From the Mediterranean bed to Kom Al-Dikka, from Akhmim to Sinai, from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to Basle and Germany and from auction halls in Europe and America to Egypt, there were several exciting archaeological events to highlight this outstanding year. Nevine El-Aref reviews the past 12 busy months.

Tutmania: This was the year when Switzerland, Germany, France, Greece, the United States and China were caught up in the euphoria of Egyptomania, with 14 exhibitions featuring the Ancient Egyptian civilisation. The one that hogged most of the glory was the touring Tutankhamun circus, which is travelling through Europe and America for the first time in more than two decades.

Egypt prohibited any further showing of the treasured collection following its last exhibition in Cologne in 1981 when damage was sustained by the statue of the deity Selket, which at one point fell resulting in the detachment of its scorpion crown.

[More], Al-Ahram, Egypt, 723, December 30, 2004 - January 05, 2005.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni will re-open the Pyramid of King Chephren in Giza as of Saturday after the completion of restoration works.

In statements, Hosni said the third Pyramid of Mycerinus will be closed for a year to start necessary rejuvenations, adding 2005 will see a giant restoration project to restore King Chephren's funerary temple and the stone blocks in the area south of the temple.

[More], State Information Service, Egypt, December 31, 2004.

The past few months have been exceptionally rich on the antiquities front.  Among some of the most important developments:

...Zahi Hawass discovered the cover of a sarcophagus dating back to the modern dynasty. The antiquity was simply lying there, and no one was able to tell him how arrived. Hawass promptly ordered the cover moved to the antiquities storerooms in Matariyya...

[More], Egypt Today, December 2004, Volume 25, Issue 12, via EEF News.

Dont [sic] say stolen[,] the word is missing, insists Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni. And because we have a soft spot for this member of Cabinet, well [sic] follow his instructions in every sentence we write.

The Egyptian Museums basement, you see, is a thiefs [sic] dream. (Whoops! We meant magicians dream. Really, we did)

In May, the Habi relief went missing from the fabled museums subterranean storage vaults, forcing Hosni to appoint a committee of experts to investigate the location to which the relief chose to disappear. While cynics said the answer was obvious (back to Japan, where it was missing until 1985), museum staff insisted its [sic] somewhere around here...

[More], Egypt Today, December 2004, Volume 25, Issue 12, via EEF News.

Tongue firmly wedged in my cheek for this one!

A team of British and Egyptian archaeologists made a stunning discovery Monday, unearthing several intact specimens of "skeleton people" — skinless, organless humans who populated the Nile delta region an estimated 6,000 years ago.

"This is an incredible find," said Dr. Christian Hutchins, Oxford University archaeologist and head of the dig team. "Imagine: At one time, this entire area was filled with spooky, bony, walking skeletons."

[More], The Onion, Volume 40, Issue 52, December 29, 2004, via HallOfMaat.

Happy New Year!

Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit has been translated into ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs by a curator from the British Museum and a retired medical expert.

Peter Rabbit, or hare beneath a semi-circle, as he is known in the 4,000-year-old hieroglyphic form, learns why it is important to listen to his mother when he is caught trespassing by Mr McGregor, or duck, vertical line, jar stand over mouth, jar stand, lasso over mouth, sitting man...

[More], The Times, UK, December 31, 2004, via HallOfMaat.

More on the granaries found in Suez, Egypt, this time Associated Press copy rather than Reuters.

An American excavation mission has unearthed eight granaries that are relics from agricultural life in the Neolithic era, the Egyptian culture minister said in a statement Tuesday.

The granaries were discovered last week in Fayoum, an oasis some 50 miles southwest of Cairo, Farouk Hosni said in the statement. The statement said the granaries date back to the Neolithic era that began around 9,000 B.C., known as a transition point from roaming and hunting societies to an agricultural one.

...

William [sic] Z. Wendrich, the head of the American archaeological mission, said in the statement that the granaries were found north of a site where several granaries full of Emmer wheat, flax and fruit were found in 1926.

[More], AP via ABC News, USA, December 28, 2004.

cf. 8 prehistoric granaries found in Egypt, AP via Anchorage Daily News, Alaska, USA, December 28, 2004.

An Afrocentric article that relates Osiris, Horus, and Isis to the [Holy] Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Black Virgin Mother.

...The “golden age” for myths of the world was between 2800-1800 B.C., with the best documented being those of Egypt. The universe was formed, according to Egyptian cosmogony, by chaotic uncreated matter — the primitive Nun (i.e. “nothingness”). This primitive matter contained, in the form of principles, all possible beings as well as the god of potential development, Khepru.

As soon as the “primitive nothingness” created Ra, the demiurge (the creator of the world but who was subordinate to the one high God), its role ended. Nun also created evil in the form of Seth (Set), the brother of Osiris, and the snake of the underworld, Apap (or Apophis)...

[More], The Black Voice News, California, USA, December 23, 2004.

Khafre, the second-largest of the three Great Pyramids at Giza, outside Cairo, is to reopen on Saturday after being closed for nearly two years for repairs and restoration.

Workers removed graffiti inside the pyramid, repaired cracks and cleaned the walls of salt residue, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said on Thursday.

[More], Al-Jazeera, Qatar, December 30, 2004.