A Condensed History of the Dakhleh Oasis – Part 1

Mummy's Wrap

Often overlooked by the mainstream, the oases in the Western Desert of Egypt offer a unique view to the history of ancient Egypt. The history of the oases parallels the history of the Nile Valley, but there is a more rustic view. Of the oases, the Dakhleh Oasis, one of the furthest oases from the Nile Valley, shines as an archaeological star, presenting to the world an almost uninterrupted chronology of ancient Egypt stretching from the Predynastic period through modern times. This paper will touch upon each ancient Egyptian era until the Graeco-Roman period, bringing together a number of sources, but focusing mostly on the archaeological records supplied by the scientists working in Dakhleh.

Two teams of archaeologists currently work in Dakhleh. Monash University in Australia excavates at the sites of Deir Abu Metta, Muzawwaqa, Ismant el-Kharab or ancient Kellis, and Mut el-Kharab.[1] New York University (NYU) has recently taken over the American work in Dakhleh from Columbia University.[2] NYU is excavating the sites Amheida and Ain el-Gedida. The archaeological site records produced by both these institutions were invaluable to the following research.

Before it is possible to view a snapshot of ancient Egyptian history through the lens of the Dakhleh Oasis, the oases must be first examined from the perspective of the Nile Valley, albeit briefly.

New Book: Imaging the Cheops Pyramid Imaging the Cheops Pyramid

Springer

Imaging the Cheops Pyramid
By H.D. Bui
Series: Solid Mechanics and Its Applications, Vol. 182
Springer

In this book Egyptian Archeology and Mathematics meet.

The author is an expert in theories and applications in Solid Mechanics and Inverse Problems, a former professor at Ecole Polytechnique and now works with Electricité de France on maintenance operations on nuclear power plants. In the Autumn of 1986, after the end of the operation on the King’s chamber conducted under the Technological and Scientific Sponsorship of EDF, to locate a cavity, he was called to solve a mathematical inverse problem, to find the unknown tomb of the King and the density structure of the whole pyramid based on measurements of microgravity made inside and outside of the pyramid.

This book recounts the various search operations on the pyramid of Cheops made at the request of the Egyptian and French authorities in 1986-1987. After the premature end of the Cheops operation in the Autumn of 1986, following the fiasco of unsuccessful drillings in the area suspected by both architects G. Dormion and J.P. Goidin and microgravity auscultation, EDF and CPGF (a geophysical company) teams continued their researches with measurements already made, trying this time an inversion of the Newton gravity equation for the entire pyramid and using another theoretical team led by the author.

Exhibition: Cleopatra in California

Virtual Press Office

The west coast premiere of Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt, featuring the largest collection of its kind ever assembled in the U.S., will open at the California Science Center May 23, 2012. More than 150 priceless Egyptian artifacts illuminating the life of Cleopatra VII, one of the most provocative and powerful women in history, will be on view including colossal statues, jewelry, coins and items from her sunken palace in Alexandria and other ancient sites that were significant during her life as queen.

Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt immerses visitors in the experience of two present-day searches on land and sea for the elusive queen, which extend from the sands of Egypt to the depths of the Bay of Aboukir near Alexandria. The artifacts weigh in at about 30 tons in total, including two 16-foot granite statues of a Ptolemaic king and queen from the 4th – 3rd centuries B.C. .

Los Angeles Times

“Cleopatra” the movie is legendary in Los Angeles as the film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton whose budget spun so far out of control that it nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox in the early 1960s. Now comes Cleopatra the historical figure, starring in a touring museum exhibition that will arrive May 23 at the California Science Center in Exposition Park for a seven-month stay.

“Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt,” will offer more than 150 artifacts, the biggest being 16-foot granite statues of two of the queen’s ancestors from the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled from the 300s BC until the asp did its dirty work on Cleo in 30 BC, as Liz duly depicted on the big screen.

For those wanting to know how the real Cleopatra VII looked, the exhibition will offer gold coins with her profile (such as the one pictured). A New York Times reviewer deemed her features “less than sensuous” in critiquing the show’s 2010 premiere at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Exhibition: Tutankhamun in Japan

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

Tutankhamen reaches Japan for the first time in 46 years this week on the last leg of a ten stop tour that began in Switzerland in 2004 and passed through Germany, France, England and several US states.

