Heritage Key is offering free guided tours of King Tut Virtual. You can join me for a guided tour of the virtual experience any weekday at 11am and 5pm London UKtime (GMT). Each tour lasts for an hour and is meant as a casual introduction to get you started on the right foot for your virtual experience. If you have never been in the virtual world before this a great opportunity as I will be there to answer any of your questions and help you with any problems you might come across. The tours will cover everything from virtual navigation…
-
-
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…
-
The Tomb of King Tutankhamun (KV62) contained many calcite jars and vases, but most were located in the antechamber and the annexe. However, the Cosmetic Jar with Recumbent Lion was found between the walls of the first and secondshrine of King Tut, in the burial chamber, suggesting it may have had more significance. Perhaps used in the funeral ceremony, the jar was found with residues of a costmetic inside – a blend of vegetable resin and animal fats.The Cosmetic Jar was one of the many artefacts from KV62 originally discovered by famous explorer Howard Carter, and photographed at the Egyptian…
-
French archaeologistDr Alain Zivie, Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), has devoted many years to investigating the 18th dynasty rock-cut tomb of Aper-el an Egyptian New Kingdom high priest and vizier from the Amarna Period, who served both Amenhotep III and the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. Zivie discovered it at Saqqara in 1987. In an exclusive video interview, shot by Nico Piazza, he shows Heritage Key some of the abundant treasures hes found there. As Zivie explains, since the tomb which dates from the latter part of the 18th Dynasty, around 1353-1335 BC is so…
-
Ancient choices made by Egyptians digging burial tombs may have led to today’s problems with damage and curation of these precious archaeological treasures, but photography and detailed geological mapping should help curators protect the sites, according to a Penn State researcher. “Previously, I noticed that some tomb entrances in the Valley of Kings, Luxor, Egypt, were aligned on fracture traces and their zones of fracture concentration,” said Katarin A. Parizek, instructor in digital photography, department of integrative arts. “From my observations, it seems that tomb builders may have intentionally exploited these avenues of less resistant limestone when creating tombs.” Fracture…
-
At the opening of the new Neues Museum in Berlin this week, it seems that one question is on everybody’s mind – will Germany return the bust of Nefertiti to Egypt? Dr Hawass of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities may be feeling a little more confident after obtaining an agreement from the Musee du Louvre for the return of the fragments from Tetiki’s tomb recently. There’s not much chance that Egypt would have received that reassuring phone call from President Sarkozy had the Louvre’s access to excavations at Saqqara not been threatened. These tough tactics have worked in this case.…
-
Senwosret III probably isnt the first person you think of when it comes to the Nobel Prize, but this ancient Egyptian Pharoah was making a significant contribution to future archaeology long before Barack Obama stole the show by scooping this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. The Egyptian pharaoh, who lived ca. 1870-1831 BC, launched several military campaigns into Nubia. As Egyptologist Gae Callender writes in The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt these were brutal conquests. Nubian men were killed, their women and children enslaved, their fields burnt, and their wells poisoned. Not something Alfred Nobel would condone. Nevertheless, in an indirect…
-
It doesn’t happen all that often that the battle over ‘mere tomb paintings’ makes headline news – why would they, when they have the highly debated return of the Elgin Marbles to the Acropolis Museum to write about? But the whole world was shocked last week, when Dr. Zahi Hawass accused France’s most famous museum of theft. Or at least, of purchasing looted artefacts and then refusing to return them to Egypt. Dr. Hawass hit back by refusing to let the Louvre’s Saqqara team dig in Egypt. The Louvre stated that it was forced to wait for permission to return…
-
The event Heritage Key attended on Saturday may not have been one of the most glamorous occasions in the archaeological circuit, but it was certainly one of the most important. Hob-nobbing over wine, beer and crisps, some of Britain’s best known Egyptologists gathered in the swanky surroundings of London’s Birlington House, to mark the Egypt Exploration Society’s plans to protect and digitise the Lucy Gura archives. And they need your help! “The most important value of archives is making fun of our colleagues.” Think Egypt and you might imagine great personalities, incredible images and fierce politics. But the excesses, eccentricities…
-
Userkare is a mysterious figure in Egyptian history. He was the second pharaoh of the Sixth Dynasty placed between Teti (who reigned from circa 2345-2333 BC) and Tetis son Pepi I (who reigned from circa 2332-2283 BC) and a usurper to the throne, who took power after Teti was murdered, perhaps in a conspiracy engineered by Userkare himself. His reign lasted just two to four years at most before he was ousted; afterwards he all but disappeared from history. Archaeologists are on the hunt for his missing tomb, to see what secrets it might reveal. We must find Userkare, states…