This is an educational web site that aims to provide the viewer with the elements of archaeological work, including the progress of excavation. The daily results are crucial to an understanding of how field investigation takes place, since decisions must be made on the basis of ongoing work. The people involved in the work are also an essential feature and contribute profoundly to the final outcomes. The focus of our diary is thus often on the people and their activities.

In May 2012 Dr. Betsy Bryan returned to the Temple of Mut precinct in Luxor, Egypt with ten Johns Hopkins students: five undergraduate and five graduate. This year Dr. Bryan and her team will be working in the area behind (south of) the lake where between 2002 and 2006 industrial areas for baking, brewing, faience and ceramic production, were discovered.

Another week, another set of adventures for me here in the Oasis. Daily life remains very much the same as we go about our respective duties and lessons in and around the dighouse and, subsequently, every day has been as wonderful, exciting, and educational as the last. Still without our permit, each and every team member has been slowly chipping away at the backlog of information and field reports, drawing and cataloging pottery and small finds, creating a new online database for the project, learning how to digitize and map images from the site, and compiling a new catalog for our ceramicists. In a departure from my usual lesson in the morning ceramics in the afternoon routine, I was invited by Ellen to accompany our newly-arriving geologist, herself, and one other student (Mat, he’s an amazing 32 year old senior at Columbia in New York, planning to attend law school in the fall to practice antiquities law) on a pseudo-geological-and-cultural-material survey in the land around Amheida, a carefully delineated area surrounding our dig site, a great portion of which Ellen had surveyed during last year’s excavation. Of course, I was thrilled and honored to join them on their trip into the desert, and I eagerly packed my backpack the next morning for a day of discovery.  

Almost 16 months after a popular revolt deposed long-standing Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, presidential palaces have been infested with insects, bats and crows due to closure and a lack of attention.

Some of Egypt’s eight palaces were built in the 19th century, according to archaeologists, who call for turning them into tourist sites.

Most state institutions have stopped looking after the presidential palaces since Mubarak’s ouster in February last year for fear of being accused by opponents of the former leader as being loyal to him, officials said.

“These sites have around 100 rare species of trees, most of them are facing a serious decline due to negligence over the past months,” said an official, who requested anonymity.

In September, members of the Scientific Society of Ancient Egypt "KeMeT" at the University of Warsaw Łukasz Przewłocki and Ewa Biskupek will begin a scientific project aimed at finding and documenting selected archaeological sites depicted in the nineteenth century drawings and described in the reports of the first archaeologists. Comparing them with the current state can provide new information on pioneering research conducted more than 150 years ago.

At the moment, work is underway on searching, cataloguing and specifying, which monuments, primarily buildings, will be selected for detailed study.

"Figures we are taking into account originate from the first half of the nineteenth century, and their authors are the first European Egyptologists, including Jean-Francois Champollion, Karl Richard Lepsius, Ippolito Rosellini, and about 200 scientists and 160 illustrators, who participated in Napoleon’s Egypt expedition" - explained Łukasz Przewłocki. Bonaparte's expedition was the cause of the immense work Description de l'Egypte.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced that distinguished curator, scholar, and archaeologist Dorothea Arnold will retire on June 30, following 21 years as head of the Department of Egyptian Art, including seven years most recently as its Lila Acheson Wallace Chairman. Her career at the Museum began in 1985. She will become Curator Emeritus as of July 1. 

“For the past 27 years, Dorothea Arnold has served as a highly respected member of our curatorial staff. Her contributions to her field have been enormous—as a long-time archaeologist, noted scholar and author, curator of important exhibitions, and leader of an impressive team of experts in the Department of Egyptian Art,” said Mr. Campbell in making the announcement. “She has also overseen the reinstallation of many of her department’s galleries, where almost all of the Museum’s vast Egyptian art holdings, numbering around 30,000 works of art, are on display. These galleries are among the Met’s most studied and most visited by our millions of visitors from around the world each year.” 

