[D]espite current media disappointment at the absence of bodies it will soon become apparent that KV63 is in fact a discovery of the most extraordinary significance — not for what the single chamber actually holds but for what it clearly signals, which is the definite presence in the Valley of at least one further tomb. The situation is this: as a chamber full of embalmers’ refuse KV63 stands in relation to a future burial as the KV54 embalming-cache in 1907 stood to the tomb of Tutankhamun. It represents without question an augury of further, significant discoveries to come.

Over the summer I have given much thought to the current state of play in the Valley, to the threat of further uncontrolled excavation and to a peculiar dilemma I find myself in: for the prospect of yet more tombs is based upon rather more than mere academic hypothesis. Just as ARTP’s radar survey of the central Valley first highlighted KV63 in 2000, so our project discovered clear evidence also for the existence and location of what appears to be a second new burial, ‘KV64’ — the tomb to which KV63 quite likely relates. Ought I now to be drawing attention to the freshly reviewed evidence for this tomb — if a tomb is what our feature indeed transpires to be? Or should I be maintaining a discreet silence in the hope that the present archaeological uncertainty in the Valley will eventually pass..?

Scroll down a bit as Nicholas's recent comments start on the 22^nd July 2006. His post of the 31^st goes on to give radar scan images and precise location maps.

Another new tomb in the Valley of the Kings: ‘KV64’ - I, Nicholas Reeves, Amarna Royal Tombs Project, July 28, 2006, via Greg Reeder at the HallOfMaat.

Two thousand years is a long time to wait for a CT scan, even by the standards of the beleaguered NHS.

But a small child mummified in ancient Egypt, became an unlikely patient at the MRI unit of Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital.

Doctors carried out the scan on behalf of the nearby Ashmolean Museum in an attempt to discover what lay beneath the mummy's bandages...

Researchers discovered that it was a young boy aged between four and seven, who was probably killed by pneumonia. Four metal buckles had been placed on the body — on the face and above the heart, stomach and genitals — to keep the bandages in place...

2,000 years on, CT scan reveals mystery of the mummy, Eleanor Mayne, The Daily Mail, UK, July 30, 2006.

The Field Museum in Chicago has sold 500,000 tickets to the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition. More than 3,000 years after his reign, Tutankhamun, the celebrated "boy king," has proven to be a cultural phenomenon in Chicago and around the world.

The 500,000 tickets sold to Tut include a record number of groups from 41 different states. Visitors have travelled to see the exhibition from as far away as Alaska, California, Florida and Brazil. The Museum has sold more than 4,500 of its popular premium memberships, Tut at Twilight and Royal Tut. Both premium memberships include benefits such as discounted tickets, priority admission and exclusive member viewings.

Due to high ticket demand, The Field Museum will extend its hours to Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs on August 6, 12, 13, 19, 20, 24 and 27 until 9 p.m., with the last entry at 7 p.m. In addition, the Museum will open earlier in the mornings-at 7:30 a.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through September 3, 2006.

The Field Museum also will host Tut at Twilight nights as an opportunity for guests to view Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs during exclusive evening screenings with reduced crowds each Tuesday in August (1, 8, 15, 22, 29) from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. (last admission at 8:30 p.m.). Tut at Twilight gives visitors an opportunity to see the exhibition after work or school in addition to the Museum's regular hours. Tickets cost $50 each and include an audio tour narrated by Egyptian actor Omar Sharif. McDonald's will remain open, as well as the King Tut Store, located at the exit of the exhibition...

500,000 King Tut Tickets Sold at The Field Museum, PRNewswire via Yahoo! Finance, USA, July 31, 2006.

cf. Field Museum Reaches 500K Mark For King Tut, CBS2 Chicago, Illinois, USA, July 31, 2006.

Italian authorities say Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, one of several major U.S. museums accused of harbouring looted artefacts from Italy, has agreed on the outline of a deal to return multiple items.

In a joint statement, MFA Director Malcolm Rogers and Italian officials stopped short of claiming a complete agreement or disclosing details on artefacts, saying only that in a daylong Tuesday meeting, they "made significant progress toward a final agreement that establishes a cultural partnership."

