Tutenstein captures the Daytime Emmy for Best Cartoon two years running
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More than a decade had passed since Jay Stephens, a Guelph comic artist, had first dreamed up the idea of a mummified, reanimated Egyptian boy-king.
Although Tutenstein was conceived in Stephens’ vivid imagination and brought to life by Stephens’ pencil, the Emmys went to the immense team of producers and animators that broadcast the character to millions of homes. So it was the producers, not Stephens, who accepted the Emmy statuette on award night.
Still, Stephens was proud of his little undead boy-king.
“I almost felt like Tutenstein was this kid that had gone off to college and calls home to say he’s done really well,” Stephens recalls. “I was happy for him.”
Game: Nile Online
Immortal Cities: Nile Online is a persistent browser-based empire building game set in ancient Egypt. Play with thousands of other players as you construct cities and monuments worthy of your legacy as Pharaoh! Nile Online is casually paced; it’s something you can play throughout the day, minutes at a time.
The game is free to play and there is nothing to download or install - within seconds you’re commanding, tweaking and growing your empire from anywhere that you have access to the internet.
Recommended browsers: Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer 7+, Safari, Chrome.
Mosaic: Tomb of Mystery
Reflexive Entertainment announced the release of its newest game for Mac and PC - Mosaic: Tomb of Mystery. This spellbinding puzzler takes players back in time to Ancient Egypt and the world of the Pharaohs.
Working their way up through Egyptian society, players explore catacombs and piece together ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs as they uncover the truth behind the mysterious death of King Tut in a stunning mystery-puzzle adventure. Mosaic: Tomb of Mystery features spectacular effects and gorgeous Egyptian art. With over 300 Ancient hieroglyphs for players to decrypt, unique power-ups to unearth and a murder-mystery plot to decipher, Mosaic: Tomb of Mystery is a fun and mesmerizing blend of puzzle-pieced excitement and intense game play that appeals to players of all ages. Further information as well as game downloads can be found at http://www.mosaicgame.com and through Reflexive Arcade at http://www.reflexive.com.
About Reflexive Entertainment:
Founded in 1997, with one goal in mind, to make great games, Reflexive Entertainment’s passionate focus on game design has led to the creation of many top-selling and award-winning games including the Ricochet and the Big Kahuna franchises (with over 40 million total downloads) and the 2006 Downloadable Game of the Year, Wik: Fable of Souls. In addition to developing games, Reflexive has created one of the largest casual game distribution networks in existence with more than 500 affiliates distributing a huge catalog of over 1000 games to a rapidly growing audience that downloads millions of games each week.
“Foreign types with the hookah pipes say/Ay oh whey oh, ay oh whey oh”
This wavy lyrics and tune made us walk like an Egyptian in the 80’s.
What possibly inspired the Bangles to record such an unusual song?
“A guy named Liam Sternberg [wrote the song] and I think he got the inspiration from being on a ferry crossing in Europe,” says frontwoman Susanna Hoffs, who has just returned from Europe after a tour with the reunited Bangles. “The ferry was moving around and people were, like, riding the waves a little bit and he had this vision [of ancient Egyptian figures]“. Interestingly enough, the little kids in the movie To Kill A Mockingbird talk about walking like an Egyptian and they do a little Egyptian walk. So there are other references.
Charles Purcell for The Sydney Morning Herald
Cemetery G 2100: Virtual Exhibit
A new exhibit recreates 10 mastaba-tombs from Cemetery G 2100 of Giza Necropolis in both Second Life and Google Earth virtual worlds. The majority of the archaeological diagrams and photographs used to create the models were made by the Harvard University–Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition to Egypt (1902-1942), under the direction of archaeologist George Reisner. The modern color photographs and panoramas were created and collected by the Giza Archives Project. The project, headed by Peter Der Manuelian, is a repository for Reisner’s findings, as well as all archaeological publications pertaining to the Giza Necropolis.
King Tut and Egyptomania
Now that King Tut is doing Dallas, this is a perfect time to reflect on the many ways ancient Egypt has influenced American culture and the rest of the world. The list is gathered from Andrew Marton’s article for the Star Telegram but I’ve added to it.
Music
Walk Like an Egyptian by The Bangles
Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
King Tut by comedian Steve Martin
Movies
The Mummy - 1932 original starring Boris Karloff
“Mummy” - a sequence of films first released in 1999, starring Brendan Fraser
The Mummy’s Curse - 1944 movie starring Lon Chaney Jr.
Cleopatra - 1934 original starring Claudette Colbert and the 1963 blockbuster of the same name featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton
The Ten Commandments - 1923 and 1956 Biblical films but who can ignore the Egyptian setting.
The Egyptian - 1954 movie loosely and poorly based on the wonderful novel Sinuhe the Egyptian by Mika Waltari
We Want Our Mummy - 1939 slapstick comedy by the Three Stooges.
