• publication

    The Ancient World with Bettany Hughes

    Ancient World Season with Bettany Hughes by Bettany Hughes Historian Bettany Hughes gives her personal take on the diverse cultures of the ancient world in this 2010 documentary series on More 4. The series begins with an examination of Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332 BC to become the world’s first global centre of culture. The programme explores Alexandria’s role as a powerhouse of science and learning, and focuses on the female mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia, the subject of the feature film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz. The series also offers a chance to catch Hughes’s…

  • jonathan-yeomans

    Bettany Hughes’ TV Tour of the Ancient World Starts on More4

    Channel 4’s digital channel More4 has kicked off a juicy seven-week series of documentaries fronted by historian Bettany Hughes. The Ancient World began on Wednesday 24 March with a new film about Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander the Great in 332BC. Hughes travelled to Egypt in search of the city’s ancient origins, delved beneath the streets and explored the sunken ruins that are all that remain of what was once the largest city in the world. Alexandria is one of the world’s greatest ancient cities. It’s a hugely fascinating place and a topic ripe for exploration. For centuries it…

  • Ann

    The Mysterious Adventures of MacMummy – Mummies for the Return of the Rosetta Stone

    Help! In just twenty-four hours, my mummy has developed a will of his own and became politically active. MacMummy refuses to open his coffin until the Rosetta Stone is returned to Egypt, and is even rallying other mummies to join in on the protest and urging them to become a member of ‘Mummies for the Return of the Rosetta Stone’. I’m not quite sure if it is a blessing to have the most enterprising mummy ever, as he’s now… on strike. How did Ilet it get so far out of hand? We were admiring the pictures of the massive Anubis…

  • helen-atkinson

    Giant Anubis Poses as Ticket Tout in New York King Tut Exhibition Stunt

    You live long enough in this city and you’ll see things you couldn’t even imagine – like a 25-foot tall Anubis statue being towed around New York harbour, which is what happened yesterday morning. Anubis’s arrival heralds the one-month countdown for the exhibition, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, which opens April 23 at the Discovery Times Square Exposition in Manhattan, on the final leg of its journey round North America. Tickets for the show went on sale the same day. The exhibition has already wowed Tutaholics in San Francisco, and exhibitors hope that Tut will cause the…

  • sean-williams

    Why some of King Tut’s Treasures should be in the British Museum

    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…

  • Ann

    The Mysterious Adventures of MacMummy – Birth, Burton Style

    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…

  • Ann

    Mummies, Pterodactyl and Occultism! The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Dry-White

    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…

  • Ann

    Tutankhamun’s Funeral – A New King Tut Exhibition at New York’s Met

    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…

  • veigapaula

    How to Look Ten Years Older: Photos From the Scanning of a Mummy in Porto

    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…

  • malcolmj

    Egypt’s SCA Avoids Politics… NOT!

    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…