In a conversation with Heritage Key (HK), Paul Denis (PD), the curator of Fakes & Forgeries Yesterday and Today, a newly announced exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum, talks about how fake ancient artefacts are affecting the museum world. Among the things discussed are: -The emergence of ancient Greek coins as a new hot area for fraudsters. -Why the internet is an awful place to acquire artefacts. -How curators (with a little scientific help) pick out fakes. He also shares some interesting news: of the hundreds of Zapotec artefacts his museum has, about 50 percent are forgeries. He explains how they got duped on such a grand scale.…
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Archaeologists have discovered a large structure to the northeast of the 4,600 year old Bent Pyramid which may be the remains of an ancient harbour. It connects to one of the pyramids temples by way of a 140 meter long causeway. The discoveries were made by a team from the Cairo department of the German Archaeological Institute, and the Free University of Berlin. The team used magnetic survey and drill cores soundings to make the finds. The structure is mostly unexcavated and only a portion of the causeway has been unearthed. The structure itself is U-shaped, 90 meters by 145…
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It is a well-known rule that search queries which lead people to your website should be dealt with as actual questions depending on the amount of people using the search query, you know that at least one person is interested in the subject (as it comes to sex andnaked belly dancers a lot of people are intrigued). Now, some people actually phrase their search query as a question (remember AskJeeves?) starting with ‘what’, ‘how to’, ‘where’, … .Often these are err.. quite original. Here are my favourites (capitalisation and question marks added where needed) in the categories ‘General (Lack Of)…
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Archaeologists have stumbled upon what appears to be the remains of a substantial ancient settlement at Umm El-Mawagir in Kharga Oasis, Egypt. Dated to the Second Intermediate Period (1650 to 1550 BC), the newfound city is at least a thousand years older than any of the other major surviving ancient remains in the area. The ancient town lies along the bustling caravan routes connecting the Nile Valley of Egypt and the El-Kharga oasis with points as far as Darfur in western Sudan. The discovery was made by an American-Egyptian archaeological team from Yale University that is systematically searching the area…
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Following years of restoration and development, the Marina el-Alamein archaeological site on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast will open to tourists mid-September. The Marina el-Alamein archaeological site a Hellenistic-Roman town is locatedabout 5km east of el-Alamein. The ancient city was accidentally discovered in 1986, when construction started on the Marina El-Alamein resort. The archaeological area spans a section that is more than 1km long and about 0.5km wide and is the largest archaeological site on Egypt’s north coast. Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, announced that the site will be opened to tourists mid-September complete with a high-tech lighting system throughout the entire…
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According to figures quoted at an archaeological conference last week by Dr Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has generated more revenue in recent years from sending treasures of Tutankhamun abroad than it has from collections in the countrys own museums. That includes the Howard Carter collection at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, which features key pieces from King Tuts tomb such as the Golden Death Mask (some amazing picture of which you can view here) and coffins deemed too fragile or unwieldy to travel outwith the country. The SCA has made over $100 million from its…
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The British Museum’s upcoming exhibition, “Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead” is set to open on 4th November 2010 and a video posted on the British Museum’s Youtube channel gives a teaser to one of the artefacts which will be a part of the show. The quick video shows the cleaning of Nesbanebdjed’s wooden mask from his coffin in the museum’s Organic Conservation laboratory, which will be one of the pieces on display when the exhibition opens this Autumn. The star of the show will doubtless be the beautifully illustrated papyrus and linen works depicting the journey from death to…
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This week sees the opening of the Ipswich Museum‘s new Egyptian Gallery. Visitors will be able tomarvel at the mummy of Lady Tahathor, or find out about daily life in ancient Egypt as they journey down the Nile. But wait… there has been a terrible crime! A thief has broken into the museum, and stolen a very rare and precious Egyptian artefact! Can you- or your kids -help solve the mystery? This Saturday, on the 7th of August, the Ipswich Museum celebrates the grand reopening of its Egyptian Gallery. At the centre of the new set-up is the mummy of…
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An unpublished manuscript, written by 19th century Egypt explorer Frdric Caillaud, has been discovered and it points the way to a 3,500 year old tomb of an Egyptian official. It is called Arts and Crafts of the Ancient Egyptians, Nubians and Ethiopians. It iswritten in French and illustrated with drawings. The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) is in the process of translating and publishing it. The work is being led by Dr. Andrew Bednarski. He gave a lecture and interview recently in Toronto, and provided me withsnippets from the bookand pictures ofthree of the drawings. Frdric Caillaud was one…
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The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the world’s largest and oldest monuments, and isn’t without its mystery. Theories fly around regularly about whether there are secret tunnels or hidden halls under the Sphinx, which Dr Zahi Hawass, currently starring in the ‘Chasing Mummies‘ series, insists is not the case in this Heritage Key video (Watch the Video). But my question is much more simple – Whatever happened to the nose of the Great Sphinx? In a previous Heritage Key article, “Riddle of the Sphinx”, Robert Cook wrote about the legend that Napoleon’s troops used the Sphinx’s nose as…