Egypt at the Manchester Museum (Campbell Price)

On Saturday, I met up with the Young Archaeologists Club (YAC) to do a spot of hieroglyph translation. For the session, I chose this short text on an object currently displayed in the Museum’s Discovery Centre.  The members of YAC, mostly aged around 10, were incredibly knowledgable and – with only a little help – cracked the code presented by this small stela. Rather than simply ‘make up’ hieroglyphic words using a phonetic alphabet, the chance to read a real text from ancient Egypt – and work out what the object was used for – was one the group really enjoyed.

This small limestone stela is one of a class of objects called ‘ear stelae’, common in the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1069 BC), and records the name of a deity to whom it is dedicated as well as the man who made or comissioned it. It shows a pair of ears, between which reads: “Ptah-hearer-of-prayers (ptH sDm-nH)”. 

Photo for Today: the Ramesseum

Discovery of 20 mummies and a wooden coffin in Aswan

Europa Press   

Roughly, a team from the university of Jaen working in Aswan at the site of Qubbet el-Hawa have found 20 mummies from different periods as well as a large amount of other archaeological material including a wooden sarcophagus.  This is the fourth season of the Jaen excavations focusing on a large tomb constructed by a provincial governor of the 12th Dynasty.  The newly discovered wooden coffin is a later, intrusive addition to the tomb. Excavations have been using new technologies including RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging), and 3D scanning of walls, to assist with greater accuracy in the reading of the tomb's hieroglyphs.  In the next few days the investigations will reach the oldest levels of the tomb, where there is clear evidence for more chambers / rooms are "perhaps intact." Two smaller tombs have also been discovered.

The article goes on to describe the project and its scope.

You can follow the ongoing work of the Qubbet el-Hawa project at their dig diary (in Spanish) at (www.qubbetelhawa.es), where there are some great images even if you don't speak the language.

From the Europa Press website

El equipo de investigadores de la Universidad de Jaén (UJA) que desde hace un mes trabaja en la necrópolis de Qubbet el-Hawa en Asuán (Egipto) ha cosechado sus primeros resultados, con el hallazgo de veinte momias de diferentes periodos, así como una gran cantidad de material arqueológico, entre el que se encuentra un sarcófago de madera.

Se trata de la cuarta campaña de excavación que realiza este equipo, dirigido por el profesor de Historia Antigua de la UJA Alejandro Jiménez Serrano, que está centrando sus esfuerzos en una gran tumba construida por un gobernador provincial de la XII Dinastía (1830 a.C.), tal y como ha informado este lunes la institución jiennense.

The two colossi of Memnon are now three!

El Pais  (Jacinto Anton)

Thanks to Amigos de la Egiptologia for the link to this story.

See the full sized version of the lovely photo on the El Pais website.  If you look carefully, you can see Amenhotep III's wife standing, in comparatively miniature form, to the right of his legs.

From the El Pais website

Roughly, the two Colossi of Memnon that stand at the entrance to the ruined mortuary temple of Amenhotep III (on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor) now have a brother.  The new statue was found100 metres behind the two famous statues and originally formed part of the monumental decoration of the ruined temple.  It collapsed with its partner (the colossi of the building were built in pairs) during an earthquake at around 1200BC. The enormous statue, the northern one of the second pair, is a little smaller than its famous neighbours at 18m tall.  Like the so-called statues of Memnon, it represents Amenhotep III.  Following its fall it remained broken on the ground and eventually became covered with water and mud as the water table rose.  It was found in 2002 and removed to solid ground where restoration work was carried out and the pedestal was reinforced with concrete. Last Monday the delicate task of raising the colossus into an upright position was completed.  At the moment the team are still adding fragments to the statue, including the king's right foot and some blocks of the pedestal.  The official opening ceremony will take place on March 1st.

