NGC debuts Nefertiti and the Lost Dynasty

Monsters and Critics (Stone Martindale)

Emmy Award-Winning Actress Alfre Woodard Narrates Nefertiti and the Lost Dynasty It is one of Egypt's enduring mysteries. What happened to Nefertiti and her
husband, Akhenaten -- the radical king, and likely father of King Tut? In a dark and mysterious tomb located in the Valley of the Kings, there is a small chamber with two mummies without sarcophagi or wrappings. At times, both have been identified as Queen Nefertiti by scholars, filmmakers and historians. But the evidence has been circumstantial at best.

Now, for the first time, National Geographic Channel (NGC) and Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, use a CT scan machine that can go inside these two mummies to get scientific evidence that will establish whether either could be Nefertiti -- and if not, who they may be.

See the above for the full story.

More information on the same topic is available on Reuters:

The National Geographic Channel will pursue its interest in exploration and expeditions into the unknown with a slate of six new specials centered on such topics as dinosaur fossils, mummies found in China and the mystery of Stonehenge. Also among the topics are an investigation of Egypt's Nefertiti and her husband, Akhenaten, and a collection of ancient human remains discovered in the Pacific Ocean that could signal a new species of humans.

Steve Schiffman, the channel's acting general manager, said the network has been airing expedition-centric programming since its launch seven years ago but now is giving it even more of an emphasis. "Expeditions are very much part of our DNA," he said. "Since 1888, the National Geographic Society has funded over 8,000 research projects around the world. For the channel to embrace expedition as part of our programming approach is like breathing. It's who we are."

Abydos Sound and Light show

Al Ahram Weekly (Rehab Saad)

This piece looks at the development of Ain Al-Sukhna for additional tourism, but right at the end makes a throw-away comment about Abydos:

Part of the revenue of the Ain Al-Sukhna sale will go to the development of hotels owned by the state Egyptian General Company for Tourism and Hotels (EGOTH), affiliated to HOTAC, and to the development of sound and light projects, studios and cinemas. "We intend to build a hotel in Sohag and establish a sound and light project in Abydos. The government will use the revenue to pay for different projects including sewage and the development of roads especially in Upper Egypt," Abdel-Aziz said.

Nubians alarmed about dam plans

Radio Netherlands

In Nubia, Northern Sudan, there is growing anxiety about the planned construction of three dams on the Nile. The Sudanese government refuses to reveal the plans and claims that nothing has been decided upon as yet. But Nubians fear the dams will inundate most of their territory and force hundreds of thousands to leave their homeland.

"Stop Kajbar Dam now! Rescue the Nubian people!" A group of about 25 Nubians protested on Monday in front of the Sudanese and Chinese embassies in The Hague; holding up photographs of four demonstrators who died in a recent clash with the Sudanese police. Nubians are still traumatized by the construction of the huge Aswan Dam by the Egyptian government in the 1960s. In a state of perplexity, 50,000 Nubians were evacuated from the region that had been theirs for thousands of years. Now, some 40 years later, it looks as if the tragedy is about to repeat itself. Energy shortages in the booming capital, Khartoum, made the Sudanese government decide to build three dams on the Nile in Northern Sudan, at Merowe, Kajbar and Dal.

I don't want to appear single-minded, but as well as the enforced relocation of Nubian people - again - there is probably also the issue of the potential loss of heritage from these areas.

Weekly Websites

The Expedition to Punt
Sincere thanks those who emailed in response to my plea for help finding online sources for this text: Tim Groot, Antje Spiekerman and Heimo Vesala. The results are as follows:

From the World History Primary Source Document Library website, here is a translation of the story in PDF format.

On the St Andrews University website there is a super resource providing transliterations of various inscriptions from ancient Egypt, all in PDF format, including the Expedition to Punt (from Breasted's Ancient Records of Egypt, Volume 2.

And from the Maat-ka-Ra Hatschepsut website by Dr Karl Leser there is a page showing various details of the Expedition with images (illustrations, photographs and a diagram showing the arrangement of the scenes), and a commentary on the text, including a short list of transliterations for some of the more unusual terms describing items acquired from Punt. The photograph of slightly damaged painted relief the lion, at the very end of the page, is lovely. The entire site is well worth a visit if you are interested in Hatshepsut, and is available in English and German. If you use the site to hunt for references to Deir el Bahri, note that it is referred to by its original name of Dser Djeseru.

