Discovery Times Square Exposition, New York City
April 23, 2010 – January 2, 2011
The Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharoahs Exhibition opens in New York City on April 23rd. Ambassador Shoukry will attend the opening ceremony. The exhibition includes approximately 130 objects from the tomb of King Tut and other Valley of the Kings ancestors.
Reference: Modern Egypt
Posted by: Memphis Tours Egypt
“Tutankhamun’s tomb will not be closed in the near future. It is a long-term plan that has not been decided upon yet,” Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.
Many reports in the past two weeks announced the closure of this tourist magnet by the end of this year.
The long-term plan involves a $10 million project called the “Valley of the Replicas.”
Visitors will be directed to exact reproductions of the original tombs. The first three replicas will be the tombs of Tutankhamun, and the already closed burial sites of Seti I and Queen Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens.
The three original tombs will remain open to tourists willing to pay a very hefty fee, perhaps as high as $8,500 per visit.
Posted by : Yasmine Aladdin
Reference : allaboutegypt.org
King Tut
After more than 30 years, the treasures of Tutankhamun make their long-awaited return to New York in a dazzling, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. This New York engagement will be the last opportunity to see these priceless artifacts before they leave North America forever. Hurry and get your tickets today!
Being more than twice the size of the exhibition that took New York by storm in the 1970s,King Tut: The Golden Age of the Pharaohs offers something for people of all ages. Adults and kids alike will enjoy gazing at over 130 amazing treasures belonging to both King Tut and many of the most significant rulers of ancient Egypt! Objects from King Tut’s tomb include his royal diadem (crown) and one of four gold and precious stone inlaid canopic coffinettes that contained his mummified internal organs.
Complete your King Tut experience with the ultimate Egyptian adventure! It’s a 24 minute 3-D journey into Egypt. See how archaeologists discovered the tomb of the lost pharaohs. Learn how and why the ancient Egyptians mummified the dead. Discover how ancient mummies can help cure modern diseases and experience it all in 3-D! King Tut offers hand-held audio guides for fascinating details on key artifacts and lunch can be prepared for your group at the in-house cafe!
Over six million people have attended the King Tut Exhibition worldwide.
Source: viator.com
Posted by : Yasmine Aladdin
King Tut
Families planning a vacation often want to have a unique experience, as well as an educational one. With the tomb of King Tut’s limited engagement in Times Square coming to a close, those planning a family vacation should act quickly to book a trip that offers both.
The King Tut exhibit, currently showing in the Discovery Times Square Exposition, is the first appearance of the boy king in New York in 30 years. However, the exhibit is only on loan from Egypt until January 2, 2011, so those who want to get a glimpse of the legendary pharaoh should do so quickly.
The highlight of the exhibit is undoubtedly Tut’s iconic golden canopic coffinette, but its not the only artifact on display. Fifty artifacts from Tut’s own tomb are present, along with 80 from other royal tombs. These range from a golden headdress to the crown Tut was wearing when he was discovered.
Not only is the exhibition a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these treasures, but it’s also a chance for an educational experience. Kids will love learning about the ancient Egyptians, and parents might be interested in the latest DNA research on Tut’s body.
New York is the last stop on an eight-city, six-year tour, with tour organizers saying that the artifacts will return to Egypt forever at its conclusion. Travelers should take advantage of this limited run and book their North American family vacation today.
Reference: travimp.com
Posted by: Yasmine Aladdin
An exhibit opening at the Franklin Institute has about 150 artifacts and focuses on the search for discoveries about the life of Cleopatra.
Piece of statue, granite, Roman period. The face depicted may be that of Mark Antony, part of the “Cleopatra: Search for the Last Queen of Egypt” exhibit at the Franklin Institute. (David M Warren / Staff Photographer)
The two red granite statues, each more than 16 feet tall, entered the Franklin Institute one recent morning through soaring glass loading doors on the second floor. The great figure of a king went first, resting in a crate atop a metal pallet lifted by a crane. Soon he would stand beside an Egyptian queen, also from Cleopatra’s Ptolemaic era – two monumental artifacts of her mysterious world.
