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Ancient
Egyptians Were Jokesters: Humor Alleviates the Hum-Drum
"A recent series of lectures on ancient Egyptian humor given by
a leading historian [Carol Andrews] reveals that people thousands
of years ago enjoyed bawdy jokes, political satire, parodies and
cartoon-like art."
Some
dogs re-creations of others?
"Ancient Egyptian tombs are adorned with drawings and sculptures of
sleek, slender-necked canines with pointy ears and long snouts. Many dog
lovers have long thought that two breeds alive today -- theIbizan hound
and the Pharaoh hound -- were direct descendants of these regal companions
of the pharaohs. New research, however, concludes something very
different".
Dig
days: Dubai's Pharaonic flair
By Zahi Hawass
Romancing
the Stone
This month, the MFA unveils a blockbuster acquisition--an ancient Egyptian
sculpture that could be the single finest statue ever made. Its journey to
Boston is a story of startling discoveries, high-stakes deals, and the
shared obsession of two old friends.
Egypt
in Nubia and vice versa
An exhibition featuring photographs of the dismantling and re-erection of
the temples of Abu Simbel held in the EgyptianMuseum last month reminds
Alexandrins d'hier et d'aujourd'hui
Cette ville au multiple patrimoine et qui a connu le cosmopolitisme dès
l'Antiquité a fait l'objet d'un colloque à la Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
«Mon journal de fouilles est aussi
un journal de voyage »
Caroline Rocheleau, membre de la mission archéologique canadienne opérant
sur le site de la cité royale de Méroé en Haute-Nubie, au Soudan, évoque
les
liens entre les civilisations de la Nubie et de l'Ancienne Egypte.
Invented
in Egypt: A history of sport
Nevine El-Aref looks at how the Pharaohs invented sports -- and possibly
even football Zahi Hawass -- widely considered the world's most famous
archaeologist -- attests that a precursor of the game we know today as
football may have been invented in Ancient Egypt.
Dig days: A
healthy diet
By Zahi Hawass
As we continue to understand more about the lives of the Pyramid builders
through discoveries at Giza, both their tombs and settlements, an ever
more
remarkable picture emerges
«Ce
protocole a officialisé une coopération déjà existante»
Anna-Maria Donadoni, directrice du musée égyptien de Turin, évoque,
à l'occasion d'un jumelage avec le Musée du Caire, les principales
collections turinoises.
L'égyptologie
comme destin
Le père des archéologues
italiens, Fabrizio Sergio Donadoni, a consacré sa vie à l'égyptologie.
Portrait à l'occasion d'une visite en Egypte.
Living on the edge
From the last days of the Romans to less than two decades ago Siwa was
virtually closed to visitors. In the second of a two-part look at the
oasis, Jenny Jobbins finds it is not surprising that in the face of
recent development the oasis still retains many of its mysteries
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/687/her1.htm
Dig days:
The Pyramid builders II
By Zahi Hawass
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/687/her2.htm
Dig Days:
The Pyramid builders at Giza
By Zahi Hawass
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/684/he2.htm
Presentation of arms
The military glory of the Ancient Egyptians will soon be revealed at
Luxor Museum's new extension.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/684/he1.htm
Wandering amid the silence
Whether you are looking for a one-day getaway or a 16-day adventure,
there is no better place than Farafra
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/683/tr3.htm
What lies beneath the
paint
Should the scenes in the ancient noblemen's tombs in Beni Hassan be
viewed from more than one perspective?
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/682/heritage.htm
Cures for the Pharaoh
The Sakakini Palace in Cairo is currently undergoing restoration prior
to being turned into a medical museum.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/681/hr1.htm
From Coptic texts to
sacred bulls
The Serapeum was discovered by the renowned French Egyptologist Auguste
Mariette in 1852. He originally came to Egypt on behalf of the Louvre to
purchase ancient manuscripts from Coptic monasteries, and during visits
to Saqqara, Dahshur and Mit- Rahina he became interested in Ancient
Egypt...
