Egyptology News

Mummies cover-up reversed at Manchester

2008-07-26T11:45:00.003+01:00

MANCHESTER Museum has reversed its decision to cover up its Egyptian mummies in response to public opinion.

The museum covered up three unwrapped mummies on display, sparking accusations of political correctness, two months ago.

The cover-up was part of a consultation on how the mummies will be displayed when the museum's ancient Egypt gallery is redeveloped.

Nick Merriman, museum director, has said one of the mummies will now be left partially unwrapped in its original display state, while another will be partially covered, leaving its head, hands and feet exposed.

The decision to reveal more of the mummies came following a meeting of the museum's human remains panel.

Mr Merriman said: "We started the consultation process with a total covering of three of the museum's unwrapped mummies.

The post at the Manchester Website blog, which started all the discussion, can be found at:
http://egyptmanchester.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/covering-the-mummies/

See the above for more. My original posts regarding this subject can be found at:

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-responses-to-covering-of-mummies.html

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2008/06/more-re-manchester-museum-decision-to.html

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-re-decision-to-cover-manchester.html

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2008/05/more-re-covering-of-manchester-mummies.html

http://egyptology.blogspot.com/2008/05/covering-mummies.html

Rock Art Topographical Survey - Second Edition

2008-07-26T11:19:00.004+01:00

Thanks very much to Christopher Coleman for letting me know that the second edition of the Eastern Desert Rock Art Topographical Survey (edited by Maggie and Mike Morrow) has been announced and is due to be published in November 2008. This is a fully revised edition of the original catalouge of over 150 rock art sites, accompanied by a new indexed DVD providing colour images selected from the Desert RATS archives. Over 1000 photographs will be published in the book over 248 pages, 16 of which will be in full colour. Analysis of many of the sites will be revised and additional details and identifications will be included. There will be twelve pages focusing on the important but inadequately published Hammamat Schist Quarry. The accompanying DVD will contain over 2500 photographs and additional supporting material.

It will cost £45.00UKP plus postage and packaging. Full details will be shown on the Bloomsbury Summer School website.

If you want to register an interest to be kept informed of progress you can contact the Desert RATS organizers by email (bloomsbury@egyptology-uk.com) or post (The Director, Bloomsbury Summer School, Department of History, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. Please provide the following details:

Name
Email address (if available)
Landline telephone number
Mobile telephone number
Address
Zip/Post code
Country

Theban Mapping Project website updated?

2008-07-26T11:06:00.005+01:00

VOA News

Thanks to Rhio Barnhart for pointing me at this item recommending the Theban Mapping Project website:

Time again for our Website of the Week, when we showcase interesting and innovative online destinations. Our web guide is VOA's Art Chimes.

The latest Indiana Jones film is likely to remind people about the thrill of archaeology. Well, maybe not the adventure, romance and bullwhip-cracking thrill of the Harrison Ford version, but the excitement of discovering the past is still there.

The Middle East has always been a rewarding place for excavating the past. It certainly has been for Dr. Kent Weeks, who has spent decades mapping the burial place of Egypt's Pharaohs at Thebes, the capital of ancient Egypt. In 2000, he and his colleagues published an atlas that mapped out the Valley of the Kings.

WEEKS: "And it struck us at that time that it would be especially useful if, instead of just publishing a hard copy of the atlas, we could also put it up online. And so we established a website that put our atlas up, along with elaborately detailed descriptions of all of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. And, well, as of last count, around 8,500 color photographs of the decorations on their walls."

It is a very long time since I've heard any news about the TMP and its plans for the site, and it is a long time since I've visited it, but it looks to me as though they have a new image database advertised in the What's New section on their home page.

Exhibition: Egipto muestra su relación con el agua a través del arte

2008-07-26T10:40:00.001+01:00

La Voz de Asturias

An exhibition focusing on the relationship between ancient Egypt and the importance of water to the civilization:

Entre las pantallas interactivas, los carteles y las maquetas de las intervenciones de la mayoría de los países participantes en la Expo, Egipto ha decidido traer algo más a Ranillas. Su pabellón expone una muestra del arte de los fondos del museo de El Cairo, doce piezas "que demuestran la importante relación entre los egipcios y el agua", según aseguró ayer el embajador egipcio en España, Yasser Morad, durante la celebración del Día Nacional de este país.

Morad se mostró satisfecho de poder presentar el resultado de un largo proceso y de haber conseguido traer las obras a "una tierra tan hospitalaria", ya que nunca antes se habían mostrado en público. "Es una pequeña muestra, por lo cercana y por lo querida, pero muy apreciada por el trabajo que ha supuesto", aseguró el representante egipcio.

En concreto, se trata de cinco maquetas de embarcaciones de madera, procedentes de las excavaciones de Meir y de Saqqara, que ilustran escenas cotidianas del antiguo Egipto como la navegación fluvial, la pesca, la recolección de papiro o la vida militar.

