A robot archaeologist is to be sent deep inside Egypt's largest pyramid in a bid to solve secrets revealed by a first foray more than four years ago, antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass said.

"The new robot will be sent down very narrow passages in the so-called Queen's Chamber, where the first robot was sent in 2002," said Hawass, who heads Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Teams from Egypt and Singapore and a joint group from Britain and Hong Kong plan to insert the robot in February inside the Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, near to Cairo.

Equipped with tiny cameras, the robot will be sent down the chamber's north and south passages in the hope of discovering what lies behind two inner walls — or doors — revealed during the first robotic expedition in September 2002...

Robot to penetrate deep inside Cheops pyramid, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, November 30, 2006.

An Egyptian-Polish archaeological mission discovered a large collection of pottery fragments, pieces of car tonnage and parts of the priest Bani-mesu's sarcophagus while excavating at Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari on Luxor's west bank.

Numerous pieces of ostraca, pottery, ushabti figurines, papyri written in Coptic and fragments of a nemes headdress of king Thutmose III have also been unearthed.

The team also continued its programme of restoring, documenting, and drawing of the New Kingdom shrines on the third terrace of Deir el-Bahari, including those of Thutmose III, Queen Hatshepsut, and the northern and southern shrines of Amun-Re.

Artefacts found in Luxor, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 30, 2006.

Driving in Cairo is a true test of bravery.

Lane etiquette is a secondary factor as cars, buses and dangerously speeding taxi’s compete for space on the busy roads.

Don’t be surprised to see rickshaws pulled by lumbering horses or more nimble donkeys trotting along in the fast lane; while pedestrians with a death wish attempt to cross this Egyptian equivalent of the M1.

Add the constantly blaring horns and the regular scream of ambulance sirens and you are a million miles away from the original Land of the Pharaohs. Or just a few miles... for on the edge of this densely packed city sit the Pyramids of Giza, three massive signatures of another age...

Surviving a visit to the pyramids, Craig Lewis, Milton Keynes News, UK, November 29, 2006.

It is commonplace for American museums to dispose of works of art. But eyebrows are being raised at the sale of an irreplaceable collection of antiquities from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to free up funds to purchase work by emerging contemporary artists.

More than 200 objects will be sold by Sotheby's, New York, in its specialist sales next March, including some pieces so important that their likes have never been seen at auction before. The sale is estimated to total $15 million (£7.8 million).

London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi, kingpin of the Chinese art market, describes the Chinese sculpture on offer - including a massive limestone chimera from the sixth century BC - as "outstanding". "This is a hugely exciting sale," he says.

Antiquities is traditionally a market in which dealers dominate and the best objects change hands discreetly, with minimum publicity and no questions asked. "Top-quality works like the ones in the Albright-Knox sale are normally traded privately," says Sotheby's Indian art expert, Anu Ghosh-Mazumdar...

Doesn't strike me as a good idea.

Antiquities sold to pay for new art bonanza, Elspeth Moncrieff, The Guardian, UK, November 28, 2006.

Courtesy of the Italian government, visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will find an unfamiliar antiquity on view today in each institution’s classical galleries.

The artefacts are the first fruits of separate agreements that Italy reached this year with those museums to return antiquities that Italian officials have long contended were looted or removed illegally from their country. In exchange for the return of the objects — which will include the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old Greek bowl considered one of the world’s finest, from the Met’s collection — Italy agreed to offer extended loans of other antiquities that have rarely or never been seen outside Italy.

The arrival of the artefacts at their temporary homes was timed to coincide with a visit to the United States by Italy’s culture minister, Francesco Rutelli, who has taken a high-profile role in his country’s campaign for the return of looted antiquities.

The two museums are handling his arrival, and that of their new antiquities, in starkly different ways.

The Museum of Fine Arts, which was not the first museum to make a deal with Italy but was the first to return disputed objects, held a news conference with Mr. Rutelli yesterday and stressed that it was also the first American museum to receive loans of Italian antiquities under the new arrangement. (Its loan, a large marble statue from the first century A.D., arrived a couple of weeks ago for conservation work, museum officials said.)

By contrast, the Met, where Mr. Rutelli is scheduled to meet today with Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s director, planned no ceremony and did not even issue a news release to announce the arrival of its loan, a kylix, a type of drinking cup. Citing security issues, museum officials would not say exactly when the cup arrived at the Met...

Italy Lends Antiquities to 2 Museums, Randy Kennedy, New York Times, New York, USA, November 29, 2006.

In contrast, the Getty museum has no reciprocal loan agreement for returning artefacts and talks have collapsed.

Italy Expresses Dismay With Getty’s Stand on Disputed Art, Elisabetto Povoledo, New York Times, New York, USA, November 24, 2006.

cf. Getty Museum Ceases Talks With Italy Over Antiquities, Hugh Eakin and Elisabetto Povoledo, New York Times, New York, USA, November 22, 2006.

Seeking to build on its success in bargaining with a few American museums, Italy has asked the New York collector Shelby White to consider returning more than 20 ancient artefacts that it argues were illegally mined from its soil, officials involved in the negotiations say.

The request was relayed this month in a letter to Ms. White’s lawyers, they said. Rather than implicitly threaten legal action, however, as it occasionally has in pursuing objects in major museum collections, the government hopes to rely on moral suasion, said Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer for the Italian Culture Ministry. He said negotiations would begin in earnest in December.

Mr. Fiorilli said the Italian government was not implying that Ms. White or Leon Levy, her husband, who jointly amassed the collection over 30 years, were involved in any crime. (Mr. Levy died in 2003.)

Rather, “we’re showing her that there is significant evidence that links objects in her collection to illegal digs in Italy,” said Mr. Fiorilli, who leads the government commission seeking restitution of illegally excavated archaeological artefacts...

Top Collector Is Asked to Relinquish Artefacts, Elisabetta Povoledo, The New York Times, New York, USA, November 29, 2006.

cf. Shelby White on this blog previously here: $200 Million Gift Prompts a Debate Over Antiquities.

A 50-year-old Frenchman has been arrested for trying to sell locks of hair he said were taken from the mummy of Egypt's most famous pharaoh, Ramses II, officers have said.

Jean-Michel Diebolt, a postman from the French Alps, had placed an ad on an Internet site (www.vivastreet.fr) offering snips of hair, samples of the mummy's embalming resin and bits of bandages for more than 2,000 euros (2,633 dollars).

He claimed the lot came into his possession via his father who was part of a team of French scientists tasked with analysing the royal mummy 30 years ago.

Police arrested the man at his home in the Alpine village of Saint Egreve late Tuesday and were holding him for questioning on suspicion of trying to sell Egyptian property without authorisation...

Frenchman arrested for trying to sell lock of pharaoh's hair, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, November 29, 2006.

Frenchman tries to sell Ramses II hair, Reuters, UK, November 29, 2006.

Man held for 'pharaoh relic' sale, BBC News, UK, November 29, 2006.

'We want full transparency about scandal', Independent Online, South Africa, November 29, 2006.

The latest issue of Current World Archaeology is out now and contains three article of interest to Egyptophiles.

• Revealing terra incognita, Dangeil, Sudan
  Excavations at the late Kushite (3rd century BC – 4th century AD) city of Dangeil in Sudan reveal a temple of Amun, and a massive bread-making facility. By Julie R. Anderson and Salah Mohamed Ahmed. (9 pages)
• News: Tomb Radar. New Tomb in the Valley of the Kings?
  Archaeologist Nicholas Reeves led a radar survey of the Valley of the Kings in 2000, as part of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project (ARTP). Information revealed by the survey suggests that a new tomb, tentatively being labelled KV-64, lies in the vicinity of the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV-62). (1 page)
• Letters: Desert Glass
  Professor Saeed A. Durrani replies to the article View from the Field: In search of desert glass from CWA 18.

Current World Archaeology, Think Publishing, London, UK, Volume 2, No. 7, Issue 19, October / November 2006.

Subscribe to Current World Archaeology Magazine via Amazon.com.

One king’s reign heralded revolution. The other’s brought restoration. And after a later ruler set out to erase the pair from history, both were forgotten for more than 3,000 years.

The beginning of the now-famous story of King Tut and the revolutionary pharaoh who was his probable father is on display in “Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun,” running through October 2007 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The exhibit, featuring more than 100 artefacts from the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun’s birthplace of Amarna, serves as a sister exhibition to the Franklin Institute’s blockbuster Tut show that opens Feb. 3 [2007].

“We wanted to get something up that would truly complement that show,” said Pam Kosty, a Penn Museum spokeswoman. “This was just perfect. It's the childhood home of Tut...”

King Tut and his radical dad, Alison Lapp, AP via The Morning Call, Pennsylvannia, USA, November 26, 2006.

For the first time, The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is selling tickets to their upcoming exhibit. But this exhibit is unlike any other that has been at the museum.

“Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum” opens Dec. 22 [2006] and runs through March 18 [2007].

“As an international exhibition, there are higher finance conditions than most exhibits,” said Maarten van de Guchte, director of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens. “We wanted to bring a first-rate, blockbuster to Jacksonville, but to do so we had to increase ticket prices.”

The museum is expecting record attendance and tickets are on sale now...

Cummer expects huge crowds for Egyptian exhibit; but it’ll cost, Caroline Gabsewics, Jacksonville’s Financial News and Daily Record, Florida, USA, November 28, 2006.

Egyptian radiologists who performed the first-ever computed tomography (CT) evaluation of King Tutankhamun’s mummy believe they have solved the mystery of how the ancient pharaoh died. The CT images and results of their study were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Ashraf Selim, M.D., radiologist at Kasr Eleini Teaching Hospital, Cairo University in Egypt, was part of an international team of scientists that studied the 3,300-year-old mummy of King Tut in Egypt. Using a mobile multi-detector CT scanner, the researchers performed a full-body scan on the king’s remains, obtaining approximately 1,900 digital cross-sectional images.

"We found the mummy was in a critical stage of preservation," said Dr. Selim. "The body was cut into several parts with some missing pieces."

With the help of the CT images, researchers estimated King Tut’s age at death to be between 18 and 20 years. His height was 180 centimetres or approximately 5 feet 11 inches. The researchers discovered a possible premortem fracture to the femoral (thigh) bone. While they cannot assess how the injury occurred, the findings suggest that the injury may have been an open wound that became infected and ultimately fatal...

Radiologists attempt to solve mystery of Tut’s demise, EurekAlert, USA, November 27, 2006.

cf. Clues in King Tut's CT scan, Ronald Kotulak, Seattle Times, Washington, USA, November 28, 2006.

cf. Boy king may have died in riding accident, Ian Sample, The Guardian, UK, November 28, 2006.

An inscription has been found by archaeologists conducting excavations in the Lower City of Amathus that provides new information about Cypriot society in the Ptolemaic period, a statement from the Antiquities Department said yesterday.

The inscription was found on the floor of the interior doorway connecting two rooms and is as old as 3rd century BC. Although it is quite worn, it consists of 12 verses and is one of the longest texts from the Hellenistic period discovered in Cyprus. This inscription with arithmetic in Greek may refer to land portions given by the Ptolemaic General. It appears that it was laid in the floor in secondary use. Once the inscription is studied further, it is expected to provide more information about that period.