Mr. Campbell announced further that the Metropolitan Museum will conduct an international search to appoint Dorothea Arnold’s successor. Diana Craig Patch, currently an Associate Curator in the department, will become Acting Associate Curator in Charge on July 1.

Dozens of farmers in the Abu Simbel area have ended a sit-in and released 204 tourists they had held hostage inside their buses to demand the provision of irrigation water for their farms, Abu Simbel Mayor Assad Abdel Majid told ONA news agency Sunday.

The farmers captured the tourists after they had visited the Ramses II and Nefertari temples, blocking the road in front of the Abu Simbel Temple.

More than 2,500 acres had been planted since the beginning of the growing season and will be damaged due to a lack of irrigation water, the farmers had told Al-Masry Al-Youm.

A recent paper from Tel Aviv regarding Egyptian standard sizes for round pottery jugs may have inadvertently helped to solve an Egyptian mathematical mystery:

http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/article00367.html

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033895

A cursory examination of the new information suggests it is significant and may provide a long-sought-after explanation for the seeming existence of two different measurement traditions used for circular calculations in Egypt: one algorithmic, used in papyri and based on a diameter of 9 units (i.e. 28/9), and one geometric and used in monumental architecture and based on a circumference of 3+1/7th times the diameter (i.e. 22/7) (Legon 1990; Legon 1991; Lightbody 2008; Cooper 2011: 478; Lightbody 2012).

Even sleeping, “Annie” is just one of many mysteries in the recently opened show subtitled “Ancient Secrets, Modern Science.” It will be on view through Sept. 3.

Visitors will get to feel what it was like to drag by rope 60-pound versions of the brick blocks used to build the pyramids. They’ll get to experience what it was like for archaeologists to enter the darkened tombs of ancient pharaohs.

And they’ll get to puzzle over a life-sized replica of the famed Rosetta Stone that provided the key to deciphering the hieroglyphs that held the secrets of Egypt’s ancient religious culture.

The exhibit was created and produced by COSI, the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, and built by the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Archaeologist John Nolan, who has been working in Egypt since 1988 including several years at the site where many of the exhibit’s artifacts were recovered, stressed that “Lost Egypt” offers much more than earlier explorers’ obsession with tombs, temples and treasure.

The exhibit is the third in a series  designed to attract a broader audience to the nearly 100-year-old institution  and revitalize its relationship with the community it calls  home.

Press Report: The discovery of a new nomarch burial in Dayr al-Barshā

Please find the full press report attached as a pdf.
During its 2012 spring campaign, the archaeological mission of Leuven University in Dayr al-Barshā, directed by Harco Willems, has discovered an important burial dating back to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (approx. 2040 B.C.). Although the burial has been robbed at least twice, and has suffered extensive damage, a large amount of objects were still found in their original position, providing unique information on the scenario of the funerary ritual. The tomb must have belonged to a nomarch

In the course of routine excavation work at the tomb of the first Middle Kingdom governor of the Hare Nome or province, the nomarch Ahanakht I at the Deir Al-Barsha site in Minya, Belgian archaeologists from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven stumbled on what is believed to be an important burial going back to the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.

“It is for the first time in over a century that a relatively well preserved burial of this kind has been found,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, Minister of State for Antiquities. He went on to explain that, although the burial was robbed at least twice in antiquity and has suffered extensive damage since, a large part of the funerary collection was found well preserved at its original position.

Early studies suggest that the burial must belong to one of the governor or a member of his family.

Security forces seized 40 pieces that make up the top parts of Pharaonic Shawabti figurines, an Egyptian security source said on Thursday. The artifacts were stolen from the Cairo University excavation warehouses located in the archeological Saqqara region in Giza.

Investigations revealed that the suspects were surreptitiously digging and drilling then burying the figurine pieces in the sand until they could be sold.

