Luxor’s west bank receives another facelift

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny, announced that the newly installed lighting system on Luxor’s west bank has been completed with a budget of 56 million LE.

The hill of Gurna on the west bank of Luxor. The illuminated tombs of the nobles can be seen dotting the landscape (Photo: SCA)

He added that the project was carried out by the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in collaboration with Egypt’s Sound and Light organization and the foremost French company in lighting, called Architecture Lumière, chosen from several international lighting organization.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, said that the aim of this project is to preserve the tombs and temples located on Luxor’s west bank; the huge number of visitors that flock onto it will now be distributed throughout the day, from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm. This, he continued, will reduce the level of humidity inside the tombs, which negatively affect its paintings. Hawass explains that the new lighting system will also provide a beautiful and a dramatic scene at night for the pedestrians walking along the Nile corniche on the east bank in Luxor.

A view of the newly illuminated west bank of Luxor. Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple is shown in the foreground (Photo: SCA)

Major General Essam Abdel Hadi, Head of the Egypt Sound and Light Organization, said that the 922 lighting units have been installed on Luxor’s west bank were carefully installed by using GPS in order suit the rocky area of Luxor’s west bank. The lighting units can support high rates of temperature, dryness, as well as fighting against erosion and corrosion.

Dr. Sabri Abdel Aziz, Head of the Pharaonic Antiquities at the SCA, said that the project included the lighting of the mountains located on the west bank, the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens,the noblemen’s tombs, the northern side of Al-Qurna, and Hatshepsut’s temple.

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Posted by: Shaimaa Ahmed
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200 Egyptian objects back home

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny, announced that the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) received 200 artifacts from Al-Ahly National Bank yesterday and have stored them in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo for restoration and documentation.

A delicately carved wooden hand, broken off from a piece of statuary

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, said that the recovered collection was stored in the treasury of the bank since the early 20^th century and that it included objects from the ancient Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Coptic and Islamic eras. Among the objects are limestone statuary heads of ancient Egyptian and Greco-Roman deities such as Horus, Hathor and Ptah, as well as Roman terracotta statues and twenty coins from the Islamic and Modern period. Hawass added that two archaeological and legal committees inspected the collection and confirmed the objects’ authenticity.

Chairman of the Al-Ahly Bank, Dr. Tarek Amer, stated that these objects were in the possession of foreigners who lived in Egypt during the late 19^th and 20^th centuries. The foreigners were obviously antiquities collectors and had stored their collection inside two treasuries of the bank. Since the early 20^th century nobody had asked about the objects and they remained under the banks care until the executive board of the bank decided to offer the pieces to the SCA.

A marble head of Serapis, a Greco-Roman deity in Egypt.

Dr. Hussein Abdel Bassir, head of the committee who inspected the objects, said that all of the objects, which were stored in three boxes in the bank’s vaults, are totally genuine and most of them are very well preserved.

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Posted By : Shaimaa Ahmed
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New Discovery of double Statue of Amenhotep III

A close-up of the newly discovered double statue of Amenhotep III and Re-Horakhti. The statue was found during SCA excavations at the site of Amenhotep III’s mortuary temple on the west bank of Luxor. The statue was beautifully carved out of Aswan red granite, but interestingly it has inclusions of a darker solid stone that can be seen in the faces of the two figures.

Amenhotep III and Re-Horakhti

Amenhotep III enjoyed the distinction of having the most surviving statues of any Egyptian pharaoh, with over 250 of his statues having been discovered and identified. Since these statues span his entire life, they provide a series of portraits covering the entire length of his reign.

Another striking characteristic of Amenhotep III’s reign is the series of over 200 large commemorative stine scarabs  that have been discovered over a large geographic area ranging from Syria (Ras Shamara) through to Soleb in Nubia. Their lengthy inscribed texts extol the accomplishments of the pharaoh. For instance, 123 of these commemorative scarabs record the large number of lions (either 102 or 110 depending on the reading) that Amenhotep III killed “with his own arrows” from his first regnal year up to his tenth year. Similarly, five other scarabs state that the foreign princess who would become a wife to him, Gilukhepa, arrived in Egypt with a retinue of 317 women. She was the first of many such princesses who would enter the pharaoh’s household.

