Amarna Fund Raising - the Big Give Christmas Challenge

Thanks to your support, the JustGiving appeal to raise money for the next stage of the conservation of the Amarna Period coffins from the recent excavations has reached its target. The conservators will resume their work at Amarna in the latter part of the year.

THE BIG GIVE CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE

We are delighted to announce that the Amarna Trust has been accepted into the Big Give 2012 Christmas Challenge, with a project to raise funds for the conservation of the Great Aten Temple:

http://new.thebiggive.org.uk/project/greatatentemple

The Big Give Christmas Challenge is an annual matched-funding event in which online donations from the public are matched with pledges from major Trust supporters and funding from external philanthropic bodies ('Charity Champions'). This project will be the focus of our fundraising for the rest of 2012.

The Challenge has two phases. Phase I requires us to collect pledges from our major supporters (we may contact some of you individually about this).

Phase II is a period of online donation, beginning December 6th. During this time, online donations are matched with money drawn from pledges and Charity Champion Funds, until the latter are exhausted. An online donation of £5- becomes £10-; a £50 donation becomes £100, and so on. We have set ourselves a target of £8000- in online donations.

* We write to ask: if you are thinking of offering support to the Amarna Trust in what remains of 2012, please consider making a donation during the December online donation phase. It is a chance to make your donation go further.

We will send out a reminder closer to the time!

HORIZON

The next issue of the Horizon newsletter (no. 11) is about to go to press.

FIELDWORK

We plan to open the expedition house in late September for the start of a three-month autumn season.

Summer greetings to you all and thanks again for your continuing support - Barry Kemp

A million thanks

My feelings about closing the blog were distinctly ambivalent even before all the messages. I am so sorry that it has taken me a while to respond, but you all gave me a lot to think about. Thank you SO much for all those messages!  I feel very lucky to have had so many great people reading the blog for all this time, and I am very sorry that I am no longer able to carve out the time to do the job properly. It seemed (and still seems) better to admit defeat rather than trying to do the job, and doing it badly. 

As a thank you to all of you who posted and emailed, here's an offering, not a very good one, but perhaps something that's better than nothing. A lot of people have said that they have a horror of Twitter, or simply that they cannot access it. The best thing about a blog is that it doesn't require membership, and quality control is very easy - something less easy to control on Twitter and even less on Facebook. I do understand why people don't want to sign up to Twitter.  So by way of a very small gesture, I have added my Twitter feed to this page, in the right hand column. It is an exact mirror of everything that I now post on Twitter, with the link to the article at the end of each short post. It will show the most recent 30 posts.  It's not the same as the blog, but it will contain exactly the same news items that I would have posted, just without the excerpts.  I realize that the excerpts are what made it most attractive, but that was the time-consuming bit.  I spent some months on Twitter, getting a feel for it, before doing anything useful with it.  I'm still having trouble getting the message across in so few words, but I'm getting better.

Others have asked whether Egyptological will suffer the same fate.  The answer is, in the words of one of our authors, "a big fat no."  We are working to build a team for Egyptological, with people who will continue to support it in the event of any disaster (like Kate and I being run over by the same bus).  As well as editors and volunteers for various different activities, we will appoint people to look after the site as an enterprise (albeit a non-commercial one).  We have invested an enormous amount of time and energy into Egyptological, and we are committed to its ongoing maintenance.  Doing both of our blogs taught us that one-person or even two-people teams are insufficient, because you never know what life is going to chuck at you.  So we have that in hand.

I will continue to use the blog, not just for the Twitter feed, but to add email newsletters, like the excellent Amarna report, to which I will then link from Twitter.  There are also going to be occasions, as Paul Rymer observed with so much insight, that I won't be able to keep quiet about things that interest me, so there will doubtless be comments and some analysis of particular news stories - again mainly for the purposes of being able to link to them from Twitter.

Obviously, I have regrets.  And I am, of course, suffering withdrawal symptoms!  I have read through all the comments here and on Facebook many times, and can only say THANK YOU so much.  It's been great to be in touch with so many terrific people.

Hugs all round
Andie
xx

 

Closing down

After eight and a half years I rather suspect that I am closing down this blog.  I haven't found the time to update it in nearly a month.  It was always time-consuming, but recently it has become exceedingly difficult to find the time to keep it going as I would like. 

I won't delete it - the archive will still be there. I will also continue to moderate comments. 

Instead, I will start posting news items to my Twitter account, which will take much less time and can be done on a rather more ad hoc basis.  @egyptologynews, for anyone interested. 

