Web Site Following Archaeologists to the Bottom of Mut Temple's Sacred Lake

Newswise

Egyptologist Betsy Bryan and her team of graduate students, artists, conservators and photographers expand their investigation of Luxor's Mut Temple this summer, turning their attention to the temple's Sacred Lake.

With new posts appearing daily through mid-July, visitors to "Hopkins in Egypt Today" at http://www.jhu.edu/egypttoday/ will find photos of Bryan and her colleagues working on site in Luxor. In collaboration with the American Research Center in Egypt, which also supports Johns Hopkins' work inside the temple proper, Bryan will excavate on the northeast arm of the lake after ARCE's engineers have drained the lake. Excavation will proceed from the region of an ancient stone dock in a swath around 20 meters in breadth down into the basin of the drained lake. Any materials found in the lake bed will be conserved and desalinated near the bank of the lake before being transferred to a protected environment. The primary goal of this brief dig is to develop procedures for more extensive excavation of the lake next year. The lake will be refilled with less saline water after the work is completed in July and will be drained again next winter when the dig resumes.

The goal of the "Hopkins in Egypt Today" Web site is to educate visitors by showing them the elements of archaeological work in progress. The daily photos and detailed captions emphasize not only discoveries, but the teamwork among Bryan, her colleagues, students and their "gufti," the local crew members who are trained in archaeology. That teamwork is essential to a successful dig, Bryan said. The Web site typically garners more than 50,000 hits every winter, when the dig ordinarily is active.

See the above link for more

So you want to be an Egyptologist?

www.newton.ac.uk

Well, one thing for sure, it's not the tomb raiding, treasure looting and torch scorching career of the Indiana Jones Hollywood series.

Eugene Cruz-Uribe and Nigel Strudwick have put together a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on the subject: How to be an Egyptologist. Here are some highlights:

Studying an ancient language like Greek or Latin will give you practice in grammar and working with complex languages. But as important are modern languages, as they give you wide access to the scholarly publications about Egypt. My estimate is that of this literature, about 40% is in English, 40% in German and 20% in French, although this will vary widely for certain areas of the subject.

For historical reasons, presumably the Western domination of Egyptology, there is very little material in Arabic, other than that which is written for domestic consumption in Egypt. Where Arabic is of course useful is for working in the field, but the sort of Arabic taught at universities isn't always the best for that. Most Egyptologists tend to learn spoken Arabic on digs backed up by conversational classes at home.

Modern tourism in Egypt is both a boon and a bane. The money is great for the Egyptian economy, but the wear and tear on the monuments can be hurtful for preservation of the monuments.

Very few schools offer a specific major in Egyptology for undergraduates. It is most usual at American universities that you can major in Near Eastern Studies or Near Eastern Civilisations. At other institutions you may have to major in History or Classics and get a variety of Egyptian courses as chance may have it. In the US most Egyptology training is done at the graduate level leading to a PhD degree.

There are very few jobs available throughout the world, normally in universities and museums, which usually only become available when someone somewhere retires.

If you are looking into Egyptology to get rich, forget it. It won’t happen. If on the other hand you are passionate about Egyptology and are willing to work long years to finish the program with only small chances of getting a full time job at a University, then by all means follow your passion.

Read more at the link above.

Vincent has posted a video in his Talking Pyramids blog where Dr. Kara Cooney explains what it is to be an Egyptologist.

Pyramids discovered in Silicon Valley

The Inquirer

This is another news editorial on "The Lost Pyramid", a sensational mega-documentary the History Channel is about to air. Using computer technology, they uncover and recreate a supposed fourth pyramid, taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

THE OBSESSION OF historical documentary makers to come up with new things to show off their swish computer graphics is getting out of hand, according to Newsweek.

The History Channel is about to release a sensational story about a "Lost Pyramid" of Giza that it is found which is taller than the Great Pyramid but had been lost below the desert sands. The show will include some flash computer graphics of what the lost Pyramid would have been like.

The only problem is that is neither lost, taller than the Great Pyramid, in Giza, nor indeed even a Pyramid.

See the above page for more.
The Newsweek article: TV's Not-So-Great Pyramid

Introducing Ben Morales-Correa

I am proud, relieved and phenomenally grateful to welcome Ben Morales-Correa as the blog's second author whilst I'm in Italy and also at any other time, now or in the future, that he feels like adding a few words.

This is by no means his first contribution to my efforts - he has sent me photos for the Daily Photo slot, made one of my own photographs into Photoshop artwork, and I've linked to some of his posts on his own blog in the past . And he even likes flamenco. What more can I ask for?

