He’s had quite an after-life party here in Huntington, but it is soon coming to a close.

A mummy, on display at the Huntington Museum of Art since Jan. 18, 2003, is the main attraction of the record-breaking Mummy! exhibit which has become the most popular exhibit in museum history.

In a two-year-run the Mummy! exhibit, which celebrated the rich culture of ancient Egypt with everything from a lecture series to book discussions and workshops, has drawn about 100,000 people to the museum...

[More]  The Herald-Dispatch, West Virginia, USA, January 2, 2005, via EEF News.

Egyptian scientists have produced the first digital image of the face of the legendary pharaoh Tutankhamun after scanning his 3,000 year old mummy, authorities said.

The image created by computer sketches the precise traits of the pharaoh's face for the first time since his tomb was opened," Sabri Abdelaziz of the Egyptian upper council of antiquities told AFP...

[More]  AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, Jan 7, 2005.  Includes picture.

Also Egyptian scientists produce first image of King Tut's face, AFP via Hindustan Times, India, January 7, 2005.

Also Scientists give Egyptian king a face at last, AFP via IOL, South Africa, January 7, 2005.

If you missed the spectacular Eternal Egypt exhibition of ancient artifacts in Toronto and Victoria, you have another chance to catch it this month at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

Drawn entirely from the collection of the British Museum, the exhibition includes famous masterpieces and little-known treasures dating from about 3,100 BC to the fourth century AD.  It runs from Jan. 27 to May 22...

[More]   The Globe and Mail, Quebec, Canada, January 5, 2005, via TourEgypt.

Fatemah Farag encounters a submerged land of mystery, passion, cruelty and redemption, as she sails through Upper Nubia .

...

All the temples between Abu Simbel and Kalabsha were destined to disappear beneath the waters, along with the houses and livelihoods of the people who had been their neighbours for several millennia.  Yet, thanks to a no lesser heroic effort than the building of the dam itself, they were moved to higher ground, just in time.  UNESCO's General Assembly, aided by the tireless work of Tharwat Okasha, the first Egyptian minister of culture, was able to mobilise international cooperation, lots of money, and hundreds of men to slice and transport these monuments of rock, defying the heat of the desert, assorted predators and the waters that were soon lapping round their feet.  As a result, some part of old Nubia and its architectural heritage still survives today.

What has been lost for good, though, are the villages, a large section of the Nubian population having been relocated as far north as Kom Ombo.  What we know of their lives comes from accounts and drawings such as those to be found in the recently published Nubia: Sketches, Notes and Photographs (AUC Press), a collection of letters and sketches by Egyptian-born Australian Margot Veillonâ documenting the area during trips she made there between 1936 and 1964...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, 724, 6 - 12 January 2005.

Despite its wonderful location, Abu Simbel town has failed to make it as a tourist resort. Frederick Bowie asks why and reviews accommodation options.

Abu Simbel town has seen it all.  First came the High Dam, which drowned its hinterland, and forced the evacuation of all the villages in the fertile valley below.  The removal of the great temples of Ramses II to a new site may have created a lot of international publicity, and provided temporary alternative employment for displaced farmers and fishermen, but this tide of activity soon receded, and tourism has never really managed to take its place...

[More]  Al-Ahram, Egypt, 724, 6 - 12 January 2005.

Standing at the foothill of Gabal Al-Teir (mountain of the birds) is Bagawat — the highlight of any tour of Kharga Oasis.  Bagawat is famous for the desert-brown domed mausoleums that are part of one of the earliest and best preserved Christian cemeteries in the world.  At the centre of the cemetery stands a church that still had "traces of saints painted on the wall" when Edmondstone passed this way in 1819.

Numbering 263 in all, with many pit burials between the chapels, most of the tombs are but a single room.  Some are larger, and six have domed roofs.  Evidence indicates the area was a burial site long before the Christian era, but the current structures date from the fourth to the seventh centuries.  Most of the chapels have plain interiors, but there are several with wall paintings and graffiti.

[More]  Al-Ahram, Egypt, 724, 6 - 12 January 2005.

The remains of buildings from the ancient city of Aswan, dating back to El-Sawi era (the 26th Dynasty in the New Kingdom), have recently been unearthed, Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said yesterday.

The exciting discovery was made by an Egyptian-Swiss archaeological team during its excavations on Elephantine Island in the River Nile in Aswan, clarified Dr. Zahi Hawass Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities.

"The impedance of the discovery lies in its ancientness and its location in Aswan, said Dr. Hawass, adding that in the 19th Century, many antiquities disappeared as new homes and industrial projects were established in this Upper Egyptian city."

[More], Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, January 06, 2005.

Sinai is known to be the original birth place for monasticism, during the period of Roman oppression in Egypt, which later on spread throughout the world east and west.

Monasticism went through several stages; the first was that of the anchorite under which a monk found individual seclusion in a cell locked by a key or closed by a large stone.

The cells were clustered and every newcomer would knock each door for a few times to announce his advent.

At Wadi Al-Awag in south Sinai many of these cells were found...

[More], Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, January 06, 2005.

While restoring the Farama Citadel in northern Sinai, members of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) uncovered an Abbasid soldiers' residence and a textile plant for military outfits, along with a mill and water reservoirs.

Al-Farama, situated 35 kilometers northeast Qantara Sharq city, was brimming with citadels, fortresses, mosques, monasteries and palaces belonging to Pharaonic, Greek, Coptic and Islamic ages...

[More], Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, January 06, 2005.

A series of documentaries narrated at the tongue of ancient Egyptian kings will be produced under an agreement signed between the US National Geographic Institution and the Supreme Council for Antiquities.

The kings will relate secrets of their lives part of which will be revealed through a state-of-the-art scanning device which the SCA obtained from a well- known company.

The first of these documentaries will be on Tutankhamen, the most controversial of ancient kings...

[More], Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, January 06, 2005.

Was Tutankhamun murdered? In an effort to solve that mystery and others, scientists CT-scanned the 3,000-year-old mummy of the ancient Egyptian king.

In 1968 an x-ray of "King Tut" revealed a bone fragment in his skull.  Ever since, rumors have swirled that a blow to the head had killed the boy king.  The break, though, could also be explained by a fall or a mishap during mummification.

The three-dimensional image that will be created from yesterday's CT scan will be many times more informative than any x-ray.  As such, it may help uncover just how Tutankhamun died...

[More]   National Geographic, USA, January 6, 2005.

A roundup of recent antiquities news from Egypt from TravelVideo.

[More]   TravelVideo.TV, Canada, Jan 05, 2005.