A source said that following investigations, a number of search teams were formed which were dispatched to the site in order to search for the stolen figurine pieces. The 40 faience pieces covered in Pharaonic inscriptions were found buried in the sand, along with a 48 centimeter long limestone door, and two reliefs engraved with hieroglyphic text.

This week, Giza Inspectorate operated 18 water pump machines to pump out subterranean water that has accumulated under the Sphinx.

The machines are distributed over the Giza plateau according to a map showing the areas where the subterranean water has accumulated.

Mohamed Ibrahim Minister of State for Antiquities said that the machines will pump out 1100 cubic metres of water every hour, based on studies carried out previously by reputed Egyptian and American experts in subterranean water and ground mechanic and equilibrium factors.

A new head of  Nefertiti has been identified (left).

This, we now must acknowledge, is a head of the famous Queen Nefertiti, wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten (1353-1336 BCE). After some serious detective work, Dr Christian E. Loeben, Egyptologist at the August Kestner Museum in Hanover, Germany, has established its true and fascinating identity. It had been thought, wrongly as it now turns out, that this fragment of a face depicted the unisex pharaoh himself.

Dr Loeben has been able to demonstrate convincingly that it is in fact the illustrious queen, whose most famous portrait is the polychrome bust kept in the Berlin Museum (below left).

It measures barely 5.5 cm (2.2") in height, but the red-brown quartzite* head is a tiny masterpiece of Egyptian art.

In certain respects, the tale of the Ka-Nefer-Nefer follows a familiar script: like many disputed antiquities, the Egyptian funerary mask was unearthed last century and quickly vanished, spending nearly 50 years in obscurity before resurfacing on the European art market in the late 1990s. The St. Louis Art Museum soon bought the mask -- an elaborately tooled cartonnage of blended gold, glass and linen. It has since become the centerpiece in a bitter ownership dispute between the museum, which claims clear title, and Egypt, which charges the mask was plundered from a government storeroom.

But this story went decidedly off-script last year after U.S. officials, acting on Egypt's behalf, entered the fray. The feds informed museum leaders that they believed the mask was stolen, and they intended to use the courts to seize the artifact and return it to Egypt. But where some museums might have simply handed over the goods, St. Louis went on the attack, filing its own a pre-emptive lawsuit that claimed the statute of limitations had expired -- an aggressive challenge from an institution that has repeatedly defied calls to release its grip on this pricey piece of loot.

After thousands of years of separation, it appears that the husband and wife depicted in an ancient Egyptian pair statue may be reunited at last. Thanks to the skillful eye of an Egyptologist, who recognized similarities between our fragment and a fragment in a European museum collection, the couple may once again be joined together. The possible reunion is set to take place at the 10th annual Brussels Ancient Art Fair in June at the Hixenbaugh Ancient Art exhibition.   

The Hixenbaugh Ancient Art fragment is of a seated female figure wearing a high-waisted dress and a tri-partite wig, her left arm is extended to embrace her husband. The statue dates to either the New Kingdom or the Third Intermediate Period(ca. 1550 – 702 BC). The statue was intentionally defaced in antiquity - the pair separated and the woman’s face obliterated to damn her for all time. 

It has long been debated how cats went from running in the wild to becoming our domesticated furry friends.

Researchers may have solved the mystery after analysing the genetic makeup of Egyptian cat mummies.

The results of the study of DNA from the remains of ritually slaughtered animals found in tombs suggest that we have the people of Ancient Egypt to thank for our moggies and ginger toms.

Archaeologists digging at Tel Megiddo in northern Israel have unearthed what turns out to be one of the largest troves of Canaanite treasures ever found, buried in rubble from destruction 3,100 years ago.

The treasure was hidden inside a clay vessel that had been unearthed in the summer of 2010. The pot had been filled with dirt and sent for testing. It was only recently that the dirt was examined in a restoration laboratory and the treasure revealed to their great surprise.

