Researchers to restore Egyptian murals

Daily Yomiuri Online

A research institute for cultural properties will begin a study on the conservation and restoration of deteriorating ancient murals at the Saqqara ancient burial site near Cairo on March 21.

The Institute for Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Properties (ICP) aims to study techniques on the conservation and restoration of ancient murals worldwide.

The institute hopes to use the research findings at the ancient Egyptian site in the preservation of murals in Japan and in the arid zones of China and Central Asia.

The Cultural Affairs Agency expects the institute's research will benefit the preservation of Japanese cultural properties.

The institute, established in January, comprises 15 experts in the conservation science of cultural properties, geotechnical engineering and other fields from three universities in the nation, including Kansai University and Osaka Institute of Technology, and two research institutes in Egypt.

The experts include Kosuke Takatori, a visiting professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture who was involved in the preservation of endangered murals in the Kitora and Takamatsuzuka tombs in Asukamura, Nara Prefecture, and Prof. Masaaki Sawada of Kokushikan University, a former member of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.

See the above page for the full story.

Talatat Block Bearing a Possible Image of Nefertiti Discovered

drhawass.com

With photograph.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced today that an archaeological team from the Vitelli Papyrological Institute of the University of Florence has discovered a talatat block from an Amarna Period monument reused in the construction of a Christian church at the site of Sheikh ‘Ibada (Antinoopolis).

The block (larger image) is carved in sunk relief with the image of a queen of the Amarna Period wearing the vulture headdress. Dr. Rosario Pintaudi, the mission’s director, believes that the queen depicted could be Nefertiti, the wife of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten. Although it is uninscribed, the style of the relief dates it to the Amarna Period.

The Italian mission is conducting a topographical survey of the site, and in addition to their excavation of two Christian churches, has been recording the remains of a nearby Ramesside temple. Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said that the discovery of the talatat block is important, as it adds to the body of known records of the royal women of Amarna.

Ancient Cult Chapels, Egyptian Noblewoman's Tomb Found

National Geographic News (Andrew Bossone)

A 3,000-year-old noblewoman's tomb complex has been uncovered in Egypt, archaeologists announced Tuesday.

The tomb has been identified as belonging to a woman named Isisnofret—possibly the granddaughter of Pharaoh Ramses II, who reigned during the 13th century B.C.

Hieroglyphics on a sarcophagus in the tomb identify Isisnofret as a spst, or noblewoman—an honorific reserved for women of the royal family or of otherwise exceptional status.

Long hidden by sand and rubble on a rocky outcrop on the outskirts the ancient royal burial city of Saqqara, the complex measures 89 by 34 feet (27 by 10 meters).

The tomb complex includes the base of a pyramid, a monumental gateway, a colonnaded courtyard, and an antechamber with three cult chapels, according to the team from Japan's Waseda University that has been excavating the site since 1991.

See the above page for the full story.

The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections

UA News

The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, an electronic peer-reviewed journal, has been created out of a collaboration with UA faculty and the UA Libraries.

By University Communications
March 6, 2009

The University of Arizona Libraries and Regents' Professor Richard Wilkinson have jointly released a new electronic journal.

The Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, or the JAEI, was created by Wilkinson, a UA classics and Near Eastern studies professor, and will be hosted on the UA Libraries' institutional repository site, also known as UAiR.

The digitially-based, peer-reviewed journal explores the relationship between ancient Egypt and its surrounding regions and helps develop an important new trend in Egyptological scholarship by taking an interdisciplinary approach.

The journal publishes full-length articles, which have been subjected to the same peer-reviewed, blind screening process used by traditional scholarly print journals. The JAEI will also include short research notes, reviews of published works, announcements and reports of relevant conferences and symposia.

The journal also examines the relationship between ancient Egypt and its neighbors through different lenses, ranging from history to technology to art and religion.

"This is going to be a very timely and important journal for this field, there is no doubt about it," Wilkinson said in a statement.

Interest in subscribing to the journal has already been widespread.

See the above page for more.

In the house of millions of years

Al Ahram Weekly

A lost tomb and a sphinx in Luxor, painted anthropoid coffins in Dahshour and a noble woman's tomb in Saqqara. Nevine El-Aref reports on the most recent discoveries in Egypt

It seems that the recent archaeological season has been very successful. Wherever archaeologists have dug, they have come up with amazing and important discoveries.

On Luxor's west bank, major discoveries have been uncovered in the noblemen's necropolis at Sheikh Abdel-Gourna and at Kom Al-Hittan, where the temple of the 18th-Dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep III is located.

After almost 130 years of exploring the sands of the archaeological hill of Sheikh Abdel-Gourna, the tomb of Amenhotep, a deputy of the overseer of seal-bearers during the reign of Pharaoh Tuthmosis III -- known among Egyptologists as "the lost tomb" -- has been found by a Belgian archaeological mission.

Amenhotep's tomb was previously discovered during the early 1880s by Egyptologist Karl Pieh, who also drew a sketch plan of its interior design. But unfortunately over the span of time it was re- buried in sand and its exact location was subsequently forgotten. In the early 2000s traces of the tomb were revealed during work on the tomb of Sennefer, the overseer of seal-bearers. Excavators found a remarkable sandstone statue dedicated to Amenhotep, and further excavations at the site revealed more about the lost tomb that early this year led to the mission's finding the main entrance to the tomb chapel.

Laurent Bavay, head of the Belgian mission, explained that the tomb was a T-shaped chapel with a transverse gallery oriented north and south and divided by a row of six pillars. Its southern half collapsed in antiquity and the space was entirely filled with debris that partially blocked the entrance and the passage leading into the gallery. The walls of the tomb are painted with the classical geometric motifs well known from the 18th Dynasty, along with bands of hieroglyphic texts showing the name, various titles and genealogy of the tomb's owner. According to these inscriptions, the tombs belonged to Amenhotep, the deputy of the overseer of seal-bearers. His father was Ahmes, director of the cattle of Amun and Neheh, and his wife, who was called Renena, was the daughter of the overseer of seal-bearers Sennefer.

"This is a very important discovery," said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. He said that determining the exact location of the tomb would provide a better understanding of the Egyptian administration echelon during the reign of Pharaoh Tuthmosis III.

Hawass pointed out that other objects from Amenhotep's tomb were already known in Egyptological literature. The most important was a granite false-door stela found reused in the floor of a chapel added to the north side of the Khonsu Temple at Karnak.

See the above page for the full story, with photographs.

Gone with the wind - Coptic Egypt

Al Ahram Weekly (Gamal Nkrumah)

The Coptic calendar, the oldest in history, had been in existence for at least three millennia before Christ. Indeed, what today is termed the Coptic Christian calendar is essentially derived from earlier models of ancient Egyptian measurements of time. Ironically, all the current names of the Coptic months retain something of their original ancient Egyptian meanings -- invariably associated with non-Christian Egyptian deities -- thereby betraying their pre-Christian origins.

The Coptic calendar harks back to the days when the vast majority of Egyptians lived off the land, tilling the fertile Nile Valley and harvesting an abundance of crops. Certain crops were associated with the months in which they were sown or harvested. The ancient Egyptian was engaged in agricultural production on a daily basis, and the changing seasons regulated agricultural activities. The measurement of time was closely associated with regulating farm-related activities. The measurement of time was also closely linked with astrology and mathematics. The division of the day into 24 hours was an ancient Egyptian concept, as were the concepts of a month and a year. And for the past five millennia at least, the Egyptian year has had 13 months.

Tradition ascribes the invention of the Coptic calendar to Imhotep, the supreme vizier, chief architect, physician, physicist and mathematician. Imhotep, whose name means the Harbinger of Peace, is accredited with conjuring up the concept of the Egyptian year. Unlike the Western, or Gregorian calendar, the Coptic calendar divides the year into three and not four seasons. The Egyptian months and seasons were inextricably intertwined with agriculture and the ebb and flow of the River Nile. The three seasons are the first, Inundation, or Akhet -- the first season which marks the beginning of the year; second, Peret, the Planting or Sowing Season (winter); and last but certainly not least, Shemu, the Harvest (summer). The Sowing and Inundation seasons each has four months, while the Harvest has five. And since time immemorial, Egyptian farming communities have organised agricultural activities on the basis of these three seasons and 13 months.

See the above page for the full story.

Exhibition: Napoleon in Egypt

syracuse.com (Katherine Rushworth)

It's been said, especially recently, that history has a way of repeating itself. Armies invade and wars are waged year after year and century after century. As much as advances in science and technology can propel us forward, the foibles of human nature can pull us backward.

