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Saturday, November 30, 2019

Restoration of Djoser pyramid in Saqqara complete: Antiquities Ministry - Egypt Independent


https://egyptindependent.com/restoration-of-djoser-pyramid-in-saqqara-complete-antiquities-ministry/

Restoration of Djoser pyramid in Saqqara complete: Antiquities Ministry



Restoration work at Djoser pyramid in the Saqqara archaeological site has been completed and will be opened within the next few days, Head of the Projects Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities Waad Abul Ela said on Wednesday. 

Restoration and maintenance work in the pyramid of Djoser has been conducted in accordance with the latest scientific methods, he told Youm7 on Wednesday, adding that restoration methods were agreed upon under the supervision of a number of archaeological experts.

The restoration of the pyramid of Djoser was among the government's top priorities, given that it is one of the most important monuments in the cemetery of Saqqara west of the ancient city of Memphis.

Nicknamed the "Step Pyramid" Djoser pyramid was built by Amenhotep during the 27th century BC, serving as the final resting place of Djoser, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the third dynasty.  

The Cabinet had approved the allocation of LE15.4 million for maintenance work on the pyramid after a previous restoration project was suspended in 2011.

The external part of the pyramid suffered from a lack of maintenance over the centuries, according to a UNESCO report issued in September 2011, which also detailed damage caused by the removal of dirt from the pyramid's blocks, which led to the creation of large cavities in several areas.

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Restoration of Djoser pyramid in Saqqara complete: Antiquities Ministry - Egypt Independent


https://egyptindependent.com/restoration-of-djoser-pyramid-in-saqqara-complete-antiquities-ministry/

Restoration of Djoser pyramid in Saqqara complete: Antiquities Ministry



Restoration work at Djoser pyramid in the Saqqara archaeological site has been completed and will be opened within the next few days, Head of the Projects Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities Waad Abul Ela said on Wednesday. 

Restoration and maintenance work in the pyramid of Djoser has been conducted in accordance with the latest scientific methods, he told Youm7 on Wednesday, adding that restoration methods were agreed upon under the supervision of a number of archaeological experts.

The restoration of the pyramid of Djoser was among the government's top priorities, given that it is one of the most important monuments in the cemetery of Saqqara west of the ancient city of Memphis.

Nicknamed the "Step Pyramid" Djoser pyramid was built by Amenhotep during the 27th century BC, serving as the final resting place of Djoser, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the third dynasty.  

The Cabinet had approved the allocation of LE15.4 million for maintenance work on the pyramid after a previous restoration project was suspended in 2011.

The external part of the pyramid suffered from a lack of maintenance over the centuries, according to a UNESCO report issued in September 2011, which also detailed damage caused by the removal of dirt from the pyramid's blocks, which led to the creation of large cavities in several areas.

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Wednesday, November 27, 2019

A warrior’s bones are tied to revolt chronicled on the Rosetta Stone | Science News


https://www.sciencenews.org/article/archaeologists-tie-ancient-bones-egypt-warrior-revolt-rosetta-stone-chronicle

Archaeologists tie ancient bones to a revolt chronicled on the Rosetta Stone

The skeleton provides a rare glimpse into an uprising around 2,200 years ago

Egyptian warrior            bones

Lower arm bones from a man's skeleton excavated in Egypt display damage possibly caused by combat during a military uprising mentioned in writing on the famous Rosetta Stone.

R. Littman and J. Silverstein

SAN DIEGO — Excavated remains of a warrior slain around 2,200 years ago provide rare, physical evidence of an uprising that's described on the Rosetta Stone, scientists say.

"Most likely, the warrior we found was a casualty of the ancient Egyptian revolt," said archaeologist Robert Littman on November 22 at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

A team led by Littman, of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and anthropological archaeologist Jay Silverstein of the University of Tyumen in Russia unearthed the man's skeleton at the ancient city of Thmouis. That city is now buried beneath a mound of earth and debris called Tell Timai in the Nile Delta.

The Rosetta Stone, carved in 196 B.C., is famous for bearing an official message in three scripts, including one in ancient Greek that enabled scholars to decipher another written in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. That message describes a military victory of Ptolemy V, a pharaoh from a powerful Greek dynasty, against a faction of a native Egyptian revolt known from written sources to have lasted from 206 B.C. to 186 B.C. Thmouis was located in a region where battles in that revolt occurred.