Just for curiosity, the original Chapter 8, Queen Hatasu, and Her Expedition to the Land of Punt from Pharaohs Fellahs and Explorers by the remarkable Amelia Edwards is available online on the UPenn's Digital Library resource at this address.

ECHO Weblinks
This is a very useful set of links to just about every institution, archaeological mission and enterprise working in Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology right now. One or two of the links are broken, but the vast majority are active.

UPenn Online Books Library
James Breasted's five volumes of Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1906-7) are online at the above address

Predynastic and Early Dynastic - Bibliography and Chronology
For anyone starting out with studies in the Predynastic and Early Dynastic, the bibloiography and chronology supplied on this Trinitiy University page may well be of use. It has been put together to compliment a course being taught at the University. It also provides a link to the Oriental Institute's "maps" page, where a map of Egypt with all key sites is displayed.

Electronic publishing: the example of BMSAES
A fascinating 15-page paper by Nigel Strudwick, available online in PDF format. Here are his opening paragraphs:

Informatique et Egyptologie has tried to place itself in the forefront of encouraging developments in information technology (informatique, Informatik) into use in Egyptology. Issues which have beenaddressed, and which continue to be addressed, include databases, hieroglyphic word-processors, and the Internet. The stress over the past twenty years has very much been on encouraging developments to aid research, but the group has paid relatively little attention as to how this research should be disseminated and how the technologies we espouse so readily in other spheres might be turned to this end. It is now time for us to lead the way in publishing material via electronic media, since all work which has no publication might, in many ways, have been not done at all.

What is an electronic publication? In theory the term should refer to any document produced electronically and available in some way for public viewing, free or at cost. In practical terms I am thinking rather of completed work which traditionally would see the light of day in print.The most common method these days for presenting the results of research is via a web page, either as a complete web site, individual articles
or a journal-like publication available over the Internet. A CD ROM which fits the criteria of distribution just mention is another method, which these days tends to concentrate on large datasets and lends itself particularly to data which is not likely to be modified. It is not difficult to quote examples of both, particularly web sites, the latter of which lend themselves well also to publishing interim material on the way to the final report. The best example of a CD-ROM for our purposes is the AEB, but it might also prove an interesting adjunct to publish some of the raw data for a book in this way too.

Today the move is for material to be available on the Internet, although much of what I have to say below is applicable to any electronic format. My aim is to survey
the advantages and problems of the concept, and to look at some possible solutions. I wish to draw the reader’s attention to two particular publications which illustrate some of the concepts of electronic publication within the archaeological and Egyptological area.

If you want to check out BMSAES (British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan - all available free of charge online), please note that its home page has moved to a new address on the British Museum website.


Books of the Heavens
Another concise overview from The Nile Pharaoh blog, accompanied by illustrations. Here's an extract, but see the above page for more:

After the death of Akhenaten, signaling the end of the Amarna Period, we find a new set of Books related to the afterlife. These books centered around Nut, who swallows the sun god in the evening, only to give birth to him in the morning. During the day The sun god passes visibly along her body, but during the night, he travels through her body back to the place where he will rise once more.

Beginning with Ramesses IV, two of the Books of the Sky were usually placed next to each other on the ceilings of royal tombs. They depicted a double representation of Nut, back to back. The the focus is on the sun god, other heavenly bodies are also included. Generally speaking, the books emphasize cosmography and the topography of the sky, a topic which had its beginnings in the Book of the Heavenly Cow, though the astronomical ceilings found in the tombs of Seti I (KV17) through Ramesses III (KV11) can also be viewed as precursors to the Books of the Sky (heavens). These books are generally considered to consist of the Book of Nut, the Book of the Day and the Book of the Night.

Video: Zahi Hawass and Catharine Roehrig on Hatshepsut

River Front Times

A 26 minute video about the CT Scan and DNA tests carried out on the mummy of Hatshepsut. This is actually quite illuminating. Zahi Hawass is very coherent on the subject, and he is ably supported by Catharine Roehrig from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. If you are interested in this subject, this video is informative. One of the facts that I either missed in previous reports or has been reported for the first time in this video is that the brain, which would normally have been removed, was left in place in these mummies.

