Virtual Nile planned for Turin Egyptian Museum
A virtual recreation of the river Nile will soon greet visitors arriving at Turin’s world-renowned Egyptian Museum as part of a sweeping makeover. The virtual waters will flow alongside the escalator leading up to the museum, thanks to the technical wizardry of Oscar-winning set designer Dante Ferretti.
The idea is for visitors to get the feeling of actually traveling the Nile as they get to witness one of the most astounding collections of ancient Egyptian antiquities anywhere in the world. The entire layout of the museum’s exhibition space will be restructured and reorganized, increasing the available space from 6,000 to 10,000m2, allowing for a more fitting display of the Turin museum’s most valuable possessions, such as the Tomb of Kha and the full figure statue of the young Ramses II enthroned.
The Egyptian Museum in Turin houses more ancient Egyptian objects than any other in the world save the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It currently draws around 600,000 visitors each year. Of the museum’s 26,000 pieces, just 6,500 are actually on public display. Its collection includes priceless papyri, among them one of the best specimens of the “Book of Coming Forth by Day” (The Book of the Dead), the oldest ever written evidence of a workers strike, the Erotic Papyrus and history’s first map.
The first phase of the project will get under way in September 2009 and conclude in January 2011 as Italy begins its celebrations of 150 years of unity, with Turin as the country’s first capital. This will be followed by a second phase due for completion in 2013.
Book Review: Egyptology Today by Richard H. Wilkinson
Reviewed by L. R. Siddall, School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London
This is a superb book. Wilkinson has brought together some of the current leading Egyptologists to produce a single volume work that introduces the reader to the methods and theories used in the study of ancient Egypt. All aspects of Egyptology are covered from the Egyptian language and medical research to the way archaeologists survey sites and the conservation of artefacts. The book is organized thematically into four parts (approaches, monuments, art and artifacts, and texts), with each part comprising three chapters. Wonderfully illustrated, this book will make excellent reading for students of the ancient world and the interested public.
The volume opens and closes with succinct essays by the editor on the past, current, and future status of Egyptological research. Wilkinson introduces the reader to the reality of modern Egyptological practice and research, pointing out that the latter part of the twentieth century has seen the study of Egyptology benefit from broader methods of scholarship taken from the arts and humanities, and the natural and medical sciences. Egyptology is now very much an interdisciplinary field.
Intercultural Contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean may prompt dialogue in the region today
Intercultural Contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean is the title of a conference held in Cairo, Egypt, at the end of October 2008. During four days several speakers read papers relevant to specialists and the broader archaeological community. Of great importance was the location which allowed a greater participation from scholars based in the southern and eastern Mediterranean.
Archaeologist and Director at Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo Kim Duistermaat stressed the need for archaeology to be relevant to the modern world and how this conference was an example of this. Intercultural contacts are a hot issue of our world, and both the Arab and “Western” cultures historically originated on its shores and have co-existed for millennia. Looking to a common past is therefore a good way to start a dialogue and see how different cultures can coexist. The EU supported this view sponsoring the conference. A few presenters (starting with Susan Sherratt) recalled the recent idea proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy of a Mediterranean Union suggesting that it happened several times in the past, and, at least culturally, the dialogue between different cultures in the Mediterranean never stopped. Maintaining the distances with the current political projects, it seems however that archaeology can make the difference in prompting dialogue and be part of the intercultural contacts that were mentioned so much during the conference.
Excerpted from a posting by Andrea Vianello at Intute
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What is a World Heritage Site, anyway?
The Unesco World Heritage Committee, elected by nation states every four years, meets once a year to choose the world’s natural or human-made wonders in the greatest need of protection. Any country is eligible to send in a list of nominees for protection. Each site must meet at least one of 10 criteria, among them:
• represent a “masterpiece of human creative genius”
• be “an important interchange of human values”
• “bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to civilisation” past or present
• be an outstanding example of a type of building or settlement which illustrates a significant stage in human history
• “contain superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance”
• be outstanding examples of major stages of Earth’s history or ecological and biological processes in evolution
• house threatened species “of outstanding universal value”
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There are currently 878 world heritage sites which include 678 listed for cultural reasons and 174 lauded as wonders of nature. These include the Great Barrier Reef, the Serengeti Desert, the Pyramids of Giza, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, Mount Kenya, Edinburgh’s Old and New Towns, Hadrian’s Wall, Stonehenge, Memphis and its Necropolis, Persepolis, the Palace of Westminster, the centre of St Petersburg, the Banaue rice terraces in the Philippines and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus railway station in Mumbai. The country with the biggest number of sites is Italy, which has 43.