Excavations in 2011 yielded the warrior's skeleton. His body had been thrown on the ground and covered with dirt, with no sign of a burial. Healed and unhealed arm injuries and fractures elsewhere on the skeleton likely resulted from combat near the time of death as well as years earlier, Littman said. Near the skeleton, researchers found a burned arrowhead and burned ballista balls, nearly baseball-sized stones that were hurled by catapults.

Rosetta stone skeleton excavation
A warrior's remains unearthed at a site in the Nile Delta represent a casualty of an Egyptian revolt around 2,200 years ago, researchers say.R. Littman and J. Silverstein

Littman suspects that the Thmouis warrior died at the time of the Egyptian revolt. Coins excavated just above his remains date to between 180 B.C. and 170 B.C. Coins found just below his skeleton date to 205 B.C. or earlier.

It's unclear whether Thmouis residents sided with the rebels or the pharaoh, Littman said.

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Rare mummified lions add to Egyptology buzz

Rare mummified lions add to Egyptology buzz

Ancient cats come hot on the heels of a stunning human-coffin find as Egypt keeps research on the artefacts to itself, for now.
The mummy of a feline

Mummified felines, thought to be lion cubs, have been discovered alongside statues and other animal mummies.Credit: Ministry of Antiquities

The unveiling of five ancient feline mummies, including at least two lion cubs, and a host of other artefacts from the Bubasteion necropolis in Saqqara, south of Cairo, has left Egyptologists buzzing. It is only the second time that lion mummies have been found; the first was reported in 2004. The latest announcement, on 23 November, follows last month's revelation that 30 sealed coffins and their mummified human contents had been discovered at the Assasif necropolis near Luxor, some 500 kilometres south of Saqqara.

Each lion mummy in the latest trove is around 1 metre long and dates to ancient Egypt's 26th Dynasty (664–525 BC), according to a statement from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, part of the Egyptian antiquities ministry. The artefacts were found with a larger collection of animal mummies, along with wood and bronze statues of cats and crocodiles.

"This is an extremely exciting and important find, as it sheds new light on the relationship between wild and dangerous animals and the ancient Egyptians," says Salima Ikram, an archaeologist at the American University in Cairo who is working with the Egyptian government to identify the discoveries.

"It is possible that this hints at areas where lions were kept within Egypt, which we have seen [depicted] in images," she says, adding that mummified lions of this age are very rare.

More has also been revealed about the content and significance of the human coffins at Luxor. This find was first announced on 15 October, and is understood to be the largest coffin discovery since 153 were found at Bab el-Gasus ('the door of the priests'), not far from Luxor, in 1891.

Egyptian archeologists open a wooden coffin belonging to a man in front Hatshepsut Temple at Valley of the Kings in Luxor

Archaeologists open a wooden coffin near Luxor, Egypt, in October.Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty

Some of the coffins have been scanned using computed tomography, because the mummies cannot be unwrapped. The scans show the remains of a man aged 50, a woman of 35 and child 8–10 years old. All three are well preserved, and the child wore two gold bracelets, a ministry spokesperson told Nature.

The 30 Luxor coffins were discovered in two rows, stacked one on top of the other, in a pit 1 metre below ground. "I've never seen a parallel for this," says Kathlyn Cooney, chair of the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Righting a wrong

The painted wooden sarcophagi are of a type known as stola coffins, after a set of red straps depicted on them. The garment would have been worn by people connected to the Amun priesthood, one of ancient Egypt's centres of power, dating back to the tenth century BC.

Stola coffins have intricate designs, which include complicated religious iconography, as well as details of personal information about the deceased. Cooney says it is crucial that the mummies have been found in their coffins, "potentially correcting, if not reversing, a century of colonial academic wrongs by Egyptologists who separated coffins from mummies and didn't or wouldn't study the human remains properly".

A CT-scan of a feline mummy is displayed on a phone screen in Saqqara, Egypt

A computed-tomography scan of one of the lion-cub mummies.Credit: Hamada Elrasam/AP/Shutterstock

"Those interested in coffins will be able to look at the type of wood, varnish and paints; those studying ancient pathologies will be able to examine the mummies' health," Cooney says. "For somebody like me, who studies the lives of past people, it helps bring those lives back to life," she adds.

