In a review written for the January [7th] edition of The Independent Nicola Smyth praises Stephanie Moser's new book, Wondrous Curiosities: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum, for its revealing look at the powerful role of museums in shaping our understanding of science, culture, and history. According to Smyth, Moser's book is a fascinating study of the ways the British Museum has extended the domain of western culture by appropriating not only the physical objects in its collection-but their cultural significance as well. Citing artefacts gained through looting or as trophies of war, to the considerations of pattern and juxtaposition meant to manipulate viewer's perspectives of the objects on display...

, Stephanie Moser, University of Chicago Press, USA, 2006, pp. 368.

Review: Moser, Wondrous Curiosities, The Chicago Blog, Chicago University, Illinois, USA, January 16, 2007.

Previously:

Review: Wondrous Curiosities: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum, January 08, 2007.

The discovery in 2003 of the tomb of Djehuty, overseer of works at Thebes during Queen Hatshepsut's reign, amazed Egyptologists and historians not only because of its distinguished and uncommon architectural design and decorative scenes, but also for the artefacts found within its corridors — objects from different dynasties piled in the tomb to form a haphazard treasury. These finds, made at Draa Abul-Nagaa on Luxor's west bank by a Spanish-Egyptian archaeological team, revealed more details about an unusual time in Egypt's ancient history.

This week after six consecutive concessions, the mission has unearthed instruments used at the funeral inside the tomb that add emphasis to the importance of Djehuty's position.

While cleaning the debris in the tomb's open courtyard archaeologists found a 70cm-deep pit containing 42 clay vases and 42 flower bouquets.

"These are probably the remains of Djehuty's funerary [bouquets] that were later thrown inside the tomb," Spanish mission director José Gal´n said...

Project Djheuty official website.

Say it with flowers, Nevine El-Aref , Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 838, March 29 - April 04, 2007.

Previously:

Egyptian-Spanish mission discovers flowers funerary items in Djehuty tomb, March 22, 2007.

Scientists discover Egyptians' 'backgammon', April 07, 2006.

Parlour of Hatshepsut time unearthed, April 04, 2006.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities has marked a day of homage to those archaeologists who spent their lives exploring, enriching, documenting and preserving Egypt's heritage...

If any ancient Egyptian spirits are still with us, then they were gathered at the Cairo Opera House last week when Egyptologists met to celebrate their first official day of tribute.

The grand theatre became a temple for the day, embellished with a noble façade, columns and statues of ancient Egyptian Pharaohs and deities. The stage had a special backdrop featuring animated ancient Egyptian workmen carving the title of the gathering: "The First Day of Archaeologists" on a limestone wall...

Now, [Hawass] continued, a social club for archaeologists is under construction in Al-Fustat, while plans for a hospital for members of the profession are being studied. Administration officers are also looking at ways to increase archaeologists' salaries and retirement pensions.

During the ceremony seven archaeologists in particular were honoured with a certificate and a golden collar. These were Abdel-Hamid Zayed, Abdel-Rahman Abdel-Tawwab and Ahmed Abdel-Hamid Youssef as well as four deceased archaeologists: Ahmed Pasha Kamal, Selim Pasha Hassan, Mustafa Amer and restorer Ahmed Youssef...

On site heroes, Nevine El-Aref , Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 838, March 29 - April 04, 2007.

The duck box story began in 1979 when Egyptologist Dieter Arnold excavated several calcite (Egyptian alabaster) food boxes in the shape of ducks from the pyramid complex of Amenemhat III at Dahshur. The boxes were reconstructed and immediately taken to the magazines at Saqqara, where they were stored.

Some years ago the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where Arnold is now senior curator, was offered two calcite duck boxes, one from Christie's in New York and the other from Rupert Wace Ancient Art Limited in London. Arnold knew the ducks must be royal and was intrigued, but the Metropolitan Museum was not satisfied with their origins and decided against buying them. Arnold and his assistant, however, persisted in studying photographs of the ducks, and soon realised that they were one and the same as the boxes he had excavated in 1979. It appears that at some point they were re-restored so as to appear slightly different. Arnold immediately informed Zahi Hawass, secretary- general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), of the situation.

Hawass took procedures to check on the ducks. Careful checking of the ducks against Arnold's excavation notes and the information recorded in the Saqqara magazine registers confirmed the identification of those as Christie's and Wace ducks. An inventory of the Saqqara magazines showed that they were indeed missing, along with a number of other items...

Ducks fly home, Nevine El-Aref , Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 838, March 29 - April 04, 2007.

Previously:

Artefacts Return To Egypt!, March 30, 2007.

Egypt restores two archaeological food alabaster boxes, March 26, 2007.

I stayed in Miami for two weeks but could not see the streets of the city. I had to stay in an apartment because I recently had eye surgery. During this period, I had to keep my head down at all times for 24 hours a day and began to reflect on my life. In all the years of my career, I never took time for myself. I began to think about the people that I had forgotten and realised that there were many things in my life that I had also forgotten.

While I was staying in the apartment, many people called me from Egypt. President Hosni Mubarak called me twice. Before he called me the second time, I was quite miserable because the first operation on my eye was unsuccessful. I almost had tears in my eyes because of this. The phone rang around noon Miami time, and someone said that President Mubarak would like to speak to Dr Zahi Hawass. I could not believe that the president would call me for a second time. It was the day before I had to go back to the clinic to find out the results of my second operation. The president's call made me happy and significantly improved my health and mood. When I discovered the next day that the operation had been successful, I called the office of the president because he had asked me to tell him how the surgery had gone...

When I was examined by William Smiddy and found that the hole in my eye had closed, I asked him to recommend a dentist. So he called his dentist's secretary to make an appointment but his dentist was busy for the entire day. About 15 minutes later, the dentist himself called back and asked me to come to see him at noon. He was happy to hear that I was the patient and that is why he changed the appointment of another patient in order to see me...

Dig days: The Pharaoh's dentists in Miami, Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 838, March 29 - April 04, 2007.

Previously:

Dig Days: Lucky rabbit's hat (2), March 16, 2007.

Dr. Hawass in U.S. For Eye Surgery, February 02, 2007.

A French architect believes he has finally solved one of the most puzzling construction problems in history by working out how the ancient Egyptians built such a massive structure without the benefit of iron tools, pulleys or wheels.

In Paris tomorrow, Jean-Pierre Houdin will unveil the fruits of eight years' work by describing at a conference how the pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu was built from the inside out. He will propose that the Egyptians carried the building blocks up an internal ramp that formed a spiral tunnel within the structure's outer wall. These tunnels, he believes, must still exist today.

With the help of sophisticated computer software developed by the French company Dassault Systemes, M. Houdin has been able to reconstruct a three-dimensional simulation of how the great limestone and granite blocks of the pyramid were put together stone by stone...

3D Unveils the Mystery of the Great Pyramid, Dassault Systemes.

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid's construction is turned inside out, Steve Connor, The Independent, March 30, 2007.

Previously:

Real-time 3D Helps to Finally Solve the Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Kheops!, March 30, 2007.

Sudan's archaeology is finally stepping out of Egypt's shadow as teams work against the clock to rescue an entire swathe of Nile Valley heritage from the rising waters of a Chinese-built dam.

"The paradox is that, yes, an entire area is being wiped off the map but thanks to the rescue project, Sudanese archaeology is being put on the map," says Sudan's antiquities chief Salah Ahmed.

The Merowe dam is a controversial hydroelectric project one of the largest in Africa being erected on the Nile's fourth cataract and due to start flooding the valley over more than 100 miles within months...

Sudan's rich past comes into its own, Jean-Marc Mojon, AFP via The Washington Times, District of Columbia, USA, March 28, 2007.

Previously:

Sudan archaeology flourishes before the flood, March 19, 2007.

Italian archaeologists to join international efforts to save Sudan's ancient artefacts, March 02, 2007.

Damming Sudan, October 19, 2006.

Nubians will be displaced from ancient seat by lake built for dam, January 20, 2006.

Race to save first kingdoms in Africa from dam waters, January 17, 2006.

Hungarian Archaeology Expedition in Nubia, September 20, 2005.

An Egyptian archaeological delegation Thursday headed for Paris to retrieve locks of hair from the mummy of Rameses II (about 1,302 BC - 1,213 BC), one of the greatest pharaohs in ancient Egypt, the official news agency MENA reported.

Chairman of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said the retrieving of the precious hair was guaranteed under a protocol signed between Egypt and France 31 years ago.

Hawass hailed the efforts exerted by the French authorities to get back the stolen locks...

Egypt's team heads for France to retrieve mummy's hair, Xinhua News Agency via China View, China, March 29, 2007.

cf. Egypt's team heads for France to retrieve mummy's hair, Xinhua News Agency via People's Daily, China, March 30, 2007.

Previously:

France to return 'pharaoh's hair' to Egypt, February 26, 2007.

France Says 'Pharaoh's Hair' Scandal in Police's Hands, December 04, 2006.

Frenchman arrested for trying to sell lock of pharaoh's hair, November 29, 2006.

Dassault Systemes (DS), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, announced that it today held a world premiere unveiling of the scientifically proven Great Pyramid construction theory with its creator, architect Jean-Pierre Houdin.

Dassault Systemes' real-time 3D solutions enabled Jean-Pierre Houdin to model and explore the pyramid in 3D and run simulations confirming his theory that the pyramid was built from the inside!

The secret of the Great Pyramid, the sole survivor of the Seven Wonders of the World, has fascinated people throughout time. Countless theories exist as to how it was built, but none stands up to analysis. In 1999, Houdin had an insight and decided to devote himself to developing his theory. Eight years of passion and research ensued, whereby he imagined the construction site of Kheops [Cheops / Khufu] as the first industrial construction site in history. To further refine and test his theory, he called on Dassault Systemes to help. As part of its "Passion for Innovation" sponsorship programme, DS decided to help Houdin solve the 4,500-year-old mystery with its real-time 3D solutions...

3D Unveils the Mystery of the Great Pyramid, Dassault Systemes.

Real-time 3D Helps to Finally Solve the Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Kheops!, PRNewswire via Yahoo! Finance, USA, March 30, 2007.

, Jean-Pierre Houdin, Dar al-Mushaf, 2006, pp. 160.

Egypt succeeded [in getting] return[ed] two food alabaster boxes in the shape of ducks which [had] been excavated by Dr. Dieter Arnold in 1979 from the pyramid complex of Amenemhat III at Dahshur. These were reconstructed, then taken immediately to the magazines at Saqqara and stored there, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced today.

Dr. Zahi Hawass secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) explained that [the] boxes [were] returned back to Egypt with the help of Arnold who is now senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Dr. Hawass continued that several years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was presented with two alabaster duck boxes, one from Christie's New York and the other from Rupert Wace Ancient Art Limited in London. Dr. Arnold was intrigued by these ducks, as he knew they must be royal, but the Metropolitan Museum was not satisfied with their provenances and decided against buying them. However, he and his assistant, Adela Oppenheim, continued to study photographs of these ducks, and realized that they were, in fact, the same ducks that Dr. Arnold had excavated in 1979. Dr. Arnold informed Dr. Hawass immediately of this situation...

Artefacts Return To Egypt!, Zahi Hawass, Guardian's Egypt, Egypt, March 30, 2007.

Previously:

Egypt restores two archaeological food alabaster boxes, March 26, 2007.

