Attribution: Informatique Dublin Ireland Key Dates The Museum of Science and Art, Dublin was founded on 14 August 1877. It became The National Museum of Ireland in 1921. The Kildare Street building, which houses the museum’s archaeology collection, was opened in 1890. Key People The current Director of the National Museum is Dr Pat Wallace. The Kildare Street building was designed by Thomas Newenham Deane and his son Thomas Manly Deane. The National Museum of Ireland is Ireland’s state museum. It holds a large collection of artefacts, divided under the areas of archaeology, decorative arts and history, country life and…
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Virtual DressUp You have made it to King Tut Virtual? Then now it is time to experiment with customising your avatar. In King Tut Virtual, we give you many options to choose from. You can wander around in casual clothes, or decide to really play the part as an adventurer kitted out with accessories, or an Egyptian goddess from the Amarna era. In this guide to virtual fashion, I will focus on some of the glamorous ancient Egyptian dresses and jewellery. These dresses and jewellery were designed by Avagardner Kungler, a very well known virtual fashion designer in the metaverse.…
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Penn Museums world-renowned Mesopotamian Collection from Ur is the centrepiece of a new long-term exhibition exploring Iraqs Ancient Cultural Heritage that opens October 25th.The exhibition will contain field notes of previous expeditions to the region, photographs, archival documents as well as more than 220 extraordinary ancient artefacts unearthed at the excavation. Famous artefacts such as the Ram-Caught-in-the-Thicket, the Great Lyre with a gold and lapis lazuli bull’s head, and Queen Puabi’s jewelry, as well as her headdress and other treasures, will be on display at ‘Iraq’s Ancient Past: Rediscovering Ur’s Royal Cemetery‘. In 1922 – the same year that Howard…
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Glasgow Scotland Key Dates 1900 BC This mirror with papyrus shaped handle hails from the Middle Kingdom period 2055-1650 BCE and was given to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum by the Egyptian Research Students Association (Glasgow Branch) in 1923 Key People The mistress of any royal household in the Middle Kingdom would have owned a mirror such as this. The Middle Kingdom spanned the 11th to 14th Dynasties and took in the reign of Pharaohs such as Wanka Intef II, Mentuhotep II, III and IV, Senusret I, II, III and Amenemhat I, II and III. In the Middle Kingdom the typical hand mirror consisted…
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Although it seems that museums no longer have any kind of dress code these days, a young woman recently fell foul of the requirement to at least be wearing, like, something. A story in the UK’s Guardian newspaper tells the tale of woe of Kathleen “KC” Neill, who was arrested and charged with public lewdness for posing nude for photographer Zach Hyman in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Hyman is making a collection of photographs of nudity in New York’s public spaces (check out images of gob-smacked commuters gazing at gorgeous naked models on the New York subway, captured…
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It was hardly bling worthy of an East Coast rapper, but stashes of symbolic jewellery found recently in the desert of Morocco dating back 82,000 years are being hailed as vital discoveries in the scientific quest to establish the earliest juncture between human culture and cognition. Unearthed at four different spots, the items comprise 25 tiny marine shell beads, drilled with holes and showing evidence of pigment and frequent wear. They were found as part of the European Science Foundation‘s EUROCORES programme: Origin of Man, Language and Languages. So early humans had a little bit of fashion sense whats the…
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It seems that Michael Jackson wasnt the only person to put himself through extensive cosmetic surgery in order to make himself look like a bust of an ancient Egyptian. Nileen Namita, a 49-year-old artist from Brighton, has undergone no less than 51 cosmetic operations, spending over 200,000 pounds in the process, in order to sculpt herself into the living image of Queen Nefertiti. Namita says, in her interview with the Daily Mail: Throughout my childhood and teen years I had constant vivid dreams of this ancient queen. They were visions of incredible intensity – I could see where she lived,…
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One of Torontos most unique cultural getaways is a place dedicated to one small, but important, facet of human culture shoes. The Bata Shoe Museum, as its name suggests, is a museum dedicated to the history of shoes. It shows shoes ranging from 4,500 years ago to the modern day. Youcan find shoes worn by Anasazi, the ancient Egyptians and, yes, even Pamela Anderson all in the same building. Shoes in the ancient world are rare archaeological finds.An archaeologist can excavate a decent sized city and not find a single pair. As such the bulk of the museums collection postdates…
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A blog by Bija Knowles got me thinking about travel to ancient destinations. In particular, Bija talks about Libya and its move towards promoting itself more as a tourist destination. Libya has long been one of the Holy Grails of travel writing because it’s been so difficult to get into (and to get around) it independently until now. This story by Jim Keeble has more on how the country is finally opening up to tourism. It’s the same in countries along the old Silk Road routes, which are more tourist-friendly than ever. This encourages more people to discover the historic…
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Resins from pine and cashew trees, and Egyptian moringa oil: these are the essential ingredients of a rich woman’s beauty routine in Italy before the dawn of the Roman empire. The solid, yellow cream was found in an Egyptian alabaster vase belonging to an aristocratic Etruscan lady and is thought to be more than 2,000 years old. The results of a scientific analysis have just been published in July’s edition of Journal of Archaeological Science. While a concoction of these oils may not sound particularly attractive to modern women (let’s face it, the oily unction sounds like a sure pore-blocking…