A large new church, monastic burials and a vaulted room filled with Coptic wall paintings – new excavation work at the Monastery of Saint Apollo at Bawit is yielding a wealth of remarkable finds. One of the team members, Dr. Ramez Boutros of the University of Toronto, discussed some of the finds at a recent lecture and Heritage Key followed up with an interview. The Monastery of Saint Apollo was founded by the saint around 385-390 AD. Its slightly north to the site of Asyut, which can be seen on the map below. Saint Apollo was a hermit of sorts…
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Switzerland today signed an agreement for the repatriation of all illegally-obtained antiquities of Egyptian origin currently within their borders, according to a press release circulated by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). It represents a major victory for Egypt in its battle against global artefact theft, since many stolen treasures from Egypt are smuggled via Switzerland. The agreement is the latest of 16 such treaties Egypt has reached with foreign nations since 2002. The SCA press release adds that Secretary General of the SCA Zahi Hawass is currently in the process now of forming agreements with other countries. The…
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The first ever Ramesside period tomb has been found in Lower Egypt. The 3300-year-old tomb – belonging to Ken-Amun, a government official – has been discovered by an SCAmission at Tell el-Maskhuta. The excavations have also revealed 35 Roman tombs. Click the images for a larger version. In a statement released by the antiquities council, Dr Zahi Hawass reported that the tomb is of very high quality, and beautifully decorated and inscribed with scenes known from the Ramesside Period. It dates to the 19th Dynasty (1315-1201 BC) and is constructed of mud brick and consists of a rectangular room with…
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Great news for anybody* who missed out on the previous ‘Mummy CSI’ study days with Joyce Filer, as there is another one coming up. A bonus – on top of the normal forensic aspects of ancient Egypt schedule – is an entire day dedicated to the remains of King Tut and the results of the recently published Tutankhamun DNAstudy. The findings from the King Tut study have been widely covered and debated since they were published (some interesting responses on the lineage results on Kate Phizackerley’s and Dylan Bickerstaffe’s blogs, and discussion of Tut’s foot on Em Hotep!) but if…
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The original excavation of TT34 – The Tomb of Montuemhat – was carried out by archaeologist Zakaria Gomein, upon the pressure unfortunately got the better of him and resulted in suidcide in a fascinating tale recounted by Dr Zahi Hawass (Watch the video).The project lead is now Dr Farouk Gomaa who is searching TT34 for the burial chamber of the diplomat Montuemhat, and explains his progress in a Heritage Key video (Watch the video). Egyptology photographer has been busy across Thebes, and TT34 has been just one of many of the tombs in the area where he has taken his…
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A collection of 14 Graeco-Roman tombs, artefacts and a mummy dating to the third century BC have been discovered in a cemetery in the Ain El-Zawya area of Bawiti, a town in the Bahariya Oasis, Egypt. The find is early evidence of a large Graeco-Roman necropolis at the site. The tombs were found during excavation works ahead of the building of a local youth centre in the area, about 260 miles southwest of Cairo. Dr. Mahmoud Affifi, director of Cairo and Giza antiquities, said that the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has halted construction and has started legal procedures to…
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Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities is to expand, with the addition of a new department for archaeological collections. Among its duties will be the registration of privately owned artefacts, as well as supervising the transfers of ownership on these items. The Archaeological Collections Administration is established to facilitate the execution of the newly amended Antiquities Protection Law. The announcement comes only days after Egypt held its first conference on the repatriation of artefacts, showing that Egypt’s focus is not just on retrieving looting antiquities from foreign collections, but mapping and saveguarding those ‘at home’ as well. Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s Minister…
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Behind each great archaeological discovery there are at least two stories: who found it and how, and to whom it belonged. In case of the buried, or unfinished, step pyramid at Saqqara, both stories are fascinating. But one definitely does not come with a happy ending. Dr. Zahi Hawass tells us about the 1951 discovery of the Buried Pyramid at Saqqara by Egyptian archaeologist Zakari Goneim, and about how professional jealousy and false accusations eventually ended Goneim’s life as well as his career. In the 27th Century BC, Third Dynasty pharaoh Djoser was buried in the famous – and first…
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I was asked to gather a heap of data for our timeline-testing, and figured King Tut would make the most interesting case. Why?His history is one that contains a combination of ‘estimates’, undecided parentage and debated dates – and causes of death, as a matter of fact – with very few exact facts and dates for the era in which Carter and Carnarvon dug him out. The ‘split’ makes it a good test-case as well. There’s a huge gap between (circa) 1350BCand 1922 during which Pharaoh Tutankhamun was more or less left in peace. Tut’s tomb did not get robbed…
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At first glance, Boudica, Agrippinna, Cleopatra and Olympias (Alexander the Great’s mother) dont seem to have much in common other than being strong women accountable for a few deaths along the way. However, recently they have been joined together by a unique series of photographs entitled The Regal Twelve. Depicting 12 diverse women from across the ages, the series of stunning, provocative, images celebrates the famous, infamous and the obscure. Award-winning Australian fine art photographer and digital artist Alexia Sinclair embarked on the project when she was studying for her Masters and was awarded a travelling arts scholarship and two…