For one night, the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens will transform into ancient Egypt for the Cummer Museum Ball & Auction on April 21.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Cummer Museum Ball & Auction, and to commemorate the Ball’s anniversary, the Cummer Council served as the presenting sponsor for their past exhibit: “Temples and Tombs.” The event is at the museum and begins at 6 p.m.

Money raised at the Ball & Auction will go to the funding of the “Temples and Tombs” exhibit that was at the museum from Dec. 22 - March 18. Kim Sears who is handling the event’s public relations this year said this is the first year the Cummer Council has ever funded a specific exhibit...

Does this mean that the exhibition ran at a loss?

Cummer Museum turns Egyptian for a night, Caroline Gabsewics, The Jacksonville Financial News & Daily Record, Tennessee, USA, March 29, 2007.

Chairman of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass opens on Wednesday 28/3/2007 the proceedings of the third forum on Islamic and Coptic antiquities at the SCA headquarters in Cairo.

Hawass will announce during the two-day gathering ancient finds discovered by missions in some sites in Qena, the Red Sea, Damietta and Sinai.

Archaeologist Hisham el-Leithi, the rapporteur of the forum, said 16 new researches will be shown on the excavation and restoration operations in Islamic and Coptic sites.

About 150 Egyptian and international archaeologists will attend the event during which 10 veteran Egyptian employees from the antiquities sector will be honoured.

Hawass announces new discoveries during third forum on antiquities, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 28, 2007.

Mark Millmore's first literary offering is fantastic! It's much more than a book, more a trip through a time that we're all broadly familiar with, but with an eye to detail that makes the reader feel they're right there, and any previous knowledge they may have had of the Land of the Pharaohs was plainly inadequate.

'Imagining Egypt' is actually a bit of a misleading title. The reader doesn't need to imagine that much because the sheer depth of information in Millmore's book is vast. But don't get me wrong, this isn't page after page of boring writing with a few line drawings thrown in for good measure. This book is a full colour journey that really does bring to life the wonders of ancient Egypt.

So how does Millmore's book differ from all the others on offer on the subject. Well, as the author is a fine artist, theatre, designer, web designer and art director, it's no surprise to find the book littered with unique computer based images of ancient monuments and temples recreated to look as they would have done in their own time, accompanied by pictures of the sites as they are today, with maps, timelines and other images...

, Mark Millmore, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Inc, 2007, pp. 192. A special signed edition including a CD-ROM can be purchased from Mark Millmore's website.

Mark Millmore - 'Imagining Egypt', Clare Fischer, 24dash.com, UK, March 23, 2007.

If you think that finding a smart, intelligent, well-written action thriller is as tough as deciphering hieroglyphics, the book you're looking for is "Napoleon's Pyramids." It has a plot as satisfying as an Indiana Jones film and offers enough historical knowledge to give the reader a fascinating raconteur on the topics of ancient Egypt and Napoleon Bonaparte.

At the centre of William Dietrich's engaging novel is the young Ethan Gage, a former protégé of Benjamin Franklin set on a path to danger and high adventure when he wins an ancient medallion during a card game.

Set upon by enemies who crave the medallion, Gage flees Paris and joins Napoleon's military expedition to Egypt. There, his enemies in pursuit, he fights alongside Napoleon's troops, has lengthy conversations with the feisty general, travels deep into the pyramids, falls in love with a slave girl and searches for the medallion's secret...

, William Dietrich, HarperCollins, 2007, pp. 400.

Book Review: Napoleon's Pyramids, Carol Memmott, USA Today via The Indianapolis Star, Indiana, USA, March 25, 2007.

Conservators Amy Fernandez Byrne and her husband, Greg Byrne, from Shepherdstown, West Virginia worked on last year’s conservation show and couldn’t resist doing the same this year. They’re donating their services to conserve three pieces — a 13th-century Persian cuneiform bowl, an American mid-1940s Pomo Indian basket and a Roman 2nd-century bottle-flask. In 2006, they repaired an Egyptian falcon sarcophagus from 664 B.C., which was adopted by Tom and Arlene Baragona. The small, narrow box is topped with a statue rendering of the Egyptian god, Horus, with a falcon head and a human body. Inside was once the body of an un-mummified falcon.

The box, with a small hole in a corner and patches of light green-blue on the otherwise bluish-black surface, does not look perfect, which is surprising to someone unfamiliar with art conservation. Amy Byrne explained by e-mail that the Hermitage decided to focus on repairing “active corrosion.”

“Physical damage (on the proper right back side, underside and back panel) could have been addressed, but it was decided that the damage was quite old and did not threaten the piece. Damage and wear are often considered part of the character of antiquities,” Byrne wrote.

To fix the active corrosion, which was identified as “bronze disease,” Byrne first used organic and aliphatic solvents to degrease and clean the sarcophagus. She then removed the corrosion products and treated the affected area with a copper alloy corrosion inhibitor and applied a barrier coat of wax. The work took about five hours...

Time Does Not Heal Broken Art, Kristen De Deyn Kirk, Port Folio Weekly, Virginia, USA, March 27, 2007.

"How could I have been so foolish as to have missed this until now?" I said to myself over and over one day while 785 miles south of Cairo visiting Abu Simbel, near the Egypt-Sudan border in an area where the ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs once stood looking out toward the ancient Kingdom of Nubia.

The four gigantic figures of Egypt's longest reigning pharaoh tower 66 feet high and are set against a 108-feet-high facade recessed into the side of a cliff - an absolutely incredible work of ancient Egyptian art that rivals the pyramids. Not many steps away, a smaller temple is flanked by six 35-foot-high alternating states of Rameses II and his favourite wife Queen Nefertari portrayed as the goddess Hathor.

Both the larger Temple of Rameses II and the smaller Temple of Queen Nefertari were erected in the 13th century, B.C., to impress and intimidate visitors travelling from southern Africa with this stunning display of the grandeur of Egypt and the greatness of Rameses II...

Travel and Adventure: Egypt - look beyond the pyramids, Fred J. Eckert, The Bend Weekly, Oregon, USA, March 23, 2007.

cf. Egypt: Beyond the pyramids, Fred J. Eckert, The Birmingham News, Alabama, USA, March 25, 2007.

I think this is the same story as this one previously: Travel: Egypt Rediscovered, March 27, 2007.

a small section of that collection is set to arrive in Perth [at the Art Gallery of Western Australia] in July after an exhibition in Adelaide where more than 150,000 people are expected to take it in at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Made up of 500 individual pieces the exhibition, Journey to the Afterlife, is one of the most complex to be brought to Adelaide.

Louvre curator Marc Etienne has travelled with his precious cargo and worked with gallery staff for almost two weeks to install the pieces.

Mr Etienne said the obsession Egyptians appeared to have with death showed equally their love of life...

Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre: Journey to the Afterlife is at the Art Gallery of South Australia between March 01 – July 01, 2007 and at the Art Gallery of Western Australia between July 21 – October 28, 2007.

Egyptian exhibition reflects both life and death, AAP via The West Australian, Australia, March 21, 2007.

cf. More than mere mummies, Patrick McDonald, The Adelaide Advertiser, Australia, March 21, 2007.

American-Egyptologist Dr David B. O'Connor was honoured, on Saturday by the Supreme Council of Antiquities in recognition of his continued dedication and contributions to the science of Egyptology.

A former student of O'Connor and Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass highlighted to an audience of Egyptology specialists and enthusiasts how his research was influenced by O'Connor, who has worked in Egypt since 1960.

Hawass spoke of the impact O'Connor had on his first years in the field after having met O'Connor in Luxor at age 21.

"After I got to know O'Connor and worked with him, I could not part company with the man who has taught me a lot not only in terms of archaeology, but also in terms of team work and running an archaeological organization," said Hawass...

Zahi Hawass pays tribute to leading American Egyptologist, Ahmed Maged, The Daily Star, Egypt, March 21, 2007.

When King Adikhalamani [Tabriqo] started erecting a sanctuary for the divinities Amun and Isis more than two millennia ago, he could scarcely have imagined that the building would one day leave the hot and dry climate of southern Egypt.

Today, however, the temple where Egyptian priests once attended to a statuette of the high god Amun stands in a faraway city, where the cold bites, and winds blow for part of the year.

Since it was brought to the Spanish capital Madrid in the early 1970s, one of the most important Egyptian temples of the Western world is said to have deteriorated more than during the previous two millennia in Egypt.

Concerned about its state, experts are proposing solutions, including covering it with a glass dome...

Temple of Debod, Madrid, Spain.

Ancient Egyptian temple under threat in Spain, Sinikka Tarvainen, dpa via Jurnalo, Spain, March 23, 2007.

cf. Ancient Egyptian temple under threat in Spain, Sinikka Tarvainen, dpa via EUX.TV, The Netherlands, March 23, 2007.

Egypt — You really haven't seen Egypt if you haven't seen this part of Egypt," our guide said.

I usually wince at such comments, for many times I have been to places that were overhyped.

I had been to Egypt twice before — to Cairo, where each time I had stood in awe before the Pyramids and delighted in the splendours of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. For years, I told friends that was pretty much what there was to see in Egypt — see the Pyramids and that magnificent museum and then move on to another destination.

How wrong I was, and how right was that Abercrombie & Kent Egyptologist guide.

"How could I have been so foolish to miss this until now?" I asked myself one day...

Egypt Rediscovered, Fred J. Eckert, The Washington Times, District of Columbia, USA, March 24, 2007.

The struggle with her teenage brother over the throne of Egypt was not going as well as Cleopatra VII had hoped. In 49 B.C., Pharaoh Ptolemy XIII-also her husband and, by the terms of their father's will, her co-ruler-had driven his sister from the palace at Alexandria after Cleopatra attempted to make herself the sole sovereign. The queen, then in her early twenties, fled to Syria and returned with a mercenary army, setting up camp just outside the capital.

Meanwhile, pursuing a military rival who had fled to Egypt, the Roman general Julius Caesar arrived at Alexandria in the summer of 48 B.C., and found himself drawn into the Egyptian family feud. For decades Egypt had been a subservient ally to Rome, and preserving the stability of the Nile Valley, with its great agricultural wealth, was in Rome's economic interest. Caesar took up residence at Alexandria's royal palace and summoned the warring siblings for a peace conference, which he planned to arbitrate. But Ptolemy XIII's forces barred the return of the king's sister to Alexandria. Aware that Caesar's diplomatic intervention could help her regain the throne, Cleopatra hatched a scheme to sneak herself into the palace for an audience with Caesar. She persuaded her servant Apollodoros to wrap her in a carpet (or, according to some sources, a sack used for storing bedclothes), which he then presented to the 52-year old Roman.

The image of young Cleopatra tumbling out of an unfurled carpet has been dramatized in nearly every film about her, from the silent era to a 1999 TV miniseries, but it was also a key scene in the real Cleopatra's staging of her own life. "She was clearly using all her talents from the moment she arrived on the world stage before Caesar," says Egyptologist , author of a forthcoming biography, ...

Who Was Cleopatra?, Amy Crawford, The Smithsonian Magazine, The Smithsonian Institute, District of Columbia, USA, April 2007.

You say that Jean Yves Empereur looks like a literary figure from Forster's day. In your last story for us you described Egyptologist Otto Schaden as a neo-Victorian. Does archaeology draw these characters, or are you drawn to them as a writer?

Both. But archaeology doesn't draw people who want to live comfortable lives in suburbs and stay home and commute to work every day. These are people who do tend to be eccentrics. Or mavericks.