But in an interview, Italian Cultural Ministry attorney Maurizio Fiorilli, the country's lead antiquities prosecutor, indicated that the conversation included discussion of 16 MFA-held objects with disputed provenance and that the core of the pact would include return of more than one object.

He also said he expected the deal to be finalized by Sept. 30 and the first object to be back on Italian soil by Oct. 4 [2006]...

Boston museum agrees to return artefacts, Italy says, Christopher Reynolds and Livia Borghese, Los Angeles Times, California, USA, July 28, 2006.

She's beautiful. She has emotion, character, serenity. And though she's but a plaster reconstruction, she's far more personable than her namesake whose mummified remains lie upstairs in the Reading Public Museum.

Nefrina the mummy was a woman who lived about 2,300 years ago in the Nile River city of Ahkmim.

The museum has had her X-rayed and CT-scanned. From that it has learned much about her life and her death from complications resulting from a badly treated hip fracture.

Still, the dry, gaunt face lying in linen tells little about her spirit.

Nefrina the reconstruction, however, looks at you with a quiet smile, and instantly takes life...

Science takes centuries off mummy's looks, Don Spatz, Reading Eagle, Pennsylvania, USA, July 28, 2006.

The notable French astronomer André Méchain, whose career spanned the French Revolution, said that when war divides peoples, art and science can serve to reunite them. This unusual and fascinating exhibition circles around Méchain’s claim while demonstrating, arguably, that modern democratic principles are deeply rooted in conflict, science, and art — or more precisely, symbolism based upon the visual culture of ancient civilizations.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign of 1798-1801 began when the young general set sail from France in 1798 with a fleet of 400 ships carrying some 55,000 soldiers and artist-technicians (known as “savants”). The expedition’s military objective — to block British trade with India — was inseparable from its scientific and artistic ambitions. Napoleon was bringing the French Revolution to Egypt, the better to annex it. Having set events in motion, however, he soon suffered defeat by the British, returned to France, and left the cultural mission in the hands of his soldiers and savants.

These young men, inspired by the ideals of the new France of the Revolution, mapped an area from Upper Egypt to the Nile’s vast delta and somewhat further north to Palestine’s borders. Along the way, they drew, catalogued, categorized, and ordered everything in sight.

What remains of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign today is known as the “Déscription de L’Egypte...”

Egypt Rediscovered, Deborah Garwood, Gay City News, New York, USA, Volume 5, Number 30, July 27 - August 02, 2006.

NAPOLEON ON THE NILE: SOLDIERS, ARTISTS, AND THE REDISCOVERY OF EGYPT, Dahesh Museum. The site also includes a podcast by Bob Brier: Podcast with Egyptologist Bob Brier.

Archaeologists who measured the Egyptian pyramids at Giza more than 100 years ago were surprisingly accurate, a review of historical surveys has shown.

The paper, posted online by the Queensland University of Technology, reviews the major surveying projects of the pyramids Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus, built around 2600 BC, south of what is now the city of Cairo.

"They weren't that far out; their surveys were quite diligent and systematic and we're getting fairly good agreement using modern technology," said the paper's co-author Robert Webb, a lecturer in surveying in the school of urban development.

But Mr Webb says laser scanning, computer modelling and other modern technology has not brought us any closer to answering one of the most intriguing questions about the pyramids...

Pyramid pioneers were spot on, Judy Skatssoon, ABC News, Australia, July 28, 2006.

cf. Modern science can't unravel the pyramids, rediff News, India, July 28, 2006.

Tomorrow at 2am, when Cairo's traffic is at its quietest, Tahrir Square will be the stage of a major feat of transportation as a replica of the gigantic 19th-Dynasty statue of Ramses II — now at Bab Al-Hadid train station square — is taken on a trial run to the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking the Giza Plateau.