Eastern Desert - renewed gold production

2008-07-26T10:28:00.006+01:00

Monday Morning

This may appear to be slightly off-topic, but it is of interest in terms of the potential damage to the Eastern Desert that the mining might inflict on the archaeology. I've written on my Eastern Desert website both about gold exploitation in Pharaonic and Graeco-Roman periods and about the damage that existing quarrying has inflicted on the rock art. Just something to bear in mind.

Egypt, which stopped gold production in 1958, will produce eight tons of the metal from mines in its Eastern Desert in 2009, said Hussein Hammouda, chairman of the Egyptian Geological Survey and Mining Authority.

Egypt, whose people once considered gold to be the skin of the gods, is revisiting ancient gold deposits, some unworked for 2,000 years.
One of the mines which has started production has a reserve of 13 million ounces of gold, Hammouda said, adding, “Once this mine becomes fully operational, it won’t be only one of the biggest in Africa, but one of the biggest worldwide”.

Egypt’s gold production stopped in 1958 because the volume mined was considered too small to be profitable. The country produced 7.4 tons from 1902 to 1958.

“We’re planning to produce eight tons of gold in 2009, which is more than what Egypt produced in a century”, Hammouda explained.

Core drilling reveals Predynastic presence in Delta

2008-07-25T10:08:00.002+01:00

Science Daily

A small but significant find made during a geological survey provides evidence of the oldest human presence yet discovered along the northernmost margin of Egypt's Nile delta.

A rock fragment carried by humans to the site was discovered in a sediment core section north of Burullus lagoon near the Mediterranean coast.

Radiocarbon analysis of plant-rich matter in the mud surrounding the object provides a date of 3350 to 3020 B.C., the late Predynastic period.

This long, thin object, formed of dolomite, had not been deposited by the Nile or the sea, but was collected and transported from an outcrop exposure positioned at least 160 kilometers south of the core site. The fragile object lay buried at a depth of 7.5 meters in dark mud deposited in a brackish lagoon setting close to a marsh.

Stanley et al.'s fortuitous find documents an early human presence in the mid-Holocene wetlands along the delta's paleocoast, a sector where traditional excavation and augering are normally incapable of reaching zones of ancient human activity now at considerable subsurface depths.

Journal reference: Jean-Daniel Stanley et al. August 2008 Geology, Pages 599-602.

BMSAES 9, August 2008

2008-07-25T09:59:00.002+01:00

BMSAES

British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan. The British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (BMSAES) is a peer-reviewed academic journal, dedicated to presenting research on all aspects of ancient Egypt and Sudan. The articles do not need to concern British Museum objects or projects.

This issue features three papers from the Annual Egyptological Colloquium held at the British Museum in summer 2007: The ‘Head of the South’: current research in Upper Egypt, south of Thebes (July 12–13). It is intended that further papers from the colloquium will appear in a future issue of BMSAES.

Visitors to the British Museum website may have noticed that the collection of the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan is now available through the Museum's Collection database online, through which visitors can order images for academic publication, free of charge.

Contents:

Dietrich Raue
Who was who in Elephantine of the third millennium BC?

Luc Limme
Elkab, 1937-2007: seventy years of Belgian archaeological research

Ilona Regulski
The rock inscriptions at el-Hôsh

Rock art at Qurta - INORA 51 2008

2008-07-25T09:46:00.004+01:00

International Newsletter on Rock Art (in PDF Format)

Thanks very much to Dr Dirk Huyge for letting me know that an article about his work at Qurta is available on the above website, free of charge. The article is accompanied by a map of the site's location and some lovely images. Here's a short extract:

CÔA IN AFRICA: LATE PLEISTOCENE ROCK ART ALONG THE EGYPTIAN NILE

The recent discovery (2004-2007) of a vast open air complex of Late Palaeolithic rock art in Upper Egypt, announced in the Project Gallery of the British journal Antiquity (Huyge et al. 2007), has aroused worldwide interest making it already well-known among the international
rock art community. The particular circumstances of this find, which is, at least in part, a rediscovery, have been detailed in the above-mentioned Internet publication and will not be repeated here.
Late Palaeolithic naturalistic-style petroglyphs in Egypt are thus far known from two locations: locality 11 at Abu Tanqura Bahari at el-Hosh (henceforth ATB11) and Qurta (Fig. 1). At Qurta three sites have been localized bearing this type of rock art: Qurta I, II and III (henceforth QI, QII and QIII) (Fig. 2-3). In all, slightly less than 200 drawings have been identified: about 35 at ATB11 and about 160 at Qurta. As the recording of the sites progresses, this number will definitely increase. Both at ATB11 and at Qurta, bovids are the major rock art theme (Fig. 4-6). These animals are undoubtedly aurochs or Bos primigenius. No less than 70 percent of the rock drawings represent this species. Other types of fauna include birds (at least 7 examples) (Fig. 7), hippopotami (at least 3 examples), gazelle (at least 3 examples) (Fig. 7), fish (2 examples) and donkey (1 example). In addition, there are also (at least) 9 stylised representations of human figures (mostly shown with pronounced buttocks, but no other bodily features) (Fig. 8).