It also sounds as if they'd like to live in the past.

Yes, although with Empereur it was interesting. Many archaeologists come across as 21st century scientists who are completely focused on getting data. But Empereur is not only a good modern archaeologist, he also had an amazing feel for the cultural history. That's what struck me: he's somebody who feels very passionate not just about ancient Alexandria and the glory that it once was, but he also appreciates the more recent past and the way the city has transformed over the millennia.

In his book , he writes not just about ancient Alexandria but also about the literary figures and the role that they played in the last century in making Alexandria the kind of city it is...

City of the Imagination, Amy Crawford, The Smithsonian Magazine, The Smithsonian Institute, District of Columbia, USA, April 2007.

There's no sign of the grand marbled metropolis founded by Alexander the Great on the busy streets of this congested Egyptian city of five million, where honking cars spouting exhaust whiz by shabby concrete buildings. But climb down a rickety ladder a few blocks from Alexandria's harbour, and the legendary city suddenly swims into view.

Down here, standing on wooden planks stretching across a vast underground chamber, the French archaeologist points out Corinthian capitals, Egyptian lotus-shaped columns and solid Roman bases holding up elegant stone arches. He picks his way across the planks in this ancient cistern, which is three stories deep and so elaborately constructed that it seems more like a cathedral than a water supply system. The cistern was built more than a thousand years ago with pieces of already-ancient temples and churches. Beneath him, one French and one Egyptian worker are examining the stonework with flashlights. Water drips, echoing. "We supposed old Alexandria was destroyed," Empereur says, his voice bouncing off the damp smooth walls, "only to realize that when you walk on the sidewalks, it is just below your feet."

With all its lost grandeur, Alexandria has long held poets and writers in thrall, from E. M. Forster, author of a 1922 guide to the city's vanished charms, to the British novelist Lawrence Durrell, whose Alexandria Quartet, published in the late 1950s, is a bittersweet paean to the haunted city. But archaeologists have tended to give Alexandria the cold shoulder, preferring the more accessible temples of Greece and the rich tombs along the Nile. "There is nothing to hope for at Alexandria," the English excavator D. G. Hogarth cautioned after a fruitless dig in the 1890s. "You classical archaeologists, who have found so much in Greece or in Asia Minor, forget this city..."

Raising Alexandria, Andrew Lawler, The Smithsonian Magazine, The Smithsonian Institute, District of Columbia, USA, April 2007.

Previously:

Ancient Alexandria Emerges, By Land and By Sea, February 25, 2005.

Professor Kenneth Lindsay was presented with the University Medal on Monday.

Lindsay was one of the so-called "Monuments Men" during the World War Two era. They were a group of art historians who saved works stolen by the Nazis.

He recalled the first time he ever saw his most memorable piece of art, the statue of Queen Nefertiti.

"It was heavy, heavy as a dickens and put it up in a pedestal in the middle of the room. And like that, every man in that room fell in love with her. Never seen a face like that before or since. And there she stood. That was the great and wonderful moment of the whole thing," said Lindsay...

Monumental honour for “Monuments Man”, Karen Lee, News 10 Now Syracuse, New York, USA, March 27, 2007.

Previously:

Binghamton University professor helped save stolen art, March 19, 2007.

The King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute is dull, dark and disappointing. But at least the lines are long.

More than 600,000 people viewed "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" in the show's first six weeks in Philadelphia. Rarely have so many paid so much to see an itty, bitty liver casket.

That was my sucker moment. I stood there, beholding the box that once stored Tut's bile, and began to feel rather poorly myself. Thirty-two bucks per ticket, plus parking and numbingly long lines, for this? Oy, I thought. His liver.

Call me a low-brow, a whiner, a Philistine. No offence taken: The original Philistines thought Pharaoh Rameses III was tedious, too. So he smote them...

... the exhibit has flaws, too. First, there is no mummy, nor even the famous golden mummy's mask. Tut is elsewhere. This is just wrong...

Not a happy bunny.

I paid $32 to see a royal liver box?, Dave Boyer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania, USA, March 23, 2007.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has returned two ancient masterpieces long claimed by Greece on grounds of illegal provenance, the Greek culture ministry said on Friday.

The items, a gold funerary wreath and a marble woman's torso, arrived on Thursday evening on an Olympic Airlines flight from New York in "excellent condition", a ministry official told AFP.

"The antiquities will be stored at the Archaeological Museum in Athens, and will be officially presented by Minister George Voulgarakis on March 29," she said.

Greece had demanded for over a decade the return of the two works, in addition to two other items yielded by the Getty last summer, arguing that they were illegally removed from the country...

Contested Getty antiquities arrive in Greece, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, March 23, 2007.

Italian police said Thursday they have recovered about 300 ancient artefacts and thousands of fragments believed to have been illegally excavated in central Italy.

Six people were under investigation on possible charges that included trafficking of antiquities, but nobody has been arrested, Rome Carabinieri police said.

The items recovered include vases, jars and cups. Among the most precious objects was an 11-inch Greek vase dating to 600 B.C.-580 B.C. and featuring black figures. Some of the items were sold at the Porta Portese flea market, held every Sunday in Rome.

Col. Ferdinando Musella, an official with Italian anti-art theft police, said that tomb raiders often break vases and amphorae so they can sell single pieces and then ask for a higher price for the missing piece that would complete the artefact...

Italy recovers hundreds of artefacts, AP via The Boston Herald, Massachusetts, USA, March 22, 2007.

The Egyptian authorities have evicted hundreds of peasants from this village in southern Egypt because their mud brick houses, which have sat atop some of the world's most treasured and ancient tombs for centuries, were leaking sewage onto priceless antiquities.

The families have been resettled nearby in an Egyptian version of a suburban housing development, with running water and telephones. But 80 families are refusing to move, saying they want more from a government that has so far been reluctant to use brute force.

The standoff in Gurna, near the famed Valley of the Kings, illustrates the challenges facing an authoritarian government that has long imposed its will on the people, keeping them poor but fed, underemployed but employed...

Challenging tradition in the land of the pharaohs, Michael Slackman, International Herald Tribune, France, March 23, 2007.

cf. Different version of the same from the day before. Egypt evicts neighbours of the pharaohs, Michael Slackman, International Herald Tribune, France, March 22, 2007.

Egypt has succeeded in retrieving two food alabaster boxes in the shape of ducks which had been excavated by Dr. Dieter Arnold in 1979 from the pyramid complex of Amenemhat III at Dahshur then smuggled abroad.

These were reconstructed, then taken immediately to the magazines at Saqqara and stored there...

Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass explained that such boxes returned back to Egypt with the help of Arnold who is now a senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Hawass continued that several years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [spotted one at Christie's] and the other from Rupert Wace Ancient Art Limited in London.

Arnold was intrigued by these ducks, as he knew they must be royal, but the Metropolitan Museum was not satisfied with their provenances and decided against buying them.

However, he and his assistant, Adela Oppenheim, continued to study photographs of these ducks and realised that they were, in fact, the same ducks that Arnold has excavated in 1979...

Egypt restores two archaeological food alabaster boxes, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 26, 2007.

As we leave the airport, weary with jet lag, Egypt begins to weave its magic. Elaborate mosques and sprawling government buildings compete for space alongside housing block ruins. Laundry, surprisingly bright in colour despite the heavy pollution, billows in the wind. It hangs outside many a run-down apartment window to dry in the warm Cairo breeze.

Egypt's beauty lies in its startling contradictions. The bustling cities and the desert lands. It's there on the streets — donkeys trot down the main roads pulling heavy carts weighed down with people and produce.

They share the lanes with mini buses which transport the locals around town, battered cars which splutter along the road sending a spray of pollution into the already tainted air. In the city, high-rise apartments and expensive compounds share space with temples, there's a massive cemetery called "the city of the dead", and of course, the ever present pyramids...

Sands of time, Jessica Hurt, The Adelaide Advertiser, Australia, March 21, 2007.

Egyptologists Join Together At Penn Museum the University of Pennsylvania Museum to Share Insight into Newest Research and Understandings about the Amarna Period at Public Symposium Saturday, March 31, 2007.

Of all the times in ancient Egypt's long history, the Amarna Period (circa 1353 to 1336 BCE) is one of the most intriguing. In little more than a generation, the religious, artistic, and political order of Egyptian civilization was radically altered — and then restored. Egyptologists continue to make important discoveries about this time — and to debate their meaning.

On Saturday, March 31, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology hosts a gathering of prominent Egyptologists from two continents, offering a variety of perspectives on this revolutionary period. “Amarna: New Research and Discoveries in the Age of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun,” a full day public symposium, is co-sponsored by Archaeology Magazine and the Centre for Ancient Studies at the University of Pennsylvania...

Egyptologists Join Together At Penn Museum, HULIQ Media, North Carolina, USA, March 22, 2007.

Deities, votive offerings and stelae illustrating the religious convictions and social life of the ancient Egyptians in the early part of the 19th Dynasty are the Egyptian Museum's latest attractions. Nevine El-Aref reports that for the next six months visitors to the museum will have a first glimpse of these treasures, long-buried not beneath the sand but in the museum's basement.

The exhibition on the museum's ground floor falls within a series organised by the Egyptian Museum to highlight some of the treasures of its collection which has been hidden for decades in its overflowing vaults. The display changes every six months.

The current exhibition, "Anubis, Upwawet and other Deities", displays 1,000 year's worth of offerings to the ancient Egyptian jackal deity Anubis, god of mummification, and Upwawet, who opened the passage allowing the soul of the deceased to cross to the afterlife. These two were the principle protective deities of the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut from the 18th to the 21st dynasties...

Here to eternity, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 837, March 22 - 28, 2007.

On 7 July this year — 7/7/7 — the new Seven Wonders of the World will be announced in Lisbon, Portugal, the result of an international poll to compile the latest version of the list. The final seven will be chosen from a shortlist of 21 nominated sites across the planet. Yet, even though the Giza Pyramids have maintained their place through the ages, the idea of a new list has fallen flat here in Egypt where the Antiquities Authorities are bent on opposing the concept of a popular vote.

When the poll was launched in 2001, 77 candidates were nominated, all of them meeting the criteria that they were built before 2000, and were still standing. Telephone and Internet votes have so far whittled this number down to 21. These are, in no particular order, the Taj Mahal; Stonehenge; the Athens Acropolis; the Great Wall of China; the Giza Pyramids; the Statue of Liberty; the Eiffel Tower; Peru's Machu Picchu; Istanbul's Haghia Sophia; the Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow; the Colosseum; Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle; Spain's Alhambra; Japan's Kiyomizu Temple; the Sydney Opera House; Cambodia's Angkor; Timbuktu; Petra; Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer; Easter Island; and Chichen Itza, Mexico...

The Egyptian Antiquities Authority has made public its opposition to the project. Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the Weekly that the Giza Pyramids did not need to be put to the vote as they were the only one surviving of the seven ancient wonders. He suggested that Weber's organisation had no right to run such a project, being a private organisation without affiliation to any international scientific society or archaeological institute. Hawass claimed that it was not approved either by UNESCO or the Word Heritage Organisation...

One out of seven ain't bad, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 837, March 22 - 28, 2007.

cf. Seven wonders ballots pour in, John Ward Anderson, The Washington Post via The Indianapolis Star, Indiana, USA, March 18, 2007.

