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Friday, March 25, 2022

Dealer suspected of selling looted antiquities to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Louvre Abu Dhabi detained in Paris

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/03/25/dealer-suspected-of-selling-looted-antiquities-to-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art-and-louvre-abu-dhabi-detained-in-paris

Dealer suspected of selling looted antiquities to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Louvre Abu Dhabi detained in Paris

Roben Dib, the dealer suspected by US and French authorities of playing a central role in the sale of allegedly looted antiquities to museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre Abu Dhabi, has been arrested in Hamburg and transferred to France to face charges.

According to official sources, Dib has been charged for gang fraud and money laundering by the Paris judge Jean-Michel Gentil and is being held in detention following his arrest last week. Dib's transfer from Hamburg, under a European arrest warrant, was revealed by the satirical French publication, The Canard Enchainé.

In 2020, the French expert Christophe Kunicki and his husband, Richard Semper, were arrested and charged in Paris for an the alleged large-scale trafficking of looted artefacts from Egypt and the Middle East, before being held under house arrest in south-western France.

Kunicki sold a golden sarcophagus to the Met in 2017 for €3.5m. In 2019, the museum apologised and returned it to Egypt, after a criminal investigation exposed serious flaws in the Egyptian department's provenance check. In his report, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, stated that the sarcophagus came from the German-Lebanese dealer Roben Dib and the Simonian brothers, with a "forged" provenance. The same year, the District Attorney also seized an Egyptian stele on its way to being exhibited at Tefaf New York—it was also returned to Egypt.

French investigators also suspect Dib of having sold (via Kunicki) five major Egyptian works to the Louvre Abu Dhabi for more than €50m, including another golden sarcophagus and a Fayum portrait. The museum has never made any comment, but Dib tells The Art Newspaper that Bogdanos's reports were "complete lies". According to him, the artefacts came from the late Simon Simonian, who was a dealer in Cairo from 1969 to 1984, and all had legitimate export documents dating to the 1970s.

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(282) Egypt presents newly discovered ancient tombs - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiMaOhbyYYY

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PHOTO GALLERY: A tour inside one of the discovered Pharaonic tombs in Saqqara - Multimedia - Ahram Online

https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentMulti/463117/Multimedia.aspx

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Reminder: ARCE-NC Lecture April 10 - Making Millions of Pots: How the Cult in Ancient Egypt Met Its Demand for Pottery


The American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California Chapter, and the Near Eastern Studies Department, University of California, Berkeley, invite you to attend a virtual lecture by Dr. Meredith Brand, California State University, San Bernardino:
 
 
 
Making Millions of Pots: How the Cult in Ancient Egypt Met Its Demand for Pottery

Sunday, April 10, 2022, 3 PM Pacific Time


Zoom Lecture. A registration link will be automatically sent to ARCE-NC members. Non-members may request a registration link by sending email with your name and email address to arcencZoom@gmail.com. Non-members, please send any registration requests no later than Friday, April 8. The number of registrations is limited, so the sooner you register, the better.

Glenn Meyer
ARCE-NC ePublicity



(Image courtesy of Dr. Meredith Brand)

About the Lecture:

Ritual in ancient Egypt required vast amounts of goods. For instance, Ramesses III's Great Harris Papyrus lists donations of millions of material items, food, drink, and even flowers to Egypt's temples. At Medinet Habu temple alone Ramesses III offered more than 80,000 beer jars per year to the cult. Indeed the abundant material culture excavated at temple sites supports the idea that ancient Egyptian ritual needed lots of things. This is particularly clear at Abydos, the main cult site of the god of the underworld Osiris, where the landscape is covered with pottery and other goods related to temple and cultic ritual. The number of artifacts can be quite staggering - the French archaeologist Amélineau estimated over 20 million pots were deposited at Umm el-Qa'ab, the focal point of an annual festival for Osiris. More recently, University of Toronto's North Abydos Votive Zone project excavated over 100,000 pieces of pottery from a few squares near the Osiris Temple Enclosure.