If you are intersted in rock art you should check out the other articles in the newsletter too - and don't miss other INORA issues.

Sahara Volume 19

2008-07-25T09:37:00.002+01:00

Sahara

Thanks to Dirk Huyge for letting me know that the most recent issue of the journal Sahara has now been published. Here are the contents:

Papers:

Savino di Lernia, Lucia Mori and Andrea Zerboni
Geo-archaeological survey in the Kufra Region (Eastern Sahara, SE Libya)
(abstract)

Lamia Messili et François Fröhlich
Figurines néolithiques en argile cuite du Cap Achakar
(Sud Détroit de Gibraltar, Maroc nord-atlantique). Approche analytique
(abstract)

Jean-Loïc Le Quellec
À propos des molettes zoomorphes du Sahara central
(abstract)

Per Storemyr
Prehistoric Geometric Rock Art at Gharb Aswan, Upper Egypt (abstract)

Lotfti Belhouchet
Les gravures sur coquilles d’œufs d'autruche en Afrique du Nord : interprétation des décors géométriques
(abstract)

Martin Williams, Peter Glasby and John Blackwood
A note on an Acheulian biface from Adrar Bous, Ténéré Desert, south central Sahara, Republic of Niger
(abstract)

Mark Milburn
National Heritage: Some Problems & Tragedies in the Sahara and North-West Europe including Britain
(abstract)

Mohssine El Graoui, Mohamed Alifriqui, Högne Jungner, Abderrazzak Nahid et Susan Searight-Martinet
Recherche d’indices chronologiques sur le passage des graveurs de rochers de l’Oukaïmeden (Haut Atlas, Maroc)
(abstract)

Alessandro Menardi Noguera and Michele Soffiantini
The rock art sites of the upper Wadi Waddan (Jebel Uweinat, Libya)
(abstract)

Sections:

Amenti / Ament / Amentet

Joseph Clayton, Aloisia De Trafford and Mark Borda
A Hieroglyphic Inscription found at Jebel Uweinat mentioning Yam and Tekhebet

Documenti rupestri / Documents of rock art / Documents rupestres

Fabio Maestrucci e Gianna Giannelli
Rappresentazione del territorio: alcune ipotetiche mappe nel Tadrart Acacus (Libia)

Geoffrey Kolbe
A possible Neolithic sandstone rock map (eastern Uweinat)

Hardy Böckli and Mahmoud Marai
Rock art and vertical transhumance at Jebel Uweinat

Mark Borda
A remarkable rock art shelter between Gilf Kebir and Uweinat

András Zboray
Some further rock art finds at Jebel Uweinat and the Gilf Kebir

Per Storemyr, Adel Kelany, Mohamed Ahmed Negm and Adel Tohami
More‘Lascaux along the Nile’? Possible Late Palaeolithic rock art in Wadi Abu Subeira, Upper Egypt

Adriana Scarpa Falce
Enneri Borou (Tibesti Orientale, conca di Ouri, Ciad)

Bernard Fouilleux
Couloir «Tête ronde» dans le secteur de Ouan Bender (Tassili-n-Ajjer, Algérie)

Guido Faleschini
Oued Sirik (Tadrart, Algeria)

Scritture / Writings / Écritures:

Jean-Loïc Le Quellec
Du neuf avec de l’ancien : à propos des gravures et inscriptions du monument d’Abalessa

Werner Pichler
The Libyco-Berber inscriptions of Foum Chenna (Morocco) II

Dibattiti / Debates / Débats

François Soleilhavoup
De la fidélité dans le relevé graphique des images rupestres. Exemples au Tassili-n-Ajjer (Algérie). Nouvelles questions sur les «Têtes rondes»

Susan Searight-Martinet
Confusion au sujet des sites rupestres d’Ain Semaiera
et d’Ain Enbeibiga (Sud marocain)?

Alain Rodrigue
La station rupestre du Glab es Sghrir (Maroc)

Tomb reveals ancient trade network

2008-07-25T08:56:00.003+01:00

ANSA

The tomb of a woman who died around 2,600 years ago on the eastern Italian coast is helping archaeologists piece together the vast trade network that once linked this area with the Middle East, North Africa and Greece.

Experts working on a tomb near the port of Ancona say the site contains over 650 artefacts from the 7th century BC, including numerous items made in other parts of the world.