"An Egyptian-Spanish archaeological mission discovered, on Wednesday, instruments used in the funeral of Queen Hatshepsut's chief of works in Thebes, Djehuty, in Djehuty's tomb in the Dar-Abul-Naga area in Luxor's West Bank," Al-Ahram reported.

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Dr. Zahi Hawass said the new discovery includes 42 clay pots and 42 flower bouquets, which had been thrown into the deceased's tomb at the end of the funeral ceremony. This ritual is featured on a wall at Djehuty's burial chamber showing the family of the deceased, along with priests holding clay pot and flower bouquets. According to Dr. Hawass, during the cleaning of the area in front of the tomb, archaeologists hit upon the remains of a six meter long wall that once made the tomb's façade.

José Galán, head of the Spanish team said that during excavation works at the tomb's open court, a moderate wooden sarcophagus was found inside a small pit. It includes the bones of an unidentified woman that can be dated to the New Kingdom era...

Egyptian-Spanish mission discovers flowers funerary items in Djehuty tomb, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 22, 2007.

Previously:

Scientists discover Egyptians' 'backgammon', April 07, 2006.

Parlour of Hatshepsut time unearthed, April 04, 2006.

[A] group of NASA and university scientists has found a convincing link between long-term solar and climate variability in a unique and unexpected source: directly measured ancient water level records of the Nile, Earth's longest river.

Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun's corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun's activity.

Feynman said that while ancient Nile and auroral records are generally "spotty," that was not the case for the particular 850-year period they studied...

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, California, USA, March 19, 2007, via Tony Cagle at ArchaeoBlog..

PDF: Does the Nile reflect solar variability?, Alexander Ruzmaikin, Joan Feynman and Yuk Yung, Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 233, 2006.

Abstract: Is solar variability reflected in the Nile River?, Alexander Ruzmaikin, Joan Feynman and Yuk Yung, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 111, D21114, doi:10.1029/2006JD007462, November 11, 2006.

Archaeologists responsible for the antiquities portfolio of the Arab nations are taking steps in defence of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Nevine El-Aref reports on their third emergency meeting held in Cairo.

Israeli excavations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem's most volatile holy site, have sparked Arabs and Muslims to take legal action to preserve Islam's third holiest shrine.

Egypt this week witnessed two provocative removes. In parallel with the Arab Foreign Ministers Meeting at the Arab League, Arab Antiquities Officials (AAO), along with representatives of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (ISESCO), the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (ALECSO), the International Cultural Council for Research and Museums (ICCROM), and the head of the Arab Archaeologists' Union met on Sunday at the premises of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) hoping to find a solution. Although Palestinian antiquities experts were unexpectedly prevented from attending because of exit restrictions imposed by the Israelis, the meeting was attended by Munzir Al-Digani, the Palestinian ambassador in Egypt...

Remember who built Jerusalem, Nevine El-Aref, Al Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 836, March 15 - 21, 2007.

cf. Abul-Gheit calls for neutral int'l supervision of Al-Aqsa restoration process, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 16, 2007.

Previously: Hawass threatens to end cooperation in Aqsa mosque row, March 05, 2007.

The world's oldest perfumes have been found on Cyprus by a team of archaeologists.

The perfumes were scented with extracts of lavender, bay, rosemary, pine or coriander and kept in tiny translucent alabaster bottles. The remaining traces found in Pyrgos, on the south of the island, are more than 4,000 years old.

The scents were discovered inside what archaeologists believe was an enormous 43,000 sq ft perfume-making factory. "We were astonished at how big the place was," said Maria Rosa Belgiorno, the leader of the Italian archaeological team. "Perfumes must have been produced on an industrial scale..."

You may be wondering why I posted this? Well, it is because of this article from The Register (Archaeologists sniff out world's oldest perfumes, Lester Haines, The Register, UK, March 21, 2007) which quotes Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis and mentions Egyptian perfume as being in vogue a one point.

Eau de BC: the oldest perfume in the world, Malcolm Moore, The Telegraph, UK, March 21, 2007.

For a century, they have been on display in the Louvre museum in Paris, labelled as Canopic jars holding the embalmed innards of the great Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II. But the four pots, covered in hieroglyphs, are not what they seem.

An analysis by French chemists has revealed that the jars in fact contain ordinary cosmetics, produced at a much later date...

The blue jars arrived in the Louvre in 1905. They carry the name of Rameses II, and seemed to contain embalmed organs, including a trace of what appeared to be heart tissue. Yet Rameses's actual mummy still has its heart - the one organ ancient Egyptians left inside mummies so it could be weighed in the afterlife by the god Thoth. "The jars look like the pots of unguents found in King Tut's tomb, among others, not like other Canopic jars," says Jacques Connan of the University of Strasbourg, France.

With the Louvre's permission, Connan's team sampled traces of material in the pots, and analysed them using mass spectrometry and chromatography techniques...

Connan concludes that the jar probably held scented ointment made by heating aromatic wood in fat, of the type Egyptians used to anoint their heads, and sacred images...

Pharaoh's pots give up their secrets, Debora Mackenzie, New Scientist Magazine, UK, Issue 2595, March 16, 2007, p. 12.

cf. Pharaoh's Heart Unmasked, Stefan Anitei, Softpedia, March 16, 2007.

Previously:

Louvre's pharaoh jars are not what they seemed, March 14, 2007.

Human Remains in Ancient Jar a Mystery, January 30, 2007.

Approximately two years ago, American archaeologist Semir Osmanagich and his team made the astounding discovery of a series of pyramids in Bosnia.

Last Sunday, speaking at the Supreme Council of Culture, Bosnian-born Osmanagich called on Egyptian archaeologists and geologists to assist in excavating the pyramids and uncovering whether the pyramids are a product of man or nature.

“We would invite five or six Egyptian archaeologists and geologists by July or August to come [to Bosnia] and give us a hand,” Osmanagich told The Daily Star Egypt.

“Bosnia doesn’t have a faculty of archaeology. We need more help and guidance, from the Egyptian expertise especially ... to get involved in this project. This will be most beneficial to both of us,” said Osmanagich...

Pharaohs to help unveil truth of Bosnian pyramids, Sherine Abdel Monaim, The Daily Star, Egypt, March 19, 2007.

From the creators of the $25,000 dinner, there's another pricey gourmet feast on the horizon.

Wealthy foodies can mark their calendars for Dec. 12, 2008, when top chefs from around the world will be flown to Egypt to cook a dinner in front of the ancient Pyramids of Giza, organizer Deepak Ohri said Monday.

This dinner will be a bargain ... The price for dining beside the pyramids has not yet been set, but will cost no more than $10,000 per person, said Ohri...

Five hundred tickets will be sold for the dinner, to be cooked by 30 3-star Michelin chefs, he said...

Just how close diners will be to the pyramids depends on the Egyptian government and UNESCO, since the pyramids are a World Heritage site. Talks are underway with authorities, Ohri said, noting the added incentive that organizers are "considering" giving profits from the dinner to an organization or charity that helps conserve the Seven Wonders of the World...

Pyramids to play host to feast for the likes of King Tut, AP via USA Today, New York, USA, March 19, 2007.

Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs brings to life ancient wonders, historic intrigue and a modern-day forensic adventure, all in one eye-popping new film, opening at the Tuttleman IMAX Theatre. A natural complement to Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, at The Franklin Institute through September 30, 2007, Mummies takes viewers on a journey back thousands of years to explore why mummification was so vital to ancient Egyptian life.

Why are people endlessly fascinated with mummies? The worldwide curiosity about mummification is an age-old phenomenon as enduring as mummies themselves. During Egypt’s history, literally millions of mummies were made. In Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs, filmgoers will marvel at the sight of these human time capsules, shown in larger-than-life detail on the giant screen.

Mummies: Secrets of the Pharaohs unravels the mysteries enshrouding the ancient royal mummies, how they were embalmed and where they were hidden, and also recreates the dramatic story of their recovery — an “Indiana Jones”-type tale of tomb-raiders and hidden treasure that led to one of the most significant archaeological finds in modern history. Featuring top Egyptologists and researchers, , Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, and DNA scientist Angelique Corthals, the film also embarks on a genetic analysis of mummies that could have huge implications for the study of modern human diseases...

Franklin Institute’s Theatre Presents Mummies, Huliq, USA, March 20, 2007.

The statue, Apollo the Lizard Slayer, was stunning. The five-foot-tall bronze, created by the Greek artist Praxiteles as many as 2,350 years ago, depicts the nude god poised to ambush a lizard.

And the Cleveland Museum of Art wanted it. During a visit to Geneva in 2003, Michael Bennett, the museum’s curator of Greek and Roman art, noticed a statue beneath a black cloth while browsing at Phoenix Ancient Art, an exclusive antiquities gallery. After Hicham and Ali Aboutaam, the dapper Lebanese brothers who owned the gallery, pulled off the cloth to reveal the Apollo Sauroktonos, as it is also known, it did not take long for the museum to buy it.

It did so despite the Aboutaams’ disclosure that the statue’s ownership history was dubious at best.

Although it is thought to be the very statue described by Pliny the Elder in the first century, other details have been lost to time, along with one arm. The statue was part of a private estate in the former East Germany, the Aboutaams said, before it was discovered in pieces in 1990. The family who reclaimed the estate after German reunification sold the work to an undisclosed Dutchman in 1994. That person sold the statue to another collector, who sold it to the Aboutaams in 2001 with the understanding that he would remain anonymous.

The museum’s own experts spent a year investigating the provenance. Physical evidence proved that the sculpture had been out of the ground for at least a century, so its sale did not violate international laws and treaties aimed at halting illicit trade in art and antiquities.

Nevertheless, last month, the Apollo’s murky past returned to haunt the Cleveland Museum of Art...

Do You Know Where That Art Has Been?, Ron Stodghill, The New York Times, New York, USA, March 18, 2007.

cf. Do You Know Where That Art Has Been?, Ron Stodghill, The New York Times via Times Daily, Alabama, USA, March 18, 2007.

The Uganda government plans to turn Dufile Fort into a tourist attraction following an archaeological survey of Uganda's largest and most important 19th century forts.

The archaeologists found that the fort was built by the Madi people, who interacted much with the Arabs. Their findings will guide experts in developing the area where the fort was constructed, to make it economically beneficial to the Madi people who occupy the border area of southwestern Sudan and northwestern Uganda.

Dufile is on the western bank of the Nile in Moyo District, West Nile region, a 45-minute boat ride from Nimule in Sudan.

The survey, headed by Posnansky Merrick, professor emeritus and director of the Dufile Project at the University of California, was conducted from December 2006 to January 2007. Prof Merrick is the founder chairman of the Uganda Historical Monuments Commission and former head of the Uganda National Museum...

Not Egypt I know, but heh?

Uganda: Lost Fort On the Nile, Baturaki Musinguzi, All Africa, Mauritius, March 20, 2007.

The O2, formerly the Millennium Dome, will attempt to prove its capability as an exhibition venue with a much-trumpeted show on boy king Tutankhamun later this year. The exhibition is to be designed by Mark Lach, senior vice-president of entertainment and exhibitions group Arts and Exhibitions International.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, the first exhibition to take place at The O2, aims to draw visitors back in time with 'inventive design and innovative technology', featuring National Geographic images and film footage about the golden age of the pharaohs.

It will also feature three-dimensional computerised tomography scan images of Tutankhamun, taken as part of the Egyptian research and conservation project that will CT-scan all the ancient mummies of Egypt...

