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Aly El-Asfar, head of the Giza Plateau in the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Ahram Online that the Great Pyramid of Khufu will be closed on 11-11-11, thereby canceling 19 private visits scheduled and approved a year ago as well as a controversial meditation ceremony intended to be held at the foot of the Great Pyramid, ostensibly to save the earth. The closure came following a long meeting with top SCA officials. The Giza Plateau as a whole will be open, but not the Khufu Pyramid and the area surrounding it.

The SCA Press Office sent a press release announcing the closure of Khufu Pyramid “in order to perform required maintenance work following the high number of visitors that have visited the plateau in the Eid holiday”. The closure decision was taken Thursday afternoon, in coordination with the Tourism and Antiquities Police, Public Security Police, and SCA private security.

Controversy surrounded not only the meditation ceremony slated for Friday, but the fact that SCA initially approved it. People from all over the world were due to hold a “ceremony of love” to strengthen the power of the pyramid on the day 11-11-11, to save the earth from cosmic threats. According to the program published by the polish foundation DAR SWATOWIDA, which was sponsoring the event, a crystal pyramid would be installed inside Khufu’s sarcophagus for 24 hours in order to harness the energy of all sacred sites around the world and create a shield between the earth and cosmic forces. They believe the world will end on 12/12/12.

Ahram Online

Worship the Animal – 1994 the Lost Recordings EP highlights a handful of tracks crafted well before Nile’s 1998 debut LP Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka. The five-song affair, which acted as their demo tape, features the original lineup of guitarist/vocalist Karl Sanders, bassist/vocalist Chief Spires and drummer Pete Hammoura.

The mini-set is sure to showcase the band’s hyper-technical blend of punishing death metal rhythms and Eastern melodies, not to mention Sanders’s unique fascination with hieroglyphics and ancient history.

Worship the Animal – 1994 the Lost Recordings comes out October 11.

exclaim.ca

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After spending around £60,000 on a habitat with enough room for seven adult crocodiles in 2005, British farmer Andy Johnson, 41, managed to hatch the first pair of British baby Nile crocodiles last week after a 90-day incubation period. He says that he intends to use the newborn pair for breeding purposes.

Nile crocodiles grow to around 16ft long. Caring for the baby crocs is Johnson’s next priority as they are naturally tropical indigenous reptiles.

Yahoo News

What did Akhenaten actually look like? No one knows for sure. Egyptologists at UCLA mulled over the question at a symposium Saturday called “Akhnaten and His World.” Afterward, Anne Austin, who spoke on “Art and Akhenaten,” and who had seen the comparison pictures, noted “striking similarities” between Akhenaten and Obama. But she thought Obama looked more like a middle kingdom pharaoh, Senusret III, who has a similar careworn, attentive face and big ears.

As for the Michelle Obama-Nefertiti comparison, Austin said in fact she sees a similarity between the first lady and Tiye, Akhenaten’s mother.

Los Angeles Times

The Egyptian jackal, which may have been the inspiration for the Egyptian god Anubis, is actually not a jackal at all but a member of the wolf family. New genetic research in the open-access journal PLoS ONE finds that the Egyptian jackal is Africa’s only member of the gray wolf family. The new wolf, dubbed by researchers as the African wolf, is most closely related to the Himalayan wolf.

The genetic data also points to an early origin for the Egyptian jackal/African wolf. In fact, researchers believe the animal is older than well-known wolves of the northern hemisphere. According to the study, Indian, Himalayan, and the new African wolf, broke off from the gray wolf before it moved north, colonizing Europe, northern Asia, and the Americas, further subdividing into different subspecies. Ethiopian wolves, which are a unique species of canids, are older still.

The animal is not protected in Egypt and is often persecuted as it is considered a threat to livestock.

In good news, the researchers discovered that the African wolf, previously Egyptian jackal, is actually present in the Ethiopian highlands, expanding its known range considerably.

Excerpted from an article by Jeremy Hance for mongabay.com

A stone bust shaped as a pharaoh dug up in a Derby back garden has been valued at £10,000.

The owner of the item appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow where the item was valued by antiques expert Henry Sandon, who said the bust originated from around 1700BC to 1750BC.

The unidentified owner was doing some gardening when he hit the object with his spade. He did not know how the relic came to be in his back garden.

This is Derbyshire

Credit philpasquini.com

Wikimedia

The statue of the ancient Egyptian falcon god Horus found by the Mount Tamalpais Fire Crew in 2008 off a fire road along Blithedale Ridge have been “recycled” into dust by the Marin County Open Space District.

