• owenjarus

    Report: Jordan asks Canada to seize the Dead Sea Scrolls

    The Globe and Mails Patrick Martin (the papers former Middle East Correspondent), is reporting that Jordan is asking the Canadian government to seize the Dead Sea Scrolls on display in Toronto Canada. The Royal Ontario Museumis currently displaying seven of them as part of an exhibit on the scrolls.Thelast day of the exhibit isJanuary 3. Summoning the Canadian charg d’affaires in Amman two weeks ago, Jordan cited the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which both Jordan and Canada are signatories, in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls,…

  • veigapaula

    King Tut’s Treasures: Perfumes, Alabaster Vessels and Wine for the Afterlife

    In this Heritage Key video, Dr. Janice Kamrin, head of the EgyptianMuseum Database Project, shows and discusses some of the lifestyle objects found in Tutankhamuns tomb by Carter in 1922, and now housed in The Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Board games, and containers for perfumes, cosmetics and unguents, are amongst the objects shown in this video that give an insight into the livestyles of the rich and famous ancient Egyptians. You can catch up on the previous videos in this series when Dr Kamrin looks at Animal iconography (Watch the video), The Canopic Shrine, Chest and Jars (Watch the video)…

  • malcolmj

    Life of Adventure – Opening one of the Sarcophagi discovered at Gisr el-Muder, Saqqara

    Nothing keeps Dr Zahi Hawass awake at night quite like the prospect of being the first person to lay eyes on a millennia-dead Egyptian mummy. I could not sleep with thinking about it all the time, he reveals at the start of Heritage Keys latest fantastic video by Nico Piazza, documenting the opening of an intact tomb at Saqqara. Thinking about the moment that I will come down, he continues, about 11 metres, and begin to open a sealed sarcophagus that no one ever touched since 2,600 years ago. The camera pans across creepy piles of heavily decayed human bones…

  • owenjarus

    King Tut Exhibition is Toronto Blockbuster

    The first visitor numbers are in for the number of people visiting the King Tut exhibition. The Art Gallery of Ontario, which is hosting King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, announced that more than 100,000 tickets have been sold to date That works out to at least $3.2 million in sales (Canadian currency). The exhibit has only been open for one month. Now I should caution that tickets have been available for three months (you could buy them in advance). I should also add that it doesnt appear as if Tutankhamun will top the 750,000 visitors it…

  • sean-williams

    Discovering Tut – Tutankhamun’s Tomb, The ‘House of Gold’

    “In most Egyptian tombs you’ve either got the wall paintings or the coffin.” Fiona, 8th Countess of Carnarvon says, stressing the uniqueness of Tutankhamun’s tomb, the greatest discovery in history. Its treasures may be well documented, less so the incredible wall paintings that greeted Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon when they burst through in 1922 (Watch a special video on the discovery here). Lady Carnarvon, herself a two-time author on the Tutankhamun phenomenon withCarnarvon& Carter(click here to buy) and Egypt at Highclere: The Discovery of Tutankhamun(click here to buy), seems totally engrossed in the walls she and husband George Herbert,…

  • malcolmj

    Stonehenge Winter Solstice Turnout Reduced by Weather-related Traffic Chaos

    Most of you wont have relished venturing out from under the duvet at all on this snowy Tuesday morning, let alone doing it before the break of dawn. But around 600 intrepid souls were up before the birds today, and wrapped in the their woollens in time to trudge out into the middle of a frozen Wiltshire field for the rising of the sun shortly after 8am, and the celebration of the winter solstice at Stonehenge. Attendance at the event a chilled-out, smaller-scale alternative to the much headier summer solstice is usually a lot higher (2000 people turned out in…

  • malcolmj

    Treasures from KV62 – King Tut’s Funerary Figures

    The first two instalments of Nico Piazza and Sandro Vanninis four-part video series Tuts Treasures saw Dr Janice Kamrin introduce us to the boy kings canopic vessels (Watch the video) and the various fearsome representations of animal gods that guarded his embalmed body (Watch the video). Part three focuses on the many ritual figures found inside black resined wooden shrines in the treasury of Tutankhamuns lavish tomb in the Valley of the Kings. 34 ritual figures were located in total inside KV62, which was first opened and investigated by Howard Carter in 1922. Their function? Protection basically, and ritual use…

  • sean-williams

    Does Jesus-Era Jerusalem Leper Disprove Turin Shroud?

    The discovery of a ‘Jesus-Era’ man buried outside Jerusalem, Israel, has cast doubt on the famous Turin Shroud. The man, who is thought to have suffered from both tuberculosis and leprosy, was buried in a cave called the ‘Tomb of the Shroud’, part of the ‘Field of Blood’ (Akeldama), a 1st century AD cemetery in the Lower Hinnom Valley (Gehenna) near Jerusalem. The preservation of bodies in the region is extremely rare, thanks to high humidity levels underground. The man’s location in the Valley, beside high priest Annas (6-15 AD) – the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest who betrayed…

  • images

    Sandro Vannini’s Photography – Tomb of Seti I (KV17): The Burial Crypt

    Seti I is thought to have ruled over Egypt for between 11 to 15 years, overseeing the most vibrant artistic period in its dynastic history, and so it is fitting that his tomb was one of the most elaborate and beautifully decorated found in the Valley of the Kings. The well preserved tomb was found in 1817 by Giovanni Battista Belzoni, and is the longest discovered so far, stretching to at least 136 metres. Excavations still continue to this very day at the depth of the tomb as archaeologists seek to uncover the secrets of a mysterious tunnel starting at…

  • owenjarus

    Jordan’s Bronze Age Site Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun Surprises With Glyphs and Water System

    Chances are you have never heard of Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun, also known as Khirbet ez-Zeraqon. Its a 25 hectare fortified town in Northern Jordan that was occupied during a period known as the Early Bronze III (2700 BC -2300 BC). This time period was a high water mark for many great civilizations. The royal burials at Ur, the construction of the Pyramids at Giza and the rise of the twin cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in the Indus Valley all these things happened in this narrow stretch of time. Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun was excavated in the 1980s and 90s, and the analysis…