145 Islamic artifacts stolen from AUC

bikyamasr

Egypt`s Minister of State for Antiquities Zahi Hawass said on Tuesday that around 145 Islamic artifacts were stolen from the American University in Cairo in March.

He said in a statement that along with the artifacts, 50 other replicas were stolen from a storage house belonging to the University.

Hawass added in his statement that the thefts took place between March 15 and March 17, saying that after an inventory, 145 artifacts and 50 replicas were found to be missing.

More on the Norwich Shroud - Ancient Egyptian spells for a high-ranking lady

British Museum (John Taylor)

In the last few weeks the shroud of Ipu has given up more – but not all – of its secrets. A close comparison of the piece belonging to Norwich Castle Museum with a photograph of the portions in the Cairo Museum has shown that the torn edges certainly join. The Cairo fragments have parts of spells from the Book of the Dead, some of the missing words of which are supplied by the piece belonging to Norwich.

All of the texts on the Cairo pieces have been published by Irmtraut Munro, and I have now identified those on the Norwich section. So we can now say that the shroud contained the words of at least 23 spells, and it is possible that others were originally present, which are now lost.

The texts on the Cairo portion include spells to allow the dead person freedom of movement, air to breathe and the ability to control one’s heart. There is also a self-contained group known as the ‘Transformation Spells’, which enabled the dead to assume different forms, including those of a falcon, a heron, a swallow and the god Ptah.

GE Healthcare Gives CT Scans to Mummies

Today's TMJ4 (Jesse Ritka)

They have been dead for thousands of years, but some very special patients could still help save lives. They date back to 250 B.C. but they still have access to the latest in CT scan technology.

Nilesh Shah of GE Healthcare CT Scans tells TODAY’S TMJ4 Jesse Ritka "These are built for living patients to help them and get treated better but now they get mummies scanned. We tell patients when they are being scanned to hold their breath I guess we don't have that problem with the mummies, they are very still."

A selection of mummies from the Mummies of the World Exhibit may be thousands of years old but scientist at the GE Healthcare Campus in Waukesha hope their ancient remains help the patients of tomorrow.

Researchers found a circular hole on a CT scan of one of the mummy’s sculls, it could be evidence of early Egyptian brain surgery.

Photographs of discovery of puppy mummies

National Geographic

Photographs on the above page.

As part of the first full excavation of Egypt's ancient Dog Catacombs, scientists examine 2,500-year-old animal remains—a small sample of the roughly eight million animal mummies in these tunnels.

Likely supplied by ancient puppy mills, most of the mummies are dogs, and many were just hours old when taken for mummification, according to new research based on the summer 2010 excavation.

Snaking beneath the desert at the ancient royal burial ground of Saqqara (map), the Dog Catacombs were discovered more than a century ago. But only now is research shedding light on the massive number of mummies found in this complex of tunnels and chambers dedicated to Anubis (picture)—jackal-headed god of the afterlife.

Poorly mummified and piled high, the carcasses long ago deteriorated into indistinct heaps, experts say.

Hawass sworn in as Minister of Antiquities, again

Egypt State Information Service

Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawas took on Monday 4/4/2011 the constitutional oath in presence of the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi.

After the swearing-in ceremony, Hawas and Tantawi discussed new ideas to develop the performance of the newly-formed ministry.

Tantawi underlined the importance of coordinating with international bodies concerned to protect Egypt's monuments and restore those stolen abroad.


Hawas expressed appreciation for re-assigning him to hold the antiquities profile, saying he agreed with Tantawi that the immediate removal of all encroachments on antiquities' lands would be on the top of his priorities.

He said he will make a list of all transgressions and will set a timetable for removing them.

He also promised to work in coordination with the Armed Forces as well as the tourism and antiquities police to restore all stolen monuments.

Hawas added he will continue the construction of the national projects that were suspended because of the latest events in Egypt and will open the already-finished ones, including the Hanging Church and Suez National Museum.