''This tomb is of extraordinary importance, as it contains the only known funerary finds in the area of Conero dating from this time,'' said the Archaeology Superintendent for the Marche region, Giuliano de Marinis. The pieces demonstrate that an extensive network of contact and trade once linked this section of the Adriatic coast not only to Sicily and southern and central Italy, but also much further afield. The tomb contains artefacts manufactured in sites as far away as modern-day Egypt, Rhodes, mainland Greece, the Palestinian Territories and Anatolia. ''This discovery fills in a big gap in our knowledge and helps define the role this area played in past centuries,'' continued De Marinis. ''For example, it shows that items from Greece and the eastern Mediterranean passed through here en route to other parts of the Italian peninsula''. Of particular value are five glazed pottery pendants, which were made in Egypt. Probably used as amulets, they are each six centimetres in length and are shaped like seashells. Also of special interest are a bowl and lid, intricately decorated with horses, and a cowry disc from the Indian Ocean. This latter was considered a fertility symbol and was reproduced in Ancient Egyptians tombs.

See the above page for the full story.

Exhibition: Conservation in Focus

2008-07-25T07:04:00.002+01:00

Suite 101 (Stan Parchin)

Visitors to "Conservation in Focus" at London's British Museum are able to watch how experts prepare works of art before they are exhibited.

Conservation in Focus (September 11-October 26, 2008) at the British Museum permits visitors to observe and interact with conservators whose actual work is largely unseen by the public until it's completed. Experts demonstrate the procedures, techniques and instruments they use on objects from the museum's permanent collection.

See the above page for more.

So that's what the Sphinx's behind looks like

2008-07-25T06:29:00.001+01:00

canada.com (Mark Stachiew)

This photo of the Sphinx in Cairo, Egypt has been making the rounds lately because it shatters some illusions that many people have about the great pyramids. We've been conditioned by years of looking at golden-hued photos of Giza that we believe these ancient Egyptian masterpieces sit in the midst of a vast desert, when in reality they are not much more than a tourist attraction in a Cairo suburb.

A better way to see the Sphinx and pyramids in the context of Cairo is to take a look at a satellite view in Google Maps

Travel: In pharaohs’ steps

2008-07-25T06:26:00.002+01:00

The National (Katherine Darcy)

Holidaymakers with a passion for the historical will be in their element in Luxor. The city, often nicknamed the “world’s greatest open-air museum”, is home to two thirds of the world’s historical monuments. Located on the banks of the Nile in southern Egypt, this mesmerising city is often overlooked in favour of Egypt’s capital, Cairo. Nevertheless, Luxor is the perfect place for those who wish to experience the magnificent culture of ancient Egypt.

As you’d expect from a city that has been influenced by some of history’s most legendary characters, including Ramses, Tutankhamen and Alexander the Great, Luxor is abuzz with mystical charm and ancient culture. Boasting a remarkably rich legacy of temples, monuments and tombs, many of Luxor’s most renowned archaeological sites are located on the West Bank. High-end hotels take the stress out of exploring by organising one-day trips there, but if you really want to savour the sites and take in their magnitude, tackle the West Bank over a few days.

The Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens are both must-sees. Likewise, no trip to Luxor would be complete without a visit to Queen Hatshepsut’s temple. The female pharaoh is widely recognised as one of Egypt’s most successful rulers. The temple of Karnak is also a box to tick. Undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest architectural achievements, Karnak was built over a period of 1,300 years and is the biggest temple complex in the world, covering an area of 100 hectares.

See the above page for more.

Against Theoretical Archaeology

2008-07-25T06:16:00.004+01:00

Aardvarchaeology (Martin Rundkvist)

Yes, another departure from the strictly Egyptological news theme, but this post has huge relevance to current approaches and discussions in Egyptology. As usual, try not to shoot the messenger. I don't actually support this view but I thought it worth highlighting. Don't miss the comments that respond to it.

A Trondheim colleague has kindly invited me to head a session at the Nordic TAG conference next May. T.A.G. means "Theoretical Archaeology Group", and denotes a series of annual conferences rather than a defined group of people. The invitation hinted that I might perhaps want to contribute something provocative. After a moment's thought, I realised that my attitude to TAG (Nordic or otherwise) goes beyond provocative: I am simply hostile to it. Archaeological theory, in my opinion, belongs within the context of real specific archaeological research and is useless in an abstract form, which goes against TAG's basic premise. So I declined the invitation, explaining that my message to the conference-goers would be a brief deal-killer: "Go home everybody and do archaeology".

Outsiders often find the term "theoretical archaeology" humorous, evoking an image of scholars building ancient castles in the air, without contact with the gritty grimy reality of the archaeological record. The truth is that theoretical archaeology is indeed pretty risible, but not in that exact sense. The whole endeavour started in the 1960s with attempts to formalise a body of abstract interpretive theory for the discipline. This coincided with a brief spell in the history of archaeology when scholars dreamed of finding out general cultural constants, "Laws of Culture" as it were. In this perspective, theoretical archaeology would be a lot like theoretical physics, striving to formulate universal laws and ultimately achieve a Theory of Everything.