The decision was announced on Monday by Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), at a press conference held in the SCA's premises in Zamalek. Hawass pointed out that the aim of the rehearsal was to experience the circumstances under which the actual move would take place. This will include the technique used in uplifting the statue, putting it in the steel cage and uploading it on the vehicles right through the journey to its new home at the GEM. Hawass said that if the trial proved a success the removal of the actual statue would take place on 25 August.

He told reporters that the statue would be transferred as it was, in one piece, mounted in an iron cage attached on two special vehicles capable of bearing the 83-tonne statue on its 30km trip. The vehicles were fabricated by the Arab Contractors Company, which will handle the moving operation in collaboration with German experts. The statue's scheduled route has been worked out in collaboration with the Cairo and Giza governors as well as the army, police and all the ministries concerned so that any obstacles will be removed.

"Moving the magnificent statue of Ramses II from the chaos that usually defines Ramses Square is the best decision that could be taken to protect this statue from decay," Hawass noted...

Rehearsing the move, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Issue No. 805, July 27 - August 02, 2006.

Living in the arid deserts of Ancient Egypt, a 10-year-old King Tutankhamun wasn't worried about his face paint smearing or his hair frizzing from humidity.

More than 3,000 years later, in the swampy heat that gripped Chicago last week, the young king was u renovation which brought plant operations into a 30,000 square foot facility at the museum.

The cooling system was installed in 2002 as part of a $23 million renovation that brought central plant operations into a 30,000 square foot facility at the museum...

Tut's caretakers require the exhibit to maintain a temperature between 68 and 70 degrees with 45 percent to 50 percent humidity, 24 hours a day. These ranges ensure the resin-soaked linen bandages covering Tut's salt-and baking-soda-treated leathery skin don't crack from climate-related expansion and contraction...

How Tut beats the heat at the Field, Esther J. Cepeda, Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois, USA, July 27, 2006.

Botanists Ahmed Fahmy and Rim Hamdy were out earlier this month to inspect the garlands and floral collars from Coffin ‘E’, with plans to return again next season. A few of our larger ‘treasures’ were transferred to the Luxor SCA magazine for storage, as they have been registered.

Following the installation of an iron gate covering the KV-63 entrance and the clearance of the far corner of the chamber floor (to make sure there were no hidden mummies or tunnels), packing of equipment and securing the crated coffins inside KV-10, both tombs were closed and padlocked on Sunday, July 9th.

After a few days of packing up I was on my way to Cairo via train (yes, via train) for a few days of meetings and paperwork before heading home to Chicago at the end of the month.

I will be bringing with me the long awaited images of Coffin E floral collars and much, much, more to pass on to our Webmaster, Bill Wilson.

Signing off...

Director Otto Schaden

There is also a short note from Bill and Roxanne Wilson.

KV63: Otto's Dig Diary, Dr. Otto Schaden, Amenmesse Project, University of Memphis, Tennessee, July 25, 2006.

A nicely painted but none-too-fancy 2,200-year-old Egyptian coffin that stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble late in May has joined the Field Museum's permanent exhibits on daily life in Egypt in the time of the pharaohs.

The coffin, on extended loan from Exelon Corp.'s chief executive, John Rowe, appeared in the museum's permanent Egyptian gallery Friday. Probably made by provincial artisans for a middle-class person of some means, the coffin, according to one Egyptian authority, is "colourful, whimsical and charming," but the sort of object museums usually don't provide space for public exhibition.

An avid history buff, Rowe bought the beautifully preserved empty wood coffin about 10 years ago from a Chicago dealer to display it in a glass case in his office at Exelon headquarters. He reluctantly gave it up last May 25, a day after Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, publicly castigated Rowe for owning such an object...

A home all can live with, William Mullen, The Chicago Tribune, Illinois, USA, July 25, 2006.

A giant statue of Pharaoh Ramses II will be moved next month from a congested square in downtown Cairo to a more serene home near the Great Pyramids in a bid to save it from corrosive pollution, Egypt's antiquities chief said Monday.

Exhaust fumes from trains, cars and buses, as well as subway vibrations, are damaging the more than 3,200-year-old granite statue at Ramses Square, its home since the early 1950s, when it was taken from a temple at the site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.