Egyptian authorities stop truck driver from smuggling antiquities to Jordan

Al Masry Al Youm

Egyptian authorities arrested a Jordanian truck driver as he attempted to smuggle 107 Pharaonic and Islamic artifacts from Nuweiba into Jordan at dawn Thursday.

The suspect had 40 metal statuettes, 52 amulets, five wooden masks and other artifacts including a copper vase and four metal shields.

Ramsess II's last journey

Ahram Online (Nevine El Aref)

Downtown Cairo did not sleep last Friday night. Its streets were enlivened with the scene of a huge carnival, with hundred of thousands of Cairenes leaving their homes to line the pavements and bridges as they bade farewell to the red granite colossus of the 19th-dynasty Pharaoh Ramses II. The colossus, the central point of Bab Al-Hadid Square since 1954, was now making the overnight journey to its new home at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking the Giza Plateau.

As the 'royal' cavalcade rolled through the streets, where thousands of policemen were deployed in a bid to form a cordon allowing for the safe passage of the convoy, people stood at their windows and balconies waving, clapping, whistling and ululating to greet the pharaoh, while others climbed buses, cars and buildings trying to catch the last glimpse of this familiar downtown landmark.

Damage to Egypt’s antiquities cannot justifify refusal to repatriate items

elginism

A lot has been made in some news sources, of the amount of damage (or potential damage, because at the time that things like this are reported, it is often hard to make a full assessment) done to the collections of museums in Egypt during the recent protests there. Many sources then jump straight on to the next conclusion that this means that it is right to keep disputed Egyptian artefacts in the big museums of the West, despite the fact that even a year ago these riots could not be anticipated & that no one appointed certain big museums as official custodians of global culture.

Further to this, there is of course the fact that artefacts aren’t necessarily safe in any country.

One promising thing though, is that while some rioters were vandalising the museums, many more Egyptian citizens were making every effort they could to try & protect these places from damage.

The search for gold in the Egyptian Museum

Ahram Online (Zahi Hawass)

Archaeologists spend their lives excavating sites and making major discoveries, and at the end of their dig seasons they bring all of their finds to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. I, myself, used to come to Cairo all the time when I was excavating at Kom Abou Bellou in the Delta. For more than six years I would come with trucks full of treasures, such as statues and gold jewellery.

Now, for the first time, the Egyptian Museum was broken into by a group of criminals who tried to steal from their own country in an attempt to ruin the revolution for freedom and democracy. I visited the museum the morning after the break-in and at first glance it did not look like any items were missing: all of the masterpieces seemed to be in place. There were many broken objects scattered throughout the galleries and it appeared that the criminals just broke cases and threw objects on the ground. I believed then that nothing had been stolen.

Photo for Today - last one from Deir el Medina

View from the village up
towards the workmens' tombs

Sorry Tim - this is the last one of the village for the time being!

Mummy Royalty Show Signs of Clogged Arteries

Science (Heather Pringle)

In the ancient tomb paintings of the Nile Valley, Egypt's nobility often appears lithe, beautiful, and, above all, healthy. But researchers have long doubted that life at the top of the social pyramid in ancient Egypt was quite so rosy. At least as early as 1500 B.C.E., Egyptian physicians observed symptoms of angina, heart attacks, and congestive heart failure in patients and recorded them in medical papyri. Yet they gave little indication of how often they saw such cases.

Now a team led by cardiologists Adel Allam of the Al Azhar Medical School in Cairo and Gregory Thomas of the University of California, Irvine, has conducted the broadest and most detailed study yet of atherosclerosis—a hardening of the arteries that causes both strokes and heart attacks—among ancient Egypt's upper classes by building on earlier work and performing CT scans on 52 of their mummies. In a study presented at the scientific session of the American College of Cardiology today in New Orleans, the team found that 44 of the mummies still possessed identifiable cardiovascular tissue, and of these 45% exhibited definite or probable hardening of the arteries.