There are extracts from the Discovery Channel's forthcoming Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen, which will give you an idea of whether or not you want to watch it - it is a modern style popular documentary, with actors playing the roles of the key figures, lots of shimmering fabrics and a considerable amount of hype.

There is a transcript of the interview available on the International Herald Tribune website (easiest to read in the Printer Friendly format, because it extends over more than a dozen pages).

There is a short article about the making of the documentary on The Star Online. Further details are also to be found on the same website, with photographs provides another summary of the Hatshepsut discovery story.

Request for information - I promise not to carry on raving about the Bloomsbury hieroglpyh course, but one of the texts that we translated was the Expedition to Punt from Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el Bahri, and it was terrific. I haven't got time to find an online copy of the original hieroglyphic text at the moment (a quick look on Google failed to result in the complete text), but if anyone knows of an online location for this, please email me with the URL - I would very much appreciate it.

CULTANT's Heritage Panorama Patent celebration

State Information Service

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif attended a celebration held Wednesday 11/7/2007 night at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina's Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage CULTNAT headquarters marking the occasion of receiving the Heritage Panorama patent from the Scientific Research Academy. The government will continue to support the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage which plays an important role in the fields of heritage and culture, Nazif said at the celebration.

Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamel referred to partnership between the ministry and the library in terms of supporting such important center and the key role played by the ministry in boosting the technological infrastructure in Egypt. CULTNAT, located in the Smart Village, is currently the Cairo headquarters of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to which it is linked electronically. The Center aims at using the latest technological innovations to document Egypt's cultural heritage with both its aspects: tangible and intangible, as well as Egypt's natural heritage with includes information about the natural areas and their biological components.

The implementation of the center's work plan is carried out in collaboration with several national and international organizations. Introducing Egypt's heritage through the media and electronic publication leading to building public awareness and training of professionals in the field of heritage are among the Center's main objectives.

The St Louis Mask issue is still alive and kicking

River Front Times (Malcolm Gay)

Some of you may remember that a very beautiful funerary mask, currently located in the St Louis Art Museum, has been the topic of repatriation disputes in the past. I have covered this in a number of posts (click the link for all the available references), and Geoffrey Tassie has provided an articulate summary of some of the issues online (posted February 2006). I thought that this impasse had slipped off the list of Egyptian repatriation grievances, but apparently the issue has been revived by Hawass in an interview.

During a discussion of the recently identified mummy of queen Hatshepsut on the July 9 edition of the Charlie Rose Show, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, again called out the Saint Louis Art Museum for its refusal to return the Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask to Egypt. Hawass contends that the ornate funereal mask, which depicts a woman of the Nineteenth Dynasty, was illegally removed from Egypt after its discovery in 1952. The history of the mask was the subject of "Out of Egypt," a Riverfront Times feature story published early last year. Toward the end of the Rose interview, Hawass stated that although he has
overseen the repatriation of roughly five thousand Egyptian artifacts over the past five years, one prize has eluded him: "We still have one mask in [the] Saint Louis Museum of Art [that was] stolen from Egypt," said Hawass. "The museum does not want to return it."

There is a video recording of the interview on the above page, which contains the relevant pronouncement and also contains an extract from the programme Egypt's Lost Queen.

Bloomsbury Summer School - Hieroglyphs (Next Steps)

http://www.egyptology-uk.com/bloomsbury/
This may sound like a ruthless plug for the Bloomsbury Summer School in London, which runs a number of week-long courses during the University's summer vacation. And actually, it probably is, because it is a brilliant and much admired series of courses which make Egyptology accessible to anyone who wants to participate. However, beyond wanting to support this excellent institution, I thought that it might be of interest to those considering taking a hieroglyph course to hear what one week's intensive learning experience is actually like.

