Czech archaeologists have an impressive reputation around the world, working in many different countries. This week they all came together in Prague to swap notes, report on progress made and outline prospects for the future.

Czechs are now involved in excavation work in Egypt, Syria, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria and Kuwait. All have come up with some important finds, but it is the Egyptologists who have really made an international impact. After more than a century of research and 40 years of excavation work in the land of the Pharaohs, Czech archaeologists have many important finds to their name. Ladislav Bareš is head of the Czech Institute of Egyptology:

"Our work in Egypt definitely belongs to the most prestigious Czech archaeological work abroad. Out institute has been working in Egypt since 1960 and we have done quite a lot over that time..."

Czech Egyptologists report on rewarding work in the Land of the Pharaohs, Radio Praha, Czech Republic, April 27, 2006.

The British Museum's touring exhibit "Treasures of the World's Cultures" has attracted over 80,000 visitors in its first month.

"It is amazing that such an exhibit on foreign cultures has become so popular in Beijing," said Yao An, deputy curator of the Capital Museum of Beijing...

... The exhibit displays 272 artefacts including a 3,000-year-old mummy, an ancient statue of Dionysus, son of Zeus, a 2,100-year-old gold pendant featuring Aphrodite and Eros, and Leonardo da Vinci's works.

Treasures on show also include ancient Egyptian tablets, Greek busts, Roman sculptures and the world's oldest tool...

Touring exhibit of British Museum popular among Beijingers, People's Daily, China, April 28, 2006.

On a deserted green hill above the Aegean Sea, archaeologists have unearthed what may be the palace of Ajax, one of the greatest heroes in Greek mythology...

... Among the finds are tools, Cypriot pottery and bronzes, proof of relations with the eastern Mediterranean. But the most stunning discovery is a single bronze scale from an armour breastplate that bears the stamp of a famous Egyptian pharaoh.

Translated by professors Jacke Phillips and John Ray at Cambridge, it is the name of Rameses II who ruled Egypt during the 13th century BC. Lolos said it was possible that Salamina men had fought as mercenaries in the army of Rameses.

"The piece is ... unique," Phillips said. "I know of no other armour scale with a hieroglyphic inscription..."

Ajax's long-lost palace discovered on Greek island, Reuters via The Scotsman, UK, April 28, 2006.

Frustrated with the poor quality of many Web sites dealing with ancient Egypt, a professor at the University of California has decided to create an online encyclopaedia devoted to Egyptology.

Willemina Wendrich, a professor of Egyptian archaeology, had watched in dismay as the best resource for her subject, a seven-volume encyclopaedia in German, got more and more out of date because of the prohibitive cost of updating it.

Meanwhile, her students at UCLA were doing research for papers on the Internet, and being led astray. "The Web has a lot of wonderful information, and a lot of horrible information," she told Reuters in a telephone interview Thursday.

The UCLA Encyclopaedia of Egyptology, which will go online in 2008, will be peer-reviewed and will update when there are new discoveries, Wendrich said...

A single completely unrelated photo of the Psusennes gold mask was released with the story by Reuters and can be found here on Yahoo's Anthropology & Archaeology slideshow.

Egyptologists launching online encyclopaedia, Reuters via CNN, USA, April 28, 2006.

cf. Egyptologists launching online encyclopaedia, Reuters via CNN, USA, April 28, 2006.

A burnt olive tree has helped to resolve a controversy over dating key events in the Mediterranean that took place more than three millennia ago.

The new dates would change the chronology of the Minoans, Greeks, Cypriots and others by a century, realign history and raise questions about the Egyptian chronology and the genesis of Classical civilisation.

The rewriting of the history of the Aegean has come in part from an elaborate study of charcoal and seed samples from a number of sites dated to between 1700BC and 1400BC, and partly from a single olive tree. The gnarled stump was found in a volcanic rock layer on the Greek island of Santorini (Thera).

During the second millennium BC, it was the site of a massive eruption that blasted ash and rock for many miles around, burying many thriving civilisations in the Mediterranean, including Crete's famed Minoans...

Olive tree rewrites classical history, The Telegraph, UK, April 28, 2006.

cf. Olive Branch Buried by Volcano Revises History, Live Science, USA, April 27, 2006.

cf. Cultural recalibration, Science Magazine, AAAS, District of Columbia, USA, Vol. 312, no. 5773, April 28, 2006, p. 496. This is the Science article summary, a subscription is required to obtain the full version in PDF format.

It's the end of an era as one of the North East's most famous museum is emptied, in advance of a £26m revamp.

The Hancock Museum in Newcastle is to be converted into a Great North Museum with cash from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

And the 122-year-old museum will close its doors for good on Sunday, with the natural history and archaeological treasures housed there being packed up and moved out in preparation for the three-year closure.

Over the years, visitors to the Hancock have enjoyed a host of exhibitions, exploring dinosaurs, creepy-crawlies, Ancient Egypt and cult TV and films, to name but a few...

The Hancock museum was recently the home of an Egyptian exhibition called "Egypt Revealed – Life & Death in Ancient Egypt".

Making history, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, UK, April 21, 2006.

Czech archaeologists have a chance to uncover a royal palace and a royal government seat from the Pharaohs' era in Abusir, Egypt.

Miroslav Verner, long-term head of the Czech archaeological expedition in Egypt, told the Czech Archaeology Abroad conference that the royal buildings were probably situated at the border between the Nile valley and large burial grounds.

Czech archaeologists have also uncovered a number of shaft graves in Abusir dating back to 530-525 B.C.

One of the large tombs they have studied belonged to admiral Wedjahor-Resne, labelled as "the traitor of Egypt" over his collaboration with the Persians, said Czech Egyptologist Ladislav Bareš...

Czech archaeologists may uncover royal palace in Egypt, CTK via Prague Daily Monitor, Czech Republic, April 26, 2006.

cf. Czech Institute of Egyptology.

cf. Czech National Centre of Egyptology.

The new issue of National Geographic Magazine is out now and contains a feature on the Gospel of Judas.

National Geographic Magazine, National Geographic Society, Washington, District of Columbia, USA, April 2006.

Subscribe to National Geographic Magazine via Amazon.com.

Polish archaeologists and conservationists working in Sudan will found a museum devoted to early Christianity in Nubia in the town Banganarti, where they will display their finds in the area.

The museum, scheduled to open in 2 years' time, will feature fragments of three early-Christian churches unearthed by Polish teams, the earliest dating from the time of Nubia's reversal to Christianity in the 6th-7th century, as well as portraits of Nubian kings.

Among the displayed relics will be parts of the onetime Archangel Raphael Church, one of the medieval world's main pilgrimage sites, whose basement contains tombs of Nubian rulers.

Poland builds archaeological museum in Sudan, Science & Scholarship in Poland, Poland, April 24, 2006.

Blind visitors are now able to feel the magic of the Egyptian Museum, thanks to a special new gallery which will let them discover by touch the historic treasures.

The museum provides cards written with Braille, a system of touch reading for the blind, that explain all the information regarding antiques shown.

As one of the museums' educational role, the project aims to enable everyone to benefit and learn, especially blind people, Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said to reporters Sunday.

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said that a group of blind people and people endowed with eyesight participate in the project by training and explaining to the blind from all ages...

New ways to teach blind about civilization, AlArab Online, UK, April 23, 2006.

A discovery by a group of French and Egyptian archaeologists Tuesday revealed that Egyptians enjoyed a public cooking service 3,200 years ago.

The traces of that ancient civilization were found in the city of Luxor, where Egyptians prepared meals for workers of the Pharaoh tombs, and where remains of a school for workers' children, a butcher and vegetable stores.

Expert Sabri Abdelaziz confirmed they served the workers bread, meat and vegetables.

According to Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, the kitchens were built in western Luxor, near the "Ramesseum", funerary temple erected in honour of Pharaoh Ramses II (1304-1237 BCE)...

Egypt, Thousand-Year-Old Legacy Found, Prensa Latina, Cuba, April 25, 2006.

I first visited the Red Sea by taxi from Luxor to Hurghada 20 years ago. There was a tiny Sheraton hotel there, where I had the best Tom Collins I've ever tasted. But as myself and my girlfriend didn't dive, and there was little else to do in Hurghada, we caught the taxi back in the evening.

Hurghada went on to grow organically and become Egypt's first Red Sea resort, an alternative to the Valley of the Kings and overloads of Egyptology. It didn't take long for the Sheraton to be joined by a dozen other international hotels, German dive instructors and windsurf schools.

And it also didn't take long for the Egyptians to recognise this new tourism potential. Within five years, Hurghada had been overtaken in popularity on The Sinai by Sharm-el-Sheikh - and as both burgeoned into über-resorts in the 1990s, so other sleepy villages were zoned for development...

Another Sinai bombing: where now for Egypt?, Steve Keenan, The Times, UK, April 25, 2006.

cf. 30 arrested in terrorist attacks in Egypt, AP via Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois, USA, April 26, 2006.

These days, we are less and less comfortable about having the monuments of other countries in our museums. When we go to the British Museum, or drive alongside the Thames and notice Cleopatra's Needle, the immediate response is not what it used to be. Fifty years ago, we might have thought: "How wonderful to live in a country with all these wonderful treasures." Now, we are just as likely to speculate as to who stole them, and how long it is going to be before they are handed back...

National sentiment often runs high in these matters. I remember once going round a temple in Egypt with some Italian friends, and the Egyptian guide remarked of a sarcophagus that its pair had long ago been "stolen" and was now "nel Sir John Soane Museo a Londra", giving me a very accusing glare...

Last week, I was on holiday in Sudan. The territories now lying within Sudan form a minor but fascinating part of the ancient Egyptian story, and I wanted to see what treasures were still there. Of course, it was difficult. Until recently, to visit historical sites outside Khartoum, you had to go to various ministries, asking civil servants to stamp your letter of request to see the pyramids at Meroe or the temples of Naqa. It is only in the past month or so that you have been able to just turn up and pay the price of admission...

Honour amongst thieves, Philip Hensher, The Guardian, UK, April 24, 2006.

The Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale (MoA | FL) today announced that 707,534 people visited Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs during its run at the museum from December 15, 2005 to April 23, 2006. Sponsored by Northern Trust, the exhibition broke all previous attendance records at the museum and increased the membership base by 150 percent. The exhibit is organized by National Geographic, AEG Exhibitions and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and is sponsored locally by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida.

Roughly a month after opening, attendance numbers to the King Tut exhibition surpassed the two previous MoA | FL blockbuster exhibitions combined. "Saint Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of the Popes" touted more than 150,000 visitors in 2003-2004 and "Diana: A Celebration" drew more than 130,000 patrons in 2004-2005.

"It has been a tremendous honour for Florida to host the 'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' exhibit over the past four months," said Governor Jeb Bush. "More than 700,000 visitors have seen this awe-inspiring collection, which has made a positive impact on our state's economy. As one of the top travel destinations in the world, we thank those who have come from far and wide to view this historic exhibition..."

'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' Breaks Attendance Records Drawing 707,534 Visitors to The Museum Of Art Fort Lauderdale, PR Newswire, USA, April 24, 2006.

cf. King Tut frenzy reigns right till closing time, Miami Herald, Florida, USA, April 25, 2006.

Aside from its mind bogglingly comprehensive permanent exhibits, the Met’s “Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh” amasses a once-in-a-lifetime collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts and art from the time of Hatshepsut’s reign.

The Hatshepsut exhibit, displaying a massive collection of art and sculpture, becomes a strange partner to the Walker exhibit; Walker, simply will not let the history of slavery rest, while the Hatshepsut exhibit makes no mention of the cost of ancient art.

One wonders whether slave labour had a hand in the glorious remnants of ancient Egypt. Amidst the praise for and objectification of the objects within the exhibit, one cannot hear mention of a producer, the forgotten labourer who had originally quarried the stone bearing Hatshepsut’s face...