When Napoleon Bonaparte stormed into Alexandria, Egypt in 1798, he was following in the footsteps of a long line of earlier occupiers. The Romans, The Crusaders and Alexander the Great all left their footprints on the history of Egypt. But Napoleon's occupation went beyond a mere military force. Among the 55,000 troops and 400 ships arriving near the shores of Alexandria, were 150 scientists, engineers and artists known as savants. It was their job to explore, describe and document every facet of Egypt. From the architecture to the country's flora and fauna, no stoneliterallywas to be left unturned.

An interesting, if not somewhat academic, exhibition on view in the SUArt Galleries illustrates how Napoleon's quest to document all-things-Egyptian informed Western views of the country and influenced painters, architects, photographers and decorative artists for centuries to follow. The show, titled "Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt," is on loan from the Dahesh Museum of Art in New York City and remains on view in the Shaffer Art Building until March 29.

See the above page for the full story.

Travel: Respite in Aswan

The Times, ZA (Stanley Stewart)

God invented Egypt for people hell-bent on sight-seeing. From the pyramids of Giza to the Valley of the Kings, the Nile is just one darned monument after another. Temples, tombs, pyramids, sphinxes: it can go on a bit.

But at the end of Egypt there is respite. Aswan is the loveliest town on the Nile, and the place where the river is at its most beautiful. For weary souls, who are beginning to overdose on antiquities, there is relatively little to see. In Aswan you can relax on the sun lounger without feeling you are missing one of the wonders of the ancient world. It couldn’t happen to a nicer place.

For millennia, Aswan was the end of the known world. Beyond lay Africa and the Land of Punt. Well into the 20th century, visitors to Aswan felt they had reached the limits of civilisation. That has always been part of its charm. Through the alleys of the bazaar, where one could find ivory and ebony and gum arabic, wafted odours from the heart of the continent.

Yet Aswan has none of the melancholy transience of a frontier town. It is a delightful and sophisticated place. Its inhabitants are tall dark-skinned Nubians with a reputation for honesty and loyalty. Best of all is the river. Threading its way through islands, the Nile narrows here towards the First Cataract between banks of yellow sand and smooth granite. It is the splendid views over the Nile that have made the terraces of the Old Cataract Hotel one of the world’s great venues for afternoon tea. Or for cocktails, as you watch the sun set into the desert on the opposite bank. For a glorious moment the Nile and the sails of the passing feluccas are stained pink.

Aswan is a town of boats. Everyone comes and goes on the water. Villages dot the islands and the opposite bank like riverine suburbs. Cruise ships arrive from Luxor, ferries chunter back and forth, and the feluccas spread their swallow wings to the north winds that have carried boats up the Nile, against the currents, since before the days of Cheops. They are the enduring image of Aswan.

I set off one morning with a boatman for a trip upriver to Sehel Island. Out on the Nile, Aswan vanished in a moment as we entered a labyrinth of islands and rocks. Sentinel herons stood watch on the shores. Here and there the currents quickened, an echo of the First Cataract that the High Dam had largely submerged. The boatman pointed out the local landmarks — the places where they used to tow the boats over the rapids, where the islanders crossed to the mainland with their camels, where a big market was held on Thursday mornings between two sand dunes.

We moored on the sandy shore of Sehel, beneath a stand of acacias. The boatman led me up a path past the village laundry where brightly coloured clothes were laid out to dry on the rocks. The houses were blue as the river.

See the above page for the full story.

Exhibition: The Louvre Presents Today - The Gates of Heaven

Art Daily

The Louvre presents today The Gates of Heaven - Visions of the World in Ancient Egypt, on view through June 29, 2009. In the ancient Egyptian language, “gates of heaven” referred to the doors on a sacred shrine holding the statue of a god. Opening these doors brought the divine world into contact with the human one, an act that enabled the Universe to perpetuate itself by renewing the process of creation. It also allowed humans to glimpse an image of an ineffable reality. Closing the doors was merely the prelude to another, future rebirth; in the meantime, the god returned to the shadowy Beyond, withdrawing his image from human sight.

Egyptians felt that certain places acted, in a way, as replicas of these shrines containing divine statues. These places were therefore endowed with doors—actual or false—which represented the transition between physical and mental realities. This exhibition focuses on four of these realities: the ordered Universe, the Beyond, the tomb chapel, and the temple forecourt. Objects designed to depict these worlds or to be placed within them reflect a complex logic that reveals the intricacy of Egyptian philosophy, far removed from our own rational, Cartesian way of thinking.

See the above page for more.

A new dedicated social network purely for archaeologists, has been launched this month

Live-PR

I haven't joined this because I am really not into the whole online social networking thing, (I'm not even on Facebook) but I noticed a lot of familiar faces there when I had a look at the home page. If anyone is using the site perhaps they could leave a comment about how they find it.

A new dedicated social network purely for archaeologists, and those with a passion for anthropology, has been launched this month. Archaeology Network has gotten off to a positive start with over 250 archaeologists joining the site to discuss with likeminded people from across the globe.

Archaeology Social Network (www.archaeology-network.com) is designed for members to have their own personal space purely dedicated to archaeology, where they can discuss topics, news and events on the forums, write blogs about their experiences, upload pictures and videos from field trips, and meet people who share the same passions as they do.

“I am very pleased with the reception Archaeology Network has received so far” says Ross Hutchings, Online Editor of Archaeology Network. “Members are extremely active on the forums, discussing interesting and relevant topics, and have really begun to form an important online archaeological community.”

Archaeologists find statues of ancient Egypt king

Reuters UK

A team of Egyptian and European archaeologists have discovered two statues of King Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt roughly 3,400 years ago, the Supreme Council for Antiquities said Thursday.

Chief Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawaas said in a statement the first statute was made of black granite, while the second depicts the king in the shape of a Sphinx, a figure with the head of a man and the body of a lion.

Amenhotep III presided over an era which saw a renaissance in Egyptian art. He was succeeded by his son Akhenaten, the sun-worshipping pharaoh credited by some for starting the world's first known monotheistic religion.

There are three photos of the statues on Google.

The Third Annual Feast of Archaeologists

drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass)

When I first became Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, I had the idea that there should be a special occasion each year to celebrate Egyptian archaeologists and their work. It took me two years to settle on the perfect date, but three years ago we decided to set January 14th aside as “Ahmed Pasha Kamal Day” in honor of the first Egyptian scholar of Egyptology.

Since then, each year, we have held a "Feast of the Archaeologists" on this day with a festive event at the Zamalek Opera House. We honor colleagues, both living and deceased, who have contributed to archaeology and heritage preservation in Egypt.

This year, in celebration of the third annual Feast of the Archaeologists, I decided that we should recognize past directors of the Egyptian Antiquities Service (known from 1971 to 1993 as the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, and since 1993 as the Supreme Council of Antiquities). I gave a speech about the progress that has been made in improving employment conditions for Egyptian archaeologists. I mentioned the fact that salaries are three times what they were only a few years ago, and that new monthly bonuses, unique among those available to government employees, are now awarded to our best archaeologists. Top SCA employees now travel abroad with exhibitions and receive generous stipends for this work. We are building a new social club for archaeologists, to give them a sense of community and identity, and we are making health insurance available to them for the first time. I know that our foreign colleagues have expressed concern in the past about the salaries and benefits available to SCA employees, and I hope that this will help to allay their worries.

See the above page for the full story.

Maritime Archaeologist at Helm of Modern Journey to Ancient Egyptian Land

PhysOrg

Ancient Egyptians may be best known for building pyramids, but internationally renowned maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward wants the world to know that they were pretty good sailors, too.

She ought to know. Ward, an associate professor of anthropology at The Florida State University, and an international team of archaeologists, shipwrights and sailors recently built a full-scale replica of a 3,800-year-old ship and sailed it on the Red Sea to re-create a voyage to a place the ancient Egyptians called God’s Land, or Punt. Their expedition was financed and filmed as part of a French documentary that will air internationally and on an upcoming episode of “Nova.”

“This project has demonstrated the extraordinary capability of the Egyptians at sea,” Ward said. “Many people, including my fellow archaeologists, think of the Egyptians as tied to the Nile River and lacking in the ability to go to sea. For 25 years, my research has been dedicated to showing the scope of their ability and now, to proving their independently invented approach to ship construction worked magnificently at sea.”

The project grew out of the 2006 discovery of the oldest remains of seafaring ships in the world in manmade caves at Wadi Gawasis, on the edge of the Egyptian desert. The Egyptians used the site to assemble and disassemble ships built of cedar planks and to store the planks, stone anchors and coils of rope until the next expedition -- one that obviously never came. Civil unrest and political instability after the Middle Kingdom period (2040-1640 BC) likely put a halt to further exploration, and the caves were long forgotten, Ward said.

