that has been demolished and burnt over the years.

Also found were two offering tables and the remains of walls built of red brick and adobe, as well as shards of pre-transition era pottery, Hawass said. The head of the Spanish team said the discovered gates and pottery have been renovated.

Photos of the false doors are shown on the Daily Star website.

Book Reviews: Last Queen of Egypt

Last Queen of Egypt by Joyce Tyldesley, Profile Books Ltd.

The Telegraph, UK (Review by Helen Brown)

If the Emperor Augustus had been able to see into the future, and had a flick through The Daily Telegraph on February 15, 2007, he'd have been delighted to read an article headlined: "Long-lost coin reveals Cleopatra was no beauty".

After defeating the last queen of Egypt, Julius Caesar's adopted son was determined to destroy her reputation. He smashed the images made to glorify her and ensured his pocket historians cast her as a greedy, incestuous, adulterous whore who used her foreign, feminine wiles to emasculate the Roman Empire.

The Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley picks through the Augustan propaganda to assess the woman "as an Egyptian politician rather than a Roman mistress". She is honest about the many gaps in her story: we don't know much about Cleopatra's upbringing but we do know she was raised in the ultimate dysfunctional family.

The Telegraph, UK (Review by Peter Jones)

Joyce Tyldesley, an authority on Pharaonic Egypt, observes that Egyptologists tend to avoid the Graeco-Roman period. To them, it is just not Egyptian. One could argue about that, but all the sources for the period are Graeco-Roman, and Ptolemaic Alexandria (which would have told us much) is buried under the waves.

So what can an Egyptologist bring to the period - especially to the story of Cleopatra, who is so intimately tied up with the struggle for power going on in Rome first between Caesar and Pompey, and then between Marc Antony and Caesar's heir, Octavian (eventually the first emperor Augustus)?

To judge by this book, I have to say 'not a great deal'. There is certainly a lot of information about Egypt, but not so as to give the story a particularly Egyptian spin. Indeed, some of the excursions into Egyptian history and religion add little to the issues at hand.

But Tyldesley's strength has always been her storytelling, and here she is on top form.

See the above pages for the complete reviews

Travel: Stepping off the tourist trail

The Independent (UK)

When hunger strikes, I conduct a quest for koshari in the downtown side-streets. Koshari joints are café-esque, no-nonsense establishments, and I'm served this tasty carb-fest in a stainless steel bowl with a matching beaker of heavily chlorinated tap water. It's a mound of pasta, rice and lentils topped with fried onions and spicy tomato sauce, all for just 20p.

Egypt is refreshingly cheap. It's also sweltering, so when my soles begin to swell I head for the air-conditioned cool of Groppi's. This tearoom is an institution, and I sip Lipton tea in an atmosphere of faded colonialism alongside gossiping middle-class couples and ageing bachelors reading Al-Ahram.

Taking a day to adjust makes me feel I can blend in. On the average street in Cairo, foreigners are rare. Yet despite the repeated terrorist attacks aimed at tourists, travellers are converging on Egypt in record numbers. Last year, the country received nearly ten million tourists, roughly a million of whom were British. But so far I've seen very few of them.

Underground, I remind myself of metro etiquette. The first carriage of every train is for women only. Sometimes I use it; sometimes I don't. But what's remarkable, in every carriage but particularly the first, is that a certain kind of woman has disappeared. There used to be plenty: women who looked like the newsreaders on Egyptian television, or the stars of the popular soaps – smart, with make-up and (the defining feature) carefully styled hair. But many Egyptians are returning to a more fundamental expression of Islam. Hairstyles are out; hijab is in.

See the above page for the full story.

Exhibition: Gift for the Gods

International Herald Tribune (Souren Melikian)

Ancient faiths have a mystery about them that has fascinated the West since Renaissance times. Yet describing them with even the broadest approximation, let alone understanding the emotions that they stirred in the worshippers, seems beyond our grasp.

The exhibition "Gift for the Gods: Image from Egyptian Temples," which recently closed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and reopens at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland, on March 17, spawned a book that includes the latest attempt at deciphering the message of Ancient Egypt.

The radiant beauty that emanates from the faces of many of the bronze figures illuminated by some ineffable certainty is likely to take its source in deeply held creeds with a trend toward mysticism. But when it comes to circumscribing its tenets beyond the names of deities and formal rituals, our helplessness is blatant.

Martha Hill, the Metropolitan Museum curator who edited the book, prefaces her opening chapter, "Art and Influence in Temple Images," with a quote taken from a restoration inscription of Tutankhamun: "As for the gods and goddesses who are in this land, their hearts are joyful; the lords of shrines are rejoicing, the shores are shouting praise, and exultation pervades the [entire] land now that good [plans] have come to pass."

See the above page for the full story, which also has an 8-photographs slide show.

Book Review: The Hunt for Zerzura

The Spectator (review by Justin Marozzi)

The Hunt for Zerzura: The Lost Oasis and the Desert War, by Saul Kelly.

This review dates to 2002 but I've only just stumbled across it. It is less a review than a very short summary of the main themes covered by the book - only the last paragraph comments on the way in which the content is presented.

The hunt for Zerzura, mentioned for the first time by a 13th-century Syrian governor of the Faiyum, was an improbable quest for a place which, said Dr John Ball, the director of desert surveys of Egypt, probably had 'no more real existence than the philosopher's stone'. Desert explorers were not to be dissuaded, however, and the club, which met at the Royal Geographical Society every year and held its own dinner, grew to include pioneering figures such as Major Ralph Bagnold and the enigmatic Hungarian Count Laszlo Almasy. . . .

Kelly's history of the early exploration of the Libyan desert and the swashbuckling operations of Bagnold and Almasy during the war is a fascinating read, packed with detail. Deserts, war and espionage are a potent trio from a literary point of view, of course, and it is a pity the narrative is not always as gripping as the events it relates. A little more romance might have been in order.

The reviewer himself, Marozzi, wrote a book about the rather peculiar camel trek he made across Libya with a friend. If you're interested in desert travelogues his book, South from Barbary, is reviewed concisely but effectively by an Amazon.com customer.

Minoan Art at the Onassis Cultural Center

Suite 101 (Stan Parchin)

From the Land of the Labyrinth: Minoan Crete, 3000-1100 B.C. Onassis Cultural Center, March 13th 2008 - September 13th 2008.

Crete's early civilization flourished in the 3rd and 2nd Millennia B.C. It produced settlements, palace art and architecture, estates and cemeteries. The exhibition describes Minoan government and society, everyday life, religion, funerary practices, art, writing, foreign relations and trade with Egypt and other ancient Mediterranean basin civilizations.

See the above page for more information and useful links.

Trivia: The archaeology of the future

Wulffmorgenthaler

Click on the image to see the cartoon properly. As a former website developer and present-day archaeology nut it did make me smile!

Daily Photo - Luxor views

Australians celebrate 25 years of work in Egypt

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Over the past year the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square has hosted several archaeological exhibitions commemorating the anniversaries of excavation work carried out by foreign archaeological institutes and missions all over Egypt and highlighting their contribution to preserving the national archaeological heritage. Among these were the German, Polish, French and American institutes in Egypt. The most recent exhibition was inaugurated early last week to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Australian Institute in Egypt.

Entitled Corroborree, a name that refers to a traditional Aboriginal Australian gathering for the lively exchange of friendship and information, the exhibition contains 31 key objects carefully selected from Australian excavations at Saqqara, Helwan, Luxor and Dakhla Oasis.

Among the most significant objects put on display for the first time, is a collection of glass bottles, jugs and jewellery unearthed during excavations at the Ismant Al-Kharab site in Dakhla Oasis. . . .

Wine clay jars, bone labels, limestone seals and stelae from the Helwan necropolis are also exhibited. Helwan was the main necropolis of Egypt's capital, Memphis, and reflects the social classification of Egyptian society at the time when the Egyptian state was in the process of formation. The site was previously excavated during the 1940s and 1950s by Egyptologist Zaki Saad, who uncovered more than 10,000 tombs. In 1997, an Australian mission headed by Christian Köhler re-excavated the previously discovered tombs and stumbled upon almost 6,000 objects and more than 150 new graves dating from between the First and Fourth dynasties.

See the above page for the full story - it has lots of details about Australian activities in Egypt and offers a lot of useful information about sites investigated.

Valley of the Whales - Wadi Al Hitan

Al Ahram Weekly (Mahmoud Bakr)

In an event organised by the Ministry of Environment, Mrs Suzanne Mubarak inaugurated the Valley of the Whales Protected Area in Fayoum. The valley is part of the Wadi Al-Rayan Protected Area, 150km southeast of Cairo and home to hundreds of fossils of maritime creatures that lived 40 million years ago, when the valley was covered by sea.

"The Valley of the Whales was declared a natural world heritage area in 2005 due to its concentration of fossilised skeletons of whales and other maritime creatures," said Minister of State for Environmental Affairs Maged George at the event. "Remains of those extinct creatures shed light on the evolution of maritime life over millions of years." George said that President Mubarak has made the environment a top government priority. Article 59, recently added to the constitution, states that "protecting the environment is a national duty."

Mustafa Fouda, chairman of the Natural Protectorate Sector at the Environmental Affairs Agency, said that the World Conservation Union has declared the area a world heritage zone. Egypt has submitted studies detailing findings in the valley to international organisations and, as a result, UNESCO described the area as the best region for whale skeletons in the world.

See the above page for the full story.

More re Iker

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Spanish excavators working at the tomb of Djehuty, overseer of works in Thebes during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, have chanced upon a surprising discovery.

While they were excavating the floor of the open courtyard of the tomb, a well-preserved 11th Dynasty burial was uncovered, including the remains of a large wooden sarcophagus that was painted red and decorated with inscription along its sides mentioning the name of the deceased, Iker, and invocations to the goddess Hathor, mistress of the skies. In the sand surrounding the sarcophagus, five clay vessels were also unearthed, together with five wooden arrows, three of which still bore their original feathers.

See the above for more.

Snap Shot: Colossi of Memnon

Al Ahram Weekly (Mohamed El Hebeishy)

SOME 1,000-tonne twin statues have been standing firm for more than 3,400 years at the entrance of the Theban Necropolis. Mohamed El-Hebeishy takes off the shroud around the Colossi of Memnon.

Amenhotep III ruled for about 40 years during the 18th Dynasty, his reign forever remembered as one of the most prosperous and stable of Ancient Egypt. With no major military activities save one expedition into Nubia, his was a diplomatic rule. International diplomacy thrived during Amenhotep's era with foreign trade substantially increased, with an augmented number of Egyptian goods being found on the Greek mainland. Speaking of monuments, Amenhotep III undertook a grandiose makeover of Karnak Temple, not to mention the mortuary temple he built for himself on the West Bank at Thebes. Though it was the largest and most lavish among Egypt's temples, it was built too close to the flood plains, so it was already in ruins by the 19th Dynasty.

See the above page for more details and and an accompanying photograph (rather good - the colours are rich, one of the statues is enclosed in scaffolding and there is a hot air balloon in the background).

Exhibition: To Live Forever, at Indianapolis

Suite 101 (Stan Parchin)

"To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum" is a special exhibition that explains the ancient civilization's rites of mummification.

Ancient Egyptian funerary practices and religious beliefs about death and the afterlife are vividly described by some 120 pieces of jewelry, sarcophagi (coffins), statuary and vessels in To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (July 13-September 7, 2008).

Selected from more than 1200 objects in the Brooklyn Museum's world-class collection of Egyptian antiquities, the works on display in To Live Forever... range in date from 3600 B.C. to 400 A.D. From predynastic times through the Roman period, they document how the ancient Egyptians sought to conquer death and survive throughout eternity.

See the above page for the full story.

Exhibition: World of the Pharaohs, Idaho

kidk.com

A one of a kind exhibit is making its world debut right here in eastern Idaho. Its called the "World of the Pharaohs" and its opening at the Museum of Idaho.

"Its an extraordinary exhibit, 3,000 years of ancient history are represented here in the most fantastic artifacts," says David Pennock, the Executive Director, The Museum of Idaho.

And starting Friday morning,you can experience history for yourself.

"Everything that you see, is a little glimpse into how these ancient people viewed themselves in the eternities," says Pennock.

More than 200 pieces of ancient history, spanning more than 3,000 years are stopping at the Museum of Idaho. Some of the displays include a Sarcophagus lid, amulets and a kitten mummy. . . .

All these pieces come from The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

See the above page for the full story

Hawass Dig Days - Taking credit for the Nubian rescue

Al Ahram Weekly (Zahi Hawass)

This account appears to be somewhat jumbled, but I think that this is mainly because it lacks any direct reference to the location of the story to which it refers. Hawass appears to be saying that the respected Egyptologist Christiane Desroches Noblecourt has recently taken credit for instigating the Nubian rescue campaign, whilst Hawass believes that Tharwat Okasha was the person responsible. There is no hyperlink or reference to where these claims are supposed to have been made, which makes it very difficult to assess Hawass's statements. Hawass obviously feels strongly on the subject, but this actually makes it more difficult to get to the heart of the story.

