Hierakonpolis website address changed

Hierakonpolis Online

The Hierakonpolis Online website address, complete with the Nekhen News archive, has changed to: http://www.hierakonpolis-online.org/

Making Egypt 'accessible' for tourists

The Daily News Egypt (Tamim Elyan)

Claudia Ehlers has always dreamed of seeing the pyramids – a dream dismissed by almost everyone she told given the challenges she would face as a physically challenged tourist.

“But I followed my dream in defiance of all difficulties,” Ehlers said.
The German tourist stayed in Egypt for eight days and went on a safari trip on Al-Ryan Lake in her wheelchair. She says her trip exceeded all expectations.

“Everything was so unbelievable, so experience-rich, so fantastic and most importantly so problem-free,” she said, describing her trip.

Ehlers’ adventure started at Cairo Airport where she was carried off the plane by two men. “I was carried out of the airplane in a manner I never experienced before, namely without any utilities; normally the transport in and out of the plane is done with a very small chair, but here it seemed that they didn’t have anything like that. I worried about the two men who carried me because I’m not very light weighted but then I saw a wheelchair in front of the plane.”

Ehlers visited the Cairo Tower where she was helped by her tour guide up the tower to enjoy the view from the top. The next day she paid the pyramids a visit.

The highlight of her trip was when Ehlers gave up her wheelchair and took a ride on a camel with the help of her guide.

Ehlers’ seamless trip was made possible by Egypt for All, the only Egyptian travel agency dedicated to physically challenged tourists, designing programs specifically to cater to their needs.

Established by Sherif El-Hendi and Martin Gaballah in 1999 as an associate of Grabo-tours in Germany, Egypt for All comprises a professional staff devoted to the services of the physically challenged tourist.

El-Hendi received his first delegation in 1999 formed of six tourists on wheelchairs and his client list has been only growing ever since.

Photo for Today - More from the Walters Art Museum

WM-EG013
Funerary Stele of Tembu

Copyright Rick Menges, with my thanks

Date (Period): ca. 1500-1470 BC (New Kingdom)
Medium: limestone with polychrome paint
Measurements: 26 3/4 x 17 11/16 x 4 3/4 in. (68 x 45 x 12 cm)

Item Description:

This round topped funerary stela of Tembu, is carved in very low relief and brightly painted in red, yellow, blue, and black. The decoration comprises of two registers of offering scenes and a register of inscription on the bottom. The top depicts two Wadjit eyes flanking a shen-ring and water ripples with a bowl. Below this Tembu is seated with his wife on a typical 18th-Dynasty double chair. Under the chair and attached to it by a leash, is a pet monkey, holding a mirror and a cosmetic vase, which is a typical feature of New Kingdom stelae. The table in front of the couple holds loosely arranged offerings of bread, beef, vegetables and lotus buds and two jugs on stands below the table. One of the daughters of the couple stands in front of the large wine jar decorated with a "nymphaea caerulea" and presents a bowl of wine to her parents. The middle register depicts the rest of the family, including Tembu's sons Teti, Tetimose, Teiy, and Ahmose, holding various flowers and two daughters Senetnefer and Henut, holding flowers. Three of the sons wear short military kilts in accordance with their titles, while the fourth son wears a long kilt and a shirt. Between the daughters and the sons, is placed an extremely large jar decorated with a lotus flower, and topped with a clay stopper.

Archaeologists unearth granite statue

drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass)

The upper part of a granite double statue of king Amenhotep III (1410-1372 BC) was unearthed at Kom El-Hittan in the west bank of Luxor. Kom el-Hittan is the site of the temple of Amenhotep III, which was once the largest temple on Luxor’s west bank. The temple originally had two entrances: one on the eastern side where the Colossi of Memnon reside, and one at the northern side, where the double statue was located. The statue was found during a routine excavation carried out by an Egyptian team of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny reported that the statue depicts Amenhotep III seated on a throne accompanied by the Theban god, Amun. The king wears the double crown of Egypt, which is decorated with a uraeus.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, remarked that the statue is one of the best new finds in the area because of its expert craftsmanship, which reflect the skills of the ancient Egyptian artisans.

Heritage Key (Ann Wuyts)

With good photos.

A 3,000-year-old double limestone statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III is discovered near Luxor, Egypt.