But such anticipation is tempered by the knowledge that researchers outside Egypt will not yet be allowed to work on the finds, because the government is restricting research access to Egyptian institutions for now.

When Nature asked whether international researchers could contribute to the study of the discoveries — in line with the practice at many museums and heritage research institutions around the world — antiquities minister Khaled El-Enany replied: "We won't do a call [for proposals] on this study."

The mummy of a feline is displayed among other artefacts by an Egyptian archaeological team in Giza's Saqqara necropolis

One of the mummified felines found in Saqqara, Egypt.Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty

The team that found the coffins and the animal mummies was led by Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Waziri is not ruling out international involvement in research later on. But he confirms that any work will be led by Egypt's own researchers.

Willeke Wendrich, chair of African cultural archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who became president of the International Association of Egyptologists this year, hopes that those in charge will eventually allow researchers from other countries to access the finds. Another Egyptologist, who asked to remain anonymous, urged the government not to delay, saying, "Science benefits from a multiplicity of talents."

Nature 575, 573-574 (2019)

In pics: New discovery unearthed in Luxor - Egypt Today


https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/4/78185/In-pics-New-discovery-unearthed-in-Luxor
One of the discovered coffins - Press photo One of the discovered coffins - Press photo

In pics: New discovery unearthed in Luxor

Wed, Nov. 27, 2019

CAIRO - 27 November 2019: The French archaeological mission headed by Frederic Colin succeeded in discovering three wooden coffins in the external courtyard of cemetery No. 33.

The mission is affiliated with the University of Strasbourg and the French Institute of Oriental Archeology, and is currently working in the region of El-Assasif in Qurna.

The discovery of the ancient coffins was announced by Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mostafa Waziri, who explained that the three coffins date back to the 18th Dynasty and is in a good state of preservation.

For his part, Director General of Antiquities of the Western mainland in Luxor Fathi Yassin stated that the first sarcophagus is colorful and decorated with hieroglyphic inscriptions. The sarcophagus belongs to a woman and is 195 cm in length.

The second sarcophagus is about 190 cm in length, painted in yellow, with columns of hieroglyphs on a white background; it also belongs to a women. The third sarcophagus is about 180 cm long with a stucco layer, white colors and brown columns. It contains no inscriptions.

It is worth mentioning that this is the second excavation season of the French archaeological mission. During the first season, the French archaeological mission uncovered a sandstone panel with three texts of tributes and the names of two senior statesmen. The mission also unearthed a wooden sarcophagus dating back to the 18th Dynasty.

81651-توابيت-خشبية-أثرية-(2)
The magic of the ancient Egyptian civilization never ends

102329-توابيت-خشبية-أثرية-(3)

150236-توابيت-خشبية-أثرية-(4)
 
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Tuesday, November 26, 2019

How King Tut exhibitions became a multimillion-dollar industry - CNN Style


https://www.cnn.com/style/article/king-tut-exhibitions-artsy/

How King Tut exhibitions became a multimillion-dollar industry

Published 25th November 2019(FILES) -- A picture taken on October 20, 2009 shows King          Tutankhamun's golden mask displayed at the Egyptian museum in          Cairo. DNA testing has unraveled some of the mystery surrounding          the birth and death of pharaoh king Tutenkhamun, revealing his          father was a famed monotheistic king and ruling out Nefertiti as          his mother, Egypt's antiquities chief said on February 17, 2010.          AFP PHOTO/KHALED DESOUKI (Photo credit should read KHALED          DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)

Credit: KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

Written by Alina Cohen

This article was published in partnership with Artsy, the global platform for discovering and collecting art. The original article can be seen here.

In 1922, Howard Carter made the most exciting archaeological discovery of the 20th century. Working with backing from George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, the Egyptologist uncovered a tomb just west of Luxor and the Nile River, in the Valley of the Kings.
It was the most intact tomb of its kind ever found, relatively untouched by the grave robbers who'd looted nearby crypts in the intervening millennia. Because the ancient Egyptians had buried their dead with everything they'd need for the afterlife, there was plenty to steal.
The tomb, Carter discovered, belonged to pharaoh Tutankhamun (ruled ca. 1334-25 B.C.E.) and housed more than 5,000 objects that ranged from the magnificent to the prosaic: Tut's solid gold inner-coffin, sandals, statues, jewelry, textiles, oars for navigating the underworld and even linen loincloths.