The story began a few months ago when Madame Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, the famous French Egyptologist, was stated as making every effort concerning the Nubian campaign, and some newspapers even published this lie. Everyone around the world knows that Tharwat Okasha started the campaign, and made many political and scientific plans for the salvage of the Nubian monuments. When Egypt began building the High Dam in Aswan in 1960, the rising water began to threaten the two famous temples at Abu Simbel, one built for Ramses the Great and the other for his favourite wife, Nefertari, as well as other temples located to the south of the High Dam, such as Wadi Al-Sebua and Amada. At that time, Egypt called for a global, cooperative effort to save these unique temples from being submerged under water.

Noblecourt announced incorrectly that she created the idea for this campaign. This announcement made many of us angry, and we rejected this lady's effort to steal the success from a great man of Egypt, Okasha, who was the minister of culture at that time. When I met him, it was on the occasion of honouring his efforts and ingenious plan to save the Nubian monuments.

See the above page for the full story.

Who Owns History?

Time Magazine (Richard Lacayo)

An article that looks at the broad potential impact of Italy's determined pursuit of items that it believes were removed illegally from the country.

In this climate, the question of ownership of the past has taken on a real edge. "Source nations" like Italy, Greece, Egypt, Turkey and China--homes to the world's ancient civilizations--think of antiquities as national property, essential to the construction of the modern nations' identity. Which in part they are. The problem is whether that idea can accommodate the no less plausible notion that the products of ancient civilizations are also the heritage of all humanity. Our encounter with Shang-dynasty bronzes, Central African carvings and Aztec-calendar stones is part of how we construct for ourselves a human identity that transcends mere nationality. To put it mildly, in a time of rising nationalism, that's an urgent project. Why shouldn't things produced by all civilizations be widely available, not just as traveling blockbusters but on a permanent basis, to impress on people everywhere the greatness of other cultures?

See the above page for the full story.

New Book: Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus

Oxford University Press

This may be of interest to anyone looking at the spread of early farming and the establishment of agricultural systems. As in Egypt, agricultural components (plants and animals) were not native to Cyprus and therefore had to be introduced from elswhere (not a boat ride that I would have wanted to take!).

Weekly Websites

Rosette Project
http://vincent.euverte.free.fr/

Many thanks to Vincent Euverte for bringing the Rosette Project to my attention. You will need to be able to read French to get the benefit of it.

Il y a de cela presque deux siècles, le savant français Jean François Champollion découvrait, grâce à la Pierre de Rosette, le secret des hiéroglyphes et effaçait plusieurs siècles de doute et de spéculations sur cette écriture sacrée.

Aujourd'hui, alors que les épigraphistes chevronnés cernent de mieux en mieux les textes égyptiens, leur compréhension reste difficile pour une grande partie des passionnés. Comment offrir un outil qui permettrait au plus grand nombre d'accéder à des documents hiéroglyphiques ? Comment créer un programme simple et accessible à chacun ? Le Projet Rosette tente d'apporter un début de réponse à ces questions.

Oxford University Research Archive
ORA

Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) contains research publications and other research output produced by members of the University of Oxford. Content includes copies of journal articles, conference papers, theses and other types of research publications. The full text of many of these items is freely available to be used in accordance with copyright and end-user permissions.

Oxford University Research Archive is a growing repository of Oxford research publications and is therefore not a complete record of the research output from the university.

The Browse facility is currently being upgraded, but when I typed "Egypt" into the search engine it came up with some terrific papers by John Baines.

Sudan Electronic Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology (Arkamani)
Arkamani

The archaeological salvage campaigns of the 1960's brought to Nubia for the first time a large group of scholars with no background either in Egyptology or in the Classics; people who could theoretically approach the study of Nubian history without inherited preconceptions. From the work of these scholars, and later of their students, there has gradually arisen a recognized discipline of Nubiology, emphasizing the study of Nubia for its own sake rather than as an adjunct to the Egyptian or the Classical world'.

Arkamani's main objective is to make this new concept known both to Arab and non-Arab readers.

Nabta Playa
African Archaeology

Nabta Playa is an internally drained basin that served as an important ceremonial center for nomadic tribes during the early part of 9560 BC. Located 62 miles west of Abu Simbel some 60 miles west of the Nile near the Egyptian-Sudanese border. Nabta contains a number of standing and toppled megaliths. They include flat, tomb-like stone structures and a small stone circle that predates Stonehenge (2600 B.C.), and other similar prehistoric sites by 1000's of years.

Although some believe the high culture of subsequent Egyptian dynasties was borrowed from Mesopotamia and Syria, University of Colorado at Boulder astronomy Professor J. McKim Malville and others believe the complex and symbolic Nabta culture may have stimulated the growth of the society that eventually constructed the first pyramids along the Nile about 4500 years ago. Neolithic herders that began coming to Nabta about 10,000 years ago -- probably from central Africa -- used cattle in their rituals just as the African Massai do today, he said. Analysis of human remains suggest migration from sub-Saharan Africa (1).

The Nabta culture may have been a trigger for the development of social complexity in Egypt that later led to the Pharaonic dynasty he said.

Walter Granger's Faiyum Diary 1907
Faiyum Diary

The following is an abridged version of Walter Granger's daily account of America's first transoceanic fossil-hunt -- an expedition to the Fayum of Egypt in 1907. Granger's preserved, original handwritten record is the only firsthand account of any Fayum paleontology expedition made before 1947! This is the first treatment of this event based on the actual documentary record.

Tourism and Sustainable Development in Egypt 2002
PlanBlue

Tourism products in Egypt, which are attractive to international visitors, are represented by historical tourism along the Nile River as well as by marine tourism mainly with diving activities along the Red Sea coast. The activity patterns and the markets of these tourism are definitely different.

The historical tourism takes the form of sightseeing tours, while the marine tourism takes the form of long-term staying. Historical tourism attracts visitors from all over the world irrespective of distances from origin areas (long, medium and short haul market), while the marine tourism attracts visitors mostly from European countries (short and mid haul market).

Integrated products, which include both types of tourism destinations, are rare. In most cases, these two products are separated in each sub-region and prepared as optional tours with each other. That is because (a) the market of each tourism is deferent; (b) the domestic transportation system is not adequate to absorb the integrated tourism product; and (c) the capacity of Egyptian tourism industry is not satisfactory developed to supply the services for various needs of visitors. In other words, the capability of the Egyptian tourism industry is not yet matured enough to meet the various requirements from independent international visitors.

The other largest markets of Egyptian tourism are the Arab countries. They enjoy city tourism, staying in Cairo or Alexandria. Most of them are independent visitors, because there is no language barrier in communications.

See the above page for the full report (in PDF format).


UNEP/WCMC Report on Wadi Al Hitan (Faiyum Depression)
UNEP-WCMC

Wadi Al-Hitan in Egypt’s Western Desert is the only place in the world where the skeletons of families of archaic whales can be seen in their original geological and geographic setting of the shallow nutrient-rich bay of a sea of some 40 million years ago. The fossils and sediments of different periods and levels reveal many millions of years of life and are valuable indications of the palaeoecologic conditions, of Eocene vertebrate and invertebrate life and the evolution of these ancestors of modern whales. Remarkably, two species still had small hind limbs, feet and toes. The quality, abundance, concentration and state of preservation of these fossils is unequalled.

Deserts, Cars, Maps and Names
eSharp Issue 4
By Jim Harold

During the Spring and Summer of 1915, a thirty-nine year old sheep farmer, Claud H. Williams, travelled from New Zealand by way of the USA to Britain. On arrival in Britain he enlisted in the British Army and in particular the Pembroke Yeomanry and by April 1916 found himself stationed in the Egyptian desert. He was promoted to Captain and seconded to The Light Car Patrols (which may be considered to be a fore-runner to the Long Range Desert Group of WWII). He was to remain in Egypt until 1919.

Whilst this desert sojourn was a source of much frustration - kept, as he saw it, away from the action - by the end of hostilities in Egypt he had amassed a huge knowledge of the desert and motorised desert travel. Williams was awarded the Military Cross for his notable work which was to lead, just before his demobilisation by the middle of 1919, to the publication of his Report on the Military Geography of the North-Western Desert of Egypt. This was a one-hundred-and-seventy-one-page secret report with accompanying new and accurate maps of the desert terrain, which outlined the very serious potential for the use of motor vehicles in the deserts of Egypt. This document was to remain classified by the British Government until 18th October 1963.

Daily Photo - Sphinxes from the Palace of Diocletian, Croatia

Thanks very much to Thierry Benderitter from the excellent OsirisNet for sending me these great photographs. The sphinxes are located in the peristyle of the Roman Emperor Diocletian's palace in Split, on Croatia's Adriatic coast. Diocletian abdicated in AD305, and this palace was built for him to spend the rest of his life in. The palace was built using a number of different types of stone - mainly local white limestone, marble and other local materials, but also imported Egyptian granite for the columns, and the sphinxes were brought ready made from Egypt.

Photos of Diocletian's Palace appear on a dedicated gallery page World Heritage section of the UNESCO website. It looks like a fascinating place. There's also a terrific artist's reconstruction of the palace on Wikipedia - it was a vast complex! If you are interested in reading more about the palace, there's a comprehensive survey of it by Michael Greenhalgh from the Department of Art History, the Australian National Univeristy, entitled The "palace" of Diocletian at Split: A Unique Structure from the Later Roman Empire.

Dig Diary highlights

Hopkins in Egypt Today

16th February 2008: There are some splendid aeriel photographs of the Temple of Mut on the Dig Diary, taken from a tiny seaplane.


Brooklyn Museum

20th February 2008: Conservator John Steele recently arrived on site at the Temple Precinct of the Goddess Mut in south Karnak, and has updated the blog with his experiences:

I set about surveying my conservation supplies, and examined the small finds from this season, including a group of about forty coins. Pictured above is one of the first coins I cleaned mechanically with brushes and dental tools that shows the head of a Roman emperor yet to be identified. In the other picture I’m cleaning another coin with the pointed end of a wooden skewer after softening the outer layers of corrosion in a chemical solution of 10% EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid) in water made basic with ammonia. Uncovering legible details on heavily corroded coins requires a steady hand and a lot of patience but if successful can aid in dating the area the coins were found in.

Proyecto Djehuty

21st February 2008: More beautiful photographs (click on them to expand them) and more news from the newly discovered tomb of Iker. The tombs are now closed for the season, but the team will be back next year for their eighth season, when their main aim will be to excavate the funerary chamber of the tomb of Djehuty, which they discovered at the base of an eight metre deep shaft:

Hoy tocaba recogida general y, a medio día, hemos cerrado las tumbas. Hasta el año que viene. Ha sido una campaña intensa, llena de fantásticas sorpresas. La próxima campaña, la octava, también promete emociones intensas y respuestas a importantes cuestiones planteadas en la excavación. El principal objetivo será, sin duda, la excavación de la cámara funeraria de Djehuty que descubrimos al fondo del pozo de más de ocho metros de profundidad. Djehuty nos espera.

Still nothing from KV63.

Spain celebrates Pharaoh digs and digger

eTurboNews (Hazel Heyer)

In Thebes, archeologists revealed an intact 11th dynasty burial of a man called Iker in the Dra Abul Naga area on Luxor's west bank. Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced the discovery recently, adding that the burial was found by a Spanish archaeological mission during routine excavation work in the open courtyard of TT11, the tomb of Djehuty.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that inside Iker's burial shaft, the mission found a closed wooden coffin painted in red and decorated with an inscription running along all four sides. It also bears drawings showing Iker presenting offerings to the goddess Hathor, otherwise known as the mistress of the skies. Hawass explained that the coffin is very well preserved except for its base, which has suffered termite damage. The remains will be restored and consolidated before it is removed from the burial so that excavation can go on. A collection of five 11th and 12th dynasties vessels was also found in the shaft, along with five arrows, three of which were still feathered.

Dr. Jose Galán, the head of the Spanish mission, said that further excavation will bring more of the burial to light and will enable the mission to uncover more of its funerary collection. The coffin will be removed, as it is blocking the entrance to the inner part of the small rock recess used as a burial chamber.

See the above page for the full story

Tactile Gallery, Louvre

Egypt Daily Star News

A photograph of a visually impaired man, with his guide dog, exploring a replica of the serekh of Djet in the Louvre's Tactile Gallery:

Didier Roule, with his dog "Panisse," touches a replica of ancient Egypt's Snake King as part of an exhibition for blind and visually-impaired people at Louvre Museum in Paris, Monday Feb. 18. The Louvre's Tactile Gallery is the only space in the Paris museum where visitors can touch the sculptures, with no guards or alarms to stop them. Its new exhibit there is targeted to the blind and children.

There is an article about the Tactile Gallery at the Louvre on the Yahoo! News website:

The Louvre's Tactile Gallery, targeted to the blind and visually impaired, is the only space in the Paris museum where visitors can touch the sculptures, with no guards or alarms to stop them. Its latest exhibit is a crowd pleaser: a menagerie of sculpted lions, snakes, horses and eagles.

The 15 bronze, plaster and terra cotta animals are reproductions of famous works found elsewhere in the Louvre. Called "Animals, Symbols of Power," the exhibit focuses on animals that were used by kings, emperors and pharaohs throughout history to symbolize the greatness of their reigns.

Though the gallery was conceived for the blind and visually impaired, children and other visitors also enjoy it. During guided tours on the weekends, children can explore the art with blindfolds on.

