New Technology For Dating Ancient Rock Paintings

Science Daily

A new dating method finally is allowing archaeologists to incorporate rock paintings — some of the most mysterious and personalized remnants of ancient cultures — into the tapestry of evidence used to study life in prehistoric times.

In the study, Marvin W. Rowe points out that rock paintings, or pictographs, are among the most difficult archaeological artifacts to date. They lack the high levels of organic material needed to assess a pictograph's age using radiocarbon dating, the standard archaeological technique for more than a half-century.

Rowe describes a new, highly sensitive dating method, called accelerator mass spectrometry, that requires only 0.05 milligrams of carbon (the weight of 50 specks of dust). That's much less than the several grams of carbon needed with radiocarbon dating.

Daily Photo by Bob Partridge (Ancient Egypt Magazine)

Colossi of Memnon

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

Karanis Cemetery Survey Project

Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Spending an entire field season roaming a cemetery and looking at bones may seem morbid to many, but to me it was a dream. Over the past several years, Willeke Wendrich, Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, has lead an international team of archaeologists in excavations at the ancient city of Karanis. The project seeks to explore and understand the ways Karanis used the rich and lively landscape of the Fayum, a region known even in present day for its agricultural fertility. Specialists analyze the botanical remains to see what was living and growing over a thousand years ago, and excavations of an ancient granary this season help us understand life and prosperity in the past. So why am I sitting across the street immersed in the skeletal remains of the people of Karanis? How does studying the dead shed any new light on the project’s goal of understanding the living and growing landscape?

Contrary to popular opinion, the dead are actually quite talkative. Through analysis of their bones, they tell us the kinds of diseases people had to face, the daily work they had to undergo, their toothaches in old age and broken legs from their youth. While excavations can bring back into our public knowledge the growth of the city and activities of Karanis, skeletal analysis can populate Karanis with the real lives and struggles of its people.

See the above page for the full story.

Keeping the Great Sphinx’s Paws Dry

drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass)

Includes diagrams, photographs and a map.

Perhaps the single greatest threat to the preservation of Egypt’s monuments is the rising level of underground water throughout the country. Runoff from sewage and agriculture, along with overall environmental changes, is resulting in the stone of temples and tombs that were dry most of the year in ancient times becoming saturated with water seeping up from below.

This weakens the architecture, and damages wall decorations. Rising groundwater is a problem faced not only by pharaonic monuments, but by Greco-Roman, Coptic, and Islamic period structures as well. Under my direction, the Supreme Council of Antiquities is working to reduce the groundwater level around antiquities sites throughout Egypt. We have completed a USAID-funded effort to de-water Karnak and Luxor temples, and work is underway in many other places. One of our greatest recent successes has been the development of a system to prevent the Great Sphinx at Giza from getting its paws wet!

See the above page for more.

Controversy re return of Egypt's artifacts following theft of paintings from palace museum

Middle East Times (Joseph Mayton)

Items have been stolen from Egypt's museums before. In 2000, 619 Pharaonic artifacts were taken from the Egyptian Museum and smuggled into London via Switzerland. Five years earlier, thieves broke into a storeroom housing a number of artifacts at the Temple of Montu in Karnak and looted 55 scarabs and statues.

"Certainly, we have had a history of thefts, but this happens anywhere in the world where there are valuable items. Egypt is not alone in this," the aide said, after conferring with the culture minister.

Egypt is a prime target for international bandits due to corruption within the government and among the police guarding the national treasures.

A policeman who works near the famed Giza Pyramids told the Middle East Times last summer that his monthly salary was barely enough to keep his family from going hungry.

"So, I let the foreigners pay me a little extra and they can go places that are supposed to be off-limits," he admitted. He was adamant that he did not allow people to take items from the sands near the three massive structures.

"But I know some other policemen who work in other places who get a lot more money, because they let people take stuff while they look the other way," he said.

In recent years, Cairo has gone out of its way to pressure European nations to return artifacts that had been taken from the country during the colonial period beginning with Napoleon's invasion in 1798.