Nobody knows how many years the four-foot tall concrete sculpture with an approximate weight of 1200 pounds kept watch over Mount Tamalpais, north of San Francisco.

When discovered, its stony stare fixed west into the setting sun. A plaque at the base of the statue named it “Horus, Falcon God,” and indicated it was modeled after an original found at the Edfu Temple in Egypt dating back to 237-57 B.C.

In an effort to find the owner, Mill Valley police called upon Novato resident Phil Pasquini, who taught sculpture for 39 years. “Whoever made it did a very fine job. It was just the perfect setting for it,” Pasquini said and added that “I was quite surprised that they destroyed it. It was a really good piece. It certainly deserved, if nothing else, to be kept in their (Marin County Open Space District) office.”

Source: Mill Valley Patch

Ankh is based in Ancient Egypt and you play the title role of Thara as she attempts to help her sick father and solve the mysteries. The story is enjoyable enough and it’s told with a slice of humor and is beautifully illustrated in cartoon style graphics.

The player searches the scenarios of the Ankh world, all designed in great detail, looking for countless hidden artifacts and important clues. The Help function is available to players at all times when solving the tricky puzzles. As with many of these titles there are two game modes, a relaxed mode where there is no time limit on each puzzle and Normal mode where you are up against the clock as you attempt to find all of the hidden objects. This is the prequel to the successful adventure game series Ankh as a hidden-object adventure . It is your basic game of seeking, with touch screen controls.

APPMODO

R u gng 2 pick me ↑ @ 4 4 driving lsns? My ss teach wants 2 talk 2 me @ my pp. or , but I hope . ‹3

A new global language is being developed, inspired by “new media,” the surge in technology and the ubiquity of new symbols and images that have replaced traditional words.

Before the rise of the West, the most sophisticated civilization known to man began to convey written language through imagery. Which means every time one of my teenage daughters uses the icons and initialisms (those delightful “LOLs” and “TTYLs”) to express her thoughts, she is reviving the ancient Egyptian language system based on icons, pictures, and sounds.

While hieroglyphics may have run their course thousands of years ago, today there is a new visual language that is developing all around us. This development runs on two parallel tracks:

Phenomenon A: Abbreviation of the Language

By omitting vowels and by playing with letters and numbers to create different ways of evoking the same sound of a word, we are shortening our sentences and the original writing of our vocabulary. One example of this is the use of text messaging on mobile devices. The vowels are omitted and whole words are abbreviated, such as tonight (2nite) and after (aftr).

Phenomenon B: Iconology

The second phenomenon is the increased use of and exposure to icons in our daily lives. In the fast-paced world of advertising and marketing, new icons emerge every day.

The Egyptian Connection

We already take this new icon language for granted and seldom question its source or inspiration. The fact is that the whole methodology started with the ancient Egyptians – only they were not subject to cell phone bills.

They created a highly sophisticated method in which a picture could be read in four different ways.

Upon first reading, what you see is what you get, each icon represents its meaning. Thus if the image is a bird, the meaning also corresponds to “bird”. In the second, each icon represents only the sound of the word. Today, for example, something would translate as “4sale” instead of “for sale” or “B4″ instead of “before.”

The third included consistent alphabetical icon signs, in which each icon represents one letter. The fourth consisted of the ideogram, in which a group of icons represented a classified group of words that then represented a category itself, such as emotions, animals, people, places, and so on.

The ancient Egyptian read in four different ways, and this stimulated the mind with four different options to decipher the language: for example, one had to decipher whether they were reading icons that represented literal words (“bird”), sounds, metaphors or more.

How ironic is it that today, our language is evolving and following their steps.

Excerpted from an article by Galit Dayan PhD, Egyptologyst and Organizational Consultant for The Huffington Post

Complaints arose from research done by various residents indicating that Anubis is a god of death and of funeral rites, thus inappropriate as a welcoming piece for people arriving to the Denver area.

Others have questioned why an ancient Egyptian deity is allowed to be displayed on a public place while the Christian cross is not. City officials said the rule of separation between church and state does not apply here because Anubis is a god from a “dead religion”.

The Denver Art Museum, where the King Tut exhibit opens on June 29, says the figure it’s only a promotional piece for the show and not a commissioned piece of public art.

The sculpture will be on display at the airport for a few more weeks while the exhibit is in town.

Source: 9News