A pair of Italian brothers believe they have at last discovered the lost army of Persian King Cambyses II in the Egyptian desert, some 2,500 years after they are said to have been swallowed up by a vicious sandstorm. The 50,000-strong army was engulfed as it crossed the Great Sand Sea towards Siwa Oasis, to destroy the oracle at the Temple of Amun. Archaeologists have searched for the legendary lost men for centuries – yet Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni claim that hundreds of human bones and bronze weapons just outside the oasis are the remains of Cambyses’ fateful crew. Greek…
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Egypt threathening to severe ties with the Louvre museum led to five looted Pharaonic steles returning to Egypt and maybe even toTetiki’stomb of which they were illegally removed. But the directory general of the SCA, Dr. Zahi Hawass, is on a quest that he hopes will lead to thehigh-profile “icons of the Egyptian identity” returning to the Cairo Museum. What’s on the wishlist? First and foremore the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum and the Nefertiti Bust from the Neues. But also a statue of Hemiunu, the bust of Anchhaf, the mask of Ka-Nefer-Neferand the painted Zodiac blasted outof theceiling…
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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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Iran has taken a step closer to its goal of moving its capital away from Tehran to a new, as yet unbuilt location near the town of Qom. This seems like an extreme move but it’s one that has been repeated throughout history – as far back as the Egyptian dynasties of the Middle Kingdom, in ancient China and many times during the Roman empire. Sometimes there are practical reasons for capital-moving. In Iran’s case it claims that Tehran, a city of 12 million people, sits on 100 seismic fault lines and is therefore a major natural disaster waiting to…
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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.…
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As blogged by Sean yesterday, a precious hoard of Iron Age gold treasures worth an estimated 1 million has been discovered by a first-time metal detector enthusiast near Stirling. It was unveiled to the media at an event at the National Museum of Scotland this morning. The collection was described as the most important hoard of Iron Age gold found in Scotland to date. The Stirling Hoard: Gold Iron Age Torcs The artefacts four neck ornaments of European significance, dating from between the 1st and 3rd centuries BC were discovered by a local man, David Booth, on private land back…
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Archaeologists exploring the lost Maya city of El Mirador claim they’ve found the world’s biggest pyramid. The massive structure, called La Danta (The Tapir), may have its summit hidden beneath Guatemala’s jungle canopy. Yet its volume is reckoned to be larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt’s Giza Plateau. The city itself, dubbed the ‘Maya Cradle of Civilization‘, is the size of a modern metropolis; bigger than downtown Los Angeles. And experts believe there are thousands more pyramids yet to be found. Yet there is more to El Mirador, tucked in Guatemala’s northern wilderness just a…
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With the recent reopening of the Neues Museum on Berlin’s Museum Island, the argument over ownership of the Bust of Nefertiti has once again been stoked. The Germans have made the priceless, beautiful, 3,400-year-old sculpture of the famous Egyptian Queen one of the centerpiece attractions of the 200-million Neues. It seems to have only caused the Egyptians to become more resolute in their efforts to get her back. Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass stated recently that he would send a letter in October to Neues Museum directors containing irrefutable evidence in support of the…
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A lighter chapter to the ongoing issue of repatriating Egypt’s treasures will close today, as an ancient shrine fragment touches down on Egyptian soil after a year of international co-operation. The red granite chunk, part of a shrine, or ‘naos’, was bought by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art from a private collector last October, with the sole intent to send it back to its home nation. Today sees the fragment of the shrine, which commemorates King Amenemhat I, the first pharaoh of the 12th Dynasty (1991 – 1962 BC), finally return to Egypt after a combined effort between the…