Ever thought about a job that takes you across the length and breadth of Egypt, exploring the desert sands to find treasures and valuable artefacts that haven’t been touched in thousands of years?A career which gives you responsibility for some of the most famous and significant finds in history (as well as trying to get back others)?A vocation which earns you the nickname “Pharaoh” for your control over who gets to uncover the antiquities still to be found amidst the heat. And lets not forget starring in your own History Channel TV show! Dr Zahi Hawass, the Director of the…
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There is a billboard on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles where Zahi Hawass is framed in the photo to look bigger than the Great Pyramid.Supposedly, it is all a matter of perspective. In the same way you can take your own view on the reality television series “Chasing Mummies” from History Channel. (If anyone in LA can snap a good shot of that billboard, please add it to the comments below.) In terms of realityTV fare on the tube, I guess this show is pretty good. It is action packed. The series has a strongstar driving the drama andmany interesting,…
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News that King Tut’s chariot will leave Egyptto join the final leg of the ‘Tuankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs’ exhibition in New York its first trip abroad has been confirmed by an SCA press release. In the same release Dr Hawass and his team say they continue to stand behind the findings published in JAMA earlier;King Tut died of complications from malaria and Kohlers disease. Mr. Farouk Hosni, Minister of Culture, confirmed that one of King Tuts chariotsis travelingto New York City, the first time that a chariot from Tutankhamun’stomb will be allowed out of Egypt. The…
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The BBC has officially announced its TVschedule for this autumn and winter, promising its audience a big focus on history, with new programmes and new presenters. What to expect from the Beeb this autumn and winter, when the rain and cold keeps you locked into your home? The autumn & winter 2010/2011 programming includes ‘Behind Closed Doors’ with Amanda Vickery, ‘The Do-Gooders’ with Ian Hislop and programming to mark the Battle of Britain’s 70th anniversary, with a drama-documentary based on Geoffrey Wellum’s book, First Light. Ancient history specials served on these coldand dark winter nights will be ‘Pompeii’with Mary Beard,…
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Archaeologists excavating at Ahnasia in Upper Egypt, have unearthed the remains of a 3,300-year-old temple built by pharaoh Ramesses the Great. According to a statement released by the SCA, excavations at Ahnasia, an archaeological area in Beni-Suef, recently uncovered remains of a temple that can be dated to the reign of 19th Dynastyking Ramesses II . Dr. Sabri Abdel Aziz, Head of the Pharaonic Sector in the SCA, said that inside the remains of the New Kingdom temple, excavators uncovered ten cartouches of Ramesses II and beneath them a relief saying that the ruler had ordered the construction of this…
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Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the multi-millionaire musical impresario, has expressed a wish to purchase Highclere Castle, near Newbury, Berkshire. The Victorian castle has been the family seat of the Carnarvons since the 1670s, and was home to the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who funded Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun‘s tomb (watch the video). Andrew Lloyd Webber’s offer came after the current Earl applied for permission to sell pieces of land on the fringes of the Highclere estate in the hope of raising 11 million to fund badly-needed repair works to the Victorian mansion. In a letter sent to the Earl…
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When the latest Tutankhamun study was published in Jama, there were quite a few outcries that although the study looked into the direct ancestry of King Tut, it fully ignored the pointers to the pharoah’s racial ancestry, possibly hidden in the pharaoh’s DNA. As usual, Dr Zahi was accused of many things, most notable charges of ‘hiding that King Tut was black/white/purple.’ Now a retired physicist took the time to write down some of the DNA test results exposed in the Discovery Channel programme that featured the study’s results and concluded the data shown in the docu reveals Tut’s haplogroup…
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Archaeologists have discovered two ancient Egyptian tombs, belonging to a father and his son, at the Saqqara necropolis in Egypt. The rock-hewn painted tombs were unearthed last week, and with at least one tomb never looted, are considered an important find. The discovery was made during routine excavations at ‘Gisr El-Muder’, west of Djoser’s Step Pyramid, the first pyramid in Egyptian history. Work in the area has been ongoing since 1968. Dr Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s antiquities chief, says the tombs belong to 6th Dynasty government official ‘Shendwa’ and his son, ‘Khonsu’. The older tomb consists of a painted false door…
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Alexandria, 30BC. When Cleopatra, the last Queen of Egypt, is forced to surrender to Octavian, she decides she’d rather die than fall in enemy hands. She locks herself in the temple, and manages to deceive her Roman captors: by inducing an Egyptian cobra to bite her on the arm, she kills herself. A quiet and painless death. Or so the story goes. 2,000 years after the famous suicide, German historian Christoph Schaefer is challenging this ‘suicide-by-snake’ theory, claiming the Queen used a mixture of hemlock, wolfsbane and opium to poison herself. Ruling out Death by Snake After studying historical texts…
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Tutankhamun’s penis was swapped because it was too small, according to a media report. New Scientist writer Jo Marchant believes the young pharaoh may have suffered from a rare genetic defect which, among other issues, causes under-developed genitalia. Antley-Bixler syndrome also results in elongated skulls, which could account for stylistic depictions of King Tut’s proposed father Akhenaten(read our recent article on how the boy-king could have died from sickle-cell disease here). Marchant claims the modest penis was most probably broken off “during a particularly brutal autopsy“, yet others say it could easily have been damaged during its early years of…