The O2 goes for gold with Tutankhamun gig, Design Week, UK, March 21, 2007.

Name a world capital where you can stand on the balcony of your hotel room and see below a donkey cart loaded with fresh greens in the midst of heavy urban traffic.

Another hint. If you turn your gaze to the left, in the distance you see the unmistakable forms of the three pyramids of Giza, the sole remaining wonder of the original Seven Wonders of the World.

Yes, you are in Cairo, one of the world's most historic, exotic and engaging cities.

I have stayed in Cairo for about a week on two occasions — in 1995 and 2006. On both visits, I was fascinated with this city. On both visits, I also was frustrated because there wasn't enough time to experience it...

Ancient Cairo replete with fascinating historic, artistic treasures, Arthur Hoffman, The South County Journal, Missouri, USA, March 20, 2007.

Brazilian Egyptologist Cláudio Prado de Mello is building the first National Egyptology Institute in Brazil. It will operate in a building, in Rio de Janeiro, that is inspired on an Egyptian construction of the Mamluk dynasty, which ruled Egypt between 1235 and 1517 AD.

"The institute was born from the need to try to organize Egyptology in Brazil. There is a very expressive number of people interested in learning about Egypt," stated Mello. In 1990 a group of Brazilian historians and archaeologists decided to establish the institute in Rio de Janeiro. According to Mello, the organization was established focussing on the Islamic world, but the visitors are also going to have access to other cultures.

The Egyptian complex, which has three storeys, is going to house around 15 rooms where over 900 items will be exhibited and a library with 25,000 titles. Eleven rooms will house permanent exhibits, covering the formation of the earth; the first civilizations; classic cultures, like the Greek and Roman; the Byzantine culture and the Islamic world; Pre-Columbian cultures, like the Incas, Aztecs and Mayas; South American baroque art; culture of the Far East; Medieval, Renaissance and primitive Art...

Researcher builds Egyptology institute in Rio, Translated by Mark Ament, Brazil-Arab News Agency, Brazil, March 20, 2007.

The editor published in Al-Ahram Weekly on [February 01 - 07, 2007] only parts of my reply to the first question of a reader called Ronald Edge from Chicago asking about how I define directions for determinations of alignment due north of the Great Pyramid, even contrasting it with a famous astronomical site in Paris. But because of precession and the angle of the axis of Earth to the plane of the ecliptic, over time "true north" changes, and is surely now just a few thousand years later, not precisely where it was at the time the Pyramid was built. A reference to the "Spence theory" was also omitted. I here offer the two main theories regarding the alignment techniques of the Great Pyramid, sun shadow and the stellar technique.

The first approach is the simplest; two easy methods are conceivable. One is to use a gnomon (the oldest astronomical device) to record the shortest shadow length at noon when the sun is due south. This will produce a north/ south direction line. In this case the ancients would have intended to orient their pyramids to "Re", the noonday sun, when the sun is at its highest point. Another alternative is to mark the length of the shadow in the morning and draw a circle round the gnomon using the length of the shadow as the radius. In the afternoon, when the shadow reaches the perimeter of the circle, it is again marked. A line through the morning and afternoon marks is an east/west direction line. The sophistication of this method suggests that if the ancients made this alignment they were aligning to the cardinal points and had a good working knowledge of basic geometry. Both methods are a quick and easy way of establishing direction lines on most days of the year. Many scholars support this technique as the most plausible way in which the north pole alignment was calculated; for the ancients had a thorough understanding of the sun — being their chief god. Egyptian priests would have studied it carefully...

Thanks to Professor Deif for forwarding this to me.

A Question of Ancient Mathematics, Professor Assem Deif, Copts United, Egypt, March 01, 2007.

Previously:

Reply: Mathematics in Ancient Egypt, February 07, 2007.

Mathematics in Ancient Egypt, January 26, 2007.

Slowly Qurna is being erased from the map. The process began last December after the Luxor authorities ordered the demolition of all the village's mud brick houses. "In just five minutes," reported Agence France Presse on 3 December, "and under the deafening roar of bulldozer engines, three long-abandoned houses were the first to go ... The stage-managed affair included a fashion show of children parading in ancient Egyptian costumes to the beat of epic drums and enthusiastic speeches by officials for the television cameras. Three thousand five hundred families will leave for a better life..."

The eviction was the culmination of a process that began nearly 60 years ago, before Egypt became independent. The tomb of Ramose is only one of about100 tombs, the so-called "Tombs of the Nobles", sunk deep into this hillside. But because of the village of Qurna, the archaeologists couldn't get at them. Even worse, the villagers were not beyond plundering the tombs over which they perched, quietly removing items of sensational importance for discreet, expert visitors. So in 1948, the authorities decided that the village had to go...

But the people of Qurna did not buy it. Some moved there, but many dug in their heels and stayed put. The reason was simple. In Qurna, thanks to the steady flow of tourists, they could make a living. New Qurna might be pretty and shady (and surrounded by green fields, unlike the harsh rubble around the present village) but there was no indication of what they could do there to make ends meet. The villagers had no desire to take the gamble...

But this time around it's really happening: the villagers have been given no choice in the matter. They can agree to move to the new homes that are being built for them or they can refuse. Hundreds of those who have signed agreements have already moved, and their old homes have been torn down. But those that refuse will lose their homes anyway and if they decline what the government is offering to the bitter end, they will simply have the sky for a roof...

Valley of the bulldozers: Death on the Nile, Peter Popham, The Independent, UK, March 20, 2007.

“Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia has officially become the most popular museum exhibition in the city's history, with more than 616,000 tickets sold or reserved since they went on sale on Nov. 8, 2006. Outselling their previous record-holder, "Body Worlds," attended by more than 603,000 visitors during its six-month stay at The Franklin Institute, the King Tut exhibition is on track to draw one million visitors before it closes on Sept. 30, 2007.

The exhibition is organized by National Geographic, Arts and Exhibitions International and AEG Exhibitions, with cooperation from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. Mellon Financial Corporation is the presenting sponsor and PECO is the associate sponsor in Philadelphia. The exhibition is supported by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation.

"We are, of course, delighted by this unprecedented response to the exhibition," said Dr. Dennis M. Wint, president and CEO of The Franklin Institute. "King Tut is drawing many 'repeat' visitors, but it's also attracting a lot of 'first timers' as well, which is especially exciting for us..."

'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' Becomes Most Popular Exhibition in Philadelphia's History, PRNewswire via Yahoo! Finance, USA, March 20, 2007.

Doors will soon open to reveal one of the mysteries of the Great Pyramid in Giza, Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News in an exclusive interview.

Hawass, one of the world's leading Egyptologists, said he will show what lies behind secret doors inside the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum by the end of this year.

"Finally, people all over the world will know what is behind the second door in the southern shaft and the third door in the northern shaft," Hawass said...

"This month I am going to choose the team that is going to work with me on this project. It will be either from Singapore or Hong Kong," Hawass said...

Pyramid's Secret Doors to Be Opened, Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, USA, March 20, 2007.

Previously:

Tests begin to send robot archaeologist into Cheops, December 02, 2006.

More on the robotic exploration of the Khufu pyramid shafts, January 02, 2006.

The day I visited Bloomsbury's Brunei Gallery, the wind was so strong that eerie howling permeated the basement space.

This gave an authentic edge to the experience of viewing the exhibition there, A Future For The Past, about Sir Flinders Petrie's archaeological digs near Gaza.

The mock-ups include a "dig house" and a Bedouin tent with film showing Palestinian "finders" at work...

The exhibition brings to life, with ancient artefacts and period equipment, what Petrie, his colleagues and workmen achieved in digs from 1890 to 1938...

There are objects from the Petrie Palestinian Collection never before on public display. The handmade antiquities, from tiny jugs for scented oils to clay coffins, communicate over time with the earliest dating from about 4500BC...

A Future for the Past: Petrie's Palestinian Collection, The Brunei Gallery, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, January 09 - March 24, 2007.

En route to Bloomsbury, the wind began to howl, Hamstead & Highgate Express, UK, March 16, 2007.

Egyptians have arrived at the Art Gallery of South Australia, ready to unearth a new generation of archaeologists.

Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre — Journey to the Afterlife features more than 200 precious artefacts from Paris's Louvre museum.

The exhibition, which has its official launch tonight and is open to the public from tomorrow [March 21] until July 1 [2007], is the first to visit Australia from the Louvre since 1980...

Free glimpse of the treasures of Egypt, Patrick McDonald, The Adelaide Advertiser, Australia, March 20, 2007.

While history books tell the story of the Nazis' destruction of human life, little is written about their attempt to destroy and steal the culture and art of Europe. Even less is known about those who worked to save the treasures.

Named the Monuments Men, the largely unknown group of several hundred men and women worked during and after World War II to save nearly one-fifth of Europe's artwork and artefacts from destruction and theft.

Vestal resident and Binghamton University Professor Emeritus Kenneth Lindsay, 86, was one of the Monuments Men credited with preserving many of Europe's most valuable works...

Perhaps his most memorable find, he said, was a sculpture stolen by the Germans in 1912. A large box marked "the coloured queen" was delivered, and speculation about what the crate held abounded. He was ordered to open it by superiors fearing the contents had been pilfered.

"You had to be suspicious all the time," Lindsay said. "Everybody had sticky fingers."

Lindsay obeyed orders and opened the wooden crate, and there, buried under black tar paper and white spun glass, was pure beauty.

"There she was," he said, "that face looking up at me."

It was a statue of Queen Nefertiti. "I'll never get over that experience," Lindsay said. "Probably the most beautiful woman the world has ever seen..."

BU prof helped save stolen art, Star-Gazette, New York, USA, March 19, 2007.

Sudan's archaeology is finally stepping out of Egypt's shadow as teams work against the clock to rescue an entire swathe of Nile Valley heritage from the rising waters of a Chinese-built dam.

"The paradox is that, yes, an entire area is being wiped off the map but thanks to the rescue project, Sudanese archaeology is being put on the map," said Sudan's antiquities chief Salah Ahmed.

The Merowe dam is a controversial hydro-electric project — one of the largest in Africa — being erected on the Nile's fourth cataract and due to start flooding the valley over more than 100 miles (160 kilometres) within months.

Archaeologists admit that an incalculable amount of information will be forever lost...

Sudan archaeology flourishes before the flood, Jean-Marc Mojon, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, March 18, 2007.

cf. Sudan archaeology flourishes before the flood, Jean-Marc Mojon, AFP via Middle East Online, UK, March 18, 2007.

Sudan’s Merowe requests to stop excavating reservoir area

Representatives of the communities that will be flooded by Sudan’s Merowe Dam have requested that archaeologists excavating the reservoir area should leave immediately.

The request follows the failure of the government to honour an undertaking that archaeological treasures salvaged from the reservoir area would not be removed to distant museums.

The treasures will be lost forever to the dam’s reservoir. The local communities are not opposed to the salvage operation — but insist that saved artefacts should be housed in a local museum in line with an agreement reached with the government...

Sudan’s Merowe requests to stop excavating reservoir area, Sudan Tribune, Sudan, February 26, 2007.

Previously:

Italian archaeologists to join international efforts to save Sudan's ancient artefacts, March 02, 2007.

Damming Sudan, October 19, 2006.

Nubians will be displaced from ancient seat by lake built for dam, January 20, 2006.