Sindh Today

An international team of archaeologists, shipwrights and sailors has recently built a full-scale

replica of a 3,800-year-old ship and sailed it on the Red Sea to re-create a voyage to a place the ancient Egyptians called God’s Land, or Punt.

Their expedition was financed and filmed as part of a French documentary that will air internationally.

According to maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward, an associate professor of anthropology at The Florida State University, ‘This project has demonstrated the extraordinary capability of the Egyptians at sea.’

‘Many people, including my fellow archaeologists, think of the Egyptians as tied to the Nile River and lacking in the ability to go to sea. For 25 years, my research has been dedicated to showing the scope of their ability and now, to proving their independently invented approach to ship construction worked magnificently at sea,’ she added.

See the above pages for the full story.

Energy, wealth and peace to flow from Sudanese dam

New Straits Times (Siti Nurbaiyah Nadzmi)

THE 20,000-strong crowd of men in white robes, women in colourful wraps and children in Western clothes danced before the main platform on the Merowe desert in Sudan, in what looked like a massive rock concert under the baking sun.

Set against the foreboding backdrop of a warrant of arrest on their leader from the International Criminal Court (ICC), the people seemed more concerned with being set free from poverty.

Certainly, the desert dwellers -- farmers who had lived on and worked this land since the Pharaohs -- saw the US$2 billion (RM7 billion) Merowe Dam as a catalyst for change.

One of them, economics graduate Sarah Omer, 29, had returned to her hometown in Merowe after completing her studies in Khartoum to work with one of the engineering companies at the dam, Lahmeyer International.
Omer belongs to the Shaygia tribe. Her ancestors had once ruled northern Sudan and built pyramids along the Nile to mark their rule over Egypt for more than a century.

The "Black Pharaohs", as they were dubbed by Western archaeologists, were in no way inferior to the Egyptians when it came to intellect and technology, and had built more pyramids along the Nile than their neighbours.

Once a bustling kingdom, the area is today filled with mud-house villages.

Call for Papers for The Third International Congress for Young Egyptologists

Egittologia - Archaeogate

Call for Papers for The Third International Congress for Young Egyptologists "Commerce and Economy in Ancient Egypt" - Budapest (Hungary), September 25 – 27, 2009. Call for papers.

The "Third International Congress for Young Egyptologists – Commerce and Economy in Ancient Egypt" is to be held on September 25 – 27, 2009 in Budapest, Hungary.

The theme of the congress is "Commerce and Economy in Ancient Egypt".

Papers are invited on any aspect of the topic (archaeology, history, religion, language, literature, economic theory, etc.), reports and presentations about excavation projects pursued in Egypt are also welcome. The proceedings of the congress will be published.
We have the privilige to welcome Prof. Manfred Bietak, Prof. Jac. J. Janssen, Prof. Ulrich Luft, Prof. László Török, Dr. Edward Bleiberg, Dr. Ian Shaw, and Dr. David Alan Warburton who have already confirmed their intent to join the Academic and Advisory Committee of the congress. As a special guest, Dr. Alessia Amenta will be present as well.

Abstracts and registrations for speakers and poster presenters should be submitted no later than March 31, 2009. The Congress is open to visitors as well.

For more details on the Congress please visit our website at:
www.byblos.org.hu/index.php

Should you have any questions, remarks, enquiries please don't hesitate to contact the organisers:
András Hudecz (M.A.) Máté Petrik (M.A.)
Byblos Foundation
ICYE2009@gmail.com

Images of Egypt on display at Omega Photo

Bellevue Reporter

The "collision" of the ancient and modern world in Egypt is the subject of a photo exhibit by Robb Mitchell now on display through March 31 at Omega Photo in Bellevue.

Mitchell will be available Saturday, March 7, from 2-4 p.m. at Omega Photo to answer questions about his work.

An award winning photojournalist for the newspaper in Memphis, Tenn., Mitchell visited his hometown’s namesake, Memphis, Egypt and more. From the deserts of Sinai to Alexandria to Cairo and up and down the Nile River, he focused on the people and the places of both modern and ancient Egypt.

See the above page for more details.

Hawass on Manfred Bietak

Al Ahram Weekly (Zahi Hawass)

We as Egyptians believe that our monuments belong not only to us, but to everyone, all over the world. At the same time, the discipline of Egyptology was created by foreign scholars, and they solved many mysteries like the riddle of hieroglyphs. Many French, German, Italian, and American expeditions, among others, have worked in Egypt and published countless volumes that are very important and useful to this field.

Whenever we mention foreign expeditions, we must also talk about individual colleagues. We cannot remember all of them, but there are certain ones whose love of Egypt and Egyptians stands out -- people who have dedicated their lives to Egyptology, and lived among us for many years. One such scholar is Manfred Bietak, who is now working at the site of Tell Al-Dabaa in the northeastern Nile Delta. This site is the location of the ancient city of Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos, who occupied Egypt for more than 100 years. It is also near the site of Qantir, where the capital of Ramses II was located.

Bietak did careful, scientific work at Tell Al-Dabaa, a site that has been ruined by agriculture, with much of its history lost below the water table. Earlier work had also destroyed much of the historical sequence at the site. Bietak began, however, to excavate carefully using the best techniques, and he learnt and recorded the history from each level of this important site. I once visited his camp at Tell Al-Dabaa. I can say that his work may be among the most important scientific efforts underway in Egypt right now, and that he is one of the most important scholars here.

See the above page for the full story.

Travel: Egyptian passage

canada.com (Peter Wilson)

For those wanting a quieter stretch of Nile cruising, a three- or four-night cruise on Lake Nasser is the perfect way to discover the wonders of ancient Egypt. The world's largest man-made lake, Lake Nasser was formed by the construction of the Aswan High Dam, near the popular tourist destination of Aswan. Spread out deep into what was the ancient Nubian kingdom in Upper Egypt, the lake is some 550 km long and 35 km across at its widest point near the Tropic of Cancer.

The dam was an incredible 12-year construction project, but equally impressive was the major relocation program led by UNESCO teams that saw important archaeological sites dismantled block by block and moved to higher ground as the Nile waters began to rise.

Abu Simbel was probably the most significant and certainly the most impressive site to be rescued. Part of a Lake Nasser cruise itinerary includes a visit to the fabulous spot, along with visits to other rescued projects that are more remote and less visited, such as the temples of Dakka and Meharakka at Wadi El Seboua and the Temples of Amada and Derr and the tomb of Penout, all at Amada.

While a Lake Nasser cruise offers access to these important sites, the good news is that the massive lake has only a half dozen cruise ships working its waters. With those kind of numbers, it's not surprising that aboard the MS Kasr Ibrim you feel the lake and the surrounding desert landscape came straight out of the pages of an Agatha Christie novel.

See the above page for the full story.

Conference: Coptic Heritage - History and Creativity

SECOND ANNUAL COPTIC STUDIES SYMPOSIUM
COPTIC HERITAGE: HISTORY AND CREATIVITY
SATURDAY MARCH 21sT 2009

University College Auditorium - Room 140, 15 King's College Circle, Toronto, ON M5S 3H7. Co-Sponsored by the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations University of Toronto

St Mark's Coptic Museum, Scarborough
University of Toronto Art Centre
Cost: $15/$10 for students, payable at the door (lunch included)
Pre-register before 14 March to reserve your place: r.boutros@utoronto.ca

8:30 – 9:00 REGISTRATION

9:00 – 9:15 OPENING REMARKS Prof. Linda Northrup: Chair, Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilisations (NMC), University of Toronto

9:15 – 9:30 Fr. Marcos A. Marcos: Protopriest, St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Church, Scarborough, Ontario

"Envisioning St. Mark's Coptic Museum in the Coptic Canadian Village, Markham"

FIRST SESSION: EARLY CHURCH SOURCES

CHAIR: Prof. James M. Robinson: Professor Emeritus of Religion, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California

9:30 – 10:00 Dr. Anne Moore: Senior Instructor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Calgary

"Locating the Kingdom of God within the Writings of Clement of Alexandria and Origen"

10:00 – 10:30 Prof. Pablo Argárate: Associate Professor of Patristics/Historical Theology / Director of the Eastern Christian Studies Program, Faculty of Theology. University of St Michael's College

"Fourth-Century Pneumatological Controversy in Alexandria: Athanasius's Epistulae ad Serapionem"

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break

SECOND SESSION: COPTIC COLLECTIONS

CHAIR: Prof. Sheila Campbell: Emeritus Fellow, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS), U of T.

