Medinet Habu is a major archaeological site situated at the foot of the Theban Hills across the River Nile from the modern city of Luxor (ancient Thebes). It's become synonymous with the massive Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, although it does also feature a number of other important ruins.
The 150 metre-long Mortaury Temple of Ramesses III - which is well preserved, and surrounded by a large mudbrick enclosure - features some 7,000 square metres of decorated wall space. Best known and most important among the inscribed reliefs are those depicting the advent and defeat of the Sea Peoples during the reign of Ramesses III.
Another, much smaller, major structure at Medinet Habu is the Temple of Amun, built by the successive pharaohs Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. It's situated just to the left of the entrance of the mortuary temple, and has been modified multiple times over the centuries right up until the Greco-Roman period.
To the north of the mortuary temple are the badly-preserved remains of the Temple of Ay and Horemheb - the final two pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. Evidence suggests that King Tut - to whom Ay served as royal vizier - began to have a mortuary temple for himself built at Medinet Habu - two large statues of the boy king have been found there.
One of the most perplexing mysteries that Egyptologists and Aegean experts are tackling is that of the frescoes of Tell el-Dab'a, also known as Avaris.
This site was used as the capital of the Hyksos, at a time when they ruled much of Egypt, from 1640 – 1530 BC. It is on the Nile Delta and would have provided access to the Sinai, Levant and southern Egypt.
The site appears to have been abandoned for a time after the Hyksos were driven out. However, by the end of the 18th dynasty (when the Egyptians were back in control of their land), the site was in use and sported with three – yes three – large palaces. They were ringed by an enclosure wall. The whole complex was about 5.5 hectares in size.
%QUOTENow here’s the mystery –
Two of those palaces were decorated, for a very short period of time, with Minoan frescoes. These include drawings of bull-leaping scenes – which are well known from the Palace of Knossos in Crete.
Quarries, often ignored, were a crucial part of Egypt. It was from these sites that the precious raw materials and minerals used in the construction of decorative monuments such as sculptures and obelisks was hewn thousands of years ago. Among the most prolific were the Quarries of Aswan, which yielded the red granite of Cleopatra’s Needles and many of the quality stones used in the construction of burial chambers, sarcophagi and columns in the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure at Giza.
Highlighted Quote:
“Such heartbreaking failures must sometimes have driven the old engineers to the verge of despair before a perfect monument could be presented by the king to his god.” -- Reginald Engelbach
The Lateran Obelisk is a great Egyptian granite monolith, which currently stands outside the Lateran Palace in Rome, in the centre of the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano. It is the the tallest surviving ancient Egyptian obelisk anywhere in the world today, raising over 32 metres skyward (42 metres if you count its base). It weighs an estimated 455 tons.
It was originally commissioned by Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III in the 15th century BC - perhaps as a sister-monument to the Unfinished Obelisk - and was probably carved from one of the Quarries of Aswan. The carving was completed and the obelisk erected - at the Temple of Karnak - by Thutmose III's grandson Thutmose IV. For hundreds of years it represented the only single obelisk at the site.
Centuries later, the obelisk was plundered by the Romans, and removed to Rome in the 4th century AD, where it was placed in the central reservation of the Circo Massimo - the city's grand arena at the time. Some years later, it was felled - presumably by an earthquake - a left to ruin. In the 16th century, the monument was relocated - after a search ordered by Pope Sixtus V - broken into three sections and buried beneath the former Circo Massimo. Pope Sixtus had it raised on a new plinth at its current site in Rome on 3rd August 1588, with a Christian cross placed upon the top.
The inscribed sandstone blocks from a wall at the Temple of Amun, Karnak, give a list of triumphs and booty brought back for the king during the reign of Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC).
The inscriptions reads: “Account of booty in this town and among the troops of this miserable prince of the town of Tunip:
Prince of this town: 1
Soldiers: 3029
Silver: 100 dében (= 9 kg)
Gold: 100 dében (= 9 kg)
Lapis lazuli, turquoise and bronze vessels.”
Submitted by Bija Knowles on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 10:14
Everyone makes them (some of us more compulsively than others): scribbled on post-it notes, or kept mentally in our imaginations – we all make lists. And we're not the only ones either; lists have been around for a long time – possibly since the first writing systems and certainly since Sumerian scribes began to keep accounts in the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia. So what is it about the beauty of a list – its numerical order, hierarchy, completeness – that makes them such a part of how we like to categorise, order and understand the world?
Submitted by Sean Williams on Fri, 10/02/2009 - 20:53
As a relative photography muggle myself, I'm hardly qualified to comment on the incredible technical wizardry employed by Heritage Key's favourite snapper Sandro Vannini. But I do have a pair of eyes, and an acute interest in the ancient world - so I can at least extoll the visual virtues of his latest work documenting amazing artwork in the lost tombs of Thebes. Equally, I can understand the wrench it must have been to work inside the cramped rooms, which weren't even made to be revisited by humans - let alone a camera crew and equipment.
Thutmose III was the sixth Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt.
He reigned with his step mother and aunt Hatshepsut, as co-regent for the first 22 years of his reign. After her death, he became pharaoh in his own right and went on to create the largest empire Egypt had ever seen. He ran 17 campaigns, capturing large swathes of land and titles. His military campaigns were as successful and ambitious as his architectural campaign, which saw magnificent building programmes across the empire.
During the last two years of his reign, he became co-regent for a second time, this time with his son Amenhotep II.
Thutmose III ruled Egypt for nearly fifty-four years, from 1479 to March 11, 1425 BC. He was buried in the Valley of the Kings.
One of the most perplexing mysteries that Egyptologists and Aegean experts are tackling is that of the frescoes of 
