Jeff Koons, one of the most controversial, and respected, artists of our time, is set to launch his first British solo exhibition in London this week at the Serpentine Gallery. He is thought to epitomise modern art but is Koons more than a little in debt to the ancients? Graco-Roman Sex Cults Raunchy Koons would have been well at home in one of Caesars Venus sex cults. In fact, he is reported as having said that he is inspired by the ancient Greek sculptor Praxiteles. An article in the Guardian reports: ‘Koons is fascinated by sex – it keeps coming…
-
-
Summer‘s here – and if you hadn’t noticed from the lighter nights, sunny days and relaxed morals, the Council for British Archaeology are ready to officially launch the barbeque season with a festival on a truly mind-boggling scale: The Festival of British Arachaeology 2009. From Saturday 18 July, the nation will become a hotbed of heritage fun, games and erudition as hundreds of venues the length and bredth of Britain lay on over 615 events celebrating archaeology and history in this country and many more. Maybe you want to join in on an excavation project? Or be taken on guided…
-
18 to 20 year old male, Caucasoid, cause of death: unknown. It’s a brief that wouldn’t have sounded unfamiliar to Jean-Noël Vignal – a forensic anthropologist who works with police to create likenesses of murder victims at the Centre Technique de la Gendarmerie Nationale in France – when it landed on his desk in 2005. Yet the tragic young man in question on this particular occasion was no ordinary subject – he was the most legendary ancient Egyptian that ever lived. Tutankhamun, a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, died mysteriously in 1323 BC. His body lay undisturbed for over 3,200…
-
When it comes to museums, there’s no doubting London’s credentials as one of the world’s finest launchpads for the intrepid antiquarian. Huge, sprawling caverns of colonial collections and stunning curios line the magnificent colonnaded hallways of giants like the British Museum or the V&A, and no-one can deny that both have fully earned their status as truly wonderful exhibitors. Yet scratch below the surface and there’s a whole mini-museum microcosm just waiting to be explored – and you won’t have to shimmy past shoals of dough-eyed snappers to get a glimpse of some of the city’s most intriguing artefacts. Here’s…
-
A Toronto Egyptologist has a new translation of the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus coming out and a new theory on how it was written. Previously the content was attributed to a great medical doctor such as Imhotep. But not for much longer. About 3,500 years ago, in an Egypt partly conquered by a foreign power, an Egyptian man with no medical training, likely a metalworker, was pressed into service as a combat medic. He prepared for his task by studying the basics of combat medicine from a swnw (a doctor) or some form of expert. He wasnt preparing to become…
-
Three new ancient egyptian tombs dating back almost 3500 years have been discovered near Luxor by an archaeological mission lead by Dr. Zahi Hawass. One of the newly discovered tombs belonged to Amun-Em-Opet, Supervisor of Hunters and dates back to shortly before King Akhenaten’s reign. Entrances to 2 undecorated tombs have been found to the north-west of Amun-Em-Opet’s. The newly discovered were unearthed at the necropolis of Dra Abu el-Naga, on Luxor’s west bank. Amongst the items discovered in the 3 tombs: seven funerary seals bearing the name Amenhotep-Ben-Neferm, Supervisor of the Cattle of Amun. seals bearing the name of…
-
One can’t ‘tour’ the Middle East and visit Egypt without having seen the pyramids.And if you happen to be the President of the United States of America, you get the VIPtreatement: Dr.Zahi Hawass as a guide for an exclusive guided visit in the pyramids and tombs. A comment by Kate Burgess on Dr.Zahi’s facebook profile reads: ‘President Obama was so lucky to have you as his guide.‘ Areversed world?;) Watch the video here on drhawass.com, or click play:
-
The British Museum houses a suspiciously large stash of ancient relics, pillaged from around the world by British explorers back when there were no laws against that kind of thing. But the countries of origin of many of these treasures now want them back, and the repatriation of artefacts has become a hot potato between the UK and countries such as Egypt, Turkey and China. Image of the New Acropolis Museum by Skoobie99. The UKs argument had, in the past, been that the origin countries do not have appropriate venues to house and display the ancient artefacts. With two major…
-
Egypt’s first ever DNA lab exclusively dedicated to the study of ancient mummies which is located in the Egyptian Museum and helped with the quest of identifying Hatshepsut’s mummy will get a ‘sister’ lab at the Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. One of the main purposes of the new lab is to independently reproduce the results obtained in the first lab, as a crucial element of DNA testing is independent replication of the results. DNA of mummies is different from that of people alive: “It is very old and fragile, so we have to extract and multiply it before tests.”…
-
In 1930, Archaeologist Flinders Petrie excavated the tomb of a boy in ancient Egypt and was surprised to discover what appeared to be the full kit for a game of ten-pin bowling – the earliest evidence of the game. However, the more recent discovery of a number of perfect, grooved spheres found by miners in South Africa have led many people to suspect that extra-terrestrials may have been flying in on their UFOs for a game of bowls back when we were plancton. Over the past several decades, hundreds of the spheres, called the Klerksdorp Spheres, have been found by…