11:00 – 11:30 Fr. Bigoul al-Suriani: Librarian of the Monastery of Deir el-Surian, Egypt

"Collection of Manuscripts of the Library of Deir el-Surian"

11:30 – 12:00 Heather Pigat: Collections Manager, U of T Art Centre

"Coptic Art and Artefacts in Canadian Collections"

12:00 – 1:30 Lunch Break

THIRD SESSION: HISTORIC SITES

CHAIR: Prof. Amir Harrak: Professor of Aramaic and Syriac languages NMC, U of T

1:30 – 2:00 Prof. Jitse H.F. Dijkstra: Assistant Professor and Head of Classics, Department of Classics and Religious Studies, U. of Ottawa

"Christian Graffiti from Late Antique Egypt: Christian or Egyptian?"

2:00 – 2:30 Dr. Ramez Boutros: Instructor, NMC – Research Fellow PIMS, U of T

"Recent Excavations in the Monastery of Bawit: Outcome and Perspectives"

2:30 – 3:00 Coffee Break

FOURTH SESSION: COPTIC ART AND LITURGY

CHAIR: Prof. Pablo Argárate

3:00 – 3:30 Prof. Amir Harrak

"A Syriac Inscription in the Church of St Menas, Fum El Khalig, Cairo"

3:30 – 4:00 Dr. Helene Moussa: Volunteer Curator, St. Mark's Coptic Museum, Scarborough

"The Synergy of Coptic Spirituality and Liturgy -13th Century Wall Paintings, St Anthony's Old Church, Monastery of St Anthony, Red Sea"

4:00 – 4:30 CLOSING SESSION

4:30 – 5:00 Dr. Helene Moussa and Dr. Ramez Boutros

"The Canadian Society for Coptic Studies"

Daily Photo by Bob Partridge (Ancient Egypt Magazine)

Apologies for the unplanned absence. Lots seems to have been happening in the world of Egyptology whilst I was away. I've added the cream of the crop above. There are other news items to come, but I thought that this was probably enough for one day.

I wouldn't have been able to backtrack without the email help from Kat, with additional contributions from Ben Morales-Correa, Diane Leeman, Tony Marson, Rhio Barnhart, Huib Bennekom and Pierfranco Dotti.

Special thanks to Francis for a small virtual kick when I needed one.

Nofret
Close up of the statue of Rahotep and Nofret in the Cairo Museum
Painted limestone. Old Kingdom, Fourth Dynaty.
From the mastaba of Rahotep in Meidum.

With many thanks to Bob Partridge, Editor of Ancient Egypt Magazine.
Copyright Bob Partridge

New Book: The Curse of the Mummy

Thanks to Ian from Oneworld Publications for giving me details of a new publication by Charlotte Booth.

The Curse of the Mummy. And Other Mysteries of Ancient Egypt

There are many mysteries associated with ancient Egypt that have perplexed scholars and laymen alike. Egyptologist Charlotte Booth selects ten of these and explores the recent theories and outlandish guesses put forth by leading archaeologists, scientists and historians. Using the latest archaeological evidence to separate fact from fiction, Booth provides the truth about the Exodus and the real cause of Tutankhamun’s death, and reveals a fascinating world of cursed tombs, mystical lands, and even a cross-dressing king. Guaranteed to delight and inform, this book spans thousands of years from the construction of the pyramids to Ancient Egypt’s decline and illuminates the true brilliance of one of the greatest civilizations in the history of humankind.

Charlotte Booth teaches Egyptology at Birkbeck College in London, UK. She has written numerous articles, and her published books include Ancient Egypt for Dummies (Wiley 2007) and The Boy Behind the Mask (Oneworld).

Order direct from Oneworld Publications and receive 20% discount by quoting reference OWFLY09 (subject to P&P).

For all other enquiries email: marketing@oneworld-publications.com
www.oneworld-publications.com

Ancient Egyptian Gold Found in Luxor by Spanish Archaeologists

Bloomberg

Spanish archaeologists digging on the west bank of Luxor, Egypt, have discovered jewelry in a tomb of a state treasurer who lived some 3,500 years ago under the reign of Queen Hatshepsut.

The team found five gold earrings and two gold rings that probably belonged to Djehuty -- the so-called overseer of treasury, who supervised works under Hatshepsut -- or his family in a newly discovered burial chamber in his tomb, the Egyptian Culture Ministry said in an e-mailed statement today.

The chamber, the second in the tomb, is the fourth dating to this period that has been found with painted walls, the statement said. Two of its walls are decorated with texts from the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the ceiling bears a mural of the goddess Nut.

Jose Galan of Madrid’s National Research Center and his team have been excavating at the site in Dra Abu El-Naga on the west bank of Luxor since 2002 and discovered a 3-meter shaft inside Djehuty’s tomb at the end of the 2008 archaeological season. The new burial chamber was then discovered earlier this year, the statement said.

Blog update

Apologies, but the blog will be not be updated again until Monday. I will also be unavailable by phone or email.

Kind regards
Andie

‘Royal granddaughter’s tomb’ found near Cairo

Times Online

Archaeologists have unearthed the 3,000-year-old tomb of an Egyptian noblewoman in the necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo. The Japanese team believes that the tomb belongs to Isisnofret, granddaughter of Ramses II, the 19th Dynasty pharaoh who reigned over Egypt from 1304BC to 1237BC.

The tomb contained a broken limestone sarcophagus bearing the name of Isisnofret, three mummies and fragments of funerary objects.

The archaeologists’ team leader, Sakuji Yoshimura, said that the find was made near the tomb of Prince Khaemwaset, a son of Ramses II.

Bloomberg

The tomb and sarcophagus of Isisnofret were discovered in a rocky outcrop near the Serapeum, a Pharoahnic burial place for sacred bulls at the Saqqara site, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said in a statement posted on his Web site today. Three human bodies and fragments of funerary items were also discovered, according to the statement.

Most of the upper part of the tomb is missing and only the foundations of the burial site remain intact, Sakuji Yoshimura, head of the Japanese mission from Waseda University, said in the statement.

The limestone sarcophagus of Isisnofret inside the tomb is in poor condition yet still boasts some of the original inscriptions painted in a brilliant blue. The title of noblewoman was rare in ancient Egypt and it’s possible that Isisnofret is the daughter of Prince Khaemwaset, a son of Ramses II, Yoshimura said. The prince’s tomb lies nearby.

Earth Times

SCA general secretary Zahi Hawass said the tomb structure itself consists of a pylon and a colonnaded courtyard leading to an antechamber with four pillars, and terminating in three cult chapels and the base of a small pyramid.

Its plan was typical for a freestanding tomb-chapel of the New Kingdom, particularly the Rameside Period, Hawwas added.

Sakuji Yoshimura, head of the Japanese mission, said that unlike other Memphite tomb chapels of the period which were normally aligned east-west, the newly discovered monument was aligned north-south. Most of the upper portion of the structure was missing, with only foundations and some of the flooring remaining.

Google / AFP

The tomb contained a broken limestone sarcophagus bearing the name of Isisnofret and the title "noble woman", three mummies and fragments of funerary objects, the department said in a statement.

Isisnofret's last resting place is in an area of Saqqara where a team from Waseda University were excavating the tomb of Prince Khaemwaset, a son of Ramses II, it quoted Japanese team leader Sakuji Yoshimura as saying.

"Prince Khaemwaset had a daughter named Isisnofret (and) because of the proximity of the newly discovered tomb to that of the prince, it is possible that the owner of the sarcophagus is the daughter of Khaemwaset," he said.

However, Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told AFP he believes the tomb dates from the 18th dynasty instead of the 19th, because of the style of construction.

Hawass also dismissed the "similarities in the names" saying that there were many women called Isisnofret in ancient Egypt.

See the above pages for more. According to the news feed picked up by my Google Reader service Zahi Hawass's own website is supposed to have an update, with photos, but the site is down at the moment. You may want to check it later today for more information.

Proyecto Djehuty closes for the season

Proyecto Djehuty

The 8th season of the Djehuty Project has now ended for the year. The site was closed up with locks on the iron gates, the seal of the SCA put in place. It was then walled up with stones and cement.

The preliminary report for the Supreme Council of Antiquities is being prepared, which details the work achieved this season. The work includes the restoration of the White Lady, the restoration of the coffin Iqer, the beginning of the restoration of the walls of the chapel of Djehuty, excavation of the tomb of the 11th Dynasty tomb in the courtyard of Djehuty, the excavation of the burial chamber, the excavation of a chamber of tomb 399 and the analysis of epigraphy, ceramics, bones, etc.