There were two groups - those who were beginners and those who wanted to take the next steps. I was in the latter group. Days start at 10am and end at 1715. There are tea and lunch breaks, with coffee/tea/juice and biscuits in a comfortable common room, but the rest of the day consists of solid learning. Mark Collier and Bill Manley take the two groups in shifts. This year the lecture rooms were in the sparklingly new School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies (SSEES -prounounced "cease"), and they were excellent. The room where everyone congregated for breaks was in the History Department building, where tea, coffe and really rather nice biscuits were served. There was also a huge study-room allocated to us in SSEES for those who wished to sit and study in break times.

The five day course that I attended was called Hieroglyphs - The Next Steps and was headed by Bill Manley and Mark Collier. I was terribly worried that I might have bitten off more than I could chew and would either hold up the class or find myself lost, but as soon as we all gave our little "my name is x and I have this experience with hieroglyphs" speeches (at Bill's request) it became clear that there were hugely different levels of ability and knowledge. The course, fortunately, has been structured to cope with that situation.

Our expert tutors were, as I have already mentioned, Mark Collier and Bill Manley - authors of the fabulous and best selling self-teaching book How To Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs. They ran the course with the very able assistance of Glen Godenho, who is doing a PhD on the First Intermediate Period, brave soul that he is (have you seen First Intermediate inscriptions??). Jose Perez Accino was originally penned in for the week (my first ever hieroglyph tutor), but was unable to attend for reasons completely beyond his control. The three of them make a great team, with completely different teaching styles that complement each other perfectly, and helped with our own very different levels of knowledge and learning abilities. Because they were working in shifts, the different teaching styles also offered a very welcome way of breaking up the day and keeping attention focused. The three of them are articulate, never lost for a new way of explaining a difficult concept, and they never leave you feeling that even your most stupid error is unacceptable - they emphasize that difficulties are all just part of the learning curve.

The course is a mixture of lectures and closely supervised reading. The lectures are used to target notorious areas of difficulty, unpack them (or break them down) and then rebuild them slowly and carefully with numerous examples until they are understood. The supervised reading consists of texts provided in photocopies of texts (or those in the Collier and Manley book if the student prefers) which the student works on individually (or with the collaboration of neighbours), while the teaching team work their way around the room spending considerable amounts of time addressing difficulties and queries.

The activity of the very first morning of the first day initially seemed very strange to me. I was expecting a lecture, but we were instructed to read texts that were provided, and that we would be assisted when required. It turned out to be a very good idea. The exercise forced us back into the read-transliterate-translate mode that you simply must get into if you are going to make any headway at all. I was astonished at how poorly I began and how quickly I progressed, using my own forgotten knowledge and Glen's much-needed assistance when I came unstuck. The reading sessions were truly valuable to me because I could yell for help when I was struggling with a concept or specific phrase. When I couldn't go any further, there was always someone to tell me where I was missing the essential point.

The lectures were excellent. To give you an example of the scope of them, tenses, participles, relative forms and pronouns were all dealt with. No-one pretends that they are not confusing, but we are encouraged to grapple with the difficulties, we revisit them many times, and learn to tell the difference between different grammatical forms. On one day Bill Manley gave us the friendly version of participles in the morning, and in the afternoon Mark Collier gave us the harsh version. The one reinforced the other brilliantly.

Talking to other students, it became clear that some preferred Bill's allegro version and others preferred Mark's more staccato approach. But because they BOTH teach the course, the different styles don't conflict, they reinforce and compliment.

We were also encouraged by both Bill and Mark not only to look at the grammar and vocabulary, but to look behind the words to the lives (and afterlives) of the people who left their texts for us to read. This provided us with the idea that the concepts of death and the afterlifew are very different, and that phrases like "travelling to the west" are, when read in the context of funerary texts, not about going to make a new life in America, but about going into the underworld. The language is explored in terms of the exact words and phrases used to build up an empirical view of the religous and social context. I began to feel as though I was getting into the minds of some of the people who left stelae at Abydos.

We were encouraged to interrupt to ask questions, and we are expected to help out the lecturers by participating with answers to their questions.

By Thursday I was completely exhausted, but in a very satisfying way, having felt that I had achieved something very worthwhile.

By the end of the day on Friday I was uncertain if I could actually articulate anything in any language ever again for the rest of my life - my brain had completely turned to mush. Last night I actually woke up muttering in ancient Egyptian - the first words of a text that I had been reading yesterday. I am not sure what that says about the week, but I suppose it could be argued that I am thinking of ancient Egyptian as just another foreign language, rather than the alien and inaccessible code from another time and place that it once seemed.