The 125-ton statue — a popular feature on postcards and guide books — will become part of a new museum about a mile from the pyramids.

"We have to move that statue," antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said.

Contractors plan to transport a replica next week, as a test. If all goes well, the real thing will make its way through the sprawling city Aug. 25 [2006]...

Egypt to move famous Ramses statue in Cairo, Anna Johnson, AP via USA Today, New York, USA, July 24, 2006.

cf. Archaeologists tackle Ramses statue transfer, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, July 24, 2006.

An archaeologist who has spent decades studying sites in the Sahara says nomads who roamed the area millennia ago were the first to domesticate cattle.

At the time, what is now desert was a vast savannah with a humid climate, Stefan Kropelin of the University of Cologne told the BBC. When the climate changed and the area became one of the driest places on Earth, its inhabitants moved into the Nile Valley.

"They brought all their know-how to the rest of the continent - the domestication of cattle was invented in the Sahara in the humid phase and was then slowly pushed over the rest of Africa," he said. "This Neolithic way of life, which still is a way of life in a sense; preservation of food for the dry season and many other such cultural elements, was introduced to central and southern Africa from the Sahara."

The dry conditions in the Sahara, which have also left it almost empty of people and any other form of life, have had one ironic result - its archaeological sites are exceptionally well-preserved.

This relates to the two stories from last week.

Cattle first kept in Sahara, archaeologist says, UPI via Middle East Times, Cyprus, July 22, 2006.

In a journey of discovery much like opening an Egyptian tomb, work has begun to refurbish the exhibit that surrounds the mummy at the Wayne County Historical Museum.

The mummy, bought for the museum by its founder Julia Meek Gaar, is one of the most beloved exhibits — intriguing thousands of school children for decades.

The project to refurbish the exhibit and catalog the museum's Egyptian collection developed when Richmond native Bonnie M. Sampsell of Chapel Hill, [North Carolina] — who happens to have a passion for Egyptology — came home to visit her mother, Gene McClelland.

After seeing the current exhibit and talking with museum executive director Jim Harlan, they developed a plan for her to renew and expand the exhibit, catalog the collection and do more research on the items in the collection...

Even mummies need scenery change, Rachel E. Sheeley, Richmond Palladium-Item, Indiana, USA, July 24, 2006.

Scientists have tagged three northern bald ibis, among the last survivors of a species of Middle Eastern bird once so revered that it had its own ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, in an effort to save them from extinction.

Only 13 of the birds remain in Syria, Britain's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the conservation agency BirdLife International said in a news release.

The birds, with their distinctive black Mohican-style plumage and long, downward-curved red bills, were once revered by pharaohs and were found throughout the Middle East, northern Africa and the European Alps...

Rare Ibis Tagged in Race to Save Bird of Pharaohs, Reuters via Environmental News Network, USA, July 25, 2006.

The UIC Department of Anthropology, The Field Museum and the University of Illinois Alumni Association extend an exclusive invitation to alumni and their guests (and the general public) to “An Evening With King Tut.” Activities include an exclusive introduction by James Phillips, exhibit curator and UIC professor. UIC faculty, Field Museum curators and graduate fellows will lead tours of the exhibit. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvres served. Complimentary parking.

Additional sponsors include the Liberal Arts and Sciences Alumni Association and the College of Nursing Alumni Association.

Tickets are limited, [for the August 31st 2006 event,] so register early...

An Evening with King Tut, Oak Park Journal, Illinois, USA, July 2006.

Here’s why we love King Tut so much: There's a tiny, 18-inch Tut coffin that is so elaborate, so gorgeous, it takes your breath away.

And that golden coffin was crafted to hold the boy king’s liver. That's right. His liver.

This coffinette is just one of the marvels of the new “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” show, which opened May 26 at the Field Museum. It is the first time King Tut has been back in Chicago since the blockbuster 1977 exhibition...

Tut, Tut, it’s been almost 30 years since king’s visit, Trine Tsouderos, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Texas, USA, July 23, 2006.