Excavations will continue in season 9.

Waseda University work in Egypt

Waseda University, Institute of Archaeology

Whilst pottering round the Internet looking for some photos of the newly discovered tomb of Isisnofret at Saqqara I went onto the Waseda website and found this page which has lots of information about their work in Egypt. A lot of it is archive material but most of the reports give good summaries of the work carried out, and are accompanied by photographs.

New Book: Byzantine Egypt

What's New in Papyrology

Ruffini, Giovanni. Social networks in Byzantine Egypt. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. 2008

Social Networks in Byzantine Egypt by Giovanni Roberto Ruffini, Fairfield University, Connecticut
Hardback.

Also available in eBook format.

See the above page for details.

Sad news: Kenneth Lindsay

pressconnects.com

With a photograph of Lindsay looking at the Nefertiti bust, which he relocated in Wiesbanden in 1945 and which he said was an experience he would never get over.

Kenneth Lindsay, 89, a former Binghamton University professor who helped save Europe's artwork from destruction and theft after World War II, died Monday at Wilson Regional Medical Center in Johnson City.

Lindsay, who taught art history at the university for 40 years, was one of several hundred men and women who worked in the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section of the U.S. Army. The group saved tens of thousands of artworks and monuments from Hitler and the Nazis and helped return them to their owners.

Lindsay was interviewed for the 2006 documentary film "The Rape of Europa," which told the story of Hitler's destruction of works of art and the work of the "Monuments Men," as they were nicknamed by American GIs.

See the above page for more.

Resources for History B94, History of Ancient Egypt

Northwestern University Library

Thanks to Kat for sending me the link to this archive resource, which consists of course notes for students taking the History of Ancient Egypt course at the Northwestern University. The notes provided useful overviews on a number of topics including basin irrigation and the status of women.

This collection of World Wide Web pages is maintained by Schaffner Library for Northwestern University / University College students enrolled in History B94: History of Ancient Egypt, instructor Dr. Peter Piccione. The information provided below is intended to assist students in fulfilling course requirements and is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to all networked resources pertaining to Egypt.

NOTE: New material is no longer being added to this set of Web pages. It remains on the Northwestern University Library WWW server as a courtesy to people interested in Egyptology. Visitors who desire further information on Egyptology should read Dr. Piccione's extensive bibliographies in both his course syllabus and his "Selected Bibliography of Recent Works on Nubia."

Daily Photo by Bob Partridge (Ancient Egypt Magazine)

Rahotep
Close up of the statue of Rahotep and Nofret in the Cairo Museum
Painted limestone. Old Kingdom, Fourth Dynaty.
From the mastaba of Rahotep in Meidum.

With many thanks to Bob Partridge, Editor of Ancient Egypt Magazine.
Copyright Bob Partridge

The Italian Archaeological Expedition in the Sudan - Report for 2009

Archaeogate Egittologia

Thanks to Pier for sending this to me.

The 2009 season of the Italian Mission at Jebel Barkal was carried out between February 11th and 25th. . . .

Our goals were several: first, to continue excavations of two monuments of special interest for our ongoing research; second, to repair and strengthen the walls of both these structures, in order to protect newly discovered fragile architectural remains and to repair older restorations; and third, to reorganize our living situation at Karima, in order to reduce costs as much as possible.

In B2400 we continued excavating in the area near the middle of its southern side. This was the only side which appeared to have no access in correspondence with an Ionic peristyle court recognized inside the edifice. The area outside was severely disturbed in antiquity; a huge mud brick wall joined by other smaller mud brick walls was observed at a lower level, which have nothing to do with B2400. However in the sand another burial and a bronze pin was found.

In the interior of B 2400 there was only a thin layer of sand, so that the network of walls could be traced rather easily and quickly in spite of shallow holes in the ancient masonry, and its ancient layout could be surveyed throughout. Some new rooms were uncovered, with a lot of Meroitic ceramics inside (many of them with beautiful painted motifs); the walls herein were m. 1,60 wide, suggesting the original existence of an upper floor. Many bones near the surface all over the area point to its use as a late cemetery, extending as far as the Jebel. However the surface burials were mostly destroyed when the area was leveled to become a passage way.

See the above page for the full account, with photographs.

Conservation at the temple of Mut

Brooklyn Museum (John Steele)

John Steele has updated the Brooklyn Museum blog with news from the Temple of Mut at Karnak. Here's an extract but see the above page for the full post, accompanied by some great photographs (Kat, there's a good one of some Sakhment statues that you might like).

During this past week I continued to treat small finds excavated from the west side of the Taharqa gate, and to watch the progress of the stabilization and rebuilding of the south wing of the gate. In his last blog entry, Richard wrote about the processing of the hundreds of pottery sherds dug up over the course of the season. Occasionally there are enough sherds from a single vessel to reconstruct it, and for me there is a certain zen-like satisfaction in assembling these 3-D puzzles. In the picture on the left, I’m sorting through pieces looking for possible joins, and I’m using the sand-filled tubs to prop up the pieces that I’ve already glued together. The adhesive of choice in this case is the ever-useful Paraloid B-72 acrylic resin. Pictured on the right is part of a large, double-handled vessel with white slip decoration that I put together.

I also continued to clean coins using the mechanical and chemical methods described in my previous blog entry. One of the clearer images I found on the dozen or so coins I’ve cleaned so far is pictured on the left. It’s probably the profile of a Roman emperor wearing a laurel wreath, and hopefully there’s enough information visible for a specialist to identify and date the coin. Another of this week’s projects, a broken limestone fragment with part of an inscription carved on its face, is pictured on the right. The block was found reused in the north side of the Taharqa gate, and probably dates to the time of Ramses II according to Jaap van Dijk, our team’s hieroglyph specialist. The fragile face of the stone was consolidated with a 2% solution of B-72 resin in acetone and ethanol, applied with a syringe.

Sisyphos archaeological and Egyptological search engine

intute

Thanks to Rhio Barnhart for this link. I hadn't come across the site before he pointed it out.

Sisyphos

Description
Sisyphos is an Internet search engine providing access only to archaeological and Egyptological websites. Similarly to Intute, the resources accessible through this website have been selected according to their scientific relevance. Sisyphos covers all aspects of Classical (Greek-Roman) Archaeology as well as the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations; Etruscan studies; and Egyptology. In addition, the website also lists general archaeological resources (history of the subject, theories, methods, institutions, excavation techniques). The bilingual interface in German and English is effective; it is possible to search or browse the listed resources. The strength of this website is evident for its core fields of Classical Archaeology and Egyptology, and within them, the ancient art of those civilisations. The available metadata is sufficient to determine the relevancy of the resources, but there are no descriptions evidencing merits and faults of the websites or the targeted audience. It is therefore recommended to use its search facilities performing a full-text search of the included resources; it works like Google but it yields more relevant results.

http://sisyphos.uni-hd.de/ [English; German]

Non-bibliographic databases; Resource guides and directories

Hieroglyph dictionary by Mark Vygus

Mark Vygus has updated his hieroglyph dictionary (March 2009) and has made it freely available to people who would like a copy. Many thanks Mark, you're a star. It is a fabulous piece of work with a helpful introduction and 25000 dictionary entries.

The dictionary is available online at a number of sites including:


http://renfield.physics.utah.edu/wiki/images/d/d1/Pdf_dictionary.pdf

Vincent Brown's Pyramid Texts Online site (scroll down to "Dictionaries")

Hieroglyph Resource Portal

Daily Photo by Bob Partridge (Ancient Egypt Magazine)

Temple of Karnak, Luxor

With many thanks to Bob Partridge, Editor of Ancient Egypt Magazine.
Copyright Bob Partridge

Belgian mission rediscover tomb at Luxor

Reuters UK

Belgian archaeologists have rediscovered an ancient Egyptian tomb that had been lost for decades under sand, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said on Sunday.

In 1880 Swedish Egyptologist Karl Piehl uncovered the tomb of Amenhotep, the deputy seal-bearer of the Pharaoh King Tuthmosis III, in the city of Luxor, about 600 km (375 miles) to the south of the capital Cairo.

"It later disappeared under the sand and archaeologists kept looking for it to no avail until it was found by the Belgian expedition," a statement from the Supreme Council of Antiquities quoted Hosni as saying.

MSNBC

The tomb was first discovered in 1880 by Swedish Egyptologist Karl Piehl, but it was later buried under sand until the Belgian team found it again this year.

