Jane Akshar mentions rumours of another tomb find near KV-8 (Merenptah) on her blog and I received an email from Lug Buergin last night pointing me to this story [Sensational Discovery in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings!, Luc Buergin, Legendary Times, March 11, 2008] (Jane has updated her blog post since I first looked to include this story)

Also Bernhard Grundl mentions it here on the Glyphdoctors forum here.

So if this new find is over by KV-8 then it is not the radar anomaly reported by Nicholas Reeves' Amarna Royal Tombs Project here (31 July 2006) as this appears to be in a different place.

Check out the maps on the Theban Mapping Project website for comparison.

And we have this confusing news item from the Egyptian State Information Service detailing a new SCA excavation team, headed by Zahi Hawass, that is going to find new tombs in the valley of the Kings.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni named the first antiquities excavation team under Dr. Zahi Hawass Secretary General of the Antiquities Supreme Council to operate in Valley of the Kings in Luxor to unearth a number of tombs of kings and queens including Ramesses the [Eighth] and Thutmose the Second.

Dr. Hawass said the unearthing of those tombs would be regarded as the most important discovery since that of Tutankhamen tomb, especially as the excavation operations in the western bank was monopolized by foreign missions.

The Kings Valley included 63 royal tombs unearthed by foreign archaeological missions, Hawass added.

The first excavation team was formed, Egyptian State Information Service, Egypt, March 25, 2008.

So, they found a "doorway" or "stepped entrance" last November and kept it quiet (this is standard practice as official announcement is always through the SCA and they'd want to know exactly what they were dealing with first. This happened with KV63 when it was discovered.) And now they announce that they have formed an excavation team to find the missing tombs of two New Kingdom pharaohs. I expect there will be an official announcement soon of this new team discovering something.

Hundreds of residents of the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor clashed with riot police Friday during a protest against government attempts to move them to make room for an open-air museum free of modern buildings.

The demonstration turned violent when police prevented the protesters from entering Karnak Temple, one of the most famous sites from the Pharaonic era, according to witnesses.

Residents hurled stones at police, who responded by firing tear gas and arresting 13 people.

The government has offered compensation and temporary housing to many of the displaced residents, but some complain the money is insufficient or that they simply do not want to move...

Fight at the Museum: Egyptians Protest Government Attempt to Raze Homes, AP via FOX News, USA, March 28, 2008.

New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found.

Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt's old gods in favour of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.

Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt between 1379 and 1362 BC, built and lived in Tell el-Amarna in central Egypt for 15 years. The city was largely abandoned shortly after his death and the ascendance of the famous boy king Tutankhamun to the throne.

Studies on the remains of ordinary ancient Egyptians in a cemetery in Tell el-Amarna showed that many of them suffered from anaemia, fractured bones, stunted growth and high juvenile mortality rates, according to professors Barry Kemp and Gerome Rose, who led the research...

Kemp, director of the Amarna Project which seeks in part to increase public knowledge of Tell el-Amarna and surrounding region, said little attention has been given to the cemeteries of ordinary ancient Egyptians...

Study shows life was tough for ancient Egyptians, Alaa Shahine, Reuters, South Africa, March 28, 2008.

cf. Ancient Egyptians, not so fortunate, Press TV, Iran, March 29, 2008.

Monster Moves: Rescuing Ramesses was shown on Tuesday night (March 4th 2008) on channel Five in the UK. I was a bit apprehensive at first but the show turned out far better than I expected.

The show told the story of the UNESCO rescue operation to save the Egyptian monuments from the rising flood waters caused by the building of the Aswan Dam and focuses specifically on the temple of Ramesses II at Abu Simbel but also visits Philae, Amada, and Kalabsha. The story of the rescue operation is told to accompanying colour archive footage which is very good. The narration is well paced and well explained and the old footage is very good. Interspersed with these scenes is a modern recreation of cutting and moving a giant replica stone head of Ramesses II from one of the four statues that adorns the front portico of Abu Simbel. I'm not entirely sure what the point of these segments was though. How its was done is well documented and it was only forty-years ago. It is not as if they were re-creating how Ramesses' builders built it over 3,000-years ago. Are we supposed to be surprised that sixties-man was capable of this? Don't get me wrong, moving it was a stunning achievement, just as is building the Channel Tunnel or the Milau Viaduct but in a film about the latter two you wouldn't expect the film makers to go to the trouble of building a miniature one just to show you how difficult it was.

The computer graphics along with the narration served to explain the problems encountered, and overcome, quite well with graphics of the disastrous consequences of drilling to the wrong depth when mounting lifting rods in the head, for example. I guess the modern re-creation was a requirement of the series format — this is actually series three, episode one — where other 'monster' moves are actually followed and documented whereas this episode is documenting a past move.

The move of Kalabsha was shown and was used by the UNESCO team as a 'test' to see how easy it was to take a temple apart block by block and then put it back together again afterwards. Kalabsha was chosen as it is built out of blocks rather than carved out of stone like Abu Simbel. The rock cut temple of Abu Simbel itself was cut up into over a thousand blocks using giant hand saws by teams of workmen for transportation and then re-housed inside an artificial mountain. Amada temple was lifted whole onto rails to be move 2.5 kilometres away at a rate of 30 metres per day - they only had 150m of track to play with so they had to move the track as well. And Philae's move was shown with the whole temple being surrounded by a cofferdam whilst the workmen dismantled it. One structure, though, was outside of the dam and already underwater — a Roman portico gateway built by Diocletian — and a team of British Royal Navy divers, led by Ed Thompson, actually dismantled it underwater!

A couple of minor quibbles though. The use of dramatic background music was unnecessary but seems to be endemic in new productions. And the repeated graphic of a truck driving across the screen — complete with engine and horn sounds — grated very quickly but is probably a trademark graphic of the series as a whole (I've only seen this episode so I cannot be sure).

This series also appears as Mega Moves on Discovery Channel & TLC, Impossible Moves on National Geographic US and Huge Moves on National Geographic International.

cf. Monster Moves: Rescuing Ramesses, Series 3, Episode 1, Windfall Films, UK, 2008.