I've taken the photograph above from the profile on Ben's blog so that you can see who is doing all the work. Ben is a fine artist, web developer and ancient Egypt enthusiast from Puerto Rico. He paints in both abstract and figurative styles. Samples are at:
www.moralescorrea.bmcphotoart.com.

He also has a Photoshop tutorial site at http://www.bmcphotoart.com

And of course Ben is an Egyptology enthusiast - someone who has not studied Egyptology at college level, but for whom the subject is a passion. As I mentioned above Ben has his own website and blog at http://www.all-about-egypt.com. He says that the blog is essentially a travel to Egypt website that brings more information about ancient Egypt than the other Egypt tour oriented sites, but which is much less focused on the academic or encyclopedic subjects of Egyptology sites. His objective is to make visitors enjoy their Egypt vacation to their fullest by first knowing about its history, achievements, its magnificent monuments and exquisite art. He calls it, evocatively, "Egyptology for the rest of us". You can see his full profile on his blog.

This is actually a massive weight off my mind. It's just a small blog but I really hate to leave it dead in the water whenever I go away. I've become rather fond of it over the years. As you can probably tell, I am a very, very happy woman right now!

Kat is going to assist Ben with the task, as she always helps me.

Best wishes to all of you, and HUGE thanks to Ben and Kat.

Andie
xx

Blog Update

I am struggling horribly this week, so I think that it will be best if I just give up pretending that I will find the time to update the blog, and leave it until I come back from Italy. The truly kind offer of help has come in from another blogger to take over in my absence. If we can get things sorted out on time, administratively speaking, I will introduce him properly before I go. Help at last!!

All the best, Andie

Quick blog update

Sorry for the lack of posts yesterday and this morning - been a bit busy. I am going up to town today to meet a friend to combine two of my favourite subjects - archaeology chat and website-building chat. After that I thought I'd see what the queues are like at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition.

I'll update the blog this evening when I get back.

Whilst I'm at it, I should mention that I am off to Italy for a few days on Friday and won't be updating the blog for around a week as from Thursday. As usual, if anyone out there feels like taking over the job whilst I'm away, feel free to volunteer!

A quick off-topic question to the European travellers amongst you - does anyone know how widely Visa Electron is accepted by bank cashpoint machines in Europe? I've acquired a Travel Money Card from the post office (a combination between a prepaid credit card and a traveller's cheque), and I have traveller's cheques too, but it would be quite helpful to know if the card is going to be usable in places like Rome, Siena and Venice. andie@easynet.co.uk. Thanks. I'll try to drag my non-Egyptological friend to see the Rome obelisk, so hopefully I'll bring back some pics.

Finally, I received a few complaints that an article I linked to on Al Ahram Weekly was unavailable. Unfortunately there was nothing that I could do about it because the fault was not with the link that I posted but with the entire Al Ahram site - the entire website was down for days. It seems to be back up and running but is hideously slow. When I get in this evening I will repost last week's Al Ahram stories together with any new ones.

Cheers to all
Andie

OsirisNet updated with mastaba of Merefnebef

OsirisNet (English)
OsirisNet (French)

Thanks very much to Thierry Benderitter for letting me know that the OsirisNet website has been updated with the fabulous Old Kingdom mastaba of Merefnebef, which is located in Saqqara. As far as I know this is the only place where you can see the full details of tomb online. As the site is very fragile and will remain closed to the public, this is a wonderful opportunity to have a glimpse inside the tomb.

The pages were compiled with the permission and assistance of Professor Karol Myśliwiec from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology (Warsaw), whose team excavated the site. It says alot about the good reputation of the OsirisNet venture that the permission was so readily given. The screen grab was taken from the OsirisNet site (you can click on it to go to the English version of the mastaba web pages).

The mastaba of Merefnebef, is an exceptional monument in terms of its state of conservation and the freshness of its decoration. Merefnebef was a vizier of the Sixth Dynasty, and the changes to his tomb reflect changes to both political and family circumstances.

As usual there are maps, diagrams, extensive descriptions, translations of hieroglyphic inscriptions and some wonderful photographs (click on thumbnails to see big images - this wasn't working in Firefox but it worked perfectly in MS Explorer). Six web pages of solid enjoyment.

There's an interview with Professor Karol Myśliwiec about the tomb, in PDF format, from Academia.

Egypt’s First Laboratory for Ancient DNA Analysis

OBBeC

Applied Biosystems, an Applera Corporation business, is collborating with the Discovery Channel and Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities to establish the first laboratory in Egypt dedicated to testing ancient DNA samples.

