A Tomb under hanging Rock

http://tinyurl.com/z436a (en.naukawpolsce.pl)

"An increasing number of traces indicate that on a rock shelf above the temple of Hatshepsut is a tomb belonging to a Pharaoh from the 21st dynasty – says Prof. Andrzej Niwiński of the Institute of Archaeology at Warsaw University. If this hypothesis proves right, Polish archaeologists are a step away from a great find. However, there is one obstacle in the way of solving the mystery – a 1000 ton rock hanging over the precipice.
Prof. Niwiński is heading the work on the Rock Archaeological Expedition run by Warsaw University in collaboration with the Ain Shams University in Cairo. The area of research is a 100 m tall rock wall on the back of the temple of Hatshepsut, which is being reconstructed by Polish archaeologists."

See the above article for the full story.

More on opening of Coptic Museum

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/801/eg1.htm

"Mogamaa Al-Adian, Old Cairo's religious compound, is finally free of the roar of trucks and lorries that have blocked the entrance to the Coptic Museum for three years now. And the museum itself, with its limestone façade loosely based on the Al-Aqmar Mosque, has finally opened its doors to visitors in an area the attractions of which include the Mosque of Amr Ibn Al-Aas, the Hanging Church and the Synagogue of Beni-Ezra.
On Monday President Hosni Mubarak formally opened the museum during a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif and scores of Egyptian ministers and senior government officials. The president was guided through the museum's 26 galleries, containing 13,000 items, by Culture Minister Farouk Hosni and Supreme Council of Antiquities' Secretary-General Zahi Hawass."

See more in the above article by Nevine El-Aref.

£13,000 paid for Howard Carter painting

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/4762859.stm

"A painting of an Egyptian queen by Howard Carter, the man who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen, has sold at auction for £13,000. The watercolour was left to owner Barbara Rampton 15 years ago but she did not realise its significance until she took it to a charity valuation. The 1897 work had been hanging in a holiday cottage near Barmouth.
Carter, who died in 1939, discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in 1922.
His painting of Queen Senseneb began with an estimate of £3,000 but was soon contested by five telephone bidders. It eventually sold to a specialist art dealer in London."

See the above page for the full story.

Mural returned by Germany

http://tinyurl.com/pac7r (sis.gov.eg)

"Germany is to hand over sections of an ancient Egyptian mural to an Egyptian delegation Monday. 'The delegation from the Ministry of Culture and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) will receive five sections of a mural painting stolen from the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of Kings near Luxor,' said Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said yesterday 25/6/2006. SCA Secretary General Zahi Hawass hailed the move by Egyptology Institute affiliated to the University of Tuebingen. The section of the mural will be restored to their original place in the tomb, Hawass added."

Student finds unknown tomb

http://tinyurl.com/rmtob (trouw.nl)

Thanks very much to Ingeborg Waanders - not only for emailing the above link (from 23rd June), but also for the translation of the page from Dutch to English, below:

"Een student botanische archeologie uit Groningen, Jeroen van Rooij, is tijdens een studiereis in Egypte per ongeluk op een nog onbekende graftombe gestuit.
De tombe is vermoedelijk van een vermogende Egyptenaar uit de tijd van de achttiende dynastie, rond 1400 voor Christus, meldde Van Rooij vrijdag vanuit Egypte."

A Dutch student in botanical archaeology accidentally found an unknown tomb while on a study trip in Egypt.
The tomb presumably belonged to a wealthy Egyptian from around 1400 BC. The student found the tomb making a trip through the desert, while taking a stop at the bottom of a small hill. When van Rooij climbed the hill he found four deep pits on the summit. One of the pits turned out to lead into a large tomb.
Van Rooij and his party entered the tomb with the alerted Egyptian authorities. The tomb contained eight chambers, two of them large. Valuable relics weren't found, as the tomb was robbed in antiquity, presumably during the economic crisis in the 21st dynasty. Van Rooij describes the find as a "bizarre, but wonderful experience".