Another noteworthy find was a large gold cross that must have belonged to a high ranking official of the early Byzantine period (7th century AD). It was discovered in the complex of rooms with few fragments of paintings on the walls, and a lot of coins were found on the floor in the same room with the cross. The official may have resided in the room or in the entire complex.

Apart from the above, the movable finds also consisted of plaster interior architectural fragments with plant and geometrical motifs, vessels, lamps, copper objects, Hathoric capital and a pithos jar found in the southeastern corner of a room on the main avenue leading from the Amathus West Gate to the Agora. Also an almost life-size head depicting Alexander the Great was found in the room with inner arch, but its features were almost worn away.

The dig lasted six weeks and this was the last season of the second series of excavations carried out by the Department of Antiquities in the Lower City of Amathus. Overall conclusions will be published in separate volumes in the near future. Following the necessary conservation work, the excavated remains will be open to the public.

New clues about Ptolemaic past, Tatiana Yalamova, Cyprus Mail, Cyprus, November 27. 2006.

It may be a decade or more before this city’s monumental Museum Island finally shakes off the twin legacies of World War II and East Germany’s Communist regime, but with the reopening of the Bode Museum, this cultural park in the former East Berlin has taken another step toward recovering its place as one of the world’s great centres of art.

With the restoration of the Alte Nationalgalerie, or Old National Gallery, in 2001, two of the island’s five museums are now in fine shape. After an eight-year, $209 million refurbishment, the Bode probably has never looked better since its inauguration as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in 1904.

Occupying a triangular plot overlooking the Spree River on the northern edge of the island, the museum is once again a true palace of art, welcoming visitors into its vast neo-Baroque entrance hall with an equestrian statue and leading them through naturally lighted galleries with marble floors and wood-panelled ceilings.

True to the ethos of its founding director, Wilhelm von Bode, who believed in mixing art collections, the museum is also now presenting Byzantine art, 15th- to 18th-century sculptures, and coins through the ages as well as a selection of Renaissance paintings and decorative arts. And it is doing so with a majestically spacious installation...

Thus, along with restoring Museum Island, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which owns the 17 museums, is gradually reorganizing the collections, which last year meant moving Egyptian art, including the famous bust of Princess Nefertiti, to the Altes Museum...

German Museums Move Closer to Reunification, Alan Riding, The New York Times, New York, USA, November 27, 2006.

cf. Re-opening of the Bode Museum on Berlin's Museum Island, Bode Museum, Germany, October, 2006.

ONE of archeology’s most enduring mysteries — how Tutankhamun, the Egyptian boy king, met his death — may finally have been solved after a study of his mummified remains.

Ever since his grave was found 83 years ago researchers have suggested Tutankhamun, known popularly as King Tut, was murdered, probably by Aye, his closest adviser, who succeeded him.

The case for the prosecution had rested on medical examinations and x-rays from the 1960s that appeared to show a fracture in his skull. This week, however, sees the publication of a far more detailed examination of the mummy suggesting Aye has been wrongly accused...

King Tut’s death was a bad break, The Sunday Times, UK, November 26, 2006.

cf. Fair go, pharaoh: Tut's vizier gets even break, Jonathan Leake, The Australian, Australia, November 27, 2006.

cf. King Tut may have died from broken leg, UPI via Monsters & Critics, UK, November 27, 2006.

Since the closing of KV10 and KV63 on July I6th I have been busy with reports to the SCA and a proposal for the 2007 season which will commence in February or March 2007. Our immediate plans will include continued conservation work on the coffins, exploration of the remaining storage jars, consolidation of various artefacts, and mending of ceramic vessels. The conservation work on the coffins will be a top priority, as we attempt to identify names and texts on the KV63 coffins.

Till next year,

Otto Schaden

There is a new set of photos on page two also.

Otto's Dig Diary, Dr. Otto Schaden, Amenmesse Project, University of Memphis, Tennessee, November 26, 2006.

The large national exhibition "Egyptian mummies – immortality in the country of the Pharaoh" is to be shown in the federal state museum Wuerttemberg from the 6th October 2007 to 24th March 2008 in the Alten Schloss Stuttgart . On the basis of a considerable own existence of the museum the exhibition wants to obtain a comprehensive overview of the mummifying technology, the dead cult and the other world conceptions of the ancient Egyptians. It gives answers to questions about the life and faith of this millennia-old advanced culture: Who were these people, why they mummified their dead and what techniques were applied, in order to prepare their bodies for an "eternal life"? ...

Unsterblichkeit im Land der Pharaonen , Damal Geschichte Online, Germany, November 22, 2006.

Washington University owns one of the world's most prized mummies, currently on display at the St. Louis Art Museum. Many in the university community would like to see her moved to campus.

Prominent St. Louis banker and private collector, Charles Parsons, donated two mummies to the University in 1896. Both mummies have been on permanent loan to the St. Louis Art Museum since 2002. They were displayed at the University from August to December of 1999. Prior to this showing, they were in storage at the University.

One of those is Pet-Menekh, a male mummy, from the 4th or 3rd century B.C.E., whose wrapped toes can be seen at the foot of the coffin. The female mummy, Henut-Wedjebu, from roughly 1391-1350 B.C.E., is held in much higher esteem...

Buried treasure: University-owned mummy kept at St. Louis museum, Andrea Winter, Student Life, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, November 15, 2006.

A new list of seven wonders of the world is being created for which you can vote for your favourites. HappyNews.com has created a list of the seven wonders of the internet world starting with e-mail.

Email

U.S. Postal mail, now referred to as snail mail due to the agonizing number of days it takes to be delivered, can be traced back to its origin over 4,000 years ago. Historical references to a postal system can be found in Egypt and Cappadocia, dating from around 2000 BC. One of the oldest letters discovered is a tablet from the mid-14th century BC containing condolences from the king of Mitanni to Amenhotep IV, king of Egypt (and husband to the famous Queen Nefertiti) on the death of his father. Since then, it remained pretty much unchanged until 1860 when the Pony Express, a relatively slow network that ran on hay instead of electricity, lowered the delivery time of a message from weeks to, well, fewer weeks...

Seven Wonders Of The Internet World, Byron Reese, HappyNews.com, USA, November 15, 2006.

Conservation groups today claimed a rare Egyptian-style cinema in Glasgow would be "completely ruined" if a developer is allowed to convert it into flats.

Govanhill Picture House, which opened in 1926, is one of only five cinemas in the world built in the unique Arabian fashion and is the only one of its kind in Scotland.

But Hanison Estates, based in Cathcart, want to create a five-storey development of 43 flats at the site and their revised planning application will shortly be considered by Glasgow City Council...

Call to save old cinema, Graeme Murray, The Glasgow Evening Times, Scotland, UK, November 21, 2006.

Four members of a shipping family were charged yesterday in connection with a large collection of illegal antiquities that was found earlier this year at a villa on a tiny Aegean island.

Prosecutor Eleni Raikou brought criminal charges against Despina Papadimitriou, the alleged owner of the villa on the island of Schinoussa, and her three children, Alexandros, Dimitris and Angeliki.

The four suspects have been charged with illegally possessing, receiving and trading antiquities. Authorities said that 152 artefacts were found at the villa on Schinoussa and at the family's Athenian home in Psychico, northern Athens...

Four charged over artefact stash, Kathimerini, Greece, November 23, 2006.

cf. Previously: Former Getty curator charged with Greek art theft.

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said that an offer by the J. Paul Getty Museum to hand over 26 disputed antiquities doesn't go far enough and that the museum needs to return all of the artefacts Italy has requested.

Italy is asking for 21 others, including “Statue of a Victorious Youth,” known as the Getty Bronze. The Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Museum, the world’s richest private art institution, said on Nov. 21 [2006] that it would return only some of the contested objects...

Italy Says Getty Needs to Surrender All Disputed Artefacts, Farah Nayeri, Bloomberg, New York, USA, November 23, 2006.

Despite the inset of the rainy season in the American west cost city of Portland, Oregon, hundreds of people were queuing last week at the front gate of the Portland Art Museum to take an incredible journey with the Pharaohs through the afterlife. The street in front of the museum, which looks much like Park Avenue, was also packed with luxurious vehicles as the crème of Portland society flocked into the museum to attend the opening of "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt", the largest collection of antiquities ever loaned by Egypt for a North American exhibition.

The exhibition displays 107 artefacts illustrating the Pharaohs' dramatic voyage to the afterlife. Items were carefully selected from the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Luxor Museum and archaeological sites in Deir Al-Bahari on Luxor's west bank and Tanis in the Delta, where the intact royal burial of Psusennes I was discovered in the 1940s.

"The gold masks and jewellery are at least as beautiful as the pieces from Tutankhamun's tomb, but they were discovered on the eve of World War II, when there just wasn't time to deal with that sort of thing," Bill Mercer, curator of native American and ethnographic art at the museum, told reporters during a press conference held in the museum a day before the exhibition's official opening. Mercer went on to say that not only were the objects beautiful, splendid, magnificent and significant, but the scope of the exhibition was huge and included 45 pieces from Tutankhamun's collection...

Pharaohs in the city of roses, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 821, November 23 - 29, 2006.

The BBC have update their Egypt timeline page.

Timeline: Egypt, BBC News, UK, November 21, 2006.

The mention of ancient papyrus conjures images of profound proclamations carefully preserved through generations. In reality, though, most document shreds that have survived the last few thousand years are what Duke classics professor Joshua Sosin calls "grubby documentation of daily life."

Yet, Sosin said the findings are extremely profound because they represent our only link with ancient civilizations.

Sosin is among the experts consulted in a new PBS special on efforts to unlock the secrets written on a collection of ancient and hitherto indecipherable papyrus — a plant native to the Nile valley used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create the earliest form of paper...

Duke professor will appear on PBS special, Gregory Phillips, Durham Herald-Sun, North Carolina, USA, November 18, 2006.

cf. PBS: NOVA ScienceNow: Papyrus.

An environmental drama played out on the world stage in the late 18th century when a volcano killed 9,000 Icelanders and brought a famine to Egypt that reduced the population of the Nile valley by a sixth.

A study by three scientists from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and a collaborator from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, demonstrates a connection between these two widely separated events. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The investigators used a computer model developed by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies to trace atmospheric changes that followed the 1783 eruption of Laki in southern Iceland back to their point of origin. The study is the first to conclusively establish the linkage between high-latitude eruptions and the water supply in North Africa...

Icelandic Volcano Caused Historic Famine In Egypt, Study Shows, Science Daily, Maryland, USA, November 22, 2006.

cf. NASA link added: Historic Volcanic Eruption Shrunk the Mighty Nile River, NASA, USA, November 21, 2006.