The sheer quantities of material culture used for private and temple ritual at Abydos raises many questions about who produced these goods, how they organized such a scale of production, and the relationships between craft workers and state institutions. It is important to examine such questions as they provide insight into an often ignored aspect of ritual – the potters, brewers, bakers, weavers, florists, etc. whose work was vital for ritual practices in ancient Egypt. This talk examines the social and economic context of craft production for ritual with a case study on the production of pottery at Abydos for cultic use in the popular festival of Osiris at Umm el-Qa'ab and a chapel of Thutmose III in the North Abydos Votive Zone. The conclusions of this talk suggest how craft workers made their living and provide insight into both how temples functioned economically and how people got the material goods they needed for private cult.



About the Speaker:

  
Dr. Meredith Brand obtained her PhD from the Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations Department at the University of Toronto with her dissertation The Socio-Economic Organization of Votive Pottery Production at Abydos, Egypt in the New Kingdom: A Metric Analysis Study. She is currently the W. Benson Harrer Egyptology Scholar and Residence at California State University San Bernardino and an instructor in the Rhetoric and Composition Department at the American University in Cairo. Dr. Brand's research focuses on pottery analysis, material culture, archaeological science, and the social history and economy of ancient Egypt. She is a co-Director and the ceramicist of the Wadi el-Hudi Expedition that surveys and excavates mines and mining settlements in the Eastern Desert. She has been the ceramicist at University of Toronto's North Abydos Votive Zone Project and the assistant ceramicist at other sites in Egypt, and has conducted mineralogical analysis of pottery from sites in Egypt and Sudan.

About ARCE-NC:

For more information, please visit https://facebook.com/NorthernCaliforniaARCE/, https://arce-nc.org/, https://twitter.com/ARCENCPostings, or https://khentiamentiu.org. To join the chapter or renew your membership, please go to https://www.arce.org/general-membership and select "Berkeley, CA" as your chapter when you sign up.

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Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Ancient Art Council - Lecture - Saturday 9 April - 2:00 pm (PDT) - Betsy Bryan



Happy Birthday, Ancient Art Council, 25 years!


ANCIENT ART COUNCIL

Supporting Antiquities at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco


  ________________________________________________________________


Saturday, 9 April, 2:00 PM (PDT)

Live stream via Zoom

To register, please click here.


LECTURE

 

BETSY BRYAN

Alexander Badawy Professor of Egyptian Art and Archaeology

Near Eastern Studies

Johns Hopkins University


The Kingship is a Perfect Office


Kingship in ancient Egypt can be described by ideal behaviors 

prescribed to rulers in more than one literary work. This talk 

will consider how New Kingdom rulers through the reign of Ramses III 

can be seen in the light of those literary models and will indicate 

what behaviors distinguish these kings from those before and after them. 

We hope to see hints of what rulers claimed to be doing in their governance 

of the land but also what effects their rules may have had on the society at all levels.


________________________________________________________________


To register for our programs, please click here.


Spring 2022 Programs:


Saturday, 9 April, 2:00 pm (PDT): Betsy Bryan, Johns Hopkins University

Saturday, 14 May, 2:00 pm (PDT): Carol Bier, Graduate Theological Union


Breaking News:

Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs

Ancient Art exhibition at the de Young Museum 

20 August 2022–12 February 2023


We are grateful for your support of Antiquities at the FAMSF. Keep well and keep safe.


Become an AAC member or make a donationand help us grow ancient art at the Museums.


For more information or AAC membership, please visit www.ancientartcouncil.org.

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Sahar Saleem Seeks to Open the Field of Archaeological Radiology to Egyptian Students

https://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2022/03/sahar-saleem-the-first-egyptian-female-paleoradiologist/

Sahar Saleem Seeks to Open the Field of Archaeological Radiology to Egyptian Students

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Sahar Saleem, the first Egyptian female archaeological radiologist, says she hopes to see specialised higher education in her field, which has so far been largely restricted to foreign researchers.

In an interview with Al-Fanar Media, she said the turning point in her scientific career came in 2004 while she was studying the application of radiology to biology at the University of Western Ontario Hospital.

She decided to specialise in paleoradiology at the Canadian university after watching an examination of an Egyptian mummy. The experience heightened her sense of Egyptian nationality.

"That prompted me to study this science and to delve more into a specialty that was limited to foreigners," she said. "My study provided me with a way to employ medical science in preserving artifacts and mummies and unveiling their mysteries."