The Louvre opened the Tactile Gallery in 1995. Though other French cultural exhibits offer periodic events and programs for the blind, the Louvre says it is the only museum in France with a gallery specifically for the visually impaired. Elsewhere in Europe - Ancona, Italy, and Athens, Greece - also have entire tactile museums.

Doors to History

Egypt Daily Star News

A handout picture released on February 21, 2008 by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities shows the site where three stone doors were discovered by a group of Spanish archaeologists. The doors date back to the First Intermediate Period of Egypt (2191-2040 BC) from the city of Ahnasia in the Beni Sueif governorate, 120 kms south of Cairo.

See the above page for the two photographs.

Tourism: New resort planned for Al Alamein

Bloomberg

Egyptian billionaire Ibrahim Kamel plans to build a $500 million seaside resort near the World War II battlefield of Al-Alamein that will compete with Red Sea vacation sites in Egypt.

Kamel's Kato Group will construct 4,000 hotel rooms, a golf course, mall and entertainment complex in Ghazala Bay on the Mediterranean within five years, he said in an interview. Kamel, who is also chairman of Egypt's second-largest publicly traded hotel company, built a $45 million airport at Al-Alamein, a few kilometers from the resort, in 2005. . . .

The battlefield at Al-Alamein is where the Allies defeated General Irwin Rommel's Afrika Korps in 1942, reversing a German drive on the Suez Canal.

The fighting, between General Bernard Montgomery's 8th Army and Rommel's divisions, began along a German defense line stretching some five miles inland from the sea.

Kamel, a former academic and a senior member of the country's ruling National Democratic Party, is chairman of Egyptian for Tourism Resorts.

More re Past Discussed Quarterly

The Past Discussed Quarterly

For those of who have been interested in the the discussion about The Past Discussed Quarterly (PDQ) this is just a quick note to let you know that PDQ now has its own website at the above address.

As well as introductory content the site has two calls for submissions for the end of February and the end of May, together with a page detailing submission guidelines for potential contributors.

Daily Photo - Deir el Bahri (Djeser Djeseru)

Images from the female pharaoh Hatshepsut's stunning mortuary temple on the West Bank of Luxor (eighteenth dynasty).

Hawass highlights the importance of the tomb of Iker

Actualidad

Apologies that there has been a sudden increase in article written in Spanish - but the fact that the discovery of the tomb was made by a Spanish team makes this somewhat inevitable.

This piece says that Zahi Hawass has highlighted the importance of the discovery of the tomb of the soldier Iqer "the Excellent" from 1500BC by a team of Spanish archaeologists. Hawass believes that the importance of the find lies in the fact that it belongs to a period of unification in Egypt, when Upper and Lower Egypt reunited under one reign following a civil war in which this soldier probably fought.

El secretario general del Consejo Supremo de Antigüedades egipcio, Zahi Hawas, destacó hoy la gran importancia del descubrimiento de la tumba del guerrero Iqer 'el Excelente', del año 1500 a.C., por un equipo de arqueólogos españoles.

Hawas consideró que la relevancia del hallazgo reside en que pertenece a la época de la unificación de Egipto, cuando el Alto y el Bajo Egipto pasaron a constituir un único reino después de una guerra civil en la que probablemente luchó el guerrero ahora rescatado.

El jefe de Antigüedades egipcio destacó la importancia de que se hayan hallado utensilios intactos en la tumba de Iqer 'el Excelente', inscripción que aparece en el sepulcro de este arquero de alto rango en escritura jeroglífica.

See the above page for more.

Interview with Jose Miguel Serrano re tomb of Iker

ABC de Sevilla (Lola Rodriguez - in Spanish)

Thanks very much to the post from José Luis Toledo to the ASADE news group for the link to this interview with José Miguel Serrano who heads the University of Sevilla team that has found the new intact tomb of the warrior Iker, dating to the Eleventh Dynasty (some four or five hundred years earlier than the New Kingdom tomb of Djehuty which has been the Project's main focus).

La arqueología española se ha apuntado un nuevo tanto con el último hallazgo del Proyecto Djehuty: la tumba intacta de Iqer, un guerrero con 4.000 años de antigüedad, en la necrópolis Dra Abu el- Naga, en Luxor. Con 25 años de docencia como egiptólogo en la Universidad de Sevilla, José Miguel Serrano ha participado por séptima vez en esta expedición que, dirigida por el CSIC, sitúa a España «a la vanguardia de las investigaciones arqueológicas en Europa».

-Gracias al Proyecto Djehuty se ha hallado el primer retrato frontal de un faraón, varios ajuares funerarios, relieves con valiosa información, e incluso los restos de olivo más antiguos recuperados hasta la fecha. ¿Qué supondrá Iqer para el conocimiento de la historia antigua?

-Es un descubrimiento importante, porque se enmarca en el primer periodo intermedio de la historia del antiguo Egipto, la dinastía XI. Una etapa sobre la que se tienen muy pocos datos. La tumba de Djehuty es del Imperio Nuevo, más tardía en 400 o 500 años que el enterramiento intacto que hemos hallado y que, suponemos, aportará nueva documentación sobre este periodo histórico. Además, es algo inusual encontrar un cadáver en su posición original y con todo el ajuar intacto. Normalmente estos enterramientos fueron saqueados en la antigüedad o en el siglo XIX.

See the above page for the full inverview.

Lunar Eclipse

Egypt State Information Service

The moon will turn an eerie shade of red for people in the Arab world, including Egypt, late today and early tomorrow.

According to NASA, the event should also be visible from South America and most of North America on February 20 as well as western Europe, Africa, and western Asia, including countries like Lebanon,! Jordan, Egypt and Israel on February 21.

In a lunar eclipse, the Sun, Earth and Moon are directly aligned and the Moon swings into the cone of shadow cast by the Earth.

But the Moon does not become invisible, as there is still residual light that is deflected towards it by atmosphere.

Most of this refracted light is in the red part of the spectrum and as a result the Moon, seen 'from Earth, turns a coppery, orange or even brownish hue.

The last total lunar eclipse took place on August 28, 2007. The next will take place on December 21, 2010.

A solar eclipse happens when the Moon swings between the Earth and the Sun.

Is PDQ a good idea?

Ancient World Bloggers (announcement and comments)
Ancient World Bloggers (discussion)
Ancient World Bloggers (more discussion)
Electrical Archaeology

The idea of the Past Discussed Quarterly - a new electronic journal which I mentioned on an earlier post - is under discussion at the moment. If you are interested in publishing formats and the scope of the Internet to offer new and flexible ways of sharing ideas and research in archaeology and history, then this discussion is worth taking the time to view.

Thirteen Egyptologists

Missy Frye

A blog that looks at all sorts of things, but today has short biographies of 13 Egyptologists, in no particular order that I can see:

Since it’s been quite some time since I did anything about Egyptology, I think it’s a good time to correct that. So here are thirteen egyptologists ranging from the dawn of egyptology to current day.

See the above page for the full list.

Daily Photo - Wadi Hammamat inscriptions

The Wadi Hammamat in Egypt's Eastern Desert leads from Qift in the west to Quseir in the east. It was a major thoroughfare to both stone quarries in the Wadi Hammamat area from the Predynastic period onwards, and for trading expeditions to the Red Sea coast and beyond during the Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman periods.

Dig Diary - Djehuty and the new tomb of Iker

Diario Djehuty (in Spanish)

Thanks to The Egyptologists' Electronic Forum for the news that the Djehuty Dig Diary has been updated with full details for the 2008 season, and the newly discovered tomb of Iker. Although the diary is written in Spanish, it is worth looking at the site even if you don't read the language because the photographs are very informative. Click on the small image to see the full sized photograph - the details of some of the hieroglyphs from the coffin of Iker are gorgeous, and the colours are vibrant. Here's an extract from the 19th February 2008:

La base del ataúd estaba totalmente incrustada al terreno del suelo. Para poderlo sacar tendríamos que excavar por debajo y pasar unas cinchas que sujetaran la tapa a la caja del ataúd para que no se nos desvencijara al moverlo. Pero primero, habría que liberarlo del terreno también por detrás. Comenzamos excavando por la parte de los pies del ataúd (el lado opuesto a las flechas), lo que resultaba francamente difícil porque se encontraba justo debajo del muro de Djehuty. El penoso trabajo tuvo pronto su recompensa, pues la inscripción de los pies contenía el nombre del propietario: “...el venerado Iqer”. Ya sabíamos cómo se llamaba nuestro arquero, que traducido al castellano significa “El excelente”.

Cuando conseguimos hacer un estrecho paso a la izquierda del ataúd, el rais Alí no dudó un momento en quitarse la “galabeya” y arrastrarse al otro lado. El espacio era extremadamente angosto, no podía casi moverse dentro y le faltaba el aire. Unos minutos después consiguió adaptarse y comenzó a excavar muy lentamente por detrás. La inscripción del otro lateral se conservaba todavía en mejor estado, pues había estado más refugiada de la intemperie y del agua. Los colores tenían una viveza extraordinaria, como si los signos jeroglíficos se hubieran pintado ayer. Alí fue relevado por Hasán y luego se metió también Sayed. Entre los dos consiguieron el objetivo, pudimos pasar las cinchas y envolver el ataúd. Todo estaba listo para intentar su extracción.

Fabulous stuff!

Motorbikes Now Run Rings Around Donkeys in Siwa

Bloomberg (Daniel Williams)

As the putt-putt of motorbikes eclipses the clip-clop of donkey hooves, tourist guide Sayid Abu-Seif has decided that development in Siwa, his oasis home in western Egypt, is moving too far, too fast.

``It used to be quiet here,'' says Abu-Seif, 27. ``You could hear the birds. Now it begins to sound like a city.''

His unease is shared by other Siwans and outsiders concerned about the preservation of a fragile place out of time. A conundrum familiar to Shangri-Las the world over has arisen in this ancient island in the sand: What price change? In the case of Siwa, where Cleopatra came to bathe, what danger does development hold for its clean air, abundant springs and languorous pace of life among the date groves?

The question is doubly vexing in a country where every livable space is exploited. From the once-empty shores of the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, Egypt is awash in development and urbanization. Sharm El-Sheikh, the ``Red Sea Riviera,'' sprawls for miles. Other resorts have popped up from the Suez Canal down the coast toward Sudan.

Villas, apartment blocks and malls in Cairo, population 17 million, have breached the desert that frames the Nile River Valley. The port city of Alexandria marches inexorably westward, gobbling up beachfront and villages.

Egypt attracts 8 million tourists a year, according to the Tourism Ministry, and expects to double that by 2014. Tourist revenue makes up about 12 percent of the economy.

See the above page for the full story.

Book Review: Alexander the Great in His World

Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Review by Cheryl Golden)

Carol G. Thomas, Alexander the Great in His World. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007

Table of Contents

Carol Thomas' contribution to the voluminous scholarship on the "Great" Alexander III of Macedonia aims to provide an assessment of the world into which Alexander was born and the influence of that world upon his potential as king and conqueror. Thomas explores five themes or agents of influence in the king's world: the physical geography and peoples of Macedonia; Alexander's ancestry, including the dynamics of his parents' marriage; Greece and her influence on Macedonian culture; the role of the military in Macedonian society and politics; and finally, the Persian challenge. Overall, Thomas' work attempts to add a new cultural, quasi-psychological approach to Alexander studies. While this well-written attempt is approachable, ultimately Thomas provides yet another work on the "Macedonian question" and leaves the reader wanting more of the author's take on Alexander himself and a few more examples of how Alexander's "world" influenced and informed his anabasis into Persia.

Thomas' thematic approach is promising, and her discussion of the Macedonian background provides an excellent starting point for the study of Alexander the Great. Through an examination of the hard living required of those inhabiting the harsh terrain and even harsher political and social realities of Philip II's emerging state of Macedonia, Thomas hopes to "look deeply into the circumstances of [Alexander's] world in the belief that we cannot understand individuals apart from the cultures that condition their lives".

Classics @ Durban (Review by John Atkinson)

Scholia Reviews ns 17 (2008) 6.

Carol G. Thomas, Alexander the Great in his World. Blackwell Ancient Lives. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

Thomas’ approach to the study of Alexander the Great in this book was inspired by her experience in research into ‘pre- and proto-historical Greece’, and in leading seminars on Alexander’s conquests, where she has focused on explanatory contextual reasons for Alexander’s success (pp. ixf.). After an introductory chapter (‘Basic facts, generally uncontested, of Alexander’s life’, pp. 9-21), Thomas explores five ‘doors to the nature of this hero’ (p. 192), and a chapter is devoted to each of these topics, starting with Chapter 2, ‘Being Macedonian’ (pp. 22-54). This deals with Macedonia in the broader sense of the territory which Philip II added to the traditional kingdom, and covers the topography and natural economy of Macedonia, with a check list of its assets (p. 32). Thomas then touches on the vexed issues of ethnicity and language, before offering an historical survey of the period from Amyntas I (540-498) to Philip II. She suggests that Alexander learnt from his experience as a Macedonian an appreciation of the importance of natural resources, and a sense of how to use rivers and mountainous terrain to military advantage.

See the above pages for the complete reviews.

An ambitious plan to attract 25 million tourists by 2022

Egypt State Information Service

“The number of tourists visiting Egypt is expected to reach 14 million by 2011,” said the Tourism Minister Zohair Garana on Monday18/2/2008 at a meeting of the Shura Council's committee on tourism and culture.