Race to save first kingdoms in Africa from dam waters, January 17, 2006.

Hungarian Archaeology Expedition in Nubia, September 20, 2005.

The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens’ “Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum” exhibit is leaving Jacksonville in five days, and the Director of the Museum Maarten van de Guchte said the exhibit was a big success.

“The exhibit has been a tremendous success,” said van de Guchte. “We made projections based on earlier exhibitions and I think we will break the 50,000 visitor mark.”

The revenue the exhibit has generated was not the only positive outcome.

“Not only were the ticket sales a success, but so was the museum store and there was an increase in membership,” he said. “All in all it was a tremendous success for us...”

‘Temples and Tombs’ a success for Cummer Museum, Caroline Gabsewics, Jacksonville Daily Record, Tennessee, USA, March 14, 2007.

Last week, [Iraq antiquities director Abbas Ali al-] Hussainy was in Cairo for a meeting of Arab antiquities departments over Israeli excavations near Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque, but he also took the opportunity to request help from his Egyptian counterpart Zahi Hawass.

"He asked for many things. We can ask people to come for training and help in the documentation, but inside Iraq, the situation is very difficult," said Mohammed Abdel Maqsud, number two at Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

"He wanted to sign a protocol between Egypt and Iraq to get help for antiquities," he added. "We will study what we can do..."

Weighing up losses to Iraq's heritage, Paul Schemm, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, March 15, 2007.

The hat given to me by Ptti Rabbit has rescued me from death. It really did save my life. How was this? Well, the story began little over a month ago, two weeks before I travelled to the US for my eye surgery. I was excavating a site at Taposiris Magna 45km west of Alexandria to search for the tomb of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra. To spruce up the excavation work, I appointed an Egyptian team to work there in collaboration with Katherine Martinez from the University of the Dominican Republic. While we were digging there, cleaning an area near a wall, a huge stone weighing approximately 20kg suddenly fell on my head. I am grateful to God that the stone was only about 30cm higher than my head because it did not have to fall very far. After the stone fell, I felt that my head was about to crack open, but I said thank you to my hat because it had saved my life. I hope that people will now stop criticising me and my hat and realise that it has its uses.

A few days after this incident I went to see an ophthalmic surgeon, as I realised I could not really see too well. At the doctor's clinic I learnt that I had a macular hole in my right eye. I went to several doctors, and they all had the same opinion. The eye doctors did not know the exact cause of this hole, but when I told them the story about the stone they suggested that it might have been caused by that. They called it the Curse of the Pharaohs...

Dig Days: Lucky rabbit's hat (2), Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 836, March 15 - 21, 2007.

Previously:

Dig Days: Lucky rabbit's hat, March 02, 2007.

Dr. Hawass in U.S. For Eye Surgery, February 02, 2007.

The familiar golden head of Tut's sarcophagus covers the hundreds of steps leading into the Franklin Institute — a powerful metaphor for the boy king's larger-than-life legacy displayed inside. The collection of objects assembled range from the religious to the regal to the everyday. Each is presented in context since artefacts, no matter how old or how well-preserved, can't tell their own stories. The Tut collection weaves an eloquent tale thanks to the work of designer Mark Lote, the artist responsible for the blockbuster 2004 Titanic exhibit.

Eleven galleries showcase 130 treasures from the tombs of Tut and other royalty — all are between 3,000-3,500 years old.

From Tut's spectacular diadem or gold crown, to the shimmering coffinettes that held his mummified internal organs, the tiny, elegant shabti (pottery figurines buried with Tut to serve as his eternal servants), to enormous carved stone heads and statues, many of these artefacts have never before left Egypt...

Serious fans of Egyptology will want to continue their ancient adventures in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania.

There they'll find the prequel to the Tut story, showcased in the remarkable Amarna exhibit, named after the home of King Akhenaten, the man thought most likely to be Tut's father...

The mummy of all Tut shows, Liz Fleming, The Toronto Star, Ontario, Canada, March 15, 2007.

Egyptian obelisks have been swiped for centuries: They are rare and precious things. Only 22 remain in the world. Egypt still possesses five and Rome has 13. The Romans originally looted the obelisks, but the 16th-century Pope Sixtus V directed their present locations in the Eternal City. Istanbul, London, Paris, and New York each have one obelisk.

The obelisk behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Central Park, is the only ancient Egyptian obelisk in the Americas. How many people are aware of how immensely more important it is than the Met's Temple of Dendur? At least most New Yorkers have stopped calling the obelisk " Cleopatra's Needle," in a silly attempt to "sex it up" by association with the actress Claudette Colbert.

Cleopatra had nothing to do with it. It was commissioned by the pharaoh Thutmose — the third Thutmose, to be exact. The obelisk is roughly three-and-a-half millennia old. For its first millennium and a half, it stood in Heliopolis. In the year 12 before the common era, it made its way to Alexandria, but not until Cleopatra was gone. In 1869, the khedive of Egypt (who was not Egyptian but Turkish) gave the obelisk to America in commemoration of the opening of the Suez Canal. Napoleon reportedly admired this obelisk, but his Orientalists thought it was too deteriorated and steered him to the Luxor obelisk that he brought back to Paris.

Getting the 69-foot, 200-ton granite obelisk to New York from Egypt wasn't easy...

A Sliver of Ancient Egypt in Central Park, Francis Morrone, The New York Sun, New York, USA, March 16, 2007.

The baby mummy had a European mom, and likely came from a wealthy family. But where he lived and why he died — and at such a young age — remain a mystery. The mummy, exhibited for the first time Thursday at the Saint Louis Science Centre, has been the year-long focus of an international team of investigators. The museum said it may be the most extensive research project ever undertaken on a child mummy.

Acquired by a Hermann, Mo., dentist at the turn of the century in the Middle East, the mummy ended up in an attic of some of his relatives, before being donated to the Science Centre in 1985.

It sat in a museum warehouse until Al Wiman joined the Science Centre as vice president two years ago and suggested that modern medical technology could unlock its secrets.

He spearheaded efforts to get medical, science and art institutions in St. Louis, the U.S., and Egypt to discover the mummy's past...

Modern Technology Reveals Mummy's Past, Cheryl Wittenauer, AP via Newsday, New York, USA, March 15, 2007.

cf. Mummy's past revealed, Cheryl Wittenauer, AP via USA Today, New York, USA, March 16, 2007.

cf. Baby mummy had a European mom: Study, Cheryl Wittenauer, AP via Sify, India, March 16, 2007.

Dentist and anthropologist Charles Hildebolt believed modern technology could unravel the [child] mummy's secrets. He brought together a crew of Washington University radiologists and geneticists to study the mummy. Florida State University anthropologist Dean Falk and Salima Ikram, professor at the American University in Cairo and one of the world's foremost mummy specialists, signed on to help, too.

A CT scan provided vivid, 3-D images. Analysis of the bones in the mummy's hand, the plates of his skull and the roots of his teeth suggested the child died at seven or eight months.

The scans also showed that his organs had been removed. His brain had been extracted through the left nostril. Mummification required embalmers to remove all internal organs and moisture from the body.

"That seems impossible," said Falk, an expert in brain evolution. "But a fresh brain is like soup. They would have been able to scoop it like Jell-O..."

St. Louis Science Centre unveils child mummy, Diane Toroian Keaggy, St. Louis Dispatch, Missouri, USA, March 15, 2007.

One of the star exhibits at the Louvre's Egyptology wing, a collection of four jars said to have contained the embalmed organs of Egypt's greatest pharaoh, Rameses II, have a sadly less glamorous vintage.

The beautiful turquoise-blue earthenware pots, emblazoned with Rameses' name in hieroglyphs and with incantations to the gods Mut and Amun, are genuine.

But the belief that they held Rameses' preserved innards to help ease the pharaoh into the afterlife is false, French investigators say.

Writing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by chemist Jacques Connan of the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg carried out molecular tests and carbon-dating on two samples of residue scraped from two jars...

Oh mummy: Louvre's pharaoh jars are not what they seemed, AFP via The Nation, Thailand, March 15, 2007.

Previously:

Human Remains in Ancient Jar a Mystery, January 30, 2007.

In November of 2006, I was invited to accompany a friend, Nadia Geleil, to her homeland, Cairo, Egypt. It is hard to believe that you can board a jet in New York City and 10 hours later arrive in a land of full of mummies, tombs and treasure.

Nadia’s extended family met us at the airport. It wasn’t long before I realized that Egyptians are warm and friendly people. We all piled into cars and headed to the family apartment. The cars on the highway are mostly small older models, even Chinese- and Russian-made.

The highways are very crowded. They drive bumper to bumper and use the horn to let others know where they are and where they want to go. I realized I was in a foreign land when no one stopped for a red light. OK, I thought, maybe in Egypt red means go and green means stop. Well in a few minutes we went through a green light. Wrong again. I finally asked why no one stops for red lights. “They just don’t” was the response. At the busiest intersections there were traffic police to help keep order...

Local women travel to the pyramids of Egypt, Ann Thorpe, The Jamestown Post-Journal, New York, USA, March 03, 2007.

John McDonald, Egyptologist and Smithsonian researcher, will present "Who is Really Buried in Tut's Tomb, and Other Mysteries of the Kings' Valley" at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 22 [2007], in Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies.

McDonald will share his insights into the questions surrounding Tut's tomb and other royal burials. King Tutankhamun was buried in haste and for security reasons in a small, private tomb in the Kings' Valley in Egypt, while an excavated tomb prepared for Tut in the West Valley was used instead by his successor. The remains of Tut's funerary meal were buried in a different location, and his mother, a little-known princess, Kiya, may have been buried in a fourth tomb.

After the lecture, people are invited to join McDonald for an informal question and answer session and a viewing of the exhibit "Tutankhamun: 'Wonderful Things' from the Pharaoh's Tomb..."

Egyptologist lectures about King Tut's tomb and other mysteries of Egypt's Kings' Valley, Montana State University, Montana, USA, March 13, 2007.

Classical historian of the 5th century, Herodotus, once said “Egypt is a gift of the Nile.” Flowing through nine countries, including Egypt, the Nile (6,650km long) is the lifeblood of a country where 95% of its land is desert.

We checked into a luxury cruise ship with five-star facilities for a three-day cruise on the Nile to Luxor.

Old, romantic paddle-steamers like the Karnak in Agatha Christie’s novel are a rare breed these days. Most of the boats plying the Nile are motor-run cruisers. But the view stays the same. We sipped cocktails on the top deck and watched the languid, rural life slip by — mud-brick houses amid lush, green fields and farmers hard at work...

Journeying down the Nile, The Star, Malaysia, March 10, 2007.

Luxor was our starting point, the beginning or the end of the line for the 300 or so craft that ply the route between it and Aswan further upstream. We had to walk through one unremarkable vessel to get to the Sun Boat IV — our home for the next three nights — and it felt like stepping out of a Ford into a Mercedes.

The five-deck Sun Boat IV is the plushest of the four boats owned by upmarket tour operator Abercrombie & Kent. It was relaunched late last year following a refurbishment by one of Egypt's most lauded interior designers, Mohammed Noaman. The result is Art Deco-inspired, but it's more of a homage, so if you're looking for the Agatha Christie experience in all its teak and steamer-chair glory you might be a tad disappointed.

