San Francisco bay area Norma Supe, a 63-year-old nurse from Union City, and 66-year old Patti Ganal, of Los Gatos, recounted their brief but intense experience as hostages in Egypt, after being snatched Friday from a minivan on a tour of Sinai.

The two women, Ganal’s husband and two other Americans had finished a tour of the sixth-century St. Catherine’s Monastery, located at the foot of Mount Sinai where the Old Testament says Moses received the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments.

Supe and Ganal were abducted for several hours by armed Bedouin tribesmen. Their Egyptian tour guide, Hisham Zaki, was allowed to go with the women and serve as translator.

“I was not afraid at all because I know God has sent us here,” Ganal, a devout Christian and tour leader to Egypt, Jordan and Israel said in Cairo.

The kidnappers said several times they would not harm the women. Zaki said they were seeking leverage to pressure the government to release two relatives, including one of the kidnappers’ sons. The Bedouins drove for a few hours through the mountains, and suggested to the women that they were doubling as new tour guides. At one time they stopped, made a fire for the women to stay warm and prepared coffee and tea. The women were also served pita bread, dates and other dried fruit.

The abducted women hesitated to call the men “captors,” saying that the kidnappers were kind, polite and hospitable. They talked about religion and tribal rights. One even put out his cigarette in the car when one hostage said the smoke was bothering her.

The Bedouins released Zaki and the women after negotiations with tribal leaders in the peninsula.

Ganal and Supe were invited by the South Sinai Governor for dinner in a hotel in St. Catherine and for a night at a hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh. The official paid for flights from Sharm el-Sheikh for the tour group.

The five Americans visited the pyramids this weekend and were planning a visit to the coastal city of Alexandria. The group planned to return to the U.S. on Tuesday.

“All of this is an unforgettable memory,” said Norma Supe. “Maybe God had a purpose for this. It was probably to encourage more faith in me.”

CBS San Francisco

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

October 31, 2009 — July 4, 2010

Very Postmortem: Mummies and Medicine explores the modern scientific examination of mummies providing new insights into the conditions under which the Egyptians lived, bringing us closer to understanding who they were. The exhibition is a homecoming celebration marking the return of Irethorrou, the Fine Arts Museums’ mummy who has been on loan since 1944. CT-scans done by scientists at Stanford Medical School shed light on Irethorrou’s physical attributes and cause of death. The scans provide depth and scientific background to the exhibition and contribute to a three-dimensional “fly through” of the mummy and a forensic reconstruction of his head. The exhibition also includes a variety of ancient artifacts that date from approximately 664–525 B.C., the Late Period from the 26th Saite Dynasty.

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

If it’s good to be king, this year will also be a great time to be a sixth-grader.

As part of its really big show featuring the most popular exhibit in its history, de Young Museum officials are offering special group tickets to San Francisco public school students whose curriculum includes the study of ancient Egypt.

And seeing ancient Egypt up close and personal is a lot more exciting than opening a book, which is why museum officials expect close to 25,000 students to visit the exhibit this fall, when the discount tickets are offered.

The tickets are courtesy of program underwriter Wells Fargo Bank, which, in this era of corporate branding, is sponsoring “Tut School Mondays.” That’s one way to make sure the kids are not forced to stand in long lines, as their parents did when the Boy King made his first appearance in San Francisco 30 years ago.

San Francisco Examiner

The Los Altos main library has scheduled three lectures describing different aspects of the “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibition currently showing at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

• Mina Shea will present an overview of the exhibition 7:30 p.m. July 8. She will include information on 80 objects from the royal family and court.

• Julia Geist will discuss “Discovering Ancient Egypt: Tombs, Temples and Pharaohs” 7:30 p.m. July 15.

• Kay Payne will speak on “Women Yesterday: Egypt, Greece and Rome” 7:30 p.m. July 22.

All lectures take place in the Program Room of the main library, 13. S. San Antonio Road. For more information, call 948-7683.

losaltosonline.com

Meanwhile, the 25  foot tall statue of Anubis that has been traveling with the Tut show across Europe and the US has arrived in San Francisco and placed at Pier 39.

The cafe in the de Young Museum will feature a menu of Egyptian culinary treasures during the Tut exhibit, thanks to McCall Associates, the catering company founded by Kentfield resident Dan McCall in 1980.

For the Tut exhibit, look for a pyramid of greens, a Red Sea fish stew, chicken tagine, lamb and beef kefta and toasted lentil soup on the menu.

The de Young Cafe at 50 Tea Garden Drive in San Francisco will extend its hours during part of the Tut exhibit, from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Sundays from June 27 to Sept. 30; it returns to its regular hours, 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays from Oct. 1 to March 28.

Marin Independent Journal

Though the traveling exhibit “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” stills draws crowds and excitement wherever it goes, Tut and intriguing mythology behind him just doesn’t generate the same frenzy as he used to.

Back in 1979, Tutmania was akin to Beatlemania. That’s when the “Tutafacts,” 55 items from King Tutankhamun’s tomb, toured America with the blessings of the Egyptian authorities. People were ready — teased by pictures in countless books, Steve Martin’s novelty song tribute to the Pharaoh, and tasteful and tasteless souvenirs (including a T-shirt emblazoned with “Keep your hands off my tuts”) — and by the time it was over, more than 8 million people across the country viewed the exhibition.

There is less Tut buzz today for the return of the exhibit, which opens Saturday in San Francisco’s de Young Museum, where it played to crazed crowds and long lines three decades ago.

Excerpted from an article by Pat Craig for Inside Bay Area

Every piece in the show is at least 3,300 years old. Many of them never traveled outside of Egypt before this tour. The famous gold mask of Tutankhamun, a centerpiece of the ‘79 show, is not included this time around. Among the reasons it doesn’t travel anymore are high insurance rates.

The Tut “Golden Age” exhibit, a joint venture of National Geographic, Arts and Exhibitions International and AEG Exhibitions, in cooperation with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, premiered in Los Angeles in 2005. It went on to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Chicago, Philadelphia and London. The show opened over the weekend in Dallas, where it will remain until moving to San Francisco.

Ticket prices and policies for the San Francisco run have not been established. Full-price weekend tickets for the Tut show at the Dallas Museum of Art are $32.50, which includes a $10 museum admission charge.

SF Gate

The M.H. de Young Museum (commonly called de Young Museum) is a fine arts museum located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It is named for early San Francisco newspaperman M. H. de Young.

The museum opened in 1895 as an outgrowth of the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 (a fair modeled on the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of the previous year). The building was originally decorated with cast-concrete ornaments on the façade. The ornaments were removed in 1949 as they began to fall and had become a hazard. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake severely damaged the building.

Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and engineers Arup designed the newly rebuilt structure, which reopened on October 15, 2005. The current building is clad with perforated copper plates, which will change colors through exposure to the elements. A 144 ft. (44 m) observation tower allows visitors to see much of Golden Gate Park’s Music Concourse and rises above the Park’s treetops providing a view of the Golden Gate and Marin Headlands.

The de Young Museum was the last of seven U.S. museums to host The Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibit in the late 1970s.