A los dos colosos de Memnon, uno de los iconos más emblemáticos y eternos del Egipto faraónico, que reciben al viajero a la entrada de la necrópolis de Luxor, en la orilla oeste del Nilo, les ha salido un hermano. Un tercer coloso se yergue desde esta semana cien metros por detrás de las dos famosas estatuas, consideradas epítome de las maravillas y misterios egipcios y admiradas ya por los primeros turistas griegos y romanos. Esta tercera estatua, también de cuarcita, formaba parte asimismo de la decoración monumental original del arrasado templo funerario de Amenofis III y cayó derrumbada, con su pareja (los colosos del edificio iban de dos en dos), durante un terremoto alrededor del 1.200 antes de Cristo.

2nd phase of the Khufu solar boat restoration project

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

With three photos.

At an international press conference held on Egypt's Giza Plateau next Monday, Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim is expected to announce the launch of the second phase of the Khufu solar boat restoration project, which is being carried out in collaboration with a Japanese archaeological team from Wasida University.

Ibrahim told Ahram Online that the team would collect samples of the boat’s wooden beams for analysis on Monday in order to draw up accurate plans for the boat's restoration in a special museum located on the plateau.

The first phase of the project, carried out two years ago, assessed the area surrounding the second boat pit with the use of topographical radar surveys. A large hangar has since been built over the second pit, with a smaller hangar erected inside to cover the top of the boat itself. The hangars were especially designed to protect the wooden remains during the project's analysis and treatment phases.

More from iMalqata: Work in the South Village

iMalqata  (Catherine Roehrig)

With two lovely photographs of the blue-painted pottery.

In the first days we were on the site, before we hired any workmen, I stood between several pairs of mounds and eventually chose what I thought was the most likely location. I’m still fairly certain that I have the right pair of mounds – but, after four days, we haven’t found any walls of the “narrow house.” All we’ve found so far are a jumble of mud bricks and some lovely fragments of the distinctive blue-painted pottery that comes from this period – including two joining pieces of an open-mouthed Hathor jar like one we have at the Metropolitan Museum. Pottery is something Malqata has by the ton – though most of it isn’t decorated.

Amara West - Reconstructed doorway with hieroglyph-inscribed lintel

British Museum (Neal Spencer)

With photos.

Five weeks ago, Mary Shepperson revealed the remains of a stone doorway, tumbled into room two of house E13.6. Over the last few days we have reconstructed the gateway in the courtyard of our house – albeit laid flat on the ground rather than vertical…

The imposing appearance of the doorway is now more evident, standing 2.35m tall, with a passageway of 88cm wide by 1.75m tall. In terms of scale, many of our field team would have to stoop to walk through the door.

The lintel is made from an unusually fine sandstone – perhaps from Sai island – whereas the doorjambs are of the poor quality sandstone we more often encounter. This doorway would have been set into the mudbrick wall.

The jambs are not inscribed – any inscription would have been into a layer of white plaster, now largely disappeared. On the lintel, the red- and yellow-painted hieroglyphs invoke the god Amun-Ra and Horus Lord of Ta-sety, and also refer to king Tuthmosis III.

Interestingly, this door was not the main house door, but rather framed the entrance to the central reception room, with a low bench against its back wall.

Lecute notes: University of Basel Kings Valley Project – Suzanne Bickel

Luxor News (Jane Akshar)

As this was the very first lecture about the newly discovered tomb KV64 the room was completely full but Suzanne teased us just a little bit by putting it in context with all the work they have done.

The team are working on the undecorated non royal tombs in the wadi of KV34, originally 10 now 11 with KV64. The focal point of this valley is the tomb of Tuthmosis III KV34, he was a major pioneer of the entire area. The tombs are starting from the beginning of the wadi to KV33 and going back to the entrance again. (if you look on the Theban Mapping Project you can see the layout).
• kV61
• KV29
• KV40
• KV64
• KV26
• KV59
• KV37
• KV33
• KV32
• KV31
• KV30
The royal tombs KV42 and KV34 are in that wadi as well. They wanted to look at who had the privilege to be buried next to the king, was there any meaning in location, the architecture of the tombs etc

The team first started with KV47 Siptah and the fact it broke in to KV32. It was a building accident that occurred 200 years after KV32 had been created. KV32 is Tija the mother of Tuthmosis IV. The debris in the tomb identified her.