The refit is also clearly an attempt to persuade some of the boutique hotel generation that cruising might not be quite so naff after all. It is easy to see where the reported $1m (£510,000) has gone, from the teak floors to the Murano chandeliers. The 40 cabins, for 80 passengers, continue the theme with picture windows, plasma TVs and small bathrooms with walk-in showers...

Hip sailing by the ancient world, Aoife O'Riordain, The Independent, UK, March 11, 2007.

08.00: You could be forgiven for thinking that you have not quite woken up, as you breakfast in the dining room at Mena House Oberoi ..., Pyramids Road, Giza. Its picture windows look directly at the Great Pyramid of Cheops [Khufu]. Be sure to insist on a room in the Palace Wing, for its shabby-chic glory. Doubles start at $225 (£125) per night...

24 hours in: Cairo, The Independent, UK, March 11, 2007.

Spectacular plans for a repeat of the great 1972 Tutankhamun exhibition were unveiled yesterday — but the boy king's gold death mask, the big draw 35 years ago, will not travel to Britain because the Egyptians say it is too fragile to move...

Organisers of the new show — to be opened at the troubled Millennium Dome in London in November — are confident of attracting at least two million visitors during its run to August next year.

The exhibition has been organised on a vast commercial scale — partly to help Egypt's archaeological services earn badly needed cash — and ticket prices will reach a record high. Adult admission is expected to be at least £15, and possibly higher, way above the £8 to £12 charged for London's blockbuster art shows...

Dome to stage Tutankhamun exhibition, Nigel Reynolds, The Telegraph, UK, March 13, 2007.

cf. After a 35 year wait, Tutankhamun makes a golden, glittering return, Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian, UK, March 13, 2007.

cf. Millennium Dome’s curse could yet be lifted by the golden touch of King Tut, Dalya Alberge, The Times, UK, March 13, 2007.

cf. Tutankhamun returns — without golden mask, Reuters via Scotsman, UK, March 12, 2007.

cf. Tut tut, a new curse at the Dome, The Mail, UK, March 12, 2007.

cf. Treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb come to Britain, Dalya Alberge, The Times, UK, March 12, 2007.

cf. Tut, as you will not be seeing him, David Smith and Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer, UK, March 11, 2007.

A blockbuster exhibition of the treasures of Tutankhamun is set to be the most expensive ever held in Britain when it opens to an estimated two million visitors this November.

Weekend tickets for adults wanting to visit the show at the new entertainment complex at the Millennium Dome in London — now named O2 — will be £20. The London leg of a tour already attracting record crowds in America, is expected to make $100m (£52m) for the Egyptian government which sanctioned the loans of the exhibits from the boy-king pharaoh's tomb.

Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said this was being invested in the preservation of its ancient monuments which will have disappeared within decades without drastic intervention. Dr Hawass said Egypt had failed to capitalise on previous loans abroad.

But he sought to persuade British visitors that it was "fair" that his nation should profit through its partnership with the private sector at the Dome.

"If the ticket is expensive, tell the people it's very important. It's going to the monuments. These monuments will be gone in 50 years in my opinion, if we do not take action."

£20 to see King Tut show at Dome, Louise Jury, The Independent, UK, March 13, 2007.

Discovering Tutankhamun: The Photographs of Harry Burton will be the subject of a lecture by Phyllis Saretta from The Metropolitan Museum of Art at 7 p.m. on, March 27 [2007] at the Bernardsville Public Library.

The exhibition is on display at the museum until April 29 [2007]. The lecture is funded by contributions to the library made in honour of former Bernardsville resident Helen Fitzpatrick’s birthday.

This slide-illustrated lecture will examine the vintage photographs which celebrate one of the most memorable episodes in the history of archaeology — the discovery and exploration of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun...

“Discovering Tutankhamun” at the Library, The Bernardsville Courier News, New Jersey, USA, March 08, 2007.

While reaffirming that it still intends to transfer ownership of one of its most prized artefacts, a statue of the goddess Aphrodite, to Italy, the J. Paul Getty Museum says it will convene a panel of scholars in two months to plan scientific detective work needed to settle unanswered questions concerning the piece, which the Italian government claims as a looted antiquity.

Since last fall, the Getty has been at an impasse in its negotiations with Italian cultural officials over the fate of 52 works in its collection that Italy believes were looted.

Lacking input from the Italians, the Getty has decided to go ahead on its own with a study of the Aphrodite it proposed last October as a prelude to returning the piece.

"We would not be saying we were prepared to transfer title if we did not think that is the right thing to do, but scholars here think we would be remiss" in not trying to answer questions about the statue in the meantime, Ron Hartwig, a spokesman for the J. Paul Getty Trust, said Thursday...

Disputed statue to be studied, Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times, California, USA, March 09, 2007.

Two more online dig diary entries have been added for the Hierakonpolis 2007 dig season.

2007 Field Note 3 - More From the HK24B Predynastic Industrial Site

After New Years, the time available for the excavations at HK24B flew by in a flash. Although frustrating at time, the piles of potsherds and burnt mud eventually gave up their secrets and hidden surprises, but only after a good deal of earth shifting and detective work...

2007 Field Note 4 - All Drawn Out!

Any excavation at Hierakonpolis would not be complete without collecting bucket after bucket of ceramic sherds. At parts of the site the ceramic pieces are so abundant you literally cannot take a step without stepping on a few or even several. What do we do with all of these collected broken ceramics? We draw them and by doing so we can re-create the pottery vessel from which they originated...

Archaeology's Interactive Dig: Hierakonpolis, Jeremy Geller and Kyle Mullen, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, New York, USA, March 2007.

[R]umour has it the Ministry of Culture is planning to invite the private sector to invest in restoring historic Cairo.

Major hotel chains are reportedly being allowed to turn some of the monuments into hotels. Word on the street holds that the first building to be considered is going to be Wekalet Qaitbay next to Bab El-Nasr.

The Wekala was built in 885 by the Mamluk King Al-Ashraf Abul Nasr Qaitbay as a place for travelling merchants to sleep and peddle their wares. It displays all the beautiful characteristics of the Mamluk era's intricate architecture...

Palace Hotels, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 03, March 2007.

Germany is a key tourist exporting market to Egypt, said the Egyptian Minister of Tourism. Zuheir Garana said that about 1.1 million German tourists visited Egypt last year, expecting the figure to go up to two million in 2011.

Speaking to German reporters on Friday on the sidelines of Egypt's participation in the International Tourist Bourse in Berlin, Garana said Egypt is a key tourism destination for German tourists...

Germany key tourist exporter to Egypt, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 10, 2007.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni decided to carry out the urgent project of maintaining the blocks of Khufu's Great pyramid in the frame of the related great enterprise implemented by the ministry for the last 8-years in 3 stages.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities stated that a technical and engineering committee comprising of a group of scientists and experts in antiquities, including Dr. Farouk el-Baz, was formed to test the condition of the great pyramid's blocks and prepare for its restoration.

Hawass said that it is the beginning for other pyramids restoration process that extends to 10years because of its difficulty...

Integrated project to restore pyramids blocks, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 11, 2007.

Grand Palais Museum in central Paris witnesses a great attendance from the French people to visit "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" Exhibition that will end next week.

Despite bad weather and heavy rains, masses are standing in rows in front of the museum to wait for the visit. Franck Goddio, Chief of the European Institute pointed out the large number of attendants to visit the exhibition because of the French fondness of the Egyptian antiquities. Number of the visitors reached more than half a million.

Half million visitors to Egypt's "Sunken Treasures" Exhibition in France, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 11, 2007.

This week, plans for another Egyptology-fest in London will be unveiled. The Anschutz Entertainment Group is blowing trumpets for a Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition, which will open in November at The O2, the venue formerly known as the Millennium Dome. It's fairly safe to predict it will not cause the same fuss. The explanation for that lies as much with the epoch of the early Seventies as it does with the intrinsic merit of antiquity's best-known, yet most mysterious, pharaoh.

The Sixties, as a mythical era, did not coincide with the calendar period of the same name. The Sixties began in 1963, sometime between the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Beatles' first LP, and carried on until 1972, or perhaps even the year after that. It was a time of affluence and full employment, of flower-power and counter-culture, of the civil rights movement and exotic Eastern religions, of both social and sexual unzipping.

But already by 1972 there was a sense that things were coming to an end...

The return of Tutankhamania, Sophie Morris, The Independent, UK, March 12, 2007.

cf. Tutankhamun Treasures to Return to Britain After 35 Years, PRNewswire, PR Inside, UK, March 12, 2007.

cf. Tutankhamun exhibition to come to London , AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, March 12, 2007.

Video here: King Tut artefacts on display, BBC News, UK, March 12, 2007.

Under the auspices of Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) will inaugurate a pharaonic exhibition on Thursday at the Egyptian Museum entitled “archaeological secrets from the basement.”

The exhibition came within the framework of the SCA’s efforts to highlight some treasure of its collection that were hidden for decades in the basement of the Egyptian museum.

Dr. Hawass said that the exhibition which will be held at room number 44 at the museum’s first floor displays for the first time 58 objects of the 12th dynasty, Middle Kingdom discovered in 1922 by the British archaeologist Wan Bright inside the tomb of Prince Gaphay Hapi III in the upper Egyptian city of Assiut...

Exciting new exhibition at the Egyptian Museum, Zahi Hawass, The Plateau, Guardian's Egypt, March 09, 2007.

Dr. Zahi Hawass secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) received yesterday a report concerning a French production cartoon called “Princess of the Sun” which relates an imaginary story about the monotheistic king Akhenaten and his family.

March 13 [2007] will be its world premiere in Egypt, at the foot step of the Great pyramid.

According to the report presented by a technical and scientific committee headed by Sabri Abel Aziz, head of the ancient Egyptian department in the SCA, the film is a fantasy of the French writer who inspired its story from a perplexing era of king Akhenaten’s reign.

The film includes of several historical mistakes and has nothing in relation with real political, historical, religious and military events that happened in that time...

Princess of the Sun, Zahi Hawass, The Plateau, Guardian's Egypt, March 09, 2007.

Previously: Christian Jacq book being filmed, January 16, 2007.

I [Jane Akshar] was lucky enough to go to the Mut temple the other day, my third visit but I was met by an extremely frazzled Mary McKercher. She had to fend off a group of unauthorised tourists who would not take no for answer when she explained they could not visit the temple. You must get permission from the SCA. In our case we were given our written permission and a guardian from the SCA accompanied us. So please do not give the archaeologists a hard time when they say they can not let you in. Apply to the SCA for permission in the proper manner...

Includes numerous photographs.

Also check out the Brooklyn Museum: Dig Diary for the Mut Temple excavation as they are finishing up for the season.

Visiting the Mut Temple - Special Permission Required, Jane Akshar, Luxor News, Luxor via Tour Egypt, Texas, USA, March 05, 2007.

Drawn from artwork and objects amassed by the Petrie Museum, an exhibition now on display at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, "Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London," brings this story full circle, reuniting some 220 objects from the Petrie Museum with those in the college's permanent collection, all of them excavated by Petrie.

The show, which runs through July 22, includes one of the world's earliest surviving dresses, royal art from the palace of Pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife, Nefertiti, and items from the ancient Egyptians' daily life.

"We're really lucky to have it," said Diana Wolfe Larkin, visiting associate professor of art history at the college, during a tour of the exhibit last week. In fact, when Larkin learned that the show was touring the United States, her recommendation to the college was: "Grab it..."