Japan last fell under the spell of Tutankhamen in 1965 when parts of the priceless collection were exhibited in Tokyo. This time the exhibition will take place in the southern city of Osaka.

During the inauguration ceremony on Wednesday, Japan celebrated the arrival of the collection and the 150th anniversary of the first Samurai delegation to Egypt.

Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim described the exhibition as an expression the amity between Egypt and Japan, and a message that Egypt is safe and open for business.

Egyptian frustration as tourists stay away

The Guardian, UK (Jack Shenker)

At the main hall in Cairo's International Conference Centre, the organisers had pulled out all the stops. Suited waiters scurried about with canapés, pyramids of baked treats were stacked up on trestle tables, while dignitaries shook hands fervently in front of snapping cameras. For several hours the only thing missing was the guest of honour – though given the event's title, it was perhaps no surprise that Egypt's tourism minister felt little pressure to appear on time.

When Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour did finally show up at this government-sponsored celebration of "last year's tourism achievements", his keynote speech offered little comfort to the industry figures who had gathered to discover just how bad the past 12 months had been – and what the fragile and protest-battered military government was planning to do about it. Since revolution erupted on 25 January 2011, Egypt's tourism sector – which had been generating more than £8bn a year and was believed to employ one in eight of the workforce – has been decimated.

The upshot, revealed Abdel Nour on Saturday, has been a £2.5bn decrease fall in tourism revenue alongside 32% fewer visitors, with the capital – which has played host to most of the street fighting in recent months – taking the brunt.

Lecture notes: Artefacts and Early Archaeologists in the Valley of Kings

Luxor News blog (Jane Akshar)

Artefacts and Early Archaeologists in the Valley of Kings – Donald Ryan

Or what they left behind

There is a cycle in the Valley of Kings of burial (sometimes reburial) and robbery ancient and modern. There are mummy caches with dockets recording the movement from one safe place to another. There is one artefact that he feels sums up the whole valley which is of the remnants of the face piece where the wooden remains clearly show the marks of the adze that removed the gold.

The archaeologists of the past were interested in different things, gold and treasure mainly so often when they found a tomb they would describe it as having nothing of interest because it ‘only’ held mummies and pottery, consequently they left a lot behind in the tombs they excavated

Update on Hawass

zahihawass.com

For anyone interested in the activities of Hawass, following his replacement, he has updated his website (see above link). The most interesting pieces of information that he imparts are that an artefact has been recently returned to the Egyptian Museum and that Hawass is currently writing a book about antiquities and the 2011 revolution, which is almost finished. He says that it will be published first in English and then in Arabic.

Photo for Today: Sarcophagus of Ankhnesneferibre

Black schist sarcophagus of princess Ankhnesneferibre,
26th Dynasty Thebes
The sarcophagus was reused in the Roman period by
a Roman priest who changed some of the names in the cartouches.
British Museum. EA 32.

Scholars struggle to preserve Egypt's heritage

The Chronicle (Ursula Lindsey)

When soldiers and protesters clashed in downtown Cairo in late December, the army's crackdown left at least 16 dead and hundreds injured. Another victim of the violence was the oldest scientific institute in Egypt, which was largely destroyed in a fire, along with much of its precious library.

The destruction of the historical archive of the Egyptian Scientific Institute caused an outcry. But while this is the most significant case of Egypt's historical heritage being damaged by the turbulence of the last year, it is hardly the only one. Since the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak last February, antiquities and historical sites have faced a variety of new dangers.

"Threats to the heritage are diversifying," says Tamar Teneishvili, who oversees cultural programs in Egypt for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. "Who would have thought that the institute would burn that way? The situation is so unpredictable and volatile."