Cross-dressing pharaohs and Hurricane Katrina, The Daily Colonial, The George Washington University, District of Columbia, USA, April 24, 2006

There is also a 12 minute audio special feature, where actor Sam Waterston narrates the story of Hatshepsut, that can be downloaded from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website as a podcast, an MP3 or a RealAudio stream.

by Hassan Saadallah

The Egyptian Museum will soon open a hall to display the four mummies of high priests. The mummies were found in sarcophagi dating back to the XX Dynasty (1188-1069 BC).

The hall, on the second floor of the museum, has been equipped with glass showcases and ventilation system costing LE6 million .

Eleven mummies of kings and princesses, dating back to the XXI and XXII Dynasties (1069-715 BC), will also be on display.

New hall for mummies, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 23, 2006.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni has given the go-ahead for the creation of Egypt's first judicial museum to document the judicial history of the country.

The museum will be registered as the first of its kind in the Arab world. It will display rare manuscripts and books in three pavilions at an estimated cost of LE450,000 .

First Egyptian judicial museum to be established, State Information Service, Egypt, April 16, 2006.

Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak and Mrs. Bernadette Chirac, Thursday co-inaugurated Imhotep Museum at Saqqara area, situated on the West Bank of the River Nile, about 30 km south of Cairo.

The Ministry of Culture has modernized the museum in tribute to Imhotep, who was the chief architect to the Third Dynasty King Djoser (2687-2668 BC).

Mrs. Mubarak and the French first lady toured the museum's various halls and watched a film about the history of Saqqara area.

They also made a tour of the Step Pyramid plateau, the causeway, the Serapeum: a gallery of tombs, Saqqara North and Saqqara South.

In addition to Djoser's, there are another 16 pyramids on the site, in various states of preservation or dilapidation.

Mrs. Mubarak, Mrs. Chirac Inaugurate Imhotep Museum in Saqqara, State Information Service, Egypt, April, 21, 2006.

The Egyptian people mark today [Monday] Sham el Naseem feast, Spring Festival. Families went out to gardens and national parks since the early morning to celebrate this day.

The feast of Sham al-Naseem is one of the Pharaonic feasts. It is celebrated by all Egyptians, Muslims and Christians.

Pharaonic feasts were related to the astrological phenomena and their relation to nature and life. They celebrated the Spring Feast on a date determined by the Spring equinox. On that day, night and day are equal when the sun rises over Aries. It is on the 25th of Barmehat. It says in their holy book that they thought that this day marked the beginning of creation...

Egypt marks Sham el Naseem, State Information Service, Egypt, April 24, 2006.

cf. Welcoming the spring, The Egyptian Mail, Egypt, April 22, 2006.

Three blasts tore through Dahab, a crowded resort town on the Sinai Peninsula, on Monday night, killing at least 30 people and wounding more than 115.

The attack, the third at a popular Sinai resort in two years, once again raised the spectre of one of the United States' closest allies in the Arab world facing a home-grown terrorist threat trying to destabilize the government.

There was confusion in the hours after the blasts, but what was clear was that this resort town on the Gulf of Aqaba, a quaint tourist spot frequented by back-packers and scuba divers, was awash in blood on one of the most popular holiday weekends of the Egyptian calendar.

It was the third time that terrorists struck near a national holiday. It is on this day that Egypt celebrates the anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from Sinai in 1982...

30 Are Killed in Sinai as Bombs Rock Egyptian Resort City, The New York Times, New York, USA, April 25, 2006.

cf. 30 killed, 115 hurt as blasts again rip an Egyptian resort, Houston Chronicle, Texas, USA, April 24, 2006.

cf. Triple explosion spoils Easter for Egyptian resort, dpa via Monsters & Critics, UK, April 25, 2006.

cf. PM condemns Egypt terrorist bombings, AAP via The Age, Australia, April 25, 2006.

cf. Deadly blasts at Sinai resort town coincide with busy holiday, The Seattle Times, District of Columbia, April 25, 2006.

Lines wound around the block as the Museum of Art in downtown Fort Lauderdale offered its last showing of the exhibit Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs on Sunday.

The record-breaking exhibit, which opened Dec. 15, included 50 artefacts from the famous pharaoh's tomb, including his royal diadem and one of the inlaid coffinettes that contained his mummified internal organs.

Another 80 objects from other tombs and temples in Egypt's Valley of the Kings were part of the display.

The exhibit drew about 5,000 to 8,000 visitors a day. It was the museum's most popular to date...

It's a wrap for King Tut exhibit in Fort Lauderdale, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, April 24, 2006.

"It's like having great in-laws staying with you," director Irv Lippman said. "You're sad they're leaving, but there's a time for them to go."

"And they're leaving a pot of jam for you," he said with a laugh.

Lippman's good spirits are well-founded. "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" set an astonishing record for attendance. About 650,000 visitors flocking to gaze at gold and jewelled artefacts from the royal graves of Egypt's 18th Dynasty...

Tut leaves museum forever changed, Orlando Sentinel, Florida, USA, April 24, 2006.

cf. Tut bids farewell to South Florida, but his fascination stays on, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, April 23, 2006.

The discovery of gold cartouches dating back to 1400 BC sheds new light on the relationship between two ancient Egyptian rulers, Egypt's antiquities department said Friday.

A team of French and Egyptian archaeologists have discovered two sets of nine solid gold cartouches bearing the name of Tuthmose III (who ruled from 1479-1425 BC) near the pharaoh's stepmother Queen Hatshepsut's temple in Luxor, 700km south of Cairo.

"These cartouches... which have the names of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III have been found near Hatshepsut's obelisk which proves that the obelisk was erected by both rulers," said Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities...

Ancient gold cartouches found in Egypt, Independent Online, South Africa, April 23, 2006.

cf. Ancient objects found in Egypt, News 24, South Africa, April 21, 2006.

cf. Ancient gold cartouches unearthed in Egypt, Middle East Online, Cyprus, April 21, 2006.

cf. New treasure uncovered in Karnak Temple, State Information Service, Egypt, April 22, 2006.

In mid-June, noted archaeologist Zahi Hawass will present a lecture here titled “Recent Discoveries in Egypt.”

The talk — set for June 15 [2006] in TPAC’s Polk Theater — will cover such topics as recent finds near the pyramids and in the Valley of the Golden Mummies and the discovery of a new pyramid at Saqqara.

This one-night-only event featuring Hawass, an Egypt specialist familiar to TV viewers of National Geographic Channel and the Discovery Channel, is organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. It’s being held in connection with the Frist’s upcoming exhibition, "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt," which is billed as featuring the largest group of antiquities ever offered on loan from Egypt for exhibit in North America...

Archaeologist to lecture on recent finds in Egypt, The Tennessean, Tennessee, USA, April 20, 2006.

Egypt's first site museum is to be opened today by Mrs Suzanne Mubarak and Bernadette Chirac, wife of French President Jacque Chirac, during their two-day visit to Egypt by invitation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Nevine El-Aref previewed the Imhotep Museum built at Saqqara in commemoration of the ancient Egyptian architect Imhotep and the renowned French Egyptologist Jean Philip Lauer.

The museum complex, with its gleaming white marble façade, stands at the foot of the Saqqara Plateau. The complex, three years in the building on a budget of LE20 million , offers a new perspective on site museums and could set an example for others planned by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) at other archaeological sites.

According to the site management programme launched by the SCA four years ago, such complexes will offer highly efficient storage space and will replace the haphazard storehouses which were regularly subject to theft. The artefacts will be housed in a suitable atmosphere to prevent deterioration.

The idea of such museum was floated in 1990, but the location chosen would have distorted the landscape and was considered inappropriate. The project was kept under wraps until 1997, when construction began on a new site...

Museum for a demi-god, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 791, April 20 - 26, 2006.

Alexander wasn't quite so great after all. Sure, he conquered most of the world known to the ancient Greeks, but he didn't found the Egyptian city of Alexandria — he just rebranded it. It now seems that this part of the Nile has been settled for at least 4500 years, pre-dating Alexander's arrival by a good two millennia.

Alain Véron from the Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France, and colleagues made the discovery by measuring the variations in lead concentration in a mud core from Alexandria's ancient harbour. They determined how lead levels had changed over time by carbon-dating seashells found in the core...

Nile releases city's deep history, New Scientist, UK, Issue 2548, April 22, 2006, p. 17.

The touring exhibition, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" will extend its hours of operation at the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale (MoA | FL) to be open around-the-clock for the final weekend, beginning Saturday, April 22 [2006], at 9 a.m., until the sale of the final ticket on Sunday, April 23 [2006], at 10 p.m. Tickets for the extended hours, as well as tickets for normal operating hours, are currently available. Sponsored by Northern Trust, the exhibition is organized by National Geographic, AEG Exhibitions and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and is sponsored locally by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida.

With more than 640,000 tickets sold since the exhibition opened on Dec. 15, 2005, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs has become the most popular exhibition in MoA | FL's history.

"The popularity of the King Tut Exhibit in Florida has prompted us to further extend viewing hours," said Irvin M. Lippman, president and executive director for MoA | FL. "Providing around-the-clock viewing is another opportunity for us to share the exhibition with as many people as possible and to celebrate the way the people of Fort Lauderdale have embraced King Tut..."

Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale Further Extends Hours of 'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' Exhibition, PRNewswire, USA, April 19, 2006.

More than a month before the mummies arrive at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, tickets for all docent-guided school tours of a highly anticipated ancient Egypt exhibit are sold out.

Third-grade teacher Sue Collier, who plans to take her students on a field trip more than 3,000 years back in time, isn't surprised.

"Most of the elementary age (students) haven't had much exposure to ancient Egypt, to the mystery of it all and the fascination of how things were done," said Collier, a teacher at Goodlettsville Elementary School.

"There's history involved here, there's a multicultural exposure involved here. Any time you expose children this age to different cultures, they become more tolerant of other cultures. It becomes natural..."

Students set to walk with Egyptians, The Tennessean, Tennessee, USA, April 20, 2006.

More than 1,300 years after the Muslim conquest swept through Egypt, one of the country's highest religious authorities has declared that its ancient sculptures are forbidden by Islam.

In his fatwa — or religious ruling — issued earlier this month, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa quoted a saying of the prophet Muhammad that sculptors will be among those receiving the harshest punishment on Judgment Day.

Artists and intellectuals here say the edict, whose ban on producing and displaying sculptures overturns a century-old fatwa, runs counter to Islam. They also worry that extremists may use the ruling as a pretence for destroying Egypt's ancient relics, which form a pillar of the country's multibillion-dollar tourist industry...

... Egypt is dotted with millennia worth of Pharaonic antiquities. Mohsen Said, of the country's Supreme Council for Antiquities, says, "We display statues so they can be studied and so people can get to know their heritage. This is Egypt's national heritage. We don't display them for worship..."

Egypt's grand mufti issues fatwa: no sculpture, Christian Science Monitor, Massachusetts, USA, April 18, 2006.

The air grows rarefied whenever people discuss the purpose of an institution like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The sermonizing phrases — “Nourish the human spirit” ... “Display mankind’s noblest achievements” ... “Enlighten, inspire, and awe the public” — fall naturally from the lips. And well they should. But this high-flown perspective can also develop into an earnest, deathly piety that has nothing to do with the life of art. Which is why I couldn’t help but laugh when I came upon the wall panel that opens “After the Deluge” at the Met, a show organized by the contemporary African-American artist Kara Walker that was inspired by the physical and social mayhem generated by Hurricane Katrina. “The story that has interested me,” Walker writes, “is the story of Muck.”

An institution that’s not afraid of Muck is healthy. The Met remains open to the questing, disorderly culture around it, reflecting contemporary concerns without cheating the past of its stillness or complexity. Its “After the Deluge” — a small exhibition — and its massive “Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh” demonstrate in different ways how a traditional museum can keep an eye on the obsessions of modern society, in this instance race and gender, without becoming tendentious. “Hatshepsut,” a scholarly exhibition in the grand tradition, is about a woman who can still fascinate a contemporary audience. Organized by Catharine Roehrig, it marks the 100th anniversary of the museum’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, and is built from the extraordinary collection of objects brought back by the museum’s Egyptian expedition in the twenties and thirties. The show focuses upon Hatshepsut (who reigned from 1479 to 1458 B.C.) but also examines the life and art around her. It contains numerous statues of her in different guises, together with many fine examples of jewellery, furniture, and other household goods...