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Posted By: Shaimaa Ahmed
References: drhawass.com
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A New avenue from Luxor to Karnak

Mr. Farouk Hosny, Minister of Culture, announces that the expedition of the Supreme Council of Antiquities at the Avenue of the Sphinxes found today twelve new sphinx statues from the reign of Nectanebo I (380-362 BC). These sphinx statues were found in the last sector of the Avenue of the Sphinxes.

Reconstructing Nectanebo sphinx

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, said the discovery is not located within the known road of the Avenue of the Sphinxes between Karnak and Luxor Temples, but instead at the end of the newly discovered road of Nectanebo I. The Avenue runs from Luxor to Karnak, where it connects to the temple of the goddess Mut.

Mansour Boraik, Supervisor of Luxor Antiquities, indicated that this is the first time a new road that runs from east to west, toward the Nile, has been found. The most interesting

New road of Nectanebo

part of this new discovery is that the 20 meters thus excavated is built from sandstone from the quarries at Gebel Silsila, north of Aswan. The total length of this road to the Nile is about 600 meters. Dr. Hawass mentioned, too, that along this way the sacred boat of Amun, king of the gods, traveled on the god’s annual trip to visit his wife, Mut, at Luxor temple, and the king used it as well for religious processions. This discovery marks the first time that archaeology has revealed this route, which is mentioned in many ancient texts. Besides the sphinx statues, which are inscribed with the name of Nectanebo I, the excavation team also recovered Roman period objects, including an oil press and pottery. Excavations remain ongoing.

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19 objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun returning to Egypt!

Under the auspices of Farouk Hosny, the Minister of Culture, Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, and Thomas P. Campbell, Director of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, announced jointly today that, effective immediately, the Metropolitan Museum of Art would acknowledge Egypt’s title to 19 ancient Egyptian objects that have been in its collection since the early 20th century. All of these small-scale objects, which range from study samples to a three-quarter-inch-high bronze dog and a sphinx bracelet-element, attributed to Tutankhamun’s tomb, which was discovered by Howard Carter in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings. The Museum initiated this formal acknowledgement after renewed, in-depth research by two of its curators substantiated the history of the objects.

Reconstruct faience broad collar (Photo Metropolitan Museum of Art)

“This is a wonderful gesture on the part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” said Hawass. “For many years the Museum, and especially the Egyptian Art department, has been a strong partner in our on-going efforts to repatriate illegally exported antiquities. Through their research, they have provided us with information that has helped us to recover a number of important objects, and last year, the Museum gave to Egypt a granite fragment that joins with a shrine on display in Luxor, so that this object could be restored. Thanks to the generosity and ethical behavior of the Met, these 19 objects from the tomb of Tutankhamun can now be reunited with the other treasures of the boy king.” Hawass continued that “The objects will now go on display with the “Tutankhamun” exhibition at Times Square, where they will stay until January, 2011. They will then travel back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they will be shown for six months in the context of the Metropolitan Museum’s renowned Egyptian collection. Upon their return to Egypt in June 2011, they will be given a special place in the Tutankhamun galleries at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, and then will move, with the rest of the Tut collection, to the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, scheduled to open in 2012.”

At the time that Howard Carter and his sponsor, the Earl of Carnarvon, discovered the tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamun (reigned ca. 1336-1327 B.C.), the Egyptian government generally allowed excavators to keep a substantial portion of the finds from excavations undertaken and financed by them. However, during the decade that it took Carter and his team to recover the thousands of precious objects from this king’s tomb, it became increasingly clear that no such partition of finds would take place in the case of the Tutankamun tomb.

Bracelet inlay in the form of a sphinx made of lapis lazuli (Photo Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Owing to the splendor of the treasures discovered in the tomb, conjectures soon started nevertheless, suggesting that certain objects of high quality, dating roughly to the time of Tutankhamun and residing in various collections outside Egypt, actually originated from the king’s tomb. Such conjectures intensified after the death of Howard Carter in 1939, when a number of fine objects were found to be part of his estate. When the Metropolitan Museum acquired some of these objects, however, the whole group had been subjected to careful scrutiny by experts and representatives of the Egyptian government; and subsequent research has found no evidence of such a provenance in the overwhelming majority of cases. Likewise, thorough study of objects that entered the Metropolitan Museum from the private collection of Lord Carnarvon in 1926 has not produced any evidence of the kind.