The hoard includes a collection of gold and silver jewelry, beads, a ring and a pair of unique gold earrings with molded ibexes and wild goats that was likely made in Egypt.

“We find about 10 [whole] vessels every year. The only thing that was unusual was that the jug was found inside a bowl. It was put inside a bowl 3,000 years ago and was covered by another bowl and it was put in the corner of a court yard,” archaeologist Eran Arie told The Media Line. 

While some of the Warrnambool Art Gallery's more eclectic objects are reasonably well documented, this particular piece has many question marks around it which Collections Registrar Agostina Hawkins has been trying to solve.

Inside a lovely little cigarette tin decorated with pictures from Cairo are a couple of handwritten notes and a piece of material which is, apparently, a piece of Egyptian Mummy wrapping.

According to the note the wrapping is from a Mummy's tomb at Memphis from the time of King Unas.

The note also says there should be a scarab grub inside the tin, but it's no longer there.

In today’s Academic Minute, Dr. Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner of the University of Toronto reveals some recent finds from an archaeological excavation in Abydos, Egypt.

Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner is Assistant Professor of Egyptian Archaeology in the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. She also serves at Project Director for the North Abydos Votive Zone Project , an ongoing project which focuses on understanding the social organization of the community that left behind traces of votive activity at the site. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

The site of Abydos in southern Egypt has long attracted pilgrims and archaeologists. As the center of the cult of Osiris, god of death and regeneration, Abydos drew people from allwalks of life to participate in a festival that dramatized the god’s successful post-mortemtransformation. The focal point of the festival was a procession in which statues of Osiris, along with his wife Isis and son Horus, were carried on the shoulders of priests in boat-shaped shrinesacross the desert landscape from his temple dwelling to his tomb.

A collection of 35 ancient Egyptian artefacts stolen in the wake of last year's Tahrir Square uprising was recovered on Monday by Tourism and Antiquities police.

The objects were found buried in sand close to the Horemhab funerary complex in the Saqqara Necropolis on the outskirts of Cairo.

According to police, the objects were stolen from neighbouring archaeological sites during the uprising. The thieves, police speculate, had been planning to smuggle the objects out of the country at a later date.

Anyone who knows anything about the horror genre will have heard stories of curses placed on tombs in Ancient Egypt to deter grave robbers and those who would plunder the graves of priests and pharaohs. But where do these stories come from and is there any truth behind them?

On 21 May Professor Roger Luckhurst of Birkbeck College presented the true story of a mummy’s curse to a packed Petrie Museum audience.

Or perhaps, I should say, he presented the truth behind the rumour as far as he could piece it together drawing from numerous different accounts. A little more convoluted as a turn of phrase, but much more accurate.

The mummy in question is, in fact, simply a coffin lid known as “The Unlucky Mummy”, or to give it its official name: British Museum object-22542.

This lid, once part of the last resting place of an unknown woman from a high-ranking family in the priesthood, was donated to the museum by the sister of Arthur F. Wheeler, the man who was believed to have brought it back from Egypt.

But the story surrounding the lid is full of intrigue, featuring a number of shooting accidents and suspicious deaths as well as a lost fortune and a picture of a ghostly face.

The objective of this monograph is to describe and explain the meanings underlying some otherwise anomalous archaeological data drawn from the study of Ancient Egypt. An explanation for the phenomena observed has hitherto proved elusive. The data is principally concerned with royal funerary architecture from the Old Kingdom, and the underlying systems of measurement and geometry that were employed therein. As well as providing a description and explanation for the data, this work also has the objective of providing the first synthesis of related cultural information drawn from several different textual and archaeological resources. The general subject matter is pharaonic funerary architecture from Old Kingdom Egypt, and the work focuses specifically on the circular proportions deliberately incorporated into the tomb designs by the architects. Contents: Introduction; 1) Fundamentals of Ancient Egyptian mathematics and architecture; 2) The Evidence and facts of Egyptian circular proportions; 3) The symbolism; 4) Methodology, analysis and discussion of mathematics; 5) Arguments from authorities; 6) Archaeology and philology; fieldwork and deskwork; 7) Conclusions; Appendix 1: Secondary Issues; Appendix 2: Social Context of early Egyptology; Appendix 3: Egyptian and Greek Mathematics; Appendix 4: Quotes from the Greeks.