British Egyptologist Howard Carter (left)                        pictured on the steps leading to Tutankhamun's                        tomb with his assistant Arthur Callender.
British Egyptologist Howard Carter (left) pictured on the steps leading to Tutankhamun's tomb with his assistant Arthur Callender. Credit: Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images

The find was exciting on its own; a canny media ploy gave the excavation additional publicity. British newspaper The Times paid £5,000 for exclusive access to the tomb, one of the first paid scoops in history. The public frenzied.
"From the discovery in 1922, this vision of magnificence of pharaonic culture captured the imagination of just about every school child the world over," said Adam Lowe, the founder of digital conservation lab Factum Arte, which completed a three-dimensional recreation of the tomb in 2014. King Tut, a chronically ill child ruler who died at around 19 years old, was an overnight celebrity whose star has yet to fade.
Carter's discovery was just the beginning of King Tut mania. Herbert died in 1923, shortly after entering the tomb -- most likely from an infected mosquito bite -- and a series of people connected with him and Carter suffered mysterious traumas. Rumors of King Tut's curse circulated.

Tutankhamun's sarcophagus pictured at Cairo's                        Egyptian Museum in 2017.
Tutankhamun's sarcophagus pictured at Cairo's Egyptian Museum in 2017. Credit: MOHAMED EL-SHAHED/AFP/Getty Images

Beginning in the 1960s, traveling exhibitions of antiquities from the tomb created a new global sensation. An ongoing show, which started at the California Science Center in 2018, moved on to Paris's Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris, where it broke attendance records for a French art show -- the previous record-holder was also a King Tut exhibition -- and sold around 1.4 million tickets. The show has just opened at London's Saatchi Gallery in November as part of its 10-city world tour.
The general public's embrace of the boy pharaoh shows no signs of relenting, but issues of ownership and repatriation surrounding Tut-related objects still rage.

Auction anxieties

In June, Egypt attempted to stop Christie's from selling a quartzite sculpture with King Tut's features. The country alleged that the antiquity had been looted from the Temple of Karnak in Luxor around 1970 -- the year UNESCO instituted a treaty aimed at establishing measures for preventing cultural thefts and provisions for restitution.
The auction house disagreed, claiming it had established appropriate provenance and that the statue was in the private collection of Prinz Wilhelm von Thurn und Taxis by the 1960s. Christie's went ahead with the July auction and sold the disputed object for nearly $6 million. Days later, Egypt said it would sue Christie's. The brouhaha typifies the disagreements that still pervade the market for Egyptian antiquities. (Christie's declined to comment for this article.)

An Egyptian brown sculpture of Tutankhamen                        sold for nearly $6 million at Christie's auction                        house.
An Egyptian brown sculpture of Tutankhamen sold for nearly $6 million at Christie's auction house. Credit: Christies

Attorney Leila Amineddoleh, who's working with the Greek government on similar repatriation issues, called the "alleged provenance" of the sculpture "inaccurate or highly questionable." "It is not acceptable," she said, "for art market participants to turn a blind eye towards problematic provenance or ignore red flags." Amineddoleh also noted an increase in looted Egyptian antiquities since political uprisings began in the country in 2011. She added that "plunder is often a crime of opportunity."
Egypt, in fact, had measures in place as early as 1835, when it banned other countries from removing objects from its borders without approval. In 1983, the country instituted its most stringent cultural heritage rule to date: Law No. 117, which entirely abolished antiquities exports. Up until that point, countries excavating legally in Egypt could keep half of what they dug up -- with one big exception: Cairo would keep all the contents of any unplundered royal tomb, which meant that the entirety of King Tut's burial chamber stayed in the country. Yet German Egyptologists have alleged that Carter stole objects from the tomb, which are now scattered around the world.

There's a notable preference, in the world of King Tut-related antiques, for likenesses of the pharaoh himself. In 2010, Sotheby's sold a Tut-era limestone ushabti for $290,500, leaps and bounds ahead of its high estimate of $60,000. Back in 2004, the auction house sold an Egyptian bust that may have been Tutankhamun or his successor, Horemheb. Despite the uncertainty over the subject's identity, the sculpture sold for $220,800, well above its high estimate of $150,000.