God's been on trial a whole lot lately, poor fellow. Now it's even going on retroactively. For proof, check out Vagabond Acting Troupe's The Trial of Akhenaten, a 25-minute play written specifically to be performed in the Penn Museum of Art and Architecture's exhibit " Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun." The city of Amarna was built by the pharaoh Akhenaten (believed to be the father of King Tut), and razed just a generation later. His legacy turned to rubble so quickly because he angered the Egyptian people by replacing the traditional pantheon of gods with worship of just one, Aten (Akhenaten means "he who works for Aten"). In the play, things go even harder for the pharaoh after his death; he arrives in the underworld only to learn that the gods are putting him on trial for abandoning them (choose: Guantanamo or the underworld court of Osiris?). Despite the high stakes, "it's a fun, light piece," says Vagabond founder and director Aileen McCulloch. And it's performed in front of a 12-foot sphinx. This isn't Vagabond's first site-specific project with the museum; in 2003, Vagabond garnered a Barrymore for Three Worlds Intertwined, a play written to accompany the museum's newly opened Mediterranean World galleries.

The Trial of Akhenaten, The Philadelphia City Paper, Pennsylvania, USA, November 21, 2006.

More than several dozen times a day, the imaging specialists at the University of Illinois Veterinary Teaching Hospital take high-tech X-rays of dogs, cats, horses, potbellied pigs, birds and other animals.

“I’ve seen a tiger,” Sue Hartman, the senior imaging specialist at the hospital, said recently. “We’ve seen a pelican. We’ve seen snakes. We’ve seen large turtles.”

So a hawk coming in the door is no big deal.

But a 2,500-year-old hawk or more likely a kestrel, harrier or falcon that’s potentially an ancient Egyptian mummy is another matter...

U of I Veterinary school finds mummified bird, Greg Kline, AP via Illinois Pantagraph, Illinois, USA, November 20, 2006.

She was one of Egypt's most enigmatic figures, reigning as both queen and king during an era of prosperity and artistic creativity before mysteriously vanishing.

What exactly happened to Queen Hatshepsut has been lost to history, but artefacts from her 20-year reign have survived to dazzle visitors to museums on three continents.

Almost 200 of those artefacts — including sculpture, pottery and jewellery — were assembled from 25 museums in Egypt, Europe and the United States by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for a 14-month tour of the United States. The unique and unprecedented exhibit, " Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh," is in its final leg at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth after stops in San Francisco and New York. It closes Dec. 31 [2006]...

From queen to pharaoh, Robert Buckman, Washington Times, District of Columbia, USA, November 21, 2006.

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced Tuesday it will return 26 ancient artworks that Italy contended were looted or smuggled from the country.

The decision came despite a recent announcement of a breakdown in negotiations over Italian demands for Getty antiquities that had Italian officials threatening to break cultural ties with the Los Angeles museum.

Before the breakdown in negotiations was announced earlier this month, the parties had reached an agreement under which the trust that operates the museum would return some items while Italy's Ministry of Culture would provide long-term loans of other objects, museum director Michael Brand said Tuesday.

"While we continue to hope that the Italian government will honour its commitment to work collaboratively with the Getty in the future, as it agreed to do in October, the Getty's transfer of objects is not conditioned on any such arrangement..."

Getty Museum in LA will return 26 ancient artworks to Italy, Robert Jablon, AP via The San Jose Mercury News, California, USA, November 21, 2006.

A Greek prosecutor on Tuesday charged a former curator of the American J. Paul Getty Museum with knowingly buying an ancient artefact which had been illegally dug up and smuggled out of Greece 13 years ago.

The accusation that former antiquities curator Marion True illegally obtained a 4th-century BC golden wreath is the latest controversy surrounding acquisitions she made for the wealthy Los Angeles-based museum.

True resigned from her post in a whirlwind of publicity last year when Italian authorities charged her with conspiring to receive stolen antiquities.

In the Greek investigation, police raided her Aegean island villa earlier this year and retrieved what authorities say are dozens of unregistered ancient objects...

Former Getty curator charged with Greek art theft, Karolos Grohmann, Reuters, USA, November 21, 2006. Link fixed.

What's it about? Orphan Meryt-Re lives with her uncle and aunt, sister of her father, in what is now called Deir el Medina; in ancient Egypt, this village, then called Set Maat, was where the families who built the pharaohs' tombs lived. In this village of stonecutters, painters, scribes, embalmers and other workers on the tombs, people lived as they had for centuries and depended on truth and justice to keep peace...

Why it's a good read? Meryt-Re discovers she has a talent for dreaming the truth. When she is cast out by her family, she is befriended by Teti, the village wise woman, who helps Meryt-Re understand these dreams, thus bringing the truth to light and helping her family...

, Gill Harvey, Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2006, pp. 320.

Read It: Pyramid Power, Catherine Clyde, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, USA, November 14, 2006.

Bowers Museum will celebrate the new state-of-the-art Dorothy and Donald Kennedy Wing with a week of events culminating in the grand opening on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007 and two spectacular new exhibitions — “Ansel Adams: Classic Images” and “Treasures from Shanghai: 5000 Years of Chinese Art and Culture.”

The series of events begin on Sunday, Feb. 11 [2007] at 4 p.m. with a benefit for the inaugural opening of the Norma Kershaw Auditorium and the launching of the Distinguished Lecture Series. Renowned Egyptologist Mark Lehner presents “Discovering the Lost City of the Pyramids,” a recount of his adventures in Giza and the discovery of a major part of the city of the pyramid builders that illustrates a critical threshold in history when the first cities appeared on Earth. Admission for the lecture and champagne reception is $100 for members and $125 for the general public...

Bowers Museum to Celebrate New North Wing with a Week of Events Culminating in the Grand Opening on Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007, with Two Stunning Exhibitions — Ansel Adams and Treasures from Shanghai, Bowers Museum, Business Wire, USA, November 16, 2006.

Little in Henri Loyrette's demeanour suggests an implacable revolutionary. Yet this affable 54-year-old Degas scholar has steamrolled resistance to shake up one of the most venerable institutions.

In 2001 he took over the Louvre, the grandest cultural institution in France, a country that places enormous value on its culture as well as its institutions, and since then Loyrette has sped reform at a dizzying pace.

The first thing he did was to wrest administrative control of the museum from the hegemonic French Ministry of Culture. Then he set about expanding its buildings, its public programs and its scholarly remit. His ambitions were high: to change the Louvre from a grand but reified presence into a questing international player. Opposition has faded as the Louvre has flourished.

"It was not easy, but I'm very tenacious," he says with a smile. "I took the position to make it work, and there was no other solution. It was obvious, in a way."

Loyrette was in Australia this week for the opening in Canberra of an exhibition, Journey to the Afterlife: Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre, at the National Gallery of Australia...

Tenacious cultural renovator, Miriam Cosic, The Australian, Australia, November 18, 2006.

We are at the British Museum in London and Ingrid, our Blue Badge guide, is doing her best to instil in us the basics of Egyptology. So far we’ve learnt the distinction between Old Kingdom (pyramids) and New (Tutankhamun and the Valley of the Kings). We’ve seen the Rosetta Stone and heard how hieroglyphics were translated. Now she is explaining how the Egyptians believed their hearts would be weighed for virtue before they were allowed into the afterlife.

I am not usually one to swot up before going on holiday, but sometimes necessity is the mother of invention. To get from Glasgow to Egypt — where I’m off on a whistle-stop tour of ancient sites — I have to go via London. Where better to get in the mood than at one of the world’s greatest collections of Egyptian antiquities? Ten hours after walking down the museum steps, we are in Cairo. On the journey from the airport, horn-happy drivers fling themselves carelessly from lane to lane. Cheery lights adorn the mosques to mark Ramadan. Shopkeepers man neon-lit soft-drink stalls, while on a grass verge two teenage boys practise somersaults in the gloom.

I am just pondering how ancient Egypt couldn’t seem farther away when I catch my first sight of the pyramids at Giza — three menacing shadows cutting the horizon like saw teeth...

Temple worship, Adrian Turpin, The Times, UK, November 19, 2006.

I am very honoured to be the first outsider admitted to Britain's first purpose-built hotel for the eternal corpse, a phenomenon that has enthralled and terrified us for centuries. Such is the enduring fascination that some of these mummies are starring in a Sunday night history quiz on Channel 4.

They may be famous, but that doesn't make them particularly pleasant company, though. I wouldn't want to spend a night in here. In fact, I would be pretty unamused if anyone turned out the lights and left me with row upon row of ancient Egyptians dating back up 4,000 years, not to mention assorted mummified cats, cows, sheep and birds.

I know all those horror films with Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing and some runaway bandage-draped zombie were complete hogwash. I don't believe any of those tales about the terrible curses which befell anyone intruding on a Pharaoh's tomb. But all the same, hang on, did something just move . . .?

I step into one dingy aisle and come face to face with the image of a middle-aged priestess who is thought to have died around 700BC. She has no coffin, but is wrapped up in cartonnage, a sort of linen-based papiermachè casing covering her bandaged body. X-rays have shown that her vital organs were removed, mummified and then placed back inside her — except her brain. As with all mummies, this was pulled out through her nose and thrown away because the ancient Egyptians regarded the brain as irrelevant...

Hi Mummy I'm home!, This is London, UK, November 20, 2006.

cf. Channel 4s Codex.

"The Egyptian Tutankhamen exhibition in the United States has yielded $60 million over the past two years," said Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Dr Zahi Hawass.

He added that the exhibition will move from the city of Chicago in February to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

He said the exhibition will be later held at several European countries, Japan and finally in Bahrain.

Hawass said the exhibition has an insurance premium of $650 million, the largest.

Tutankhamen exhibition yields $60 million, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November, 20, 2006.

The Egyptian-French archaeological mission has discovered a Pharaonic cemetery inside the ancient Ramses Temple in Luxor.

The cemetery contains kitchens, ovens and a school for children. Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass said the grand cemetery was not royal but rather public.

Not much information in this press release really. What sort of cemetery contains a school?

Pharaonic cemetery discovered in Luxor, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 19, 2006.

They were the real-life Indiana Joneses — the explorers whose feats revealed to an eager world the secrets of an ancient civilisation which until then had been lost to history.

The stories of Howard Carter, who made one of the greatest ever archaeological finds when he discovered Tutankhamen’s intact tomb, circus strongman and adventurer Giovanni Belzoni, who unearthed the 3000-year-old monuments of Rameses II, and Jean-François Champollion, who cracked the code of the hieroglyphs via the Rosetta Stone, are revealed in the handsome six-part documentary drama Egypt, which began on Seven and GWN last Sunday.

Series producer Paul Bradshaw says the stories were so compelling that they derailed original plans for a series focused purely on ancient history. Instead, Egypt became a fully dramatised account of the men behind these critical discoveries.

“They really are the giants of Egyptology,” Bradshaw says. “What attracted me to their story was they come from such a romantic time, when little was known about the world, when empires were expanding, and you could really have a good adventure somewhere and find some amazing stuff out...”

The BBC published a book to accompany this series entitled: , Joyce A. Tyldesley, BBC Books, UK, 2005, pp. 240. The four-part mini-series is also available on DVD: , BBC Video, UK, 2005.

Riddle of the sands, Tamara Hunter, The West Australian, Australia, November 16, 2006.