Tourist nights are expected to double to 140 million and hotel capacity is expected to increase by 15,000 annually.

Tourism revenues account nearly 7 percent of Egypt's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 40 percent of the country's service exports and 19.3 percent of foreign currency, he further said.

Garana said an ambitious plan has been drawn up to attract 25 million tourists by 2022.

ArcheaoForum launches

ArchaeoForum

Tony Cagle has announced on his ArchaeoBlog that he has relaunched his online forum for the discussion of all matters archaeological, this time protected from spam advertising. A couple of categories have been set up, and anything archaeological is fair play, but things are yet to kick off properly. This really is a new beginning so if you want to become involved now would be a good time!

Daily Photo - The Great Sand Sea

Dig Diary - Temple of Mut

Brooklyn Museum

Many thanks to Mark Morgan for pointing me to the above pgae, where Brooklyn Museum's activities at the Temple of Mut in Luxor this season are described, accompanied by excellent photographs. The dig diary is in the format of a blog, so go to the end of the page to arrive at the first day of the new season, and click the (more) link under each post to see full details for that day. Very enjoyable. Here's a short extract from 15th February 2008:

This week we moved a couple of teams of workmen from the Taharqa Gate (where working space is getting a little constricted) to the excavations north of Mut’s 1st Pylon. We now have teams working both on the structures built against the pylon face and in the area bounded on the north by the remains of Temple A’s columned porch and on the west by the Mut Temple’s East Porch.

More re earliest page found at Deir al-Surian

The Art Newspaper

Fragments of the earliest dated Christian literary manuscript have been found at Deir al-Surian, an ancient monastery in the Egyptian desert. Dating from 411 AD, these were discovered under a collapsed floor of a ninth-century tower. The fragments are from the final page of a codex written in Syriac (an Eastern Aramaic language) which was acquired by the British Museum library in the 19th century.

Few manuscripts have had such an astonishing history. In 1847, British Museum librarian William Cureton said that “among all the curiosities of literature, I know of none more remarkable than the fate of this matchless volume”. We can now add a final chapter to the story.

The manuscript on Christian martyrs was written in Edessa (now Sanliurfa, Turkey), and at some point in the next five centuries it was taken eastwards. In 931, the abbot of Deir al-Surian travelled to Baghdad and brought it back to Egypt.

In 1086, a monk added a marginal note in the middle of the manuscript, expressing concern that the last page with its colophon (the scribe’s ending notes) might be lost. Since the book was by then already “ancient”, he wanted to record that it had been written in 411. The monk’s precaution was wise, since centuries later the last page did indeed become detached.

The European who found the main manuscript was Lord Curzon, who visited Deir al-Surian in 1837 in search of ancient texts for the British Museum. There were then only a dozen monks, led by a blind and elderly abbot. Lord Curzon bought three Coptic manuscripts, but he had heard rumours that earlier texts in Syriac were hidden in the cellar of the ancient tower, in a vault used to store olive oil.

The Independent UK also covers the story and has a set of photographs of the fragments as they were found (click on the More Pictures link under the main photograph).

For those who are unfamiliar with Egyptian monasticism, Deir al Surian (Monastery of the Syrians) is located in the Wadi Natrun, in the desert near the western part of the Nile Delta. It is thought to have been established here as early as the Sixth Century, and forms part of a history of Coptic monastic life dating back to the Fourth Century, when St Macarius retreated here and attracted followers. It started out life as the Monastery of the Holy Virgin Theotokos, but its name changed to Monastery of the Holy Virgin of the Syrians when it was sold to rich Syrian merchants from Mesopotamia in the Eighth Century. Its role as a library began in the Tenth Century, when a senior monk named Moses of Nisbis brought over 250 Syrian texts to the monastery, after spending a number of years actively collecting them. Its role as a centre for scholarly activity raised its importance, and by the Eleventh Century it was the biggest of the Wadi Natrun monasteries, with 60 monks in residence. The monastery experienced a series of downturns in its fortunes, but continued to be occupied (albeit not exclusively by Syrian monks). It now has electricity and telephone lines, and has been extensively restored in recent years.

Partnership agreement between ISESCO Organization, Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Egypt State Information Service

Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) decided signing a partnership agreement with Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA), by which the BA will be considered a deposition library for all the ISESCO's cultural releases and publications in a historical step of Alexandria's history that coincides with choosing it as a capital of Islamic culture in 2008.

Dr. Khaled Azab, the Director of Information Administration in BA, said in press conference yesterday 17/2/2008 Dr. Abdul-Aziz Al-Tobgary, Director of ISESCO, will visit Alexandria for final singing of the partnership agreement as well as participating in the inauguration of Alexandria International Book Fair which will start on 21/2/2008, during which the Islamic World celebrations of choosing Alexandria as an Islamic cultural capital will be launched.

Moreover, it is settled that the BA will display all the publications related to Alexandria's establishment, history, development, population, renaissance, and several cultures, in addition to all the fields that distinguish this deep-rooted city through the eras.

Photographs from new Middle Kingdom Tomb

guardians.net

The pages that Zahi Hawass hosts on the above site have been udpated with three photographs of the recently discovered 11th Dynasty tomb of Iker. The photographs have been shown elsewhere, but these are slightly larger versions.

Egypt Reveals a Different Kind of Intensity

Columbia Spectator (Dov Friedman)

I nearly didn't include this because it is less about Egyptology than about a comparison between American and Egyptian modes of life, and has a light dusting of politics over it. However, I thought that a couple of the paragraphs might be of interest:

Daily life here could not be more different than in the city. Because the oasis’ underground aquifers are running dry, we take three minute showers—and not even every day at that. Whereas my concept of a view was a Schapiro single facing 115th Street, now I climb to the house’s roof and see palm trees, the majestic Libyan Escarpment, and the first traces of desert sand in three directions. While I spent more of first semester at 1020 than I care to admit, “going out” here consists of walking 30 minutes to town and sitting over hookah and the occasional brew. It’s a “no frills” lifestyle—and it could not come at a better time.

Yet, over the last three weeks, I have discovered a different kind of intensity. The middle month has centered on archaeological fieldwork in a fourth century Roman city. Alarm clocks ring at 5:45 a.m., and we excavate from 7:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. Another two afternoon hours are spent working at home. The intensity here is one of a collective mission. The excavation season is short and there is a tremendous amount to accomplish. Everyone here is passionate about archaeology, and the sense of collective responsibility means that no one wants to let others down. An otherwise brutal schedule becomes manageable, even desirable. Unlike the taxing intensity of New York, the intensity of this team of people has been invigorating.

See the above for the writer's thoughts about the differences between life in the U.S. and Egypt.

I am particularly intrigued by the comment about water shortages in Dakhleh Oasis - does anyone know anything else about this? The Nubian Aquifer which lies beneath the Western Desert and supplies springs and wells, irrigates agricultural land, feeds factories and processing plants, and supplies the towns and villages the (and is contraversially planned to be the essential water source for all of Mubarak's agricultural expansion plans).

UPDATE: Thanks to Kat for a link on Bloomberg which deals with the subject of Mubarak's plans in this direction.

Antiguo Oriente 5 (2007)

Antiguo Oriente 5

Thanks to Roxana Flammini for the news that Antiguo Oriente 5 (2007) abstracts are now available at the CEHAO's website. Two are concerned with Egyptian themes, as follows:

Mummy 61074: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity (in English) by Shawn McAVOY (Arizona State University-USA). Priests of the Twenty-first Dynasty king Smendes I (1070-1043 BCE) had the unenviable task of quickly reburying the kings of the New Kingdom after the Valley of the Kings repeatedly had proven insecure as a final resting place. In the process of reburial these priests identified the mummies of the kings as quickly and as accurately as they could, but reasons exist to question some of their identifications. Mummy 61074, in the Cairo Museum, currently carries the identification of Amunhotep III (1386-1349 BCE). This paper examines Mummy 61074 and with the aid of xray and serological evidence proposes that 61074 is not Amunhotep III but his son Akhenaten.

Excavation Report: The Rope Cave at Mersa Gawasis: a Preliminary Report by André J. VELDMEIJER (PalArch Foundation, The Netherlands) and Chiara ZAZZARO (University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Italy)

Tourism: For Americans in Egypt, haggling is a must

The Daily Collegian (Greg Collins)

Because merchants try to sell their products to foreigners at outrageously high prices by Egyptian standards, tourists will be forced inevitably to suggest a lower figure, succumb to the original price, or not buy the product at all.

I encountered this situation when American University in Cairo students traveled to the pyramids of Giza and Saqqara, the world-famous mausoleums honoring pharaohs that were built thousands of years ago. These highly-frequented tourist destinations are an oasis for Egyptian merchants, camel drivers and craftsmen to hound Americans and Europeans for cash, cash and more cash by attempting to sell what they claim are "authentic" Egyptian artifacts. . . .

A more unfortunate feature of this bartering is the large amount of children who also act as merchants at the pyramids. Even though you want to walk through the sites unbothered, they will accost you, trying to sell postcards, headscarves and water. From an American's perspective, they are rude and disrespectful, similar to the adult merchants at tourist sites and on the streets of Cairo.

See the above page for the full story.

Exhibition: Replicas of Tutankhamun

Inside El Paso

The gold tomb and large chariot are incredible to see. It's not hard to imagine that at one time they carried the king of Egypt.

Those artifacts are part of "Tut's Treasures: Re-Creating the Tomb," showcased at Lynx Exhibits.

The exhibit features historical artifacts of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen, better known as King Tut, which date to 3000 B.C.

The exhibit begins with a "time machine," a 25-seat full motion simulator ride through Ancient Egypt.

It is followed by a view of artifacts that belonged to King Tut, who reigned for nine years and died at age 18. His tomb was found in 1933 and is considered the most complete uncovered in Egypt.

The exhibit has 126 reproductions of Tut's treasures.

See the above for more, including a photograph of some of the replicas.

Daily Photo - Wadi Abd el Malek

It will come as no great surprise to regular visitors to the blog to find yet more photos of the Gilf Kebir haunting these pages, but the Wadi Abd el Malek is of particular interest for a number of reasons. Wadi Abd el Malek is a long wadi which penetrates the northern edges of the Gilf, its sands blending with those of the Great Sand Sea. It is one of the greenest of the wadis that lace the edges of the Gilf plateau, with ground cover plants and Acacia showing the most remarkable will to survive in this immensely arid area. The wadi is one of three which were, jointly, suggested to form the lost oasis of Zerzura.

Zerzura was a fabled city of riches in the desert. It was first mentioned in print by an anonymous Thirteenth Century Arab author in The Book of Hidden Pearls, and was mentioned again in 1835 by Sir John Gardiner-Wilkinson who claimed to have visited it. It became one of the targets of exploration by the informal 1930s Zerzura Club of which Bagnold, Clayton, Clayton-East-Clayton, Wingate, Penderel, Almasy and others were all members. The exploration of the Western Desert and the search for Zerzura are all tied up in the later work of the Long Range Desert Group and Almasy's attempts to use the Western Desert as a route between Italian held Libya and Egypt, from where the British and her allies were operating. The British members of the Zerzura Club, including Bagnold, Clayton, Wingate, and Penderel, all found themselves on the opposite side to the Hungarian Almasy who now advised Rommel in north Africa. It is a fascinating period of modern history, all taking place in the unforgiving desert environment west of the Nile.

Because of the vegetation, Wadi Abd el Malek is one of the few that supports animal life - lizards, snakes, scorpions, desert gerbils and fenec foxes, amongst others. If you like deserts, this a fabulous place.

Dig Diaries updated

Saqqara Online

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Leiden University's work at Saqqara continues to be documented on the team's dedicated page, with ongoing work examining the tomb of Ptahemwia. The site was updated again on the 15th February 2008, and it continues to look very exciting:

Our fourth week of work around the tomb of Ptahemwia has been surprising and rewarding. Although last week we had thought that a pair of rooms leading south from Ptahemwia's subterranean antechamber belonged to a later shaft, we are no longer so sure. When most of this shaft's 8 meters had been cleared from below, we saw that it must pre-date Ptahemwia: its real aperture is about a meter below the level of Ptahemwia's courtyard. The cascade of mostly clean sand which poured down from it has flooded the rooms below, and so a few more days will pass before all pertinent details emerge. But from what can be seen of these other rooms now, they may have originally belonged to an earlier period as well. To complicate matters, we noted that the shaft in question had been reused up above our own level to lead to a Late Period burial complex. This complex had anciently broken through to yet another late complex, which in turn had broken through to yet two more complexes, one late and one (probably) from a New Kingdom neighbor of Ptahemwia still buried beneath the sand. By flashlight, our ceramicist Barbara instantly recognized a painted travertine sherd as New Kingdom in date—a singular fragment of beauty in a maze of rooms choked with bones, mummy dust, bits of wood, and pottery two and a half millennia old.

See the above page for lots more, with photographs.