Show me the money

The first major touring exhibition of artifacts from King Tut's tomb was a product of financial necessity. In 1961, archaeological sites in Egypt were in danger of flooding and the country needed funds to protect them. Over the next five years, more than 30 objects from Tut's tomb toured 18 cities across the United States and Canada. A slightly enlarged show opened in Japan in 1965. Through 1981, Tut artifacts were nearly always on the road, touring from Moscow to London, from Paris to Berlin.

Visitors queue in the rain to see "Treasures                  of Tutankhamun" at the the British Museum, London,                  in 1972.
Visitors queue in the rain to see "Treasures of Tutankhamun" at the the British Museum, London, in 1972. Credit: Steve Wood/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

After the glut of shows, the artifacts returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, their permanent home. In 2004, "Tutankhamun. The Golden Beyond" opened in Basel, Switzerland, and then Bonn, Germany, with around 50 objects from Tut's tomb and additional artifacts from the Valley of the Kings, offering a new generation the opportunity to get to know the boy pharaoh.
Subsequently rebranded as "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs," the show ultimately toured 17 cities, drawing around 10 million visitors. A smattering of exhibitions have toured ever since, including the show opening soon in London, without losing steam.
In 2020, King Tut's treasures will find a new resting place in Giza's forthcoming Grand Egyptian Museum -- the largest museum dedicated to a single civilization. Architect Patricio Pouchulu has designed a structure that resembles a glass eye emerging from the desert, looking out over the pyramids.

Replicas of treasures found in Tutankhamun's tomb                  on display in Munich, Germany, in 2009.
Replicas of treasures found in Tutankhamun's tomb on display in Munich, Germany, in 2009. Credit: AFP/DDP/Getty Images

The touring exhibitions have been such a hit that a market has even developed for shows of replicas. In 2014, the German company Premier Exhibitions, in conjunction with Semmel Concerts Gmbh, toured copies of over 1,000 objects found in Tut's tomb.
Lowe, from Factum Arte, expressed support for only those exhibitions directly benefiting the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. "If you're in a position where the local community can gain financial advantage from preserving cultural heritage, it will make a significant difference," he said. Lowe's own work has generated further fascination for the pharaoh. Using Lowe's scans, Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves has argued that Tut's tomb may hold a secret, as-yet-uncovered chamber in which Queen Nefertiti could be buried (a theory since dismissed by Egyptian authorities).

Outside the tomb

King Tut-related antiquities can be divided into two categories: those found inside or outside the tomb. The latter group includes the sculpture sold at Christie's, as well as a number of objects in public and private collections worldwide. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for example, owns a sandstone head of Tutankhamun, made between 1336 and 1327 B.C.E. The museum purchased the sculpture in 1911, before Carter discovered King Tut's tomb.
Rita Freed, chair of the MFA Boston's Art of Ancient Egypt, Nubia and the Near East Department, noted that the museum determined its object to be a sculpture of King Tut on the basis of style. "When art historians look at the three-dimensional eyes; the very sensuous mouth; the fact that he has pierced ears; the round, almost child-like face, there are not a lot of kings that could represent other than Tutankhamun," she said.

Tutankhamun's gilded coffin undergoes restoration                  at the conservation center in the Grand Egyptian Museum.
Tutankhamun's gilded coffin undergoes restoration at the conservation center in the Grand Egyptian Museum. Credit: KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images

Freed noted that objects from King Tut's time are also appealing on purely aesthetic terms. The pharaoh ruled Egypt during a period of great wealth and superb craftsmanship. Gold, glass and semi-precious stones were prevalent materials. The most enduring image of King Tut may be his fabulous gold funerary mask, embellished with quartz, carnelian, turquoise and lapis lazuli.

For Freed, the reasons for persistent King Tut craze are obvious. "The stuff is drop-dead gorgeous," she said. "There's romance, intrigue, mysterious deaths, scandalous rumors. It's everything you'd want in a good novel." High-stakes sales, persistent concerns over looting, record-breaking exhibition attendance, and evermore sophisticated research keep the legend of King Tut alive.