Figurine of a dog made of bronze with a gold collar

The 19 objects now identified as indeed originating from the tomb of King Tutankahmun can be divided into two groups. Fifteen of the 19 pieces have the status of bits or samples. The remaining four are of more significant art-historical interest and include a small bronze dog less than three-quarters of an inch in height and a small sphinx bracelet-element, acquired from Howard Carter’s niece, after they had been probated with his estate; they were later recognized to have been noted in the tomb records although they do not appear in any excavation photographs. Two other pieces—part of a handle and a broad collar accompanied by additional beads—entered the collection because they were found in 1939 among the contents of Carter’s house at Luxor; all of the contents of that house were bequeathed by Carter to the Metropolitan Museum. Although there was discussion between Harry Burton (a Museum photographer based in Egypt, the Museum’s last representative in Egypt before World War II broke out, and one of Carter’s two executors) and Herbert Winlock about the origins of these works and about making arrangements for Burton to discuss with a representative of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo whether these works should be handed over to Egypt, that discussion was not resolved before Burton’s death in 1940. When the Metropolitan Museum’s expedition house in Egypt was closed in 1948, the pieces were sent to New York.

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Posted by : Shaimaa Ahmed

Pharaonic inscriptions near Taima, KSA

Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities announces discovery of Pharaonic inscriptions near Taima
Professor Ali Ibrahem Al Ghabban, vice president of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (SCTA) announced the discovery of the first Pharaonic archeological finds in the Arabian Peninsula recently. The relics date back to the twelfth century BC.

Professor Al Ghabban stated that the discovered item is a hieroglyphic inscription, which is the Pharaonic. The inscription was discovered on a rock near the oasis of Taima, carrying the royal signature (double cartridge) of King Ramses III, who ruled Egypt between (1192-1160 BC), adding that Saudi archeologists have discovered this inscription near the famous historic oasis Taima – one of the largest archaeological sites in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula where the remains of its archeological walls reaches 13 kilometers in length.

Professor Al Ghaban added that, the relic which was found four months ago beside Taima in Tabouk Province, has raised the big question about its existence in the northwest of the Arabian Peninsula.

Archaeologists from Saudi Arabia have conducted field surveys and studies. According to which they found out that there was an ancient trade route, which linked the Nile Valley directly to Taima. The ancient trade route was used during the reign of Ramses III in the 12th century BC over which Egyptian trading caravans carried precious and luxury goods, like incense, gold, silver, and copper from Taima.

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Reference : eturbonews.com
Posted By : Shaimaa Ahmed

New statue of Amenhotep III uncovered

The upper portion of a red granite double statue featuring King Amenhotep III (1390-1352 BC) with the falcon-headed sun god Re-Horakhti was found today on the north western side of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple on Luxor’s west bank.

Double statue of Amenhotep III and the sun god, Re-Horakhti. The statue was uncovered at the site of Amenhotep III's mortuary temple complex on the west bank of Luxor (Photo: SCA)

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny announced that the statue was found during a routine excavation carried out by an Egyptian team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), directed by Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA.

Hawass remarked that the statue is one of the best new finds in the area because of its expert craftsmanship, which reflect the skills of the ancient Egyptian artisans. Dr. Hawass pointed out that King Amenhotep III is well known for his overwhelming amount of statuary, particularly group statuary featuring the king with deities such as: Amun-Re, Re-Horakhti, Bastet, Sobek and Sekhmet, the goddess of healing. Hawass pointed out that the Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project, directed by Dr. Hourig Sourouzian, has unearthed more than 80 statues of the goddess Sekhmet during their excavations at the temple. It has been suggested that the Sekhmet statues were erected because Amenhotep III was very sick during his final years.

 

The Egyptian mission has found several statues depicting King Amenhotep III with the solar god, Amun-Re and a granite colossus featuring Thoth, the god of wisdom, in the form of a baboon. “This is the first time that we have found a standing statue of the god Thoth,” asserted Hawass.

According to Mansour Boraik, General Supervisor of the Luxor Antiquities Department of the SCA, a number of group statues of Amenhotep III are still partially buried under private farmland that surrounds the temple. Dr. Samir Farag, governor of Luxor, and the SCA are now trying to reach an agreement with the farmer to buy this section of land so that the statues can be fully excavated. In the future, this area will be converted into an open-air museum that will display the objects found in the mortuary temple complex.