The mummy will be a "wrap" in a week, but the high-tech exhibit is still drawing respectable attendance to the Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center.

Mobilians have eight more days to experience the multimedia exhibit “Mummy: the inside story,” which closes July 31 [2006].

More than 85,000 have visited the museum to learn something about the Egyptian process of mummification and a 3,000-year-old priest named Nesperennub. They continue to attend the large-format movie "Mystery of the Nile," take virtual tours of the tomb of Nefertari, and show interest in the science of mummification in the Ciba Lab...

Mobilians have eight days left to see 'Mummy' exhibit, Thomas B. Harrison, Mobile Press-Register, Alabama, USA, July 23, 2006.

The pharaohs of ancient Egypt owed their existence to prehistoric climate change in the eastern Sahara, according to an exhaustive study of archaeological data that bolsters this theory.

Starting at about 8500 B.C., researchers say, broad swaths of what are now Egypt, Chad, Libya, and Sudan experienced a "sudden onset of humid conditions."

For centuries the region supported savannahs full of wildlife, lush acacia forests, and areas so swampy they were uninhabitable.

During this time the prehistoric peoples of the eastern Sahara followed the rains to keep pace with the most hospitable ecosystems.

But around 5300 B.C. this climate-driven environmental abundance started to decline, and most humans began leaving the increasingly arid region.

"Around 5,500 to 6,000 years ago the Egyptian Sahara became so dry that nobody could survive there," said Stefan Kröpelin, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Cologne in Germany and study co-author...

Exodus From Drying Sahara Gave Rise to Pharaohs, Study Says, Sean Markey, National geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, July 20, 2006.

cf. Ancient humans 'followed rains', Helen Briggs, BBC News, UK, July 21, 2006.

[T]his month, as Greece stepped up its campaign against the illegal antiquities trade and announced it would demand the repatriation of hundreds of looted works, the statue again became the focus of scrutiny. Mr Aboutaam may have exercised due diligence when he bought the masterpiece but authorities in Athens believe that before it entered his showroom it was passed through a chain of traffickers on the underground market. "We're investigating this statue and whether it was stolen very closely," says Giorgos Gligoris, who heads Greece's art squad. "We believe that it was, that it's a typical case of antiquities theft. We're in the process of studying photographs. The Italians, we have learned, may be claiming it and so may we. Our information from informers is that it was found in the Ionian Sea and then passed on, through I don't know how many hands, before being sold."

From his sixth-floor office in the Orwellian building that is the Athens police headquarters, the detective oversees a web of informants in and outside Greece. Among his targets is the freeport in Geneva where the sellers of museum-quality pieces often store their stock and where specialists believe the illicit journey of plundered art into some of the world's greatest museums often begins.

"We have people in Geneva because it seems that containers always pass through the freeport," he says. "Smugglers like Switzerland, with its flexible laws and good location, but they can see we're closing in on them..."

It's art squad v tomb raiders as Greece reclaims its pillaged past, Helena Smith, The Guardian, UK, July 21, 2006.

That a victim of a Palestinian suicide bombing would seek legal redress from an American museum might seem baffling to the uninitiated. But for Daniel Miller, 27, it is simply a way of extracting justice from a government that he blames for his suffering.

Because Iran helped to train and support members of Hamas, the militant group that carried out the attack along a Jerusalem shopping promenade in 1997, Mr. Miller and four other Americans who survived the attack decided to seek damages from the Iranian government in American courts.

In 2001 they won a judgment against Iran in federal court in Chicago; in 2003 a United States District judge in Washington awarded them about $71 million in compensatory damages and $180 million in punitive damages, to be paid by the Iranian government, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyer.

To collect on the judgment, the plaintiffs seized upon an unusual strategy shortly afterward: laying claim to some 2,500-year-old cuneiform tablets that are on loan from Iran to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. The survivors are demanding that the university sell the tablets, unearthed by American archaeologists at the ancient Persian capital of Persepolis in the 1930s, and compensate them with the proceeds.