These attempts fizzled. Most archaeologists abandoned all hope of finding cultural constants around 1980 and returned to our standard business of finding out the unique kaleidoscopic non-generalisable details of individual (pre-) historical situations. But theoretical archaeology somehow survived, it even thrived, as an end unto itself. (Thus TAG, whose first conference took place in 1979.) No longer did it in the main aim at making archaeology better: it splintered into a myriad philosophical sects, abandoned the concept of "better", and set out on a trend-driven random walk, existing to produce not better, but more new theory, mainly in the form of buzzwords. The 1980s reaction against the technocratic natural determinism of the 60s and 70s also opened the door wide to all manner of post-modernist philosophisering from the weird fringe of lit-crit and sociology. And thus, today, we have a few Swedish university archaeologists writing about Heidegger and fake ruins in theme parks.

Instead of going to TAG, I'll just set out a few brief points on what I think archaeology should be and do.

More re TAG:
http://antiquity.ac.uk/tag/index.html

TAG 2008:
http://www.tagconference.org/2008

TAG 2009:
http://www.allconferences.com/conferences/20080505150827/

Saqqara - a history hidden in stones

2008-07-24T06:18:00.001+01:00

Nauka w Polsce

The titles of functions performed in the state, facts of everyday life, descriptions of ceremonies - this is the type of information that can be found on the stones used by ancient Egyptians to decorate their tombs and estates. Such inscriptions are one of the basic sources of knowledge in research. Dr Kamil Omar Kuraszkiewicz from Warsaw University Institute of Archaeology discussed the finds of the Polish archaeological mission in recent years during a conference "Poles on the Nile".

Sakkara is located south of Cairo and west of Memphis. It is the oldest part of the ancient cemetery in Memphis, the capital of Egypt in the times of the Old Kingdom. The best known object in Sakkara is the pyramid of Djosser, the founder of the 3rd Dynasty (27th century B.C.). Polish archaeologists are working in the western part of the complex.

"In our part of the metropolis in Sakkara, we are dealing with graves from two periods - the Old Kingdom (Lower Cemetery) and the 2,000 years younger burials in the Upper Cemetery. All this in the shadow of Djosser's pyramid" - Dr Kamil Kuraszkiewicz explained. The Lower Cemetery consists of mastabas and rock tombs belonging to officials who lived at the close of the Old Kingdom, including Merefnebef and Nianchnefertum.

Dr Kuraszkiewicz noted that the archaeologists are constantly reminded of the presence of Djosser, as they frequently find tiles from the interior of his tomb complex. In 1999 and last year, archaeologists found stone steles with his name inscribed in them. Their function is still unknown - maybe they marked the boundaries of the complex. Kuraszkiewicz noted that one thing was certain - that at one point they stopped being needed and were re-used as building material.

The archaeologist explained that approximately 400 years after Djosser's death, a private cemetery operated on the western wall of the complex. It was the burial site of middle-ranking officials. They are mainly brick mastabas decorated with lime architectural elements, primarily blind gates as well as sacrificial tables and pools. Most of the tomb constructions above surface are preserved poorly or not at all. This has meant that many of the lime elements of the tombs have been moved, which affects the identification of the tomb's owner.

See the above page for the full story.

Stanford Papyri

2008-07-24T06:13:00.000+01:00

What's New in Papyrology

They're torn and faded and have the woven texture of a flattened Triscuit. At first glance, the ancient Egyptian texts look like scraps of garbage. And more than 2,000 years ago, that's exactly what they were—discarded documents, useless contracts and unwanted letters that were recycled into material needed to plaster over mummies, like some precursor to papier-mâché.

Now they are priceless clues to everyday life in the Ptolemaic Era, bits of history recently cleaned and sandwiched between pieces of glass so researchers at Stanford could begin translating the Greek writing and Egyptian script while studying the worn papyrus it is scribbled on.

See the above page for a link to the full article.

Egypt to retrieve 19th-dynasty statue from Netherlands

2008-07-24T06:11:00.000+01:00

Egypt State Information Service

Discovered in Saqara in 1985, stolen then auctioned, Ushabti - an ancient funerary statue - could finally go home to Egypt where it belongs.

Dating back to the 19th Dynasty, Ushabti was identified when a collector - who had bought the statue, having no background about the heist - showed it to experts at a Lyden museum in 2006.

It was only then that the amateur collector knew what he had had in possession; an 8.8cm statue of a woman made of pottery that was unearthed some 27 years ago, except that it has never been on display at any museum. All parties concerned agreed that they should return the piece to Egypt.

Dutch authorities have delivered Ushabti to representatives of the Egyptian government in order to take it back home, an Egyptian Embassy statement said Tuesday 22/7/2008.

