There have been many great women in the times and study of Ancient Egypt – Hatshepsut and Nefertiti are two great examples. Yet in the era of discovery; the time in which great explorers pioneered the excavation of Egypt’s greatest treasures, one woman sticks out louder than Liberace in a dole queue. Cue Amelia Edwards, a Victorian writer and adventurer who bucked the conservative traditions of her time to help found one of London‘s greatest museums. We meet Petrie Museum curator Stephen Quirke at 10am on a bleak British morning, drizzling rain just about getting our umbrellas out in the…
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The Lewis Hnefataflmen: doesnt quite have the same ring to it as the Lewis Chessmen, does it? But if what a new paper by a trio of heritage experts is saying is true, the famous 900-year-old set of ivory-carved pieces discovered on a Scottish island in 1831 may not be from a chess set at all, but rather an ancient Viking board game. The study also questions the popular notion of how the hoard came to end up on Lewis, and calls for new excavations at a site near to where they were reportedly found. Hnefatafl, which was popular in…
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A video featuring Dr Farouk Gomaa was recently featured on Heritage Key as he explains his progress on archaeological excavations being carried out in el-Assasif, Thebes at the site of TT34 – the Tomb of Montuemhat. Dr Farouk Gomaa explains that the search in the tomb continues for the burial chamber of the diplomat Montuemhat, which has yet to be located. The mysteries ofThebes are uncovered in a new book featuring photography from the renown Egyptology photographer Sandro Vannini in the publication “The Lost Tombs of Thebes:Life in Paradise” authored by Dr Zahi Hawass. The excavations at TT34 were photographed…
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After 3,000 years its appears all but certain that the husband of the mummy of Djedmaatesankh has been found. We know from her coffin that his name is Paankhntof. She was a musician at the temple of Amun-Re in Thebes – he was a doorkeeper at the same temple (actually something of an important position). At the weekend symposium, researchers presented evidence that the mummy of her husband is now located at the Art Institute of Chicago. Heritage Key broke the story a week ago here. The research was presented by Gayle Gibson of the Royal Ontario Museum and Stephanie…
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The mummy of a young Nazca priestess has been discovered in the ancient city of Cahuachi, Peru. Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Orefici, director of the Nazca Project, made the startling find in a mini-temple between the mysterious metropolis’ Great and Orange Pyramids. The 300-450 AD woman had been buried beneath ropes and reeds, and covered in finely-woven fabrics with killer whale pattern. Several obsidian arrow heads had also been worked into the weave. The young woman’s face had been painted, and an extra vertebra added to her back. Her arms were also deformed – possibly as a result of having had…
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An Italian duo have revealed what they claim is the ‘real’ face of Queen Nefertiti. Ethnologist Franco Crevatin, from the University of Trieste, and cosmetics expert Stefano Anselmo, started with a recent CAT scan of the famous queen’s bust, held in Berlin’s newly-reopened Neues Museum. The scan of ‘Nonofret‘ as she’s known in Germany, appeared to show a second face, made of stone, buried beneath the stucco top layer the world has come to adore. Using computer imaging, Crevatin and Anselmo have made what they feel is a faithful reproduction of the hidden face. And though differences are subtle –…
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Next Saturday Venice will be holding its own funeral. As far as publicity stunts go, it’s quite an unequivocal message that the city is on the brink. Only this time the threat is not from the rising tides and the island city’s subsiding foundations; the danger comes in the form of the rapidly shrinking population it seems that the Venetians are migrating to the mainland faster than you can say ‘just one cornetto’. According to one group of locals members of the online community venessia.com – the population has now fallen below the threshold of 60,000 people (down from about…
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The oldest museum in the world, opens its doors to the public after a mammoth five-year revamp tomorrow. And the curators of Oxford’s famous Ashmolean will be hoping a new 61million building will help visitors enjoy and understand an envious collection of artefacts from the cradle of civilisation onwards. The collection certainly has an esteemed pedigree, having been added to by archaeological greats like Arthur Evans, discoverer of the Palace of Knossos in Crete. So on the eve of one of its biggest days, what are the Ashmolean’s best objects? 1. The Jericho Skull This skull, from 7,000 BC Jericho…
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Athree day Egyptian symposium starts, in Toronto,in a matter of hours. The Scholars’ Symposium (or Scholars’ Colloquium) is curated by The Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities (SSEA), and brings together a stella lineup of speakers. Todays session will be at the Royal Ontario Museum, and tommorows will focus on Egypt and the Bible and willbe held on the University of Toronto campus. The temperature is hovering at around 0 degrees celcius – not exactly what you would find at Giza! As I talked about in previous posts an update on research in the Sinai desert and at the…
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The Nubians get short shrift when it comes to recognition of significant ancient cultures. A new exhibition at the Clay Center in West Virginia, US, hopes to rectify that. It is cleverly entitled: Lost Kingdoms of the Nile, but the artefacts are all Nubian, not Egyptian. (The subtitle is: Nubian Treasures from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.) The exhibition runs from Sept. 12, 2009 to April 11, 2010. Part of the problem for the Nubians, of course, is the rock-star quality of their neighbors, the Ancient Egyptians, who persistently dominate the imaginative landscape when it comes to ancient things.…