EGYPT WORLD HERITAGE SITES
• Abu Mena (1979)
• Cultural site Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis (1979)
• Cultural site Historic Cairo (1979)
• Cultural site Memphis and its Necropolis – the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur (1979)
• Cultural site Nubian Monuments from Abu Simbel to Philae (1979)
• Cultural site Saint Catherine Area (2002)
• Natural site Wadi Al-Hitan (Whale Valley) (2005)
This year, the committee met in Quebec City, Canada, and added an extra 27 places across the globe to its list of “endangered species”. Among them were more than 100 monumental tombs at Al-Hijr in Saudi Arabia, built by the Nabataean people between the first century BC and AD100. Another was the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, where one billion butterflies overwinter each year. The committee also added the island of Surtsey, which appeared 20 miles south of Iceland as a result of volcanic eruptions between 1963 and 1967, and is a pristine natural laboratory for the study of plant and animal colonisation.
Does it help to have World Heritage status?
Yes…
• It brings extra funds to poor countries to help conserve places of universal value
• It draws attention to the world’s most neglected treasures and places of historic interest or natural beauty
• It can save places from total destruction by natural or human forces
No…
• It brings in floods of extra tourists whose footprint can do more harm than good
• It can have the effect of preserving a living place in aspic and stifling innovation
• It can undermine a country’s right to make decisions about its own heritage
Source: Paul Vallely for The Independent
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The development plan for Luxor
Image by Xavier Fargas via Flickr
The “Comprehensive Development Plan for the City of Luxor, Egypt”, drawn up in 1999, “prepared for the Ministry of Housing Utilities and Urban Communities and the UNDP-sponsored Abt Associates” is to establish and carry out a work plan for environmentally sustainable tourism development that also benefits the local population.”
There is a very real reason why the project is top priority. Tourism is growing. Tens of thousands of visitors arrive in Luxor daily. Groups are bussed in from Hurghada for daily tours, and the Nile Corniche simply cannot accommodate the hundreds of rambling tour busses.
What is historically important unfortunately counts for little in political and economic terms in contemporary Egypt, because tourism is one of the three top foreign-currency earners and weighs too heavily against the protection of archaeological sites. Anyway, it is difficult to differentiate between what appears an unnecessarily ambitious archaeological undertaking, and its part of a comprehensive development plan for the city of Luxor.
I refer to the decision to excavate and restore the Avenue of Sphinxes linking Luxor and Karnak temples with view to “improving the touristic experience, increasing the vitality of the city centre, and forming the centrepiece of an Open Museum”. Back in 1997 no one realised that it was part of a comprehensive plan that would require the demolition of housing, commercial, government and religious buildings intruding on the buried avenue, and include the phased relocation of Luxor residents. Nor did they realise that it would be a pedestrian thoroughfare and that the Nile boulevard would be widened to accommodate tourist buses transporting tens of thousands of tourists to Karnak daily.
Today, 10 years down the line, we finally read the fine print and realise the full extent of what many call a “catastrophe”. As the sandstone sphinxes (some 1,200 of them) continue to be unearthed, we realise that the housing of hundreds of residents are being demolished and they themselves relocated. The project includes “landscaping and enhancing the area with the provision of visitor amenities”, and “modification” of street layout. A clear statement of intention. So why are we surprised?
The plan to increase the size of Luxor ten-fold is frightening. Is it too late to do anything about it?
Excerpted from an article by Jill Kamill for Al-Ahram
Mystery of the screaming mummy
Some academics believe that Man E, as the screaming mummy is named, is the body of an Hittite prince summoned to Egypt by Tutankhamen’s widow Ankhesenamen, who did not bear heirs to the throne of Egypt. Others that he was an Egyptian governor who had died abroad and been returned to his homeland for burial. According to this report, the mummy belongs to Prince Pentewere, elder son of Ramses III, who, with his mother, Tiy, had evolved a plan to assassinate the pharaoh and ascend to the throne.
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On a scorching hot day at the end of June 1886, Gaston Maspero, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, was unwrapping the mummies of the 40 kings and queens found a few years earlier in an astonishing hidden cache near the Valley of the Kings.
There, wrapped in a sheep or goatskin - a ritually unclean object for ancient Egyptians - lay the body of a young man, his face locked in an eternal blood-curdling scream. It was a spine-tingling sight, and one that posed even more troubling questions: here was a mummy, carefully preserved, yet caught in the moment of death in apparently excrutiating pain.
He had been buried in exalted company, yet been left without an inscription, ensuring he would be consigned to eternal damnation, as the ancient Egyptians believed identity was the key to entering the afterlife. Moreover, his hands and feet had been so tightly bound that marks still remained on the bones.