In the shadow of the rugged Mount Sinai in Egypt lies Saint Catherine’s, the world’s oldest continuously operating Christian monastery, established in the sixth century. Artistic treasures from this ancient site will travel to Los Angeles for Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Centre, November 14, 2006 – March 4, 2007. The exhibition offers an unprecedented look at some of the oldest surviving icons from the Byzantine world, and provides rare insight into monastic life, past and present, at the remote, historic monastery. This Premiere Presentation is one of the most ambitious and important projects ever undertaken by the J. Paul Getty Museum, which is the sole venue for the exhibition. The exhibition has been organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum in partnership with the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at Mount Sinai and the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt.

The works on view were commissioned by the monastery or acquired as gifts over more than a thousand years, and have been in the continuous care of generations of monks at Saint Catherine’s. Featured in this exhibition are 43 icons — holy pictures or emblems regarded as sacred in the Greek and Russian churches — six manuscripts, and four liturgical objects used by the monks. These illustrate the central role of the icon in religious practice and introduce the public to the compelling history of Saint Catherine’s. Standing at the centre of an international crossroads, the monastery functioned as a place of cultural exchange, attracting pilgrims throughout the Middle Ages, and continues to do so to this day.

“This exhibition presents an unprecedented opportunity to enter the world of Saint Catherine’s without venturing to Sinai. But this experience will still feel like a pilgrimage,” says Michael Brand, director, the J. Paul Getty Museum. “To see these works in the flesh is to make a direct connection to the traditions that have been carried on over centuries at one of the world’s most holy sites...”

The book that accompanies the exhibition is available from Amazon: , Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Kristen M. Collins, Getty Trust Publications, USA, 2006, pp. 320.

Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, Art Daily, Mexico, November 14, 2006.

The Tut exhibit was a glittery 'Wow!' in '77. Now it's a survey of history and culture...

I've been meaning to stop by the Field Museum to say hi to Tutankhamun, the god/king of ancient Egypt, since he opened in Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs May 26. But one thing after another seems to come up; and, before you know it, spring is gone and summer is getting small in the rear-view mirror and fall seems hell-bent on becoming winter, and by Jan. 1, he'd be gone...

I had last seen Tut, as he commonly is known, in his 1977 visit to the Field.

"Treasures of Tutankhamun" likely was the first museum show to have the hoopla and crushing crowds — 1.36 million people in just four months — to warrant the description "blockbuster..."

If my memory is at all intact of the "Treasures" show 29 years ago, it seemed that "The Golden Age of the Pharaohs" is less wowie-zowie, less Tut-centric than its predecessor and, instead, more educational about the history and culture of Tut's era. The difference in the names of the exhibits indicates that this was the intent. Archaeologist Carter's quote upon entering the tomb, "Everywhere, the glint of gold," is reproduced on a wall in one room, but there didn't seem to be the overwhelming glitter of the earlier show...

Contrasting Field trips, Charles Leroux, Chicago Tribune, Illinois, USA, November 15, 2006.

On this day in history: November 17, 1997: Egyptian militants kill tourists at Luxor.

More than 60 people have been killed after an attack on a group of foreign tourists visiting a temple in southern Egypt.

The tourists' bus was fired on as they visited the temple of Hatshepsut, one of the main attractions in the town of Luxor in southern Egypt.

An Egyptian police spokesman said most of the dead were Swiss and Japanese tourists...

My Egyptology lecturer, Angela Torpey, was leading a tour from my evening class at Warwick University and was on the West bank at the time of the attack. Their Egyptian guides had them hide in the tomb of Sennedjem. See here: What happened at Luxor?

1997: Egyptian militants kill tourists at Luxor, BBC News, UK, November 17, 2006.

Egyptian art is impressive in its age and scale. Without reading the didactic on the wall, it is possible to appreciate the skill and vision of the ancient sculptors who created such intricate carvings, the scribes and painters who carefully documented the realm of the dead, and the metal-smiths who so painstakingly set amazing stones.

There is no doubt that “The Quest for Immortality,” which opened Nov. 5 [2006] at the Portland Art Museum (PAM), is awe-inspiring. To walk in the front entrance is to come face to face with a large, two-story statue of Rameses II, who reigned in Egypt between 1279 and 1213 BCE. The wall didactic is informative, but it’s really the audio tour that gives the most interesting background.

“The Quest” exhibition is based upon the excavations of the royal tombs at Tanis begun in 1939, and focuses upon Ancient Egyptian beliefs and rituals surrounding the dead...

The Quest for Immortality, Georgina Ruff, Portland State University Vanguard, Oregon, USA, November 14, 2006.

The Egypt Centre at Swansea University will say goodbye to one of Ancient Egypt's most mysterious artefacts next week, when the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus is returned to its permanent home at the British Museum.

A section of the famous Rhind has formed the centrepiece of a year-long exhibition at the Egypt Centre, after it was loaned to the museum under the British Museum 's Partnership Scheme.

Visitors to the centre, where entry is free of charge, will have a last chance to see perhaps the most famous of the British Museum's magnificent collection of Egyptian papyri until Tuesday 21 November...

Last chance to see ancient Egyptian maths paper, News Wales, UK, November 14, 2006.

In the first years following Alexander’s death, Ptolemy (like the other so-called Successors) continued to mint the traditional coinage that had been issued by his hero. The main type of coin had shown Alexander’s putative ancestor Herakles (Hercules) wearing on his head the lion scalp that commemorated one of his legendary labours. It was, after all, normal Greek practice to reserve the “heads” side of a coin for the portrait of just such a god or goddess: Athena at Athens, Persephone at Syracuse, Helios at Rhodes and so forth. Then Ptolemy dared take a step that has stirred no end of debate among scholars — one that, in essence, threw a rock into the still waters of Greek art and religion, sending great ripples outward through time and place to Sicily, Syria, Rome and beyond: Ptolemy replaced the portrait of Herakles on Alexander’s posthumous coinage with a stunning image of another god — Alexander himself.

On these new coins, Alexander wears the scalp of an Indian elephant in the same way Herakles wore the lion pelt. Alexander also sports the aegis of Zeus, a scaly bib that could create thunder and ward off enemies. The aegis appears around Alexander’s neck, tied in place by the knotted bodies of two writhing snakes. In addition, these coins show above Alexander’s ear the unmistakable ram’s horn of the Egyptian deity Ammon (identified as Zeus by the Greeks). It was a conspicuous case of identity theft, as Ptolemy appropriated for Alexander the singular characteristics of the Graeco-Egyptian god. Ptolemy’s Alexander is Zeus / Ammon.

According to experts, Ptolemy thus not only exalted his hero but, by doing so, also elevated his own status as the caretaker of that hero’s corpse — now not just the body of a great leader, but of a god...

Ptolemy’s Alexandrian Postscript, Frank L. Holt, Saudi Aramco World, Texas, USA, Volume 57, Number 6, November / December 2006.

Egypt is going to have a new museum. The Arab country is building, in Al-Azhar Park, in Cairo, a museum that will retrieve the history and religion of the capital city of the Arab country. It will be named First Museum of the City, and will convey a notion of the evolution of the city. The museum will be in an area of 4,000 square metres, and will have two floors, on which 1,000 pieces from different historical periods, especially the Islamic one, will be exhibited.

"Most pieces are from the Islamic era, but there will also be pieces from the Pharaonic and Coptic eras," said Seif Al-Rachidi, the Agha Khan Organization for Culture coordinator for the Museum. The project is conducted by the Agha Khan Organization for Culture and by the Supreme Council of Antiques.

The committee in charge of the project is still searching the country for objects to be exhibited in the museum. Some of them will come from other museums. The Pharaonic pieces will come mostly from archaeological excavations in the Matarya region, in the outskirts of Cairo. Objects coming from excavations at the Citadel, a historical area in the Egyptian capital, will be exhibited in the museum as well...

Museum to tell the history of Cairo, Randa Achmawi, ANBA, Brazil, November 15, 2006.

One king's reign heralded revolution. The other's brought restoration. And after a later ruler set out to erase the pair from history, both were forgotten for more than 3,000 years.

The beginning of the now-famous story of King Tut and the revolutionary pharaoh who was his probable father will be on display in "Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun," now running through October 2007 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The exhibit, featuring more than 100 artefacts from the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun's birthplace of Amarna, serves as a sister exhibition to The Franklin Institute Science Museum's blockbuster Tut show beginning Feb. 3, 2007.

"We wanted to get something up that would truly complement that show," said Pam Kosty, a Penn Museum spokeswoman. "This was just perfect. It's the childhood home of Tut..."

Penn exhibit explores Tut's revolutionary birthplace, Alison Lapp, AP via PhillyBurbs, Pennsylvania, USA, November 14, 2006.

cf. King Tut Exhibit On Display At Univ. Of Penn., Alison Lapp, AP via CBS3 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, November 13, 2006.

Tourism promoters are hoping that after their next advertising campaign, even Tut, the boy king, will know Philly's more fun when you sleep over.

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. says it's equipped with $1 million in grants from the state to promote " Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," opening Feb. 3 [2007] at the Franklin Institute, to attract people from outside the region.

The Franklin Institute and its partners for the show, including primary sponsor Mellon Financial Corp., will be spending at least $1 million more on marketing, said Karen Corbin, the museum's vice president of marketing and visitor relations.

The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau will advertise the exhibition to tour groups and in Europe.

The travelling exhibition, which will make the last of four U.S. stops here, could draw more than a million people, officials said. Already, the museum has sold more than 200,000 advance tickets, with 94 percent bought by people from outside the region...

An invitation from King Tut to stay awhile, Tom Belden, The Philadelphia Enquirer, Pennsylvania, USA, November 12, 2006.

In anticipation for the King Tut exhibit coming to the Franklin Institute in February, Sunday the Penn Museum unveiled Amarna, Ancient Egypt's Place in the sun. It offers a unique look at the childhood home of Tutankhamun.

Hundreds endured long lines Sunday to get a glimpse at parts of the royal city the boy king called home.

Penn's Curator Dr. David Silverman tells Action News, "This always has to do with the wonders of King Tut. You just mention his name and people will come. And what we like to think we have here is hors d'oeuvres for the main event in February..."

Includes video footage: Egypt Comes Early to U Penn.

Egypt Comes Early to U Penn, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC Action News, Pennsylvania, USA, November 12, 2006.

The Field Museum in Chicago, where Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs is on view through Jan. 1 [2007], is extending its hours for the holidays, providing not only more viewing time at the blockbuster show but also more time for shopping.

Through the end of the year, the museum will open one hour earlier (8 a.m.) on Saturdays and Sundays.

It will remain open until 9 p.m., with the last tickets sold at 7 p.m. today, Monday, Friday and Nov. 21, 22 and 25 [2006]. The museum also will be open Thanksgiving from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

From Dec. 20-23 the museum will be open from 9 a.m.-9 p.m., and on Christmas Eve from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. From Dec. 26-29, visitors can enjoy "Tut at Twilight," a premium showing of the exhibition (with reduced crowds) from 5:30-10:30 p.m. Cost is $50 per person and includes an audio tour narrated by Omar Sharif...

Field Museum gives extra time for Tut, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Ohio, USA, November 12, 2006.