"We were a bit surprised by how just how much atherosclerosis we found on ancient Egyptians who were young," says team member James Sutherland, a radiologist at the South Coast Radiological Medical Group in Laguna Hills, California. "The average age of death was around 40."

Bloomberg (Pat Wechsler)

Clogged arteries seemed to run in the family of Ahmose-Henutempet, a queen during Egypt’s 17th dynasty almost 3,600 years ago, according to research based on body scans of mummies.

Both the queen, who died in her 40s, and her sister, the princess Ahmose-Meyret-Anon, showed signs of atherosclerosis, a buildup of fatty substances in heart vessels that lead to heart attacks and stroke, according to a report today at the American College of Cardiology meeting in New Orleans.

The study scanned 44 mummies from the royal family, their ministers and staff that still had remnants of arteries. It found 20 with a disease that doctors now mostly tie to the stresses and bad habits of modern life, said Randall Thompson, a cardiologist and study author.

LA Times (Thomas H. Maugh II)

CT scans of Egyptian mummies show that many of them suffered from hardening of their arteries, researchers said Sunday. Cardiologists have generally believed that atherosclerosis is a byproduct of the modern lifestyle, caused by eating foods that are too high in fats, lack of exercise and smoking. The new findings indicate that "we may understand atherosclerosis less well than we think," Dr. Gregory S. Thomas, a cardiologist at UC Irvine, told a New Orleans meeting of the American College of Cardiology. It may be that humans "are predisposed to atherosclerosis," he said, "that it is part of our genetic makeup."

Thomas and his colleagues reported 18 months ago on a study of 16 mummies, in which they found hardening of the arteries in nine. Eight of those nine were older than 45 when they died. The oldest of the atherosclerotic mummies belonged to a woman known as Lady Rai, who had been a nursemaid to Queen Ahmose Nefertiti.

Kansas City Star (Alan Bavley)

She didn’t smoke. Never ate a double bacon cheeseburger. Never sacked out on the couch watching cable. Yet by the time she reached her early 40s, she was a candidate for a heart attack.

That was nearly 3,600 years ago.

Princess Ahmose-Meryet-Amon, of Egypt’s 17th Dynasty, had the world’s oldest known case of coronary heart disease, researchers say.

Atherosclerosis — commonly called hardening of the arteries — was surprisingly widespread in ancient times, at least among the Egyptian mummies examined by an international team of scientists and heart specialists, including one from St. Luke’s Hospital.

More re reinstatement of Hawass

drhawass.com (Zahi Hawass)

Video - 4.46 minutes.

On Wednesday, March 30th, Dr. Zahi Hawass was called from the Prime Minister Essam Sharaf in his office to be appointed Minister of Antiquities. In this video Zahi Hawass is addressing a message to all friends of Egypt.

Ahram Online

Five days after his meeting with Egypt Prime Minister Essam Sharaf renowned Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has been officially reappointed to the post of Egypt’s minister of state for antiquities affairs.

A 30-minute meeting was held between Hawass and Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces to discuss security measures necessary to safeguard Egypt’s antiquities and efforts to be exerted to restore Egypt’s looted artefacts in collaboration with the world community and UNESCO.

Hawass told Ahram Online that the first order of the day is to repel the 500 encroachments on archaeological sites that have been found within the past two weeks, as well as the resumption of projects that were on halt due to the revolution.

Modern Ghana (Kwame Opoku)

When Hawass resigned we questioned whether the time he choose was right seeing that Egyptian antiquities were in a bad situation, with lootings going on in several museums and archaeological sites. We cautioned those who rejoiced at his resignation that the respite the retentionists had unexpectedly gained would be very short:

“Many Western museum directors may be rejoicing at the resignation and departure of Zahi Hawass from the position of the Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. Let them rejoice for the period of respite they have unexpectedly gained will be shorter than they wish.” (2)

On his re-appointment, Hawass met representatives the young archaeologists who had protested and picketed the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, because they had no jobs. They received a promise from the new Minister of Antiquities that he would assist by continuing to create more jobs in his Ministry but he also pointed out that the problem of unemployment which is general in Egypt cannot be solved by his ministry alone

Tel el Dabaa warehouse break-in

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

Armed looters broke in to the Tel El-Dabaa antiquities warehouse on Thursday, stealing artifacts and breaking several pieces of the stored collection.

Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the Central Administration of Antiquities of Alexandria and Lower Egypt, said the warehouse was used to store artifacts found at Tel El-Dabaa's archaelogical sites by Dutch and German excavation missions over the last 30 years. They include a collection of ancient Egyptian clay pots and amulets.

Abdel Maqsoud said that an inventory is now being carried out by Egyptian archaeologists to determine the number of missing objects and the cost.

Reports of looting continue to dominate in Egypt

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

With photos.

A report issued early this week shows that 800 artefacts are still missing from the Qantara-East warehouse in North Sinai. The storehouse was looted on 29 January -- the fifth day of the Egyptian uprising.

On that day, thieves broke into the warehouse and succeeded in stealing and escaping with what amounted to a significant part of its collection. The warehouse was being used to house the collections belonging to the planned Port Said, Sharm El-Sheikh and Taba museums, as well as many objects originally from Sinai that were retrieved from Israel following the signing of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty.

Two days after the break-in, 292 of the stolen objects were recovered with the help of the army and members of the Sinai Bedouin community. However, the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs at the time was not able to assess the exact number of objects stolen until the completion of a detailed inventory.

The remaining objects in the Qantara-East warehouse have now been moved to safety in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

The result of the inventory revealed that some 800 objects are missing, all dating from the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Islamic eras.

Online: Tuthmosis III Temple Project

Tuthmosis III Temple Project

An excellent website with full details of excavation and survey work, and campaign reports for 2008, 2009 and 2010.

The excavation, restoration, conservation and site management of the Temple of Thutmosis III, in Luxor’s West Bank first began in 2008 through a collaborative project between the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquity and the Academy of Fine Arts, Seville-Spain.

The team is directed by Dr. Myriam Seco Álvarez and Dr. Atia Radwan. Both coordinate the investigations at the Temple of Millions of Years, built by a pharaoh considered to be the “Napoleon” of Ancient Egypt and among the most important pharaohs of the New Kingdom.

Since the beginning, the project has had the support of the Spanish Embassy in Egypt and is sponsored by the Spanish petrol company CEPSA. Starting in 2010 the BOTÍN FOUNDATION also graciously donated funds to support the project. Thanks to our sponsors, we have been able to extend our work season to three months a year; therefore, having a greater opportunity to increase our knowledge of the temple and to restore and preserve more of this significant monument.

EES Delta Survey - First Visit to Daba

Egypt Exploration Society (Patricia Spencer)

With photos.

This morning we went to the SCA office and met the Director for Kafr esh-Sheikh, Dr Mohammed Abdel Rafaa, who made us very welcome and actually remembered us from when we were touring around tells in 1990 with Sabri Abdel Aziz! He assigned an Inspector to us, Madame Salwa Galal, and she came with us for a preliminary visit to the site. We set off on the 15 km drive to the site in lovely weather but it started to rain heavily just as we arrived so our first view of Daba was though a very wet windscreen!

Fortunately the rain soon stopped and we were met by the SCA site guard, and walked around part of the site, looking at the substantial mud-brick remains which seem not to have changed in the last 20 years. The surface of the site is covered with burned red brick- fragments and some intact structural remains - and there are also a few weathered red granite blocks visible.

Fundraising for Amarna's monastic history

JustGiving

The Amarna Project has another fundraising project up and running on the JustGiving website. they are trying to raise £1500.00, which seems entirely reasonable. So far they have raised £210.00. Many small donations add up just as quickly as a few large ones. See the photos on the above page.