The civilization of ancient Egypt has been a source of fascination for explorers and scholars for centuries, and has occupied a special place in the imagination of the public ever since early travellers’ descriptions and illustrations of the strange culture of temples, tombs and hieroglyphs began to circulate around the world. Egyptology in the Twenty-first century is a multi-disciplinary science practiced by specialists across the globe. The story of its development from a hobby for the educated and wealthy to a highly formalized academic discipline provides the key to understanding how and why we know what we know about ancient Egypt. The endeavours, achievements, talents and failings of the main practitioners, and the social, political and economic circumstances in which they lived and worked have all shaped our understanding of Egypt’s past. This biographical dictionary tells the story of the most important contributors and will be an indispensable reference tool for scholars and enthusiasts alike. 

Apuntes de Egiptología es una publicación periódica del Centro de Estudios del Antiguo Egipto (C.E.A.E. ) de Buenos Aires, República Argentina, Sudamérica.

The Wine Jars Speak: A text study. Reworked and translated from a Swedish MA thesis, Vinkärlsetiketterna berättar: En textstudie from 2008 in Egyptology, Uppsala University.

This paper examines the texts written on shards from wine jars found at El-Amarna, Tutankhamun’s tomb (KV 62) and Deir el-Medina. Information concerning the administration of wine and its production, found in these texts, is examined. Wine was an important element in Egyptian society and a common iconographic motif in tombs at Thebes during New Kingdom.

Welcome to the Theban Tombs Satellite Mapping Project! The map is designed to be an interactive experience for users. You will be able to zoom in and out, view information about buildings and parking lots, and print out findings. This menu is to help you to understand the functions of the map in order to provide a more fulfilling experience!

Yesterday, I joined a team from the Caer Alyn Archaeological Heritage Project (CAAHP) as they attempted to recreate the ancient Egyptian art of faience production. Faience is a glazed non-clay ceramic material, composed mainly of crushed quartz or sand, with small amounts of lime and either natron or plant ash. The characteristic blue colour of Egyptian faience comes from a copper compound added to this mixture. Once fired, a thick glaze forms on the surface.

At the Manchester Museum we have around 2500 objects made of Egyptian faience, including one of my favourites – a bright blue libation cup of Nesi-khonsu, from the Deir el-Bahri royal cache. The material was widely used for vessels, shabtis, jewellery and amulets throughout the pharaonic period. In creating our new Ancient Worlds galleries we want to explain how this very attractive material – called tjehenet or ‘dazzling’ by the ancient Egyptians – was made.

In January I met Alan Brown of Daresbury Laboratory, who told me about his work recreating ancient kilns and his interest in ancient Egypt. 

As Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, it seemed appropriate to highlight this magnificent fragment from a colossus of another monarch who celebrated 60 years on the throne. It comes from an over-lifesize granite statue of Ramesses II, named in the inscription on the back pillar as celebrating his heb-sed or jubilee festival. Ramesses II was one of only two pharaohs to rule for over 60 years. It is conceivable that the statue from which the crown comes was created for such a jubilee.

The form of the crown is complex. It comprises the tall ‘atef’ crown, with rams horns and flanked by plumes and rearing cobras (or uraei). 

I recently received an enquiry about the short inscription on this pottery sherd – or ostracon. The piece comes from the collection of Mr George Spiegelberg, a merchant in Manchester and brother of the famous German Egyptologist Wilhelm Spiegelberg (1870-1930). The ostracon shows the head of a ram deity with a rearing cobra before it, sketched first in red and then gone over in black.

