Egyptology
KV64 – 1,100 year-old tomb of female singer found in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings
Egyptian and Swiss archaeologists have unearthed a roughly 1,100 year-old tomb of a female singer in the Valley of the Kings. It is the only tomb of a woman not related to the ancient Egyptian royal families ever found in the Valley of the Kings, said Mansour Boraiq, the top government official for the Antiquities’... »
New website showcases 1,137 animal mummies online
The Animal Mummy Database is a searchable database of Ancient Egyptian animal mummies. Animal mummies were created by the millions during the Late-Roman Periods in Egypt, mostly to be used as votive offerings at temples of gods associated with those animals. Some were extravagantly made with decorations and colorful wrappings to be sold at... »
Egypt’s Antiquities Minister announces new policies
Newly-appointed Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said Egypt’s antiquities will be managed differently, focusing more on further developing the skills of Egyptian archaeologists. From now on, site leaders must periodically inspect archaeological sites and submit detailed plans for maintenance and development, including budgets, goals, obstacles, and the timeline of each project. During a with top... »
Rock Art in Egypt at least 15,000 years old
Using a new technology known as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), Yale Professor of Egyptology John Coleman Darnell and a team of Belgian scientists have determined that Egyptian petroglyphs at Qurta, on the east bank of the Nile about 40km south of the Upper-Egyptian town of Edfu are about 15,000 years old, making them the... »
Amarna Letters now online
High-resolution images of the famed Amarna letters, the ancient 14th-century B.C. diplomatic correspondence between the New Kingdom pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of various Canannnite city-states, among others, have been placed online by Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum, which houses more than 200 of the total of over 300 tablets that define the ancient corpus. Among... »
Prostrate cancer found in Egyptian mummy
Some 2250 years ago in Egypt, a man known today only as M1 struggled with a long, painful, progressive illness. A dull pain throbbed in his lower back, then spread to other parts of his body, making most movements a misery. When M1 finally succumbed to the mysterious ailment between the ages of 51... »
Two stolen ancient Egyptian reliefs recovered
One of the two objects recovered depicts four geese and is decorated with hieroglyphic text, but this object is not the famous Geese of Meidum at the Cairo Museum which has been depicted in several reports of this news. The Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Police have succeeded in recovering two well-preserved limestone reliefs stolen in... »
Foreign archaeological missions resume work in Egypt
The Permanent Committee of Antiquities (PCA), led by Mostafa Amine, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), approved the resumption of several archaeological works carried out by foreign archaeological missions. The Polish archaeological mission will start a comprehensive documentation at Queen Hatshepsut’s temple on Luxor’s west bank. The German Archaeological Institute’s mission in... »
New head of SCA meets protestors
In his first day in office, newly appointed Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Mostafa Amine met with protestors camped for four days in front of the SCA’s Abassiya building. Amine told protestors that he agreed with Prime Minister Essam Sharaf to immediately resolve their problems and to appoint all temporary staff... »
Protesters shut down Egypt tourist sites
Following the announcement by Prime Minister Essam Sharaf that current secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Abdel Fatah would be offered the full authority of a minister, more than 4,000 archaeologists blocked the entrance to the Council’s offices in Abbassiya, switching off the electricity and preventing the employees from entering. They also... »