The statement quoted the head of the Belgian team, Laurent Bavay, as saying most of the inscriptions on the cemetery's walls were heavily damaged, but the ceiling inscriptions were in good condition.

See the above pages for more.

KV63 - A Special Report by Textile Specialist Elise van Rooij

KV-63

This season, in addition to examining our tenth pillow (from Jar #13) and a multitude of other textiles from KV-63, I came upon one item of particular interest to report on.

This object appears to be some kind of ‘rug or towel’ found inside Coffin A in 2006. Although this item exhibits significant decomposition enough is salvageable to recognize its original intent and form.

It is a ‘pile’ textile, whereby extra strands or loops of thread were woven into the cloth or attached afterwards to project or stick out, to create a pile effect that gave the textile absorbent and isolating qualities (similar to our modern bathroom floor rugs). Other examples of this type of textile were found in the tomb of Kha (laid over a bed) at Deir el Medina, in a eleventh dynasty tomb at Deir el Bahari and in the mass–burial of soldiers in the same area.

The actual size of the ‘rug’ is unknown but probably measured at least one square meter judging by the amount of decay and surviving material. A few photos of this remarkable ‘find’ have been made available, under ‘2009 ~ Photos’, courtesy of Elise van Rooij.

There's also an update about KV-63 in the media (publications and tv) on the above page.

Amenhotep III statue rises again

Times UK Online (Norman Hammond)

With photograph.

One of Egypt’s most noted Pharaohs is once more standing tall and looking out across the Nile Valley, by the efforts of an international team and a little help from the British Museum. A colossal statue of Amenhotep III, grandfather of Tutankhamun and ruler of Egypt for more than 36 years, has been raised and given back his head.

The red quartzite statue, one of a set that stood around the courtyard of his funerary temple at Kom el-Hettan, near Luxor, fell centuries ago. In the early 19th century the British collector Henry Salt acquired its head, together with a second head from the same site, and both finished up in the British Museum; the museum published Salt’s manuscript on some of his work in the recent book The Sphinx Revealed.

The statue was one of a set that stood on the north side of the peristyle court of the temple, and shows Amenhotep III (reigned 1386-49BC) wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt. The south side of the court had similar statues, but wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt.

The raw material for the northern statues came from Gebel el-Akmar in northern Egypt, that for the southern ones from the red granite quarries of Aswan in the far south.

See the above page for the full story.

Sad News: Virginia Burton

Richmond Times Dispatch (Ellen Robertson)

As a curator of Egyptian art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Lucille Virginia Burton often traveled alone, except for a guide, to archaeological spots throughout the Middle East.

"'Ginny' learned that "if you don't show fear, that can get you out of situations," said her friend, Louise Friday of Urbanna. "She once thought two guides were getting ready to rob her, so she quickly jumped up and said, 'Let's go!' and forcefully dissuaded them."

A woman who had stayed in the cliffs of Petra and taught herself to read hieroglyphics, Ms. Burton, who died Sunday at 90 in a Richmond nursing home, said the pièce de résistance of her career was overseeing the transfer of the Temple of Dendur from Egypt.

The temple was given to the United States by Egypt in 1965 and allotted to the museum in 1967. Installation was completed in 1978 in the Sackler Wing, which was built around the temple as it was being reassembled.

See the above page for the complete article.

Revised edition: The Western Desert of Egypt

Cassandra Vivian

The Western Desert of Egypt
New Revised Edition 2008
AUC

The revised edition of the only handbook for exploring the Western Desert of Egypt has turned up on my doorstep this weekend. I ordered it around a year ago to replace my battered 2002 edition when it was listed as available for order on Amazon. At the time it had a delivery estimate of a couple of weeks, but I have been receiving apologies from Amazon ever since.

I only received the book on Saturday so other than the addition of some glossy colour photographs I don't know what the revised edition adds to the existing one because the preface doesn't say. But it has some more pages (459 in total as opposed to 426 in the 2002 edition).

If you are travelling into the Western Desert this is the only real print resource, other than the eternally useful and enjoyable Sahara Overland by Chris Scott (which has a supporting website). Sahara Overland is a glorious book about travel throughout the entire Sahara desert, but obviously covers the Egyptian Western Desert area in much less detail than Vivian's book. For those wondering about portability Vivian's book weighs c. 0.91kg (just over 2lbs).

Vivian clearly shares the same concerns that many Western Desert travellers have about the impacts of tourism on the desert landscape. Growing numbers of visitors pose a potential threat to its beauty and to the lives of the people who dwell in and around the desert. She is careful to give GPS co-ordinates only for sites which she considers not to be at major risk and she makes an appeal to visitors to respect the desert, to move quietly through it and to be its friend. It has always seemed so strange to me, as it clearly does to Vivian, that some of the people who travel so far to see something so amazing, should treat the landscape and the archaeology such lack of care.

Daily Photo by Bob Partridge (Ancient Egypt Magazine)

Luxor Mosque

With many thanks to Bob Partridge, Editor of Ancient Egypt Magazine.
Copyright Bob Partridge

Video: Traffic using World Heritage land at Giza as unofficial highway

BBC News (narrated by Christian Fraser)

This was featured on the BBC News 24 television channel last night and my eyes nearly popped out of my head at some of the footage. I'm very glad that they have featured the same story on the BBC website today, because it really needs to be highlighted.

An unofficial highway is being used which crosses World Heritage land at Giza. The foundations for a highway were put down 2km from the Giza pyramids but the project was abandoned in 1995 due to an outcry by archaeologists. However traffic continues to use both the abandoned foundations and the desert route that the completed highway would have taken. Professor Abdel Hamil Nur-el-Din is shown bemoaning the situation. A UNESCO spokesperson expresses sympahy for the Egyptian authorities, and a driver using the unofficial highway says that the new ringroad needs to be finnished.

A new highway, an extension to the greater Cairo ringroad, is being built along a different route but this is still very much under construction. Cairo's traffic is a ghastly problem. It's road infrastructure was built for 6 million people and the numbers now exceed 22 million. Preventing people from taking short cuts through the unexcavated desert, part of the Old Kingdom necropolis, is going to be very difficult.

Thousands of cars and lorries are using an abandoned road near Egypt's Pyramids that is protected by world heritage status.

The former head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities says he is outraged people are using the road, situated at the edge of the Giza plateau.

More re Turin papyrus

Discovery Channel News (Rossella Lorenzi)

Good summary of what the Turin Canon actually is and what the newly discovered fragments mean for its interpretation.

Some newly recovered papyrus fragments may finally help solve a century-old puzzle, shedding new light on ancient Egyptian history.

Found stored between two sheets of glass in the basement of the Museo Egizio in Turin, the fragments belong to a 3,000-year-old unique document, known as the Turin Kinglist.

Like many ancient Egyptian documents, the Turin Kinglist is written on the stem of a papyrus plant.

Believed to date from the long reign of Ramesses II, the papyrus contains an ancient list of Egyptian kings.

Scholars from the British Museum were tipped off to the existence of the additional fragments after reviewing a 1959 analysis of the papyrus by a British archaeologist. In his work, the archaeologist, Alan Gardiner, mentions fragments that were not included in the final reconstruction on display at the museum. After an extensive search, museum researchers found the pieces.

The finding could help more accurately piece together what is considered to be a key item for understanding ancient Egyptian history.

"This is one of the most important documents to reconstruct the chronology of Egypt between the 1st and 17th Dynasty," Federico Bottigliengo, Egyptologist at the Turin museum, told Discovery News.

"Unlike other lists of kings, it enumerates all rulers, including the minor ones and those considered usurpers. Moreover, it records the length of reigns in years, and in some cases even in months and days."

Written in an ancient Egyptian cursive writing system called hieratic, the papyrus was purchased in Thebes by the Italian diplomat and explorer Bernardino Drovetti in 1822. Placed in a box along with other papyri, the parchment disintegrated into small fragments by the time it arrived in Italy.

Some 48 pieces of the puzzle were first assembled by French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832). Later, some other hundred fragments were pieced together by German and American archaeologist Gustavus Seyffarth (1796-1885).

See the above page for the full story.

Video: Call to return Nefertiti

BBC News (Tristana Moore)

Clearly presented summary of the most recent dispute over the Nefertiti sculpture which is currently located in Berlin. Here's the introduction from the above page:

The head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt has called for a 3,500 year old sculpture of Queen Nefertiti, which is kept in Berlin, to be returned to Cairo.

A newly discovered document dating back to 1924 suggests Germany kept quiet about the antiquity in order to make certain that it stayed in the country.