The international community has expressed apprehension about returning items currently being shown in their museums. They argue that Egypt is not able to safely house all the priceless artifacts.

See the above page for the full story.

New law expected to impose penalties for antiquities trafficking and copyright of Egypt's heritage

Al Ahram Weekly

Parliament is shortly expected to endorse a draft law outlining severer penalties for antiquities trafficking and copyright of Egypt's heritage, Nevine El-Aref reports

Protecting Egypt's cultural heritage from treasure hunters, retrieving looted and illegally-smuggled antiquities and generating the revenue necessary to restore and conserve this country's heritage are key priorities in a new antiquities law soon to be reviewed by the People's Assembly.

The new law, if passed, will also restrict photography of archaeological sites and artefacts and impose intellectual copyright controls on key Egyptian images such as the pyramids.

"The current law, 117/1983, is no longer suitable since the penalties it imposes for antiquity trafficking are not harsh enough. We need to stiffen penalties in order to stop further trafficking," Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), says.

Egypt first issued an antiquities law in 1835. This has been modified five times, most essentially in 1912 and 1983. The 193 law contains several loopholes, and the penalties did not prevent looting and urban encroachment on archaeological sites.

In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, treasured objects were shipped abroad in response to European interest. To mention just a few, the first collection in the Vienna Museum was granted by Khedive Abbas I and Said Pasha to the Austrian Prince Archidum Maximium, while the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde in Paris was given to the French King Louis Philippe by Mohamed Ali in return for the clock in the Citadel. The offering of Egyptian antiquities to foreign governments became a diplomatic trend.

Foreign excavation missions working in Egypt at that time acted as antiquities traders and sold vast numbers of Egyptian artefacts to their own national museums, creating great ancient Egyptian collections in the Louvre, the British Museum and the Berlin Museum, among others. Another opportunity for foreigners to obtain artefacts was through applying the division policy on newly-discovered antiquities. National and international laws at that time approved the trading of antiquities, and monthly auctions were held in one of the Egyptian Museum galleries.

After the completion of the Nubian temples salvage operation, the Egyptian government offered a large number of monuments to foreign countries as a gesture of thanks for their efforts. The Dabur Temple was given to the Spanish government and reconstructed in a gallery at the Madrid Museum, while in 1974 the small Dendereh Temple was handed to the American president Richard Nixon. The Egyptian government continued to offer items of its heritage or to sell them on the international market until the last modification of the law in 1983, which prohibited all such activities. All antiquities in Egypt became the property of the state and their unlawful removal from the country subsequent to that date is theft.

See the above page for the full story.

Screaming Mummies

Archaeology Magazine (Mark Rose)

There's a full length feature on the above page by Archaeology Magazine's Mark Rose, complete with diagrams and photographs. Fascinating stuff.

For well over a century, the contorted features of ancient mummies have led to speculation of untold pain and horrible deaths. The examples quoted above are from the examination of Egyptian mummies more than 120 years ago. Today, similar descriptions can still be found in television programs and academic writings. "Is this the face of a queen? What kind of terrible end did she meet?" and "a terrible head wound, an agonized scream," intones the narrator of "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen," a 2007 documentary. A photo caption in the scholarly volume Mummies and Death in Egypt (2006) reads "mummy of a boy five years of age, fixed in agony." And the widely covered 2007 discovery of Chachapoya mummies in Peru prompted this newspaper headline "Moment 600 years ago that terror came to Mummies of the Amazon" and copy "Hands over her eyes and her face gripped with terror, the woman's fear of death is all too obvious."

Mummies with their mouths agape or lips pulled back as if they are screaming or writhing in pain are truly startling. Two of the most famous--designated Unknown Woman A and Unknown Man E--are from a cache of royal mummies found in 1881 at Deir el-Bahri in Egypt. When first unwrapped in the late nineteenth century, they provoked the shocked reactions quoted above.