Their start point was the Theban Mapping Project http://www.thebanmappingproject.com on that some of their tombs are mapped and some are just indicated as holes filled with debris. However debris can be vital giving clues to the owner. KV29, 31, 40 and 59 are only indicated not mapped. Others like KV26 were mapped but have now been updated with more correct information. 

The future of Libyan heritage and tourism

The New York Times (Mike Elkin)

More than 2,600 years after the Greeks founded the city of Cyrene in the mountains of northeastern Libya, the ancient gymnasium’s high stone walls still shield athletes from the winter winds as they train among the ruins.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi disavowed pre-1969 history as colonialist and un-Libyan. Now that he is gone, heritage-conscious Libyans have drafted a plan to preserve the ruins at Cyrene and promote them as a tourist attraction in a rural area where unemployment is high.

Abdallah al-Mortdy, a 52-year-old architect, grew up just a few kilometers from Cyrene, but did not study the ruins, now a Unesco World Heritage site, until he left Libya at age 19 to study architecture in Florence. In the years since returning home, however, he says he cannot let two or three days go by without taking a stroll through the remains of the vast colony blanketing the hills and valleys of the Green Mountains. Spanning 7 square kilometers, or 3 square miles, the excavated and restored ruins include a temple to Zeus, a sanctuary to Apollo, a Greek agora and a Roman forum, Byzantine baths, and more than 1,000 rock-cut tombs dotting the countryside.

In the 1940s, Italian archaeologists raised many of the walls and columns that had collapsed since an earthquake in the year 365, but about 75 percent of the city lies undisturbed, with bits and pieces poking out of the ground.

EES Magazine: Egyptian Archaeology 40

Egypt Exploration Society

EA 40 will be published in February/March 2012. The EES news pages include a progress report by Chris Naunton on the rehousing of the Society's Lucy Gura Archive, and accounts of two recent trips made by groups of EES members - to Berlin and Ethiopia - as well as news and photographs from the Society's 2011 Annual General Meeting and other events. In addition to regular features such as ‘Digging Diary’  and ‘Bookshelf’  the issue includes the third in the series of short interviews with leading Egyptologists, Five minutes with Neal Spencer, and the following articles:

David Jeffreys, Memphis in the Middle Kingdom: the field school. Inset: Rebuilding the Memphis workroom

Joanne Rowland, The first archaeological field school at Quesna

Kenneth Griffin, The Book of the Dead in the tomb of Karakhamun

Veit Vaelske, Terracottas from Tell Basta

Pascale Ballet and Gergory Marouard, Workshops and urban settlement in Buto. Inset: Bérengère Redon and Guy Lecuyot, The baths of Buto

Robert Schiestl, Investigating ancient settlements around Buto

Angela McDonald and Sally-Anne Coupar, The Egyptological afterlife of Colin Campbell

Manuela Lehmann, The city of Avaris after the New Kingdom

Manfred Bietak, The archaeology of the 'gold of valour'

Margaret Maitland, Pharaoh: ideal and reality

Pierre Tallet and Gergory Marouard, An early pharaonic harbour on the Red Sea coast

Bookshelf has reviews by Alice Stevenson (Tine Bagh, Finds from W M F Petrie's excavations in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek), Rosalie David (John H Taylor, Egyptian Mummies), John H Taylor (Agathe Legros and Fréderic Payraudeau (eds), Secrets de Momies) and Peter A Clayton (Ivor Noël Hume, Belzoni: The Giant Archaeologists Love to Hate), with an account by Anna Baghiani and John J Taylor of the recent identification of the grave of Sarak Belzoni.

Digging Diary has brief reports on recent fieldwork in Egypt, including a note by Susanne Bickel on the recent discovery of KV 64.

Exhibition: Opening the Vaults

My Fox Chicago

Exciting new discoveries at the Field Museum are unlocking some mummy mysteries.