German museum directors deny the bust was smuggled from Egypt.

Classical Department displays 2,700-year-old mummy

The Collegian, University of Richmond (Guv Callahan)

Few students are aware that a 2,700-year-old Egyptian mummy has been the University of Richmond’s property for 133 years.

The mummy, Tchai-Ameni-Newit, and her sarcophagus are on public display in the Classical Studies Department’s Stuart L. Wheeler Gallery of the Ancient World in North Court Academic Building. The dimly lit room, silent except for the hum of the ventilation system, is home to a number of other Greek and Roman antiquities and modern replicas.

Of the items in the gallery, the mummy is most prominent. She lies in a glass-sided drawer that pulls out from the left wall, and her sarcophagus stands in a large glass case directly above her.

According to the Classical Studies Department’s Web site, the university acquired Tchai-Ameni-Newit in 1876, when Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, a professor and trustee of Richmond College, brought her back from an excursion to Egypt. Curry bought the mummy in Egypt from an American who said it had once belonged to the Prince of Wales.

This part of the history has raised some skepticism over whether the mummy actually belongs to the sarcophagus, said Elizabeth Baughan, assistant professor of classics and archaeology at Richmond.

The description of the American who sold the mummy to Curry resembles Edwin Smith, Baughan said. Smith was part of a team that supposedly excavated 30 mummies one day in 1875 and presented them to the Prince of Wales, she said.

“The question is, how likely it is that 30 mummies were excavated at one time and in one day?” Baugh said.

“Was it kind of a set up to please the Prince of Wales when he visited and, if so, were they mixing mummies with sarcophagi that were more intact?”

See the above page for the full story.

Anthropologists join in work of reconstructing mummy's face

pal-item.com (Rachel E. Sheeley)

Forensic anthropologist Andi Simmons was up to her elbow in the interior cavity of the Wayne County Historical Museum's mummy and relishing every minute of it.
Advertisement

"It's just a phenomenal chance for us," said Simmons, a staff member in the archaeology and forensics lab at the University of Indianapolis.

Simmons and Jeremy Beach, fellow University of Indianapolis forensic anthropologist, came to the museum this week with forensic artist Brenda Robertson Stewart of Indianapolis to assist her in reconstructing the face of the mummy.

Stewart started the project in January, measuring and examining the mummy's skull to create a duplicate on which to build its face. She usually does such reconstruction work on the victims of crimes. As her work progressed on the mummy's face, she discovered that to complete her task, she needed the jawbone, which was somewhere inside the mummy's wrappings.

Guided by recently digitalized X-rays and CAT scans taken in 2000 at Reid Hospital -- when the mummy returned from a loan to a Michigan museum -- Simmons, Beach and others spent a good part of a day seeking the jawbone and exploring the remains, feeling carefully to see where bones have shifted in the mummy's casing.

See the above page for the full story.

Addressing the call for objects to be repatriated

The Daily Mail, Islamabad

You will need to scroll down to the second story on the page.

HEADS are in the news this week. China has demanded the return of two 18th century bronze animal heads that belonged to the late French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and auctioned in Paris on Wednesday. Egypt wants the famous head of Nefertiti back from the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. There will be many who are sympathetic to the view that all historic and cultural artefacts seized decades or even centuries ago in war, by colonial regimes or in similar questionable circumstances should be returned to their countries of origin, if so desired. There are many such demands. . . .

A line has to be drawn somewhere. A hundred years seem a good cut-off point. That would cover anything stolen within the lifetime of an individual or owned by his or her immediate family. A statute of limitations is standard procedure in many countries. An item stolen 200 years ago would have been bought in good faith many times over since (the case with the Chinese bronze heads and why a French court agreed the auction could proceed). But it needs a UN treaty to give it teeth. That would help in the task of tracking down and repatriating items recently stolen and smuggled as well as ensuring that world heritage items long held in distant museums remain protected and treasured.

See the above page for the full story.

Mummification Museum Lecture - Osiris chapels, Karnak

Luxor News Blog (Jane Akshar)

Thanks to Jane for taking more notes from the Mummification Museum lectures held in Luxor.

Excavations and Epigraphic work in the Osiris chapels to the North of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak Dr Laurent Coulon

He wishes to propose a new interpretation that after the New Kingdom Osiris became more important and there were specific chapels for specific functions of Osiris. From 21st dynasty to early Roman times. Every sanctuary claimed that they were the tomb of Osiris. Osiris of Koptos has a chapel at the back of the Amun temple. The temple of Opet celebrates the birth and rebirth of Osiris built in 25 dynasty by Taharka and Ptolemy VIII. A papyrus in the Louvre mentions various festivals.

During the 25th 26th dynasty there was another processional way from the Amun temple to the Ptah temple and these chapels are along this way. There are 3 chapels named Osiris Master of Life, Osiris Maters of Food and Osiris Master of Eternity. They were erected by the God’s wives of Amun in 1570-1526. There is evidence of Ankhnesneferbre see sarcophagus British Museum EA32 and JE36907 a stele. Her official Sheshonk has tomb TT27 which is a big tomb as he is a big man. Like Senemut is to Hatshepsut.

See the above page for the rest of Jane's notes.

Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead

Talking Pyramids (Vincent Brown)

Vincent has a short feature today about the Book of the Dead which includes two videos from the Royal Ontario Museum, and lots of useful online resources.

Climate Change: Sites in Peril

Archaeology Magazine (Andrew Curry)

My excuse for featuring this article is that as well as looking at the impacts of climate change on archaeological sites from many parts of the globe, it looks at the effects that desertification in the Sudan will have on Meroitic monuments. Here's the introduction to the article:

Rising sea levels are eating away at coastal sites, increased rainfall is eroding mud-brick ruins, creeping desert sands are blasting the traces of ancient civilizations, and the melting of ice is causing millennia-old organic remains to rot. "With climate change, we're feeling a sense of urgency," says University of Northern Colorado anthropologist Michael Kimball, who organized a panel discussion on climate change and archaeology at the World Archaeology Congress in Dublin last year. "It definitely focuses the mind."

For countless communities, archaeology can be a source of local identity, pride, and even income. "It may be intangible, but when a community loses its connection to history it loses something pretty important," says Kimball.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of more than 1,000 experts on climate science convened by the United Nations, estimates that the world's temperature has risen about two degrees in the past century, thanks in part to an increase in carbon dioxide that traps heat in the earth's atmosphere. The consequences have already been dramatic. The world's oceans have risen four inches in that time. Weather patterns have also gotten less predictable and more extreme.

Over the next hundred years, the IPCC predicts that sea levels will rise at least another four inches. The worst-case scenario is truly frightening: a 10-degree rise in global temperatures, causing ice caps to melt and sea levels around the world to rise more than three feet.

Archaeologists can't stop global warming, but they can make dealing with it a priority. That may mean documenting sites before they disappear; in some places, simple steps like putting roofs over melting or rain-threatened areas are ways to preserve them. Action, however, must be taken soon. "Our job is not so much to talk about how to get climate change to stop," says Giovanni Boccardi, the chief of UNESCO's Asia and Pacific Unit. "While climate change is global, lots of solutions are local--and within our reach." What follows is a look at some of the threats facing archaeological sites around the world.

See the above page for the full story.

Travel: Studying Arabic in Cairo

Buffalo News (Candace Lusakik)

This is an insightful account of what it's like to do a total immersion course in Arabic in Cairo over a six week period, living with an Egyptian family. The author went shortly after leaving high school.

Margaret Santillo, West Seneca East International Club adviser, had told me about the scholarship being offered through AFS. Its purpose was to teach young Americans the Arabic language in order to promote understanding of the Middle East.

After a round of interviews from AFS, I was chosen from 300 applicants for one of the 25 places on the trip.

It was so scary, to be honest. I was not expecting this curveball in my life. I was leaving senior summer to go to Egypt for six weeks with people I had never met before.

Before the trip, we had several conference calls with previous program participants giving advice on what to expect. I knew I was in for a different experience. I knew I would have to dress more conservatively because Egypt is a mostly Muslim country.

So, at the end of June 2007, I said goodbye to family and friends and began a journey that would change my life forever.

After an orientation in Washington, D. C., we stepped on the KLM flight to Amsterdam and then to Cairo. It felt like a dream.

We arrived in Cairo at 4 a. m. As we drove from the airport, we began to drive past images one sees in those commercials where orphans are asking you to support them for 18 cents a day. I was honestly terrified. I think all of us were wondering: Is this where we’re going to live?