Such mummies, however, are found not just in Egypt but worldwide, in Palermo, Sicily, Guanajuato, Mexico, and, as noted above, in Peru. Some of these bodies were purposefully preserved, though by various methods, while others are natural or, you might say, accidental mummies. What does that say about the supposed frozen-mask-of-agony phenomenon? Are screaming mummies really testaments to horrific deaths? Or are they the result of natural processes, botched or ad hoc mummification jobs, or the depredations of tomb robbers?

Historical representations of the dead offer a clue to answering, why do mummies scream? In particular, Victorian depictions and, later on, film portrayals of the ghost of Jacob Marley come to mind. The deceased business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Marley is often shown with a cloth tied around his head and under his jaw. (You can read "A Christmas Carol" and view John Leech's illustrations at the Gutenberg Project website.)

See the above page for the full story.

EES News Update, 12 March 2009

Egypt Exploration Society

Dear all,

This is just a very short note to alert you to a couple of additions to the Society’s online presence.

For some time we have been trying to think of new ways of keeping you all more immediately up-to-date with our activities in the field. The Society’s Director, Dr Patricia Spencer, is currently in Egypt to undertake, with her husband, Dr Jeffrey Spencer, a short season at the site of Yetwal wa Yuksur, for the EES Delta Survey. It is not always easy to find a usable internet connection in the Egyptian countryside (!) but we think we may have found a way round this: Patricia will be sending short updates to a specially created page on the web, in the form of text messages from an Egyptian mobile phone. If possible, longer updates will be sent via e-mail to the London office for staff to upload.

The new page is here: http://deltasurvey.tumblr.com/. Please do have a look, and let us know what you think! You can subscribe to the updates via RSS (what is RSS?) and a comment facility is provided at the bottom of each entry for you to leave your thoughts. We will be monitoring traffic to the site, and if it generates sufficient interest and proves not to be technologically impossible, or too onerous for Patricia, we will certainly consider expanding the idea to our other field projects.

Lastly, a short story on our events of the last few weeks has just been uploaded to our news page. Please take a look!

Best wishes,
Chris Naunton


Christopher Naunton
Deputy Director

The Egypt Exploration Society
3 Doughty Mews
London WC1N 2PG
Tel. +44 (0)20 7242 2266
www.ees.ac.uk

Kelsey Museum of Archaeology Dig Diary

Two short updates have been added to the Dig Diary for the Kelsey excavations at Abydos. In Week 2 painted blocks were found, which the conservators quickly went to work on. In Week 3 the conservation team set to work achieving their goals. The use of databases is discussed and the data collection form has been reproduced on the site - lots of data required!

Donors react fast to save site in the Faiyum

Cotsen Institute of Archaeology (Willeke Wendrich)

Our primary goal in archaeology is to collect information, but academic archaeology has moved beyond just survey, excavation and analysis to include the protection of cultural heritage in its broadest sense. Working in the Fayum, an Egyptian desert oasis south of Cairo, poses many struggles for the preservation of sites due to both wanton destruction by treasure hunters and plowing activity by local farmers. When the threat is imminent we go into rescue mode and quickly record as much as we can. But sometimes giving up the site equals allowing material remains with world heritage value to be destroyed. In these cases, immediate action is the only option, like building a protective fence. This is a costly decision that never comes at the right moment, and is never foreseen in the budget.

Last December, two weeks before we were scheduled to wrap up our work in the Fayum and leave Egypt, we discovered that agricultural development had encroached upon Kom W, one of the most famous Neolithic sites in Egypt. In 2003 and 2006, members of the Director’s Council of the Friends of Archaeology, the highest-level support group at the Cotsen Institute, had visited the site and knew of its importance. An e-mail with the subject header “HELP” was sent out to this group and within 24 hours we received the comforting message: “go build your fence, we'll take care of it.” The Cotsen Institute has a donor base, which lives archaeology, understands fieldwork stress and panic mode, and is there when most needed. Within two weeks the fence was in place, and because it looks very much like the fences surrounding mine fields throughout the desert, we have good hopes that it will be utterly effective in protecting Kom W and its fragile remains. Thank you Charlie Steinmetz, Debbie Arnold, Patti and Roger Civalleri, Harris Bass, Jeanne Bailey and Tracy Johnson, for fencing in the Fayum.