Race and Gender on Fifth Avenue, New York Metro, New York, USA, April 24, 2006.

In response to a federal lawsuit, the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art has made its popular King Tut exhibit more accessible to blind, deaf and physically disabled visitors.

However, Joshua Entin, who represents a group of blind and disabled individuals who sued the museum, said the settlement reached last week did not accomplish all of his clients' goals.

"The case is not over," Entin said...

Museum improves access after lawsuit, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, April 19, 2006.

cf. My previous post: Fort Lauderdale museum sued over disabled access to Tut exhibit.

The massive collection of illegal antiquities uncovered by authorities on the tiny Aegean island of Schinoussa is unique and probably the largest ever seen in Greece, police told Kathimerini yesterday.

Policemen and archaeologists were still combing through artefacts at the villa of an unnamed woman from a wealthy shipping family. The raid came after a search of her home in Athens, where more antiquities were found.

“I have never seen such unique items before in my life. I do not think I will ever handle such a big case again during my career,” an officer from the Antiquities Department of the Attica Police, who preferred not to be named, told Kathimerini...

Experts in awe of antiquity stash, Kathimerini, Greece, April 15, 2006.

The latest issue of Archaeology magazine is out now and contains the following articles of interest.

• City of the Dead
  by Andrew Lawler.
  
  The vast Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara is now emerging from the shadow of Giza and the Valley of the Kings.
  
  Pilgrim, priest, or pharaoh, each made the same sacred journey. Starting at dawn from the sprawling capital of Memphis along the west bank of the Nile River, they first crossed a shallow lake by boat to reach the great necropolis--a symbolic journey to the land of death. Stepping ashore, they began the climb up from the floodplain to the forbidding desert plateau. Silhouetted tombs of nobles from the 1st Dynasty appeared on the left, and, as the path curved south, ahead loomed the celebrated Step Pyramid, tomb of King Djoser, founder of the 3rd Dynasty (2662-2597 B.C.) and builder of Egypt's first pyramids. In the early morning sun, the massive 200-foot-high tomb with its six limestone-encased steps sparkled brightly. A dozen other royal pyramids, each at the centre of its own collection of temples and tombs, some enclosed by elaborate porticos and most filled with hand-carved reliefs in dim rooms, rose above the dusty plain. Smoke from offerings drifted over the site, day and night, blowing in the dry desert wind over the capital in the lush valley below.
• Reviews: Egypt's Missing King
  by Mark Rose.
  
  Egyptian bagpipers playing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" outside the Cairo Museum? It sounds improbable, but it did happen. The mummy of Rameses I, ruler of Egypt circa 1298-1296 ("Mystery Mummy," March/April 2003, and "New Life for the Dead," September/October 2001) found in a museum in Niagara Falls, Canada, along with a two-headed calf and pig? Where it was viewed by Abe Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, and P.T. Barnum? Yes, that, too, might have happened.
• News: From the Trenches
  
  Exceptional discoveries seem to be the rule of the day in Egypt...

Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, New York, USA, Volume 59, Number 3, May / June 2006.

Subscribe to Archaeology Magazine via Amazon.com.

An exhibition titled "The Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai," is on view through Friday, July 28, in the first floor lounge of the Department of Art and Archaeology in McCormick Hall.

The exhibition of 24 photographs was organized to commemorate Kurt Weitzmann (1904-93) and the Princeton-Michigan expeditions to Mount Sinai. Weitzmann, a professor of art and archaeology at Princeton from 1945 to 1972, and his colleague George Howard Forsyth Jr., a member of Princeton's class of 1923 and a professor at the University of Michigan, organized a series of expeditions between 1956 and 1965 to Egypt, with the aim of studying the Monastery of St. Catherine and its treasures...

Exhibition commemorates Sinai expeditions, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, April 15, 2006.

A provocative $4-million documentary by Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici claims to have found archaeological evidence verifying the story of the biblical Exodus from Egypt, 3,500 years ago...

... in Exodus Decoded, Mr. Jacobovici says he has found almost a dozen overlooked relics that confirm the biblical story...

... What experts will make of the high-tech documentary, with 45 minutes of computer graphic enhancement, is not clear. Mr. Jacobovici includes interviews with more than a dozen historians, archaeologists, geologists and writers that support key parts of his argument. These include the distinguished Egyptologist Donald Redford, now teaching at Penn State University. But no single scholar endorses the entire thesis...

Director posits proof of biblical Exodus, Globe and Mail, Ontario, Canada, April 14, 2006.

Farouk Geweida in the daily business El-Alam el-Yom referred to a letter from a tour guide warning that underground water is threatening the foundations of the ancient temple at Esna in Upper Egypt.

"The letter said that attempts to pump the water out from under the temple have been in vain. Experts say the only solution is to raise the temple on a platform of insulating material.

"Is there any way to avoid putting the lives of visitors at risk and save the temple?"

Save Esna Temple, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 17, 2006.

My Trip To Ancient Egypt: An Exhibition of Artefacts of a Pharaoh in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Spring break is the one week off from school in the middle of the semester where U.S. college students are free to do whatever they please. While the majority of students flock to the beaches of South Florida to enjoy their one week of freedom from anything scholastic, my friends and I went to Ft. Lauderdale to see the Tutankhamun Exhibit at the museum of art there. This exhibit started in Los Angeles, moved to Ft. Lauderdale, will move on to Chicago and Philadelphia as a part of its tour of the United States, then move to London before making its way home to Egypt. The popularity of this show was immense as tickets had to be purchased a month in advance for a specific time and date...

The Mummy Will Return, RP Online, Germany, April 18, 2006.

by Zahi Hawass

Most of our work during the third, fourth and fifth seasons was focused on preservation and conservation. We have treated all the mummies in situ to protect them from deterioration and infestation by insects, and we have carefully recorded all the artefacts we have found at both sites.

We have also constructed ceilings and doors for the tombs we have excavated. We have opened several tombs, from the 26th, Dynasty to the public. This was an immense job, which required installation of electricity, ventilation inside the tomb and landscaping outside.

One day I hope to have a major site museum at Bahariya; it will be the first of its kind built for a major discovery such as the Valley of the Golden Mummies.

I will never forget the first day of our excavation.

That evening, the team went to a café to discuss the excavation. The owner, Sheikh Rashed, came to me and said, "Sir, our town is so neglected. Next time you are on TV, will you talk about us?" Neither of us realised that I would soon be mentioning their little town in publications and programmes worldwide. Bahariya has become one of the most famous archaeological areas in the world. About ten thousand tourists travel there each year, and the region is finally entering the twenty-first century. There are hotels, cafés, markets and cars, and it is now possible to dial directly from Bahariya to anywhere in the world. Sheikh Rashed still has his café but now he has opened an internet café so that everyone can check their e-mail from Bahariya. I never thought anything like this would happen in an oasis deep in the Western Desert of Egypt.

My best estimate is that the valley holds about ten thousand mummies, but I feel we should let them rest undisturbed. The 253 mummies we have uncovered have given us an enormous amount of information to sift through. We have only scratched the surface of this site and the adventures will continue for many years to come.

The future of Bahariya, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 17, 2006.

The Egyptian Gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum, which has been closed for refurbishment since September 2004, is due to re-open on May 27 2006.

Comprising three rooms, the revamped gallery will now explore the lives of Egyptian kings and the ordinary people of Ancient Egypt, as well as the fascinating process of death, burial and the other funerary rituals of the Ancient Egyptians.

With the earliest pieces in the Fitzwilliam collection dating from about 3100 BC, the original remit was to improve its display. However the refurbishment has also given staff at the museum a valuable chance to look at the conservation issues that needed to be dealt with...

New Egyptian gallery nears completion at Fitzwilliam museum, 24 Hour Museum, UK, April 18, 2006.

On April 20 the Fitzwilliam Museum will play host to the famous Liverpool poet, dramatist and storyteller Adrian Mitchell, who will be launching a competition for 14-17 year olds and over-18s.

The task will be for the young writers to construct a fairytale or write the ending to an ancient Egyptian tale. The beginning of the original story, about a prince doomed to die in one of three ways, is recorded on a piece of papyrus in the British Museum.

This will soon be on show at The Fitzwilliam, but the ending of the story has never been found - which is where the public and the competition come in...

Cambridge Wordfest comes to the Fitzwilliam's Egyptian gallery, 24 Hour Museum, UK, April 18, 2006.

By Zahi Hawass.

There are 26 tombs of Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings. Aside from that, the valley is home to 36 tombs which once belonging to royal relatives or courtiers, many of whom are now anonymous. Only a little more than a month ago a new tomb was found in the valley, bringing the total number to 63. The new tomb was found about seven metres away from the tomb of Tutankhamun by Otto Schaden of the University of Memphis.

The story of this discovery began last year, when Schaden wrote to me to say he had found a shaft located near the tomb of Amenmesse of the 19th Dynasty (KV-10). Amenmesse's tomb had been discovered long ago, but Schaden had worked for many years on cleaning and recording it. He never dreamed of working outside the tomb, since this was not part of his concession. However, his luck changed last year when the Inspector of Qurna came to see him and asked him to clean the area around KV-10's entrance as part of a planned Supreme Council of Antiquities project to protect the valley from flooding. While doing so, and purely by accident, Schaden came across the top of this shaft...

Dig days: Treasure without end, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 790, April 13 - 19, 2006.

cf. KV-63 official website.

An exhibition entitled "American Contributions to Egyptian Archaeology" in the Egyptian Museum suggests transparency after years of reticence, says Jill Kamil.

Last month's official opening in Room No 44 of the Egyptian Museum of an exhibition of American discoveries in Egypt was a high-profile event. It was launched by Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and attended by Frank Ricciardone, the American ambassador in Egypt — who is showing more interest in Egyptian culture than did his predecessors — as well as Gerry Scott, director of the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE), who demonstrates a more amicable attitude to the press, and Wafaa El-Saddik, director of the museum. The objects on display included pieces chosen from the permanent collection of the museum as well as some recent and impressive discoveries.

Cameramen, reporters, invited guests and curious tourists pressed forward to catch sight of the charismatic Hawass as he gave his opening speech. With his usual exuberance he welcomed the opportunity to recognise America's contributions to Egyptian archaeology for more than a century. He mentioned the work of George Reisner at Giza, and made reference to the fact that he had been fortunate in his career to have been friends with two eminent American Egyptologists: David O'Conner, with whom he worked early in his career at Abydos and Malkata, and Mark Lehner, with whom he has worked at Giza for the last 30 years...

An open-door policy, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 790, April 13 - 19, 2006.

Yesterday a Beluga Airbus, the world's largest cargo carrier, landed at Borg Al-Arab Airport near Alexandria to collect 371 of the precious artefacts which have been brought up from Egypt's Mediterranean sea bed over the last six years, reports Nevine El-Aref.

They will be transported to the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin, Germany, where the first-ever international exhibition of “Egypt's Sunken Treasures” will be held. From 13 May to 4 September [2006] Germans and their neighbours will have a chance to admire the testament to an ancient culture that had lain forgotten for 1,500 years. Egypt's sunken treasures will display unique finds discovered during Frank Goddio's underwater expeditions with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) at two legendary sites: Alexandria's ancient Eastern Harbour, with the submerged part of the royal quarter, and the ancient towns of Heracleion and Canopus off the coast at Abu Qir.

Among the objects on show are three gigantic pink granite colossi featuring the Nile god Hapi, a Ptolemaic king and an unidentified Egyptian queen dressed as the goddess Isis. A customs stelae from Heracleion with inscriptions in two languages, hieroglyphic and Greek, will also be on show along with sphinx statues which probably represent Queen Cleopatra's father Ptolemy XII, a head of god Serapis and a black granite shrine known as the "naos of the decades", which is covered with figures and hieroglyphic texts relating to the ancient calendar...