Hopkins in Egypt Today

Don't forget that Betsy Bryan's team from John Hopkins University is back in action at Luxor, and their Dig Diary, complete with photographs, is available online with details for January and February so far. Here's an extract from the 15th Febraury:

The wall is coming down slowly but surely. Franck oversees the movement of each block as it is lifted by the winch. Blocks that are decorated and had been reused in the Twenty-fifth dynasty wall are placed on the cart to be moved to a mastaba. Those that are strong enough to be returned to the rebuilt wall are stacked next to the wall on the existing mastaba. Those that have no decoration and are disintegrated will fill subfloor areas within the temple. With the rapid removal of the wall by courses, new scale drawings must be made every couple of days. Chuck works to complete the drawing of Level 4 before its stones are lifted, and each block is numbered to facilitate Franck’s reconstruction of the wall. After the blocks are lifted, if there is decoration, an additional D-number is assigned to it, and Betsy keeps a description of any inscriptions and sculpted elements along with a list of the Decorated block numbers.

El Nilo se come los cimientos de los templos de Luxor

El Pais

An article looking at the threat to Nile monuments on Luxor's west bank from the waters that have invaded them since the building of the Aswan High Dam, which it says have suffered more in the last 20 years than in three millennia of history. A new and ambitious project by USAID will aim to lower the level of the subterranean waters by two metres. The project, which will target the Ramesseum, its neighbouring mortuary temples and some minor sites, will be similar to the one carried out at the east bank temples of Karnak and Luxor.

Las aguas del Nilo están royendo los cimientos de los templos de Luxor, la antigua Tebas, que en sólo veinte años han sufrido más que en sus tres milenios de histora. Y todo por culpa de la presa de Asuán: puso a Egipto en la modernidad, pero el precio fue perturbar el sueño de los dioses, que según los egipcios antiguos reposaban en Tebas tras la creación del mundo.

Ahora un ambicioso proyecto tiene como fin rebajar dos metros el nivel de las aguas subterráneas, que están minando los cimientos de algunos de los templos más visitados del turismo mundial.

"Los templos están en un estado muy grave, ya que en los últimos veinte años han sufrido el peor deterioro en sus miles de años de vida", sostiene el jefe del proyecto, Jeremy Gustaffon, de la Agencia estadounidense para el Desarrollo Internacional (USAID).

See the above page for details

Display of ancient mummies disrespectful?

BBC News

Thanks very much to Chris Townsend for bringing this piece to my attention (together with several other articles mentioned in today's posts). It looks at the somewhat disturbing idea (and prospect) of removing ancient Egyptian mummies from display in Manchester Museum if the display of the mummies should be deemed disrespectful.

Manchester Museum could remove its display of ancient Egyptian mummies, if people decide it is disrespectful.

Museum bosses are debating the ethics of showing human remains as part of the Egyptology collection and want to hear public opinion on the issue.

The consultation comes as the museum prepares to show Lindow Man, an Iron Age man found in a Cheshire peat bog.

It also follows controversy stirred up by the arrival of the Body Worlds 4 exhibition at another city museum.

The Gunther Von Hagens display at the Museum of Science and Industry drew criticism from the Bishop of Manchester.

The bishop's belief that the human body should be treated with more respect sparked the debate at Manchester Museum.

Bosses have been consulting academics and other groups on the issues surrounding exhibits including human remains and whether they should be on display in museums.

It means the museum's Egyptology collection, which contains a number of mummified bodies, could be redisplayed or, if people feel strongly enough, removed.

There is a video to accompany the piece on the above page (Museum visitors' views on the mummies), or at the following URL:

http://tinyurl.com/ysuec6

Personally, I believe that it is a great shame when well meaning organizational pressure leads to the artificial sanitization of the way in which we perceive past societies and their cultural output, particularly as regards the exhibits that museums can and cannot have on display. The way in which people behaved in the past does not always mesh with our own present day ideas and tabus, but it is unhelpful and counter productive to "protect" the public from the reality of the past. Doing so merely prevents us from gaining insights into an important part of the cultural spectrum of a given society. The treatment of death by past socieities is an important way of understanding how life was perceived, and it is completely artificial to conceal the physical expression of belief and ideas. Museums are supposed to inform, not disguise.

I do agree that museums have a responsibility to display mummies (and other forms of human remains) in ways which are designed to inform, involve and interest, rather than to sensationalise - which is why there was some negative reaction to the fanfare approach to laying bare Tutankhamun's naked face to visitors at his tomb in Luxor. But I don't believe that anyone could suggest that UK museums are sensationalising our mummies, and it offends me to sugggest that mummies should be withdrawn from display when they form such an important archaeological dataset.

With Body Works matters are probably somewhat different - it seems to me that the main aim there was to create a reaction to the dead form of the body via a highly sensationalist approach. Take it or leave it, people can always vote with their feet.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to a great extent to how we define "disrespectful". If museums have to start imposing modern western ideas of respect on past archaeological objects and sites we are potentially going to be in for a few costly and contraversial changes.

Luxor City Development Project

Egypt State Information Service

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif held Thursday 14/2/2008 a meeting to review the implementation of the Comprehensive Development Plan for the City of Luxor.

During the meeting, Nazif followed up the renovation process of the Corniche road connecting Karnak and Luxor temples, said Cabinet spokesman Magdi Radi.

The plan which was approved two years ago involves the preservation and protection of the unique antiquity settings, cultural resources and the heritage of the Luxor City as one of the world's greatest open air museums.

The irrigation, investment and tourism ministers and the chairman of Luxor Supreme Council attended the meeting.

Farag discussed an idea presented by a US consultancy to establish an entertainment tourist project, involving a movie theater to display films about Luxor's history.

The meeting also took up three key projects to operate ferry boats between the Eastern and Western banks of the Nile and marinas in the southern part of Luxor city, the spokesman said.
The plan also involves the excavation and restoration of the avenue of ram-headed Sphinxes in Karnak.

Heritage branding - Cleopatra's cosmetics and Hammurabi's Heineken

EurekAlert

From at least Bass Ale’s red triangle—advertised as “the first registered trademark”—commodity brands have exerted a powerful hold over modern Western society. Marketers and critics alike have assumed that branding began in the West with the Industrial Revolution. But a pioneering new study in the February 2008 issue of Current Anthropology finds that attachment to brands far predates modern capitalism, and indeed modern Western society.

In “Prehistories of Commodity Branding,” author David Wengrow challenges the widespread assumption that branding did not become an important force in social and economic life until the Industrial Revolution. Wengrow presents compelling evidence that labels on ancient containers, which have long been assumed to be simple identifiers, as well as practices surrounding the production and distribution of commodities, actually functioned as branding strategies. Furthermore, these strategies have deep cultural origins and cognitive foundations, beginning in the civilizations of Egypt and Iraq thousands of years ago.

See the above page for more. Wengrow is a lecturer at UCL's Institute of Archaeology.

The abstract can be found on the Current Anthropology website, but you will need to pay/subscribe or have access via your institution to read the full article.

Queen Sofia of Spain visits Saqqara with Hawass

guardians.net

Another update to Hawass's pages hosted on the guardians.net site gives an account of Hawass guiding Queen Sofia of Spain around Saqqara, and shows photos of them at the Imhotep Museum and inside the Step Pyramid. There is another short comment about work on a "headless pyramid" being carried out at the site:

Queen Sofia also visited the excavation area of the “Headless Pyramid,” in which an Egyptian mission supervised by Dr. Hawass is working. A group of galleries and crypts, a sarcophagus which is believed to belong to the Middle Kingdom, and a burial chamber were discovered in this area.

See the above page for more.

Found at last: the world's oldest missing page

The Independent, UK (Alan Johnson)

A year after the Romans packed up their shields in AD410 and left Britain to the mercy of the Anglo-Saxons, a scribe in Edessa, in what is modern day Turkey, was preparing a list of martyrs who had perished in defence of the relatively new Christian faith in Persia.

In a margin he dated the list November 411. Unfortunately for the martyrs, history forgot them. At some point, this page became detached from the book it belonged to. Since 1840, the volume has been one of the treasures of the British Library. It is known only by its catalogue code: ADD 12-150

The missing page has always been a fascinating mystery for scholars and historians. Now, after an extraordinary piece of detective work, that page has been rediscovered among ancient fragments in the Deir al-Surian monastery in Egypt. It is, according to Oxford University's Dr Sebastian Brock, the leading Syriac scholar who identified the fragments, the oldest dated Christian text in existence.

See the above page for more.

Exhibition: World of the Pharaohs, Egyptian Masterpieces From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

North West Arkansas' News Source

You know an exhibition is big if it is being announced more than a year and half before it arrives.

So it is with “World of the Pharaohs: Egyptian Masterpieces From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” which will be on display at the Arkansas Arts Center from Sept. 10, 2009, through June 27, 2010.

“World of the Pharaohs,” what Arts Center executive director Nan Plummer calls the “first exhibition of Egyptian art to come to Arkansas,” will consist of more than 200 objects. Among the artifacts, many of which originate from the Pyramid age (2675-2130 B. C. ), are a royal decree carved in limestone, a relief scene from the tomb of Qar and Idu, a sarcophagus lid, jewelry, amulets and a cat mummy.

The Arkansas Arts Center has its own website.

Loans of Archaeological Material

Looting Matters (David Gill)

Not strictly Egyptology, but certainly directly relevant, this piece by David Gill (member of the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology at Swansea University, Wales) on his Looting Matters blog looks at the 2006 "New Guidelines on Loans of Antiquities and Ancient Art". David looks at both the upsides and downsides to the Guidelines, created by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), highlighting key points of interest.

Egypt-themed reviews in JRA 20

What's New in Papyrology?

The What's New In Papyrology? blog has pulled out some Egypt-focused reviews in the latest edition of the Journal of Roman Archaeology, and these can be seen at the above page.

Coptic Graffiti and Early Christian Impressions of the Past

What's New in Papyrology?

The abstract of a forthcoming lecture by Jennifer Westerfeld, which highlights some important points itself, and is accompanied by a photograph that amply illustrates the point being made:

Spray-painted across walls or scratched onto the windows of subway cars, graffiti is often seen as a modern, urban phenomenon. However, the practice of writing graffiti actually goes back many thousands of years, and graffiti from the ancient world can be a valuable source of information for modern historians, giving us greater insight into how the ancients interacted with local landscapes. This talk will draw on recent fieldwork at Abydos and sites in Egypt's Kharga Oasis to discuss how Christian graffiti from the late antique period (roughly 350-750 CE) reflect changing attitudes towards sacred space and can help us reconstruct early Egyptian Christians' impressions of the Pharaonic monuments that still dominated the landscape at that time.

It's nice to see the ways in which graffiti can be useful! Details of the lecture by Jennifer Westerfeld, in Chicago at the end of March, are on the above page. A short bio of Westerfeld is also shown on the above page.

Hawass awarded Gold Medal of the Royal Band in Spain

guardians.net

During a gala ceremony at the Spanish Embassy in Cairo, Spanish ambassador to Egypt Antonio López Martinez presented to Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the “Golden Medal of the Royal Band,” in recognition of his devotion and untiring efforts to promote and protect Egypt’s cultural and archaeological heritage. This award is given by the government of the Spanish province of Ourense to honor cultural personalities around the world.

There's a photo on the above page of Hawass being given the award (the guardians.net site hosts Hawass's own pages).

Weekly Websites

Tools for studying the Pyramid Texts online
Pyramid Texts Online
By Vincent Brown

Vincent has updated his Pyramid Texts Online website with the addition of a useful Dictionary of Middle Egyptian. On his blog, Vincent says that "This dictionary was created by Paul Dickson as a result of his frustration with the existing dictionaries and their arrangement around the approximate sounds of the words instead of their spelling, as dictionaries are usually organised". Vincent's blog continues to grow nicely.


Egypt's Natural Heritage at Risk
CultNat

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) annually publishes a list of endangered animal and plant species in each country. This list includes native mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes, molluscs, insects and plants that have been assessed as being at risk of extinction on a global level (a Red Data list).
The Egyptian Red Data list (2002) includes 35 mammals, 20 birds, 6 reptiles, 10 marine fishes and mollusks and two plant species.
The majority of reports on these species makes a clear link to specific human activities, which because of their intensity, extent, or persistence, have negatively affected the habitat or condition of particular species.

Silence, Darkness and Light The Grand Egyptian Museum
By Ahmed Kamal Ali
Digital Library and Archives

Thanks to David Petersen for this link to a book which can be dowloaded free of charge (55 pages). Here's the Abstract:

How can the unique legacy of the most ancient of civilizations be represented within a single building? How can one building spans the area between heaven and earth, the space described in the cosmology of our pharonic ancestors?

Certainly, to design such a building is a unique challenge, and an unprecedented opportunity, on this most privileged of sites in the history of mankind, that a museum is to be constructed capable of linking the immemorial past with the distant future spanning both the horizons of the ancients and those as yet unseen.

Through the investigation of phenomenology, geometry, simplicity, purity and light, listening to the voice of silence, emerging to the light from the darkness, and by understanding the strength of simplicity after passing through complexity, This thesis offers an endless stream of ideas that challenge the mind.

The vision for the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is to establish a place where people from different nations and cultures will be able to immerse themselves in the rich culture heritage from more than 5.000 years of Egyptian civilization. With the support of new technology, more effective and efficient dissemination of information can be achieved, enabling the New Museum to be a source of enjoyable, entertaining, educational and cultural experiences for all visitors.

This project aims at structuring a complex of exhibits and facilities, which will accommodate all Pharaonic periods, it will be the largest museum in the world, and will provide access to information and future knowledge. It results from the careful articulation of the problem and a subsequent ordering of constraints within the context of the competition proposal.