Book review: Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im spätantiken Ägypten

2008-07-24T06:10:00.000+01:00

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Itzhak F. Fikhman, Andrea Jördens, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im spätantiken Ägypten. Kleine Schriften. Historia Einzelschriften 192. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006.

Reviewed by Karl Strobel, Alpen Adria Universität

This volume presents a series of important contributions by I. F. Fikhman which are focussed on the history of economy and society in late antique and early Byzantine Egypt until the middle 7th c. AD. A. Joerdens and G. Becht-Joerdens provide an introduction with a sketch of the life and the work of Fikhman under the difficult conditions of the communist Regime in the Soviet Union.1 Fikhman, who became a well-known papyrologist also in the West, left post-communist Russia in 1990 for Israel because of the omnipresent anti-Semitism. Born in a Jewish family in Kishinew in 1921, he lost most of his library when leaving Russia. A bibliography of Fikhmans's work (184 titles) is given on pp. 369-380. In this volume eight contributions are published for the first time in a western language, i.e. German, without any changes or annotations. The other articles were already published in Western languages in different collections and papyrological journals. They are often based on earlier contributions in Russian. All the articles in this book are published or reprinted without corrections or additions. It is a great pity that many of Fikhman's important contributions in Russian were not known in the West, especially his books on craftsmen and the conditions of their professions in late antique and early Byzantine Egypt and on Oxyrhynchos.2 The city of Oxyrhynchos, municipal offices, decuriones, great landownership, professional corporations and the conditions of crafts are the focus of his research based on the papyrological evidence and not on communist theory. Today, several new publications complementary to Fikhman's studies are still important for the current research.3 Fikhman's contributions are first of all devoted to the flourishing period of the early Byzantine cities and economy in the eastern Mediterranean during the 5th and early 6th c. AD. Infrastructure and far-reaching transport and exchange were still maintained, as well as the high standard of agriculture. Enormous building activities may be seen in the churches and monasteries of the 5th and 6th c. AD. Private trade and commerce on the local, regional, interregional and international level were still of great importance, the commercialization of agricultural production reached a new climax in the early 6th c. AD. The monetary system and the system of taxes were fixed conditions of everyday life and of the economy.

See the above page for the complete review

Lecture notes: John Wyatt's "Animal Worlds"

2008-07-24T06:09:00.002+01:00

A few days ago I posted a set of notes that I made about Dirk Huyge's lecture on Egyptian petroglpyhs. Continuing along those lines, today I am posting my notes from John Wyatt's lecture, entitled Animal Worlds. This was part of Dr Kathryn Piquette's Egypt Before The Pyramids course at Bloomsbury last week.

Unfortunately my notes weren’t as comprehensive as those that I took at Dirk Huyge’s lecture because I was operating the slide changer on the slide projector. It turned out that my abilities didn’t stretch to watching for the sign that the slide needed changing and writing notes at the same time. Multi-taskers would be ashamed of me. It was a truly fascinating lecture, from which I learned an enormous amount, and I can only apologise for not doing full justice to it.

John’s professional background is as an ornithologist specializing in floodplains, and he also spent six years doing field research on the black rhino (and was gored twice, which really is getting up close and personal with one’s research subject!). His knowledge is encyclopaedic but he was able to break down a vast corpus of data into an easily digestible and very enjoyable presentation.

John’s approach was to match up the data on artefacts and rock art, where representations of animals are shown, with the fossil data - the actual remains of animals found at archaeological sites in Egypt.

John opened with the idea that African animals may have played a greater role in Egypt’s past than previously thought. The impact of migratory behaviour in both birds and grazing animals may have been of greater importance than usually recognized, especially in post-glacial Egypt when the climate was wetter than it is today and the environment was comparable to modern Sahelian conditions. John explained that by “migration” he means any species which move over distances in order to feed but then return. The example given to illustrate this point was the movement of aquatic birds who make use of floodplain regimes, which in Africa occur at different times in different places. The birds follow floodplain regimes north throughout northern Africa. The antelope, indigenous to Mesopotamia and shown on the Gebel el Tarif knife and in some rock art may have migrated into the area as far as southern Egypt and the Sudan, and was probably found in Egypt until the Early Dynastic period. He suggested that emigration, where species move on a permanent basis, may also have taken place at some points.

However, John also pointed out that just because certain species are represented on artefacts or in rock art found in Egypt this does not mean that the animals themselves were necessarily present in Egypt. Human movements could have led to outsiders bringing in artefacts with representations of animals, or Egyptians visiting other areas and bringing their experiences home with them.

John looked at the record for wildlife in Egypt specie by specie - everything from squirrels and desert hares to lions and elephants. As well as describing the evidence available for their physical presence in Egypt, he looked at their environmental requirements - particularly their water requirements. This was fascinating because it gave a good idea of what sort of environmental conditions were being experienced when these species were in the given areas. Certain species were concentrated in very specific areas depending on water availability. An example given was the Nile lechwe - an antelope with high water consumption requirements, the only evidence for which comes from the Faiyum Depression and the Nile Delta where water was readily available.