Treasures from the deep, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 790, April 13 - 19, 2006.

The only known copy of the Gospel of Judas, which casts an unorthodox light on events leading up to the Crucifixion, is returning to Egypt. Nevine El-Aref relates the story of the codex and its conflicting perspective.

The gospel of Jesus's favourite disciple, Judas, was on show yesterday in Washington's National Geographic Museum before its return to Egypt where it was found 30 years ago. The fragile codex — made up of 13 papyrus leaves — has been restored with a two-million-dollar fund from the National Geographic Society (NGS) and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery. Its most recent owners, the Basel-based Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art (MFAA), will now hand the codex over to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo.

The gospel, written in Coptic in the third or fourth century, is believed to be a translation of an original Greek text belonging to an early Christian sect sometime before AD180. The document offers new insights into the relation between Jesus and Judas, whose betrayal led to his capture and crucifixion. Unlike the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in which Judas is portrayed as a reviled traitor, the new gospel depicts him as acting on a request by Jesus to hand him over to the Romans.

The codex also contains a text entitled "James", otherwise known as "The First Apocalypse of James", the "Letter of Peter to Philip" and a fragment of a text that scholars are provisionally calling "The Book of Allogenes"...

The gospel according to Judas, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 790, April 13 - 19, 2006.

The shepherds who settled the Eastern Sahara in the fourth millennium BC developed a culture whose archaeological remains are of astounding richness.

Polish pre-historians have been engaged in intensive research in northeast Africa for more than 40 years. The greatest accomplishments in this field have been achieved by the international Combined Prehistoric Expedition (CPE), with a core comprised of Polish and American archaeologists. The expedition’s director was originally Professor Fred Wendorf from Southern Methodist University in Dallas; it is now being directed by Romuald Schild from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences.

The CPE has devoted a considerable portion of its efforts to researching areas in the eastern Sahara, namely the Western Desert in Egypt, also known as the Libyan Desert. The more than one dozen excavation seasons carried out in this region (whose climate essentially makes work only possible in wintertime) have concentrated on Homo sapiens’ earliest history, studying the people who dwelt here beginning more than a hundred thousand years ago. The greatest focus has been placed on researching the late Stone Age, i.e. the Neolithic, when humanity was partially abandoning its hunter-gatherer way of life and switching to an economy based on food production. For the ancient residents of the Western Desert, this chiefly meant raising cattle...

Prehistoric Herdsmen, Michał Kobusiewicz and Romuald Schild, ACADEMIA: The Magazine of the Polish Academy of Sciences, No. 3 (7), 2005, pp. 20 - 24

Get a good night’s sleep, drink a few fanageen of strong Turkish coffee and put on sensible shoes: A tour of the cultural capital of the Arab world, while invigorating, is exhausting...

... Since you’re here, check out the Supreme Cultural Council and neighbouring Creativity Centre, where seminars and shows are sometimes held. A stop at El-Hanager Arts Centre is a must for exhibitions and (usually experimental) plays. And there is always something to do at the Opera House’s many halls, be it taking part in a heated seminar, attending a concert, catching the ballet or an opera or watching a documentary...

... Two must-see museums are the Museum of Islamic Art in Bab El-Khoulq and the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo. Both had been closed for years and have undergone extensive renovations. The two will open to the public in early April 2006. It is likely to take the serious museumgoer several hours to give due appreciation to the unique displays, which hold thousands of artefacts. Each museum warrants a separate day of sightseeing...

Cultural Cairo, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

The Great Desert Circuit runs over 1,000 kilometres from Cairo to Assiut through the desert oases of Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga. Located 265 kilometres south of Cairo, Bahariya is a drive-thru geological museum. Its black and orange basin is littered with fossils of the Cretaceous-era sea creatures that lived here when it was an inland sea.

If fossils are your fancy, take a 4WD to Gebel Dist at the north end of the oasis, which is chock-full of them. Even dinosaur bones have been found here, including the remains of a huge herbivore dating back 94 million years. Unfortunately, they were stored in Germany and destroyed during the Second World War by Allied bombs.

Fossils are not the only surprises to be found in the Western Desert. Cairo’s travel agencies organize tours to Qarat El-Hilwa for a peek at the much-hyped cache of “golden” mummies of the Ptolemaic era, as Zahi Hawass defined them upon their discovery in the 1990s — though despite their rich exteriors, their embalming was actually much sloppier than in previous eras. You might also be able to wrangle a permit to visit on your own. A ticket can be purchased at the local antiquities inspectorate for LE 30...

The Great Desert Circuit, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Once frequented almost exclusively by backpacking foreign tourists, Siwa Oasis has grown into a popular, if remote, destination for international tourists and intrepid Egyptians alike. Less than 75 kilometres from the Libyan border as the crow flies, Siwa is a sizable island of greenery in the Great Sand Sea...

... Though far off the path of Pharaon-ophiles, Siwa has its share of antiquities. Gebel Al-Mawta (Mountain of the Dead) is honeycombed with late-pharaonic and early Greco-Roman sites, four of which are open to tourists. All that is left of the Temple of Amun is a partly reconstructed wall and a stone floor overgrown with weeds. The Temple of the Oracle, up on a hill amid the ruins of a salt-mud village, has withstood the years much better. The temple had a powerful patron in Alexander the Great, who came seeking the oracle’s confirmation that he was the son of Zeus, a key endorsement in the conqueror’s ambitions to rule Egypt. A little deeper in the palm grove is Cleopatra’s Bath, a hot spring that historians believe owes its name more to clever marketing than documented history...

Siwa, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

How many museums (for there are many) have you been to in Egypt? Here are a few for you to consider, from wonderful to weird.

Believe it or not, Egypt is awash in museums, some of which must surely qualify as being among the weirdest in the world. They were never intended that way, but we’re nonetheless glad they are. Some of the oddest and most interesting...

Museums Across Egypt, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Once ancient Thebes, the City of a Hundred Gates has aged with impeccable grace. The recent discovery of a tomb containing seven sarcophagi at Luxor’s Valley of the Kings, the first of its kind in about 80 years, has already boosted the city’s tourism numbers — as if tourists needed another excuse to visit one of the world’s most archaeologically significant locales.

Start with a visit to the awe-inspiring Karnak temple. Once upon a Pharaonic time, everyone was allowed to stand in the first of its three courtyards, while only the nobles were granted access to the second, and the third and most sacred was solely reserved for the High Priest and the Pharaoh. Attend the daily multilingual sound and light show (LE 33 for non-Egyptians and LE 11 for Arabic shows, www.sound-light.egypt.com) and learn the story of Thebes by the Sacred Lake.

The Luxor temple, which preserves the remains of a church on its grounds, also houses the mosque of Sufi Sheikh Yusuf Abu Al-Hajjaj. Other perennial tourist favourites include the temple of Hatshepsut and the grand tombs in the Valley of the Nobles, the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens — all well worth the visit. Touring the antiquities is lots of fun, but expect to walk a lot and stand even more...

Luxor and Aswan, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Unlike tourists with their crammed itineraries — who will undoubtedly emerge from the Egyptian Museum stunned, overwhelmed and unable to process the incomprehensibly vast collection of treasures on display within the enormous building — we Cairenes can take our time to savour the treats squirreled away within the museum’s walls.

A plan is essential: The Egyptian Museum houses a staggering collection of over 100,000 objects, too many to absorb in a lifetime, let alone in a single trip. While some displays are well-marked (generally in Arabic and English, occasionally in French), the signage is erratic and you often won’t know what you’re looking at unless you’ve educated yourself beforehand. Decide in advance what you want out of your visit — a broad introduction to Egyptology or a focused look at a particular feature.

Either way, if you aren’t already familiar with the museum’s layout, it is probably wise to invest in a map or a professional guide. The former sells for LE 35 in the gift shop to your left as you enter the building; it is colour-coded and numbered so you can sort out which gallery contains displays from which kingdom or ruler. There is also a wall map of the ground floor, though it isn’t terribly detailed and you can’t refer to it as you wander about. Look for it just to your left after you’ve gone through the final security check within the museum building...

The Egyptian Museum, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Who better to ask for a personally guided tour of the greatest wonders of Egypt than the world’s foremost Egyptologist, Dr Zahi Hawass? In his position as the Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, a post he has held since 2002, Hawass has been a tireless warrior in the fight to regain Egypt’s lost and stolen treasures while preserving those endangered by the environment and mass tourism.

Last month, Hawass took et on an exclusive tour of what he considered the nation’s must-see sites...

Zahi Hawass’ Egypt, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

... It is seriously cool stuff most people will never get a chance to see in real life, but for the next several months, it is all on display at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum.

Bancroft Library officials have selected more than 350 of the library's rarest and most historic holdings for an exhibit celebrating the library's 100th year.

Running through Dec. 3 [2006], the exhibit combines pieces of California history with first editions of Copernicus and Galileo; ancient Egyptian papyri with images of the Beat poets; and mementos of the Black Panther movement with an extremely rare and fragile 16th century scroll illustrating the life, loves, wars and rituals of Cuicatec rulers who lived in what is now Oaxaca, Mexico. The scroll, called the Codex Fernandez Leal, is probably the most valuable item in the library's collection...

Historical gems on display at UC Berkeley Art Museum, Inside Bay Area, California, USA, April 05, 2006.

Dating back to the 14th century B.C., the Luxor temple complex on the west bank of the Nile River — which includes the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, more than 40 temples and the tombs of thousands of nobles — is threatened not only by the ravages of tourism and theft, but by the Nile itself. The construction of the Aswan Dam 40 years ago has caused salt to build up in the newly fertile soil around the temples, eroding their ancient foundations and filling many tombs with water. The World Monuments Fund is currently devising a management plan for the site, and hopes to give the complex its biggest renovation since Alexander the Great...

7 Most Endangered Wonders of the World, Newsweek International via MSNBC, USA, April 10 - 17, 2006.

... Officially, UNESCO bestows the honour on places that exemplify an area's ancestry, with the purpose of ensuring they are preserved. Unofficially, designation is a kind of fairy dust that often turns little-known cultural gems into overnight tourist sensations, fostering intense competition among places to get listed. That is not always a good thing. "Sometimes a site becomes so attractive it becomes impossible to visit or appreciate," says Francesco Bandarin, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. "This is the big problem in generating tourist traffic..."

World Heritage Sites: More Harm Than Good?, Newsweek International via MSNBC, USA, April 10 - 17, 2006.

... No matter how exotic the destination, until recently a traveller's biggest concern was how to get there, not where the journey would ultimately lead. Now thanks to rising incomes and falling airfares, getting there is the easy part; last year a record 806 million tourists hit the road. But those hordes — combined with forces ranging from climate change to civil war, industrial toxins to runaway development — are laying siege to some of the world's most treasured and irreplaceable sites. Whether the millennial gates of Machu Picchu or the moonlit waterways of Venice, we are in danger of losing places we thought would always be around, sure as Stonehenge. New Orleans nearly drowned. The Coral Triangle, a diver's paradise, is as fragile as an eggshell. Visitors ride go-karts along the Great Wall of China and steal artefacts from the crumbling temples of Luxor. Even Stonehenge has been cordoned off. The only certainty for today's travellers is that the wonders of the world are perishable, whether they're made of stone or ice, by man or nature...

The World's Most Endangered Destinations, Newsweek International via MSNBC, USA, April 10 - 17, 2006.

The world's only known copy of the Gospel of Judas, arrived in Egypt on Wednesday for public display.

The head of the Egyptian supreme council of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said: "Egypt has managed to reclaim the 13-page papyrus manuscript."

The manuscript dates to the third or fourth centuries and portrays the apostle Judas as Jesus' faithful servant, not his betrayer.

The document had been undergoing restoration and translation in Switzerland, where it had been acquired by the privately owned Maecenas Foundation...

Gospel of Judas put on display, News 24, South Africa, April 12, 2006.