If you still wish for a blog-based news service there are lots of them out there.  When I started Egyptology News it was the only such service, but lots of other people are now doing a similar job.  Just do a Google search and see which one you like the best.  EEF produce a weekly round-up, too.

My eternal thanks and a huge hug to Kat Newkirk, who has been copying me on news emails for years and years.  Kat, please keep me on your distribution list - I will be using it for Twitter instead.

My sincere thanks to all of you who have followed the blog over the years too - it has been fun. 

Best
Andie

Beni Hassan first in National Project to Document Egypt’s Heritage

Ahram Online  (Nevine El-Aref)

Eight years after giving the go-ahead for the National Project to Document Egypt’s Heritage, Beni Hassan necropolis in the Upper Egyptian town of Minya has become the first site on the list to be documented.

The Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) is responsible for archaeologically documenting Egypt’s cultural and historical heritage, in an attempt to protect and preserve it, as well as providing comprehensive and detailed studies of every site and monument in Egypt for researchers and students in the field.

Mohamed Ibrahim, antiquities’s minister, told Ahram Online that Egyptologists used state-of-the-art equipment and modern technology to document the necropolis and published the findings in a booklet of 337 pages, including 268 photos and 62 drawings and charts.

Director of the ministry's registration department, Magdi El-Ghandour, described the documentation effort as one of Egypt’s major projects to preserve its heritage. He added that the project aims to establish a scientific database for every monument in Egypt, to help the work of researchers.

"It is the second documentation project to be established in Egypt; the first was carried out in 1985 during the Nubian temples salvage operation, documenting the Nubian temples whether rescued or inundated in Lake Nasser."

Rising water: a necessary evil?

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Can the new pumping system on the Giza Plateau help reduce damage to the Sphinx caused by leaking subterranean water? Nevine El-Aref looks at this, and what caused the high water level

Within the framework of the Ministry of State for Antiquities's programme to preserve its ancient Egyptian monuments, Giza Plateau inspectorate has begun operating a state-of-the-art pumping system to reduce the high rate of subterranean water that has accumulated beneath the Sphinx and the underlying bedrock.

Ali El-Asfar, director of the Giza Plateau archaeological site, says that under the new system 18 water pump machines distributed over the plateau are pumping out 26,000 cubic metres of water daily at a rate of 1,100 cubic metres of water an hour, based on studies previously carried out by reputed Egyptian-American experts in subterranean water and ground mechanic and equilibrium factors.

The LE22-million project was initiated to reduce the high level of subterranean water under the Sphinx, which had increased because of the new drainage system installed in the neighbouring village of Nazlet Al-Seman and the irrigation technique used to cultivate public gardens and green areas in the neighbouring residential area of Hadaaq Al-Ahram and the golf course at the Mena House Hotel.

"All these have led to the leakage of water into the plateau, affecting especially the Valley Temple and the Sphinx which are located on a lower level," El-Asfar said.

Egypt's Sphinx, Pyramids threatened by groundwater, hydrologists warn

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

One month ago, Giza's antiquities inspectorate installed a new system to pump subterranean water out from under Egypt's historical Sphinx monument and the underlying bedrock.

Subterranean water levels at the Giza Plateau, especially the area under the valley temples and Sphinx, have recently increased due to a new drainage system installed in the neighbouring village of Nazlet Al-Seman and the irrigation techniques used to cultivate the nearby residential area of Hadaeq Al-Ahram.

The system involves 18 state-of-the-art water pumps capable of pumping 26,000 cubic metres of water daily.

The project, which cost some LE22 million and is financed by USAID, has raised fears among some hydrologists and ecologists that it could erode the bedrock under the Sphinx and lead to the historic monument's collapse.

New antiquities project

Egyptian Gazette (Amina Abdul Salam)   

A number of archaeologists have launched a project to develop archaeology in Egypt to be carried out by the new government, according to MENA.    

The project, which was launched under the title, ‘Egyptian Antiquities’ Renaissance Project ‘ includes a plan to develop archaeology to occupy a prestigious position as one of the state’s main economic sources, said Mohamed Abdel- Maqsoud ,deputy chairman of the Egyptian antiquities sector.

The project aims at changing the technique of work in this field that should  controlled  by a specialised  state security body to protect Egypt’ monuments and archaeological heritage .

