What's New, Pussycat?

As a sincere thank you to everyone who emailed yesterday here are some odds and ends that I’ve been collecting over the last month. Most of it is old hat but I hope that some of it will provide a useful starting point for the eventual resumption of the blog. I'll do another summary next week.

I haven’t got links for all the articles and I’ve only listed the items that seem to be of most interest. And I haven’t checked all of the links due to the state of my dial-up connection which is wobbly to say the least. This really IS an experiment but it seemed like a good place to start. Apologies for any problems!

GENERAL NEWS


Pharaonic-Era Sacred Lake Unearthed in Egypt
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=8834458
Archaeologists have unearthed the site of a pharaonic-era sacred lake in a temple to the Egyptian goddess Mut in the ruins of ancient Tanis, the Culture Ministry said on Thursday. The ministry said the lake, found 12 meters below ground at the San al-Hagar archaeological site in Egypt's eastern Nile Delta, was 15 meters long and 12 meters wide and built out of limestone blocks. It was in a good condition.


Body Part Mummified With Ancient Egyptian Recipe
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/10/15/salt-mummification.html
Swiss researchers have succeeded in mummifying a body part using the salty recipe of the ancient Egyptians. The experiment, which has been running for more than four months, takes inspiration from a 1994 study by Ronald Wade, director of Maryland's State Anatomical Board, and Bob Brier, one of the leading experts on mummies and Egyptology.


Louvre agrees to return frescoes to Egypt
There have been numerous reports about the appeal from Cairo to the Paris Louvre for the repatriation of Luxor tomb frescoes. AFP reported on 7th October that Egypt had devided to break ties with the museum and the museum’s interests in Egypt until the matter was resolved. Hawass made a statement to the effect that items purchased by the museum had been stolen from Luxor prior to the sale. The response by the Louvre was positive but as with many national museums the decision had to be escalated to a government office for consideration. The French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand confirmed that a special commission had been convened to consider the request. Mitterand said that it wasn’t until the rediscovery of the tomb in 2008 that doubts emerged about the legality of the frescoes. On Friday October 9th the decision was taken to return the five fragments.
The discussion was exclusive to the Luxor frescoes and did not address the issue of the Denderah zodiac which Egypt has been trying to repatriate for many years.
http://artmuseumjournal.com/louvre_to_return_stolen_artifacts_to_egypt.aspx


KV63 Update
www.KV-63.com
Otto Schaden relaunches his Dig Diary. Additions to the site include a listing of new KV-63 publications, some new images and a Special Commentary on the Menkheperre Seal by Dr. Otto Schaden.


Update re Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090820/FOREIGN/708199898/1185/enewsletter


Neues Museum opening Friday 16th October
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvoeb4YGM_wAD1Y_zHgp-_e6ZptAD9BBHURG2
Berlin's Neues Museum, boasting ancient treasures such as a famous bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti and a magnificent Bronze Age golden hat, is finally reopening to the public after standing for decades as a bomb-damaged shell. The museum is being inaugurated Friday by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and opens its doors to the public Saturday. That will mark the first time since World War II that the whole of Berlin's neoclassical Museum Island complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been open.


Egypt to preserve tombs with closures and replicas
http://artmuseumjournal.com/egypt_to_preserve_pharaonic_tombs.aspx
Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt and Director of Excavations at the Giza Pyramids, Saqqara and Bahariya Oasis, told Agence France-Presse on August 17, 2009 that the wall decorations of his country's pharaonic tombs near Luxor (ancient Thebes) are in danger of disappearing due to environmental and biological factors. His solution is to close many of the tombs to tourists after conservation and construct scale replicas within each site's vicinity near the Nile River's west bank.

Mummy Scan
http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/1728134,stanford-scan-ancient-mummy-082109.article
Scientists trying to unwrap the mysteries of a more than 2,500-year-old mummy believed to be an ancient Egyptian priest conducted computer scans Thursday to help determine how the man died, what was buried with him and what he looked like. In a basement lab at Stanford University Medical School, Iret-net Hor-irw's mummy lay tightly wrapped in tattered linen as a handful of scientists looked on.


Farouq Hosni misses out on UNESCO appointment
Hosni lost his bid to become the new Director General of UNESCO in September. The new Director General is Bulgarian Irina Bokova.