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/679/heritage.htm
Sacred galleries under threat
Since 1986 one of the main tourist attractions at Saqqara has been
closed to the public. No tourists have been able to wander awestruck
through the splendid rock-hewn galleries flanked by tomb chambers each
with a huge sarcophagus that once held the remains of the sacred Apis
bulls...
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/679/hr1.htm
Promoting passion
By Zahi Hawass
Noele Switzer is an American who never studied Egyptology but has
devoted more than 40 years of her life to a study of Egypt and its
ancient history. She heads a company in Los Angeles that builds houses
for the poor. With little time to spare, she has nevertheless managed to
play an important role in promoting an awareness of Egypt's Pharaonic
heritage around the world...
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/679/hr3.htm
Dig Days. Dorthea: Om-Seti
By Zahi Hawass
As I wrote in my last column, meeting Mahmoud Saleh, the 12- year-old
boy, and hearing the incredible story of his life and his passion for
Egyptology reminded me of Om-Seti.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/677/he2.htm
Sleuthing in a royal tomb
The huge tomb of Amenhotep III -- one of the most prodigious builders of
ancient times -- is at long last receiving the attention it deserves.
Nevine El-Aref looks into the second stage of its restoration
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/676/he1.htm
Weaving circles
Myths not only evolve, they are sometimes invented. Jill Kamil observes
a modern ritual at Karnak
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/676/he2.htm
From funerary masks to
portraits
These were removed from their mummy wrappings The so-called Fayoum
portraits, more than 1,000 of them, are the largest body of ancient
portable paintings to have survived...
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/675/he2.htm
Dig days:
A born archeologist
By Zahi Hawass
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/675/he3.htm
Head of Egypt's antiquities council explains how to preserve ancient
treasures
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/features/30_01_04_c.asp
The Mummy's Tomb, Unwrapped
Because starting tomorrow, and for only six weeks, the restored and
reconfigured Egyptian tombs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art will be
unveiled without the protective glass that has obscured their 4,000-
year-old limestone carvings for the last nine decades. Scary icons to
generations of city schoolchildren, the two tombs - or "toons,'' as
they were lovingly misdescribed in "The Catcher in the Rye'' by J.
D. Salinger - have been sheathed in thick glass panels since shortly
after they were first opened to the public in 1910 and 1916. The huge
old glass sheets - too heavy to be cleaned, covered with scratches,
tinged green and prone to annoying reflections - "distorted the
colors in the reliefs,'' said Dorothea Arnold, the museum's curator of
Egyptian art, describing the carved, painted limestone images in the
offering chamber of the tomb of Perneb. "It came to such a point
that I was ashamed to come in here,'' she said, standing in the tomb on
a recent afternoon. New 11-foot-tall glass panels from Wernberg,
Germany, cannot be installed until mid-March. Thirteen of the panels
will protect the tomb of Perneb and 10 the newly repositioned tomb of
Raemkai. Hinged for cleaning access, the nonreflective new glass panels,
which are engineered to be "water white,'' reducing the greenish
hue, are three-fourths of an inch thick and made of three laminated
layers for strength. And so, this construction-schedule hiccup offers a
once-in-a-lifetime viewing opportunity. Quite literally, since few
people could be alive who saw the tomb reliefs before the protective
glass was first hoisted into place. The Perneb "is the most
complete tomb outside of Egypt,'' said Dr. Arnold, who organized the
multimillion-dollar reinstallation of the tombs and five galleries
around them. The painted carvings are very rare, she said, gloriously
depicting the rituals of libation and sustenance in the afterlife.
Describing the glassless limestone reliefs as unencumbered, Philippe de
Montebello, the museum's director, said that "we honestly believe
that people approach great things with a deferential attitude.'' Of
potential vandalism, he said, "We are frankly not concerned.'' But
the museum will not only trust but also verify. Visitors will be ushered
into the once-sacred offering rooms in groups of five, under the
supervision of a guard. And atmospheric monitors will signal alarms to
empty the tomb chambers if an increase in humidity from visitors
threatens the condition of the fragile limestone reliefs. In the
reconstruction, which has been under way for more than two years, five
of the 32 galleries and seven study rooms that constitute the Lila
Acheson Wallace Galleries of Egyptian Art, some 6,000 square feet of
displays housing 800 artifacts, have been reconfigured and reinstalled.