Virtual tour of the mastaba of Khafkhufu I
CultNat

This application is slow in Explorer, and I couldn't get it to work at all in Firefox, but if you like to read Old Kingdom inscriptions, this virtual walk-through is worth the effort. The CultNat website appears to be functioning rather more effectively than it used to. The navigation is clunky, but the site is worth exploring.

The Mastaba of Khafkhufu I is situated in the row nearest the great pyramid in the eastern cemetery, it lies south of the pyramid causeway and east of the three queens’ pyramids. The mastaba is in fact the southern chapel (G 7140) of the double-mastaba G 7130-40. The northern chapel (G 7130) is that of his wife.

The entrance of the Khafkhufu I chapel is from the east through the mastaba doorway to the external hall (A). The only decorated part of the external hall (A) is the western wall through which passes the corridor to the main offering-chamber (B) which is also decorated. The reliefs feature the tomb owner and his family. The walls of the offering chamber are fully decorated as characteristic of the old Kingdom tombs, and show decoration items of this period including the titles of Khafkhufu.

Ancient Egyptian Love Songs
The Eloquent Peasant

Margaret Maitland has a nice piece on her blog about love songs, timed to coincide with Valentine's Day, with a couple of very useful links.

Whether you love it or hate it, today is St. Valentine’s day, and while the Egyptians didn’t really have an equivalent, the closest they had to such a holiday would perhaps be the festivals of Hathor, who, as the goddess or love, beauty, music, fertility, and even drunkenness, would make a much more likely patron of lovers than a canonized Roman martyr.

Although the Egyptians didn’t go in for roses and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, they did have lots of love poetry. Many people don’t realize what a rich body of literature the ancient Egyptians had, from fun stories about the adventures of magicians, to epic poems about epic journeys, and even what one might call the Egyptian version of the fairytale Rapunzel.

See the above pages for full details.

Daily Photo - Gilf Kebir Plateau

Blog Update

It is always my worst blogging nightmare that I will go away for a few days and that after weeks of relative silence from the world of Egyptology something major will erupt. I could have wept when I came back to my Inbox yesterday!

However, it is great that there is some real news to impart, together with the usual articles and general updates. Where an article supersedes earlier ones with both the same and additional information I have only posted the detailed version, in order to minimize duplication. You will find them all backdated below, starting with the post that appears after the most recent set of photographs to be posted - photos of the Faiyum Neolithic.

There will be more updates from the last few days tomorrow, I suspect, but I'll just add them to tomorrow's news posts.

Thanks to Kat Newkirk, Chris Townsend, David Petersen and Vincent Brown for their help - as ever they have made updating the blog after an absence an almost painless experience.

Kat - I left London in the fog, and arrived at Wales in full, glorious sunshine! The weather held whilst I was there, and it was exceptionally beautiful. Even London, today, is all blue skies and bright sun. So I've stopped complaining :-)

Rare Egyptian "Warrior" Tomb Found

National Geographic (Steve Stanek)

An unusual, well-preserved burial chamber that may contain the mummy of an ancient warrior has been discovered in a necropolis in Luxor.

Scientists opened the tomb—found in Dra Abul Naga, an ancient cemetery on Luxor's west bank—on Wednesday. (See an Egypt map.)

Inside the burial shaft—a recess crudely carved from bedrock—experts found a closed wooden coffin inscribed with the name "Iker," which translates to "excellent one" in ancient Egyptian.

Near the coffin they also found five arrows made of reeds, three of them still feathered.

A team of Spanish archaeologists made the surprise find during routine excavations in a courtyard of the tomb of Djehuty, a high-ranking official under Queen Hatshepsut whose burial site was built on top of graves dating to the Middle Kingdom, 2055 to 1650 B.C.

(Related: "Rare Middle-Class Tomb Found From Ancient Egypt" [January 18, 2008].)

The coffin dates to Egypt's Middle Kingdom era, though the cemetery is better known for its use during the New Kingdom, 1550 to 1070 B.C.

Based on the coffin's inscriptions and pottery found near it, experts date the burial to the early reign of the 11th dynasty, which lasted from 2125 to 1985 B.C. Soldiers played an important role in society during that time, when Egypt was reunified after years of civil war.

An enlargement of the photo shown on the above pages can be found on the National Geographic website.

See the above two-page article for the full story. The Djehuty project has its own website in Spanish and English.

Archaeologists dig up 'oldest' African human sacrifice in Sudan

Yahoo! News

It has been a good month for prehsitory in the Nile area!

French archaeologists in Sudan say they have uncovered the oldest proof of human sacrifice in Africa, hailing the discovery as the biggest Neolithic find on the continent for years.

The tomb of a 5,500-year-old man surrounded by three sacrificed humans, two dogs and exquisite ceramics were exhumed north of Khartoum by Neolithic expert Jacques Reinhold and his 66-year-old Austrian wife.

"This is the oldest proof of human sacrifice in Sudan, in Egypt, in Africa," Reinhold told reporters next to the remains in El Kadada village, a three-hour drive north of the Sudanese capital.

"I don't know of another example in Africa at this level... We don't have anything as strong in other excavations in other countries," said Reinhold, as villagers in traditional white robes carefully scrapped earth into buckets.

The archaeologist, who has led the excavation for several months, described the tomb as the most important Neolithic find in Africa since the 1990s.

That period -- which Reinhold calls the first global revolution -- marks the period when man evolved from hunter gatherers into farmers and producers, forever changing the structure of human society.

Theban Mapping Project website updated

Theban Mapping Project (Kent Weeks)

It is an absolute age since the TMP website was updated with any information about what is happening in the Valley of the Kings and neighbouring areas (over a year, according to this progress reports by Kent Weeks). Here's an extract, but see the above page for the full story:

It has been over a year since our last report to you, and both the Theban Mapping Project and Thebes itself have undergone several changes..

For example, there is a new addition to our website that I think you will find especially useful, a bibliography of Theban West Bank archaeological sites. It is now up and running and offers over 5,000 references that describe tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, outlying wadis and the Tombs of the Nobles, plus all the memorial temples, shrines, villages, graffiti, predynastic remains, and Christian sites. The entries include publications from early in the 19th century to the end of 2007, and deal with excavation, recording, conservation, history, analyses—everything but grammatical analyses of a monument’s texts.. There is also a list of abbreviations of journals and series, plus a list of variant spellings of the names of private tomb owners that should help students and scholars find their way through the complexities of Egyptological literature. We will regularly update the bibliography, and we hope to add a search engine to make it an even more useful tool in the near future. Your comments about (and additions to) the bibliography are, of course, enthusiastically welcomed.

Over the next few months, we will add to our website nearly 900 color photos of decorated Valley of the Kings tomb walls. Many of these images will be Zoomifiable, meaning that one will be able to admire entire wall scenes, or zoom in and examine in detail the brush strokes in an ancient artist’s rendering of an owl, or examine the corrections made by senior scribes to an apprentice’s drawing. With the addition of these images, the website now offers comprehensive coverage of most of the decorated tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The photographs, bibliography, a growing number of historical images, plus our detailed architectural plans, conservation reports, and tomb descriptions, make the website a comprehensive one-stop source for information on the Valley of the Kings.

Our TMP staff spent most of 2007 helping the Supreme Council of Antiquities begin the implementation of the TMP’s Valley of the Kings Management Plan. This is urgent business, as the number of tourists visiting KV can now reach over 7,000 each day, a number that the valley cannot safely handle without careful planning. (Our Management Plan is available on the website; just click here.) A new parking area for tour buses, an improved tram line from the new Visitors Center to the KV entrance, new tourist shops, toilets and piped water, and a cafeteria—all are part of the plan. We undertook a major—and highly successful—test of LED lighting in the tomb of Rameses VI, a tomb recently re-opened to the public after a three-year-long closure, on a limited basis and at an additional charge. Hopefully, the demonstration lighting system will be made permanent one day soon and, eventually, will be added to all the KV tombs regularly visited by tourists. Within the next few months we will install electronic temperature and humidity recorders in all tombs open to the public to monitor the effects of visitors on each tomb’s environmental condition. We are also working to devise new ticketing systems that will help control the numbers of tourists visiting the tomb to prevent overcrowding and reduce damage from sudden changes in temperature and humidity.

Architour of Cairo

The Financial Times

A very brief look at some of the architectural highlights of Cairo, of which I find the Nile Hilton probably the most unexpected of the buildings that appear on the brief list.

Egypt and Sudan to sign co-operation memo

Egypt State Information Service

Egypt and Sudan signed a memorandum on tourist, economic and agricultural development in the North Sudan province through providing necessary expertise by the Egyptian side.

The memorandum, signed Saturday 16/2/2008 by the Egyptian Businessmen Association for Tourism and the Sudanese Minister of Tourism for North Sudan province Othman Soliman Fadlallah, includes carrying out projects by the Egyptian side that promote development in the Sudanese province.

"Egyptian businessmen working in the tourism field are ready to help their Sudanese counterparts to develop tourism in their country, EBAT Chairman Amr Sedki said, voicing satisfaction over cooperation between the Egyptian and Sudanese peoples.

The memorandum was signed at the end of a four-day visit to Egypt by a Sudanese delegation that toured Hurghada, Marsa Alam, Aswan and Edfu.

Alexandria capital of Islamic culture for 2008

Egypt State Information Service

Alexandria governorate has created, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture, a memorial logo for the Egyptian city and it will issue a postage stamp printing the planned logo on it.

This came on the occasion of designating Alexandria as the Capital of Islamic Culture for the year 2008.

Tourism and culture ministries officials are working on a new book including information on the history of Islamic culture in Alexandria.

More re Egypt plans to copyright antiquities

Egypt Daily Star News (Ahmed Maged)

The issue of copyrighting cultural property has been under discussion for more than a decade. But the decision to apply such a rule to Egyptian monuments and artifacts — everything from pyramids to scarabs — couldn’t simply pass as a move aimed at protecting intellectual property.

“The copyright law relating to antiquities comes at a time when it is so badly needed to enforce attempts aimed at preservation and documentation,” Halim Nour El Din, professor of archaeology and former director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The main thrust of the law, which is still undergoing debate and drafting in the People's Assembly, is thought to apply to exact full-scale replicas of monuments. However, there seems the possibility that it will apply also to the manufacture and sale of tourist trinkets based on the nation's precious antiquities.

Alaa Mahrous, of the underwater archaeology department, Alexandria, spoke of the necessity of enforcing the law to curb semi- rather than exact imitations. “Distorted imitations are even more dangerous. You never know. Over the years they can pass as original,” remarked Mahrous.

However, there are other concerns. China is thriving on trading in Egyptian souvenirs manufactured in the country, an industry worth millions. Some nations have locally reproduced exact copies of some of the Egyptian sites to promote them as national tourist attractions, and these are generating profit from which Egypt doesn’t benefit.

Dr Abir Anany, a senior tourist guide, regretted the fact that the China-made Egyptian souvenirs are filling a gap left by the Egyptian market. “These souvenirs are an essential part of any tourist’s shopping spree. We have some made in Egypt but those are insufficient and expensive. One item could originally cost LE 5 and is sold for LE 100. We are copyrighting these items simply because we have failed to stand up against Chinese competition.”

Critics, therefore, argue whether the Supreme Council of Antiquities' (SCA) decision has been motivated by the keenness to preserve cultural heritage or the desire to share the profit of imitators.

It is difficult to argue strongly for one side against the other.

See the above page for the full story.

More re Neolithic settlement found in the Faiyum

Science Daily

Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings.

The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible trade links with the Red Sea, including a thoroughfare from Mesopotamia, which is known to have practiced agriculture 2,000 years before ancient Egypt.

"By the time of the Pharaohs, everything in ancient Egypt centered around agriculture," said Willeke Wendrich, the excavation's co-director and an associate professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA. "What we've found here is a window into the development of agriculture some 2,000 years earlier. We hope this work will help us answer basic questions about how, why and when ancient Egypt adopted agriculture."

Just centimeters below the surface of a fertile oasis located about 50 miles southwest of Cairo, the UCLA-RUG team excavated domestic wheat and barley and found the remains of domesticated animals -- pigs, goats and sheep -- along with evidence of fishing and hunting. None of the varieties of domesticated animals or grains are indigenous to the area, so they would have to have been introduced.

The archaeological team also found a bracelet made of a type of shell only found along the Red Sea, suggesting a possible trade link with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. In addition, they unearthed clay floors of what may have been simple structures -- possibly posts with some kind of matting overhead.

New York Times

(with two photographs)

American and Dutch archaeologists reported last week the discovery at a desert oasis of what they say is the earliest known farming settlement in ancient Egypt. They said the animal bones, carbonized grains, hearths and pottery were roughly dated at 5200 B.C.

Now, for the first time, the archaeologists said, early agriculture in Egypt can be studied in a village context, promising insights about the farmers and some answers to the questions of how, why and when Egyptians adopted farming.

In an announcement on Wednesday, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the new research showed that “the settlement was much larger than expected” and included clay floors of simple dwellings.

See the above pages for more details.

Exhibition: The World of the Pharaohs, Idaho

Local News 9 - Idaho Falls (Karole Honas)

The World of the Pharaohs opens February 22nd. Today we got to check out the artifacts that date back 5,000 years! They are real and excavated from tombs in Egypt.