The use of radiology in archaeology aims to "provide a safe examination method, without causing any damage to the organic remains. … It helps determine the mummy's gender, age, diseases, and physical activity before death."

Sahar Saleem  

Saleem has since become an expert in the field and a key member of the Egyptian Mummy Project at the Ministry of Antiquities. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Western Ontario's College of Anthropology and Archaeology and the College of Archaeology at the University of Tennessee.

International museums that have called on her expertise include the Maidstone Museum in the United Kingdom and the Barnum Museum in Connecticut. She also participated in examining the mummies of monks at a monastery in Gangi, in Sicily.

A Safe Examination Method

The use of radiology in archaeology aims to "provide a safe examination method, without causing any damage to the organic remains," Saleem said.

"It helps determine the mummy's gender, age, diseases, and physical activity before death, by examining the placement of the muscles' attachment to bones. X-rays also assist historians to understand burial customs and mummification techniques."

In 2007, Saleem was honoured by the Radiological Society of North America for designing the first protocol for MRI imaging of fetal hearts.

In 2016, she was named Outstanding Academic by the American Association of College and Research Libraries. Her joint book with the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, "Scanning the Pharaohs", won the 2017 Best Popular Science Book award at the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scientific Excellence.

After she returned to Egypt in 2006, Saleem joined the Ministry of Antiquities. Her first assignment was to examine the mummy of Tutankhamun. Since then she has worked on 40 royal mummies, including those of Ramses II and Seqenenre-Taa II.

Sahar Saleem specialises in the                        use of radiology to study mummies. She and Zahi                        Hawass, founder of the Egyptian Mummy Project at                        the Ministry of Antiquities, have published                        studies revealing new details about Egypt's                        ancient rulers.
Sahar Saleem specialises in the use of radiology to study mummies. She and Zahi Hawass, founder of the Egyptian Mummy Project at the Ministry of Antiquities, have published studies revealing new details about Egypt's ancient rulers.

The results of her research have been published in such journals as Nature and the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

The Face of Amenhotep I

Saleem's most recent work with the Egyptian Mummy Project was a study of Amenhotep I, using CT scans and advanced computer programs. On December 28 last year, the king's face was revealed for the first time. The work showed that he died at the age of 35.

The American Archaeological Institute's journal Archaeology chose her joint study, with Zahi Hawass, of the mummy of Amenhotep as one of the top 10 archaeological discoveries in 2021.

"Paleoradiology has become an indispensable tool for examining, diagnosing and studying mummies, the way a doctor cannot dispense with X-rays before prescribing treatment for a patient."

Zeinab Hashesh   A professor of Egyptology at Beni Suef University.

Hawass, founder of the Egyptian Mummy Project, told Al-Fanar Media that the use of radiology "was one of the most important means of project success."

The techniques that he and Saleem use help to "preserve the mummies during the examination and study process," he said. "They helped us see what we wanted to examine in the mummies' body, without untangling their wrappings."

A Rare Specialisation

Saleem said specialists in paleoradiology around the world are "extremely scarce" and the main problem facing Egypt is the lack of a precise specialisation in this field. Support was needed "from archaeological institutions and associations to encourage young researchers to join the specialty, and to provide supported educational programs," she added.

Saleem is currently using portable digital radiography devices to examine mummies at excavation sites and remote places. This technology is an advanced form of X-ray examination which produces a digital image on a computer for immediate analysis.

Zeinab Hashesh, a professor of Egyptology at Beni Suef University, told Al-Fanar Media that Saleem, as the first Egyptian woman to specialise in paleoradiology, was qualified to establish a school that could train dozens of scholars in this specialty.

Hashesh, who works at the American Research Center in Egypt, said that "paleoradiology has become an indispensable tool for examining, diagnosing and studying mummies, the way a doctor cannot dispense with X-rays before prescribing treatment for a patient."

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Saleem has at times had to work tens of meters underground  and spend long hours in poorly ventilated burial sites at various temperatures.

She says her passion for her work helped her to overcome such difficulties and accomplish tasks on site just like her male colleagues. While she aspires to continue her work using the latest technologies, her ambition is to train a new generation of scholars specialised in this field and provide them with scientific tools to protect Egypt's antiquities.