We all came away with photocopies of texts which we should be able to tackle now, and I am looking forward to continuing to torture ancient Egyptian grammar as I have all week - but certainly with fewer mistakes than in the past. I am also conscious now, thanks to comparisons by Mark between ancient Egyptian and English expressions, that my modern English grammar is really not up to scratch, but I am far too tired and old to tackle it right now, so please accept my apologies for a very scrappy post!

I cannot believe how much I have learned. I had reached a certain level of competence by myself, but in this week I have made huge leaps beyond a point beyond which I was simply unable to reach without assistance. Mark Collier took us through two texts on the last day of the course, which we tackled as a group, "chanting" the translation together, and I was staggered at how much we could all could translate without effort. It was a big contrast to the beginning of the week.

More than anything, I came away with the idea, drilled into us by Mark, that if there is a part of a word that does not resemble its standard dictionary format because it includes an extra hieroglph, then that hieroglyph needs to be accounted for. Never avoid an extra sign - if it is there, it has a purpose and is doing something useful which will give a huge amount of information about the sense of the sentence and what it means. The idea that Egyptian grammar is a window into the subtleties of the Egyptian mind is very powerful and seductive, and whenever I see an extra hieroglyph in a word, I now feel interested rather than daunted.

It is quite clear that many people who did either this or the beginners' course in 2006 have not touched a hieroglyph since then. It is also clear from all the comments that this is a source of considerable regret to them, but that people have not devised a way of comforatably fitting hieroglyph revision into their lives. Jose Perez Accino told my beginner class a few years ago that hieroglyphs are like Tefal - non-stick. He was so right. If you don't have a plan to keep going with the language, to revise and reinforce your learning, it will fade from your mind. Part of the value of the course is that it gives you the entire tree-trunk (Mark's term) from which you can branch off and learn more. But you need to keep reinforcing that basic tree-trunk of knowledge. I am going to work through the Collier and Manley book again to reinforce knowlege that seems to wax and wane on a daily basis, but I am worrying about how to ensure that what I have learned this week will stay with me - that is something that needs to be resolved.

Looking beyond the hieroglph course itself, the organizers of the Summer School, (Christopher Coleman, Lucia Gahlin and Jan Picton) are authorities in their own right, and are committed to making things work. They are helpful, friendly and informative, and their genuine enthusiasm is contagious. The students who attend the courses are from many different backgrounds and nations. The social receptions and parties are not obligatory, but they offer genuinely undemanding relaxation, together with (Hna) a good opportunity to meet people who share a basic set of interests.

Serious thanks to the Summer School for the great party to mark the end of the course yesterday night - it was lovely. There was wine, there were strawberries the size of tennis balls, a roof terrace with a great view, and it was super to exchange notes with people with whom I had sat, but not exchanged conversation, for the last five days. One of the really nice things about the Summer School turns out to be that one meets some absolutely lovely people, both new and familiar, so here are a few personal hellos. A quick hello to Amanda, who was sitting in front of me, is infinitely more hieroglyphically capable than me, and reads this blog! Bob, if you read this, I loved the shirt - the last time I saw you (at Highclere) you were in a very posh suit. Francis - more beers are required and I promise to fix your poor laptop this weekend. Christopher, Lucia and Jan - such a pleasure to meet you at long last. And wishing all the best for Mark on his potentially traumatic journey via Virgin trains to Chester - his story did make me smile, because I have to do the Euston to Chester route so often myself. I could tell some hair raising stories about Virgin trains, but I'll spare you.

I am taking another course next week at Bloomsbury, on which I will again offer a few remarks - Tombs with a View by Dr Steven Snape. Quite a few of those on the hieroglyph course will also be taking that course, or one of the other two courses that take place next week.

I hope that this offers just a little insight into what it is like to take a hieroglyph course in general, and at Bloomsbury in particular.