Mubarak inaugurates refurbished Coptic Museum

http://www.gom.com.eg/gazette/home/detail_2_22.shtml

"In his address during the opening ceremony, Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni said the Coptic Museum is one of Egypt's most important museums as it houses a huge collection of artefacts dating to the Coptic era.

President Mubarak watched a documentary on the restoration of the museum and the methods of display of 1,300 items in 26 halls. Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass said during a tour of the museum by the President that the restoration project included the addition of a new hall devoted to the history of churches in Old Cairo. A hall for temporary exhibitions has also been built, Hawass added. The restoration project, which was carried out by a group of Egyptian experts, began in 2003, Hawass said.

. . . . President Mubarak heard a presentation by Ezzat Naguib, director general for restoration works on the Coptic Museum on manuscripts in the museum. The manuscripts, of which some date back to the 4th century AD, including 13 bibles and several exhibits obtained from monasteries in Egypt. . . . Head of the icons section Mervat Megalli briefed President Mubarak on the icon exhibits that range between 300 and 600 years old. Most of the icons are of the Virgin Mary, Christ and a number of saints."

See the above page for full details - please note that the page will be changing shortly.

Increase in Jordanian tourists to Egypt

http://www.strategiy.com/airlinenew.asp?id=20060626071019

"Jordanian visitors to Egypt increased 4.5 percent to 50,514 in the first five months of this year, reflecting the strong cultural ties and increased business and leisure opportunities. Egypt’s traditional Pyramids-and-museums profile is broadening as more modern shopping malls, entertainment venues and luxury, internationally acclaimed hotels and resorts shoot up across the country."

See the above page for more details.

Blog updates

Apologies for the late posting of the weekend's news - I had to go away unexpectedly.

At the same time, my Internet access is going to be interrupted from Wednesday this week, through to Tuesday next week, and it may be impossible to update the site during that period. Apologies if this turns out to be the case.

Kind regards

Andie

Tut's necklace shaped by fireball

http://tinyurl.com/zsdwm (theaustralian.news.com.au)

"Scientists believe they have solved the mystery surrounding a piece of rare natural glass at the centre of an elaborate necklace found among the treasures of Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh.
They think a fragile meteorite broke up as it entered the atmosphere, producing a fireball with temperatures over 1800C that turned the desert sand and rock into molten lava that became glass when it cooled.
Experts have puzzled over the origin of the yellow-green glass -- carved into the shape of a scarab beetle -- since it was excavated in 1922 from the tomb of the teenage king, who died about 1323BC.
It is generally agreed the glass came from an area called the Great Sand Sea, but there has been uncertainty over how it was formed because there is no crater to back up the idea of a meteorite. Now it is thought the meteorite responsible was not intact but made up of loose rubble."

See the above page for the full article.

Also covered at:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2242001,00.html

Scarcophagi found near Giza pyramids

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200606/s1671476.htm
"The head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities says Egyptian archaeologists have found two ancient sarcophagi close to the pyramids. Council chief Zahi Hawass says the sarcophagi are about 2,500-years-old - dating back to the late 26th dynasty. He says they have been found about one kilometre south of the Giza pyramids. . . . The sarcophagus is painted red, blue and green and bears the name of its owner, Neb Ra Khatow, and ritual incantations to the gods.
The second sarcophagus has a more human form and was found inside the first."

See the brief article, above, for more details.

Also covered in brief at:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2116691

http://tinyurl.com/efxum (Reuters)

Discovery Channel - more on KV63

http://tinyurl.com/e7rv7 (dsc.discovery.com)

Discovery are advertising a follow-up to their first KV63 feature: "Egypt's New Tomb: Opening the Coffin is the second program following the astonishing discoveries being made by archaeologist Dr. Otto Schaden in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. This special follows the on-going action as the excavation of KV 63 reaches its climax."