Egyptologists still digging up past, even with uncertain future

Medill Reports Chicago (David B. Nelson)

The Egyptian Revolution that began a year ago continues to create instability in a country rich with antiquity. But most Egyptologists say it’s business as usual, even with the recent return of protestors to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

“The impact has been very minor,” said Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist and research associate at the Oriental Institute, a research center and archaeology museum at the University of Chicago. Teeter, also a representative to the Chicago chapter of the American Research Center in Egypt, was in Egypt as recently as last November. “The biggest disruption has been bureaucratic. Permissions were disrupted because committees weren’t meeting. Basically trying to do advanced planning was very hard,” she said.

Kathleen Scott, director of publications at the San Antonio chapter of the American Research Center, also reported only minor issues unrelated to safety.

“At first some expedition seasons were delayed or held off,” Scott said. “But for the most part our organization, which does a lot of the interface between expeditions and government, has found it to be going reasonably well.”

Heritage at what cost?

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El Aref)

Almost two months since he took on Egypt's antiquities portfolio, Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim tells Nevine El-Aref about his plans to develop and preserve Egypt's heritage -- including upping ticket prices for tourists

After months of decision, indecision and counter- decision, Egypt's antiquities and monuments have got their own ministry back. The Ministry of State for Antiquities has been resuscitated to join the National Rescue Government (NRG) led by Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri.

Since the start of last year's January Revolution, several ancient monuments and artefacts exhibited in Egypt's museums, storehouses and archaeological sites have suffered from negligence or worse. The prevailing chaos led to a lack of security all over the country, and robberies were commonplace. Meanwhile, the official body, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), then under the umbrella of the Ministry of Culture, swung between a Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) and an independent SCA body affiliated to the cabinet.

Finally, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) established the NRG two months ago, Egypt's antiquities regained its ministry as the MSA. Mohamed Ibrahim, chief of the Tourism Guiding English Department in the Faculty of Arts at Ain Shams University, was appointed to the post and became the second Minister of State for Antiquities, succeeding the better known archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

Ibrahim is no stranger to the SCA or the MSA's archaeological stratum.

Saving Egypt's fire-bombed books

BBC News (Sarah Hashash)

Thousands of historical documents could be lost following a fire at the Institute of Egypt - which began during clashes in Tahrir Square last month - but an army of restoration workers is working day and night to save the country's written history.

The plain-clothes security guard in the dingy ground-floor office at Egypt's National Archives eyes my camera suspiciously.

On the desk in front of him lies a heavy black revolver. After a brief dispute with my guide and phone calls to his seniors, he reluctantly lets me in.

I am led into an adjoining room where, knee-deep in stacks of newspapers, men and women wearing face masks, rubber gloves and white lab coats are hard at work.

Mummy reunited with mask

The Republic

The mummy Nefrina came face to face with her funeral mask Wednesday, as the likeness that had been buried with her — but was separated the past 82 years — was returned to her in the Reading Public Museum.

Museum Director John Graydon Smith thanked the University of Pennsylvania for lending the mask to the museum for the next year.

It was scheduled to go on display Thursday in the Nefrina Gallery.

"We are delighted," Smith said. "I really think it's going to show people, especially kids, what they were trying to accomplish in the mummification process.

"I don't know that we'll see a huge influx of visitors. From a responsibility perspective, this is the right thing to do."

The university bought the mummy, its coffin and the mask from an antiquities dealer in 1893. In 1930, it agreed to let the Reading museum borrow the mummy and coffin for display.

But it insisted on keeping the mask, even after the museum bought the mummy outright in 1949. The museum has been trying to borrow the mask since 1993.

Object Biography from Manchester Museum

Manchester Museum Blog (Campbell Price)

Each month I hope to highlight an individual object that will feature in our new Ancient Worlds galleries. Many of the objects in the collection have incredible stories behind them but, due to an inevitable lack of space, these cannot be included fully in gallery labels or text panels. We aim to tell some of these stories – or “object biographies” – in digital content to accompany the new displays.

This small cup is only 6.75 cms in height but is made of eye-catching bright blue faience, or glazed composition ceramic. The hieroglyphs name Nesi-khonsu, wife of the Twenty-first Dynasty ruler Pinedjem II. She is given the title “first in charge of the musical troupe of Amun” (tA wrt-xnrt tp n imn) – a group of female musicians who entertained the deity in his temple at Karnak.