The vertical caption reads: Beloved of Amun-Re, Lord of the Sky, Great God.
The text above the ram’s head reads: Amun-Re, the Light of Day.

The provenance of the sherd is most likely to be the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1069 BC) village of Deir el-Medina, built to house the workers involved in the construction of tombs in and around the Valley of the Kings. 

A collection of over 50 ancient Egyptian objects travelled from Surrey to Swansea, and arrived at the the Egypt Centre today (31st May 2012). Items on loan include a Sokar hawk, shabti figures, two glass bottles, two amulets, a ?bell in the shape of a Bes head, pottery vessels, a papyrus or lotus shaped pendant, etc. A selection can be seen above (better pictures to follow).

The artefacts, donated by Woking College, include several shabtis (servant figurines) which the ancient Egyptians believed would do work for their deceased owners in the afterlife. One of the shabtis is an ‘overseer shabti’. Shabtis, mirroring real life work teams, were organised in gangs of 10. Each gang would be overseen by a foreman, or overseer. The shabtis are around 3,000 years old. The collection also includes a glass bottle, from late in Egyptian history (c100BC-AD200), around the time of Cleopatra.

Bolton Museum has scooped a prestigious national award for its touring Egyptology exhibition, currently wowing visitors in the Far East.

“Quest For Immortality: The Bolton Museum Collection”, which received its one millionth visitor earlier this year, has won the international category of the “Museum Oscars” — the Museum and Heritage Awards. The exhibition has now moved to Shanghai, in China, after spending 12 months at different venues in Taiwan.

Leader of Bolton Council, Cllr Cliff Morris, said: “This is a fantastic achievement and a great honour. 

This summer the Boston Museum of Science enters the ancient land of Egypt to uncover and explore the buried history that is just a stone's throw away from modern life.

The museum's new exhibit, "Lost Egypt: Ancient Secrets, Modern Science," aims to broaden your understanding of archaeologists' work in Egypt. If you have ever wondered how we know so much about a civilization that coalesced in about 3000 BC, this exhibit is for you.

"Lost Egypt" is great for all ages — informative enough to keep adults engaged and interactive enough to hold an 8-year-old's attention span. The exhibit is a single loop, but don't be deceived by the small space — "Lost Egypt" has plenty to offer.

Upon entering the dark exhibit, visitors are greeted by a life-size camel. Kids can climb on and have their picture taken with the realistic model to begin their journey into the past 5,000 years of Egyptian history.

To give visitors a sense of modern Egyptian life, there is a large map on the ground and a wall of photos of modern Egypt.

A documentary which used the corpse of a recently deceased Westcountry taxi driver to illustrate how ancient Egyptians mummified bodies, has won a BAFTA.

Alan Billis, a taxi driver from Torquay, volunteered for the programme after seeing a newspaper advertisement. He died last year, aged 61, after a battle with lung cancer and his body was mummified using ancient techniques.

It is believed to be the first time in 3,000 years that these ancient mummifying techniques have been revived.

Speaking last year, Mr Billis' widow, Jan, said her husband took part because he wanted to give his grandchildren something extraordinary to remember him by.

The west coast premiere of Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt, featuring the largest collection of its kind ever assembled, opened today at the California Science Center. More than 150 priceless Egyptian artifacts illuminating the life of Cleopatra VII, one of the most provocative and powerful women in history, will be on view including colossal statues, jewelry, coins, and handwritten notes from her lost palace in Alexandria. 

Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt immerses visitors in the experience of two present-day searches, on both land and sea, for the elusive queen which extend from the sands of Egypt to the depths of the Bay of Aboukir near Alexandria. The artifacts weigh in at about 30 tons in total, including two 16-foot granite statues of a Ptolemaic king and queen from the 4th – 3rd centuries B.C.

"We are thrilled to host the west coast premiere of this extraordinary exhibition," said Jeffrey Rudolph, president and CEO of the California Science Center.