Brooklyn Museum launches new smartphone tours
http://artmuseumjournal.com/brooklyn_museum_launches_new_smart_phone_tours.aspx
Individuals with Web-enabled phones make their initial selections of art. The museum's program then suggests related works to see. Visitors can then create sets of annotated objects and share their customized tours with others on the museum's Web site, which contains images and brief descriptions of more than 11,000 artworks.



EXHIBITIONS

The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC
Sunday, October 18, 2009 - Sunday, May 16, 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
http://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/sub.asp?key=15&subkey=7332

World of the Pharaohs: Treasures of Egypt Revealed
An exhibit on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Arkansas Arts Centre
http://www.paragoulddailypress.com/articles/2009/10/04/opinion/doc4ac8edacea60b536445697.txt



BOOKS

The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology
Roger S. Bagnall
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ClassicalStudies/?view=usa&ci=9780195178388

The Idea of Writing: Play and Complexity
Edited by Alex de Voogt and Irving Finkel
http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=18&pid=33455
The Idea of Writing is an exploration of the versatility of writing systems. From ancient Egyptian, Cuneiform and Merotic writing to Chinese, Maya and Maldivian script, the authors examine the problems and possibilities of polysemy, representing loanwords and the problems of adapting a writing system to another language. The playful and artistic use of writing, including a contribution on writing dance, further illustrates the intricacies of the systems.

Debating Archaeology
http://lcoastpress.com/book.php?id=248
Lewis R. Binford
1989 (re-released August 2009), 556 pages, $39.95 Paper
In this volume, the founder of processual archaeology, Lewis R. Binford collects and comments on the twenty-eight substantive papers published in the 1980's, the third in his set of collected papers (also Working at Archaeology and An Archaeological Perspective). This ongoing collection of self-edited papers, together with the extensive and very candid interstitial commentaries, provides an invaluable record of the development of "The New Archaeology" and a challenging view into the mind of the man who is certainly the most creative archaeological theorist of our time. A new 2009 foreword by Binford reflects on the importance of these articles to later developments in the field.


JOURNAL UPDATES

The British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (BMSAES), Issue 12
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/online_journals/bmsaes/issue_12.aspx
Contents
- Constructing word similarities in Meroitic as an aid to decipherment
Reginald Smith
- Early Kushite Tombs of South Asasif
Elena Pischikova
- Edfu under the Twelfth–Seventeenth Dynasties: The monuments in the National Museum of Warsaw
Marcel Marée
- On Publication
Jeffrey Spencer


Journal of the Serbian Archaeological Society
[Glasnik Srpskog arheoloskog drustva]
http://scindeks.nb.rs/issue.aspx?issue=6970&lang=en
Free download of all the papers/reviews in pdf format


Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Vol. 28, Iss. 3, 2009
Shifting social networks along the Nile: Middle Holocene ceramic assemblages from Sai Island, Sudan
Elena A.A. Garcea, Elisabeth A. Hildebrand


PalArch
http://www.palarch.nl
Journal of Archeaology of Egypt/Egyptology 6 (5) 2009
BOOK REVIEWS:
P. Davoli about Peacock, D. & L. Blue. Eds. 2006. Myos Hormos – Quseir al-Qadim. Roman and Islamic Ports on the Red Sea. Survey and Excavations 1999-2003. - Oxford, Oxbow Books
J. Moje about Sederholm, V.H. 2006. Papyrus British Museum 10808 and its Cultural and Religious Setting. – Leiden, Brill (Probleme der Ägyptologie 24)



NEW WEBSITES AND WEB LINKS

Taa-oewie
www.taa-oewie.nl
Live date November 2009

The Gazelle in Ancient Egyptian Art - Image and Meaning
By Åsa Strandberg
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-107642
(Uppsala Studies in Egyptology 6, 2009) is now available for downloading.
Thanks for John Wyatt for this link

Jsesh 2.12
http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/node/1402
Thanks to Serge Rosmorduc for the link to the latest version of JSesh, his free hieroglyph editor.

Oxyrhynchus Hymn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLYfLEZW3bc
Video/audio of the The Oxyrhynchus Hymn.