I've read it three times and failed to find a date for when it is being aired, although I know it MUST be there - I'm just having one of those days today! However, the KV63 website says that it is being aired in the USA on July 9, 2006, 9:00 -10:00 pm ET. See the above page for more about the programme.

There is a lovely photograph of one of the coffins at:

http://tinyurl.com/kouep

Museum scans mummies for clues to past

http://tinyurl.com/mm5vy (twincities.com)
"Two mummies from the Milwaukee Public Museum have received computerized tomography, or CT, scans to help determine how they lived and died. The scans will produce three-dimensional images of the mummies that also will help researchers visualize what they looked like and build sculptures of their faces. The scans, performed Friday, are part of a larger effort by the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium to gather images of mummies collected from the Akhmim site in Egypt."
See the brief article above for more details.

Also covered at:
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/14895210.htm

Update re the Getty negotiations

Thanks to Archaeology Magazine's News section for the following links.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=local&id=4286490

For those of you following the Getty situation, this page provides an update on the ongoing negotiations between the Italian government and the Getty museum re repatriating items smuggled illegally out of Italy: "The director of the J. Paul Getty Museum met with Italian officials in Rome on Monday to discuss a possible deal to return artifacts the Italians claim were illegally smuggled out of the country, but it remained unclear whether the two sides would reach an agreement soon."

http://tinyurl.com/zzlqu (bloomberg.com)

A very short item also appeared on Bloomberg.com: "The J. Paul Getty Trust has agreed to return several ancient artifacts to Italy in exchange for loans of other works and joint exhibitions. The trust and the Italian Ministry of Culture expect to reach a final agreement 'in the early summer,' according to a joint statement released on the Business Wire."

More on 'Le Déscription' at the Dahesh

http://tinyurl.com/kxwja (nj.com)

"The Dahesh Museum has a show devoted to 'Le Déscription', Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt, that includes many engravings and two rare complete editions. The "Déscription" is a folio-sized series of 13 volumes of engravings, many of them beautifully color-printed, and 10 volumes of text assembled by 167 scientists, engineers, economists, mathematicians, botanists, zoologists, artists and scholars who accompanied the 40,000 or so French troops.
While the civilian savants were in Egypt, they kick-started the scientific study of ancient cultures, sort of inventing modern archeology -- not to mention finding the Rosetta Stone, thereby making the translation of hieroglyphics possible."

See the above page for the full story.

KV63: A Mystery Fit For A Pharaoh

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/july/kv63.php

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/july/kv63.htm
Thanks very much to Aayko Eyma for the above link to a four page article about KV63, on the Smithsonian.com website, introducing the find, describing its recent history and summarizing the current state of play at the site: "Schaden's newly opened chamber is KV-63. Unlike Tut's, it contains neither gold statues and funerary furniture nor, as of early June, the mummified body of a long-dead Pharaoh. Despite the coffins, this probably isn't even a gravesite. Still, the discovery, announced in February, was trumpeted worldwide, because most archaeologists had long ago given up hope of finding significant discoveries in the valley. More remarkably, the artifacts appear to have been undisturbed for more than three millennia, not since one of Egypt's most fascinating periods—just after the death of the heretic king Akhenaten, who, unlike his predecessors, worshiped a single deity, the sun god Aten."

Animal behaviour in ancient Egypt

http://www.pr.mq.edu.au/macnews/ShowItem.asp?ItemID=482

And another one from EEF. This is a report about research being carried out on animal depictions from ancient Egypt: "Linda Evans is a research assistant at Macquarie University's animal behaviour laboratory. In addition to a passion for animals, she is also passionate about archaeology and her PhD study at the Australian Centre for Egyptology has enabled her to combine these two interests.Evans is currently writing her thesis after eight and a half years' part-time work examining 8208 images of animals in 291 tombs and tomb fragments from cemeteries from the Old Kingdom period at Giza and Saqqara."