A rigging crew and several Egyptians – present whenever their country’s antiquities are in transit – worked quietly, pulling the statues inside, unpacking them, standing them upright.
It was a difficult, delicate task, but far simpler than it had been to retrieve the figures from the murky depths off the coast of Alexandria, where an excavation of mythical proportions continues to provide context for the enigmatic Cleopatra, last pharoah of Egypt before it became a Roman province in 30 B.C.
The sights and sounds of the underwater project, along with those of corresponding land excavations, are featured in “Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt,” which opens Saturday and runs through Jan. 2, 2011. The 18,000-square-foot exhibition, which will travel to four other North American cities, includes about 150 artifacts ranging in size from coins to massive statues and weighing a total of 30 tons.
Arts and Exhibitions International organized the 2007 Tutankhamunshow that drew more than 1.3 million visitors to the Franklin Institute. AEI chose to debut “Cleopatra” here because of that success and the institute’s science focus: This is not a gallery show but a look at the process that has led to contemporary discoveries and, some believe, to the cusp of one of archaeology’s most sought-after finds, the tomb of Cleopatra and her lover, Mark Antony.
Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and familiar to viewers of documentaries about ancient Egypt, said the show was the first to focus on the search for the pair.
He and Kathleen Martinez, a Dominican archaeologist, five years ago began excavating inside the temple Taposiris Magna in Abusir, west of Alexandria. Among their finds was a foundation deposit that revealed the temple was built in the time of Ptolemy IV, one of 14 said to have contained a piece of the body of Osiris, god of the underworld.
Inside was a small temple dedicated to Osiris’ wife, Isis, which Hawass says was built when Cleopatra ruled.
David Silverman is the curator in charge of the Egyptian collection at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which has paired with the Franklin Institute for this exhibition and is offering a self-guided tour, “Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.” He said despite the tremendous amount that has been written about Cleopatra, little is known of her from material culture.
“The problem about the material that was written about her is it was written later . . .,” says Silverman, whose first graduate student was Hawass. “Some parts are fairly negative, some of it is inaccurate, and then all of a sudden, a lot of it winds up being very romantic, and through rose-colored glasses.”
Underwater archaeology, he said, requires a tremendous amount of conservation, some of which must be done before the artifacts – especially the porous ones – emerge from the sea.
On the deck of the Princess Duda, anchored off Alexandria above the sunken island on which Cleopatra’s palace stood, the French diver and archaeologist Franck Goddio said in a phone interview Tuesday that the excavation was far from finished. He estimated that the project has revealed less than 1 percent of the submerged artifacts.
Goddio – who began the project in 1991, electronically mapped the site from 1992 to 1996, then began excavating – values the context his work is helping paint of the queen’s life and times. But the discovery of statues and parts thereof often comes piecemeal.
One morning last week, visibility underwater reached five feet. That, he said, “is very good for us” – typical visibility is seldom more than three feet, enough to spot a sculpted arm or elbow jutting from the sediment, which in some places covers the site to a depth of about 10 feet.
“You just see part of this artifact, and you discover it little by little,” he said. “It’s only by drawings on the surface” – and photography, and sophisticated mapping tools – “that we start to see what is there.”
The island is believed to have slid into the Bay of Aboukir in the fourth century A.D., when an earthquake sent a tsunami crashing through the city. Goddio’s crew has found two buildings there: the remains of Cleopatra’s palace and a small temple devoted to Isis.
On Monday, Goddio found a foot-tall bronze statuette on the site of the Isis temple. His team continues to find elements of Cleopatra’s era, and even the smallest provide context; depictions of gods reveal the periods during which the artifacts were created.
“It’s not a static museum exhibition,” Dennis Wint, the Franklin Institute’s president and chief executive said of “Cleopatra.” “It’s an exhibition that is going to emphasize the process of exploration and discovery.”
The work of Hawass and his crew is represented in the show’s terrestrial portions. Inside the main entrance of the temple Taposiris Magna, they found many pieces of sphinx statues, which he said could mean the entrance was lined with “an avenue of sphinxes.” Twenty-two coins were found, emblazoned with the face and name of Cleopatra.