The latest issue of current world archaeology is out now and contains two article of interest to Egyptophiles.

• KV-63: tomb or room?
  The recently discovered KV-63: tomb or room? (3 pages)
• View from the Field: Egypt
  This issue our View from the Field comes from Nigel Hetherington in Cairo, a Cultural Heritage Consultant who is currently working for the Theban Mapping Project in the Valley of the Kings. (2 pages)

Current World Archaeology, Think Publishing, London, UK, Volume 2, No. 4, Issue 16, April / May 2006.

Subscribe to Current World Archaeology Magazine via Amazon.com.

Around 1479 B.C. King Hatshepsut guided Egypt through 20 years of peace, prosperity, and artistic expression.

But there's a twist: Hatshepsut was a woman.

She's the most significant female ruler in ancient Egypt," said Catharine Roehrig, an Egyptologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Some of the fruits of Hatshepsut's prosperous reign — statues, jewellery, papyrus, and more — make up a recently opened travelling exhibition at the Met through July 9 [2006]...

Egyptian "Female King" Gets Royal Treatment, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, April 10, 2006.

After opening on December 15, 2005, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," sponsored by Northern Trust at the Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale (MoA | FL), has made its mark on the city by bringing in an estimated $150 million in revenue. With high demand for tickets during the exhibit's final days in Florida, additional viewing times up to 10 p.m. have been added on Friday and Saturday nights for the final two weekends before it closes on April 23 [2006]. The exhibit is organized by National Geographic, AEG Exhibitions and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and is sponsored locally by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida.

With more than 640,000 tickets sold to date, the entire state of Florida has been abuzz with tourists coming to see the exhibition, helping boost Florida's profile as a cultural destination. Approximately one-third of tickets sold to the exhibition came from outside the tri-county area, and six of the top-performing zip codes in terms of ticket sales came from outside the state of Florida. Tut hotel packages brought in more than $1 million in room night revenue alone.

"It has been a tremendous honour for Florida to host the 'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' exhibition, and we are thrilled its hours have been extended to give even more visitors a chance to experience this awe-inspiring collection...

'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' Brings an Estimated $150 Million to Fort Lauderdale During Its Four-Month Run, PRNewswire via Yahoo! Finance, USA, April 11, 2006.

The restoration effort will concentrate on the neck and chest of the Sphinx which have been eroded over time by the desert winds, according to Dr. Zahi Hawass, director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Reuters, UK, April 11, 2006.

This is Lou Dobbs reporting from Goshen with breaking news:

My sources tell me that a small, neoconservative cabal has given the Israelites orders to leave Egypt tonight after negotiations with the authorities broke down.

Just how great an exodus Moses Amramson and his brother, Aaron, will be able to produce remains to be seen. It's not clear if the Israelites could gain admission or find jobs in any other country, while here they've been gainfully employed doing the jobs that Egyptians won't do.

These illegal aliens seem to have put down roots in Goshen generations ago when the fabled Joseph Israelson appeared at court, where he would rise to the position of grand vizier and head of the Federal Grain Reserve. It was said at the time he could interpret dreams, but that may be only hearsay...

And now, live from Egypt ..., Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, USA, April 12, 2006.

Sky TV, UK, are trailing the Hallmark Entertainment film "The Curse of King Tut's Tomb".

Epic adventure starring Casper Van Dien [Starship Troopers]. An archaeologist searches for secrets about the life and death of Tutankhamen. But does he know the power of the mystery he hopes to reveal?

Showing times: Sky One - Monday 17^th 20:00, Friday 21^st 21:00, and Monday 24^th 20:30. 1 hour 50 minutes.

The Curse of King Tut's Tomb, IMDB.

cf. Previously blogged here Hollywood Actors Play King Tut's Discovery, October 04, 2005.

The 1600 year-old Gospel of Judas scrolls are to be returned to Egypt after 36 years abroad, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced on Wednesday.

The 13 papyrus scrolls, dating back to the 3rd or 4th century, are written in ancient Coptic and wrapped in a thick leather covering, according to the head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, Zahi Hawass.

The scrolls of the Gospel of Judas, also known as the Lost Gospel, were trafficked out of Egypt in the 1970s after being unearthed in the desert in the southern province of Minya by an Egyptian peasant...

Gospel of Judas scrolls to return to Egypt, Monster & Critics, UK, April 12, 2006.

An exhibition of approximately 30 pieces of photography and coloured pencil drawings will be on display at Spoon River College from Wednesday, April 12 through Friday April 21 [2006].

The works belong to SRC instructors Scott and Tracy Snowman who travelled to Egypt in January of 2005. The Snowmans' travelled with a group of about 40 Americans, which included their children Taylor (age 13) and Jake (age 11). The trip included a cruise down the Nile as well as a comprehensive tour of Cairo.

The goal of the exhibition is to illustrate the beauty of the Egyptian culture. Ancient monuments and modern life are all represented in the show. Both artists have over 20 years of experience with fine art and photography...

SRC exhibition to highlight Egypt, The Canton Daily Ledger, Illinois, USA, April 10, 2006.

The Airbus A300-600ST, the aircraft manufacturer’s Super Transporter, which is also known as “Beluga”, supports the exhibition “Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” by carrying some of the artefacts from Egypt to European destinations. “Egypt’s Sunken Treasures” will exhibit 500 artefacts of Egyptian history of the period 700 BC to 800 AD, which have been buried in the Mediterranean for more than 1000 years. They were discovered off the coast of Alexandria and in the bay of Abukir by the archaeologist Franck Goddio over the last ten years.

On 10th April, three colossal statues — representing God Hapy as well as a king and a queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty — and approximately 40 boxes with smaller pieces were loaded on board one of Airbus’ “Belugas” in Alexandria, Egypt. The three Colossal Statues all have a height of about five meters and weigh 5.5 tonnes each...

Airbus Super Transporter supports ‘Egypt’s Sunken Treasures’ expo, Strategiy.com, United Arab Emirates, April 12, 2006.

Some 669,000 tourists visited Egypt in February with an increase of 4.5%, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.

Tourist nights reached up to five million with a slight decrease of 2.4% from last year.

European tourists came first with 71.3% followed by the nationals of Middle East countries with 16.18%.

Arabs made up some one million tourist nights with an increase of 4.6%.

More tourists visit Egypt in February, State Information Service, Egypt, April 11, 2006.

The world's biggest Airbus plane left Cairo Monday night, carrying some 330 sunken monuments retrieved from the Mediterranean in Alexandria for display in a Berlin exhibition on May 11 [2006].

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass said that the plane takes the shape of a sarcophagus.

Egypt will get L.E 6 million in return for displaying its breathtaking artefacts during the four-month event, he added.

Egyptian sunken monuments to show up in Berlin exhibition, State Information Service, Egypt, April 11, 2006.

The new operators of the ill-fated Millennium Dome will show how the inside of the giant Greenwich structure is taking new shape ahead of its re-opening next year.

AEG Europe, part of America's giant Anschutz Corporation, is turning the Dome in south London into a 23,000-capacity entertainment arena.

Stars such as Sir Paul McCartney, Madonna, the Rolling Stones and Britney Spears are expected to perform at the Dome, which is now officially known as The O2...

... It is thought that the Dome will house a Tutankhamun and the golden age of the pharaohs exhibition in 2007...

Operators to reveal new-look Dome, The Coventry Evening Telegraph, UK, April 12, 2006.

cf. Dome takes shape ahead of opening, BBC News, UK, April 12, 2006.

by Ihab Shaarawy

Every bit as remarkable as the world premiere of the exhibition on "Egypt Sunken Treasures", which is to be shown in Berlin, Germany from May 13 through September 4 [2006], is the manner in which the artefacts will be brought from Alexandria to Berlin. Some of them weigh several tonnes and for the journey, they are to be loaded onto the transport aircraft Airbus 300-600ST Beluga, which Airbus is lending for this special cultural undertaking.

Having spent thousands of years on the bottom of the sea, the monumental statues, fragments of ancient columns and cult objects will arrive in Germany's capital aboard an aircraft with today's most voluminous cargo hold.

"By supporting the exhibition Airbus and its parent company EADS wish to make a contribution to cultural life and to enable the city of Berlin and its visitors from all over the world to experience "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" in what is on of the most famous and beautiful exhibition buildings in Germany — the Martin-Gropius-Bau," EADS and Airbus have said in a press release.

The exhibit will present 489 artefacts discovered during underwater archaeological excavations done from 1992 to 2005.

Those excavations have been performed under the supervision of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt by the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology (IEASM). Those excavations were performed in the Great Port of Alexandria (the Portus Magnus now submerged) as well as in the bay of Abu Qir; more particularly on the sunken city of Heracleion, discovered in 2000, and on the site of East Canopus already partially spotted in 1934 by Omar Toussoum.

Among those objects are three colossus statues of a Pharaoh, a Queen and Hapy, divinity of the flood of the Nile and of the fertility.

There is also a black granite stele which has revealed the Egyptian name of this city of Heracleion, which is Thinis.

A large statue head, likeness of Caesarion, son of Cleopatra and Cesar, which as retrieved in Alexandria, and a beautiful Ptolemy Queen, proceeding from East Canopus, will be also part of this trip.

But the exhibits' travels are by no means over then they have completed the trip to Berlin on board the "Beluga". At the end of their stay at the Martin-Gropius-Bau the statues will take off again, this time on a flight to France. From December 8 [2006] to March 16 [2007] “Egypt's Sunken Treasures” will be on show in the Grand Palais, Paris.

'Egypt's Sunken Treasures' riding high, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 11, 2006.

Two intact tombs from the first dynasty period, clay models of granaries and the oldest "writer's palette" are among the most recent discoveries made by Polish archaeologists in Tell el-Farcha in the Eastern Nile Delta.

The golden-plated figurines from before 5 thousand years found recently have been transported to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Further excavations resulted in unearthing two tombs, archaeologist Piotr Kołodziejczyk said. The excavations are carried out by Polish Expedition in cooperation with the Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology.

One of the uncovered tombs (ca. 3050-2900 BC) contained a skeleton, clay pottery and vessels of sandstone and alabaster. The other tomb several dozen older contained 25 clay vessels.

"The discovery confirms the role of Tell el-Farcha as one of the major centres of the state of the pharaohs that was formed at that time. This changes the to-date views of the role of the inhabitants of the Nile Delta in the establishment of Egyptian monarchy," the Pole believes.

Discoveries by Polish archaeologists in Egypt, Science & Scholarship in Poland, Poland, April 06, 2006.

A group of Poznań archaeologists has discovered new examples of cave paintings dating back to the 7th millennium B.C. in Dakhla oasis, Egypt. Inventory works were run in February till mid-March. They had been commenced by Prof. Lech Krzyżaniak, an eminent specialist of Saharan cave art, of the Archaeological Museum in Poznań, who passed away in 2004 — says Prof. Michał Kobusiewicz of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), running the research.

“Our team came across a few groups of rock carvings. Smoothed fragments of the valley walls formed surfaces covered in numerous pictures. These were usually schematic depictions of women and realistic pictures of giraffes caught in lassoes and lead on cords, which may signify the worship value of these animals sacrificed to the gods” — says Prof. Kobusiewicz...

Mysterious depictions of elephants in the Egyptian oasis of Dakhla, Nauka w Polsce, Poland, March 29, 2006.

The Lexikon der Ägyptologie is a standard reference for scholars of ancient Egypt. Professor Willeke Wendrich of UCLA's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures owns all seven volumes. Her colleague, Jacco Dieleman, has the set of 6,000 articles in worn red binding lining his bookshelf.

The encyclopaedia was published over the course of almost thirty years -- the final volume came out in 1992. But by 2008, Wendrich, Dieleman, and John Baines, a professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, plan to create a new Egyptology encyclopaedia in a whole new medium. The online UCLA Encyclopaedia of Egyptology (UEE) will be easy to update, easy to search, and illustrated with images, 3-D views of ancient cities and sites, and interactive maps.