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GEM of Egypt: Louvre of archaeology turns into endless building site | Daily Sabah

https://www.dailysabah.com/arts/gem-of-egypt-louvre-of-archaeology-turns-into-endless-building-site/news

GEM of Egypt: Louvre of archaeology turns into endless building site

Behind the Giza pyramid complex, a fan-shaped building rises on a slope of desert in the Greater Cairo Area in Egypt. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), also known as the Giza Museum, is still under construction.

While the museum is slowly taking shape, you can already picture how school groups and tourists might one day gather in the forecourt in the shade of the palm trees.

However, 10 years after the start of construction work, the only question that remains is: When will it finally open?

Essentially, only a few final steps needed to be taken, the Ministry of Antiquities announced in February. Structural work, the atrium and the grand staircase are finished, and so are "99.8%" of the interior fittings and "98%" of the exterior areas.

An Egyptian archaeologist works on a pharaonic late                period round-topped stela of Sobck Nakht in the stone                laboratory of the newly opened restoration center of the                partially opened complex of the Grand Egyptian Museum in                Cairo, Egypt, June 16, 2010. (AP Photo)
An Egyptian archaeologist works on a pharaonic late period round-topped stela of Sobck Nakht in the stone laboratory of the newly opened restoration center of the partially opened complex of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt, June 16, 2010. (AP Photo)

The GEM is set to become the world's largest museum dedicated to a single civilization, with a collection of 100,000 artifacts spanning across an area equivalent to 70 football pitches.

And yet the planned Louvre of Ancient Treasures has turned into a permanent construction site.

Exactly 10 years ago, on March 12, 2012, authorities hailed the start of construction work on the GEM. The foundation stone had been laid by late President Hosni Mubarak in 2002, and the first work started in 2005.

The project was first announced in 1992, but 30 years have passed since then. An opening date has not yet been set, they say in Cairo.

"I want to have kings, queens and heads of state at the opening ceremony," Antiquities Minister Chalid al-Anani told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) last summer. But an event with 600 guests or more would not be possible during the pandemic, he said.

Workers clean the area next to a giant statue of the                Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II in the hall of the Grand                Egyptian Museum in Giza outside Cairo. (DPA)
Workers clean the area next to a giant statue of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II in the hall of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza outside Cairo. (DPA)

"I believe it will be the biggest opening in Egypt's modern history," he said, noting his eagerness to adequately celebrate this event.

Besides the pandemic, the revolution and political upheavals from 2011 onward caused delays. Added to this was a lack of money in Egypt's economic downturn.

According to reports, the estimated construction costs have since risen to the equivalent of more than 900 million euros ($996.34 million), about twice as much as initially estimated. In 2015, the news site Al-Monitor asked: Will the museum ever open?

Visitors will still be amazed when they stand in front of the 11-meter-high (36-foot-high) statue of Pharaoh Ramses II in the monumental atrium. Some 5,000 years of history are to be brought to life here, from ancient Egypt to the Greco-Roman period.

The burial treasure of Pharaoh Tutankhamun from the Valley of the Kings will be a special highlight when it goes on display in its entirety for the first time.

It is quite possible that some visitors will feel a little lost. Even an 11-meter-high Ramses II could seem small in the enormous hall, and who wants to see thousands of artifacts in one tour?

A drone films a giant statue of the pharaoh Ramses II                as it is relocated at the Grand Egyptian Museum, in Cairo,                Egypt, Jan. 25, 2018. (AP Photo)
A drone films a giant statue of the pharaoh Ramses II as it is relocated at the Grand Egyptian Museum, in Cairo, Egypt, Jan. 25, 2018. (AP Photo)

But the GEM, connected to the pyramids along architectural axes, is also likely to turn into a structural extension and a modern interpretation of the famous ancient structures, writes Architectural Digest magazine.

Child-king Tutankhamun, meanwhile, could be a key in the guesswork surrounding the opening date. Nov. 4 marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of his burial chamber by British archaeologist Howard Carter.

The Egyptian government likes to stage its antiquities with a lot of pathos and symbolism. An opening of the GEM on this day, said Egyptologist Zahi Hawass a few months ago, would be a global event.