Pharaohs were obsessed with death. They believed they had to pack all their riches into the tombs so they could live well in the afterlife.

When the pharaoh died, the body was mummified.

Their organs removed and saved.

"There's some brown staining on the edges. I think from some of the materials kept inside these. It's not the most pleasant smell, but it's very interesting. You can lift the lid and still see the remains of the ancient person inside," Laura Lipcsei from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston said.

When you first walk into the museum, you'll be stunned by the two-ton statue of Ramessess II, considered Egypt's greatest and most powerful pharaoh. From the big to the small, there's even a mummified kitten on display.

See the above page for more details, plus a video preview.

The Museum of Idaho has its own website, which contains details about museum opening hours etc.

Soaring high across the pyramids

Egypt Daily Star News (Sarah Marquer)

On a clear and sunny Friday afternoon overlooking the city’s wonderfully hazy skyline, over 250 Japanese and Egyptian families, students, and government representatives gathered amidst the usual flurry of tourists around the Pyramids of Giza with a single aim in mind — to test Cairo’s winds with Japanese kites

In celebration of the opening of the 2008 Japan-Egypt Year of Science and Technology, modern Japanese kites were shared and flown high into the air against the backdrop of the Khafre Pyramid in order to arouse curiosity in science and technology, old and new, among the youth of both countries.

The Lindako kite, translated from Japanese as a series of kites in one line, was featured alongside the pyramids in order to stimulate questions about aero-science and architectural technology.

See the above page for the full story.

The Faiyum to become a tourist site for prehistoric whales

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

In the parched desert on the westernmost edge of the Fayoum Depression stretches Wadi Al-Hitan (Whales Valley), its invaluable fossil remains of the earliest and now extinct sub-order of whales, the Archaeoceti, scattered among wind-eroded pillars of rock surrounded by sand dunes, cliffs and remnants of low shale hills and a limestone plateau of petrified sea-shells and corals.

Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site and nominated as the first natural heritage site in Egypt in July 2005, Wadi Al-Hitan is one of the most important sites in the world for demonstrating one of the iconic changes that make up the record of life on Earth: the evolution of the whales.

Remains at the site vividly portray their form and mode of life during their transition from being land animals to taking on a marine existence. It exceeds the value of other comparable sites in terms of the number, concentration and quality of the fossil remains found there, as well as their accessibility and setting in an attractive and protected landscape. The site also accords with key principles stated in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) study on fossil World Heritage Sites, and represents features currently absent from the World Heritage List.

Following its nomination, a three-year-long site management project was implemented in Wadi Al-Hitan in an attempt to protect it from urban encroachment or human destruction. The project includes a well-equipped visitors centre with an audio-visual theatre, an open-air fossil museum, a cafeteria and toilets, as well as a parking zone outside the protected area and a small barn for camels used by visitors in touring the site.

See the above page for the full story.

Last of the ancient wonders: The Great Pyramid

Al Ahram Weekly (Assam Deif)

It has variously been claimed that the pyramids served as power plants, water pumps, astronomical observatories, sources of ill-defined pyramid- power energy vortices, guidance beacons for alien spacecraft sites for mystery initiation ceremonies.

Unfortunately there remains no known written record as to how the most famous of the more than 100 pyramids in Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Giza, was built, nor have any reliefs depicting the building ever been found. The Greek geographer Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, mentioned the theory that levers were used to lift pyramid stones. Perhaps this is the most tenable of the alternate theories; as reported by Egyptologist Selim Hassan in his opus Ancient Egypt, Part 1, Cairo, 2000, p. 288. Hassan verified Herodotus's theory based on excavation conducted by Cairo University in the mid-20th century on the Giza Plateau, where the debris of two pulleys were found, one near the second pyramid and one inside the workmen's village east of the valley.

Leaving aside this theory, Egyptologists generally agree that the heavy blocks were most probably lifted into place by maintaining an ascending ramp of fractured pebbles. This view was supported by the discovery at Saqqara of an unfinished pyramid for King Sekhem-Khet of the Third Dynasty, where ascending ramps were found. This view of ascending roads is not shared by the Danish engineer Garde- Hanson, who reckoned that such a ramp as needed for the Great Pyramid would require 13,400,000 m3, seven times the amount of material used for the pyramid itself and necessitating a work force of 240,000 to build the ramp alone during Khufu's reign. Moreover, it would then require a workforce of more than 300,000 to dismantle it in a space of at least eight years. Even if such a ramp were to have been built on only one side of the pyramid, it would have required three times the pyramid volume instead of seven. However, since the ramp inclination could be at most to allow for the pulling of the heavy blocks, it would be about 10km long. In addition, to be able to support the weight of the stones the ramp would need to be made of nothing less in strength than the limestone material of which the stones themselves are made. These engineering facts cannot be disputed, and explain why there is as yet no convincing theory concerning the construction.

See the above page for the full story.

Tutankhamen to tour eight European, American cities

Egypt State Information Service

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif agreed to staging an exhibition displaying Egyptian antiquities in eight European and American cities on March 9, 2008 through December 2012 under the rubric Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs in exchange for 34 million US dollars.

Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni, in press statements Wednesday, said the exhibition will be staged at requests from US and European quarters.

On his part, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawwas said the exhibition will last for four years starting next month from the Vienna-based Art History Museum.

Valentine's Day - love in ancient languages

Eisenbrauns
Eisenbrauns (alternative URL)

Good fun - and two of the entries are written in ancient Egyptian.

Love is in the air! We went looking for a few good scholars to display both eros and erudition in our first (and possibly last!) Ancient Near Eastern Valentines contest.

We asked for no more than three original compositions or original interpretations in any ancient Near Eastern language (we bent the rules to allow Greek), accompanied by an English translation. Music and artwork were similarly welcome. We memorized the entire corpus of Near Eastern poetry, and watched for cheating.

You amazed us. You made us laugh. You made us smile. You made us cringe. (Any further contests will come with a strict "PG-13" rule. Oy!) You submitted Valentines with footnotes, references, and errata. After much deliberation, we're proud to present this year's winners.

We did our best to match prizes to the entries; we figured a free book in the entrant's area of interest was more valuable than a more expensive free book of something else. There were, of course, exceptions.

See the above page for all the entries and, of course, the winner!

Exhibition: Lost Kingdoms of the Nile

Emory Wheel

Even before the release of Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Arc and The Mummy, Americans had found a place in their hearts for all things Egyptian. The ancient Nubians, whose thrived in North Africa from 6000 B.C. to 350 A.D. were as strong a culture as America today, but they also loved and imitated Egyptian art.

The Carlos Museum’s new exhibit “Lost Kingdoms of the Nile” showcases artifacts from the ancient North African country. Though some objects are peculiar to the Nubians, there are many that show an artistic propensity for Egyptian art. The exhibit also features photos and records of the excavations that brought these objects to light and the turn of the 20th century.

Set in the top floor of the Carlos, the exhibit consists of three large rooms and three side rooms all painted a deep purple. Against this somber backdrop, the many artifacts brighten up the rooms with their vivid colors and fascinating designs.

To the untrained eye, the collection appears at first to be an Egyptian treasure trove. The objects on display include scarab beetles, mummy statuettes and model reconstructions of pyramids. Ancient Egyptians simply had a good deal of aesthetic sway over their neighbors to the south. Each kingdom held political power over the other at some point, and the Nubians were just as fond of Egyptian knock-offs as are Americans today.

See the above page for the full story. Further details are available from the Michael C. Carols Museum.

Archaeologists discover a 7,000-year-old settlement where agriculture was in full bloom

LA Times (Thomas H. Maugh II)

The problem is that most of the remains in the oasis have been uncovered by blowing sand, leaving few artifacts in their original setting, said archaeologist Willeke Wendrich of UCLA, who led the research. Moreover, much of the area is, ironically, being trampled by modern agriculture.

At the end of the 2006 digging season, Wendrich's team sunk a borehole into one sandy site previously excavated by Caton-Thompson and discovered subsurface evidence of bone and other artifacts. Before leaving, Wendrich managed to lease the six-acre site for a year.

When she and paleo-botanist Rene Cappers of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands returned last year, they found that the investment was worthwhile.

"What we have found here is a window into the development of agriculture" in Egypt, Wendrich said.

None of the remains of domesticated plants and animals were native to Egypt. All were originally domesticated in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East about 11,000 years ago and developed into a technology "package" over the succeeding 2,000 years.

The findings at Fayoum suggest that the technology was imported intact rather than invented locally, experts said. That possibility is supported by the discovery at Fayoum of a bracelet made from shells found only along the Red Sea, indicating that trade was occurring throughout the region.

See the above page for more.

Health-care plan in ancient Egypt?

Orlando Sentinel (Stephanie Pain)

As Egyptian mummies go, Asru is a major celebrity. During her life in the 8th century B.C., she was known for her singing at the temple of Amun in Karnak; now she's famous for her medical problems. Forensic studies have revealed that although Asru lived into her 60s, she was not a well woman. She had furred-up arteries, desert lung (pneumoconiosis) caused by breathing in sand, osteoarthritis, a slipped disc, periodontal disease and possibly diabetes, as well as parasitic worms in her intestine and bladder. Her last years must have been full of pain and suffering. After all, what could her doctor do to help? Say a few prayers and recite a spell or two?

If you read the history books, that's about as much as Asru could expect. But not according to Jackie Campbell at the KNH Center for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester in England. Her research suggests that Asru's doctor probably consulted a handbook of remedies and prescribed something to soothe her cough, deaden the pain in her joints and perhaps even expel some of those worms. What's more, Campbell's findings indicate that Asru's doctor had more than 1,000 years of pharmaceutical expertise to draw on.

If she's right, the history of medicine needs rewriting.

Dutch Archaeologists Uncover Earliest Egyptian Temple (2000)

Science Daily

Update: Thanks to the anonymous comment which pointed out that this piece is actually from eight years ago. I've left it in place in case it is of interest or a useful reminder for anyone.

During excavations at Tel Ibrahim Awad in the eastern Nile Delta, Dutch archaeologists discovered a large Middle Kingdom temple. Beneath this building, which dates from around 2000 BC, there were traces of five earlier temples, the earliest dating back to around 3100 BC. This is at least as old as the oldest temple previously discovered, namely at Hierakonpolis. Heavy-duty groundwater pumps had to be brought in to make it possible to reach the earliest remains. Financial support for the excavations was provided by the NWO¹s Council for the Humanities.

The ground plan of the earliest of these temples is unlike anything previously discovered in Egypt, and no other sites are known where a similar series of temples was built one on top of the other and which date back so far. The archaeologists do not yet know which gods were worshipped in the temples. In the third-earliest, they discovered about a thousand "disposable ritual objects", including statuettes of baboons and pottery. According to the laws of the ancient Egyptians, objects which had been used in religious worship must not be profaned and they therefore had to be preserved within the walls of the temple. The objects are currently being studied to see what they can tell us about temple rituals at this early date. No inscriptions were found to provide any clues.

See the above page for more details.

Book Review: Write your own Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Write your own Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Angela McDonald, British Museum Press 2007

When I first saw this for sale in the British Museum shop I assumed that this was a book about hieroglyphs aimed at children. The book is large in area but only has 80 pages. The title sounded a bit “I Spy”, and the huge lettering of the title, accompanied at the bottom of the page by the words “Names”, “Greetings”, “Insults” and “Sayings” all contributed to the sense that this was aimed at a sub-adult audience. I didn’t actually pick it up at that time to look through it, but at a later date, wasting time in Waterstones one afternoon, I had a closer look. There is nothing on the book’s cover or in the introduction to indicate a target age group, but a brief perusal indicated clearly that it was not aimed for children – the language used was far from child-like and the description of the concepts that underlie hieroglyphic expression are far more detailed than a child could grasp. Instead, it looked very much as though this book was directed at a teenage audience, an interesting idea that led me to purchase a copy – a mere £5.99 in Waterstones on Gower Street.

The aim of the book, the author states clearly to “teach you how to write your own hieroglyphs”, which is certainly a new approach. The introduction describes how the aim is to teach the readers to create a persona for themselves by examining ancient Egyptian names, titles and labels. The idea is to involve readers in a one to one relationship with the hieroglyphs, encouraging them to think about names and comments to enable them to engage at least on superficial level, with the ancient Egyptian way of thinking. McDonald says that by learning to name people, pet is possible to see the Egyptian world through ancient Egyptian eyes.

After the introduction, which explains how the book is to be used and discusses the importance of naming in Ancient Egypt, McDonald discussed the hieroglyphic script, briefly explaining how it was deciphered before looking at how the script works in practise. She covers directions of writing, the order of hieroglyphs, the sound of ancient Egyptians, the different types of scripts which were used and then explains how the hieroglyphic script actually functions by combining sound and meaning signs. She wraps up the chapter with a small exercise which asks the reader to write their own name using symbols from the single consonant sign list and a selection of determinatives, both of which she provides.

The first full chapter is entitled “People and their Names”. In it, McDonald uses the whole topic of naming to bring Egyptian people and their beliefs to life: “As soon as a child was born, he or she was given a name that could serve as a protection. It could be done in different ways. The most common method was to link the child with a god”. A chart is included to show how names were often composed as part of a formulaic arrangement which would include the name of the deity – for example “beloved of Amun”. The goes on to handle the subjects of nicknames, family relationships, terms of endearment and occupations. Again, the chapter is wrapped up with a set of tools to enable the readers to create new names for themselves.