(“I think the reason why people think Cleopatra was ugly is because she was depicted with a big nose on the coins,” Hawass said. “But you cannot really know . . . . I do not think Cleopatra was ugly at all because the lady captured the hearts of the two most powerful people on earth, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.”)
Outside the temple, a large Ptolemaic cemetery was unearthed. Some of its many mummies were gilded, and all their heads were turned toward the temple, which Hawass said could mean an important person, or persons, were buried inside.
He didn’t venture to estimate when the team might discover the tomb itself, but said the excavation project itself was significant: While many have searched for the tomb of Alexander the Great in Alexandria and Siwa, no one has looked for the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony.
“We know that Cleopatra built a palace and tomb . . . but both of these are now underwater in the harbor of Alexandria,” he said. “We know from ancient writers that Cleopatra was never buried in her tomb. This is why we have turned our focus to the Isis temple . . .. If they were buried inside the temple, they would be symbolic of the husband and wife, Isis and Osiris, buried together.”
Hawass’ favorite piece, which he found inside the temple, is an alabaster head of Cleopatra. “When I held the head in my hand,” he said, “I felt the magic of the queen, and I imagined what it would feel like if we found the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.”
Mark Lach, designer of the hugely successful Tut exhibition and creative director of “Cleopatra,” calls the current show’s content “far richer.”
“There’s not a lot to know about Tut,” he said, who “probably would’ve been an insignificant king lost to the pages of history if it wasn’t for the discovery. We know a lot more about Cleopatra. We also don’t know a lot about Cleopatra. We know who she is through movies and pop culture, but what’s the real backstory? Well, what’s amazing about the discoveries that Franck has made, this gives you her world.”
Visitors will start with a 4½-minute introductory video. The screen then will rise to reveal a statue of Isis, considered to have been the archetypal mother of Egypt.
That’s where the audio tour, featuring an actress speaking as Cleopatra, begins. It’s free, the first time either Arts and Exhibitions International or the Franklin has included it within the ticket prices, which range from $19.50 to $29.50 for daytime entry.
A glass-floored walkway takes visitors through a room that includes artifacts underfoot, video projections of divers and the sounds of their communication. More than a dozen original videos were produced for the exhibit.
And though multimedia elements loom large in the show, an ancient papyrus document in a glass case reveals as much, detailing an exchange of wheat for wine to benefit an aide of Mark Antony’s.
At the bottom is a note Cleopatra is thought to have scribbled. It says, in translated Greek, “Make it happen.”
Reference: philly.com
Posted by : Yasmine Aladdin
The pharaoh Tutankhamun was discovered in his tomb in Egypt in 1922, by the British archaeologist Howard Carter.
Since then his real identity has remained a mystery.
In recent years the advance in DNA profiling has given hope that the king’s family connections could be revealed.
The results of important DNA tests, carried out over the past two years in Cairo, have now been announced at the TutankhamunExhibition in Dorchester.
Although Dorset has no direct link to the pharaohs, the exhibition has been in existence for 21 years, and is internationally acclaimed.
It is also one of the few exhibits of its kind, outside of Egypt.
Tim Batty, the General Manager of the exhibition, said: “The research has helped to establish a family tree for Tutankhamun, which is something we didn’t really know before.”
The report, which is on display in the Tutankhamun Exhibition in Dorchester, traces back to the pharaoh’s great grandparents.
Tim said: “It’s firmed up some of the things we already suspected.
“It’s proved that the mummy in ‘Tomb 35’ [in the Valley of the Kings – a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, tombs were constructed for the kings and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom] was Tutankhamun’s mother, but archeologically it hasn’t been proved who that person was yet.
“The tests have also shown that Tutankhamun’s father was buried in ‘Tomb 55’ – again it still hasn’t been proved exactly who this person was, but it has always thought to have been Akhenaten [a pharaoh of the 18th dynasty of Egypt, he ruled for 17 years and died in 1336 BC or 1334 BC].”
DNA sequencing has also shown that Tutankhamun’s mother and father had a sibling relationship.
Tim said: “Ancient Egyptian relationships are fairly complicated in that there was quite a lot of intermarriage between brothers and sisters.
“Marriage was very different compared to what we know today.”