The giraffe is another interesting character. In rock art it appears in the Eastern Desert, Nile Valley and Gebel Uweinat (and elsewhere in the Sahara). Dirk Huyge had mentioned the ones at El Kab in the previous lecture. John’s analysis of the requirements of the giraffe make it clear that the giraffe needs trees or tall shrubs in order to survive. Acacia is one of the trees that it uses habitually for food and hydration. Acacia is a staple Sahelian tree and as John says it survives today in limited desert areas. Before the mid Holocene drying the giraffe might well have been resident in southern areas of Egypt before being forced out by aridification.

Another specie that is a useful climatic indicator is the striped ground squirrel which was found in the Western Desert and Dakhleh, but is now extinct in Egypt. There has been extensive debate about the maximum levels of rainfall experienced in the eastern Sahara at different times in the post-glacial period. Looking at all the data the most plausible estimates for maximum annual rainfall put it at between 100 and 200mm in the Western Desert. To put that into context, 400mm is required for cultivation and today’s Western Desert receives less than 4mm maximum annual rainfall. This squirrel requires some sort of moisture but only needs direct intake of water itself rarely, sustaining itself instead on the moisture it finds in plants. Its habitat was a burrow under the ground. These facts combined indicate that it requires sufficient plant life around it in order to keep itself hydrated but needs very low levels of rainfall to ensure that its burrow does not fill with water. Again, Sahelian conditions would be a good match for this rodent.

There were some real surprises in the fossil record - for example white rhino at Dakhleh oasis. As it was a grazing animal this indicates that in the general Dakhleh area there was sufficient grazing vegetation available to support the white rhino. Dakhleh produced some more surprising results, and I wonder if this wasn’t because it is thought that it is the only one of the oases which is thought to have experienced a dual climatic system in the early Holocene - tropical (with summer rains) and temperate (with winter rains).

Many of the species were a particularly good match with Dirk Huyge’s lectures, where the vexed subject of identification of different species was raised. The horned ungulates were very interesting from this point of view - the different shapes and sizes of horns are very diagnostic for determining which specie is which in a depiction.

On a similar level John was also able to shed some very useful light on the subject of tall leggy birds (of the feathered variety, obviously!). These are frequently shown on Naqada II vessels and in rock art. He distinguished between birds with legs towards the back of their bodies, which can only be ostriches, and those with legs clearly positioned of the bird. The best candidate for the latter is the great flamingo. Fossil remains of the specie survives from the Egypt desert and oases, and it can still be found in Egypt today.

Needless to say, I enjoyed the lecture enormously. John is a very fluent speaker, knows his subject backwards and had excellent slides to support his lecture, with both illustrations and photographs which really brought the subject to life. The handouts which accompanied the lecture were absolutely super and I will be keeping mine in one of my desktop folders for ease of reference. Both are several pages long. The first is an enormous list of the mammals of ancient Egypt, including English, Latin and Arabic names and their current status in Egypt together with lovely coloured illustrations of the most important of them. The second is listing of many of the artefacts discussed with identifications of each of the species shown on the items.

Many thanks to John Wyatt, who is a super person and who I believe (and hope) will be presenting again next year at Bloomsbury.

Video: Entombed ship revealed by video camera

2008-07-23T09:42:00.003+01:00

National Geographic

The National Geographic have posted a video of the video camera footage which was taken recently of the still-buried wooden boat at the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is 4600 years old. It was shown to visitors was shown on a screen at the existing solar boat museum. Zahi Hawass is shown talking the press through the images.

Be warned that the video starts to play, with music, as soon as you load the page.

Archaeological discoveries in Matariya, Damietta and Kom Abou-Billou

2008-07-23T09:39:00.002+01:00

Egypt State Information Service

"Important cemeteries dating back to the Roman age along with nine statues were unearthed this year among other key discoveries," Culture Minister Farouq Hosni said Monday 21/7/2008.

The burial ground found in Giza's Kom Abou-Billou district housed a number of statutes of some gods, topped by Aphrodite, and several engravings of the Roman age, the Minister told reporters.

An archaeological mission has also found in Cairo's district of Matariya a huge number of granite chunks representing parts of a giant statute of Ramses II, third ruler of the 19th Dynasty, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)'s Secretary General Zahi Hawwas said.

A cemetery dating back to the Sixth Dynasty was also unearthed in Matariya, he said.

In Damietta, a number of limestone sarcophaguses were also found, he added.

Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, Diplomacy

2008-07-23T09:33:00.002+01:00

Huliq News

Four thousand years ago, trade by sea and land linked distant civilizations to one another to an astonishing degree. From Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in the south to Thrace, Anatolia, and the Caucasus in the north and from regions as far west as mainland Greece all the way east to Iran, the great royal houses forged intense international relationships through the exchange of traded raw materials and goods as well as letters and diplomatic gifts.