Death on the Nile - 1978 movie based on Agatha Christie’s suspense novel
The Jewel of the Nile - 1985 film featuring sizzling pair Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner
The Prince of Egypt - 1998 animated film based on the Ten Commandments
Television
Batman with Victor Buono as arch-enemy “King Tut”
Tutenstein - Animated series from Discovery Kids about a 10 year old pharaoh brought back to life
Actor
Omar Sharif - Alexandria born actor made famous for his roles in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago
Belly dancing
Little Egypt, also known as “Fatima”
Sport
Bowling - the origin of this sport occurred thousands of years ago at a simple lane about 56 miles south of Cairo
Pyramids and obelisks
Pyramid Arena in Memphis, Tenn.
Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas
Pyramid Arena at Cal State
Pyramid entranceway to the Louvre Museum in Paris
The Washington Monument obelisk
Expressions
“Sphinxlike” refering to someone bearing an inscrutable, unreadable facial expression
“Pyramid scheme” meaning a corrupt form of making easy money
“Inverted pyramid” as a form of organizing a news story
Eateries
King Tut - a Fort Worth institution since opening in 1992
Campisi’s Egyptian Restaurant - where Jack Ruby dined the night before John F. Kennedy was assassinated
And of course, the legendary and pervasive “mummy’s curse”.
Enormous Lego Sphinx showcased in Halifax
Canadian Lego Certified Professional, Robin Sather, 43, one of just six certified professionals in the world, spent the weekend in Halifax building an enormous Lego Sphinx. The colorful Egyptian iconic structure, which took about 50 hours to complete, is part of the Discovery Centre’s Secret of the Pharaohs exhibit, where scenes from the past, artifacts, and hieroglyphics are entirely made of Lego. Owen Grace, 37, a member of Nova Lug, a group of local Lego enthusiasts, helped Sather build the Sphinx, whose head weighs about 200-pounds. There’s an ongoing contest to guess how many blocks were used.
The exhibit will be at the Discovery Centre until January.
Egypt donkey jailed for theft
An Egyptian donkey has been jailed for stealing corn on the cob from a field belonging to an agricultural research institute in the Nile Delta.
The ass and its owner were apprehended at a police checkpoint that had been set up after the institute’s director complained that someone was stealing his crops, the state-owned Al-Ahram daily said.
The unnamed ungulate was found in possession of the institute’s corn and a local judge sentenced him to 24 hours in prison. The man who had his ass thrown in jail got off with a fine of 50 Egyptian pounds (nine dollars, six euros).
Cleopatra - How much you know?
If you think Cleopatra was a beautiful Egyptian queen who committed suicide by getting an asp to bite her, well…not much.
According to Karl S. Kruszelnicki, this is what you should know:
First, Cleopatra was not Egyptian, she was Macedonian.
Second, Cleopatra almost certainly was not beautiful in the physical sense — bearing in mind that the concept of beauty is different for each time period and for each person. Only 10 coins from her reign with representation of her have survived in good condition. They show her as having a fat neck (euphemistically called “Rolls of Venus”), a hooked nose, long ears and a prominent chin.
Cleopatra was, like all the other Ptolemaic women, around 1.5 metres tall. In today’s terms, she was short, dumpy and squat.
Her wisdom and wit are praised in Arabic and Coptic literature.
Cleopatra raised an army, built a fleet to rival Rome’s, made Egypt strong, kept the peace, and successfully played off powerful opponents against each other.
Third, the snake. Shakespeare tells us (in Antony and Cleopatra) that Cleopatra died from the bite of an asp, smuggled into her bedroom in a basket of figs. But that particular species of snake does not live in Egypt. A far more likely contender (if she was killed by a snake) was the cobra.
So even today, we still don’t know how she really died.
Tutenstein Reigns With Feature Length Movie
The first feature length TUTENSTEIN movie is set to debut on Discovery Kids in the U.S. this fall and premiere internationally at MIPCOM Junior in October.
In TUTENSTEIN: CLASH OF THE PHARAOHS, Tutenstein, Cleo and Luxor take the trip of a lifetime — to ancient Egypt. When Tut is plagued by nightmares concerning his death, he journeys to the past with hopes of stopping his death. But the gang arrives too late, nearly 1,000 years after Tut lived. His hopes for the royal treatment are dashed when Cleo is mistaken for Cleopatra, the current Pharaoh of Egypt. With their roles reversed — Cleo playing the arrogant queen while Tut begrudgingly taking the role of her servant — Tut and Cleo’s friendship is challenged. While Cleo lets the crown go to her head, Tut and Luxor discover the Grand Vizier’s plan to take control of the kingdom by getting rid of Cleo. Tut must stop the Grand Vizier and rescue Cleo before she’s sent to the Afterlife. By the time they return to the present, Tut and Cleo learn the importance of true friendship — no matter what the era.
Both the TUTENSTEIN movie and television series combines ancient Egyptian mythology with contemporary urban humor and attitude. Its goal is to accurately portray the diverse Egyptian mythology, utilizing stories and characters that reflect the lives of kids today. In order to do so, PorchLight’s production team works closely with Dr. Peter Lacovara, TUTENSTEIN’s Egyptology consultant who authenticates the Egyptian content.
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By N2H