The J. Paul Getty Museum’s former antiquities chief said the market for ancient art is probably the “most corrupt” of art markets, with unscrupulous dealers peddling smuggled goods, according to a written statement made to a Rome court where she's on trial for buying loot for the Getty.

Marion True, the former antiquities curator of the Los Angeles-based Getty, the world’s wealthiest art institution, said she fought the illicit trade by tightening the Getty’s acquisition standards, and by purchasing and documenting objects of unknown origin so they wouldn’t be lost to the private trade.

“The museum had to accept the premise that the majority of antiquities available on the market had, in all probability, been exported from the countries of origin illegally,” True, 58, wrote, explaining why the Getty adopted policies that restricted artefacts it could buy.

True’s lawyers submitted her statement today to the Rome Tribunal as evidence in her trial...

Getty Ex-Curator Says Antiquities Trade ‘Corrupt,’ Art Smuggled, Vernon Silver, Bloomberg, New York, USA, November 10, 2006.

At first glance, one may mistake it for a Pharaonic archaeological site but this is the remains of the only Pharaonic temple outside mainland Egypt. Mohamed El-Hebeishy sets out to discover the Nile Valley temple of Serabit Al-Khadem, dedicated to the Goddess Hathor — Lady of the Turquoise.

Miners were the very first settlers in Sinai. Around 8,000 years ago they started mining near-surface turquoise and copper. By 3500 BC, the goliath turquoise vein of Serabit Al-Khadem was discovered and for more than 2,000 years the early Pharaohs of newly united Egypt conducted a fairly systematic operation. Turquoise was extracted from the high mountainous mines, carried down through Wadi Matalla till it reached the garrison port of Al-Markha, near today's Abu Zenima. From there it was loaded onto ships bound for mainland Egypt. The bluish green turquoise served a number of purposes, from carving scarabs to using its powder as a colouring paint.

Dedicated to Hathor, the patron goddess of copper and turquoise miners, her temple is located 1,100m above sea level. It was first built during the reign of Pharaoh Sesostris I of the Middle Kingdom...

Snap shots, Mohamed El-Hebeishy, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 819, November 09 - 15, 2006.

An Australia-bound exhibition of Egyptian artefacts from the Louvre is about much more than pyramids and sphinxes, its curator tells Miriam Cosic.

Images from ancient Egypt — the pyramids and the sphinxes, the mummies, headdresses and loin cloths, the sacred scarabs and priestly cats — are plentiful in popular culture, but they are almost cartoon-like in their superficiality.

Our familiarity with them is misleading. The mind-set of these mysterious people is far less transparent to us than that of the ancient Greeks, whose classical civilisation flared comparatively briefly towards the end of the 3000-year reign of the pharaohs.

To walk from the Egyptian rooms in the Louvre in Paris, one of the great repositories of this material, into those of the Greeks next door is to leave the seemingly modern — large-scaled, brightly coloured and smoothly textured, dominated by text and brand-like pictograms — for the rough-hewn simplicity of a much more distant world...

Art of the Ancients, Miriam Cosic, The Australian, Australia, November 11, 2006.

Journey to the Afterlife: Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre

• National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia, November 17 2006 to February 25, 2007.
• Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia, March 21 to July 01 2007.
• The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, July 20 to October 28, 2007.

From 17 November 2006 to 25 March 2007 approximately one hundred and fifty objects from ancient Egypt will be on display in the exhibition Objects for Eternity at the Allard Pierson Museum. This exhibition will show how intensively and carefully the ancient Egyptians prepared for the eternity they believed was in store for every decent person. The Allard Pierson Museum will show these glorious treasures — supplemented by a few objects from its own rich Egyptian collection — on their path through time, answering questions such as: How were they made? For whom? And why...?

The exhibition catalogue is entitled edited by Carol A.R. Andrews and Jacobus van Dijk, 2006, pp. 278. If the preceeding book link didn't work, please click the the picture.

Allard Pierson Museum: Objects for Eternity, Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 17, 2006

On more than 20 visits Ian "Molly" Meldrum has seen Egypt from the back of a camel, the deck of a ship and any number of bar and restaurant windows. He thought he'd seen it all.

Then he looked at it through the lens of a camera. "It was like seeing it again for the first time," he said last week.

Molly has just returned from a 14-day trip through his favourite destination, accompanied by a producer and camera crew. The results will be seen on Channel 7 in a two-part Great Outdoors special, starting next Monday.

It was a trip which took him back to all the old haunts - his long-time home away from home, Mena House, which sits at the foot of the pyramids; a three-day trip down the Nile, restaurants, nightspots and any number of historical sites which, even with plenty of practice, he still finds hard to pronounce.

"I've never been on a film shoot in my life," he said. "I'm used to ad-libbing, not standing up and speaking to camera...

Molly walks like an Egyptian, Mike Colman, The Courier-Mail Australia, November 07, 2006.

"Amarna, Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun," opens Sunday at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, one of the world's great centres of ancient Egyptology and ancient Egyptian artefacts.

Amarna was the new capital created in central Egypt by the man generally believed to be Tut's father, Pharaoh Akhenaten. Akhenaten — one of whose wives was the purported magnificent beauty Queen Nefertiti — changed his people's religious habits, claiming that instead of the many gods the kingdom had worshipped, there was but one god — the disk of the sun, known as the Aten.

"We believe that Akhenaten built his city in central Egypt near this wadi, a break in the cliff east of the Nile River, because it was a dramatic setting," said Josef William Wegner, an associate professor of Near Eastern languages and civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania, and a co-curator of the exhibit. "He must have thought it was a magical place, and that the sun god could be magically born out of this horizon."

To be sure, Akhenaten had ulterior motives in steering his subjects to this new religious belief. According to Wegner, Akhenaten said that he was the sole prophet of the new sun god, the only one who could interpret the sun's life-giving force...

The exhibition catalogue is entitled by David P. Silverman, Josef W. Wegner, and Jennifer Houser Wegner.

Sun shines on Egypt exhibit, Robert Strauss, Philadelphia Daily News, Pennsylvania, USA, November 10, 2006.

It’s a bit of a brain-twister. Tutankhamun accomplished little in his life. No expansion of Egypt’s borders, no triumphant victories like a run of pharaohs before him. Still, he is the most recognized and probably the most famous pharaoh, and the only one to have a nickname in pop culture, “King Tut.”

The boy king will be front and centre at a pair of world-class exhibitions coming to Philadelphia. “Amarna, Ancient Egypt’s Place in the Sun,” opens at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on Nov. 12 [2006] offering a rare look at the boyhood home of ancient Egypt’s Tutankhamun. An extraordinary royal city, Amarna grew, flourished and vanished in roughly a generation’s time.

It is a complementary show to the travelling blockbuster exhibition “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” that comes to the Franklin Institute beginning Feb. 3, 2007.

Dr. David Silverman, curator in charge of Penn Museum’s Egyptian Collections, is the national curator for the exhibition.

“The two exhibitions will dovetail nicely,” said Dr. Josef William Wegner, associate curator of Penn Museum’s Egyptian Section...

King Tut comes back, Terry Conway, Delco Times, Pennsylvania, USA, November 10, 2006.

King Tut will get the royal treatment from Pennsylvania.

The state has granted about $1 million to promote the exhibit "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," which will open at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute on Feb. 3, the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. said Thursday.

The exhibit, which will run through Sept. 30, is expected to draw more than 1 million visitors.

To date, 200,000 advance tickets have been sold, with 94 percent coming from outside Philadelphia...

State spending $1M to tout Tut, Philadelphia Business Journal, Pennsylvania, USA, November 06, 2006.

Forty-eight hours after his re-election and 24 hours after tickets for the blockbuster exhibition "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" went on sale to the general public, Governor Edward G. Rendell stopped by The Franklin Institute box office to show his support.

Early indications are that the exhibition will be a success for both the museum and Philadelphia, as more than 220,000 advance tickets have been sold to date, a record for the museum and the exhibition tour. Ninety-four percent of all tickets sold are from outside the city of Philadelphia, an indication of the strong tourism impact the exhibition will bring. A grant from the Governor to support the exhibition through regional marketing will help draw visitors into Philadelphia.

Backing a Winner: Governor Edward G. Rendell Visits “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Business Wire, USA, November 09, 2006.

The new issue of Minerva magazine is available now. It contains an article that may be of interest to Egyptophiles as follows.

• The Sphinx: Guardian of Egypt
  by Eugène Warmenbol

Minerva Magazine, London, UK, Volume 17, Number 6, November / December 2006.

Subscribe to Minerva Magazine via Amazon.com.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni is preparing to open yet another museum this month, this time in the beautiful coastal city of Rachid, where the Rosetta Stone was discovered by the French in 1799 and translated in 1822.

According to SCA head Zahi Hawass the LE 4-million , two-building complex will feature a three-floor historical construction dating back to the Ottoman era. In the 1960s, the building was turned into a small museum depicting Rachid’s role in the struggle against the British occupation.

The museum will display some 700 pieces, the most important of which are Umayyad and Ottoman gold and bronze coins.

Culture 101: Carved in Stone, Sherif Awad and Manal el-Jesri, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 11, November 2006.

The monthly round-up of antiquity and travel news from TravelVideo.TV.

• Pharaonic dentists unearthed in Saqqara
• Tourists see perpendicular sunrays on Ramses II face
• Bahrain to host Golden Pharaoh exhibition

Antiquity News from Egypt November 2006, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, November 08, 2006.

Travel News From Egypt November 2006

• Egypt's pavilion in London open
• Egyptian Tourist Authority launches new website
• Port Ghaleb Egypt announces huge marina expansion program

Antiquity News from Egypt November 2006, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, November 08, 2006.

Just when you think everything in the news is too depressing, you see a headline like this: Archaeologists Smiling About Dentists’ Tombs.

Normally, finding funny stuff to write about is like pulling teeth. In this case, it is pulling teeth.

Tomb robbers recently broke into an Egyptian pyramid and found the remains of three Egyptian dentists. The robbers were arrested but their discovery has raised questions about the history of this medical sub-specialty. That might make dentistry almost four millenniums old. Anthropologists said it wasn’t hard to find a competent dentist in ancient Egypt. But a decent dermatologist? A good pulmonary man? Scarcer than hen’s teeth.

Experts weren’t sure they were dentists at first. In fact, there was some speculation they were lawyers because each was clad in expensive robes and jewels. What finally convinced the experts was the discovery of a huge 100-pound iron mallet nearby, which was apparently the Novocain of the day...

Wolfsie: Pyramid scheme, Dick Wolfsie, Rushville Republican, Indiana, USA, November 07, 2006.

Tickets for the final venue on the current U.S. tour of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" at The Franklin Institute will become available for public purchase beginning at 10 a.m. EST today, Wednesday, Nov. 8 [2006]. The exhibition marks the first time artefacts from King Tut's tomb will visit Philadelphia.

Organized by National Geographic, AEG Exhibitions, and Arts and Exhibitions International, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, the exhibition will visit The Franklin Institute Feb. 3 through Sept. 30, 2007. Mellon Financial Corporation is the presenting sponsor and PECO is the associate sponsor in Philadelphia.