Dieleman, a philologist in the Department of Near Eastern Languages, says the project is informed by the search functionality of Google and the constant updates of Wikipedia. Printed encyclopaedias, he explains, can't keep up: "Once it is out, a week later it is outdated." But what UEE is countering, he says, is "ill-informed information about Egypt on the Internet..."

Construction Begins on UCLA Encyclopaedia of Egyptology, UCLA International Institute, California, USA, April 06, 2006.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said on Thursday that Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered new monuments dating back to the pharaohs' Middle Kingdom in Al-Fayoum governorate, south of Cairo.

Chief among the masterpieces is the temple of Madi City, the only temple remaining from that period of time.

New pharaonic monuments uncovered in Fayoum, State Information Service, Egypt, April 07, 2006.

cf. Excavation website: Medinet Madi, l'Università di Pisa.

With the mystery of an ancient mummy revealed, along with authentic archaeological artefacts and 3-D graphics, the exhibit, "Mummy: The inside Story," has something for the old and young alike.

The exhibition is presented at Mobile's Gulf Coast Exploreum in partnership with the British Museum in London.

Visitors will begin their exploration of the life and time of ancient Egypt by entering an orientation chamber or the first section of the exhibit gallery. Here they learn about the history of ancient Egypt and the practice of mummification.

A brief video presentation also introduces the "star" of the exhibit, Nesperennub, a priest of Karnak, who lived and died about 2,800 years ago in ancient Egypt. The video explains how 3-D technology will be used in the next section of the exhibition to resurrect him from his coffin, in cyberspace...

Mummy: The inside story on display at Mobile's Gulf Coast Exploreum, The Mississippi Press, Mississippi, USA, April 09, 2006.

A collection of massive statues discovered during archaeological digs in the ancient underwater city of Herakleion are to be exhibited in Paris and Berlin, the Egyptian Supreme Antiquities Council said.

Two statues of Ptolemaic monarchs (304 BC to 30 BC) which each stand six metres (19 feet) tall and weigh six tonnes (13,200 pounds), as well as statues of the Egyptian goddess of fertility and motherhood Isis are included in the 300 pieces to be displayed...

... "Three hundred pieces will be on display at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin beginning May 11 [2006], then at Paris's Grand Palais from November 20 [2006] to March 22, 2007," said Zahi Hawass, the head of the antiquities council...

Ancient statues from Egyptian underwater city to go on display, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, April 08, 2006.

The KV63 dig diary has been updated with a couple of more entries.

... Much as happened in the last two weeks, as Coffin ‘A’ (the first coffin) panel pieces and ‘mask’ were safely raised and relocated into KV-10. In addition, to some large pottery fragments, an inscribed Alabaster Jar and lid was also retrieved from inside the coffin ‘A’. The Alabaster Jar contained an inscription pertaining to ‘18 small jars’ was examined to disclose resin bandages which may have held moringa oil. A second alabaster jar and lid was also found which indicates ‘20 jars’ and faintly mentions Amen-Re...

KV63: Otto's Dig Diary, Dr. Otto Schaden, Amenmesse Project, University of Memphis, Tennessee, April 02, 2006.

by Zahi Hawass

In 2004 the Discovery Channel and Channel 5 in England televised live from Bahariya. The shows were broadcast at 3:00am Cairo time, which was prime time (8:00pm) in the States. The people in the States were now able to experience first hand an archaeological excavation conducted by an Egyptian team, and the discovery of many tombs.

For two nights we filmed in the Valley of the Golden Mummies, were we found nine intact tombs all containing mummies covered in gold. We also opened a sealed shaft that contained a skeleton of an ordinary man, and conducted x-rays of several of the mummies.

The next three nights we filmed in Skeikh Soby, where we had found the tomb of its governor Djed-Khonsu-ef-ankh, his wife Naesa II, and his father, Ped-Isis. This season we are searching for the tomb of his mother Naesa I and his grandfather, Iru-aa.

Going live, we found two sealed shafts, which I entered with Mike, the presenter of the show and Laura Green. It was an exciting adventure! The room at the bottom of the shaft was filled with rubble, which I crawled over for about 15 metres. This was very dangerous but fun.

This room then opened into a second chamber, which lay at the bottom of another sealed shaft. At the end of this chamber was another anthropoid sarcophagus. Reading the inscription I found out this was Pedi-her-khieb, the brother of Djed-Khonsu-ef-ankh. We opened the sarcophagus live and found pottery and 40 shawabtis.

On the following nights we opened several more limestone sarcophagi in this burial chamber, which dated to the 26th Dynasty. In the first chamber we found a sarcophagus, which contained the remains of an infant. The larger sarcophagus held the mummy of its mother. It seems the woman died giving birth to the child and therefore, they buried the baby beside her.

All these finds were unique and exciting, but we are like detectives continually searching for the rest of the family of Djed-Khonsu-ef-ankh that still lie buried somewhere beneath t he houses of El-Bawiti.

Finds in the Valley of the Golden Mummies - live, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 10, 2006.

The latest issue of Ancient Egypt Magazine is out now. Below is a summary of its contents.

• A “New” tomb in the valley of the Kings
  AE reports on the newly-discovered tomb in the Valley of the Kings, containing seven coffins and many storage jars. How was the tomb found and who could the occupants be?
• Sinful Barbarians and Part-Time Legionaries
  The area surrounding the Temple of Isis at Philae was the scene of some fierce fighting in the fifth century AD. Ross Cowan tells the story.
• Featured Pharaoh: The God’s Father Ay
  Ay held senior positions in the court through the reigns of Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun, before he himself became Pharaoh. Marshall Hindley examines the evidence.
• Photo Feature: the Anubis Chapel in the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut
  AE looks at the surviving decoration in this well-preserved Chapel in the much-visited temple at Deir el Bahari.
• Did the ancient Egyptians ever reach Malta?
  The ancient Egyptians had a lucrative trade with Eastern Mediterranean nations and islands. Anton Mifsud and Marta Farrugia look at evidence for their reaching as far as Malta.
• The Friends of Nekhen
  In the second of her regular articles, Renée Friedman looks at the discoveries made in the cemeteries of Hierakonpolis, which have revealed the earliest attempts in Egypt at mummification and some remarkable grave goods.

Ancient Egypt Magazine, Empire Publications, Manchester, UK, Volume 6, No. 5, Issue 35, April / May 2006.

Subscribe to Ancient Egypt Magazine via Amazon.com.

Danielle Smith has never been to Egypt. But at Van Andel Museum Center on Tuesday, she got a taste of the ancient culture.

With her cousin giggling nearby, Danielle was mummified with a roll of toilet paper wrapped around her legs, body and then her head.

"It tastes like tissue," said the 9-year-old student from Brookside Elementary School in Grand Rapids...

Museum lets kids live like Egyptians, Everything Michigan, Michigan, USA, April 05, 2006.

cf. Public Museum of Grand Rapids.

A leading candidate for the position of Moses' pharaoh is King Rameses II, whose throne name was Meryamun Usermaatre. "Rameses" means the "going forth of Re," the sun god. His other names mean "Re has favoured him" and "beloved of Amun." It is this pharaoh who gets credit for the story of the Exodus in many Bible commentaries and movies. If this designation is correct, it would make the pharaoh who ordered the destruction of Moses and the male children of Israel Rameses' father, Seti I, or Seti Merenptah Menmaatre. King Rameses II is remembered by Egyptologists as the greatest of the pharaohs. He fathered more than 50 sons, won great victories in the Levant, and posted garrisons to the far south in Nubia, to the far west in Libya and ruled over the Sinai, as well.

The text tells us that pharaoh's army, chariots and captains were drowned in the Red Sea, although it does not explicitly say that the king personally perished in the waves. This is a convenient thing, given that Rameses' body has been discovered in Egypt and is on display for those who pay extra to see him in the National Museum in Cairo. Rameses, his father Seti, and the other pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty carefully fail to mention the untidy little events at the Red Sea on any of their ancient monuments.

Interestingly, it is in the reign of Rameses II's son, Merenptah Hetephermaat Baenre-merynetjeru, or "beloved of Ptah, joyous in truth," who is the first ruler of Egypt who even mentions Israel. In a monumental stone, Merenptah tells us that his armies slew Israel in Canaan and "his seed is no more..."

Pharaohs of the Bible, Redlands Daily Facts, California, USA, April 06, 2006.

Egyptian aristocrats of 3,500 years ago passed the time with a backgammon-like tabletop game, Spanish archaeologists have discovered.

José Manuel Gal´n and his team made the discovery at Luxor.

The collection of marble pieces for the game, known as "senet," was found in the ancient Egyptian capital inside a mound holding the tombs of XVIII dynasty nobles Djehuty and Hery, Galan said.

The Egyptologist said that the game must have had some religious significance, as it was placed in the burial mound to accompany the deceased "during the tortuous path that brought him to eternal life"...

See also the Spanish team's website: Excavación, restauración y publicación de las tumbas de Djehuty y Hery en Luxor. This is the same team that announced finding a 'hall' in the tomb of Djehuty last week.

Scientists discover Egyptians' 'backgammon', Expatica, Netherlands, April 06, 2006.

Previously:

Parlour of Hatshepsut time unearthed, April 04, 2006.

An Egyptian archaeological team has discovered a series of structures in the southwestern town of Fayoum that could yield vital data as to how a Middle Kingdom temple was built, the culture minister said on Thursday.

Farouk Hosni said that the structures included administrative buildings, granaries and residences believed to have belonged to priests of the temple, which was dedicated to Renenutet, the goddess of harvest, as well as the crocodile-god Sobek and falcon-deity Horus, Hosni added.

"This find can be considered one of the most important discoveries in Fayoum, as it unveiled remnants of all architectural elements making up the Medinet Madi temple," according to Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)...

Egypt finds clue to ancient temple's secret, Middle East Times, Cyprus, April 07, 2006.

Injy El-Kashef gets close and personal with the Arabs' most favourite creature.

That no camels (or horses for that matter) are allowed on the pyramids plateau seems almost sacrilegious. How, but how? The Supreme Council of Antiquities' Mohamed Megahed told Al-Ahram Weekly that this ban was issued by the council about 10 years ago, but that "violations cannot be controlled because many of those who rent camels by the pyramids have a license to do so." What about all those thousands of tourists heeding the call of advertisements based on this very image, though? The SCA has deemed the ban necessary on the premise that the Giza Plateau could do without the filth of animals. Someone needs to take care of that Western collective subconscious, whatever the case, and perhaps replace the image of the camel by the pyramids with a coke-vending machine or something; otherwise thousands of tourists will be sorely disappointed when that once-in-a-lifetime experience at the foot of the Great Pyramids, should the ban be better implemented, exclude a camel ride. And we wouldn't want to upset those tourists, now, would we? ...

Identity beast, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 789, April 06 - 12, 2006.

Serene Assir visits Rashid, home to much more than just the Rosetta Stone.

As a child, I would often accompany my parents on for brief breaks in London, which for my father constituted a mixture of work and pleasure. Meanwhile, for my mother and me, life was always intensely active during those trips. We would spend our days walking through the streets — which more often than not would be drenched with rain — going from one art gallery to the next museum. Her energy was extraordinary, and her ability to raise a real interest in me in art and history was perhaps more so.

My nagging and early-morning arguments aside, the British Museum and, more specifically, the Rosetta Stone intrigued me perhaps more than any other aspect of the metropolis' cultural life. The fact that one single document written into rock in three languages provided the key to resolving endless mysteries in the Pharaonic era seemed to me like magic. So it became clear to me that, being in Egypt, a trip to Rashid — the city beneath which the stone was found by French colonisers — was becoming long overdue...

From London to Rosetta, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 789, April 06 - 12, 2006.

A museum visitor who smashed three 17th-century Chinese porcelain vases in what he said was an accident caused by tripping over a shoelace was arrested yesterday on suspicion of causing criminal damage.

Nick Flynn, 42, said that he could not help falling down a flight of stairs and crashing into the Qing Dynasty vases on a visit to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. But police have examined CCTV images of the fall and are now investigating whether it was deliberate criminal damage.

