Blogs

The Advertising Standards Association (ASA) told Semmel Concerts to pull their TV spots promoting their King Tut replica event as it was too misleading and not clear enough that content was not the real items. The voiceover on the ad said: "Escape on a voyage into the fascinating world of ancient Egypt. Tutankhamun - his tomb and his treasures is not just an exhibition, it's an adventure. Visitors become explorers, discovering and solving the mystery of the long lost world of ancient Egypt". 

The ASA ruling advise Semmel to change the ad for future.

Mary Ann Craig visited the exhibition and appreciated that the replicas did a lot to tell the story and popularize the story of King Tut. 

From May 3rd until June 10th, the Ipswich Museum is hosting a free sneak preview of 2,000-year-old Iron Age gold coins once belonging to Boudicca's Iceni tribe. The 200 coins on display are part of the Wickham Market hoard, discovered in 2008.  

I have spent the majority of the last 6 years working between Egypt and London; during this time my archaeological career has changed track somewhat from working on heritage protection strategies in Luxor to assisting media production companies in producing documentaries set in the historical realm. The journey from archaeologist to televising producer has enabled me to travel both metaphorically and physically between the worlds of the media and archaeology while attempting to be part I hope of both, a sometimes difficult undertaking. Generally I spend most of the year, some eight or nine months in Egypt during the archaeological season which not coincidently also mirrors what has become a filming season for the major television networks such as National Geographic, The Discovery Channel and The History Channel. 

Four ancient Egyptian artefacts belonging to Tutankhamun, and missing from the Cairo Museum since the January Revolution have been returned, announced Dr. Zahi Hawass, Minister of State for Antiquities, in a statement to the press.

A month and a half after the Cairo Museum break-in, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has posted online a listing of sixty-three objects that were found to be missing following the looting. Amongst the missing Ancient Egyptian treasures are ritual statues and a fan belonging to King Tut, Yuya's shabtis, amulets, as well as amulets and jewellery.

Final List of Objects Missing from the Egyptian Museum, as released by the SCA, March 15th 2011:

On March 8th, International Woman's Day is celebrating its centenary, and the Petrie Museum is joining in by honouring Victorian writer Amelia Edwards, for without her, there may have never have been a 'Petrie Museum'.  

Amelia Edwards was a novelist and travel writer, as well as an Egyptologist. After visiting for the first time in Egypt 1873, she wrote a vivid account of her adventure in A Thousand Miles up the Nile. She was the driving force behind the establishment of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now the EES) in 1882 to promote the scientific exploration of Egypt and its monuments.

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About 5,300 years ago, a man travelling the Alps was hit by an arrow. Roughly 5,280 years later, two German tourists exploring the Italian-Austrian border discover the world's oldest and best preserved mummy.

Since, Ötzi has been examined by innumerable scientists and has received almost three million visitors.  

To celebrate the natural mummy's twentieth year as a global sensation,  the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano is dedicating a special exhibition to the Iceman.

The show's highlight – besides a peek at Ötzi's refrigerated corpse – is a new, naturalistic reconstruction of how Ötzi would have looked, based on anatomical 3D images of his skeleton. 

The source of Stonehenge's bluestones – a distinctive set of stones that form the inner circle and inner horseshoe of Stonehenge – has long been a subject of fascination and considerable controversy.  

In the early 1920s, one type of bluestone, the so-called ‘spotted dolerite’, was convincingly traced to the Mynydd Preseli area, in north Pembrokeshire.  However, the sources of the other bluestones - chiefly rhyolites (a type of rock) and the rare sandstones remained, unknown. 

Now geologists at Amgueddfa Cymru, the National Museum Wales, have further identified the sources of one of the rhyolite types.

The find also provides the opportunity for new thoughts on how the stones might have been transported to the Stonehenge area.

Egypt's Minister of Antiquities Affairs, Dr Zahi Hawass, announced today that the missing limestone statue of King Akhenaten, the likely father of Tutankhamun, has been returned to the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.  

To date, four objects from the preliminary list of missing artefacts have been found; the Heart Scarab of Yuya, a shabti of Yuya, the statue of the goddess Menkaret carrying Tutankhamun, and now the statue of Akhenaten as an offering bearer. 

An inventory check at the Cairo Museum, Egypt - two weeks after the protests at the capital lead to a break-in at the national museum - shows that not all of ancient Egyptian treasures are accounted for.

Amongst the missing antiquities - ranging from little shabtis to larger stone statues - are objects that were discovered in King Tut’s tomb.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, announced today that the staff of the database department at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo have given him their report on the inventory of objects at the museum following the January break in.

Sadly, he said, they have discovered objects are missing from the museum.