Since opening in June 2005, the exhibition has drawn more than 2.5 million visitors, breaking records in each city it has visited, including Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale and Chicago, where the exhibition is on display at The Field Museum until Jan. 1, 2007. Treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb were last displayed in the United States during a seven-city tour from 1976 to 1979 that set touring exhibition attendance records with some 8 million visitors...

Tickets on Sale Today for 'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,' Opening at The Franklin Institute in February 2007, PRNewswire via Yahoo! Finance, USA, November 08, 2006.

Huge Crowds Expected for King Tut Show at Franklin Institute

"We hope that there'll be a million people coming to this exhibit. We think of the schoolchildren who will get to know about ancient Egypt..."

Huge Crowds Expected for King Tut Show at Franklin Institute, Karin Phillips, KYW Newsradio 1060 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, November 08, 2006.

cf. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs official website.

"The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt" may be one of the biggest and broadest-reaching Egyptian art shows ever. But it owes its existence to a boy king.

The first major Egyptian art show that toured the country — "Treasures of Tutankhamen" in 1976 — accomplished two things. It started a revolution in museums and began a pop culture fascination with Egyptology.

Organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 1976 exhibit of relics and treasures was the first of many Egyptian-themed shows that would dot museums across the world. According to the Portland Art Museum, three major Egyptian exhibits have either visited or originated here since the 1970s, including "19th Century Photographs of Egypt From the Schubert Collection" in 1989, "Splendours of Ancient Egypt" and "Along the Nile: Early Photos from Egypt," both in 1998.

'Tutankhamen' started museums on quest for blockbuster, D.K. Row, The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, November 05, 2006.

The Portland Art Museum's permanent collection [of photographs] includes about 150 photos from this [early] era by some of the most celebrated photographers of their day, including J. Pascal Sebah. Sebah first made his name in Constantinople with views of ancient ruins, portraits and local people in traditional dress. In 1873 he opened his first studio branch in Egypt, and that's when his career accelerated. Even after Sebah's death in 1886, his son and others continued the Sebah studio until 1952, long after snap cameras had made photography a ubiquitous, affordable and easy-to-use technology.

But the views made by Sebah and such contemporaries as Francis Frith for tourists in 19th-century Egypt were a far cry from snapshots.

"You get this sense of wonder," Toedtemeier says. "They're often very elegant and beautifully composed, but there's also this immediacy that's almost blunt. And you add to that the discovery of these ruins, these temples and tombs. People just found it very exotic. Egypt was blowing people's socks off right and left..."

Photography from late 19th century is treasure in itself, Brian Libby, The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, November 05, 2006.

Egypt has pyramids, China has a wall and Greece has the Parthenon — all evidence of ancient and great civilizations.

Ever heard of ancient Bosnians?

Probably not. But some are seeing pyramids towering above a drab Bosnian town — perhaps pyramids bigger than the Egyptians built.

Tourists are flocking to buy trinkets, to eat pyramid pizza and pyramid cake, and stay at the local hotel, re-named the Pyramid of the Sun.

"Last year here, we had 20,000 tourists in the whole summer," Davor Pekic, owner of the Pyramid of the Sun, said through a translator. "This year, we had that many tourists on one day..."

Not me though...

Ancient Pyramids of Bosnia? Many Are Believers, Nick Watt, ABC News, California, USA, October 29, 2006.

Egypt's Tutankhamen exhibition is coming to Bahrain next year. Egypt has accepted in principle Bahrain's offer to host the Golden Pharaoh display in April, Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities secretary-general Zahi Hawass said yesterday. He said Bahrain would be the first country in the Arab world and North Africa to hold an exhibition of Egyptian antiquities.

The exhibition will run for several months in Bahrain, he told the Egypt State Information Service.

It is currently in the US, but will move to South Africa before travelling to Bahrain, said Mr Hawass...

'King Tut' coming to Bahrain, Gulf Daily News, Bahrain, Vol. XXIX, No. 232, November 07, 2006....

cf. Previously: 'King Tut' set for Bahrain.

Before a single ticket is sold for " The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt" at the Portland Art Museum, staffers had to clear a series of hurdles nearly as long as the Nile. (OK, maybe not quite that long.)

First, Portland had to compete with several other museums to host the show, which began at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., one of its organizers. The five-year, 11-city tour of the United States includes Boston, Houston and Denver; Portland is the only West Coast stop.

"We first got involved about four years ago," recalls Bill Mercer, curator of Native American and ethnographic art for the Portland Art Museum. "They were looking for a museum not only with the size and resources to handle such a monumental exhibition but also one with a lot of interest in terms of attendance..."

Mounting exhibit proves as monumental as treasures, Brian Libby, The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, November 05, 2006.

Immortal life is a timeless, tantalizing theme

The quest for immortal life.

It's one of the enduring themes of literature, from the ancient and biblical to the modern and contemporary.

And for Oregonians during the next several months, it's also the stuff of fantastical art that they'll be able to see and scrutinize like great views of Mount Hood: a sculpture of the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, Osiris; elaborately painted chests that were supposed to contain the organs of kings and queens stuffed in jars; a boat that's both a decorative object and a ship to sail the limitless space of the universe; a re-creation of the tomb of Thutmose III, a king from the 15th century B.C...

Immortal life is a timeless, tantalizing theme, D.K. Row, The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, November 05, 2006.

Can't-miss treasures

It's a lot of Egyptian art to take in.

Starting Nov. 5 [2006], the Portland Art Museum hosts "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt." The extravaganza features 107 pieces of sculpture, decorative objects and funerary art, including a re-creation of an Egyptian tomb.

The show's organizers say it's the largest grouping of antiquities ever loaned by the Egyptian government for a North American art show. It's been on tour since 2002. Portland is its 10th and next-to-last stop, and it will be here until March [2007]...

Can't-miss treasures, The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, November 05, 2006.

You have to shake yourself to remember that many of these works have endured for 3,500 years, from a civilization that lasted for 3,000 years.

Some of the objects in this exhibit were new when the pyramids already were 1,000 years old.

"Most of us tend to have one view of Egypt as sort of a static thing," said Bill Mercer, curator of Native American art at the museum.

"I think it was a very successful civilization that was able to adapt and change."

"The Quest for Immortality" features 107 objects, including gold jewellery, massive stone sculptures and works in wood, many never before shown in public and many never displayed in the United States...

The art of immortality 'Immortality', Ron Cowan, The Salem Statesman Journal, Oregon, USA, November 05, 2006.

Thousands of years ago, the people of the Nile River delta fervently believed they would be reborn. The touring show in the Portland Art Museum from Nov. 5 [2006] through March 4 [2007], " The Quest for Immortality," demonstrates just how obsessed that ancient civilization became with death.

"It so preoccupied their minds, that everything they did in life was preparing them for everlasting life," says curator Bill Mercer.

Seattle was a stop for the original "Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit in the late 1970s, the first American museum blockbuster, which drew more than 8 million patrons over a three-year period. Portland brought another hit, "Splendours of Egypt," to this area in 1998, which drew about 340,000 people over 23 weeks.

The Quest for Immortality compares favourably to those, Mercer says, in that this show has twice as many pieces as "King Tut" and comes with a much more focused theme than "Splendours..."

Exhibit shows 'greatest hits' of EGYPT, Brett Oppergaard, The Columbian, Columbia, USA, November 03, 2006.

Bill Mercer, curator of Native American and ethnographic art at the Portland Art Museum, calls his job "the fun curatorship" because he gets to handle artwork spanning the globe and virtually all of human history.

Mercer specializes in the art of the North American continent — he has studied, written about and lectured on the subject for 20 years. Mercer came to the museum in 1997, and helped to develop the museum's Centre for Native American Art, which is one of the museum's most visited areas.

But Mercer's duties at the museum extend well beyond North America. As the curator in charge of ethnographic art, he is also responsible for the museum's Pre-Columbian and African collections, and often coordinates and manages large visiting shows. Currently, Mercer is overseeing the Portland visit of "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt..."

Curator discusses the back story of the exhibition and the lingering appeal of Egyptian art, Rachel Neugarten, The Oregonian, Oregon , USA, November 05, 2006.

Lectures by Egyptologists expand exhibit's reach

The art for a Big Show like "Quest" is just part of the programming. The Portland Art Museum has planned a slew of informative lectures by respected authorities to complement the show and explain many of its historical aspects. Here's a tipsheet of lectures as well as some important facts on the show.

Nov. 5 [2006]: Lecture with Dr. Zahi Hawass. The academic that Bill Mercer, the Portland curator overseeing the exhibit, calls the Steve Irwin of Egyptology will give a lecture on the show and about his discoveries. Hawass is secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and has discovered roughly 250 mummies. He'll sign copies of his recent book, "The Realm of the Pharaohs..."

Lectures by Egyptologists expand exhibit's reach, The Oregonian, Oregon , USA, November 05, 2006.

Global warming is threatening archaeological sites from Peru to Egypt as well as natural wonders such as the Caribbean's largest coral reef, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.

Heritage sites linked to thousands of years of civilization "may by virtue of climate change very well not be available to future generations," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program.

Rising sea levels, more frequent storms, erosion and flooding are accelerating damage to heritage sites around the world, according to an Atlas of Climate Change issued on Tuesday during a November 6-17 U.N. global warming conference.

UNEP said fear of cultural losses, such as a Viking camp in Scotland at risk from erosion or rising seas threatening Alexandria in Egypt, was an extra reason for action to rein in a warming widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels.

"These are losses that affect us all," said , co-author of the study...

Global warming said threat to world heritage, Reuters via Yahoo! News, USA, November 07, 2006, via PhDiva.

The young woman in the picture is called Annie. Not her given name of course because Annie lived somewhere between 200 and 300 B.C. in an area of Egypt called Akhmim, about 300 miles south of Cairo.

The area is largely unknown to most of us, although it is believed to be the home of King Tut's grandmother. Annie is part of Dr. Jonathan Elias's project to bring that part of ancient civilization to life. "It is important because there are many questions regarding was it a multi-ethnic culture we know it was but we would like to demonstrate that," said Dr. Elias.

Annie, who was just about 19 when she died, is the fifth Egyptian mummy Dr. Elias is reconstructing.

Back in April, Annie was taken from the Academy of Natural Sciences to Hahnemann Hospital. Without disturbing Annie's wrappings, she was given a CT scan. These images were then sent to a laboratory to produce a skull model. Now, forensic sculptor Frank Bender will start facial reconstruction...

Also includes video footage here: Reconstructing Annie, and twenty-seven images of the CT scan are available here: CT Scan of Annie the Mummy.

Reconstructing Annie, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, October 26, 2006.

Modern Cairo is a city of 18-million people. Like many large cities, residents enjoy the conveniences of technology and availability of culture and nightlife, but struggle with dense gridlock and small spaces.

There is something that clearly distinguishes Egypt's Capital as a unique Metropolis. The sprawling city is a backdrop to one of the most recognizable images in the world the Giza Pyramids.