A specialist ceramics restorer is glueing together more than 400 pieces to recreate the three vases and hopes to have one on show in the museum by June [2006].

Mr Flynn, of Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, was arrested at his home early yesterday. A police spokesman said: “A 42-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage in connection with an incident at the Fitzwilliam Museum on January 25 [2006]...”

Museum trip man arrested for smashing Qing vases, The Times, UK, April 06, 2006.

There is a new issue of PalArch out with the following paper.

Response to Vandecruys (2006). The Sphinx: dramatising data….and dating. – PalArch, series Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology 1, 1: 1–13, Reader, C.D.

In a previous paper (Vandecruys, 2006), the evidence presented by the current author for re–dating the Sphinx of Giza and a number of other structures present within the Giza necropolis has been reassessed. Following this re–assessment, Vandecruys has raised a number of objections to the current author’s thesis. The current paper provides a response to the criticism of Vandecruys and presents further arguments in support of Early Dynastic development at Giza, of which the Sphinx is considered to have formed an important element.

Response to Vandecruys (2006). The Sphinx: dramatising data….and dating. – PalArch, series Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology 1, 1: 1–13, Colin Reader, PalArch, series Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology, Issue 2, No. 1, pp.1–13, April 01, 2006.

by Simon Willis

Got any hog's teeth handy? You might need them to cure your indigestion. According to an ancient Egyptian medical text, you need to grind one hog's tooth and add it to a sugar cake mixture. Bye-bye, dyspepsia. You don't have any sugar? Sorry to have troubled you. I'll try the other neighbour.

The ancient Egyptians knew a thing or two about medicine. For instance, if you have a touch of diarrhoea, mix figs, grapes, bread dough, corn, elderberries and some fresh earth (!). At least you know where the ingredients have been. Do you know the constituents of those pills from your local friendly pharmacist? Even if you read the list of ingredients, do you know what benzodr-whatever-it-is-polyphosphate is? But a lump of earth is a lump of earth, and that is sure to bung you up for a while.

If you burnt yourself in ancient times and were in agony, your physician would have followed the following procedure:

"Create a mixture of milk of a woman who has borne a male child, gum, and, ram's hair. While administering this mixture say: 'Thy son Horus is burnt in the desert. Is there any water there? There is no water. I have water in my mouth and a Nile between my thighs. I have come to extinguish the fire.'" Lesions of the skin? No problem.

"After the scab has fallen off put on it, take a scribe's excrement (sic), mix in fresh milk and apply as a poultice."

The Greek historian Herodotus remarked on how healthy the Egyptian people were.

Diodorus of Sicily wrote that doctors prescribed treatments according to rigid, time-honoured written precepts.

If a patient died, Diodorus wrote, the physician would not be blamed if he had followed the rules to the letter.

If he deviated from the text, he would join the patient in the next life, he said.

One papyrus text consists of two chapters on how the physician can protect himself from his patients' ailments, otherwise it's 'Physician, heal thyself'. A diseased doctor is no use to anyone, except to another doctor.

The third chapter is devoted to the demons that may afflict the patient.

The gods come to the rescue. Horus is the physician's protector. It is said that the 'R' at the top of doctor's prescription forms is a shorthand form of the eye of Horus, and not the abbreviation of the Latin Recipe (take).

The ibis-headed god Thoth helped the physician with the medical texts. He would come in pretty handy now for deciphering the prescriptions issued by today's doctors. Isis, an expert at recovering body parts and putting them back together, is also on hand. Sekhmet was the one to watch out for. She had to be appeased because she is the harbinger of death. But when she was not leading spirits off to the Afterlife, she was a dab-hand at gynaecology. Trouble having a child? The doctor could commune with Min for fertility purposes. When the little one is ready to come out, an appropriate libation for Thueris was the ticket to ease the pangs of childbirth and to ensure the survival of mother and baby. In the event of an epidemic, Seth would need an offering or two. The incantation by the physician was essential for the success of the cure.

We may feel smug about cures in packets and a pill for every ailment and discomfort. We may dismiss the recitations by the doc as mumbo-jumbo. However, imagine what our descendants in, say, 200 years' time might think of our cures and patent medicines. 'How primitive!' hey might gasp, 'but how quaint.'

In Mediaeval Europe, methods had changed little. Instead of incantations, doctors had to keep an eye on the planets.

If you look at some of the glossy and expensive publications on astrology — the publications that tell you how to construct your own birth chart and get it wrong, such that you find that you should have had a fatal accident three years ago, or founded a business empire by the time you were six years old — you will find that each sign is associated with a particular part of the anatomy.

For example, the first sign, Aries, governs the head. Therefore, people born between March 21 and April 21 are susceptible to headaches. The chest and lungs are the domain of Cancer. If you were born within the first 20 days of July, you should brace yourself for bronchitis and pneumonia. Scorpio rules the — ahem — genitals and Pisces, the feet.

If you had a terrible headache in 13th century Europe, the doctor would have given you a potion to take when Jupiter is in Aries and Saturn is left-hand down a bit or something — slightly more complicated than take one three times a day after meals. The physician could well have boiled the bark of a willow tree for ten minutes and told you to drink it at the appropriate time.

By the way, willow bark contains salicylic acid, which is the primary ingredient of aspirin.

While Herodotus noticed how healthy our ancestors were, what went wrong? Blood pressure that fluctuates more wildly that share prices, diabetes, kidney failure, breathing complaints during the rice straw burning season, urinary tract infections are among the most common ailments in Egypt.

In an interview with Le Progres Magazine (2 April), dermatologist Dr. Henri Amin, who is also an expert in parapharmacology was asked what is happening to the nation's health?

"There is no secret," Dr. Amin replied, "What with pollution, contaminated water, badly used pesticides, overpopulation, scant respect for hygiene, poor eating habits and fast food."

"The Egyptian people must double their efforts to maintain their health," he warned.

But how much will it cost?

In the bad old days, doctors' remuneration was often in kind.

"That potion worked wonders, doc. The headache's gone. Here you are an overcoat, seeing as you might catch your death of cold in that damp cellar of yours."

Judging by the cost of private health care, some doctors and surgeons could buy the factory that produces overcoats.

Without the incantations and weird ingredients for medicines, the romance has gone out of medicine. It's all pills and holding patients hostage if the family cannot pay the hospital bill.

The romance of ancient medicine, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 06, 2006.

... The artefacts devoted to Senenmut, steward of Hatshepsut and tutor to her daughter, are among those that elicit the most curiosity and amazement. Senenmut’s origins were lowly, betokening little chance of gaining great influence. Yet he eventually became indispensable to Hatshepsut the King. Deemed the Great Steward of Amun during the seventh year of Hatshepsut’s rule, Senenmut oversaw the construction of the temples of Karnak, Luxor, the mortuary temple of the king herself and a massive funerary complex in Thebes.

He may also have had a significant impact on the development of sculpture, not least as it pertained to portrayals of himself. Writing in the catalog, Peter F. Dorman, an Egyptologist at the University of Chicago, lists a number of “firsts” in the Senenmut corpus, many of which re-imagined traditional renderings of official functions. A raft of innovations specific to Senenmut’s tenure can't be mere coincidence; his influence is wide and deep...

Egyptian Queen Won Throne, But Her Steward Steals Show, The New York Observer, New York, USA, April 10, 2006.

... Among the many works on display at the Met are graceful statues of Hatshepsut as pharaoh, clad in the scarf and cobra symbolic of kingship, the short kilt worn by Egyptian men and the requisite false beard. Externals aside, there is no attempt to hide the pharaoh's gender: the body is slim, the face feminine, the eyes soft. The inscriptions refer to “king,”" but the linguistic references are feminine. Also on exhibit are sphinxes topped with the royal head that decorated her famous colonnaded temple Djeser-Djeseru in the Valley of the Kings; they are slender and feline, carved from various kinds of stone. One entire gallery is dedicated to the numerous — and innovative — statues of Senenmut, the royal tutor who cared for Hatshepsut’s daughter and who commissioned much of the art and architecture that defined Hatshepsut’s reign...

The Feminine Kingdom, Newsweek via MSNBC, USA, April 10 - 17, 2006.

It was a startling windfall, and one of the largest donations New York University had ever received: $200 million in cash and real estate for the founding of an ancient studies institute. The force behind the gift, the art collector Shelby White, described it as "the dream project of a lifetime" for her and her husband, the financier Leon Levy, who died in 2003. Yet while many greeted the gift last week as an exhilarating bonanza, it is stirring intense debate among archaeologists across the country, and even at N.Y.U.

By accepting the money, some argue, the university is tacitly approving Ms. White's practice of buying Greek and Roman antiquities, including some that experts believe were looted from archaeological sites. Some scholars point proudly to policies adopted by their own institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Cincinnati and Bryn Mawr College, to discourage or even ban the acceptance of Levy-White money.

To protest the donation, one professor has already resigned from N.Y.U.'s existing Centre for Ancient Studies...

$200 Million Gift Prompts a Debate Over Antiquities, The New York Times, New York, USA, April 01, 2006.

cf. Comment hereIndy Was Wrong — Sometimes It Doesn't Belong In A Museum, Plastic, April 05, 2006.

cf. Institute for the Study of the Ancient World to Be Created at NYU with $200 Million Gift, New York University, New York, USA, March 21, 2006.

... I have just enjoyed what is unquestionably the oddest — and most truly wonderful — experience yet. (If it were not for the fact that I'm in no hurry to go, I'd say I couldn't wait to see it in my obituary.) I have spent 10 days here in bustling, ebullient Cairo lecturing on the royal cat of the ancient Egyptians!

You may well wonder how and why I got into the royal and sacred cat business after interviewing Fidel, Yasser, Moammar and too many other scoundrels, renegades and scofflaws to mention. Then again, when you think about it, you may not wonder at all.

You see, 20 years ago I had a wonderful little street cat from Chicago who looked so much like the Egyptian god-cats — like the beautiful "Bastet" with her long, supple legs, her upright little ears and her Egyptian earrings and jewellery — that I gave him an Egyptian name, "Pasha." (He refused to wear the earrings.) But I was sure that he, too, was descended from the god-cats and was only lost in Chicago. When Pasha died, I got a lovely little Japanese Bobtail, a charming chap with a squirmy little bunny tail, whom I named "Nikko" after the beautiful Buddhist-Shinto shrine in Japan...

EGYPTIAN CAT SCHOLARSHIP WAS PURELY A LABOR OF LOVE, Yahoo! News, USA, April 04, 2006.

Considering her long life and even longer afterlife, it's not surprising that Westminster College's Egyptian mummy, [Pesed,] turns out to look more like a grandmummy.

In a newly constructed bust, Pesed, a 2,300-year-old mummy that was donated to the New Wilmington college in 1885 by a former student turned missionary, appears lined by age and the Egyptian sun. Researchers yesterday unveiled the results of their efforts to put a face to her name.

Reconstructed mummy busts are usually sculpted with a surface as smooth as a baby's bottom, noted Sam Farmerie, the college's curator of cultural artefacts...

Reconstruction reveals how Egyptian mummy may have looked in life, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania, USA, April 05, 2006.

cf. The mummy returns — Long-admired lady’s face revealed, The Sharon Herald, Pennsylvania, USA, April 04, 2006.

cf. Mummy's likeness comes of age, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Pennsylvania, USA, April 05, 2006.

cf. Mummy's Likeness Displayed At Westminster College, CBS 3 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, April 05, 2006.

Most ancient Egyptian pillows were rather uncomfortable-looking headrests carved out of wood, ivory and stone, but scientists have just analyzed a 4,000-year-old Egyptian pillow made out of woven plant fibres that were encased in a wax coating.

The rare artefact, which dates to 2055-1985 B.C., suggests Cleopatra and other well-known ancient Egyptians may have snoozed on relatively fluffy pillows that perhaps biodegraded over time, leaving the hard headrests for modern archaeologists to find.