Abdel-Maqsoud noted that the antiquities sector is facing financial problems due to the reduced number of tourists visiting Egypt  during the last couple of years. The archaeologists have called for cultural tourism  to be mainly based mainly on visiting monumental sites throughout Egypt.

It is know the antiquities sector is self -financing , says Abdel -Maqsoud, adding that the annual revenues of the monuments normally reaches to LE1.2 billion  nearly($200 million) annually.

Learning more about the Middle Kingdom

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

With photos.

The discovery of a Middle Kingdom burial of a member of the family of the Deir Al-Barsha governor has given Egyptologists some unique information on the scenario in which the ancient Egyptians conducted their funerary rituals.

Belgian archaeologists cleaning the newly discovered shaft inside Ahanakht I's tomb (top); a collection of copper vases and plates used in funerary rituals

Everything began as normal at this spring's archaeological season at the Deir Al-Barsha necropolis in Minya, which lasted from March to May. As usual, teams of workmen, archaeologists and restorers were busy on all parts of the site, digging and clearing the tombs of the village nomarchs (provincial governors) and searching for artefacts or monumental remains that could tell them more about the history of this particular period of ancient Egypt.

The site of the Deir Al-Barsha necropolis in the sandy gravel desert is famous for its rock-hewn tombs dating from the Middle Kingdom. Although part of the necropolis was investigated at the beginning of the 20th century by the American archaeologist George Reisner, no plans or detailed accounts of these excavations were ever published. Time has since taken its toll of the necropolis, and it was almost totally covered by sand.

In 2002 a Belgian archaeological mission from Leuven University started a magnetic survey there in an attempt to gain some insight into the overall organisation and social stratification of the necropolis.

Egypt at the Manchester Museum

Egypt at the Manchester Museum

There have been a number of updates by Campbell Price in the last couple of weeks. Have a look at the above page to find out more about the following topics:

• Curator’s Diary 10/7/12: Pagans, Christians and Muslims – Egypt in the First Millennium AD
• Photographing Fragrances
• Texts in translation #7: The shabti spell of Horudja
• Curator’s Diary 30/6/12: CT scanning Asru … and a crocodile mummy!
• Texts in translation #6: A stela of Peniwemiteru (Acc. No. R4571 1937)
• Curator’s Diary 15/6/12: More than Musty Mummies…? ACCES seminar in Swansea
• Curator’s Diary 13/6/12: Egyptian Collections and Collectors in Brussels
• Object biography #6: The crown from a colossal statue of Ramesses II (Acc. No. 1783)

St. Catherine's monastery seeks permanence through technology

Egypt Independent (James Purtill)

St. Catherine’s Monastery is going digital. The monastery that claims to be the oldest in the world ­— not destroyed, not abandoned in 17 centuries — has begun digitizing its ancient manuscripts for the use of scholars. A new library to facilitate the process is about five years away.

The librarian, Father Justin, says the monastery’s library will grow an internet database of first-millennium manuscripts, which up until now have been kept under lock and key. Should a scholar want a manuscript, they need only email Father Justin.

“And if I don’t have book but see a reference, I can email a friend in Oxford. They can scan and send it the next day,” he says.

Still, as natural and inevitable as it sounds, that’s quite the sea change. Just 10 years ago, bad phone lines made it hard to connect a call with the monastery. One hundred years ago, it took 10 days to travel from Suez with a caravan of camels. 

Taba's Salaheddin Citadel set to open doors in July

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

After a year of extensive restoration Salaheddin Citadel on Pharaoh Island, 250 metres from Taba Beach in Sinai, opens to the public in July.

What’s new?
The restorations include repairing all eroded and corroded surfaces, restoring the fence that surrounded the citadel and replacing fallen or missing blocks with new ones that match the others.

A new lighting system makes the citadel appear like a crystal gem in the middle of the Red Sea. They’ve also installed lighting along the visitor paths.

Documentary films and photo exhibition relate the history of the citadel in the visitor centre.

To make visiting the site easier for tourists, during his latest inspection visit, Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim suggested constructing a closed tunnel to connect the citadel to the Taba beach, which boasts beautiful coral reefs.

He also calls on the Tourism and Antiquities Police to tighten security measures in the Sinai, considering some of the recent instability in the area.

A detailed document of inscriptions in Islamic Cairo

Ahram Online (Nevine el-Aref)

After 14 years of hard work, Bernard O’Kane, professor of Islamic art and architecture at the American University in Cairo (AUC), has managed to compile a detailed report of Islamic inscriptions in the historic zone of Cairo as part of the project to preserve and document inscriptions and epigraphs on Islamic monuments in the city up until the 1800s.