Who could he be, this screaming man, assigned the anonymous label ‘Man E’ in the absence of a proper name?
Today, nearly 130 years after his body was first uncovered, a team of scientists has brought the wonders of modern forensic techniques to bear on the enigma.
Using sophisticated-technology, including CT scanning, Xraysand facial reconstruction, to examine the mummy, they uncovered tantalising new clues that could reveal his identity, all under the watchful eye of Five’s TV crew, who are making a series of documentaries hoping to unravel some of Egypt’s great secrets.
Their findings suggest that Man E is indeed Prince Pentewere, elder son of Rameses III, who, with his mother, Tiy, had evolved a plan to assassinate the pharaoh and ascend to the throne.
Excerpted from an article by Kathryn Night for Mail Online
French tourists released after Egypt desert safari
Image by enthogenesis via Flickr
Egyptian authorities have released five French tourists and four Egyptians accused of endangering themselves on an unauthorized desert safari.
The tourists, aged between 42 and 85, were arrested on Tuesday in the Red Sea resort of Marsa Alam after a safari to the nearby Wadi el-Ghadir organized by an Egyptian tour operator. Tour companies must get security permits to conduct desert safaris in Egypt.
Egypt to restore three Pharaonic antiquities from Spain
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A delegation from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) will head to Spain to bring back three Pharaonic antiquities. The pieces, a head sculpture of an unknown man, a granite bust of a nobleman and a tomb wall fragment depicting two women, belong to the “New Kingdom” era, which began with the 18th Pharaonic dynasty during the 16th century BC and lasted until the rule of the ancient Greeks in Egypt.
The SCA knew the pieces were being displayed in Barcelona in 2004, along with a fourth one, which was later discovered to be fake. The SCA will provide the museum in Spain with three replicas in return for the antiquities.
In the past few years, Egypt has recovered around 5,200 pieces, that had been smuggled out of the country and displayed abroad.
Egyptians welcome Obama victory
Americans woke up in Egypt Wednesday with the realization that in a short few months they will no longer be stigmatized by U.S. President George W. Bush when they tell an Egyptian they are American. Instead, a thumbs up signal might accompany the mention of one’s citizenship rather than a thumbs down and a “Bush is bad.”
The vast majority of Egyptians believe the Obama win is a stepping-stone for the United States toward regaining its moral strength in a region that has been at the heart of anti-Americanism.
Still, not all Egyptians were happy to see Obama earn the presidency. Coptic Christians mainly supported Republican presidential contender John McCain because some felt he would continue the war on terror.
Either way, Obama’s victory was historic for the Middle East, which has long looked to the U.S. for change. With his African origins and strong conviction to move the United States in a new direction, hope for a new direction remains in the hearts and minds of a majority of Arabs who have longed for a different American route in their world.
UCLA opens Egypt’s first official archaeology field school for U.S. undergrads
It’s all part of the adventure of being in Egypt’s first officially sanctioned field school for American undergraduates.
Willeke Wendrich, a UCLA professor and renowned Egyptologist, and her co-director René Cappers, a professor and archaeobotanist from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands, lead the 36-person field school and arranged nine pairs of American-Egyptian student teams to work together.
For the UCLA students, exploring the sprawling agricultural settlement that was Karanis and uncovering plant remains and animal bones from the fourth through sixth centuries is turning into the trip of a lifetime.
Just two weeks into the dig, the field school has made some new discoveries.
“Based on dates in Greek papyri previously found at Karanis, the city was thought to have been abandoned in the fourth century … but the section we are working on dates from the fourth to the sixth centuries, which expands the occupation of Karanis by approximately two centuries,” Wendrich said. “It certainly was rural, but it was also a large town, in which the inhabitants, mostly small landowners, created a comfortable life for themselves.”
“One of the main mysteries is how the city inhabitants were provided with water,” Wendrich said. “Karanis lies in the desert at the edge of the Fayum depression, and there were several canals that ran near the town. To date, six bath houses have been identified, but it is as yet unclear how the water from the canals reached the town.”
Karanis is now believed to have been inhabited from 300 BC to the sixth century. The field school is uncovering plant remains, animal bones, textiles, basketry, leather and fragments of papyrus. After the first week of classes, including a crash course in Arabic, they began excavating. They draw plans, take photographs and measurements, excavate, sieve and sort finds. Nearby, modern life in the Fayum oasis continues.
The team excavates Sundays through Thursdays from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m, then attends a lecture before a dinner break. After dinner, it’s time to complete paperwork from 7-9 p.m. before falling into bed and starting over again. Undergrads get Fridays and Saturdays off to explore Cairo and relax in the dig house.
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By N2H