The laboratory, which is located in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, began testing samples from ancient royal mummies from the 18th Dynasty in April as part of a project to identify the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s most famous female pharaoh.The initial findings will be revealed in a two-hour documentary titled "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen", which premiers Sunday, July 15 on the Discovery Channel.

The primary purpose of the new DNA laboratory is to assist in the identification of the mummy of Hatshepsut, as well as other mummies that have been removed from their original tombs, and to clarify familial relationships within and between Egypt’s ancient dynasties. This is the first time DNA testing has been used in the quest to identify an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.

“By providing this technology to Egypt, Applied Biosystems is helping to advance science and bring our dead pharaohs back to life,” said Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. “A basement that was once a maze of artifacts is now a cutting-edge scientific lab, the first of its kind dedicated to revealing the mysteries of our mummies.”

See the above page for more.

A wake-up call for the antiquities market

International Herald Tribune (Souren Melikian )

Curators and collectors who track sculpture from Ancient Egypt, Etruscan bronzes from present-day Tuscany, or Hellenistic sculpture from around the Mediterranean and further afield in Iran, would be well advised to ponder their next move with utmost care.

The days when you could buy anything without bothering to find out how this major statue of a seated woman in imperial drapes or that marvelous bronze figure of an animal came to tumble onto the market are over. The latest evidence that a new stage has been reached was a policy advisory issued by the U.S. Association of Art Museum Directors. Its gist, The New York Times reported last week, is that museums "normally should not acquire a work unless solid proof exists that the object was outside its country of probable modern discovery before 1970, or was legally exported from its probable country of modern discovery after 1970."

As the overwhelming majority of objects knocking about the art market come from countries that do not permit the export of antiquities, the U.S. museums advisory amounts to underwriting, if only unofficially, the 1970 Unesco convention banning the acquisition of objects illicitly dug up.

This will not stop overnight the illicit traffic in antiquities. But it is a heavy blow dealt to the antiquities trade because it makes it that much less tempting to museums and wealthy donors alike to acquire objects of ill-defined provenance.

See the above two-page article for the full story. There is a photograph on the page of an absolutely wonderful snake sculpture from Egypt, which is so perfect that it makes me go weak at the knees. From the Jéquier collection, it sold for $338,500 at Christie's. The Swiss Egyptologist Gustave Jéquier died in 1946. The IHT says that extraordinary prices were achieved for some of the items from his collection precisely because they did not raise provenance questions (although it doesn't actually say how Jéquier himself established provenance).

Titanic discoverer to search for lost sarcophagus

Times Online (Thomas Catan)

A thankfully coherent version of the recent stories saying that the Supreme Council of Antiquities want to look for the sarcophagus of Menkaure somewhere off the coast of Spain.

Built from polished blue basalt to transport the king's earthly remains to the next world, the elaborately decorated vessel lay hidden inside the third-largest of Giza's renowned Pyramids for more than 4,000 years. In 1837 the British colonel Richard William Howard Vyse blasted his way into Menkaure's sepulchral chamber using gunpowder and discovered the stone casket.

The mummy was missing by that time — ancient Arabic graffiti indicated that the colonel was not the first to find the chamber — and he realised that his discovery could open the way for a new generation of grave robbers. “As the sarcophagus would have been destroyed had it remained in the Pyramid,” he noted in his diaries, “I resolved to send it to the British Museum.”

In a twist worthy of an Indiana Jones film, the sarcophagus was lost again the following year before it could reach British shores. The merchant ship Beatrice, which was carrying it and other antiquities found by the archaeologist, sank while sailing from Malta to Gibraltar — reportedly off the coast of Spain, near Alicante.

Now the Egyptian Government wants to recover it with the aid of underwater robots. Zahi Hawass, who heads Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, told Spanish journalists that he was seeking financing from the National Geographic Society for the search.

To locate the Beatrice he has lined up the services of Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic using high-tech submersibles. . . .

“It's going to be very challenging to find something of that sort,” said John Baines, Professor of Egyptology at Oxford University. “Looking for something in the open Atlantic, which is nearly what this amounts to, strikes me as being a hopeless case.”

See the above page for the full story.

Daily Photo - More views of Aswan, past and present

Thanks again to George Mutter for sending me these photographs, offering contrasts between Aswan as in 1906 and 2006. They are great. The first pair show camels in the forecourt of the Old Cataract Hotel (look closely at the modern one!). The latter pair are a view from the Old Cataract looking south down the Nile towards the First Cataract.