Willeke Wendrich is Associate Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Excavations at the tomb of Ay

Luxor News ( Jane Akshar)

Visiting my favourite tomb the other day and expecting to find it deserted and quiet I was surprised to find dozens of people excavating. I managed to chat with the geophysics chappy called Dash. He said they were searching for the Amarna tombs which made a lot of sense to me as the Western Valley only has two known tombs Amenhotep III and Ay (possible originally built for Tutankamun). He said lots of interesting things.

1) the Eastern Valley deceives you, cut surfaces are identified but these led nowhere, tantalising and mysterious why are there

2) there are 4 bore holes at the tomb of Ay, nobody knows why they are there. Could possible by some kind of marker. Either old or new Belzoni or anything as nobody kept a record

3) geophysics has not developed as much as DNA so his ability to identify things is still primitive

He had just started work but there was also lots of excavations goign on as well.

Howard Carter's Egypt notes to net £4,000

This Is London

Archives relating to great discoveries in ancient Egypt, including the tomb of Tutankhamun, are to go to auction.

The cache of letters and photos collected by Egyptologist Rex Engelbach could sell for up to £4,000 at Bonhams in Mayfair later this month.

It includes letters from Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter, who uncovered the tomb of the boy pharaoh in 1922.

The Bonhams sale is on 31st March 2009: Sale 16779 - India and Beyond, Antiquities, Greece and the Near East, 31 Mar 2009, New Bond Street:

Lot No: 167
Papers of Rex Engelbach
EGYPTOLOGY
Papers and photographs of the Egyptologist Rex Engelbach, comprising:

(i) Letters to Engelbach by Lord Carnarvon (22 March 1921 - "I heard the latest news from Luxor when Carter arrived here yesterday, he told me you would be kind enough to look after the tomb - please accept my best thanks - I hope one will find something. I had hoped to have had a little private conversation with you at Luxor & therefore I hope what I am going to write you will treat as quite confidential... We shall then have to find a new 'Master Digger' & I have hear rumour that Mr Brunton might like to take it on. I would be no party to taking him away from Petrie if he wanted to keep him... but I should like to know what you think of him..."), Howard Carter ("...I am pleased you have managed to reconstruct the wee marquee. I failed to put it together. There is a small gilt tone which belongs to it - Rather like a box, which had (originally) a feather cushion on top, but which was completely destroyed by insects..."), Sir Aurel Stein (two autograph letters - "I have often thought back with gratitude to all you did to make my 'globe-trotting' tour profitable in an archaeological way. Those were glorious days spent between Kala Siman in the North and Deir Sita in the South with ruins of all sorts to provide archaeological 'feasts for the eye', as the Indian expression has it. I took a considerable number of photos at sites which had remained beyond the area of the Princeton Univ. expedition's operations..."), Rudyard Kipling ("...I greatly want to see the new treasures of the museum: and with whom could I see them better than with you?..."), Flinders Petrie, under whom Engelbach had trained (series, including one written while excavating at Gaza - "I am now hard at it, clearing up all the flow of pots & bronzes that comes in, typing, & drawing all new types; beside that doing much of the field plans, & the arrangement of the work. My wife does all the book-keeping & pay, so with 300 people slogging away we are kept pretty busy. Our five helpers each take a part of the superintendence. My girl is an omnium, does the best inking of drawings, doctors all the damaged folk, & takes turns at holding the diggers when other people are off..."), Carter's assistant Richard Bethell, George Reisner ("...I am deeply grateful for your intermediation with the Egyptian Army Air Force in securing for us the beautiful photographic mosaic of the Gaza Necropolis..."), Somers Clarke (long illustrated letter about their Egyptian Masonry), the Crown Prince of Sweden (series, about "acquiring duplicates for the Egyptian Museum for the Egyptian Museum in Stockholm out of the store rooms of the Egyptian State Collections" [for which Engelbach was made a Knight of the Polar Star]), P.G. Elgood, Dorothy Mackay, S.R.K. Glanville, General C.W. Spinks ("...glad everything went well with the Royal nocturnal body snatching..."), Enoch E. Peterson, J.I. Craig, Sir Alan Gardiner (series), Percy Newberry, Battiscombe Gunn (series), H.V. Morton (2), and others; together with a series of 16 letters by Engelbach to his wife Nancy ("...I took Ibrahim over to the Tombs of the Kings yesterday and saw Carter. He tells me the Times copyright is still on. They all leave in about a week as the steamboat is to arrive tomorrow. Carter tells me that Derry is to have the examination of Tut. I am glad as I cannot stick Elliot-Smith...")