Finally, to anyone who is wondering why I only updated the blog ridiculously late last night and why I haven't answered emails in my usual quick-fire style - you need to blame Mark Collier, Bill Manley and Glen Godenho. By the time I've arrived home every night this week all I have wanted to do is float in the bath with a large glass of wine before falling face down on my bed until the alarm gate-crashes my dreams. All email replies, website updates and other responsibilities will be actioned this weekend. Plan A was actually to spend the entire weekend asleep, but life must go on, even post-hieroglyphs!

For anyone interested in reading some of the classic texts, check out the Ancient Egyptian Language website, which has the texts and some transliterations for a number of famous stories including Sinuhe, the Shipwrecked Sailor and the Eloquent Peasant. The texts are freely available with no registration required.

For anyone intersted in revising and keeping up their skills, have a look at the GlyphStudy group, which is an email list of people working through Allen and offering a lot of very strong mutual support by both the moderator, Karen, and its voluminous membership - again, it is free of charge, but you will need to register. I've also thrown together a page on hieroglyph resources for those who want to keep up with their revision on an ongoing basis.

Apologies for the multiple postings of this commentary - I have had the usual problems with the formatting and line spacing. I will be a much happier and saner person when the guys who run the Blogger service actually get this issue resolved.

Saturday Trivia

The New KonTiki

Some scientists will go to amazing lengths to prove a theory. Botanist and archaeologist Dominique Görlitz is no exception. He's setting sail to cross the Atlantic -- against the wind -- in a reed boat.

Long before Columbus or the Vikings ever set foot on American soil, Stone-Age man made regular trans-Atlantic trips in reed-hulled sailboats, according to Görlitz' theory. The ancient mariners could have established trade routes between the Americas, Europe and Africa by making use of the Gulf Stream and prevailing winds as many as 14,000 years ago. To test his theory, the 40-year-old German, accompanied by 11 volunteers, will attempt the journey of over 6,000 kilometers, setting sail in the Abora 3, a 41-foot-long (12.5-meter), 12-foot-wide (3.7-meter) boat made completely out of reeds and rope, from New York on July 11 and hoping to land in Spain within 65 days. . . .

Görlitz said he believes the discovery of tobacco beetles and cocaine -- native to the Americas -- in the Egyptian tombs of Ramses II and Tutankhamen, both of whom lived around 1300 B.C., along with the Stone-Age cave drawings of boats and ocean currents founds near Gibraltar strongly support the idea that trans-Atlantic trade occurred long before Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492.

Illuminated 4 ft mummy
You have to love it:

This visible day and night illuminated 4 foot mummy has a special silk screened surface of highly-reflective material that fills-out the frame, making it visible day or night. This mummy is outlined by 100 clear white lights that are crafted from bulbs rated for 3,000 hours of use, and are securely attached to the rust- and weatherproof frame.
This 4 foot mummy will fold flat for storage.

Fiction Book Review: Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

Nefertiti tells the story of a powerful woman's rise and fall in Ancient Egypt. Through the eyes of her younger sister, Mutnodjmet, we are introduced to a young Nefertiti, destined to one day become a powerful ruler. Beautiful beyond compare and power-hungry, Nefertiti is a fascinating character. As the pages turn her actions become more outrageous and you begin to realize that power is everything and whoever controls the throne has the power.

Nefertiti marries Prince Akhenaten, who has come into line for the throne with the suspicious death of his older brother. Akhenaten is a reckless unstable young man and Nefertiti is chosen by his mother to sway Akhenaten away from some of his more disastrous views. He believes that there should only be one god in Egypt and that the Pharaoh should be his only voice, not some priests in a temple. Suspicious of
everyone, including his parents, Akhenaten is determined to alter Egypt’s destiny.

See the above pages for more.

More re recent discoveries re economic organization of Kush

The University of Chicago Chronicle (William Harms)

Archaeologists from the Oriental Institute have discovered a gold-processing center along the middle Nile in the Sudan, an installation that produced the precious metal sometime between 2000 and 1500 B.C. The center, along with a cemetery they discovered, documents extensive control by the first sub-Saharan kingdom, the kingdom of Kush.