The People and their Names chapter forms the template for the next two – Gods and their Names and Animals and their Names. In Gods and their Names McDonald looks at how the name of a deity reflected that deity’s role in life, but she also mentions that some names, like that of Osiris, are difficult to interpret. The exercises at the end of the chapter encourage readers to 1) create their own demonic names and 2) to create a name for a sacred place. The Animals and their Names chapter is, as you might expect, rather endearing in places, and includes the terms for many animals that I have never seen mentioned in hieroglyphic form (e.g. spider, rhino, flea, lizard). McDonald looks at pets’ names, animal symbolism and the use of animal titles in human names.

Chapter 5 is slightly different. It looks at words and phrases in ancient Egyptian, digging into how worlds are put together and what the construction reveals. There are also greetings, insults and laments.

It is an enjoyable book and I will find the vocabulary useful. It offers a different way of understanding hieroglyphs and how they are assembled into words that capture wider concepts. It only offers a very basic insight into the grammar of the language, which you would expect in a book of this size, and it does this most effectively. It is the ultimate absolute beginner’s book.

If I had been given this when I was a hieroglyph-obsessed 12 year old I would have been very grateful, happy and hooked! Even as an intermediate Middle Egyptian reader in my mid 40s I learned some new facts and terms, and the book will certainly keep its home in my collection. At 5.99 with excellent diagrams, easy to read hieroglyph arrangements, pronunciation guidelines and photographs (many from the British Museum), it is a massive bargain.

If you are just starting out and don’t mind to start at a basic level, or if you have a bright and interested teenager on hand, this would be a good book to acquire.

Flight of the Family

Al Ahram Weekly

Egypt is considered the most suitable destination worldwide for a religious tourist visit of one of the most sacred relics of Christianity -- the sites visited by the Holy Family during their flight into Egypt. These sites were included on a map in a pamphlet issued by the Ministry of Tourism in nine languages in 2000 in coordination and with the approval of Pope Shenouda III.

According to Matthews Gospel, reference to the visit of Jesus to Egypt seeking safety is undisputed. And according to the map of Egypt, the only point of entry from the north from Bethlehem is through Farama (Pelousium) which is stated in the ministry pamphlet and its relics which exist until today.

There is also a report issued by a Polish committee for antiquities about this particular site which said that after extensive research and excavation on the site it was proved that these relics are indeed 2,000 years old.

Farama is the eastern entrance for Egypt near Arish in North Sinai governorate. Although the area is lifeless, it is a distinguished tourism location and contains the remains of an entire Roman city. It has a church that was built on the cave which the Holy Family stayed in during its visit to Egypt 2,000 years ago.

Farama was also a crossroads for three important routes -- a port on the Mediterranean, a port of the Pelousium branch of the Nile, and a road from the eastern side. It was the second city in Egypt after Alexandria. about the passage of the Holy Family in this old city.

See the above page for the full story.

UCLA-Dutch team uncovers Egypt’s earliest agricultural settlement

UCLA Newsroom (Meg Sullivan)

Archaeologists from UCLA and the University of Groningen (RUG) in the Netherlands have found the earliest evidence ever discovered of an ancient Egyptian agricultural settlement, including farmed grains, remains of domesticated animals, pits for cooking and even floors for what appear to be dwellings.

The findings, which were unearthed in 2006 and are still being analyzed, also suggest possible trade links with the Red Sea, including a thoroughfare from Mesopotamia, which is known to have practiced agriculture 2,000 years before ancient Egypt.

"By the time of the Pharaohs, everything in ancient Egypt centered around agriculture," said Willeke Wendrich, the excavation's co-director and an associate professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at UCLA. "What we've found here is a window into the development of agriculture some 2,000 years earlier. We hope this work will help us answer basic questions about how, why and when ancient Egypt adopted agriculture."

Just centimeters below the surface of a fertile oasis located about 50 miles southwest of Cairo, the UCLA-RUG team excavated domestic wheat and barley and found the remains of domesticated animals — pigs, goats and sheep — along with evidence of fishing and hunting. None of the varieties of domesticated animals or grains are indigenous to the area, so they would have to have been introduced.

The archaeological team also found a bracelet made of a type of shell only found along the Red Sea, suggesting a possible trade link with the cradle of agriculture in the Near East. In addition, they unearthed clay floors of what may have been simple structures — possibly posts with some kind of matting overhead.

See the above page for more details

Tourism in the City of the Dead, Cairo

Al Ahram Weekly (Mohamed El-Hebeishy)

"Egyptians have always thought of tombs not as a place of death but rather a place where life begins", a statement that started with our ancient ancestors and which has still managed to hold its truthfulness through the ages.

A rectangular one-storey building set in an endless matrix, one row after the other, and nothing but a number of minarets and domes break the subtleness of the scenery. This might be the view of the City of the Dead up from a plane, but when you dare the inconsistent streets and stroll its zigzagging alleyways, you will be literally stunned by the historical richness it embraces.

A cemetery indeed, yet and for a handful of various reasons, mostly economical, it changed into a lively neighbourhood with all the elements of a resident quarter except for one mere fact -- its dwellers are actually living among the dead. A woman with a small stall selling cigarettes, a guy with a noisy tool fixing an old wrecked car, a queue of adolescents piling in front of the baker, and a group of bare foot children playing hide and seek in the barely fitting one-car streets. Within the parameters of five main cemeteries in Cairo, five million people are estimated to be living, some in small buildings that were raised haphazardly next to each other, others in slum-like forms that have nowhere to go but crumble if thunder strikes. But for the majority, they live in tombs. The way Egyptians build their tombs, whether they have reserved either a courtyard where the deceased is buried or an adjacent room, there is where people live.

But how does such a place hold monumental archaeological and historical value?

See the above page for the full story.

Daily Photo - Faiyum Neolithic

I've posted photos of the Faiyum Neolithic before, but it is particularly topical at the moment, so here is another set (the last three are from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology database, with my thanks).

More re Neolithic discoveries in the Faiyum

Al Ahram Weekly

Nevine El-Aref sheds some very welcome light on the previous reports:

At the site, known as Z-Basin, on the north shore of Lake Qaroun, an archaeological and geological team from University College of Los Angeles (UCLA) and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG) stumbled upon what is believed to be the most complete Neolithic settlement ever found in Fayoum. This discovery was made when the team was surveying the site to study fluctuations in the lake level which caused artefacts to be either covered with metres of sediment or dramatically displaced by erosion.

This site was previously excavated in 1925 by Gertund Caton-Thompson, who found several Neolithic remains. This time the magnetic survey revealed that the settlement was much larger than expected and that the area excavated by Thompson was only a fraction of the site.

"I cannot stress enough how important this is," mission director Willeke Wendrich says. According to Wendrich, the Fayoum Neolithic had so far been considered as one period but this view may have to change. "Our first result of study gives us reason to believe that they might be dated to different periods within the Neolithic," he says. Careful excavation and analysis of the area will be carried out in the upcoming archaeological season in an attempt to enormously augment the knowledge of such an interesting site.

In order to understand the layout of the Qaret Al-Rusas Roman village, on the northeastern side of Lake Qaroun, without excavating it, the mission carried a magnetic survey. The map shows clear wall lines and streets in an orthogonal pattern typical of the Graeco- Roman period. The village has well- preserved Roman remains of decorated limestone blocks and traces of mud- brick walls which show up in two robber trenches.

Early studies, Wendrich says, show clearly that the site was covered by the waters of Lake Qaroun at an unknown time for an unknown period, as not only the surface is completely levelled but potsherds and limestone flakes are covered with a thick layer of calcium carbonate, which is usually indicative of a stand of 30-40cm deep water.

See the above page for the full story.

Natural history: Desolate Desert

Egypt Today (Richard Hoath)

I'm always a happy woman when there's an article about Gilf Kebir/Gebel Uweinat, and here's a lovely piece on the Egypt Today website about the area's natural history. A good kick-start to a grey day in London - when I woke up this morning the fog was so thick that I couldn't actually see the houses on the other side of the dock where I live. It was awfully nice to have Richard Hoath bringing the desert and the desert stories back to life for me. Here's a short extract:

One of the joys of preparing for such a trip is doing the background reading. In this case, much of the historical background comes from the writings of early travelers — by camel and by car — during the opening third of the twentieth century. These books include The Lost Oases by the suave Ahmed Hassanein Bey, Libyan Sands by Ralph “On-On-Baggers” Bagnold and the recent The Hunt for Zerzura by Saul Kelly. In these travelogues I have been able to turn up a better picture of the contemporary fauna of these areas and put at least a little flesh on the scientific literature’s skeletal form.

The search did not start out promisingly. Take this entry from one of Bagnold’s expeditions: “This part of the country is such a sterile wilderness that any life besides our own was unexpected. South of the Ammonite Scarp [towards the Gilf Kebir] not even a bird was to be seen. No vegetation, dead or alive, had been seen for the last 220 miles.”

This is not encouraging prose for a naturalist. But just a little further on: “Yet life there was. At our next camp a colony of jerboa kept us awake by hopping over our faces at night, and investigating the contents of our cooking pots. What do they live on? Surelynothing but sand!” These would be Lesser Egyptian Jerboas described in last month’s column — the original “Desert Rats.”

Most poignant is the Zerzura in the title of Kelly’s book.

See the above page for the entire story.

Egyptian delegation to inspect stolen antiquities

Egypt State Information Service

The official response by Zahi Hawass and the SCA to the information that stolen artefacts from the important prehistoric site of Maadi (in the Cairo suburbs) have been recovered in the U.S., and a pilot has been arrested over the case.

The museum from which the artefacts were apparently stolen was located at the excavation site, and there is a photograph of it on the Tour Egypt website's feature on Maadi, together with diagrams and photographs of the site itself.

Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni approved Saturday 9/2/2008 sending an Egyptian delegation from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) to New York City to examine antiquities stolen by a US Army helicopter pilot.

Chief Warrant Officer Edward George Johnson was arrested Tuesday in Alabama on charges of selling 370 Egyptian artifacts that were stolen from Cairo University excavation storehouse.

In statements on Saturday, SCA Secretary General Zahi Hawwas said he received a few hours ago an official letter from Mark Andrew, an official at the US Department of Homeland Security, in which Andrew informed him that some Egyptians and Americans were involved in the case.

The US official said they helped the pilot smuggle 80 pieces of antiquities.

Hawwas said a picture of the US pilot will be shown to Horya Abdel-Baqi, a storekeeper at the Cairo University excavation storehouse in Maadi, southern Cairo, from where the artifacts were stolen.

After the artifacts were discovered missing from the storehouse in 1987, Ms Abdel-Baqi became prime suspect.

According to US authorities, Johnson could not identify his accomplices, Hawwas said.

During a meeting with a US official in New York six months ago, Hawwas asked for secrecy until evidence against the suspect was established.

Hawwas said he asked the US authorities to unveil circumstances surrounding the case now in order to identify other defendants.

SCA accidentally gets back stolen antiquities

Egypt Daily Star News (Nigel J. Hetherington)

An issue we saw gain momentum in 2007 has swung back on the agenda once again almost as the new year came in. This is the issue of the repatriation or return of Egypt’s cultural heritage from the museum stores of Europe and the Americas.

In the last few weeks, the University Museum at Southern Illinois University in the United States agreed to return a statue of a cat dating from the Ptolemaic era that had been illegally smuggled out of the country.

In an ironic twist to the story the location of the cat only came about because the museum’s current director Dona Bachman, sent a letter to the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) asking for approval to exhibit the artefact as part of the museum’s collection, and requesting more details about the object and the archaeological site where it was originally found. It was then that Dr Zahi Hawass, Director General of the SCA, spotted that the cat was on a list of items stolen from Egypt.

See the above page for the full story.

Hawass Dig Days - The Temple of Min, Akhmim

Al Ahram Weekly (Zahi Hawass)

When people think of Egyptian temples, they usually focus on the temples of Karnak, Luxor and Abu Simbel. For this reason, I was happy to see that Atlantic Productions, a TV production company in the United Kingdom, had chosen the town of Akhmim and its little-known temple to the god Min as one of the top 10 archaeological discoveries in Egypt. I was doubly happy because I participated in this discovery, and I even published a scientific article about the temple, one of the largest in Egypt, which is dedicated to Min, the god of fertility.

Akhmim was the capital of the ninth nome of Upper Egypt. Its ancient monuments are buried under the ground, and modern houses have been built on top of them. Today, people dig in the courtyards of their homes and sometimes discover major artefacts. With the help of the FBI in New York City we were able to recover two stelae that had been excavated illegally from Akhmim and smuggled by antiquities dealers. The Arab travellers who visited the site in the ninth century AD said it took from sunrise to sunset to view the temple of Akhmim, and even remarked that it was larger than the temple at Karnak. When the Sohag governorate built a post office more than 20 years ago part of a temple erected by Ramses II's was found underneath the construction site.

One of the discoveries was a beautiful statue of Merit-Amun, the daughter and wife of Ramses II. This statue may be the largest female statue ever found in Egypt. I saw the statue for the first time when I went to discuss a young lady's master's thesis with my late friend Gamal Mokhtar and Ahmed El-Sawy.

See the above page for more.