Archive for August, 2011

Welcoming up to 500,000 since it opened in April this year, the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition originally dated to leave early November, will stay the extra month down under before leaving for his permanent residence in the new Museum in Egypt. The exhibition shattered Melbourne Museum records before it opened... »

A flask of lotion believed to have belonged to the female pharaoh Hatshepsut contains a carcinogenic substance that might ultimately have killed the Egyptian queen, German researchers said. Part of the permanent collection at the University of Bonn’s Egyptian Museum, the vessel was thought to have held perfume until a two-year study uncovered traces... »

Ancient Egyptian men and women alike would have their tresses styled with a fat-based “gel” when they were embalmed. Natalie McCreesh of the University of Manchester, UK and her colleagues examined hair samples from 15 mummies from the Kellis 1 cemetery in Dakhla oasis, Egypt, and a further three samples from mummies housed in museum... »

The Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has been the official national body overseeing the sector since its establishment in 1994. With the rise of Egyptomania in the 19th century and Mohamed Ali’s creation of the first national antiquities authority in 1835, European explorers have dominated the field of Egyptian archaeology, as well as the processes... »

The Egyptian government is demanding the return of the bust of Prince Ankhhaf from the Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The precious 4,500-year-old statue, 20 inches tall, was not stolen. It was excavated by a team from the MFA, Harvard University, and Egypt in 1925. In 1927, the Egyptian government gave it to the MFA... »

The new Galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia (modern-day Sudan) will open on 26 November and feature the Ashmolean’s Egyptian collections and objects that have been in storage for decades. The £5 million project will more than double the number of mummies and coffins on display. It will feature new lighting, display cases and interpretation. The collections... »

Six months into its revolution, not only has Egypt’s tourism fallen dramatically, its unemployment rate rose from just under 9% to almost 12%, and its GDP fell by 4%. Over half of Egypt’s population is under age 29, and 90% of unemployed Egyptians are under the age of 30, an age bracket that carries... »

The advent of mobile banking and growth of e-commerce are just two of the most widely publicized and utilized developments worldwide and Egypt is no exception. Based on recent data published by the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), internet penetration in Egypt was over 30 percent of the total population as of... »

Four ancient Egyptian objects from the time of King Amnehotep III will be returned to Egypt by the UK within days, said Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Mohamed Abdel Maksoud in a statement on Saturday. The pieces had been removed from the base of an ancient statue of Amnehotep III in his... »

A colossal statue of a pharaoh weighing more than nine tons is heading to the Met by ship from Germany. When it arrives in New York in the next 10 days, it will go on view in the museum’s Great Hall. The Egyptian Museum in Berlin owns the statue but is in the middle of... »