The statue was found at Kom el-Hittan, at the northern entrance of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III – once one of the largest temples on the west bank of the Nile.

Egypt's Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, said that the statue depicts Amenhotep III seated on a throne accompanied by the – now headless – Theban god, Amun.

The 18th Dynasty pharaoh – who ruled from about 1410 to 1372 BC – wears the double crown of Egypt, which is decorated with a uraeus.

Mr. Abdel Ghaffar, director of the excavations, said that the newly discovered statue of Amenhotep III is 130 cm tall and 95 cm wide.

So far, the upper part of the double limestone statue – found during routine excavations supervised by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) – has been unearthed.

20Minutos

(Thanks to Amigos de la Egiptologia for the link. With photo)

Un equipo de arqueólogos egipcios ha descubierto una estatua del faraón Amehotep III (1410-1372 a.C.) en la ciudad monumental de Luxor, a unos 600 kilómetros al sur de El Cairo, informó este sábado el Ministro de Cultura egipcio, Faruq Hosni.

En un comunicado difundido por el Consejo Supremo de Antigüedades (CSA), el ministro precisó que la parte posterior de una estatua doble de ese rey, esculpida en granito, fue desenterrada en las proximidades de su templo, en el sector oeste del río Nilo.

La pieza representa a Amenhotep sentado sobre un trono al lado del dios Amon, la principal divinidad de Tebas, la capital de Egipto en el Imperio Medio (1975-1640 a.C.) e Imperio Nuevo (1539-1075 a.C), y que se alzaba en lo que hoy es Luxor.

Investigation of theft of Hathor statue

Monsters and Critics

Egyptian officials on Thursday were investigating the theft of a statue of the ancient goddess Hathor from a museum in South Sinai, after the piece was found in the desert a day earlier.

Prosecutors are interrogating security guards at the Serabit el- Khadim temple, where the statue of Hathor stood, security sources said.

Ongoing work at the Avenue of the Sphinxes

Luxor Times

With lots of photographs.

Yesterday after the opening of the Committee meeting on the safeguarding project of New Gourna Village. Dr. Samir Farag invited all media and press representatives to accompany him to have a look on the work is being carried out in the Sphinx avenue in the area behind Mubarak Library.

The Museum of Islamic Art

Al Masry Al Youm

In general, a museum collection is arranged in one of two ways. Either the pieces unfold chronologically, according to the year they were made, or with narrative, attempting to tell a story or teach a lesson. These days in Egypt, chronology is out and narrative is in, at least as long as Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SAC), has anything to say about it.

“Chronologically is bad. It doesn’t teach people,” Hawass said from behind his desk in the SCA building in Zamalek as countless assistants materialized from various doors. A red plastic button with the word “bullshit” sits on his desk. One gets the sense that the official makes frequent use of this toy.

The Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo certainly has a story. It is one, of course, of the artifacts it holds--the largest collection of Islamic art in the world, covering 1400 years of Islamic history from Umayyad to Ottoman. It is a story of advances in medicine and the spread of religion, of funerary traditions and science, of changing social mores.

It is a story of inclusiveness.

New Book: A History of Ancient Egypt

Wiley

A History of Ancient Egypt
Marc Van De Mieroop (Columbia University, USA )
Paperback
336 pages

Outlining the major political and cultural events, A History of Ancient Egypt is an authoritative and accessible introduction to this fascinating ancient culture.

• An accessible chronological narrative that draws on a range of historical sources
• Offers an up-to-date survey of ancient Egypt’s history from its origins to its domination by the Roman Empire
• Considers social and economic life and the rich culture of ancient Egypt
• Places Egypt’s history within its regional context, detailing interactions with Asia and Africa
• Engages students with various perspectives on a range of critical issues with the Key Debate section included in each chapter
• Makes the latest discoveries and scholarship accessible to a wide audience

Book Review: Edward William Lane

Al Ahram Weekly (Jill Kamil)

Jason Thompson's Edward William Lane, "is no mere biography", he explains. "It is a collective biography, in the sense that it is about the clusters of people around Lane. He was a central figure, a planner. They tended to share sources and observations, giving in order to get. But Lane was not like that at all. He was a taker not a giver. Moreover, he was extremely authoritative".