In addition, three of the 18-foot-tall original windows facing Fifth
Avenue, as well as ceiling beams of the 1902 building designed by the
architect Richard Morris Hunt, have been exposed, along with their
street views, for the first time in decades. The newly redesigned
galleries include two devoted to Predynastic and Early Dynastic art up
to 2,650 B.C., including four flint hand axes that have been dated to
100,000 to 300,000 years ago, the oldest in the collection. Two other
renovated galleries house the collection's most recent Egyptian works,
dating to Roman times, ended around A.D. 400. But the most striking new
feature of the galleries is the reconfiguration of the two tombs. That
of Perneb, a sacred royal official, is dated from 2380 to 2350 B.C.;
that of Raemkai, a royal prince, is dated to about 2450 B.C. These
relics will now serve as the Metropolitan's gateway to the Egyptian wing
in "a dramatic evocation of what it was like to enter the mystery
of the tombs,'' Mr. de Montebello said. Dr. Arnold said that the new
setting for the Perneb tomb, which originally took 10 to 15 years to
build, more closely represented its natural setting in Egypt. A new
rusticated wall of Egyptian limestone from a quarry in Helwan, Egypt,
has been built outside the tomb to restore the sense of intimacy
conveyed by the original closed courtyard, with its relief carvings of
Perneb. As for the Raemkai tomb, its limestone reliefs have been
reassembled in their original enclosed configuration, instead of being
"displayed on the walls looking like easel paintings,'' as Mr. de
Montebello put it. The old presentation of the Raemkai tomb, and even
the glass panels, were described by Mr. Salinger in "The Catcher in
the Rye": "You had to go down this very narrow sort of hall
with stones on the side that they'd taken right out of this Pharaoh's
tomb and all,'' he wrote in the voice of his 16-year-old protagonist,
Holden Caulfield, adding, "It was pretty spooky.'' In the novel, a
boy asks Holden for directions to the mummies "in them toons and
all,'' and Holden says: "Toons. That killed me. He meant tombs.''
Holden finds himself alone in the tomb of Perneb. "It was so nice
and peaceful,'' he says, but then he notices an obscenity written
"right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones.'' The
new limestone wall at the tomb of Perneb was carved with chisels, and it
matches the original walls in every respect, except for the light color
of the new stone. "Give the wall another 4,000 years,'' said Dr.
Arnold with a laugh, "and we'll have a good match.''
The New York Times
Dig days:
A scent of the Pharaohs
By Zahi Hawass
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/673/he2.htm
On (Héliopolis), première université de l'histoireOn (Héliopolis),
première université de l'histoire
Les Egyptiens étaient forcément dotés d'une culture universitaire et
universelle
http://www.algomhuria.net.eg/progres/4/1.asp
Mummy in a
sealed coffin
By Zahi Hawass
I arrived at the West Bank of Luxor after a long trip from Kharga Oasis.
I slept during the four-hour journey, dreaming that I was watching the
opening of the sealed coffin found by the Spanish mission.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/671/hr2.htm
Egyptian
reflects on career - and paradoxes of preserving
Nasry Iskander, after dedicating a lifetime to preserving the mummies in
the Egyptian Museum, boils his work down to one straightforward thought.
"It is much better to work with the dead," he said, sitting in
a squat room tucked away in the bowels of the grand neo-Classical
building. "They give you less trouble." In fact, Iskander
finds a certain paradox working with the shrunken, desiccated bodies of
the men and women who ruled Egypt about 3,500 years ago. While they are
among the biggest draws for tourists, they have traditionally been a
kind of tolerated stepchild in the field of Egyptology. Archaeologists
tend to be more interested in hieroglyphics say, or glittering funeral
masks, than in skin and bones. "That is very shortsighted, because
the mummy is the center of our civilization," he said.