A documentary film of Djoser Pyramid to be a reference to all archaeologists

Egypt State Information Service

"Egypt plans to make a documentary film of Pyrmaid of Djoser, Egypt's first step pyramid, using a three-dimensional technique to be a reference to all archaeologists," Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said Monday9/6/2008.

The film will display a perspective image of the pyrmaid, located in Sakkara, to help archaeologists know the exact condition of each step and stone pieces, the Minister said. The four-week project will be carried out by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in cooperation with a Japanese-American mission, Hosni said.

The project comes as part of celebrations of making 2008 the Year of Science between Japan and Egypt.

The pyrmaid was built during the Old Kingdom's 3rd Dynasty. The pyramid is 254 feet tall, with six steps.

The Step Pyramid is said to have been built for Netjerikhet Djoser, the 2nd King of Egypt's 3rd Dynasty, by that master architect and ancient Egyptian legend, Imhotep.

Djoser's tomb is located deep beneath the pyramid. The pyrmaid was excavated in 1934 by Jean-Philippe Lauer who found a mummified left foot, believed to be all that is left of Djoser.

Dovecotes, Tradition and National Identity in Egypt

Iconoclasm (Troels Myrup Kristensen)

Dovecotes are not only an omnipresent part of many Egyptian landscapes. They are also very much part of the national identity of modern Egypt, as seen for example in the above portrait of Mubarak in the Abdine Palace in Cairo. It shows a contemplative president surrounded by symbols of the modern Egyptian nation-state: airforce, industry, agriculture, Mahmoud Mokhtar’s sculpture Egypt’s Renaissance, pyramid, mosque, Coptic church, the Nile and a pair of dovecotes.

Dovecotes are used to raise pigeons (hammam). They are often built on the upper stories of houses but frequently they are also of the stand-alone, tower-like variety. There is a great number of different sizes and types. The continuity of the tradition of raising pigeons in dovecotes is nowhere more apparent than in the Fayum.

See the above for the full story, which includes photographs of some of the dovecotes including an example from Roman Karanis.

Brooklyn Museum Egypt Lantern Slides

Egypt Then and Now (Ben Morales-Correa)

In 1849, the Philadelphia daguerreotypists William and Frederick Langenheim introduced the lantern slide: a transparent image on glass that could be projected, in magnified form, onto a surface using a “magic lantern,” or sciopticon. This new technology expanded the uses of photography, allowing photographic images to be viewed by a large audience. With lantern slides, museum curators and educators could illustrate their lectures, letting audience members see detailed studies of objects and sites from around the world.

The Brooklyn Museum’s lantern slide collection was started by the Museum’s curator of fine arts, William Henry Goodyear, in the late nineteenth century.

See the above page for the full story, together with a link to the fabulous flickr slideshow of some of the lantern slides (hover the cursor over the image and then click on the "i" symbol to see details of each slide's subject matter. Excellent.

Exhibition: Beyond Babylon

Suite 101 (Stan parchin)

Thanks to Stan Parchin for sending me the above link.

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is the sole venue for Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. On view from November 18, 2008 to March 15, 2009, the exhibition features works of ancient art from Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, Thrace, Anatolia, the Caucasus, mainland Greece and Iran.

Some 350 objects in this landmark presentation, derived from palaces, temples, tombs and a shipwreck, describe the unusual movement of people, artworks and luxury goods across the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (ca. 2000-1200 B.C.).

See the above page for Stan's overview.

New Book: Los Primeros Reyes y la Unificacion de Egipto

University of Jaen (in PDF format)

Thanks to Geoffrey Tassie for bringing my attention to a new book just published on state formation by Alejandro Jimenez Serrano: Los Primeros Reyes y la Unificacion de Egipto, Universidad de Jaen. It translates as The first kings and the unification of Egypt. It is written in Spanish and pulls together many of his articles, based largely on his doctoral research.

One of Alejandro's areas of specialization is analysis of early serekhs, and there is an entire section dedicated to this subject in the book.

The table of contents and the bibliography are available in PDF format at the above address, and here is the descriptive text from the cover of the book.

En la presente obra se profundiza en los numerosos aspectos de la primera realeza egipcia, e la que se sentaron las bases de uno de los estados centralizados más antiguos de la historia de la humanidad. Para ello, se estudian con detalle los diferentes elementos que los más antiguos gobernantes del Valle del Nilo desarrollaron para presentarse tanto en la esfera divina como en la humana. A partir de este análisis, se propone una reconstrucción histórica y cronológica de la unificación de Egipto.