Last week the Iranian government finally took notice, dispatching a Washington lawyer to District Court in Chicago to plead its case. In a hearing yesterday Iran was given until Aug. 21 [2006] to respond to the suit...

In a Lawsuit Aimed at Iran, Terror Victims Focus on Ancient Artefacts in a Chicago Museum, Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times, New York, USA, July 18, 2006.

Iran, U.S. Allied in Protecting Artefacts

In a case that raises issues of victims’ rights and cultural heritage, Rhode Island lawyer David J. Strachman aims to seize and sell Iranian property — including thousands of 2,500-year-old clay artefacts known as the Persepolis tablets — and channel the profits to victims of the 1997 terrorist attack...

Iran, U.S. Allied in Protecting Artefacts, Peter Slevin, The Washington Post, District of Columbia, USA, July 18, 2006.

More than a hundred years ago, German archaeologists began to excavate the remarkable tel (mound) of Megiddo. Since then, artefacts galore from 26 layers of civilization built on top of one another have been discovered. However, the site still has many untapped secrets waiting for a trowel or shovel to unearth and expose them to the light of the new millennium.

Scores of students from Israel and abroad, including archaeology buffs of all ages, are hard at work hoping to discover the unknown as they participate in this season's dig on and around Tel Megiddo.

For 25 years a German team worked the site, mentioned in ancient Egyptian writings as Thutmose III — one of the mightiest kings of Egypt — waged war upon the city in 1478 BCE. The battle was described for posterity in hieroglyphic detail on the walls of his upper Egypt temple.

The Germans were followed by teams from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., some of their finds ending up in the US...

Dig this tel, Lydia Aisenberg, Jerusalem Post, Israel, July 13, 2006.

War, politics, religious movements and natural disasters — all key players in the formation of human history. Now, Kathleen Stewart Howe has just added one more chief element to the list, one that most people would never consider as being pivotal in history: photography. Howe, the Sarah Rempel & Herbert S. Rempel ’23 Director of the Museum of Art and professor of art history at Pomona College, has found that photography played a significant role in shaping archaeology, especially Egyptology, from its very beginnings.

In her March 30 [2006] lecture entitled, “Egypt Recovered: Early Photographic Surveys and the Development of Egyptology,” Howe exposed photography’s dramatic impact on Egyptology. Since its introduction to the public in 1839, photography has been used as a record-keeper for dozens of archaeological expeditions to Egypt. During her informative oration at the Getty Villa, Howe enlightened the audience about three of the most important photographers and their expeditions: Maxime Du Camp, Félix Teynard, and John Beasley Greene.

According to Howe, Du Camp was the first photographer who wanted to “collect impressions of the orient,” which he did through a series of general views and close-up views of hieroglyphic tablets of monuments that he took during his Egyptian expedition. He used daguerreotypes to preserve the images and to create the first photographic travel book.

A few years after Du Camp’s expedition, Teynard travelled to Egypt in hopes of being able to convey a sense of experience through his photographs by actually spending time around the ancient sites. He produced a photographic atlas of Egypt, which included the first photographs of vandalized and defaced monuments.

Greene travelled to Egypt in the 1850s, after Du Camp and Teynard, but he went there as an excavator. He travelled to Egypt and found more to excavate than he had ever imagined existed. He only took photographs in order to keep a record of the excavations in which he participated, such as that of the Sphinx. It was Greene who kept the first systematic documentation of any excavation in history.

Howe said that these photographers have left a legacy that enables people today to understand the origins of both photography and Egyptology...

Modern technology uncovers the glory of ancient Egypt, Megan Westervelt, Pepperdine University, California, USA, July 14, 2006, via EEF News.

Prehistoric humans roamed the world's largest desert for some 5,000 years, archaeologists have revealed.

The Eastern Sahara of Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad was home to nomadic people who followed rains that turned the desert into grassland.

When the landscape dried up about 7,000 years ago, there was a mass exodus to the Nile and other parts of Africa.

The close link between human settlement and climate has lessons for today, researchers report in Science...

Ancient humans 'followed rains', Helen Briggs, BBC News, UK, July 21, 2006.