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Monday, November 25, 2019

Long-Hidden 3D Scan of Ancient Egyptian Nefertiti Bust Finally Revealed | Live Science


https://www.livescience.com/nefertiti-bust-3d-scan-revealed.html

Long-Hidden 3D Scan of Ancient Egyptian Nefertiti Bust Finally Revealed

The full-color model is made up of more than 6 million            triangular polygons — 2D shapes that are the building blocks            of a 3D digital object.
The full-color model is made up of more than 6 million triangular polygons — 2D shapes that are the building blocks of a 3D digital object.
(Image: © Cosmo Wenman, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

When a German museum scanned a remarkable ancient Egyptian sculpture of the queen Nefertiti the digital files were guarded almost as closely as the iconic artifact itself. 

However, the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in Berlin has finally released the 3D scan of the 3,000-year-old statue, after a 3-year campaign by digital multimedia artist Cosmo Wenman. Wenman then placed the files on Thingiverse, a site for viewing and printing 3D objects, Wenman wrote in a blog post

The bust shows the striking face of Nefertiti; she lived from 1370 to 1336 B.C. and was the wife of  Pharaoh Akhenaten. Carved in limestone by the court sculptor Thutmos in 1340 B.C., the bust shows the queen as "a grown woman with a harmonic and balanced beauty," according to a description on the museum's website.

Archaeologists unearthed the artifact in Amarna, Egypt, in 1912, and it has been in the collection of Berlin's Egyptian Museum since 1920. Museums often scan and 3D-model important objects to make them more accessible; unlike fragile artifacts, high-res models can safely and easily be manipulated in three dimensions, revealing their smallest details. The museum had done just such a 3D scan of the Nefertiti bust, Wenman discovered in 2016 — but getting permission to see it would prove to be complicated and time-consuming.

Beginning that year, Wenman doggedly pursued access to the Nefertiti files under Germany's freedom of information laws, which enable anyone to attain copies of official records (including digital media) that are created by federal agencies. 

But the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation — the organization that oversees state museums in Berlin — initially denied Wenman's request. Representatives claimed that releasing the scan would interfere with the museum's sales of Nefertiti bust replicas in its gift shop, Wenman said. Eventually, the agency granted his request, sending him a USB drive with the files.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Ncnc3wwvfDNnVubNbHty7F-650-80.jpg

Nefertiti's face was carved in limestone by the court sculptor Thutmos, in 1340 B.C.  (Image credit: Cosmo Wenman, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

What's more, the museum had virtually "stamped" the underside of the 3D model with a Creative Commons license, effectively making it free for anyone to copy, adapt or transform for noncommercial use, as long as the original source is acknowledged, Wenmain said in the blog post.

While Nefertiti's 3D scan has escaped from its digital limbo, other fine art masterpieces are not so lucky. Wenman is currently seeking access to 3D scans of Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker," which officials with the Rodin Museum in Paris are refusing to release, Wenman said in a statement.

On Thingiverse, the files are available for anyone to download and use for noncommercial purposes, under the Creative Commons license assigned to the scan by the museum, Wenman wrote.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Zahi Hawass says Nefertiti’s tomb could be discovered in 'a matter of weeks' - Egypt Independent

Still not holding my breath. Glenn

https://egyptindependent.com/zahi-hawass-says-nefertitis-tomb-could-be-discovered-in-a-matter-of-weeks/

Zahi Hawass says Nefertiti's tomb could be discovered in 'a matter of weeks'



Prominent Egyptologist and former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass told leading UK news outlet Express.co.uk that he hopes to discover the location of Queen Nefertiti's tomb in "a matter of weeks."

The famed Egyptologist told the English newspaper that Egypt's Valley of the Kings, where Hawass currently works in Luxor, houses the burial site of the legendary ancient queen. He went on to explain that he expects to uncover all of the tombs belonging to the 18th Dynasty's queen as well as tombs belonging to the children of various Kings, adding that recent research points to the existence of an unidentified burial site belonging to Egypt's ancient royals located near the tomb of Amenhotep III.

"They are all buried in this valley and I am still searching," Hawass stressed.

Hawass' groundbreaking statements came in the context of an ongoing worldwide tour of artifacts belonging to ancient Egyptian King Tutankhamun.