More about disease and possible causes of death have been revealed in the report too.
Tim explained: “The cause of death of Tutankhamunhas never been known.
“Originally, due to a mark on the back of his skull, it was thought that he had been hit over the head, or had fallen off his chariot and hit his head.
“However a CT scan [brain scan using x-rays] was done about two or three years ago and it was proved that the blow to the back of his head wouldn’t have been severe enough to cause death.
“Later a break on his leg was discovered and it was then put forward that septicemia [the presence of bacteria in the blood] may have caused his death, if the break hadn’t healed properly.
“That was the current theory until now – it’s now been proved through this latest report that he had malaria as well.
“So we’re getting a picture of quite a frail king, despite the fact he was young – he was only 19 when he died.
“He obviously had malaria, but whether this is what killed him is yet to be proved.
“It was quite prevalent in those days, because of the marshland near the River Nile [in Egypt], which attracted the mosquitoes – so it would have been possible to live with the disease, but not actually die from it.”
Reference : news.bbc.co.uk
Posted by : Yasmine Aladdin.
One of the most famous sites in Egypt has always been the Valley of the Kings, which has revealed to us such wonders as the tomb of Tutankhamun. However, all of the major discoveries of the past were made by foreign archaeologists. I was determined that Egyptian archaeologists should become part of the process of excavation and discovery, so in November 2007, the first all-Egyptian team to ever work in the Valley began excavating the area behind the tomb of Merenptah.
In the cliffs behind the tomb we discovered channels that the ancient Egyptians dug to redirect the “tears of the gods,”the flood, in order to preserve the tombs. In the course of our excavations, we recorded many new graffiti in the Valley and found many ostraca, which are pieces of limestone or pottery with drawings and inscriptions. The inscriptions found were very interesting, including a picture of an old lady, the cartouche of Ramses II and many descriptions and other things.
The second site we excavated was the area in front of the tomb ofTutankhamun, KV 62. Many people have been looking for a new tomb in the Valley, especially since the discovery of KV 63 in 2005. Nicholas Reeves had conducted radar survey and the results showed a crack in the mountain, which he said could indicate a tunnel in the mountain that could end in a burial chamber. He thought that KV 64 would be located in front of the tomb of Tutankhamun. However, as we know from a study of the geology of the Valley of the Kings, there are many cracks in the mountain, and when we excavated, we found nothing. Another scholar, Lyla Brock, indicated that a “KV C” would be found near the antiquities office. We demolished the antiquities office and investigated that area and the area in front of Tutankhamun’s tomb, but we found no evidence of any tomb.
Another of our excavation projects in the Valley rediscovered the workmen’s huts found by Howard Carter. We excavated them and found that they were huts where the workmen lived temporarily while they were constructing tombs in the Valley, and they were reused in Dynasty 19 as storage magazines. The most important work that we have done in the Valley of the Kings is to make a study of the levels in the Valley from Dynasty 18 to 20 for the first time.
We are also excavating in the Valley of the Monkeys, which is right next to the Valley of the Kings. Our finds there included many ostraca and pottery from the time of Amenhotep III in front of his tomb. The most important things we found in the Valley of the Monkeys are four foundation deposits, each containing pottery, weapons, tools, animal bones and other artifacts. Kent Weeks has published that foundation deposits were not placed before the tomb was built, as they were with temple deposits, but were deposited after the construction. If we study all of the tomb foundation deposits in the Valley of the Kings, we find that some tombs have five deposits while others have four. Therefore, the discovery of four foundation deposits near each other in the Valley of the Monkeys indicates that there could be a tomb nearby, and we hope to find it. I would be very happy if it is the tomb of Ankhesenamun, the wife of Tutankhamun, who married King Ay after Tut’s death. Another exciting possibility is the tomb of Queen Tiye, the wife of Amenhotep III, whose mummy we have recently identified. Both of these queens would be likely to be buried in the Valley of the Monkeys, near the tombs of their husbands. We continue our excavations in this area in the hopes of revealing the secrets of this fascinating place.
Reference :
http://www.drhawass.com/blog/excavations-valley-kings
Posted by : Yasmine Aladdin
EGYPT 