Research can be endlessly seducing. It is certainly so for historian Jason Thompson. Even before his biography on Sir Alan Gardner Wilkinson and His Circle (published by AUC Press in 1992) had reached page-proof stage, the focus of his interest had already honed in on Edward William Lane, a member of the same circle whose fascinating and multi- faceted Description of Egypt had never been published. This massive work, which combines history, geography, city life, village communities, and antiquities between Alexandria and the Second Cataract, was rescued by Thompson from certain oblivion when he located files of unpublished material in the Griffiths Institute. Realising its value and aware that the material was known to only a handful of scholars, he decided to undertake to edit the material and provide an appropriate introduction.

Book Review: Egypt: A Short History

The Maui News

EGYPT: A Short History, by Robert L. Tignor. 363 pages, illustrated. Princeton, $29.95

The title, unconsciously I think, is funny, but Robert Tignor’s book about Egypt gets better as it goes along.

“Egypt” is one of the odder histories I have read, addressed to people who want to travel to Egypt, which is a lot of people: Tourism makes up 10% of Egypt’s national income (not counting the giant subsidies American taxpayers provide). The assumption is that they might want to know something about the place, but not too much.

The early chapters are is a mishmash of a hisstory that, I suppose, most people know at least a little about; that Egypt is the “gift of the Nile, that Pharaoh Ramses II had a big ego and so on. Tignor understates the technological contributions of the ancient Egyptians, mentioning mathematics and a primitive start toward alphabetic writing, but completely ignoring the material contributions. It is hard to imagine modern life without glass, for example.

He also appears to swallow whole the Old Testament stories about Egypt, although archaeology has found no trace of ancient Israelites in the most archaeology-friendly place on earth.

Tignor is an economic historian of modern Egypt, and as the history reaches the area of his lifetime study -- which happens also to be the period where (I conceive) even educated people tend not to know as much as they do about the more exciting era of pyramids, messiahs (even if imaginary) and tombs full of gold -- it becomes more trenchant.

Photo for Today - More from the Walters Art Museum

WM-EG011
Ankh-ef-en-Sekhmet Entertained by a Harpist

Copyright Rick Menges with my thanks

Artist: Anonymous (Egyptian)
Date (Period): ca. 550-525 BC (Late Period)
Medium: carved limestone, traces of red paint
Measurements: 17 5/16 x 25 9/16 in. (44 x 65 cm)

Item Description:

Late Period interest in the past is clearly demonstrated in this work, whose composition, clothing, and poses all recall Old Kingdom and Middle Kingdom works. Details such as the crisp precision of the carving and the presence of personal names date the piece to the Late Period. It shows its owners, Ankh-ef-en-Sekhmet and his wife Hathor-em-hat, to the viewer's left. Their daughter, with close-cropped hair, kneels at center. The three are entertained by a harpist named Psamtik-seneb, who "plays the harp for the good of their spirits everyday." The harpist's name means "may King Psamtik be healthy." The tomb from which this relief came was located in Saqqara, the necropolis (cemetery) of Memphis, an important center for the worship of the goddesses Sekhmet and Hathor, whose names are incorporated into the tomb owners' names.

Alexandria the crossroads

Saudi Aramco World (Edward Lewis)

With photographs.

Visitors to Alexandria are usually surprised by two features: the extent to which the city contributed to and shaped the Mediterranean world, and the complete lack of physical evidence that demonstrates that role.

This is, after all, the city that hosted the renowned Library of Alexandria in the last three centuries bce and could boast such resident scholars as Euclid, Ptolemy and Eratosthenes, the city where the Pharos lighthouse, one of the ancient Seven Wonders, guided vessels from all over the known world to her prosperous port. Alexander the Great founded the city in 331 bce. And Mark Anthony, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and the woman mathematician Hypatia, all, for part of their lives at least, contributed to Alexandria's development into a metropolis with a backdrop of magnificent palaces, temples and public edifices decorated with luxuries from Europe, Africa and the East. Such was the Alexandria's prestige that Diodorus Siculus, in the first century bce, described her as “the first city of the civilized world.”