In 2000, excavations at the 5th-7th century monastic site of Kom el-Nana at Amarna unexpectedly revealed the sanctuary of the monastery’s church and, amongst the rubble, over a thousand fragments of painted plaster. During several study seasons, these were painstakingly rejoined by Dr Gillian Pyke to reveal part of the original decoration of the apse: a scene of Christ and the Apostles.

The next stage of the Kom el-Nana Church Painting Project is to disseminate this important attestation of early Christian faith, and of Amarna's later history. Can you help us with this? Your donation will be put towards the costs of publishing this work in full, and will help make this important research accessible to a wide audience.

Hanging Church in Old Cairo restored

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

Following 13 years of restorations to the fourth century Hanging Church in Old Cairo, it will finally welcome its worshipers back in time to perform their Easter prayer ceremonies.

Within days, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf is set to officially inaugurate the Hanging Church for Coptic Easter.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s well-known antiquities expert, who is expected to accept re-appointment as minister of antiquities, detailed that the LE120m budget (roughly $20m) dedicated to the Hanging Church’s restoration was mainly to reduce the water leakage into the church, strengthen the foundation of the church Babylon fortress in order to protect them from future damage. The walls were reinforced, missing and decayed stones were replaced and masonry cleaned and desalinated. The decorations and icons of the church were also subjected to fine restoration in collaboration with Russian experts and new lighting and ventilation systems have been installed.

Book Review: City of the Ram-man

Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Review by Robert Gozzoli)

Donald B. Redford, City of the Ram-man: The Story of Ancient Mendes. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010.

This book by Redford is a synthesis of the author’s fieldwork at the site of Mendes, in the northeastern Nile Delta, from 1990 onward, supplemented with a history of the site itself. In fact, the book is a general introduction to the site, as each of the 13 chapters has an initial historical introduction followed by a discussion of the archaeological discoveries of the period. There are numerous textual boxes throughout, giving biographies of ancient Egyptian officials, royal texts or other relevant material. Previously, books for the general public have appeared only for major sites such as Amarna and Thebes; now there is a third: this book describes the entire history of a capital of a Delta nome, which grew to become Egypt’s capital during the first millennium BC. While the idea is certainly lauda-ble, the end result is not entirely smooth.

Chapters one and two deal with the origins of Egypt. Prehistoric Egyptian to later Mendes is described, introducing the reader to the geographical and historical setting. Redford takes pains to describe the growth from the primitive community to chiefdom, led by the Big Man (“Great Man”) and the extension of the settlement, with mudbrick houses and buildings imitating Asiatic prototypes. The integration of the Delta region into the southern kingdom through military conquest is then narrated. The foundation of the White Fort is briefly described, as well as the implications of a unified kingdom over the country, which also brought the development of writing.

From the Elephantine archives, the life of a Jewish woman

The Jerusalem Post (Renee Levine Melammed)

In the sixth century BCE, a large military camp was set up in Elephantine by the Persian rulers who had conquered Egypt. This “city of ivories” was located on a small island in the Nile opposite Syene (Aswan), the site of their civil administrative capital. Persian soldiers and mercenaries served in the army; we know that Jewish regiments comprised part of these mercenary troops needed to protect this southern exposure from foreign attacks and to supervise trade and taxation there. Jewish soldiers were permitted to raise families and to engage in business.

Life for the Jews of Elephantine was quite different from that of their brethren returning to settle in the Land of Israel: They had not been exposed to the ideas being propounded by Ezra and Nehemiah, and they had built their own temple in which two local goddesses were worshiped alongside Yahu, the God of Judah.

In the late 19th century, various archives from Elephantine were discovered, transcribed and translated from the original Aramaic. When property was passed on or decisions were made in court that concerned property, the papyri upon which these legal activities were recorded were retained by the owner. The Jewish woman Mibtahiah’s archive contains 10 documents found in superb condition; they reveal surprising details concerning her life and the options available to Jewish women in this settlement.