Image via Wikipedia

In the tomb of King Tutankhamen (KV 62), the painted walls are covered with dark brown spots that mar almost every surface.

Despite almost a century of scientific investigation, the precise identity of these spots remains a mystery, but Harvard microbiologist Ralph Mitchell thinks that the young pharaoh was buried in an unusual hurry, before the walls of the tomb were even dry. That moisture, along with the food, the mummy, and the incense in the tomb, would have provided a bountiful environment for microbial growth, he says, until the tomb eventually dried out.

Mitchell’s research team has been culturing living specimens swabbed from the walls of the tomb as well as conducting DNA sequence analyses.

Meanwhile, chemists at the Getty Conservation Institute have been analyzing the brown marks, which have seeped into the paint and the plaster, at the molecular level.

So far, the chemists have identified melanins, which are characteristic byproducts of fungal (and sometimes bacterial) metabolism, but no living organisms have yet been matched to the spots.

Analysis of photographs taken when the tomb was first opened in 1922 shows that the brown spots have not changed in the past 89 years. That means the microbes that caused the spots are ‘not active’, in other words, dead.

Science Daily

The newly created production unit is an implementation of the new antiquities law which establishes the intellectual property rights and trade mark of the MSAA production of replicas. According to the law, the MSAA is the only foundation with permission to produce exact replicas on a 1:1 scale.

The production unit employs 40 skilled artists and painters.

Ahram Online

Zahi Hawass announced the return of four items that had gone missing from the Egyptian museum during Egypt’s January Revolution. Among the returned objects was the gilded wooden statue of the boy-king Tutankhamun, standing in a boat throwing a harpoon.

Salah Abdel Salam, a public relations person at the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs (MSAA), came upon the objects during his daily trip to work on the Metro. He related that he accidently found an unidentified black bag placed on a chair in the Shubra Metro station. Doubtful that the bag was concealing an explosive, Salah opened it and found the Tutankhamun statue.

The statue had suffered slight damage with a small part of the crown missing in addition to pieces of the legs. The boat remains in the museum, while the figure of the king is undergoing restoration.

The second object is one of the 10 missing ushabtis of Yuya and Thuya.

Another of the returned objects is a gilded bronze and wooden trumpet of Tutankhamun. It was received in excellent condition and will similarly be put on display straight away.

The last of the returned pieces was a part of Tutankhamun’s fan. One face is in good condition while the other has been broken into 11 pieces. However, part of the royal fan remains missing.

Zahi Hawass stated that now, following the return of these objects, the number of missing pieces from the museum has reached 33 objects out of 54.

Following restoration, an exhibition of the reinstated objects will be put on display at the Egyptian Museum, in an attempt to celebrate the World Heritage Day on 18 April.

Ahram Online

Luxor Times

The conservation lab team has divided the objects affected by the disturbances in the Museum two weeks ago into several groups depending on their nature and damage sustained. The first group contains pieces that are all in good condition and do not need any restoration work. Most, if not all, of these objects date to the Late Period. The second group contains objects that need minor restoration work. Some of the pieces in this group include statues of gods and goddess in good condition, and a faience vase with one piece broken off; this vase has already been repaired. The third group includes the pieces of the broken statue of Tutankhamun standing on a panther. This beautiful statue of gilded wood displays the standing king wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt, holding a flail in his right hand, and a staff in his left. The statue seems to have been used to smash other showcases, and unfortunately the left arm, holding the staff, has been broken off. The panther is broken at the legs, and its tail and right ear have also been broken. Much of the gilding from the statue has also been broken off. I am happy to say, despite the extent of the damage, that this can be restored in a few days time. The fourth group contains the damaged mummy bands of Thuya. Thuya and her husband Yuya were the parents of Queen Tiye, and the great-grandparents of Tutankhamun. Thuya’s mummy bands are gilded cartonnage, and thankfully, only one section was damaged. The upper part of one god was broken off the open work of the bands, but luckily no other damage was sustained. This object can be restored very quickly. The fifth group of objects includes statues and shabtis belonging to Yuya and Thuya and some dating to the Late Period. All of these objects are currently undergoing restoration. The final group includes the pieces belonging to a wooden boat model and pieces from the model troop of Nubian archers, both dating to the Middle Kingdom. These objects will also be able to undergo a full restoration.

drhawass.com

The staff of the database department at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo have given me their report on the inventory of objects at the museum following the break in. Sadly, they have discovered objects are missing from the museum. The objects missing are as follows:

1.     Gilded wood statue of Tutankhamun being carried by a goddess

2.     Gilded wood statue of Tutankhamun harpooning. Only the torso and upper limbs of the king are missing

3.     Limestone statue of Akhenaten holding an offering table

4.     Statue of Nefertiti making offerings

5.     Sandstone head of an Amarna princess

6.     Stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna

7.     Wooden shabti statuettes from Yuya (11 pieces)

8.     Heart Scarab of Yuya

drhawass.com

“Tutankhamun’s tomb will not be closed in the near future. It is a long-term plan that has not been decided upon yet,” Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.

Many reports in the past two weeks announced the closure of this tourist magnet by the end of this year.