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Reference : drhawass.com
Posted By : Shaimaa Ahmed

The Egyptian Book of the dead come back to life

LONDON — As self-help manuals go, the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead has certainly stood the test of time.

For centuries, the 3,500-year-old guidebook offered Egyptians a step-by-step guide to the journey from this life to the next. It remains famous, if poorly understood — a spooky collection of arcane symbols, crocodile-jawed monsters and jackal-headed gods.

A major new exhibition at the British Museum hopes to shed new light on the book, which was not a single volume, but a series of spells and illustrations inked onto papyrus scrolls and designed to help the dead make the perilous journey to the afterlife.

The Egyptian Book of the dead

The show seeks to dispel the modern notion — partly created by all the tombs, mummies and funeral masks — that ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death.

“They were not obsessed with death, as some people say — they were obsessed with life,” the exhibition’s curator, John Taylor, said Tuesday. “Most people would have died by 35, but they had quite a privileged life in many ways, and wanted to continue with it after death.”

The show, which opens Thursday and runs to March 6, is the first of three British Museum exhibitions looking at death and spirituality through the ages. A show next year looking at devotion in Medieval Europe will be followed in 2012 by one about the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj.

The Egyptian exhibition reveals a highly developed society with a complex theology — and an eye for commerce.

It winds, labyrinth-like, through the museum’s circular Reading Room, mirroring the journey humans were thought to take after death.

It was a spiritual obstacle course that saw the soul leave the mummified body of the departed and travel through the nether world. There it could be waylaid by scorching fires, poisonous snakes, wild animals and worst of all the Devourer — a demon with the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus.

The final obstacle was a trial, at which the heart was placed on a set of scales and weighed against a feather. A light heart meant successful passage to the afterlife. A heavy heart, weighed down with sin, meant being thrown to the Devourer.

The book’s spells and illustrations, developed over centuries from about 1,500 B.C., were intended as a guide to overcoming these obstacles. There were 200 spells in all, from which wealthy Egyptians could pick and choose for their own custom-made Books of the Dead.

 

The exhibition brings together some of the treasures from the museum’s world-famous collection of Egyptian artifacts. There are mummies, gilded funeral masks and cedar coffins colorfully decorated in red and blue.

The star objects are the scrolls themselves, long rolls of papyrus covered with neat black and red hieroglyphic columns and illustrated with scenes of the afterlife.

Book of the dead

They were rolled up and placed alongside mummies in their coffins. Spells also were inscribed on coffin walls, mummies’ shrouds and even their linen bandages.

Fragile and easily damaged by light, the scrolls are rarely displayed. The longest, a 120-foot (37-meter) scroll made for the daughter of a high priest about 3,000 years ago, has never been shown in public before.

The exhibition reveals the Egyptians’ spirituality — but also their knack for commerce. Only the most powerful individuals could afford their own custom-made scrolls, and mass-market options were available to the less well-off.

Archeologists can tell that Ani, a senior civil servant — scribe to the king — who died about 1275 B.C, bought his scroll off the shelf because his name has been inserted into blanks spots in the text.

Another exhibit is a basalt and gold amulet in the shape of a scarab beetle, with a blank space on the back where the buyer’s name could be written. It was one of a variety of objects that could be purchased as part of preparations for a good death.

“Over time, more things became essential,” Taylor said. “Somebody had a business sense there.”

Having completed the arduous journey, the successful person could spend the afterlife sailing with the sun god Ra in his boat across the sky, or dwelling with Osiris, god of the underworld. But the most favoured option was to settle in the Field of Reeds, a fertile riverside land that resembled an idealized version of the Egypt the deceased had left behind.

“The ultimate goal was going home,” Taylor said, “but without the illness, suffering and death.”

 

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Posted By   : Shaimaa Ahmed

Egypt hosts the Global Real Estate Institute(GRI) Summit

Egypt hosts for the first time the Global Real Estate Institute (GRI) Summit for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) on November 4th in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh. The event will bring together the leading senior international and national decision-makers that are driving the real estate development and investment sectors in their markets, providing a common platform for regional and international developers and investors to discuss the strategic market potentials, investment trends & opportunities, pertinent issues, and challenges facing the market today.

 

Sharm El Sheikh

“PHD always aims to lead and be an active partner in events that bring together the industry’s most important players, not only in Egypt, but within the MENA region as well. This first-time summit in Egypt reflects PHD’s position as a leader in the real estate development and investment industry to address key market issues,” said Yasseen Mansour, CEO & Chairman of Palm Hills Developments.