(ii) Photographs, including a series of snapshots taken in late in 1922 and early 1923 of the comings and goings around the tomb of Tutankhamun ("Tut's tomb valley of Kings Luxor Rex's back". "Gold Coffin of Tut Amkh Amun lying on sarcophagus", "Carrying box from Tomb of Tutankh Amun", "Luxor 1922 Lord Carnarvon leaving Tomb of Tutankhamun", "Rex & M. Lacan at Tut's Tomb", Engelbach standing outside the tomb, etc.); together with photographs of the burial chamber of Queen Hetepheres at Gaza as first found, of the Cairo Museum staff, the Unfinished Obelisk as discovered by Engelbach at Aswan in 1922, and much else

(iii) Articles, papers and other documents, including a revised typescript of 'Tutankhamun's Tomb: An Account of its Discovery' ("...Carnarvon arrived on November 23rd, with his daughter, then Lady Evelyn Herbert, and the tomb was actually opened when I was away for the night at Qena...This was, strictly speaking, irregular..."), list of books in his library, various certificates of award for foreign honours, royalty statement for his Ancient Egyptian Masonry, etc.

Estimate: £2,000 - 4,000

Exhibition: The Dream of Eternal Life

BBC News

One of the biggest exhibitions of mummies ever staged is opening in the northern Italian town of Bolzano.

The show, called the Dream of Eternal Life, features more than 60 mummies from Egypt, Asia, Europe and South America, assembled from 27 museums.

They include animals as well as humans, and the artefacts connected with them.

Mummification Museum Lecture - News from Kom el Heltan

Luxor News blog (Jane Akshar)

Thanks to Jane for yet again making her notes available from the Mummification Museum lecture in Luxor:

Mummfication Museum lecture - News from Kom el Heltan - Dr Hourig 28/2/9

The area under excavation is the colossus of Memnon and the temple of Amenhotep III and they have been working for 6 years with lots of backing.

A very interesting slide was shown with the original temple superimposed on the existing site. There were three pylons with colossal statues in front of them, an avenue of sphinxes leading to a peristyle court, the sanctuaries. The width of the pylons is known but not the length. The site is 3 m above the original temple floor but after excavating 8 cm they hit water. The site desperately needs the dewatering project. There is a fantastic stele showing Amun, Mut and Khonsu. The temple was part of the Beautiful Feast of the Valley. In 1998 it was designated on of 100 most endangered monuments.

The colossi came from Gebel el Amar and show 2 ladies his wife Queen Tiye on the south and his mother Mutemwiya on the north. They monitor it yearly to check for tilting. As well as looking after the monuments they also collect old documents. She showed a painting by Verner 1873 which showed the statues with water at their feet, people around then with fires going. Combine that with the damage of the salts, the vibrations from the parking lot and the road it is amazing they have survived. They want the road to be moved (the slides show quite clearly the road goes through the southern side). The statue also suffers from the changes in temperature as much as 40 degrees between day and night which make it peel like an onion. They had over 1000 fragments that needed consolidation. An Armenian seismology report shows an earlier earthquake than the Roman one. Liquefaction gives evidence of earthquake.