Video on the cave paintings in Gilf Kebir, and the blogpost that goes with it (thanks to Ann Wyts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUdOhG__d4&feature=player_embedded
http://heritage-key.com/blogs/malcolmj/archaeovideo-prehistoric-paintings-swimmers-and-beast-gilf-kebir


MAGAZINES


Ancient Egypt
The October/November 2009 issue of “Ancient Egypt” magazine (published in the U.K.) is now available.
This issue is also available as an electronic version which can be found at the web site www.ancientegyptmagazine.com This may be useful for anyone with a broadband connection who may have difficulty in getting hold of a paper copy of the magazine, or who might want to see a copy before subscribing.
Contents of this issue include;
- News from Egypt and the World of Egyptology: A bumper ‘From our Egypt Correspondent’ brings the latest news and information including reports on new work at Tell Dafna in the Delta, at Saqqara, Luxor and a special exhibition in the Egyptian Museum on Japanese work in Egypt.
- The Re-sealing of KV62: The Tomb of Tutankhamun was sealed by priests and officials at the time of his burial and again after robberies. One of the reasons this tomb (and possibly others) lay undiscovered was that it was then further sealed by natural forces when there was a flood in the Valley of the Kings, as Steve Cross reveals.

- Bits and Pieces: Most of us are familiar with museums displaying ancient Egyptian objects, but what happens to the pieces we don’t see, the damaged, incomplete, modest pieces? Earl L. Ertman investigates.
- Nabta Play Saved: Nabta Playa is a place that few people have heard about, yet it is hugely important to the history of Egypt. Raymond Betz explains where and what it is and how it is an interesting example of Archaeoastronomy.
- The Mortuary temple of Merenptah: AE explores the little-visited temple of Merenptah and its small site museum and finds that it is well worth a visit, especially for anyone interested in the reign of Amenhotep III.
- An unexpected Turkish Delight: Mark Walker, visiting Turkey, discovers temples to the ancient Egyptian gods and explains how and why they came to be built.
- Egyptian Masterpieces: AE looks at a statue of a scribe in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
- The Sycomore and Fig: The sycomore fig was a special plant to the ancient Egyptians. Not only did it provide an edible fruit, but it became associated with funerary beliefs as Hilary Wilson shows.
- The Work of the Egypt Exploration Society: in the fifth of a series of articles, in this issue, Joost Hagen writes about his findings and experiences when studying some Coptic texts, found at the site of Qasr Ibrim in Nubia.
- How old is that mummy in the coffin: Aidan Dodson investigates and questions the current aging techniques.
- PerMesut: in our regular feature for younger readers, Hilary Wilson looks at ancient Egyptians life in and on the river in an article entitled “Sink or Swim”.
- Net Fishing: our regular look at Egyptology on the Web, tracing the history of ancient Egypt. This issue Victor Blunden looks at the last Ramesside kings.

New Books featured in the October issue
Abydos: Egypt’s first Pharaohs and the Cult of Osiris, by David O’Connor.
The Encyclopedia of the Egyptian Pharaohs: Vol 1 – Predynastic through 20th Dynasty, by Darrell D. Baker.
Ancient Egypt and Nubia, by Helen Whitehouse.
The Life of Meresamun: A temple singer in ancient Egypt, Edited by Emily Teeter and Janet Johnson.
The Curse of the Mummy and other Mysteries of Ancient Egypt, by Charlotte Booth.
The Illustrated guide to the Coptic Museum and Churches of Old Cairo, by Gawdat Gabra and Marianne Eaton-Krauss.
Tutankhamun Uncovered: The adventure behind the Curse, a novel by Michael J. Marfleet.
The Murder of King Tut, by James Patterson and Martin Dugard.


BOOK REVIEWS

Scholia Reviews ns 18 (2009) 26.
Neville Morley, Antiquity and Modernity. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
http://www.classics.ukzn.ac.za/reviews/09-26mor.htm

PalArch
http://www.palarch.nl
Journal of Archeaology of Egypt/Egyptology 6 (5) 2009
P. Davoli about Peacock, D. & L. Blue. Eds. 2006. Myos Hormos – Quseir al-Qadim. Roman and Islamic Ports on the Red Sea. Survey and Excavations 1999-2003. - Oxford, Oxbow Books
J. Moje about Sederholm, V.H. 2006. Papyrus British Museum 10808 and its Cultural and Religious Setting. – Leiden, Brill (Probleme der Ägyptologie 24)



CONFERENCE REPORT

The International Egyptological Conference in Moscow 2009
http://heritage-key.com/blogs/dasha/international-egyptological-conference-moscow-2009-day-four