"If sleeping on fibre pillows and bedding occurred, it has not survived well or at all in the archaeological record of the ancient Near East," said Andy Gize, Judith Seath and Rosalie David...

Unusual Ancient Egyptian Pillow Analyzed, Discovery Channel News, USA, April 05, 2006.

by Hassan Saadallah

In cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the Faculty of Music at Helwan University will offer a diploma course in Pharaonic music as of next September, an official said.

"The purpose of the new course is to encourage the nation's youth to take a keener interest in our Pharaonic heritage," added Professor Gawdat al-Malt of Helwan University. "The objective is also to prevent our wonderful Pharaonic civilisation from being consigned to oblivion."

Meanwhile, the SCA will be encouraging more students to visit museums and archaeological sites.

Registration for the Pharaonic music course will start in August at Helwan University's Faculty of Music, located in Zamalek.

Helwan Univ. to offer diploma in Pharaonic music, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 05, 2006.

From mummies to tomb artefacts to the rarest gold jewellery, ancient Egypt materializes in two months at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, but advance tickets already are on sale.

The highly anticipated Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt opens June 9 [2006] for a four-month run at 919 Broadway. It promises a unique glimpse at more than 100 artefacts dating from as early as 1550 B.C. through about 330 B.C.

Drawn from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Luxor Museum and the archaeological sites of Tanis and Deir el-Bahari, the show is described as the largest collection of artefacts ever loaned by the Egyptian government for display in North America.

Beyond the great age and rarity of the objects, organizers say, the thematic thrust of the show is ancient Egyptian thinking about the afterlife...

Anticipation builds for Frist's Quest for Immortality, The Tennessean, Tennessee, USA, April 04, 2006.

One of the finest private collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts, the Mansoor Amarna Collection, is now available to the public through e-Powersellers.

This collection was obtained during the first half of the last century by M. A. Mansoor, a Cairo antiques dealer. Thirty-two of the more interesting and rare artefacts remain in the possession of the family. While rarely shown to the public, the authenticity has been verified independently; a list by several authorities is available upon request.

The family has chosen e-Powersellers to provide a selection from the collection for sale on eBay. The first item is now available for viewing on eBay...

At the time of writing there are five items for sale ranging from $500K to $1.75M.

Mansoor Amarna Collection of Egyptian Antiquities Released To The Public, eMediaWire, USA, April 02, 2006.

Sarah Parcak's friends often refer to her as Indiana Jones.

Parcak, an archaeologist who leads research expeditions in Egypt, however, has uncovered many more new sites than the fictional movie adventurer ever boasted.

"It's a calling, I believe," Parcak said by e-mail from Egypt. "It continues to interest me because we are constantly making discoveries that change the way we think about the past, and consequently, ourselves."

Her discovery of 100 new sites in Egypt, some dating as far back as 3000 B.C., certainly is nothing to sniff at. But Parcak, a teacher of Egyptian art and history at the University of Wales-Swansea in Wales, has no intention of resting on her laurels anytime soon...

Bangor native finds career in Egyptian tombs, Bangor Daily News, Maine, USA, April 04, 2006.

After 10 years, Betsy Bryan's annual expeditions to Luxor, Egypt, may be routine, but what she found on the 11th trip was anything but: In January, Bryan, chair of the Johns Hopkins Department of Near Eastern Studies, and a 17-student team unearthed a 3,400-year- old life-size statue of a beautiful Egyptian queen.

When the crew first found the figure, it was lying facedown in the temple of the goddess Mut. From an inscription that ran along its back pillar, they initially thought it dated to 1000 BC. After cleaning the object more thoroughly, they realised they had found something much grander — and older...

Hopkins team unearths a 3,400-year-old Egyptian queen, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA, Vol. 58, No. 2, April 2006.

by Zahi Hawass

During the Graeco-Roman Period, Bahariya Oasis prospered as a military outpost and a centre of wine production. Wine making and its consumption were central to life in the Oasis, and was an activity associated with the god Bes, and there is evidence that he was worshipped in several locations in Bahariya in addition to El-Bawiti. In 1939, Ahmed Fakhry uncovered four ruined chapels at Ain el-Mufttells near El Qasr. In the third chapel oversized figures of Bes were carved into each wall.

In 1988 a resident of El-Bawiti came into the Antiquities Inspectorate in Bahariya and handed over a piece of basalt containing the cartouche of Akhenaton. This is the only artefact that has been found at Bahariya belonging to the "heretic king." Egyptian law requires that ancient artefacts be preserved, not sold, and anyone who can guide us to them is rewarded. The man who brought us the stone, led us to a small mound, among the houses of El-Bawiti, and he told us that inscribed stones like this one had just been lying in the sand. The next month, Ashry Shaker began an excavation and uncovered a unique temple. It was a temple to Bes, the god of pleasure, sexuality, dancing, wine, music, and the protector of mothers and children.

The architecture of this temple is similar to other Graeco-Roman temples in Egypt, which used the Egyptian style rather than the Roman style. The interior is made of mud bricks on a foundation of limestone blocks, measuring 60 X 40 feet. It lies on a north-south axis with a causeway or ramp leading to the entrance. Sphinxes most likely lined this ramp at one time. Inside there is a long, horizontal hall with a stucco floor and lying in three pieces, in front of its base was a statue of Bes. Strewn around the statue were many copper vessels, used to present offerings to the god. A small door off the main hallway led down the short ramp to a rock-cut water shaft. Here the ancient apparently used the water to cure illnesses.

God Bes, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 03, 2006

Last week Eleanor Kulin, marketing and projects manager for the Exploreum, released numbers that suggesting mounting excitement for the multimedia, high-tech presentation surrounding the 3,000-year-old mummy Nesperennub.

Figures tallied after 18 complete days of the exhibit's 144-day run show 15,676 visitors, an average daily attendance of 871. Kulin says 74 percent are purchasing combination tickets ("Mummy" and the IMAX film "Mystery of the Nile"), much higher than the museum's initial projections of 50 percent.

Kulin says 47 percent of visitors are from Mobile and Baldwin counties; the remaining 53 percent hail from outside our area.

"Early attendance figures are stronger than projected," says Kulin. "The Exploreum set an attendance goal of 100,000 for the exhibit, or a daily average of 694. ... It is a very healthy sign that early daily attendance figures are about 25 percent above projections..."

Exploreum on 'Mummy track' to another hit, The Mobile Register, Alabama, USA, April 02, 2006.

He was a kid from a disgraced family, possibly assassinated and buried just off the beaten path in a tomb that, in Pharaonic terms, is a broom closet.

But Tut's is among the most-visited holes in the ground of the Valley of the Kings, where the humidity down below makes the 105-degree September morning seem cool and refreshing when I re-emerge into the present.

The tomb is empty except for the boy king himself, tucked back into his sarcophagus in the wake of his most recent trip topside, for CT scans last January. Gazing in at the most famous teenager in world history, and the gods painted on the surrounding walls to guide him (and his two also-mummified children) to the netherworld, my mind reels at the tiny size of the burial chamber. How could all those coffins, shrines and relics possibly have been squeezed in here? ...

Visiting Tut's tomb is a rich experience, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, USA, April 02, 2006.

An Egyptian-Spanish archaeological expedition unearthed Thursday a parlour belonging to Gihoti [Djehuty, overseer of the treasury, overseer of works - ed.], a workers' superintendent in charge of decorating temples and galleries during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, 1502-1487 BC.

A game board was also excavated in a nearby room. Supreme Council of Antiquities Secretary General Zahi Hawass said the parlour found in the Ancient Egyptian New Kingdom's capital of Thebes in Luxor Thursday was one of the largest as it is measured 34 metres long. The head of the Spanish team said that house utensils were also found.

Why they are referring to it as a parlour I am not sure? A translation problem possibly? Other news reports refer to it as a hall.

Parlour of Hatshepsut time unearthed, State Information Service, Egypt, March 31, 2006.

cf. The excavation team's website for previous season's work: Excavación, restauración y publicación de las tumbas de Djehuty y Hery en Luxor.

Scientists in Egypt on Monday started the restoration of the Great Sphinx of Giza.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities is carrying out the work, with scientists hoping to rectify previous mistakes in the restoration of the monument.

Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the Sphinx had suffered the greatest damage when workers used cement to restore the statue in the 80s.

"The Sphinx is like a human being. When you put cement on its body, it stops the breathing of the limestone," he said...

Click on the picture above to see five Sphinx restoration photographs from Reuters.

Restoration of Egyptian Sphinx begins, AP via NDTV, India, April 03, 2006.

Surviving a rebel attack and braving crocodile-infested waters, a group of explorers — including two New Zealanders — has completed an 80-day voyage up the world's longest river reaching what they say is the source of the Nile.

The three explorers from Britain and New Zealand claim to be the first to have travelled the river from its mouth to its "true source" deep in Rwanda's lush Nyungwe rainforest.

"History has been rewritten," British explorer Neil McGrigor told reporters yesterday.

The team, which used a Global Positioning System (GPS) and inflatable motorboats, believes the Nile is at least 107km (66mls)longer than previously thought...

NZ team finds new source of Nile in Rwanda, Stuff, New Zealand, April 02, 2006.

cf. The team's official website: Ascend the Nile.

Cairo is huge, everything is written in squiggles, and there are mosques everywhere with neon lights. We arrived late in the evening, went straight to the suburb of Giza, the home of the pyramids, and checked in at Mena House, which has been a hotel since 1869. It has brownish photos of Winston Churchill and the American president Roosevelt making wartime plans on the back of a napkin.

There were roses on our beds and chocolate-covered strawberries on the table. A man brought a tray of juices and cool flannels. I was exhausted, but I had just enough energy to take a look at the Great Pyramid, which was right outside our balcony.

Next day, our guide, Salwa — very nice — took us over to the pyramids. They were ENORMOUS! If you built a wall from all the stones, 10ft high and 10ft wide, it would stretch round the whole of France. Me and dad climbed up one — a bit...

Me, dad and the mummies, The Sunday Times, UK, April 02, 2006.

Can a queen be a king, too? Consider the case of Hatshepsut, an Egyptian ruler of the 15th century B.C. The eldest daughter of Thutmose I and his principal queen, she married her younger half-brother, Thutmose II. His untimely death left her regent for Thutmose III, his son by another wife. At some point, she decided to govern jointly with the boy and took on the title of king. Later, she assumed the supreme title of pharaoh and ruled Egypt in that powerfully masculine role until her death.

During her reign (about 1479-1458 B.C.), when Egypt was emerging as a world power, the country prospered, the arts flourished, and peace, more or less, prevailed. In these respects, her rule might be compared to that of Elizabeth I of England, though Elizabeth had to make do with the less impressive title of queen.

Hatshepsut is the subject of a celebratory show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one that commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Met's department of Egyptian art. Organized by the Met and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, it includes many objects from the Met's own extensive holdings, excavated at its digs in the 1920's and 30's. But it isn't so easy to follow Hatshepsut's trail in this overambitious show, what with the number of relatives, subordinates, minor officials and such who also have a place in it, along with scarabs, jewellery, pottery, furniture and other artefacts...

'Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh,' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New York Times, New York, USA, March 31, 2006.

fatwa issued by Egypt's top religious authority that forbids the display of statues has art-lovers fearing that it could be used by Islamic extremists as an excuse to destroy Egypt's historical heritage.

Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the country's top Islamic jurist, issued the religious edict that declared as un-Islamic the exhibition of statues in homes, basing the decision on texts in the hadith (sayings of the prophet).

Still, many fear that the edict could prod Islamic fundamentalists to attack Egypt's thousands of ancient and Pharaonic statues on show at tourist sites across the country.

"We don't rule out that someone will enter the Karnak temple in Luxor or any other Pharaonic temple and blow it up on the basis of the fatwa," Gamal Al Ghitani, editor of the literary Akhbar Al Adab magazine, said...

Fatwa against statues triggers uproar in Egypt, AFP via Middle East Times, Cyprus, April 03, 2006.