"Everything you see was built for the mummies - the coffins, the
tombs, the pyramids, the temples."
Iskander,
61, reached the mandatory retirement age last year and left his official
job as head of research and conservation in the Department of
Antiquities. But he still serves as a consultant on several crucial
projects that involve both human and animal mummies. If human remains
barely interest most researchers, this is doubly true for animal
remains. The ancient Egyptians mummified everything from dogs to
crocodiles for one of four reasons. The animals were either symbols of a
god, temple offerings, household pets the deceased wanted along in the
afterlife, or food for the eternal journey. Iskander, an avuncular
figure sporting a rim of white hair, devoted much of the 1980's and
1990's to making sure that the royal mummies were preserved. That done,
he turned his attention over the past five years to the museum's rich
animal collection. (The word mummy comes from the ancient Greek word for
wax.)
He and a colleague, Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American
University in Cairo, shuttered the animal mummy room and began studying
more than 165 beasts. The room was quietly reopened last month with new
showcases. The hulking crocodiles are no longer casually tossed on top
of thecabinets gathering dust, for instance. But the museum
directors decided the whole display remained too cramped and are
planning a more glamorous official opening at a later date. Some of the
new displays reveal Iskander's impish sense of humor, like the label on
a set of ribs wrapped in linen as an afterlife snack. "Clearly
barbecued ribs have been popular for a long time," reads the typed
card.
Iskander dates his interest in mummies to 1943. He was born into an
illustrious clan of Coptic Christian scientists from Alexandria that
year, and his late Uncle Zaky made the breakthrough discovery on the
chemical processes that kept mummies preserved. Iskander obtained
degrees in physics and mathematics from Alexandria University in 1965,
but immediately entered the field of antiquities. He did not get his
first mummy until 1972, and the process of preserving that queen hooked
him for life. He just looked at her for two months, he said, afraid to
touch her and unsure where to start. The only advice his illustrious
uncle gave was to read a lot and to wear a mask - just in case a body
shut away for thousands of years emitted bacteria. The face and body of
the queen was covered with a disfiguring white powder. The scientist
soon discovered that a modern Beverly Hills plastic surgeon trying to
preserve the sagging looks of any Hollywood star with collagen has a
certain affinity with the mummifiers of old. To make the dead
queen look young and robust, the mummifiers injected her face with
animal fat. Over the centuries, the fat had reacted with the salt
used to dry out the body, producing a kind of detergent - hence the
white powder dusting the queen's skin.
When
Iskander started his career, the 27 or so royal mummies in the Egyptian
Museum were kept in ordinary display cases. Some had been encased in wax
in an effort to preserve them, others bombarded with gamma rays to
forestall any sudden blossoming of bacteria. The original mummification
process was designed to keep the bodies so dry that bacteria that would
normally eat the body could not survive. But after living in darkened
tombs with little oxygen for thousands of years, the dehydrated
nobles were suddenly exposed to bright lights, debilitating
pollution and the proximity of sweaty bodies of thousands of
tourists every year. Eternal life seemed doomed. So Iskander set to work
with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, designing special cases
that control theoxygen, temperature, pollution, motion and other
factors. The fruit of his labors was harvested in 1994, with the opening
of the first mummy room at the Egyptian Museum. A second room, housing
another 12 mummies, was supposed to follow in two years. But given the
bureaucratic wrangling required for any renovation work, it is only now
nearing completion. Having reached an age where death is no longer
unthinkable, Iskander says he wants to be mummified, too, but doubts it
will happen. "I spent most of my life working to preserve
others," he says. "Why not me?" http://www.iht.com/articles/124564.html
Artículos de Egiptología - Parte VI
Artículos de Egiptología - Parte V
Artículos de Egiptología - Parte IV
Artículos de Egiptología - Parte III
Artículos de Egiptología - Parte II
Artículos de Egiptología - Parte I
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