New Egyptian museum to cost LE5 billion

Al Masry Al Youm

Egypt's Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Ali has announced the start of the final phase of construction at the Grand Egyptian Museum, scheduled for inauguration in 2015. The new museum is being built on the Cairo-Alexandria Road, overlooking the Giza Pyramids

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Ali said that representatives from Besix Group, the Belgian company that won the bid for the project, recently attended a ceremony for the start of the final phase, along with a number of foreign ambassadors.

Ali said that the overall cost of the project will be LE5 billion, adding that the Japanese government had provided a large part of the funding as a soft loan to be repaid within ten years of inauguration.

Egypt library czar calls for new archives law

Ahram Online

In an interview this week with Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency, Zein Abdel-Hadi, recently appointed head of the Egyptian National Library and Archives, laid out an ambitious plan to revamp Egypt’s National Library, restructure the country’s library system, and push for a long-awaited archives law.

According to Abdel-Hadi, the challenges currently facing Egypt’s National Library are tremendous, the first of which has to do with the fact that library management reports to the Ministry of Culture at a time when the Bibliotheca Alexandrina is linked directly to the president’s office. In this context, Abdel-Hadi explained that the National Library’s total budget amounted to LE60 million while the Bibliotheca receives three times this amount.

While the National Library’s funds are hardly enough for wages and manuscript restoration projects, the Bibliotheca is able to conduct cultural activities beyond the scope of a normal library.

Rhind Mummy under the scanner

Scotland on Sunday

SHE was spirited to Scotland by a forward-thinking Egyptologist who made an unusual decision not to unwrap the mummified remains of a young woman to find any “treasure” lying beneath.

Now, more than 150 years later, the secrets of what is under the black-tarred linen surrounding the “Rhind Mummy” has been revealed in a series of CT scans.

An Edinburgh University team of radiologists and forensic pathologists have identified the remains as those of a 2,000-year-old Egyptian woman, aged 25-29, with a plate of metal, probably solid gold, in the shape of a flying scarab, placed on her skull.

Another metal disc has also been found on her stomach, and she is clutching a rolled scroll in her right hand against her thigh. The scroll is likely to be a funerary text, combining directions for mummification with guidance for the afterlife, and it could give the mummy’s lineage or name.

New Book: Westcar on the Nile

Reichert Verlag

On November 6, 1823, four Englishmen disembarked in the harbour of Alexandria. In the succeeding ten months, they traveled up the Nile as far as the Second Cataract and, in the course of their travels, witnessed the turmoils of a revolution against Mohamed Ali Pasha, the viceroy of Egypt. In this volume, Henry Westcar’s journal, which was written during this journey, is edited and annotated for the first time in its entirety. Additionally, the book offers a profound overview of the reign of Mohamed Ali Pasha and particularly the treatment of ancient monuments. The topic of the famous “Westcar Papyrus”, which owes its name to the author of the journal, is discussed in an excursus.

Demonology during the Late Pharaonic and Greco-Roman Periods

Books and Journals

The Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions has an article focusing on Egypt, for those who are interested.

Volume 11, Issue 2, January 2011
ISSN: 1569-2116
E-ISSN: 1569-2124

Demonology during the Late Pharaonic and Greco-Roman Periods in Egypt
Rita Lucarelli
pp. 109–125 (17)

Travel: Cruising on a dahabiyya

Daily Mail (Wendy Gomersall)

Fishermen in rowing boats just a few feet away from us slapped the river with big wooden bats to bring their prey to the surface. Farmers in long robes called galabeyas guided donkey carts loaded with sugar cane along the banks, and we counted the shiny black buffalo squatting in the shadows and pure white egrets standing in the shallows.

We waved back at passengers on the big cruise boats as they swept past, dwarfing our small but perfectly formed wooden vessel, and agreed that the Nile offers the best river cruise in the world.

Our boat with a difference was Amber, a dahabiyya. These wooden sailing boats were favoured 100 years ago – when Egypt-mania was new – by travellers who wanted to see the river, tombs and temples at a relaxed pace and in luxury, sharing the experience with a few like-minded passengers.