Alexandria was vulnerable to attack by the Byzantine fleet, so ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab relocated up the Nile and founded what would later become Cairo.Yet aside from the outline of the impressive new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, successor in 2002 to the city's great library, or the 15th-century fort that guards the harbor entrance, modern Alexandria's panorama gives no clue she was once the center of commerce and culture in Egypt, let alone the Mediterranean. Fast-paced building projects and earthquakes have made archeology only a partial, often clouded, window on the city's past. As a result, great emphasis is placed on the written record, with which, fortunately, ancient Alexandria is amply blessed. Travelers, geographers and historians documented the city's topography, her array of impressive buildings, her mixed population and her political structure, giving voice to a past city that has otherwise virtually disappeared.

New Book: Visible Language

Oriental Institute

Thanks to Rhio Barnhart for the above link.

Available as a PDF download. 12.33MB

OIMP 32.

Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East and Beyond

Writing, the ability to make language visible and permanent, is one of humanities' greatest inventions. This book presents current perspectives on the origins and development of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt, providing an overview of each writing system and its uses. Essays on writing in China and Mesoamerica complete coverage of the four "pristine" writing systems — inventions of writing in which there was no previous exposure to texts. The authors explore what writing is, and is not, and sections of the text are devoted to Anatolian hieroglyphs of Anatolia, and to the development of the alphabet in the Sinai Peninsula in the second millennium BC and its spread to Phoenicia where it spawned the Greek and Latin alphabets. This richly illustrated volume, issued in conjunction with an exhibit at the Oriental Institute, provides a current perspective on, and appreciation of, an invention that changed the course of history.

New meteorite impact site discovered

Science Daily

A 2008 Google Earth search led to the discovery of Kamil crater, one of the best-preserved meteorite impact sites ever found. Earlier this year, a gritty, sand-blown expedition reached the site deep in the Egyptian desert to collect iron debris and determine the crater's age and origins.

One day within the last several thousand years, a rare metallic meteorite travelling over 12 000 km/hour smashed into Earth's surface near what is today the trackless border region between Egypt, Sudan and Libya. The impact of the 1.3 m, 10-tonne chunk of iron generated a fireball and plume that would have been visible over 1000 km away, and drilled a hole 16 m deep and 45 m wide into the rocky terrain.

Since then, the crater had sat undisturbed by Earth's geologic and climatic processes, which usually render all but the very largest terrestrial impact craters invisible. It was also, as far as is recorded, unseen by humans.

Book Review: Ancient Egypt: An Introduction

Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Reviewed by Peter C. Nadig)

Salima Ikram, Ancient Egypt: An Introduction. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

It is not easy to write an introduction to ancient Egypt, since so many details, past and present, need to be covered for this fascinating and extremely variant culture. A great deal of this fascination can be attributed to the aesthetic quality of Egyptian art which had left its mark over a period of 3000 years as well as the good preservation of many monuments and objects. Salima Ikram (American University Cairo) provides an excellent introduction – lavishly illustrated with photos and drawings. In nine chapters, the book aims at a general readership not familiar with Egypt by “setting the stage for their further study and investigation”. The focus is not only the various aspects of ancient Egypt’s history and culture, but also their reception as well as rediscovery through the ages.

The book starts with a detailed chronological chart of the periods of Egyptian history from 5000 BC till 30 BC. Kings’ names are given with their Horus and throne names as well as personal names and regnal years where possible (pp. xiii-xxiii). Chapter One (“The Black and the Red”) brings an outline of Egypt’s geography and environment. The author makes it clear that the country's wealth not only lay in the annual inundation of the Nile, but also in its natural borders. The different regions of Egypt, such as the Nile River and the Nile Valley, the Delta, the Western Desert with its oases, and the Sinai Peninsula along with the Eastern Desert and The Red Sea are explained. The second chapter ("Travellers, Thieves, and Scholars") deals with the history of Egyptology and Egyptomania. It began during the New Kingdom when Egyptians themselves began to reflect on the monuments of their past. Among these Prince Khaemwese, a son of Ramesses II stands out, whose restoration inscription can still be seen on a pyramid in Saqqara.

A separate section covers Greek and Roman visitors as well as scholars who wrote about Egypt such as Solon, Pythagoras, Herodotus, Manetho, Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Septimius Severus, and the fourth-century nun Egeria. A short section sums up the interest of Arab scholars in Egypt, some of which studied the ancient monuments or tried to decipher the hieroglyphs.