Treasured seekers: A Mount Holyoke College exhibit celebrates the contributions of two pioneers in archaeology, Phoebe Mitchell, The Amherst Bulletin, Massachusetts, USA, March 02, 2007.

More than 100 relics of adoration entombed with the Egyptian pharaoh [Tutankhamun] have finally arrived in Montana — minus his mummy's curse. Most of the objects at the Museum of the Rockies' tantalizing new exhibit, "Tutankhamun: 'Wonderful Things' from the Pharaoh's Tomb," are reproductions of the originals, which no longer travel.

The reproductions were crafted by artisans at the Pharaonic Village in Egypt, as well as the Field Museum in Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As a collection, they offer visitors a rare chance to peer into an ancient world of life and death.

Marty Martin, the exhibit's co-creator, spent one day last week guiding docents through the display. Under the melancholy glow of the museum lights, Martin paused by golden statues and alabaster vessels, offering insight to the pharaoh's life and times...

Ancient glory, Martin J. Kidston, The Helena Independent Record, Montana, USA, March 04, 2007.

It was none other than Benjamin Franklin who said: "Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." But for such a revered drink, the steps to making beer are actually quite basic — simply bottle (or can) the alcoholic fermentation that occurs when yeast is introduced to extracts of malted grain. Still, scientists throughout the ages have spent countless hours tweaking this general formula, communicating their achievements via media ranging from ancient funerary art to this week's lecture on the science of beer at the New York Academy of Sciences.

Beer has been around for at least 8,000 years, making brewing quite possibly the world's oldest biotechnology. Archaeologists have scraped beer deposits from ancient Egyptian brewing jars, historians recount how everyone from Pharaoh to farmer drank, and beer was a common offering to the Egyptian Gods. Ancient brewers formed their brew from watered-down fermenting bread dough, styling their beers with extracts from a range of plants, including mandrake (which tastes something like a leek). The "hop," a vine that produces a resin and oil-rich cone that gives beer its characteristic bitter note, didn't enter the recipe until much later, and the cultivation of hops can be traced back to eighth century Germany...

Do I need an excuse to post an article about beer? ;-)

, Charles W. Bamforth, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed, 2003.

Beer, and the biochemists behind it, Kate Thomas, USA, The Scientist, March 02, 2007.

Three new finds, announced over the past week, show that Saqqara remained a major burial place for Egypt's elite long after the Old Kingdom period for which it is famous, according to Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

One of the most unique finds was a cache of wooden statues dating back to about 2200 BC, which were unearthed by a joint Egyptian-Australian team. The statues were found inside a mud-brick tomb of the classic platform style that contains a fine false door in wood and two tables for offerings. False doors are a regular feature of the tombs of the period.

The tomb containing a rare double wooden statue of an ancient Egyptian scribe and his wife. The official was Ka-Hay, who kept divine records, and his wife, Spri-Ankh.

Dr. Hawass said the tombs were rich in content if not elaborate in design...

New tombs discovered in Saqqara, Egypt, Zee News, India, March 08, 2007.

With six of the current Seven Wonders of the World already destroyed, it's no surprise the world wants a new set. This time, the experts are leaving it up to us. The first global poll in history will determine the next Seven Wonders of the World. Everyone in the world with a phone or a computer will be able to choose seven of the 21 finalists selected by a panel of experts. The only requirement is that they must have been built before 2000. Like the previous Seven Wonders of the World, the contestants are all man-made.

Most would assume the oldest and only standing of the original Seven Wonders of the World, the Pyramids of Giza, would automatically make the final list. However, the pyramids are among the other nominees for the new list. The Egyptian authorities were not happy that the pyramids were not automatically included in the list. They believe there is no denying the pyramids' mysteriousness and the ingenuity of their creators.

CNN reported Feb. 27 that Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptian director of antiquities, said he wanted the Pyramids of Giza to be removed from the new wonders list because they are in a category of their own and no other monument compares. Nominees from around the world are fully embracing the contest, along with the extra publicity and tourism it gives the locations. However, the Egyptian authorities refused to meet with the contest organizers at all.

Who can blame them, when some of the other contestants include the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower — Those monuments are babies compared to the 4,500-year-old Pyramids of Giza...

New wonders not so wondrous, Liz Stoever, Northern Star, Illinois, USA, March 08, 2007.

My first encounter of "baksheesh" was on a trip to Egypt. The word "baksheesh" connotes several meanings perhaps depending on which side of the country you came from. In the western sense of the word, it is interpreted as "tip" (to insure prompt service), but the Middle East sees "baksheesh" in several shades of meaning.

The word originated from the Persian "bakshish" meaning "gift". It can mean an offering to the gods.

It can also refer to "bribery" or perhaps in a better situation, as "charitable giving", or it can be a token of money as a gratitude for a service received.

Someone can ask for baksheesh and still not come off as begging...

In ... Egypt, nothing is as overwhelming as the constant request of "baksheesh"...

Way of the Baksheesh, Dorothy Bangayan, The Sun-Star Davao, Philippines, March 08, 2007.

From the imposing columns and temple facade to the mummies hidden inside, the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum is one big jaw-dropping spectacle. You don't have to go halfway 'round the globe to have your socks knocked off, because this cool, mysterious repository of artefacts, papyri and sarcophagi is just a short drive away in San Jose.

For the last half-century, families and school groups have been mesmerized by the Rosicrucian Museum's temple facade, modelled after the Temple of Amun at Karnak. They've explored the display cases laden with canopic jars, mummified cats and wondrous artefacts. They've delved into the mysterious underground tomb and channelled their inner Indiana Jones. You can, too.

What kids like: Any kid who ever dreamed of adventure will make a dash for Khnumhotep's royal tomb. The opening to the rock-cut tomb yawns open, its rough-hewn passage dark, ominous and irresistible. Brush past the dimly lit columns and descend into the cool, shadowy depths, where a stone sarcophagus (and the wisdom of a staff tour guide) await...

Egyptian Museum offers pleasant, fascinating time, Jackie Burrell, Inside Bay Area, California, USA, March 05, 2007.

The venue for the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs Exhibition has been announced. The O2 - Millennium Dome, located on the banks of the River Thames in Greenwich will be the home of this long awaited exhibition which returns to London for the first time in 30 years and is expected to be the biggest exhibition the city has ever hosted...

The Tutankhamun exhibition will run from November 22, 2007 to August 31, 2008. This is the biggest visitor event to hit London in years and demand is expected to be high as a whole new generation take the chance to learn first hand about the life of this magic monarch...

Venue of Tutankhamun Exhibition Announced, PR Leap, UK, March 04, 2007.

Six of the Seven Wonders of the World have long since gone with the wind. The Giza pyramids of Egypt are the sole survivor — and now they are threatened by modern Cairo's rapidly spreading urban sprawl.

But the reliability of the original Seven Wonders list, drawn up by the architect Philon of Byzantium in about 200 B.C., was suspect anyway. Did the hanging gardens of Babylon ever exist? The Tower of Babel? The Colossus of Rhodes? No traces remain.

Philon kept within his known world — the Mediterranean basin — so manmade constructions like the Great Wall of China and Angkor Wat in Cambodia never made the grade.

Today our world is so loaded with wonders that, uncomfortable with the gaping lacunas in Philon's legacy, a Swiss-Canadian filmmaker, Bernard Weber, is conducting a popular vote on the Internet to update the list...

Not everyone thinks this makes sense, notably the Egyptians, who bristle at what they see as a challenge to the international standing of the pyramids...

Updating the Seven Wonders of the World, Micheal Johnson, International Herald Tribune, France, March 06, 2007.

A model of Tutankhamun's golden mask made entirely of Lego bricks is displayed during a preview of an upcoming exhibition at the Egyptian Museum.

Tutankhamun’s golden mask, AP via The Daily Times, Pakistan, March 04, 2007.

Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, will give a free public lecture Thursday at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno.

Hawass, named by Time magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in the world, will share his expertise on ancient Egypt and King Tut.

The lecture is scheduled at 7:30 p.m. in the student centre on TMCC's main campus, 7000 Dandini Blvd. off U.S. 395 north.

"He is passionate about Egypt and its antiquities and doesn't hesitate to use words like magical, thrilling and marvellous when describing his discoveries...

Egypt expert to give free lecture, Reno Gazette-Journal, Nevada, USA, March 07, 2007.

A thousand years' worth of offerings to an ancient Egyptian jackal god are the subject of an exhibition that opened on Thursday at Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

The exhibition, "Anubis, Upwawet and Other Deities," is based on votive offerings that British archaeologist Gerald Wainwright found in a tomb built around 1800 or 1900 BC near the southern town of Assiut.

The tomb originally belonged to a local hereditary prince, but for more than 1,000 years local people used it as a shrine for personal devotion, filling it with tablets dedicated to the local jackal god Upwawet.

"The stelae (tablets) offer us unrivalled evidence about the social history of the region. Much may be gleaned from the names and occupations of the people (who dedicated them to Upwawet)," the museum said in a statement...

Egypt Museum airs 1,000 years of jackal god gifts, Reuters via Yahoo! News, USA, March 01, 2007.

A short while ago, I had the privilege of being given a tour of the Griffith Institute Archives here in Oxford by its director, Dr. Jaromir Malek. It is one of the most renowned Egyptological archives in the world and it houses among many other things, all the personal papers of Howard Carter, the excavator of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

It seemed almost as chilly as outside when we ventured into the archive room, which is constantly kept at 18 degrees to preserve the fragile documents it houses, but as I glanced up at the famous portrait of Carter, that I’d seen reproduced many times in books, hanging on the wall, I knew that there were many ‘wonderful things’ to come.

You can see them for yourself on the Griffith Institute website here. Also, check out some of the other links I’ve included and take a look at the amazing resources the Griffith has made available online...

The Griffith Institute Archives, Margaret Maitland, The Eloquent Peasant, UK, March 05, 2007.

I recently attended the King Tut exhibit at the Franklin Institute, and to say that I was disappointed would be a gross understatement ("Tut is regal, not quite an experience, " Peter Dobrin, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Feb. 4 [2007]). I admit that my expectations were high because I had previously seen King Tut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during the mid-1970s.

There were three major problems with the Franklin Institute showing. First, some of the best artefacts shown at the previous King Tut exhibit were not shown at the Franklin Institute, most importantly the magnificent solid gold death mask. Second, the institute did not control the crowd. They did not impose a time limit on visitors and thus the exhibit rooms became so crowded that you could not move. Last, the distances the visitors had to walk were too long, especially the ramps, which were far too steep.

Other problems were also evident. Many of the exhibition rooms were too dimly lit. There was little seating in the exhibit area. The guards had no idea of where things were and responded poorly when a visitor fell. They called for an EMT who never came.

King Tut exhibit doesn't quite live up to its past, Paul D. Rosenstock, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pennsylvania, USA, March 05, 2007.

The giant travelling exhibit "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt" (a show, incidentally, that Mercer coordinated for its Portland run) ended Sunday after a visit that began Nov. 5 [2006].

"It's going bye-bye, but it's going with a big bang," museum spokeswoman Beth Heinrich said Friday afternoon.

The museum threw its doors open until midnight Saturday so last-minute tomb gawkers could get in, and closed for good at 5 p.m. Sunday. Final attendance figures aren't yet available, but Heinrich said it should come in at about 145,000 to 150,000, including about 30,000 schoolkids on field trips...

Art notes Museum offers a late, last glimpse of 'Egypt', Bob Hicks, The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, March 05, 2007.