The long-term plan involves a $10 million project called the “Valley of the Replicas.”

Visitors will be directed to exact reproductions of the original tombs. The first three replicas will be the tombs of Tutankhamun, and the already closed burial sites of Seti I and Queen Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens.

The three original tombs will remain open to tourists willing to pay a very hefty fee, perhaps as high as $8,500 per visit.

msnbc.com

Tourists to Egypt will soon be able to visit the tomb of Tutankhamun without setting foot in the Valley of the Kings. A €500,000 life-size facsimile of the Boy King’s tomb and sarcophagus are to be installed in the revamped Suzanne Mubarak Children’s Museum in Cairo (slated to open early this year). The copy, created using the latest scanning technology, will eventually join replicas of the tomb of Tuthmosis III and a room from Nefertari’s tomb in a visitor’s center planned for 2012 near British archaeologist Howard Carter’s home at the entrance of the Valley of the Kings.

Included in the facsimile will be a lost “Isis” fragment known only from a photograph taken by Harry Burton shortly after Carter’s discovery of the tomb in 1922. The 1.8m x 1.4m fragment is from the southeast corner of the Throne Room. The photograph, now at Oxford’s Griffith Institute, shows that Carter had carefully removed the fragment and placed it in a wooden box filled with bran.

The Art Newspaper

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is voluntarily returning 19 small artifacts to Egypt that had been in its collection for decades and that curators recently determined came from Tutankhamen’s tomb.

Among the more significant are a tiny bronze dog, less than three-quarters of an inch tall, and a small lapis lazuli  sphinx from a bracelet. The objects will be on display until January as part of the Tutankhamen exhibition in Times Square. After that, they are to be exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum for six months and then sent to Egypt to be shown at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza when it opens in 2012.

The New York Times

drhawass.com

Art Museum Journal has a very good article on this topic.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition will travel to Melbourne, Australia at the beginning of April 2011, the first time that the treasures of the golden king will be displayed in this country. The exhibition contains 140 objects belonging to King Tut and his family, fifty of which were found by Howard Carter during his excavation of the boy king’s tomb.

The Melbourne exhibition will contain some never before seen objects, including a statue of King Akhenaten. This statue is being added as a result of DNA analysis, which proved that Akehnaten was the father of Tutankhamun, and the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.

Some of the unique artifacts that visitors will see include: a mannequin statue of the boy king, which would have been used in antiquity to hang ceremonial robes and jewelry; a beautiful golden dagger; a small coffinette used to house one of King Tutankhamun’s internal organs; and other statues of the king.

drhawass.com

Made of two beaten and burnished sheets of gold, Tutankhamun’s somewhat idealized likeness weighs 10.23 kg (22.5 pounds).

The pharaoh’s mask portrays Tutankhamun wearing the royal nemes headdress, its stripes of opaque blue glass imitating precious lapis lazuli. The vulture Nekhbet and cobra Wadjet, divine symbols of dominion over Upper and Lower Egypt, sit prominently upon his brow. These protective ornaments of solid gold are outfitted in blue faience, colored glass, carnelian, lapis lazuli and translucent quartz. Nekhbet’s eyes are missing. The back of the headcloth terminates in a bound queue or pigtail. Beneath the nemes is a broad collar composed of 12 rows of lapis lazuli, quartz and green feldspar segments. A gold profile image of the falcon-headed god Horus, encrusted with obsidian and colored glass, decorates each end.

Tutankhamun’s resplendent mask appears to be a faithful portrait of the youthful king. Its narrow lifelike eyes of black obsidian and white quartz, fleshy lips, nose and chin are comparable to his mummy’s facial features. The eyes’ lids and brows are made of lapis lazuli. Their distinctive kohl outlines, also of the same stone, simulate make-up used to shield against Egypt’s intense sunlight. The earlobes are pierced for jewelry, although gold foil covered them when the antiquity was discovered. A removable and pleated false beard, emblematic of the ruler’s holy status, is inlaid with faded gray-blue faience.

From an article by Stan Parchin for Art Museum Journal

Recording the tomb of Tutankhamun from factum-arte on Vimeo.

The high resolution recording and production of an exact facsimile of the Tomb of Tutankhamun is part of a major initiative by the Supreme Council of Antiquities to preserve the tombs in the Valley of the Kings while making important tombs that are either closed or in need of closure accessible to the public and to scholars.

The project has been launched by Dr Zahi Hawass in collaboration with the University of Basel, The Friends of the Royal tombs of Egypt, the Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation and Factum Arte.

All the recording of the tomb of Tutankhamun has now been completed. Work on the processing of the data is now underway and work on the facsimile of the burial chamber and sarcophagus of Tutankhamun will be completed in time for the opening of the Susanne Mubarak Children’s Museum in January 2010.

Dr Zahi Hawass has identified a site near Carter House at the entrance to the Valley of the Kings to install the facsimiles and a full feasibility study has been commissioned. It is estimated that over 500,000 visitors a year will visit the site and that the paying visitors to the facsimiles will provide revenue that can be used to ensure the long term preservation of the Theban Necropolis.

FACTUM ARTE