The Gold Mask of Tutankhamun and Its Significance

Art Museum Journal (Stan Parchin)

British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the Gold Mask of Tutankhamun (ca. 1332-1323 B.C.) in 1925. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Harry Burton recorded the spectacular find in crisp black-and-white photographs, each carefully taken inside the Burial Chamber of the adolescent king's four-room tomb. Developed from fragile glass negatives, Burton's pictures have since etched an indelible impression of ancient Egyptian royalty into the popular imagination. He masterfully captured the mask centuries after Tutankhamun's funeral, a ceremony that occurred more than 10 years following the religiously turbulent Amarna Period of Akhenaten (r. 1353-1336 B.C.), the frail young ruler's iconoclastic father.

While Akhenaten professed singular devotion to the Aten or solar disk, the practice of age-old polytheistic rites persisted throughout the heretic's reign and thereafter.

El equipo de arqueólogos de la UJA descubre numerosas momias en Asuán

Que.es

El equipo de investigadores del Proyecto Arqueológico que la Universidad de Jaén (UJA) tiene en Asuán (Egipto) ha descubierto numerosas momias, una mesa de ofrendas de gran tamaño, una estela y cerámica de uso ritual, en una de las tumbas de la necrópolis de Elefantina.

Desde hace más de tres semanas, un equipo multidisciplinar está llevando a cabo la tercera campaña en la necrópolis de los nobles de Elefantina en Asuán, según ha informado en un comunicado la propia universidad jiennense.

El profesor del Área de Historia Antigua de la UJA y director del proyecto, Alejandro Jiménez Serrano, ha anunciado que, en concreto, "en la tumba número 33, una de las más grandes del cementerio y datada en el 1850 a.C., se ha descubierto una mesa de ofrendas de gran tamaño, numerosas momias", una estela (monumento conmemorativo en forma de pedestal con relieves) y cerámica de uso ritual.

Middle Egypt Trip Report

Luxor News Blog (Jane Akshar)

Thanks to Jane for sharing both the account and a terrific set of photographs from her recent trip to Middle Egypt. Here's a short extract:

Day 1
Left Luxor at 7:30, an earlier start and breakfast boxes might have been a good idea as there was a lot to see on route. We skipped Abydos and Dendera as many of the group had or could see these another time. Our first stop was Akhmim which is the home of the statue of Meritamun, daughter of Ramses II. Similar to Esna it is situated below the level of the town, there is a modest open air museum with some interesting blocks. As well as the very large statue of Meritamun there is a much later statue of Isis as Venus. There were some blocks from the Amarna period with rays of the sun terminating with hands.

Interview with Hawass

Laverdad.es

An interview in Spanish with Zahi Hawass. The only piece of information which was new to me was that Hawass is in talks with the National Geographic regarding the possibility of searching for the sarcophagus of Menkaure in Spanish waters off Cartagena (southeastern Spain). There was a story back in 2008 in The Times (also available online) which mentioned the possibility of searching for the sarcophagus.

¿Va a bucear en aguas españolas en busca del sarcófago de Micerinos?
-Se trata del sarcófago de Micerinos y a Egipto le gustaría cooperar con el Ministerio de Cultura español para intentar encontrarlo. Y les proveeremos de fondos, si es necesario para ello.

-¿Dónde se hundió el barco que trasladaba ese sarcófago?
-Estoy seguro de que está en aguas de Cartagena. Ahora mismo estamos en conversaciones con el National Geographic, y quizás el National podría proporcionar estos fondos.

Photo for Today - more from the Walters Art Museum

Copyright Rick Menges, with my thanks

Temple Relief of Nectanebo II
Artist: Anonymous (Egyptian)
Date (Period): ca. 350 BC (Late Period)
Medium: granodiorite
Measurements: 33 1/4 x 71 1/2 in. (84.5 x 181.6 cm)

Item Description:
Once decorating the lower section of an interior temple wall, this relief depicts gods carrying offering trays supporting cartouches bearing the name of King Nectanebo II, and liquid and floral offerings. The deities bring the agricultural wealth of the nome, or region, they represent in a procession. The hieroglyphic texts praise the king and the god Onuris-Shu. Unlike the sunk relief used on exterior walls, interior walls were decorated with raised relief.