The 1st court was 100m deep, the second pylon had 2 colossal similar to the Memnon statues. They have had to work on preservation and documentation. The north colossus of the 2nd pylon was fallen and eroded. In 2002 the found the right leg with a statue of Queen Tiye. In 2004 they lifted the 450 tons and moved it 11 ½ metres north to a dry area. They needed pumps day and night.

They found the south colossus fallen east south east, a hand was broken in 3 parts.

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

Tourism: Egypt enjoys golden year

fvw

Egypt’s promise of sun, sea, sand and culture brought German tourists in record numbers last year. In total, 1.2 million Germans flocked to the Land of the Pharaohs, a figure topped only by the Russians. However, with a total of 14.3 million room nights, Germans stayed longer, representing a jump of nearly 26 per cent over 2007.
The German performance contributed to a buoyant year for Egypt, which attracted 12.8 million visitors in total, a rise of 15 per cent over the previous year. Speaking at ITB, Egyptian tourism minister Zoheir Garranah said the country enjoyed 25 per cent growth until September when the economic downturn started to bite.

“What will happen in 2009 is the million dollar question, but we realise it is going to be a very tough year,” he said. “We need to work quickly and very aggressively to minimise losses from the business.”

The minister explained such measures include close co-operative marketing with tour operators, organising press and trade familiarisation trips to the country, and working to attract incentive groups and charter packages. The decision by German travel association DRV to hold its annual conference in Port Ghalib and Luxor in December is set to bring in another 1,000 or so industry visitors.

See the above page for the full story.

Nine paintings stolen from northern Cairo museum

The Earth Times

Nine paintings were stolen from Mohammed Ali Pasha's palace, a museum that lies on the Nile banks in northern Cairo, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture said on Tuesday. "Officials at the palace say the paintings were last seen Monday afternoon just before the palace was closed," Egypt's Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni said when he went to inspect the crime scene on Tuesday along with head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Zahi Hawas.

Hosni expressed his sorrow and deep concern at the theft, which had happened at a time when "Egypt is implementing several projects to restore its museums and protect its legacy."

See the above page for more.

Exhibition: How Giacometti's Art Walks Like An Egyptian

The Journal of Turkish Weekly

Alberto Giacometti, the leading Swiss artist and sculptor of the 20th century, has a previously little known side – he was obsessed with ancient Egyptian art.

A new exhibition at Zurich's Kunsthaus fine arts museum sets Giacometti's modern works against the backdrop of relics from ancient Egypt. The similarities are striking.

Giacometti (1901-1966) is most famous for his sculptures of slender, elongated figures, including his "walking men".

His work is highly prized - his Grande femme debout II (Tall woman standing II) sold for $27.5 million (SFr29 million) in New York in May last year, confirming him as the most expensive Swiss artist.

Giacometti's use of the "Egyptian style", however, is little known and it has taken a collaboration between art – the Kunsthaus – and Egyptology – the Egyptian Museum in Berlin – to bring it to life.

See the above page for more details.

Daily Photo by Bob Partridge (Ancient Egypt Magazine)

Colossi of Memnon


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

Gold jewelry found in tomb of Djehuty on the west bank of Luxor

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.

Associated Press

With photographs

This undated photo released Tuesday March 10, 2009, by Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, shows walls of a tomb thought to belong to a senior official under Egypt's most powerful queen, on the west bank of the Nile river in Luxor, Egypt. The Supreme Council of Antiquities says five golden earrings and two rings were found in the tomb of Gahouti, the head of the treasury under Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt some 3,500 years ago.

Yahoo Espana

With photograph.

Una misión de arqueólogos españoles ha descubierto cinco pendientes y dos anillos de oro de la dinastía XVIII del Imperio Nuevo (1539-1075 a.C) en la ciudad monumental de Luxor, en el sur de Egipto, anunció hoy un comunicado oficial.

El Consejo Supremo de Antigüedades (CSA) explica en la nota que las piezas se encontraron en la cámara mortuoria de Gehuti, responsable de la Hacienda durante la época de la Reina Hatchepsut (1482-1502 a.C), en la zona de Derá Abu al Naga, en la orilla occidental del Nilo en Luxor, a 600 kilómetros al sur de El Cairo.