“This is the first time that the GRI MENA summit will be held in Egypt, and by sponsoring the GRI summit PHD is bringing the biggest and best of the global real estate professionals together under one roof, where real estate issues, strategies, opportunities, trends, forecasts and fundamentals can be discussed and analyzed,” added Mr. Mansour.

The GRI is a global league of key real estate investors, developers and lenders whose mission is to build relationships and work together. Like all GRI’s summits worldwide, the MENA summit is an opportunity for all participants to engage in discussions freely in small groups.

Small Reef Fish in Coral, Sharm El Sheikh

The lead partners of the first ever GRI MENA Summit to take place in Egypt are Palm Hills Developments, one of Egypt’s leading real estate developers and investors. Commenting on this unmatched partnership, Dr Khaled Sedky, Chief Portfolio Officer, PHD, said, “The Real Estate Development & Investment Industry is vital for any successful emerging economy; it acts as an axle to the GDP’s helm. Alongside other industries, it provides room for long term investment opportunities, overall market expansion, and wide variety of job opportunities creation. PHD has always focused on leading the way in its field; bringing the GRI MENA summit and this group of driving elites of the real estate industry to Egypt helps put its real estate market on the world map and is a perfect example of PHD’s dedication.”

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Reference: ameinfo.com
Posted by : Shaimaa Ahmed

New Discovery at Giza

An Egyptian archaeological mission directed by Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), has discovered a large mud brick wall dating to the reign of King Thuthmose IV (1400-1390 BCE). The wall was uncovered in the area located in front of King Khafre’s valley temple on the Giza plateau.

First section of the mudbrick wall found in front of Khafre's valley temple at Giza (Photo: SCA)

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny added that the discovery was made during routine excavation work carried out by the SCA.

Dr. Hawass stated that the newly discovered wall consists of two parts: the first section is 75cm tall and stretches for 86m from north to south along the eastern side of Khafre’s valley temple and the Sphinx; the second part is 90cm tall and is located in the area north of Khafre’s valley temple. This section is 46m long and runs from east to west along the perimeter of the valley temple area. The two parts of the wall converge at the south-east corner of the excavation area.

Hawass explained that according to initial studies carried out at the site, the newly discovered wall is a part of a larger wall found to the north of the Sphinx. This wall was constructed by King Thuthmose IV as an enclosure to protect the Sphinx from winds. According to ancient Egyptian texts the construction of this wall was the result of a dream which Thuthmose had after a long hunting trip in Wadi El-Ghezlan (Deer Valley), an area next to the Sphinx. In the king’s dream, the Sphinx asked the king to move the sand away from his body because it choked him. For this favor, the Sphinx promised to make Thutmose IV King of Egypt. To accomplish this task, Thuthmose IV removed the sand that had partially buried the Sphinx and built an enclosure wall to preserve it.

View of excavation trench in front of Khafre's valley temple (Photo: SCA)

Hawass pointed out that archaeologists previously believed that the enclosure wall only existed on the Sphinx’s northern side because a 3m tall by 12 m long section had been found there. This theory has now been disproven thanks to the discovery of the two new wall sections along the eastern and southern sides of the Sphinx.
In addition to the two sections of the enclosure wall, the SCA team found a mudbrick wall on the eastern side of Khafre’s valley temple. Hawass believes that this wall could be the remains of Khafre’s pyramid settlement, which was inhabited by priests and officials who oversaw the activities of the mortuary cult of Khafre. This cult began at the king’s death and continued until the eighth dynasty (ca. 2143-2134 BCE), which was the end of the Old Kingdom.

 

Essam Shehab, supervisor of Khafre’s valley temple excavation, said that the mission also dug a 6m deep assessment trench in the area located in front of Khafre’s valley temple to search for any activity dating to the Middle Kingdom (2030 – ca. 1660 BCE). Initial inspection did not reveal any Middle Kingdom activity in the trench as it was filled with almost 5m of sand. Such amount of sand, said Shehab, suggested that the area was abandoned during the Middle Kingdom.

Excavations continue in order to reveal the rest of the Thuthmose IV enclosure wall and any other secrets still hidden

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Reference : drhawass.com
Posted By : Shaimaa Ahmed