Last summer, the museum staff wheeled out their mummies into a special mobile X-ray scanner in the parking lot. The scanner revealed some never-before-known details about the mummies and what's really inside those wraps.

Some of the mummies have been at the Field Museum for over 50 years, but never have they revealed so much.

The scans and mummies are now on display, and for the first time ever, the Field Museum can get into the minutia of the mummies.

Some of the mummies come from ancient Egypt and others from Peru. There are men and women, girls and boys, and all of them have a story to tell.

Photo for Today - The Ramesseum

Animal mummies, statue (of Hatshepsut?) and other objects found at Abydos

Live Science (Owen Jarus)  

Thanks to Owen Jarus for sending me the above link.

A wealth of new discoveries, from animal mummies linked to the jackal god and human remains to an enigmatic statue, are revealing the secrets of an ancient holy place in Egypt once known as the "Terrace of the Great God."

The mysterious wooden statue may be a representation of Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who ruled the land 3,500 years ago, the researchers say. She was typically portrayed as a man in statues, but this one, giving a nod to femininity, had a petite waist.

The discoveries were made during one field season this past summer by a team led by Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner, director of the excavation and a professor at the University of Toronto. The findings offer insight into Abydos, a site that was considered a holy place, Pouls Wegner said at a recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities in Toronto, Canada.

Sudan Dams Appeal

Subject: Sudan Dams Appeal
Vincent Rondot
Former Director of French Unit/SFDAS
President, International Society for Nubian Studies


Paris, 2 February 2012

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the International Society for Nubian Studies and its staff, please accept our best wishes for the New Year 2012.

We would have preferred doing so under more auspicious circumstances. Indeed, the government of Sudan has maintained its decision to build a dam at Kajbar and, amongst the various hydro-electric projects currently underway, this is undeniably the project with the most disastrous consequences for the archaeological and historic heritage of the Sudan.

As the President of the Society, I was asked to forward the attached message received from the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM); an appeal of our Sudanese colleagues for a salvage and study campaign before the construction of two dams, the first between Kajbar and the Third Cataract (Mahas country); and the second at Shereiq (Fifth Cataract).

Following the salvage operations required by the construction of the Fourth Cataract dam, the present communication is a new appeal by the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums to the international community for the documentation, study and preservation where possible, within a time frame that remains unknown.  The letter from Salah Mohamed Ahmed, Director of the Excavations and Fieldwork at NCAM already presents certain measures that will be taken.

He also mentions the generous offer made by our colleagues at the British Museum to host a first information and consultation meeting on 15 May 2012. I would be grateful if you could let us know whether you will be attending.

It seemed essential to me to distribute this letter as far and wide as possible, evidently to institutions and specialists of Sudan archaeology but also to institutions and archaeologists working in Egypt. I thank you in
advance for your wide distribution of this message.

The letter from NCAM can be found on:
http://preservethemiddlenile.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/ncam-dams-appeal2.jpg

Glasgow team gets £1m grant to study illegal trade in antiquities

The Guardian, UK

Every year, artefacts and antiquities of cultural significance are looted and smuggled around the world, often turning up in private collections or even museums. Last year, a number of objects were stolen from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo during the protests in Tahrir Square.

Now, a team at Glasgow University has been awarded a £1m grant from the European Research Council to study the illegal trade in antiquities.

Researchers will spend the next four years gathering and analysing data on the movements and motives of traffickers, the types of activities involved, such as illegal excavation; transit and purchase; and pricing structures. The aim is to develop new approaches to regulate the international trade of cultural goods and help policymakers better define laws to fight criminal activities.

"It's extremely widespread," said criminologist Dr Simon Mackenzie, who will lead the project. "There are architectural sites and museums that are being looted all over the world, including Britain and the USA, but obviously more so in the developing world. Previous safe areas have become accessible and the material is saleable. Nowhere is safe."

The Sudan Archive

Durham University

Thanks to Chuck Jones's AWOL for this link.