We arrived at the Cairotel and after an orientation, met our host families. I met my Muslim family: Sara, Hager, Abdullah, Mohammed, my host mom, Nadie, and my host dad, Abdelwaheb. My host dad was a manager for Egypt Air and my host mom was an Arabic teacher –so that helped on some homework I had. My host siblings ranged in age from 14 to 22, and all were students in something like high school and college.

I fell in love with their flat. Although it was in a rough part of Cairo, it was huge, with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a dining room, two living rooms and a wrap-around balcony. It was an awesome place to call home.

My host family fought together, mourned death together, ate dinner and spent quality time every night together –something that American families do not do anymore. They honestly gave me a different view of Islam that I never had from the American media. This was one of the first things I learned when I was there: Never judge someone by appearance or label alone.

For the first three weeks of my trip, I felt like I was suffocating. I didn’t particularly like the food. The Egyptian diet usually consists of bread, falafel, foul (a bean mixture), koshari (a mixture of lentils, chick peas, noodles, rice, and red sauce), and more bread. They rarely eat meat because it’s so expensive.

As a woman, I had to wear nothing that was above my knee and that showed my chest or arms. I had a curfew of 10 p. m. every night even if I was with my older brother, Mohammed. I sometimes got glaring looks because I didn’t wear a veil.

For six hours a day, I studied Arabic at the Kalimat Language Institute. The teachers pushed us to live in the Arabic language.

By the end of my trip, I could read Arabic and understand Arabic conversation. Not only did Kalimat give me the tools to learn the Arabic language, it gave all 25 participants a bonding experience. We could talk about what was bothering us and at the same time learn how diverse Cairo is, since each of us lived in a different part of the city.

See the above page for the full account of the experience.

Travel: A hot air balloon ride in Luxor

Al Ahram Weekly

Thanks very much to Diane for this link. I've never done the hot air balloon ride, in spit of having been to Luxor many times. It is something I really must get around to doing!

Were the ancient Egyptians to revisit Thebes these days, writes Nagwa Abdel-Hamid, who knows what they would make of their descendants (and others) surveying the centuries-old necropolis in colourful hot-air balloons? Last week, in the warm winter of Luxor, photographer Mohamed Wassim and I set out to the west bank of the Nile at 5.20 in the morning, too early for anyone to want to get out of bed. Yet we were too excited to pass up the opportunity, so excited we were positively eager to wake up.

A microbus took us from the hotel to the shore, where we crossed the water from east to west in a small boat, and there, gathered around 15 rubber marvels at a conveniently central spot, we joined some 200 people, technicians and workmen as well as passengers and Balloonists -- as the balloon operators, pilot types who take their jobs more seriously than you would expect, are called -- united in the drive to compete with the birds and see the ancient world from above.

The moment we leapt into our balloon came all too abruptly, and before we realised what was going on, our Balloonist Bahaaeddin Ahmed was reciting the safety instructions (my personal impression of the experience, for the record, is that it is safer than flying, driving or even, as in the case of Cairo, pedestrian transportation).

A few minutes before departure Ahmed set off a small helium-filled balloon to determine air currents and wind direction, as he explained, which helps him choose the best itinerary; it rose in seconds, quickly disappearing into the skies above. And then, the fires roared, propelling us up over 1,000 feet into the air, and we were surrounded by a foggy dark dispelled gradually by the first light. A magnificent scene: the sun rearing timidly from the east bank, warming our trembling bodies as drifts of birds started their day, with the mountain-flanked desert glittering gold and red in the distance.

See the above page for the full story.

Interview with Assoc. Dr. Teodor Lekov re Bulgarian Egyptology

Focus Information Agency

This looks as though it has been put through a translation engine without having been edited into submission before being put online. Some paragraphs are a real struggle. I've only posted it because it appears that there is only one university in the Balkans which offers Egyptology, and some of the information may be of some use to some visitors.

Head of Mediterranean and Eastern Studies department of the New Bulgarian University (NBU) Assoc. Dr. Teodor Lekov to answer FOCUS News Agency questions concerning to what extant the Egyptology has been developed in Bulgaria as a science and what is the realization of the people that have graduated that subject.

FOCUS: To what extant has been developed the Egyptology in Bulgaria and on the Balkans?
Teodor Lekov: There is no other university that to offer tuitions on Egyptology on the Balkans. The Bulgarian New University (BNU) is the only university that offers bachelor, master’s and doctoral programs on Egyptology. Bulgarian New University is the only institution of higher education on the Balkans where Egyptology could be studied at the each of the three academy levels.

FOCUS: And what is the interest of youth students to turn the Egyptology in their occupation?
Teodor Lekov: There is a keen interest in the recent years, because there are more and more people opened to the world. This is a nationwide subject. It is not engaged only with Bulgarian issues and the Bulgarian being. Many young people could afford to study such subject because due to the fact that they started traveling, having different incomes and other sources.

See the above for the entire interview.

First look: Chipperfield’s Neues Museum

The Architechts' Journal (Roz Bulleid)

Here are the first pictures of the finished Neues Museum in Berlin, newly restored by David Chipperfield Architects and Julian Harrap Architects

The £49 million rennovation – one of the most prestigious restoration projects in Europe – has succeeded despite funding problems and local complaints. It has been 12 years since Stirling Prize-winner Chipperfield was commissioned to masterplan the area.

Completed in 1849, the building on Museum Island in the heart of former East Berlin was bombed in the Second World War and spent much of the 20th century as a crumbling shell.

Chipperfield has rebuilt the missing north-west wing and a bay to the south east. The courtyard spaces and staircases have been restored in a way that preserves a sense of the building’s decay.

The 20,500m sq museum will house Egyptian antiquities when it opens later this year, as it did before the war.

See the above page to see the before and after photographs.

There's a more detailed description and over view on the Financial Times website, minus the photographs.

There was a huge amount of interest, with 30,000 people visiting the site in three days last September. Chipperfield is keen to contrast this civic engagement with the apathy in his home country. The process, which saw the designs toned down, was painful but the German people, their press and their politicians are deeply involved in their public buildings. The result is spectacular.

Outside, the rebuilt parts of the structure are expressed in brick and smeared with a creamy slurry so that their texture doesn’t jar with the stone – yet they remain obviously apart. This approach has been followed through inside, with a meticulousness that shows why this huge undertaking has lasted 11 years. Chipperfield points out that it was a building of “millions of decisions”; as there could be no blanket approach, the work involved a painstaking analysis of every surface and detail, decisions about what could be saved, what must be rebuilt and how to distinguish between old and new.

In places it resembles the faded Parisian decadence of Peter Brook’s resonantly faded music hall Bouffes du Nord; in the Roman rooms the patched-up reds of the walls and the damaged frescoes evoke Pompeii itself. The museum itself becomes the archaeology, layering story on story and rooting the antiquities in this tiny Prussian island through a shared history of destruction and place. In the stunning staircase hall, where Chipperfield’s monumental newly inserted stair leads operatically upwards in a sweep of light, the fire-damaged and weathered Ionic columns begin to resemble the very artefacts they originally copied.

The Egyptian rooms were judged, even in the 1920s, to be over the top, and their rich hieroglyphic wall paintings were erased in favour of the now ubiquitous modernist white box, here compounded by an oddly cheapskate scheme of painted-on fake timber panelling. The restoration reveals both a frieze of exuberant historicist fakery (which survived above a suspended ceiling) and the overlaying of clinical whiteness. Embedded in this one, captivating room is the whole history of the museum – from being a place of wonder to a place of detached analysis, to a cultural repository in which artefact is inseparable from context.

See the above page for the full story.

Trivia: Video teaser for movie Agora

comingsoon.net

There's a video teaser for the new movie Agora, starring Rachel Weisz, on the above page. It is the first I've heard of the film so I had a look at it. As far as I can tell from the series of action clips it is an epic - lots of dramatic music, crowd scenes, waving of swords, dramatic lighting and mock ancient Egyptian sets. There's not much else to see in this clip but it give you a sense of the character of the movie.

Here's the caption:

An international teaser trailer for Alejandro Amenabar's Agora, starring Rachel Weisz, is now online and can be watched using the player below (make sure to hit the 'HQ' button in the lower right-hand side of the player to watch in high quality). Set in Roman Egypt in the fourth century A.D., Weisz plays astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, who fights to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world. Her slave Davus (Max Minghella) is torn between his love for his mistress and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity.

Daily Photo by Bob Partridge (Ancient Egypt Magazine)

Sphinxes from the avenue of sphinxes at Luxor Temple

With many thanks to Bob Partridge, Editor of Ancient Egypt Magazine.
Copyright Bob Partridge