According to a press release distributed by the AUC press office, what drove O’Kane to undertake the project was that many of the Islamic monuments in Cairo were deteriorating and in danger of disappearing; there was no documentation of the inscriptions. “I felt I needed to do something to help with the preservation of information,” he said.

Exhibition: Communication in Ancient Egypt

University of Birmingham 

Since the very beginning of human evolution, communication has played a crucial role in social development. In our modern world, when messages are conveyed through countless routes, it is very appropriate to look back and understand how interaction influenced past societies.

‘Connections’ aims to explore the ways in which the ancient Egyptians communicated between each other and those in a wider international environment. The methods they used are not far removed from our own, using various verbal and non-verbal techniques. Contributions to this study include investigations of written communication, along with interaction through material culture, gestures and much more. ‘Connections’ hopes to provide a unique insight into the ways that the Egyptians communed with the deceased, the illiterate, the divine and sacred worlds, foreign countries and different social groups.

An online catalogue accompanies a physical exhibition taken from objects loaned to the University of Birmingham from the Eton College Joseph William Myers Collection of Egyptian antiquities. These objects are among the finest items of Egyptian art to have been collected during the late nineteenth century. Many of them are small masterpieces in their own right – but those less aesthetic objects also communicated messages, and have not been neglected in this project.

Exhibition: Djehuty Project out in the daylight

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

With 2 photos.

A NUMBER of artefacts discovered at a tomb in Draa Abul-Naga necropolis on Luxor's west bank is to go on show for the first time in the Luxor National Museum, Nevine El-Aref reports.

After almost 10 years in storage at the Luxor antiquities inspectorate, the very distinguished ancient Egyptian objects will take their place in the permanent collection of the Luxor Museum. They were found in the tomb of Djehuty, the overseer of works at Thebes during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut.

The artefacts include the very well-preserved sarcophagus of a Middle Kingdom warrior named Iker, which means "the excellent one". The sarcophagus was found in the courtyard of Djehuty's tomb in 2007, along with five arrows made of reeds, three of them still feathered. These will also be included in the new exhibited collection.

Some clay vases and bouquets of dried flowers that were thrown inside the Djehuty tomb at his funeral are to be exhibited along with a faience necklaces, gilded earrings and bracelets.

Two clusters of ceramic vases, mostly bottles, with shapes typical of those fabricated during the reign of Tuthmosis III, will also be exhibited.

"These artefacts were carefully selected from the collection unearthed at Djehuty's tomb," said Mohamed Ibrahim, minister of state for antiquities.

Djehuty's tomb was discovered in 2003 by a Spanish-Egyptian archaeological mission. Their excavations revealed many new details about an unusual time in Egypt's ancient history.

The tomb of Amenemope (TT148) on Osirisnet

Osirisnet (Thierry Benderitter)

We present to you today the tomb of Amenemope, TT148, which dates from the 20th Dynasty.
Amenemope was Third Prophet of Amon, descended from a powerful family of which many representatives are mentioned in the chapel. The monument is on the north hillside of Dra Abu el-Naga, an area of which the prestige and the direct view of the pylons of Karnak, compensated for the poor quality of the local rock, which along with the prolonged occupation, caused serious damage to the decoration. What has survived is of a great artistic quality and allows the previous splendour of this tomb-temple to be realised.

Upcoming publication: Buhen Old Kingdom Town

The EES Publishing Blog (Patricia Spencer) 

On 30 December 1961 an EES expedition led by Professor Bryan Emery returned to Buhen in the Sudan, as part of the UK contribution to the UNESCO campaign to save the monuments of Nubia. In two short seasons in the winters of 1961/2 and 1963/4, the team excavated the Old Kingdom town at this site better known for its impressive  Middle Kingdom brick fortress. Emery only published only two very short descriptions of the work – one, which was not illustrated, in the editorial foreword to JEA 48 (1962) and another, with some photographs  and a plan, in Kush XI (1963).  He also included information about the town in his book Egypt in Nubia (1965). After completing the work at Buhen, Emery moved back to Saqqara and on his death in 1971 the excavations at Buhen remained unpublished.  Professor Harry Smith, with colleagues, published the fortress in two EES volumes in 1976 and 1979, and he had, in 1972, invited David O’Connor, who had been one of the Field Supervisors, to publish the Old Kingdom Town. 