This unprecedented movement of precious materials, luxury goods, and people resulted in a total transformation of the visual arts throughout a vast territory that spanned the ancient Near East and the eastern Mediterranean.

Opening November 18 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the landmark exhibition Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. will focus on the extraordinary art created as a result of a sophisticated network of interaction that developed among kings, diplomats, and merchants in the Near East during the second millennium B.C. Approximately 350 objects of the highest artistry from royal palaces, temples, and tombs – as well as from a unique shipwreck – will provide the visitor with an overview of artistic exchange and international connections throughout the period.

See the above page for more.

Sweeping Aside the Living at Luxor

2008-07-23T09:22:00.001+01:00

Middle East Times

One of Egypt's most famous ancient cities, Luxor, is in the process of getting a makeover, and not everyone is pleased with the government's actions. The plan is to create an open-air museum on the city's west bank, home to such renowned monuments as Queen Hatshepsut's Temple and the Valley of the Kings.

It will be a haven for tourists who will be alone with the ancient structures.

The catch, however, is that thousands of Egyptians living on the west bank of Luxor will detract from the atmosphere the government wants to nurture.

No worries, the Supreme Council of Luxor told the Middle East Times: the process of moving people living among the ancient sites will be "smooth and without problems."

In fact, one official said that some people have already been moved from the west bank "and have begun to live normal lives without problems on the east bank."

In a statement to the Middle East Times, the Supreme Council of Luxor, said that the relocation of residents from the west bank will make Luxor "become the first and largest open air museum in the world."

The project to make the west bank an open-air museum is part of an overall endeavor to make Luxor a modern tourist site. It will cost the Egyptian government 1.2 billion Egyptian pounds ($200 million) for all renovations, including restructuring famed temples Karnak and Luxor as well as creating a new bazaar for shopping opportunities.

This project, the council argues, will only help "to increase tourism" in what they argued was "a manner that respects Egyptian heritage and its past" without infringing on the residents of Luxor.

See the above page for the full story.

What it means to be listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site

2008-07-23T09:19:00.003+01:00

The Star Online (Bhag Singh)

I always feel a little guilty about sneaking these somewhat global articles into an Egyptology blog, but in my own defence there is a chunk in the article about salvaging Abu Simbel from the advancing waters of Lake Nasser following the building of the Aswan High Dam.

THERE is much excitement over the listing of George Town and Malacca as Unesco World Heritage Sites. Going by reports, there will be a three-day celebration by Penangites, while Malacca will celebrate the event next month and perhaps on a grander scale.

While Malaysians have every reason to rejoice, a reader wants to know what the significance is as these two sites are based in our country and have been ours all this while.

In order to appreciate the subject of World Heritage Sites, it is necessary to refer to the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. The seeds for this were perhaps laid towards the end of World War I which saw the emergence of an international movement to protect heritage.

People saw the damage and destruction caused by the war. But the idea to protect heritage did not attract sufficient attention until some 40 years later.

Malacca’s famed Jonker Street with its Dutch era buildings are amongst the locations within the state’s Heritage Zone.

The pursuit of heritage protection was triggered following the decision to build the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, which would have flooded the valley containing the Abu Simbel temples, a treasure of ancient Egyptian civilisation.

In 1959, after an appeal from the governments of Egypt and Sudan, Unesco launched an international safeguarding campaign. Archaeological research in the areas to be flooded was accelerated. The Abu Simbel and Philae temples were dismantled, moved to dry ground and reassembled.

The campaign cost about US$80mil, half of which was donated by some 50 countries, showing the importance of solidarity and shared responsibility in conserving outstanding cultural sites. Its success led to other campaigns to save Venice and its Lagoon (Italy), the archaeological ruins at Moenjodaro in Pakistan, and the restoration of the Borobodur temple compounds in Indonesia.

This in turn led to Unesco initiating, with the help of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the preparation of a draft convention for the protection of cultural heritage.

See the above page for the full story.

4th Century bible online

2008-07-23T08:54:00.005+01:00

Egypt Daily Star News

Thanks to Mark Morgan for pointing out that the above link was pointing to the wrong place entirely! I have now corrected it and it goes straight to the article.

One of the world's oldest Bibles, the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered in Egypt in the 19th century, is to be made available online this week, the Leipzig University library said Monday.

The Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from the fourth century, is one of the two most ancient copies of the entire Bible in Greek. The other is the Codex Vaticanus.

The manuscript was uncovered by a German scholar in St Catherine's monastery in the Sinai desert. Much of it, written on some 350 pages of vellum, ended up in St. Petersburg.

In the 1930s, most of this treasure trove was then sold by Stalin to the British Museum in London.

Some 40 pages also ended up going to Leipzig University, while yet more pages were found in the 1970s in a walled-up room at St Catherine's monastery.