Thousands of years have weathered both the pyramids and the Sphinx. Tourists are now forbidden from getting too close to the Sphinx, but our guide Hassan let us stand in between its paws. We were able to touch the giant tablet inscribed with stories of encounters the ancient kings had with their Gods...

Also includes video footage.

Tale of Two Cities, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, November 03, 2006.

Across the Nile from our hotel [in Luxor], at the base of red sandy cliffs, lie tombs of kings and queens that date back thousands of years.

The one area called the Valley of the Kings is just that, a valley with dozens of tombs, many of which held the mummies of Egypt's Pharaohs.

Today many of the tombs are open to the public, but there is only one mummy left in the valley. It is probably the most famous mummy in the world: King Tut.

When you hear about the riches found in his tomb, including jewellery, art, food, large pieces of furniture, you might think it is a large area. You would be wrong...

Blog: Day Three in Egypt, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, November 03, 2006.

Their size, beauty and significance are more powerful than any history book or picture can prepare you. Their architectural perfection dominates the sprawling modern city to the East.

"I think Egypt has magic and mystery. If you ask anyone, any place in the world about Egypt they will think right away of the great pyramid," said Dr. Zahi Hawass of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Upon our arrival to Giza, our guide, Hassan, eagerly shared the lesser known legends of this enchanting historical place. He led us to the front of the pyramids, where we stood in between the paws of the Sphinx — an area closed off to tourists because of the monument's deterioration. We were able to touch the giant slate covered with hieroglyphics, a detailed record of each Kings' encounter with their Gods...

Also includes video footage.

Inside King Tut's Tomb, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, November 02, 2006.

About 400 miles down the Nile from Cairo is a much smaller city called Luxor. This is the home to the Valley of the Kings, an amazing road of tomb after tomb, honouring the ancient Pharaohs.

We arrived here last night on an Egypt Air flight that landed a little before midnight.

Joining us for this leg of the trip is our "fixer" and our good friend Nasser. He is a producer at a local television studio and he has guided us with wonderful skill and patience. He is one of those people who seem to know everyone, and he can talk us through any situation.

And there have been situations. Nothing dangerous, mind you, but situations nonetheless. There is a lot of bureaucracy in Egypt, especially when you are getting access to the country's most famous assets.

One person will sign a piece of paper, and say it is the single document we need. Then the next person will look at that document as if they have never seen such a thing before. There has been some shouting and some bitter-sounding conversation, but at the end of each encounter, we/re a little closer to our goal of the moment...

Blog: Day One in Egypt, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, November 01, 2006.

We arrived Sunday evening after a long journey from Philadelphia. It began at Philadelphia International Airport at 4:00 Saturday afternoon, continued through Frankfurt, Germany early Sunday morning, and ended in Cairo late Sunday afternoon.

Getting into a foreign country with all of the television equipment can often be a slow process. However, we were greeted in Cairo by what is known as a fixer, a local who helps take care of "stuff." And at the airport, we were taken care of. We were whisked through passport control and customs, into a waiting van, and before we knew it, we were at our hotel.

As you can imagine, we were all tired, so after some dinner, it was off to bed...

Action News Arrives in Egypt, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, October 30, 2006.

A Safe Arrival in Luxor

We arrived in Luxor like 3 college students on a road trip, with our backpacks hung on our shoulders.

Our flight arrived just after midnight in this city along the Nile. We will steal a few hours of sleep before heading off to King Tut's tomb in the morning. Ironically, as we search for the ancient tomb we'll be searching for a modern cyber café...

A Safe Arrival in Luxor, John Morris, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, October 31, 2006.

The famed King Tut exhibit is coming to Philadelphia and the Franklin Institute in February, but we are not waiting to become immersed in the wonders of Ancient Egypt.

I am heading there to bring you a taste of it.

It's a 15-hour flight to this historically rich part of the world and getting ready for the flight is just a small part of the preparation for this incredible journey.

My first priority was medical preparation. So I made a visit to travel medicine specialist Jim Branagh at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania...

Also includes video footage.

Action News Goes to Egypt, Erin O'Hearn, 6 ABC News, Pennsylvania, USA, October 27, 2006.

Up until recent years, there had been a scholarly debate among European intellectuals, joined by some Blacks, on what they referred to as the peopling of ancient Egypt. What this question really posed was, “Who were the ancient Egyptians?” Were they Black, white or mulatto, etc?..

I'm not personally a fan of this line of thought but I've posted it for completeness.

Egyptians were Black, not white, Conrad W. Worrill, The Philadelphia Tribune, Pennsylvania, USA, November 03, 2006.

A month of so ago I had this really clever idea that I'd update the firmware on my Sony Ericsson K750i mobile phone to try and resolve the joystick problems and the poor picture quality in low light conditions — both of which the upgrade should fix I believe.

Anyway, off I popped to the Sony Ericsson website and downloaded the Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS) software and followed the instructions.

All seemed to go well. Until, that is, I tried to use the camera. Doh! I was presented with this error message.

Wrong camera driver version (0.9). Please update camera driver to 4.5 or later.

Attempts to re-flash the firmware were met with the message saying that the software was "up to date" but I could continue anyway. I did. It made no difference...

Searching Google produced lots of pages complaining about the same error (click the link above). Finally I found one that suggested an answer (I'm buggered if I can remember which site it was or find it again though!). So I'm going to document it here.

Firstly back up your contacts either to the SIM or synchronise them with Outlook etc. and back up the pictures in the phone memory using the Sony Ericsson PC Suite software.

Secondly, Under Settings, General, select Master Reset. You will receive warnings about losing contacts and pictures etc.

Thirdly(?), Run the Sony Ericsson Update Service again. It will claim the software is up to date but continue anyway. This time it will work.

Finally, restore your contacts and any pictures you require and you should be up and running again.

They've arrived — ancient papyri from an Egyptian excavation conducted for U.C. Berkeley more than a century ago. The documents are on campus today after a long journey worthy of a mystery novel. Some of it, 4,000 years old. The papyri was excavated by archaeologist George A. Reisner, who was devoted to distraction.

Some academic presentations are more elaborate than others. With that in mind, one should not discount the importance of this one at U.C. Berkeley's Morrison Library. It was 105 years in the making.

Dr. Donald Mastronarde: "A lot of archaeology, you're looking at trash."

Dr. Donald Mastronarde, followed a modern paper trail in bringing these ancient Egyptian writings to U.C. Berkeley, where they belonged in the first place...

Also contains a video clip.

Documents Contain 4,000 Years Of History, Wayne Freedman, ABC 7 News, USA, November 01, 2006.

cf. The Centre for the Tebtunis papyri.

cf. On this blog previously: Egyptian scrolls finally head for Californian home.

Emily Teeter said Tut-mania didn't begin until after museums started exploiting ancient Egyptian artefacts with travelling shows.

Teeter, an Egyptologist at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, gave a lecture titled "Tutankhamun: How His Treasures Changed Our World," Thursday in the Hibben Centre. She discussed the global impact of the discovery of King Tut's tomb.

She said the tomb's discovery changed people's expectations of the museum experience and the government and businesses' function in the exchange of artefacts...

Discovery launches King Tut craze, Anna Hampton, The Daily Lobo, ???, USA, November 03, 2006.

Queen Hatshepsut (often better known as Hot Chicken Soup) seized control from her stepson, Thutmose, on the grounds that Egypt deserved better than a pharaoh with such a goofy name. She ruled for 20 years before Thutmose found enough people who hated a female ruler more than his name and led a revolt to retrieve his throne.

But Hatshepsut had plenty of time to institute some fine traditions. The only female pharaoh began the festival of drunkenness, which we now celebrate as "Girls Gone Wild"...

Party Hearty with Hatshepsut, Cal Lanier, Football Fans for Truth, USA, October 31, 2006, via ArchaeoBlog.

cf. Earlier on this blog: Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites.

Yale's Egyptology program may not yet have a large presence on campus, but it will soon have a home overseas as construction continues on the Yale Institute in Egypt.

Construction of the many components of the institute — which will be spread across various sites west of the Nile River — began last year and is now picking up pace. Egyptologist John Darnell said living spaces, storage work spaces and expedition headquarters to be used during fieldwork will be built in the western desert region of Egypt by the end of this academic year. He said the institute also hopes to soon open offices in Cairo and Luxor. The other major component of the program's growth will be the expansion of the institute's Web site to include scholarly accounts of fieldwork in Egypt, Darnell said.

Darnell, who is the chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, said the increased infrastructure will make it easier for students to travel to Egypt to participate in expeditions, which he said are extremely important for anyone who wants to study and work in Egyptology...

Institute boosts Egypt program, Kanya Balakrishna, Yale Daily News, Connecticut, USA, November 01, 2006.

Humanity's extraordinary signature on the Earth's landscape is about to be celebrated at the British Museum with more than 350 images, each capturing ways of sending the same message to future generations: "We were here." The slender scribble of the Great Wall, a citadel like a plum pudding, the tree-covered, keyhole-shaped tomb of a Japanese emperor; they make you want to reach out and touch, running your finger over the lumps and lines.

Georg Gerster, the Swiss photographer responsible for these images, couldn't do that. He started compiling his unique record of the Past from Above in 1963, clinging to helicopter struts, fighting camera wobble as light aircraft bucked and yawed, and losing valuable dawn and evening light explaining to control towers that he wasn't a spy...

Pharaoh Rameses II, for instance, had to be content to imagine the magnificent pattern of the Ramesseum, his mortuary temple dating from the 13th-century BC, from 1,000ft up. He had only his architect's plans and the vast but partial views available from the flat desert ground surrounding it. Visitors to the museum see not only the bird's-eye view, but the striking effects of later history on the monument - and the hundreds of others alongside it in the exhibition. There is demolition, excavation, rebuilding and the gentle smothering by nature with silt, sand, trees or vines...

History from on high, The Guardian, UK, November 02, 2006.

Museums in Egypt are entering a new era. New institutions are being constructed, and there is a change from the concept of museums as storage facilities to modern museums with educational and cultural messages. In conjunction with this development, associations for "Friends" of various museums, including the Islamic Museum, Coptic Museum, and the Cairo Museum, have been organised. For the first time, each of these museums also has educational programmes that teach archaeology and art to both adults and children.

We are building a number of new national museums. There will be national museums at Sohag and Suez; two others will be opened next month at Rashid and Al-Arish. A national museum has already been opened in Alexandria. Specialised museums are also being built, such as the Textile Museum in Old Cairo, scheduled to open soon. The Akhenaten Museum in Minya, the Mosaic Museum in Alexandria, the Portrait Museum in Fayoum, and the Coin Museum at the Citadel are other examples of this type of museum.

Site museums are yet another category. A beautiful site museum at Saqqara, the Imhotep Museum, was opened recently by Mrs Mubarak. Soon a site museum to be known as the Crocodile Museum will be opening at the temple of Kom Ombo.

The great museums of Egypt are also being renovated as part of our overall plan...

Dig Days: Egyptian Museums, Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 818, November 01 - 07, 2006.