The team found more than 55 grinding stones made of granite-like gneiss along the Nile at the site of Hosh el-Guruf, about 225 miles north of Khartoum. The region also was known as Nubia in ancient times. Groups of similar grinding stones have been found on desert sites, mostly in Egypt, where they were used to grind ore to recover the precious metal. The ground ore was likely washed with water nearby to separate the gold flakes. “This large number of grinding stones and other tools used to crush and grind ore shows that the site was a center for organized gold production,” said Geoff Emberling, Director of the Oriental Institute Museum and a co-leader of the expedition. The research was funded by the National Geographic Society and the Packard Humanities Institute, which also offered to support all the other teams working in the Fourth Cataract salvage project, the location of the University’s expedition.

Do have a look at the site - there is lots more information and some good photographs.

317 antiquities pieces to be displayed in Japan

State Information Service

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni approved the travel of an antiquities team to Japan to inaugurate the Egyptian monuments exhibition to be staged in the museum of the University of Asida, in the City of Sengoku on July 31, 2007 to last till September 9. The team is headed by Dr. Zahi Hawas Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Hawas said this is the sixth tour be Egyptian antiquities in the Japanese cities which started Mid-July last year and will last till the middle of the year 2008. The exhibition will include 317 pieces date back to various historical epochs. The exhibition is to tour ten Japanese cities till the year 2008. Egypt will receive one million pounds for that in two installments, he added.

Geoarchaeology August 2007

Geoarchaeology

The journal Geoarchaeology has a number of fascinating papers focusing on the Mediterranean and Near East (part 2) in its August 2007 issue (Volume 22, Issue 6). Have a look at the above page for more information, with titles and abstracts, including Holocene climatic change and human settlement between the central Sahara and the Nile Valley: Archaeological and geomorphological results by Olaf Bubenzer and Heiko Riemer.

Part 1 of the Mediterranean and Near Eastern special issue (Volume 21, Issue 7, October 2006) also had an article on Egypt, focusing on the Western Desert: A digital elevation model as a base for the reconstruction of Holocene land-use potential in arid regions by Andreas Bolten, Olaf Bubenzer and Frank Darius

The June 2007 issue also had an interesting paper: An examination of groundwater within the Hawara Pyramid, Egypt by K. Keatings, G.J. Tassie, R.J. Flower, F.A. Hassan, M.A.R. Hamdan, M. Hughes, and C. Arrowsmith. I had to give that one a plug - Geoffrey Tassie is a friend.

If you are not a subscriber and don't have access via an institution, you can purchase 24 hour access to the articles on the Geoarchaeology website. The full listing of all Geoarchaeology issues can be accessed here.

TV Review: Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen

Variety

This anonymous reviewer doesn't much like the forthcoming Discovery Channel show about the identification of a mummy as Hatshepsut, describing it as "a bit of a snooze". Have a look at the above page for more details, but here's an extract:

Much of the two hours follows Hawass as he seeks to identify the mummified remains of Hatshepsut, a 15th-century B.C. ancestor of King Tut who wrested power from her stepson, controlled Egypt and had evidence of her reign expunged following her death.
Producer-director Brando Quilici certainly goes the extra mile trying to wring suspense out of the exercise -- as the press release pledges, to "bring archaeology alive for viewers." At one point, there's even an honest-to-God scream on the soundtrack when a mummified face is revealed.
Sorely lacking, however, is anything approaching a "Rosebud" moment. Moreover, despite the wild-eyed salesmanship by Hawass and the eagerness of Stanford professor Kara Cooney -- who joins in attempting to put the pieces together -- the final payoff seems relatively mundane in the eyes of a novice.

Zahi Hawass

The New York Sun (Kate Taylor)

Short piece about Hawass and his latest interests.

Egypt currently has a dozen new museums under construction — and not enough masterpieces of ancient art to fill them, the secretary-general of the Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said yesterday in an interview.

"People used to say that Egypt does not have good museums. We have better museums now than they have," Mr. Hawass, who is in New York to promote the Discovery Channel documentary, "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen," about the possible identification of the mummy of Hatshepsut, said. But "we don't have enough objects," Mr. Hawass said.