Reference code: GB-0033-SAD
Title: The Sudan Archive
Dates of creation: ca.1880 onwards.
Extent: 800 boxes of papers, 50,000 photographs, 136 cinefilms, 1,000 maps, museum objects and a large amount of related printed material.
Held by: Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections

The Sudan Archive was founded in 1957, the year after Sudanese independence, to collect and preserve the papers of administrators from the Sudan Political Service, missionaries, soldiers, business men, doctors, agriculturalists, teachers and others who had served or lived in the Sudan during the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. It comprises over 330 individual collections of official, semi-official and private papers of British men and women. Each collection is named after the donor who is usually the creator of the records. The collections vary in size from one file to 180 boxes. All levels of colonial society are represented, from Assistant District Commissioner to Governor-General and senior officers of government, as well as from the technical and medical services, the army and the church. The core period covered is 1898-1955, but there is a significant amount of Mahdist material as well as papers relating to the military campaigns of the 1880s and 1890s, while in recent years the scope of the Archive has extended to the period after independence and now contains material up to the present day. Moreover, as officials were frequently seconded or posted to neighbouring countries, or simply passed through them on leave, the Archive also holds substantial numbers of papers relating to Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and African states bordering on the Sudan.

In addition to official and personal papers (correspondence, reports and memoranda, trek notes and diaries, letters home and so on), collections may include a variety of records in other formats such as photographic images (prints, lantern slides and 35mm slides), cinefilms from the 1920s to the 1960s, sound recordings, maps, museum objects and a large amount of related printed material. Most of the material is in English, with a small amount in Arabic.

The material is open for consultation, with the exception of a small number of files containing personal or sensitive material, which have been closed for a specified period.

Permission to make any published use of material from the collection must be sought in advance from the Sub-Librarian, Special Collections (e-mail PG.Library@durham.ac.uk) and, where appropriate, from the copyright owner. The Library will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

Crowdsourcing a solution to the illicit antiquities trade?

The Punching Bag (Larry  Rothfield)

Jason Felch, lucky dog, will be speaking at Google today about "crowdsourcing a solution to the illicit antiquities trade." Sounds promising, though too vague to evaluate before the fact. If the idea is just to put the power of the crowd to work monitoring auction-house catalogs and eBay, however, that is not going to solve the problem of market-driven looting of archaeological sites. Not that catching Sotheby's or the occasional antiquities dealer holding stolen pieces is without value; the market needs this kind of policing. But the market is global, and most of it is not going to be visible to the crowd. Moreover, the antiquities most in need of protection, unexcavated ones, by definition lack the photographic information (or any other information) that Google is designed to share.

Google might, on the other hand, assist in a different mobilization of crowd-policing, by creating in-country means for locals to report looting in progress to their antiquities police. 

Publication of ‘Heritage in Health’ best practice guide

UCL Museums (Linda Thomson)

The publication, ‘Heritage in Health: A guide to using museum collections in hospitals and other healthcare settings’, has just been launched online by UCL Museums & Collections.  This illustrated 24-page guide offers thoughtful and practical solutions for taking museum objects out to adult audiences within healthcare settings and draws upon findings from the UCL and UCLH three year, ground-breaking research project, ‘Heritage in Hospitals’.

The project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) was carried out in conjunction with University College London Hospitals Arts programme. 

Exhibition: John Garstang

Lancashire Telegraph

THE work of a legendary archaeologist is being celebrated in an Egyptian exhibition in Blackburn and Burnley this year.

John Garstang pioneered modern techniques of photographing grave goods at the turn of the 20th Century.

Born in Strawberry Bank, Blackburn in 1876, he attended Blackburn Grammar School and Oxford University before starting work for the famous Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1899.

Petrie pioneered many modern archaeological techniques and was the first to understand how the pyramids were constructed.

Garstang later became an independent excavator, funded by groups of wealthy individuals who were rewarded with finds brought back from Egypt.

Some of his finds ended up in museums across Lancashire, including Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery and Towneley Hall Museum and Art Gallery in Burnley.

Modern day Egyptologist Claire Ollet, from Knuzden, has used Garstang’s original photos to reunite many of the items. 

Photo for Today - The Ramesseum