About Antiquities

Some 330 monuments rescued from the Mediterranean waters off Alexandria, including three five-meter tall colossi, are on exhibit in Berlin through September. According to Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt will get LE 6 million in return for displaying its breathtaking artefacts during the four-month exhibit.

Hatshepsut Mummy Found

The true mummy of Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut was discovered on the third floor of Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, Hawass revealed during a lecture at the New York-based Metropolitan Museum of Art in March. The museum is hosting an exhibition of 270 Hatshepsut artefacts through July 9 [2006].

Pharaonic Monuments in Fayoum

Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered new monuments dating back to the pharaohs’ Middle Kingdom in Al-Fayoum governorate, the Ministry of Culture has announced. Chief among the relics is the temple of Madi City, the only temple remaining from that time period.

Hatshepsut-Era Parlour Unearthed

An Egyptian-Spanish archaeological expedition working in Luxor has unearthed a 34-meter-long parlour belonging to [Djehuty], 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.

Travel News, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 05, May 2006.

Dr. Samir Farag, president of the Supreme Council of Luxor, has big plans for his city and the wealth of antiquities there. One plan is to restore the road connecting Luxor and Karnak. Stretching over three kilometres, the planned road would cut a 60- to 70-meter-wide swath right through a largely residential area of modern Luxor.

Luxor Temple is believed to be the oldest functioning house of worship in the world. Archaeologists estimate that people have been worshipping at the temple for more than 4,000 years. An early Christian church replaced the gods of the Pharaohs and the Romans. Later, when the local community converted to Islam, the church was bricked up and a mosque, which continues to function today, was built on top of it.

In ancient times, a road linked the Luxor temple with Karnak, the two holiest sites in the Pharaonic religion. The Ancient Egyptians believed that the sun god Ra was born in Luxor, but lived in Karnak. Once a year, Ra needed to travel back to the place of his birth to rejuvenate himself. A ceremonial procession, including the pharaoh, followed the sphinx-lined road to accompany Ra...

Relocation Game in Luxor, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 05, May 2006.

Music professor Dr. Khairy El-Malt has been calling for a national project to revive ancient Egyptian music for a dozen years now, and it seems his dreams are finally coming true.

Last month, the Supreme Council for Antiquities and the Faculty of Musical Education of Helwan University agreed to make it possible for music students to acquire a graduate diploma in ancient Egyptian music, with classes set to begin in September 2006.

The SAC will allow students access to museums and sites and to ancient musical instruments and relief drawings. Classes for the diploma will take place in the evenings, and include subjects such as ballet, music, anthropology and philosophy.

Ancient music reborn, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 05, May 2006.

Saint Louis museum says purchase in 1998 was legal.

If only the 3,000-year-old mummy mask at the Saint Louis Art Museum could talk. Maybe then the mystery of its rightful owner could be laid to rest, much like it was in an ancient Egyptian pyramid so many ages ago.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities for Egypt has given the Saint Louis Art Museum a May 15 deadline to turn over the burial mask of Ka Nefer Nefer, which they believe left the country illegally.

Officials with the museum are evaluating documents from the council that seek to prove that the mask from around 1307-1196 B.C., could have been stolen from an Egyptian Museum storage room...

Egypt demands return of mummy mask, AP via MSNBC, USA, May 02, 2006.

Men still fight over the legendary Egyptian beauty Nefertiti, 3,300 years after her death. In 2003, when the director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin allowed two Hungarian artists to briefly unite the famous bust of the ancient queen with a new bronze body, Egyptian cultural officials reacted as if the lady had been violated. She was no longer safe in German hands, said culture minister Farouk Hosni.

Zahi Hawass, who had become secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities a year earlier, was incensed by what he called “an insult to Egypt’s heritage.” Not long after the event, he demanded the return of the bust to Egypt, along with four other objects in European and American museums. In a recent interview at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Hawass told ARTnews that he plans to ask UNESCO to support his demand. He does not charge that the five objects he is asking for were looted. He calls them “icons of our Egyptian identity” — unique artefacts of Egyptian cultural patrimony. “They should be in the motherland,” Hawass insists. “They should not be outside Egypt.”

Hawass’s list of national icons starts with the Nefertiti bust in Berlin and the Rosetta stone (ca. 200 B.C.) in the British Museum in London. Both of these objects left Egypt a long time ago, the Rosetta stone in the 1820s and the Nefertiti bust in 1912. From the Louvre, Hawass wants the Denderah zodiac (50 B.C.), a map of the heavens that was sawed and blasted out of the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor at Denderah by the agent of a French collector in 1821. By modern standards the Rosetta stone and the zodiac were looted, although the term wouldn’t have made sense to the French and British agents who swarmed over Egypt in the early 19th century in a competitive quest for treasure — nor to most Egyptians...

Descendant of the Pharaohs, Sylvia Hochfield, ARTnews, May, 2006.

Japan will extend up to $307.7 million in loans to Egypt to help rebuild the Egyptian Museum, where King Tutankhamen's golden mask is exhibited.

Japan and Egypt exchanged notes on the loans in Cairo Sunday evening. The loans will cover nearly half of the total rebuilding costs of $617.09 million , Jiji Press reported Monday.

During talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in May 2003, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi promised to support the project.

The plan is to rebuild the museum, which opened in 1902, to a new museum called Grand Egyptian Museum, with about 100,000 items on display.

Japan to help rebuild Egyptian Museum, UPI via The Washington Times, District of Columbia, USA, May 01, 2006.

Only 21 finalists remain in the final stretch of the public's selection of the new seven most noteworthy landmarks in the world, the Swiss-based New7Wonders Foundation has told Discovery News.

The goal of the project is to revise the original "seven ancient wonders of the world," since only one — the pyramids of Egypt — still exists today...

Seven World Wonders Finalists Picked, Discovery Channel News, USA, April 27, 2006.

TIME magazine have named Zahi Hawass in the top 100 ‘people who shape our world’. ‘[A] list of 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world’.

He walks briskly toward the television cameras, the perfect image of a modern-day archaeologist-having traded his suit for jeans, blue work shirt and trademark Indiana Jones hat. The confident stride is justified. Zahi Hawass, 58, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, is The Man. He determines who will excavate in Egypt and when and where. Unlike some of his predecessors, he does not keep a low profile. He ranges the world lecturing, making TV appearances and turning out a stream of books and articles.

Hawass has to be — and is — a master of multitasking. A friend and I once had coffee and shisha (water pipe) with him in Cairo. He sipped his coffee, chatted with us, dictated to a secretary and took phone calls more or less simultaneously...

TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World, TIME Magazine, USA, Volume 167, No. 19, May 08, 2006.

cf. TIME 100, TIME Magazine, USA, Volume 167, No. 19, May 08, 2006.