One of the most important achievements during the Nubia Salvage Operations under the auspices of UNESCO in the 1960s was unquestionably the discovery of an ancient cathedral in Faras which contained wall paintings preserved in excellent condition. As a result of four years of investigation and conservation by a Polish mission under the direction of K Michaowski, these magnificent and unique paintings can today be seen in special galleries in the National Museums of Warsaw and Khartoum.

The discovery can be regarded on a par with the most important archaeological discoveries of the second half of the 20th century, and certainly among the most significant achievements of the Nubian campaign. Once the architectural decorations and inscriptions of the church had been studied, including the cathedral's foundation stela and the famous List of Bishops of Pachoras, the conserved wall paintings can be said to have had a considerable impact on the establishment of Nubiology as an independent discipline.

Conservator Józef Gazy single-handedly managed to devise a system by which to protect and, at the same time, remove no fewer than 120 paintings from the ancient mud-brick walls of the cathedral and transport them safely to their new destinations in Poland and Sudan. Polish restorers working under Hanna Jêdrzejewska in Warsaw and Gazy in Khartoum then completed the conservation process. The paintings were mounted on new ground, and the innovative technical approach which was developed for the project permitted easy transport of individual wall paintings...

Polish activities upstream, Jill Kamil, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 818, November 01 - 07, 2006.

Of more than 150 papers that researchers presented at the 11th International Conference of Nubian Studies, the largest group concerned recent studies with special emphasis on current rescue operations in the area of the Fourth Nile Cataract.

Organisers made an effort to bring together papers that would present an overview of the most important archaeological sites under excavation in recent years, those where significant discoveries have recently been made. The conference provided an excellent opportunity to review the achievements made in Nubian studies over the 34 years since the 2nd conference took place in Warsaw in 1972, and conference committee director W Godlewski made particular mention of Nabta Playa, Kerma-Doukki Gel, Naga, Banganarti and Dongola.

The programme was divided into plenary sessions held in the mornings and four parallel topical sessions presented in the afternoons. Panel discussions were held on selected topics including official and vernacular languages in the Nubian kingdoms, representations of rulers or religious ceremonies conducted inside sacral buildings and, as Godlewski was quick to point out, "an evaluation of the international activities in the Fourth Cataract region constituted one of the hottest topics discussed at the conference..."

All eyes on Nubia, Jill Kamil, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 818, November 01 - 07, 2006.

Queen Sonja of Norway visited Egypt this week at the invitation of Mrs Suzanne Mubarak to attend the finale of the world's year-long celebration marking the centennial of the death of the great playwright Henrik Ibsen, launched last January in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. The festival has bee marked in 80 countries worldwide, with a total of about 8,000 events celebrating Ibsen's life and works. Egypt was chosen as the venue to host the closing of Ibsen's gala commemoration, with several prestigious arts activities being held in Cairo and Alexandria.

The stage at the feet of the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau provided a dramatic setting for a spectacular performance of Ibsen's world- acclaimed play Peer Gynt. The event was widely held to be not only the high spot of all the Egyptian cultural events of 2006, but also the greatest international performance in the year-long Ibsen commemoration. At the brilliant performance, in the presence of Mrs Mubarak and Queen Sonja along with a score of Norwegian and Egyptian top officials and ministers, Queen Sonja awarded Mrs Mubarak the Henrik Ibsen Foundation's award for her leading role in promoting cultural dialogue between all nations, her constant efforts to promote the various segments of culture, and her building of bridges to connect different civilisations. The award also honoured Mrs Mubarak for her support for the event, which also marked the 70th anniversary of Egyptian- Norwegian diplomatic ties.

The Giza performance, which was organised by Ibsen 2006 in collaboration with the Egyptian Tourism Authority, the Ministry of Culture and the Cairo Opera House, attracted more than 1,500 international visitors to the Egyptian capital...

Ibsen in Egypt, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 818, November 01 - 07, 2006.

A peak on the plateau

Last week, audiences were treated to two phenomenal performances of Henrik Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt, with music by Edvard Grieg, staged at the Sound and Light Theatre of the Giza plateau to mark Ibsen Year...

Ibsen in Egypt, Amal Choucri Catta, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 818, November 01 - 07, 2006.

The first necropolis for royal dentists ever found was discovered early this week in the shadow of Djoser's Step Pyramid in Saqqara. Nevine El-Aref visited the site and learnt that the Pharaohs' curse was not just a myth.

Early this month a pair of tomb raiders were inflicted with the Pharaohs' curse when they were apprehended while making an illicit attempt to dig a deserted area in the shadow of the Step Pyramid. They have since been jailed, but their illegal action in the Saqqara necropolis inadvertently led excavators to a very important discovery on the site. A necropolis dedicated to royal dentists of the Old Kingdom was revealed intact.

The necropolis dates back to the early fifth dynasty. "It was created to honour a chief dentist, E-E-Mery and two of his colleagues who treated the Pharaohs and their families," says Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), who led the excavation team...

A new bite for archaeologists, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 818, November 01 - 07, 2006.

Two experts face redundancy after completion of a £384,000 improvement scheme at Swaffham museum because money for their salaries is running out.

Museum manager and curator Kate Ayres and education officer Elaine Brown face the axe because three-year grants to meet their pay cheques expire next February [2007].

Unless applications for new grants are successful, the museum will have to be run by unpaid helpers when it reopens early in 2007 after a two-year closure for improvements...

Work is also in progress on a new exhibition room dedicated to Egyptologist Howard Carter, who lived in Swaffham and discovered Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt 1923.

This part of the project is being funded by a £25,000 grant from WREN, Waste Recycling Environmental Ltd, and other grants have come from the Heritage Lottery Fund as well as the town council...

Fixed link.

Museum experts face the axe, Watton & Swaffham Times, UK, November 01, 2006.

Some of the oldest and most precious scrolls unearthed from an ancient Egyptian crypt by UC Berkeley archaeologists over a century ago have been acquired by the university after decades of intrigue and delay.

Scholars said Wednesday that the four large rolls of papyrus record a wealth of detail about administrative affairs in Egypt's Middle Kingdom as early as 4,000 years ago.

UC Berkeley's Centre for the Tebtunis Papyri in the Bancroft Library took possession of the largely intact scrolls — taken from atop a stone coffin in an Upper Nile tomb — from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The Boston museum agreed to return all known papyri from Cal's 1901-04 dig at the Naga ed-Deir necropolis in exchange for a $10,000 payment for conservation work and the costs of shipping the scrolls to Boston from Europe in the 1930s and the 1960s...

Egyptian scrolls finally head for Cal home, Rick DelVecchio, San Francisco Chronicle, California, USA, November 02, 2006.

cf. Egyptian papyri arrive on campus, Kathleen Maclay, UC Berkeley News, UC Berkeley, California, USA, November 01, 2006.

cf. Documents Contain 4,000 Years Of History, Wayne Freedman, ABC San Francisco News, California, USA, November 01, 2006.

Booming tourism, a key part of Egypt's economy, is having a catastrophic effect on the country's unique cultural heritage, experts said on Wednesday.

So large were the numbers of people now visiting Egypt's famed ancient sites like the Valley of the Kings that they were causing serious damage in a way that even centuries of weather had failed to do, they said at a meeting in London.

"Tourists are scuffing walls with bags and bodies, wearing away paintings and colour," Michael Jones, of the American Research Centre in Egypt, said during the meeting of the British Egyptian Society and the London Middle East Institute.

"The humidity caused by the crowds' breathing and perspiration is also taking a terrible toll on the fabric," he added...

Tourism damaging Egyptian heritage, Reuters via The Scotsman, Scotland, UK, November 01, 2006.

Tourism damaging Egyptian heritage, Reuters via AlArab Online, UK, November 02, 2006.

Interview with Miroslav Verner.

Egypt’s ancient cultural treasures are under serious threat, not only because of theft and development but because of Egypt’s worsening environment. Why makes Egyptology such a fascinating field of study? What kind of challenges can Egyptologists expect in the coming years, and what plans do Czech Egyptologists have for the future? What did the ancient Egyptians give to Europe and the world? To answer these and other questions, we bring you an interview with Miroslav Verner, one of the most renowned experts on ancient Egypt.

I might suggest that archaeologists are born rather than made. By that, I mean that from childhood, an archaeologist digs for the truth and has a strong desire to uncover hidden mysteries. But how could a budding archaeologist find information about Egypt 50 years ago, when television was still in its infancy, the Internet didn’t yet exist and travel was virtually impossible?

I must say that my interest in Egyptology developed over time. As a boy (not that I was any exception here), I was attracted to anything adventurous and mysterious: decaying ruins, castles and the discovery of unknown secrets. I was also impressed by travelogues as a child and always insisted that my parents buy me any available, including books about famous Czech travellers (Emil Holub, the travelogues of Zikmund and Hanzelka, as well as others) — quite simply, anything I could get my hands on...

Miroslav Verner, Egyptologist and Professor at Charles University, Prague Daily Monitor, Czech Republic, August 18, 2006.

A Japanese research team has successfully removed a mural in an ancient Egyptian tomb at the World Heritage site of Saqqara, using a technique used on Japanese murals, so that conservation work can be done on it, team members said Friday.

The Kansai University team removed the plaster mural from the underground burial place of Princess Idut, which dates back to around 2360 BC. The mural depicts birds, food and beer in colour and has hieroglyphs engraved in it.

In the rare removal of a fragile plaster mural, the team glued rayon paper with resin over parts of the mural to be removed, using a type of seaweed paste to protect them from breaking, and carefully separated the plaster from the rock wall with knives.

The technique was used in removing a mural at the Kitora tomb in Asuka, Nara Prefecture, which dates from the late seventh century to the early eighth century, but the Idut mural is the first case of such removal abroad, according to experts...

Japanese team succeeds in removing Egyptian mural for conservation, Kyodo News via Yahoo! Asia News, October 27, 2006.

Egyptian antiquities authorities revealed early last week they caught ancient tomb raiders red-handed, leading them to ancient remains never thought to have existed in the area. The grave robbers launched their dig one summer night two months ago but were apprehended. Unaware of their finds, they helped authorities uncover the first necropolis ever found dedicated to dentists. They found the site early this month in Sakkara while digging the area located west of the First Dynasty tombs.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) announced that the necropolis includes three tombs built of mud brick and limestone. The first belongs to the chief dentist of the king E Emery who served during the reign of the Fourth Dynasty. It includes an entrance leading to a rectangular hall with two L-shaped chapels decorated with offering and daily life scenes.

Hawass said, “The most important scene is the curse inscription engraved on the false door showing a crocodile and a snake. Such an inscription was typically known in the old kingdom in order to scare off anyone who may enter the tomb,” he told the eTurbo News...

Ancient Site the Tomb Robbers in Egypt Stumbled Upon, Hazel Heyer, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, October 31, 2006.

TOMB RAIDERS FIND PHARAOHS’ DENTISTS

Thieves last week led archaeologists to the graves of three royal dentists, located near to the Step Pyramid of King Djoser, believed to be Egypt's oldest pyramid...

TOMB RAIDERS FIND PHARAOHS’ DENTISTS, The Voice, UK, November 01, 2006.