Alejandro Jiménez Serrano (1974) Profesor Contratado Doctor en el Área de Historia Antigua de la Universidad de Jaén, Doctor en Humanidades por la Universidad de Jaén y MPHil, (Egyptology) por el University Collage London (2002). Ha publicado diferentes libros y artículos en España y en el extranjero entre los que destacan Royal Festivals in the Late Predynastic Period and the First Dyansty (Oxford 2002) y La Piedra de Palermo: Traducción y contextualización histórica (Madrid 2004). Actualmente dirige un proyecto de investigación en la necrópolis faraónica de Qubbet el-Hawa (Assuán, Egipto).

Conference: Primo Convegno Napoletano di Egittologia

http://www.anse-egypt.com/ANSE_2008-congress.htm

Thanks to Francesco Raffaele for letting me know that an international congress of Egyptology will be held next week in Naples, Italy. The Primo Convegno Napoletano di Egittologia will take place in Palazzo Reale, Sala Rari (Biblioteca Nazionale) on June 18th-20th 2008.

The conference has been organized by ANSE, of which Francesco is one of the founding members, together with Dr. Ilaria Incordino, Dr. Massimiliano Nuzzolo and Dr. Giuseppe Lebro. The aim is to promote new studies and discoveries in Egyptology.

The ANSE website currently shows the programme for the conference on a dedicated page. In a few days all 23 conference abstracts, which are in English and Italian, will be added as a single PDF file to the same page. A publication will be issued with the complete papers in 2009.

It's nice to see a healthy smattering of Late Predynastic and Early Dynastic stuff in there. Nothing earlier though.

More reviews of Cuno's Who Own's Antiquity?

Here's a round-up of some of some of the reviews of James Cuno's book Who Owns Antiquity? It is a completely random selection.

Archaeology Magazine (Roger Atwood)

Wall Street Journal (Eric Ormsby)

New York Times (Edward Rothstein)
If you are asked for a username and password enter egyptnews in both fields

Chicago Sun Times - Interview with James Cuno. Also on the International Herald Tribune.

CultureGrrl (Lee Rosenbaum)
(Thanks to Kwame Opoku for sending me the above link)

New Statesman (Robin Simon)

Time Magazine - Interview with James Cuno, different from that mentioned above (Richard Lacayo)

Artknows (Tom Flynn)

Chicago Reader (Deanna Isaacs)

Travel: Photoshop Express

Photoshop Express Online

I mentioned this online application developed by Adobe briefly a few weeks ago. It is an image editing programme which is potentially very useful for anyone like me who finds themselves working or on holiday in Egypt with a vast set of digital photographs which could really do with being backed up. It also offers people who are away from home the opportunity not only to share their photographs with friends back home, but to edit them in advance.

One of the few magazines which I read regularly is Photoshop Creative. The most recent issue has included a review of Photoshop Express, which is an online and free of charge version of one of the most powerful image editing programmes available. In summary, the review says that the beta site has been a phenomental succes with 60,000 people creating public web albums within the first month. In response to users' feedback the team behind the online application have added the following new features:

• A "Save As" function
• Integration with flickr.com
• Extension of video capabilities

It is aimed at everyone from the complete novice to experienced users. There are lots of features, and the functionality is more or less self explanatory and clearly presented. Preview features are available for most of the functionality (which is really useful), and it is still under development using the feedback from those currently using the application.

Registration is free of charge, and you don't actually have to register to "test drive" the app. You will, however, need Flash 9 installed.

Photography Exhibition: Ten Years of Photography in Egypt (modern Egypt)

Egypt Daily Star News (Laura Kasinof)

Coptic priests, Bedouin women, and a blue-tinted photo of famous belly dancer Dina’s renowned tummy — these are some of the subjects of the latest photography exhibition on display at the German Embassy in Zamalek.

“Ten Years of Photography in Egypt,” an exhibition by German artist Claudia Wiens, opened last Monday, featuring 25 photographs — in color as well as black and white.

The featured photographs do not share a unifying theme; rather, their subjects cover an array of settings and feature people from all walks of life within Egyptian society: the wealthy and the poor, from Cairo and from rural areas.

When asked about the message she wanted to convey to her audience with her work, Wiens said, “My approach, especially in Egypt, is to show normal, daily life. In the big media, there is always a focus on war, terrorism, fundamentalism, suppressed women — all these stereotypes.”

The exhibition is part of the embassy’s 18-month-long efforts to promote cultural and artistic exchange between Egypt and Germany by presenting works of artists from both countries.

See the above page for more.