The tour kicked off on November 2, and the collection is currently being hosted by London's Saatchi Gallery under the title "Treasures of The Golden Pharaoh." The temporary exhibition in London is part of a worldwide tour across 10 countries marking the 100th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut's tomb that is set to continue until 2022, after which the artifacts in question will be permanently displayed in the new Grand Egyptian Museum.

"It's a very exciting thing to be able to tour the world with King Tutankhamun," Hawass commented during the same interview, adding that King Tut's "wishing cup" is his favorite piece from the treasured collection.

Meanwhile, King Tut's temporary exhibition in the Grande Halle La Villette in Paris broke records by attracting 1.5 million visitors, according to Hawass, who called the turnout "remarkable" in the context of other French cultural exhibitions.

"But it's also a huge responsibility — we are traveling with 150 masterpieces from the tomb of Tutankhamun," Hawass commented in an interview with Express.

Queen Nefertiti was the wife of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled over Egypt during the 14th century B.C., and the step-mother of King Tut, whose tomb was unearthed in 1922 by Howard Carter. Her name means "the beautiful one has come."

In August 2015, British archeologist Nicholas Reeves announced that archaeologists could be on the brink of discovering Queen Nefertiti after he found wall markings in King Tut's tomb indicating the presence of a hidden doorway that may lead to another room. Reeves guessed that this chamber might belong to Nefertiti's tomb, according to Bigraphy.com.

Hawass is listed by National Geographic as an Explorer in Residence, and the famed Egyptologist was also included among the world's Top 100 Most Influential People of 2005 by TIME Magaz
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An Official High-Resolution 3D Model of the Bust of Nefertiti Is Available for Download

I use a variety of open-source Linux-based utilities to view large models like this one. If you're on Windows or OS X, you might try the Unity Editor, but beware that the size of this file could lock or crash your computer if it doesn't have sufficient resources (memory and CPU).

That said, this model is worth a look, VERY cool.

Glenn


https://kottke.org/19/11/an-official-high-resolution-3d-model-of-the-bust-of-nefertiti-is-available-for-download

An Official High-Resolution 3D Model of the Bust of Nefertiti Is Available for Download

posted by Jason Kottke   Nov 25, 2019

Nefertiti 3D

The spectacular bust of Nefertiti, some 3300 years old, is currently housed at the Neues Museum in Berlin. A few years ago, high-resolution scans of the sculpture were released without permission of the museum. Now, after three years of pressure on the museum related to their claim on the bust, an official "full-color, 6.4 million-triangle 3D scan of the Bust of Nefertiti" has been released under a Creative Commons license. Cosmo Wenman has the story of how he eventually got the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation to release the scans.

For more than a decade, museums around the world have been making high-quality 3D scans of important sculptures and ancient artifacts. Some institutions, such as the Smithsonian and the National Gallery of Denmark, have forward-thinking programs that freely share their 3D scans with the public, allowing us to view, copy, adapt, and experiment with the underlying works in ways that have never before been possible. But many institutions keep their scans out of public view.

The Louvre, for example, has 3D-scanned the Nike of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo. The Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence 3D-scanned Michelangelo's David. The Bargello has a scan of Donatello's David. Numerous works by Auguste Rodin, including the Gates of Hell, have been scanned by the Musée Rodin in Paris. The Baltimore Museum of Art got in on the Rodin action when it scanned The Thinker. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has scans of works by Bernini, Michelangelo, and many others. But instead of allowing them to be studied, copied, and adapted by scholars, artists, and digitally savvy art lovers, these museums have kept these scans, and countless more, under lock and key.

In Berlin, the state-funded Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection has a high-quality, full-color 3D scan of the most iconic portrait sculpture ever produced, the 3,364-year-old Bust of Nefertiti. It has held this artifact since 1920, just a few years after its discovery in Amarna, Egypt; Egypt has been demanding its repatriation ever since it first went on display. The bust is one of the most copied works of ancient Egyptian art, and has become a cultural symbol of Berlin. For reasons the museum has difficulty explaining, this scan too is off-limits to the public.

Rather, it was off-limits. I was able to obtain it after a 3-year-long freedom of information effort directed at the organization that oversees the museum.