More re recent CT scans

State Information Service

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni has said that CT-scan results have ruled out that one of the newly discovered mummies in Luxor was that of ancient queen Nefertiti. A team of Egyptian archaeologists and researchers suggested that one mummy was of King Akhnaton. The same team recently discovered the mummy of Hatshepsut. Dr Zahi Hawwas, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the tests are part of a large-scale project to identify all discovered mummies believed to be that of the royal dynasties. He said the head of the research team, professor of radiology at Cairo University, has concluded that the newly discovered mummy of a young woman cannot be the beautiful queen Nefertiti. "Sophisticated CT-scan showed the opposite," he said.

Qurta rock art

National Geographic (Dan Morrison)

This story is actually several weeks old, but since as National Geographic have now picked up on it, here it is again, with a photograph.

The team found several additional panels of artwork over a 1-mile-long (1.66 kilometer-long) stretch of 230-foot-tall (70-meter-tall) sandstone cliffs.
There is "little doubt" the engravings are 15,000-years-old, Huyge said. They depict a now extinct species of wild cow whose horns have been recovered from Paleolithic settlements nearby.
The drawings would be examined for lichens and organic grime called "varnish rind" that could be carbon dated or subjected to another process known as uranium series dating, Huyge added. Because the rocks are inorganic, they cannot be dated directly using these methods.

For the older articles, see the recent publication on the Antiquity website, and Nevine El Aref's excellent summary on Al Ahram Weekly

Travel: Memphis, Saqqara and Dashur

Economic Times / India Times (Bidisha Bagchi)

Short article about a visit to destinations near Cairo.

Dahshur was in the military zone till 1996 therefore it thankfully got saved from the camel drivers, horse owners, hawkers, tour groups and their guides who infest the pyramid site of Giza and litter it.

UK Archaeology Week

Council for British Archaeology

It's a very slow news day today, so here's a quick plug for the UK's National Archaeology Week which features events and activities throughout the UK from 14th to 22nd July 2007 (including the Portable Antiquities Scheme Archaeological Finds Roadshows).

Full details can be found by clicking here.

KV55 - CT-Scan of mummy (Akhenaten or Smenkhkare?)

National Geographic (Brian Handwerk)


CT Scans have been used on the KV55 mummy with a view to discovering its identity.

The mummy's identity has generated fierce debate ever since its discovery in 1907 in tomb KV 55, located less than 100 feet (30 meters) from King Tutankhamun's then hidden burial chamber.

So an international team of researchers led by Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, used a CT scanner to peer inside the body and those of several other Valley of the Kings mummies. (The expedition was partially funded by the National Geographic Society, which owns National Geographic News.)

The scan revealed a number of striking physical similarities between the mystery mummy and the body of Tut, including a distinctive egg-shaped skull. (Related photo gallery: King Tut's New Face) . . . .

The CT scan supports the idea that the mummy is Akhenaten by revealing it as a male between the ages of 25 and 40 who shares many physical similarities with Tut—assuming Akhenaten was Tut's father, as some experts believe. The mystery mummy's strange elongated, egg-shaped skull, called dolichocephalic, is strikingly similar to Tutankhamun's. The jaw, cheekbones, cleft palate, impacted wisdom teeth, and slight scoliosis of the spine are all also similar to Tut's—suggesting familiar traits that may have been passed on from father to son.

However, even Hawass has recommended caution re the identification, saying that the mummy could actually belong to one of a number of people, and Aidan Dodson believes that the mummy is that of Smenkhkare, but says that there will probably never be universal agreement about the identification of this mummy. The article goes on to mention the failed attempts to identify Nefertiti.

A closer look at the page's image of the scans is also available by clicking on the small image on the first page, or by clicking here. Click on the link immediately beneath the image on the new page to see a six-photograph slide show.

See the above page for the full story (over two pages).

Whilst we're in the Eighteenth Dynasty, there is a short but useful summary of the Hatshepsut DNA test, for anyone who has managed to miss it, on the Courier Mail website.

EAIS Newsletter June 2007

EAIS
The newsletter of the Egyptian Antiquities Information System is available online at the above address. As well as a number of short news items, the contents for this issue include

• A useful introduction to the EAIS team and its activities (including information about how foreign missions can help to update the EAIS database)
• A report on the sustainability of the EAIS project
• An overview of the status of Governorate al-Wadi al-Gadid which includes the oases of Kharga, Farafra and Dakhleh)
• A CRM project in Luxor's West Bank