When I’m strolling through the British Museum’s Egyptian Sculpture Gallery taking in its ancient statues, stelae and scriptures, it’s hard not to think something’s missing. For among its rows of exotic artefacts, nothing on display relates to Egypt’s most famous king in modern times, Tutankhamun. And I think Britain deserves to have kept hold of at least some of the ancient world’s greatest pieces. Firstly I think I need to set the record straight: I’m not some postmodern British colonialist, sipping on Pimm’s while the servants polish my Blunderbus. Tutankhamun’s discovery was made by an Englishman, funded by an Englishman…
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Should you start panicking when your colleague donates you the mummies that their kids are too grown-up for to play with? Of course not! (or so I kid myself.) Thanks to Meral I now am the proud owner of my first ever mummy, which we named ‘MacMummy’ because of his provenance (and utter failure to decipher the hieroglyphs on his coffin). I managed to capture him in this shot early this morning, when MacMummy was just waking up to the smell of freshly made coffee in a setting that strangely resembles KV62, albeit it a little out of scale (The…
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Good news for all fans of ‘light’ historical films such as The Mummy, Return of the Mummy and 10,000 BC. Even greater news for fans of the – sublime – comic (although BD, ‘bande dessine’ is more correct) series by Tardi. ‘Les Aventures Extraordinaires d’Adle Blanc-Sec‘ has been made into an adventure movie by Luc Besson (Taxi, Kamikaze, Leon, The Fifth Element), which will star lots of Mummies, at least one Pterodactyl and enough demon worshippers and mad scientists to keep the film going. Indiana Jones, beware emancipation! 😉 Set in 1912, before the Great War, the adventure starts when…
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In 1908, more than a decade before the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, American retired lawyer and archaeologist Theodore Davis made a remarkable discovery. While excavating in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, he unearthed about a dozen large storage jars. Their contents included broken pottery, bags of natron, bags of sawdust, floral collars, and pieces of linen with markings from years 6 and 8 during the reign of a then little-known pharaoh named Tutankhamun. The significance of the find was not immediately understood, and the objects entered the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art as a mystery. It…
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A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to take part in the scanning of a female mummy from ancient Egypt, and to take photos to document the experience. This young girl was only around 25 at the age of death, and survived in relative peace for thousands of years. In the last century, however, she’s been used as a bargaining tool by the Germans, survived attacks by torpedos and fires, and even suffered physical traumas. I discovered that the scientific analysis of a young mummy can show us a lot about the life in ancient Egypt, but tell…
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Last year, Dr Zahi Hawass spoke to Heritage Key in a video interview about the restoration work being carried out at the Moses Ben Maimon (Maimonides) synagogue in Cairo by the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (see the video at the bottom of this page). With the project nearing completion, the SCA chief has today announced that a planned celebration to mark the reopening of the restored monument has been cancelled. Dr Hawass explained that the decision comes in the aftermath of Israeli authorities prohibiting worshippers from praying in the Al-Aqsa mosque in the West Bank. The West Bank has…
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We set the task of nominating London’s most influential invaders and talking-up the Big Smoke’s most important ancient sites in the first two rounds of our Ancient World in London Bloggers Challenge, and got some fantastic responses from the blogosphere. In round three we’re posing a new question, to again be answered in blog form in competition for prizes both real and virtual. It’s sure to prove contentious: Should the British Museum return the Rosetta Stone to Egypt? This Ptolemaic era Egyptian stele – created in 196 BC and discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta in Egypt –…
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King Tutankhamun would have approved of the exclusivity of it all: members of the Denver Art Museum can now buy advance tickets at a special low price for the upcoming show opening July 1, Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, which runs through Jan. 2, 2011. With Egyptomania still in full swing, it’s pretty clear already that this show, hailed by the Museum’s publicity as a “Rocky Mountain exclusive” will be a blockbuster. Considering it is his Colorado “debut”, I’m sure the Boy King will be glad they’re giving first dibs to his serious fans. “Early-bird” tickets for…
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Question who can completely fill up a cavernous 1,500 seat domed hall on a Saturday night in Toronto? Answer Dr. Zahi Hawass I dont get to introduce rock stars, said Art Gallery of Ontario CEO Matthew Teitelbaum. Well tonight he did. Forget the critical New Yorker article, the mixed reviews of the new Tut exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, or the fact that local Toronto media largely stayed away from this lecture. The worlds most well-known Egyptologist completely filled Convocation Hall, with people who had all paid a small admission fee (no more than $18) to hear him…
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Safari operators in Africa realised several years ago that there were people who wanted to see the wildlife, but not shake dirt out of a sleeping bag and take a shovel to dig a loo at the end of the day. Now London-based Ancient World Tours, who specialise in ancient sites, is amongst a growing number of companies capitalising on this growing market, and offering camping holidays with a twist of glamour: glamping. I spoke to Managing Director Peter Allingham about the changing face of cultural tourism. Although the name sounds like something a dodgy pop star would do, glamping(glamour…