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Sunday, November 24, 2019

Photos: Cache of mummified animals, including big cats, found in Saqqara - Egypt Independent


https://www.egyptindependent.com/photos-cache-of-mummified-animals-including-big-cats-found-in-saqqara/

Photos: Cache of mummified animals, including big cats, found in Saqqara



Egyptian Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Anany announced on Saturday that an Egyptian archaeological mission has uncovered a unique cache of mummified animals, including sacred birds and five big cats which preliminary studies suggest are lion cubs.

Details on the new archaeological discovery were unveiled during a press conference held on Saturday at the Bubastian cemetery of Saqqara, in the presence of some ambassadors of foreign countries, and heads of foreign archaeological missions operating in Egypt.

The cache was discovered as the mission worked on excavating a cemetery for animals, Anany said.

The results of x-rays and preliminary scientific studies conducted on two feline mummies proved with 95 percent certainty that the mummies are small lion cubs aged eight months according to close examination of their of bones, the Minister noted.

Anany added that more studies will be conducted in the coming weeks to confirm 100 percent certainty of the initial results, and will extend these studies to include the rest of the mummies to ascertain their sex and species.

He added that if studies truly prove that these mummies are small lion cubs, it would mark the first ever time that intact lion cub mummies were discovered, as only skeletons have ever been found.

The Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the head of the mission Mostafa Waziri said that a huge collection of artifacts had been discovered, which include 75 statues of cats of various sizes, and sculptures made from wood and bronze.

The discovery included 25 wooden boxes with covers adorned in hieroglyphic inscriptions, he added, inside of which were the cat mummies, and wood statuettes of various animals such as the mongoose, the Apis deity and small mummified crocodile remains.

He added that a large scarab made of stone, other small scarabs made of wood and sandstone were found, alongside a statue of a distinctive wood Ibis and a set of statues of ancient Egyptian gods.

Waziri noted that the mission also found two small limestone coffins featuring Bastet, and that many cobra statues were also found.

Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm

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Saturday, November 23, 2019

Northern Cal. Egyptology Lecture 12/08/2019: A Tale of Two Crocodiles




The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a lecture by Dr. Emily Cole, University of California, Berkeley 



A Tale of Two Crocodiles:
Object Lessons from the Fayyum

Sunday,  December 08, 2019, 3 pm

Room 126 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley Campus

(Near the intersection
of Bancroft Way
and Barrow Lane)

Come shop at our Annual Holiday Souk, before and after the lecture.
NOTE THE ROOM CHANGE FOR THIS LECTURE ONLY!!


About the Lecture:



The exhibition at The Bancroft Library Gallery, "Object Lessons: The Egyptian Collections of the University of California, Berkeley," invites visitors to explore how items of everyday life were created and discarded, excavated and conserved from antiquity to the present day. In this lecture, I explore the very different lives of two objects that were discovered at Tebtunis, a town in the Fayyūm region of Egypt. The first is that of an intact crocodile mummy. As one of many animal mummies discovered at Tebtunis, this object tells the story of religious practice in the Fayyūm, where crocodiles were worshipped. The second is that of a crocodile that was unwrapped in the search for inscribed papyri. I reflect on why an object that inspires so much fascination today was taken apart by early twentieth-century archaeologists. How has the distinction between artifact and text affected the way we catalog, present, and interpret ancient objects? Through the story of these two crocodiles, I consider the journeys taken by objects as they came to form modern collections.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Emily Cole received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA in 2015 for her work on multiculturalism in Graeco-Roman Egypt. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri in The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. There she is working on the exhibit "Object Lessons: Egyptian Collections at the University of California, Berkeley." She was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. She has worked on excavations in Spain, Turkey, Sudan, and Egypt for 15 years and is co-director of the Northeast Fayyūm Lakeshore Project in Egypt with Dr. Bethany Simpson.


Lectures are free and open to the public. Donations are welcomed.
No photographing or recording of lectures without the express permission of the speakers.
Parking is available in U.C. lots after 5 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends for a fee. Ticket dispensing machines accept either $5 bills or $1 bills. Parking is available in Parking Structure B on Bancroft between Hearst Gym and Kroeber Hall and just across the street from the University Art Museum. Parking is also available in lots along Bancroft, and on the circle drive in front of the Valley Life Sciences building.

A map of the campus is available online at http://www.berkeley.edu/map/
For more information about Egyptology events, go to http://www.facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE or https://www.arce-nc.org.
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