Según los primeros estudios de los arqueólogos españoles, es posible que estas joyas pertenezcan al propio Gehuti o a un miembro de su familia, ya que era un funcionario importante que se vestía con joyas como los reyes, agregó el texto.

Estos estudios han probado también que la tumba de Gehuti fue saqueada en distintas épocas faraónicas.

Además, los contenidos de la tumba como el ataúd y la momia fueron quemados en un incendio en el periodo entre 725 y 1081 antes de Cristo.

El secretario general del CSA, Zahi Hawas, explicó que es probable que los pendientes y los anillos hallados fueran extraviados por los ladrones durante el robo de la tumba, por lo que pudieron ser encontrados ahora, mientras que otras joyas han desaparecido.

drhawass.com

A Spanish mission working at Dra Abu El-Naga on the West Bank at Luxor has discovered a second, painted burial chamber in the tomb of Djehuty (TT11). Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced the discovery, adding that the Spanish team, led by Dr. José Galán of the National Research Center, Madrid, has been working at the site since 2002.

At the end of their 2008 season, the mission came across a 3 meter-deep shaft inside the burial chamber of Djehuty, an overseer of the treasury and overseer of works during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut (ca. 1479-1458 BC). At the beginning of 2009, they discovered a second burial chamber at the bottom of this shaft. The chamber is decorated on two of its walls, mostly with texts from the Book of the Dead. An image of the goddess Nut adorns the ceiling (photo).

The discovery is remarkable, as only four other decorated burial chambers dating to this period are known. Although the names of Djehuty, his father, and his mother were intentionally erased in the upper part of the monument, they are intact in the newly discovered lower burial chamber. At the entrance to the lower chamber, the Spanish team found five gold earrings and two gold rings, which date to the early- to mid-18th Dynasty and probably belonged to Djehuty or to a member of his family.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, commented that only a few other objects from the tomb are known, as most of Djehuty’s funerary equipment was destroyed by fire in antiquity. Galán added that the discovery of this decorated chamber adds to our understanding of the religious and funerary beliefs of the mid-15th century BC, and of the elite of Queen Hatshepsut’s court.

What happened to Pharaoh's workers?

Al Ahram Weekly (Jill Kamil)

We are gradually beginning to understand what happened to the elite body of artisans that worked on the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings after they ceased to be built, says Jill Kamil

It appears that the workers, or should we say workmen and artisans, the people who built the rock-cut tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings from about 1500 BC onwards, may have later been employed on a project aimed at "emptying" and "recycling" their contents -- or that, at least, is what Rob Demaree of Leiden University thinks.

In his recent talk at the Dutch Institute in Cairo, Demaree said that an impressive number of texts on papyri, ostraca and graffiti had provided researchers with extensive information on the workers' community at Deir Al-Medina, especially from the Ramasside Period and the second half of the New Kingdom, but that in spite of all our knowledge we did not know what happened at the end of this period when the Ramasside line of kings was no longer in power and no more royal tombs were built. "Now, thanks to a largely unpublished dossier of texts, we are gradually beginning to understand what happened to them," he said.

Demaree, who studied Egyptology in Leiden, Copenhagen and Oxford, and who obtained his PhD on "Ancestor Worship in Ancient Egypt", was aware that not all members of the audience were au fait with the earlier phases of the workmen's village on the Theban necropolis, let alone the final phase, so he started his presentation by outlining what had taken place earlier. To recap, he said that the settlement was founded some time in the early 18th Dynasty, in the reign of Tuthmosis I (1550--1525 BC), the first Pharaoh definitely to be buried in the Valley of the Kings, and that in its earliest stage there was no resident community -- just a village of some 40 houses to accommodate itinerant workmen hired for short periods of time. Later the settlement was expanded to accommodate a special group of artisans -- "expert artists" might be a better word -- and, from literary evidence recovered from the village, it appears that more than 100 people, including children, lived in the village, off and on, for several centuries.

See the above page for the full story.