See the rest of the article for more.

The tomb of Neferhotep

Another item courtesy of EEF:

http://www.lagaceta.com.ar/vernotae.asp?id_nota=162927

"Desde 1999 un grupo de egiptólogos argentinos . . . trabaja en Luxor, en la tumba perteneciente a Neferhotep, un funcionario muy importante en la época del rey que sucedió a Tutankamón; como este monarca reinó por sólo cuatro años, hay poca documentación sobre la época."

Roughly translated as: Since 1999 a group of Argentinian Egyptologists have worked in Luxor in the tomb of Neferhotep, an important official during the reign of the king who succeeded Tutankhamun. As this king reined for only four years there is very little documentation about his reign.

A book entitled “Imágenes a preservar en la tumba de Neferhotep” has been published recently by the team: "[Violeta] Pereyra dijo que el libro registra todo lo que se ha hecho desde 1999 -año en que ella recibió la autorización del Consejo de Antigüedades de Egipto para ingresar a la tumba- hasta la actualidad."

Roughly translated as: Violeta Pereyra siad that the book listed everything that had been done since 1999 - the year in which she received authrization from the Supreme Council of Antiquities to enter the tomb - until the present.

Loss of Curators' Power

http://tinyurl.com/rw28c (nytimes.com)

Thanks to the EEF News Digest for the following. A two-page article looking at how the Brooklyn Museum has restructured its management teams to raise efficiencies: "The Brooklyn Museum, which built a sleek new glass entrance two years ago and is trying to reinvent itself after years of declining attendance, is planning a shakeup of its staff that has angered several curators and drawn criticism from other museums. Beginning next month, the museum will do away with traditional departments like Egyptian art, African art and European painting and instead create two "teams," one for collections and one for exhibitions. Arnold L. Lehman, the museum's director, said in an interview that the changes were intended to make the museum's relatively small curatorial staff more efficient and to encourage curators to exchange ideas more freely."

If you need a username and password, enter egyptnews in both fields.

Saturday Trivia - Tutankhamun

Chocolate Tut
http://tinyurl.com/px4f5 (news.cincypost.com)
"In honor of the Field Museum's Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs exhibit, Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers created a 400-pound chocolate statue of King Tut. Currently on display in the lobby, the culinary masterpiece is being auctioned for charity. The 120-hour culinary labor of love, created by executive pastry chef Omar Martinez, is made of dark chocolate covertures with 55 percent cocoa content and the chocolate statue is trimmed with 12 ounces of 14K edible gold dust."

Reincarnated Tut

http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=books&article=148

"Helen Reddy's memoir The Woman I Am may have trouble finding an American audience. The Australian vocalist burst upon the American scene in the mid-1970s when her song 'I Am Woman' became an international feminist anthem. Unfortunately, by 1980, that white-hot career essentially ended, and few Americans under the age of 40 will now recognize her name. But no American will have trouble reading her memoir; I haven't seen a prose style like Reddy's since my fourth-grade subscription to The Weekly Reader expired. . . . Things really get interesting in The Woman I Am when Reddy delves into her own personal spiritual search and her belief in reincarnation. Along the way, she informs the reader that Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, was the reincarnation of Richard III; and that Elvis Presley was the reincarnation of King Tutankhamen."

Book Review: The BM Concise Introduction - Ancient Egypt

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/800/hr3.htm

"T G H James's The British Museum Concise Introduction: ANCIENT EGYPT has now been published in a paperback edition which makes for a concise yet comprehensive and up-to-date survey which is easy to handle, writes Jill Kamil. . . . It takes a scholar like T G H James, retired keeper of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan in the British Museum, with his long and intimate association with Egypt and Egyptian monuments, to produce a work of this calibre. James has witnessed a remarkable growth in popular interest in Egypt during that time, and he has, in addition, what all too few scholars possess -- a talent for writing a text that is interesting and which makes for easy browsing."

See the above page for the complete review.