New Book: The Tombs of Beni Hassan in Minya

Ahram Online

Egypt's Ministry of State for Antiquities just issued a new book, 'The Tombs of Beni Hassan in Minya: The Picture and the Significance,' the first in a series in an ongoing project aimed at documenting Egypt's monuments and archaeological heritage.

The project, which began in 2004, aims to register all monuments throughout the country.

According to Minister of State for Antiquities Ahmed Ibrahim, the project will utilise the latest recording and documenting technologies.

The 377-page book includes 268 high-resolution photos of the tombs, along with 62 diagrams.

Magdy El-Ghandour, head of the Egyptian Centre for Recording Monuments, says the project's next step is to publish the scientific studies and make them available to future scholars.

Book Review: Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination

Bryn Mawr Classical Review (Review by Reyes Bertolín Cebrián)

Paul A. Trout, Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination.  Amherst, NY:  Prometheus Books, 2011.  Pp. 325.  ISBN 9781616145019.

Trout’s book presents an interesting hypothesis about the origins of myth and storytelling. The author conceives the development of storytelling in the very ancient past as a mechanism of early human beings to cope with the fear of predators. The purpose of the book is to “explain in detail how and why the animal predators of the Pleistocene got inside our heads and our stories” (25). Trout reminds his readers right at the beginning that, before human beings became the most efficient predators on the planet, they were the prey for about two million years, and until only about ten thousand years ago. For most of this time, humans had only stones and sticks to ward off predators.

The book is divided into ten chapters. The first introductory chapter, in which the purpose and method of the book are explained, is very short. Trout sets out to clarify why we are still so fascinated with stories about predators, real or fictitious. His purpose is also to discover the role that predators played in the evolution of storytelling itself.

The second chapter, "Bringers of Death", presents a survey of the predators which our ancestors encountered. Besides those still living and devouring humans in our own times, such as tigers, lions, wolves, bears, crocodiles, sharks, and snakes, the Pleistocene had a variety of fierce and dangerous animals to fear. Not only were those animals much larger than the current ones, but human beings were also not yet confident hunters, although not completely defenseless.

Book Review: City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish

The Periscope Post (Review by Philip Womack)

This time it’s a star turn for Peter Parson’s City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007). This charming, entertaining and informative book is not only easy to read, it also delights with its clear-sighted analysis of the papyrus fragments found at the site of the Egyptian city of Oxyrhyncos. Here, in the early twentieth century, the archaeologists Grenfell and Hunt stumbled upon a classicist’s dream – mounds and mounds of intact papyroi.

“I make obeisance on your behalf every day before the Lord God Serapis. From the day you left we miss your turds, wishing to see you.”

A few of them gave up texts of Homer; there was a lost play of Euripides, Hypsipyle, (which it is thought concerns the cursing of a group of women by Aphrodite for neglecting her shrine; her curse was to give them all extreme body odour. Perhaps that’s why it was lost.) There were songs of Sappho (who features in a Ronald Firbank novel, Vainglory, in which a professor reads out, proudly, the fragment to assembled high society: “Could not (he wagged a finger) Could not, for the fury of her feet!”) and other Greek lyricists. But most were prosaic, and as such add a huge amount to our knowledge and understanding of life at the height of the Roman Empire, just before Christianity.

Exhibition: Journey Through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead in Japan

The Japan Times Online (C.B. Liddell)

All exhibitions focusing on ancient Egypt (3100-332 B.C.) smell of the tomb to some degree, simply because the best artifacts have been recovered from the graves — this is true of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," an exhibition currently being held at the Osaka Tempozan Exhibition Gallery and which comes to the Ueno Royal Museum on Aug. 4. According to professor Jiro Kondo, a director of the Institute of Egyptology at Waseda University and the curator for the "Book of the Dead" exhibition here, such shows usually follow a set pattern.

"Every two or three years in Japan we have some sort of ancient Egyptian exhibition," Kondo says. "The focus is on golden objects and jewelry rather than a theme, leading Japanese people to think ancient Egyptian civilization is gold, mummies and jewelry. But this time, we are following the British Museum exhibition and taking a deeper look at the beliefs related to the afterlife."

The exhibition features around 80 objects sourced from a show held in autumn 2010 at the British Museum, with the centerpiece being the Greenfield Papyrus. This remarkable scroll, made for a high-ranking priestess named Nestanebtasheru in 930 B.C., contains a richly illustrated version of the Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian funerary text that is a rich source of information about the civilization.