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In Photos: A part of the Babylon fort in Old Cairo opened to public after restoration - Ancient Egypt - Antiquities - Ahram Online

https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/9/463145/Antiquities/In-Photos-A-part-of-the-Babylon-fort-in-Old-Cairo-.aspx

In Photos: A part of the Babylon fort in Old Cairo opened to public after restoration

Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 20 Mar 2022

After decades of being closed to visitors, a part of the Babylon fort located within the façade of the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo was inaugurated on Sunday.

Old Cairo

This section of the fort was subjected to restoration, and it is the first phase of a comprehensive restoration project for the fort with the goal of opening the entirety of it to the public.

Hisham Samir — the assistant to the tourism minister for projects — explains that the facades of the newly inaugurated part of the fort were cleaned from dust and bird droppings, and damaged blocks were restored. A new lighting system was also installed to highlight the beauty of its architecture and original job for which it was constructed. Broken windows inside the fort were repaired as well.

The second phase of the fort restoration project started immediately after the completion of the first one and aims to restore the southern part of the fort found beneath the Hanging Church, known as Amr Gate.

The whole fort will be open for visits after the completion of the project.













Short link:

 

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Friday, March 18, 2022

Discovery of Five Tombs at Saqqara

https://www.facebook.com/tourismandantiq/posts/332564445571775

- The Minister of Tourism and Architecture is checking the discovery of a new impact, announcing its details on Saturday
- The. Khaled Al-Anani thanks the staff for their efforts and confirms that all these discoveries were made in the hands of pure Egyptian
In an early hour of this morning, Dr. Khaled Al-Anani, the Minister of Tourism and Architecture, the excavations of the Egyptian archaeological mission working in the area northwest of the Pyramid of King "Marnera" in Sakara, which has discovered the discovery of 3 engraved graves of the modern ancient state and the first transition, Inside them many burials and archeological meetings, accompanied by Dr. Mustafa The Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Archeology and the President of the Mission.
Dr. Khaled Al-Anani decided to go down to one of these graves that was revealed with Dr. Mustafa Waziri, to check out the patterns and find an archeology inside them, encouraging him to work on the mission of the Supreme Council for Archef.
The Minister of Tourism and Effects thanked the staff for the efforts made by this generation of rich people of unprecedented discoveries in a periodic and organized in pure Egyptian hands.
Dr. Mustafa Waziri explained that the first cemetery of the discovered graves of a person called "Irie" from one of the top men of the state, and it consists of a well leading to the burial room of the walls engraved pictures with many funeral scenes including views of the tables of the cemeteries, the front of the palace, and the pots of essential oils Selling, also has a huge coffin of lime stone In addition to engraving pieces belonging to the cemetery owner and the mission is now working on collecting them.
The second grave yard was probably the wife of a man called a "Yart" because she was close to his grave. And it consists of a rectangular well. The third tomb belongs to a person called "Babi Farhafai", which used to occupy several positions of the only Samir, and the supervisor of the Great House, the sober priest, and the disinfectant of the house, while the fourth grave is a rectangular well that is about 6 meters deep under the surface of the Lady Td My "home" eyes that carried decorated titles The only king and the priest of the idolatry.
As for the fifth cemetery, it belongs to a person called "Henu", which consists of a rectangular well, which is about 7 meters deep and comes from between his namesake the supervisors of the Royal Palace and the only Sunmir, the heir prince and the pillar, the supervisors over the Great House, the bearer of the sea face seal, and the supervisor over the dress Tan.
The mission will continue on-site excavation work to discover more of its secrets, as the mission is currently working on cleaning these graves and its impactful documentation works.
It is worth noting, that over the past years the Egyptian archaeological mission had announced a number of important archaeological discoveries in the area of Saqara, including the discovery of hundreds of colored human coffins inside them mummiyawas in good condition of preservation for the elders of the state and the priests of the family For 26 which was selected from the top 10 discoveries World archaeology for 2020, in addition to the discovery of two graves from the fifth family era of the disinfectant priest "Wahati" and the overseer of the Royal Palace "Khoi" and a number of cat graves.
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Ministry of tourism and artifacts
  
May be                        an image of 2 people and people standing
May be an image of 1 person, brick wall and outdoors    May be an image of outdoors  May be an image of 1 person and standing    May be an image of 1 person and brick wall  --   Sent from my Linux system.