The program's speaker is Dr. Zahi Hawass, an international spokesman for Egyptian archaeology. He is the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. For over thirty years, Hawass has studied, unearthed and protected the mysteries of the Giza Plateau and Nile Delta. His passion for Egypt and expertise on its artefacts has made Hawass one of the world's foremost Egyptologists. Raised in the small village of Abeyda, Egypt, Hawass completed his doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His recent significant archaeological finds include the Valley of the Golden Mummies, but it is the tombs of pyramid builders and craftsmen that Hawass considers his greatest discovery. Dedicated to the conservation and protection of Egypt's ancient heritage, Hawass has aggressively campaigned for the return of Egypt's treasures held in international museums. The Rosetta Stone, currently housed in the British Museum of London, is at the centre of the most recent attempt at artefact repatriation. Hawass is often featured on the History Channel and National Geographic, where he is the current Explorer-in-Residence. He appears in conversation with Carol Tang.

Tue, Jul 17, 2007 — 8:00 pm

Wed, Jul 18, 2007 — 2:00 am

City Arts & Lectures: Egyptian Archaeologist Zahi Hawass, KQED Radio, California, USA, July 17, 2007.

Grotesquely obese and a dental disaster, Egypt's long-lost Queen Hatshepsut was no raving beauty. But she is emerging as the poster girl for a new era in Egyptology which will see more old questions answered even as new ones arise.

The recent discovery and positive identification of the 3,500-year-old mummy of Hatshepsut through the use of 21st Century CT scans and DNA technology illustrates the potential for many of history's long-standing assumptions about the ancient world to be affirmed or disproved scientifically, said Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, who made the identification of the long-nameless mummy.

"What really you can see from this story is that the CT scan and DNA can really reconstruct history and you can see things never seen before," Hawass said during an interview in New York this week...

Mummy awakens new era in Egypt, Lisa Anderson, Chicago Times, Illinois, USA, July 14, 2007.

When mummy experts piece together what an ancient person looked like in real life, one key to body type that's a dead giveaway is the size of the mummy's breasts.

Paleopathologists who have been trying to reconstruct the appearance of Hatshepsut — whose mummy is the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary on Sunday, July 15 [2007] — say they know that Egypt's greatest female pharaoh was obese in part because her breasts were so very large, even after 3,000 years.

"Huge and pendulous," Hatshepsut's upper girth immediately caught the attention of mummy experts, according to Zahi Hawass, Egypt's secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Egyptologist and paleopathologist Bob Brier, one of the world's foremost experts on mummies, told Discovery News: "Breasts are one clear indication of obesity in female mummies. It is fairly simple: fat is deposited there, the skin stretches and that skin does not retract with mummification. So it is easy to see excess skin in the area of the breasts..."

Breasts Key Clue to Hatshepsut's Obesity, Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, USA, July 13, 2007.

The bust of Nefertiti stored at Berlin’s Altes Museum, is one of the most renowned works of ancient Egyptian sculpture. Fifteen years ago, a computed tomography (CT) scan of the bust revealed that a second structure was hidden inside. This structure was presumed to be a cast of the subject’s face, but the image resolution was too poor to be conclusive. With recent advances in CT scanning, researchers called for a repeat scan to document the structure within the bust. Results of the scan, which was conducted using a Siemens Medical Solutions SOMATOM® Sensation 64-Slice CT, are included in a National Geographic Channel special that will premiere tonight.

“I have always been interested in the secret carried inside that bust. But it is also very difficult and hazardous to examine ancient artefacts without damaging them,” said Prof. Dietrich Wildung, director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin.

With the help of one of Siemens’ highest resolution CT scanners, Prof. Wildung and Alexander Huppertz, MD, head of the Imaging Science Institute in Berlin, as well as the National Geographic team, were able to X-ray the bust without damaging it...

Siemens CT Scanner Reveals Mysteries inside Egyptian Relic, Business Wire, USA, July 16, 2007.

cf. Siemens CT Scanner Reveals Mysteries inside Egyptian Relic, Business Wire via MSN Money, USA, July 16, 2007.