Egypt Archives - Page 87 of 92

The Disappearance of Artifacts from Sinai

Some important artifacts excavated by Israeli archaeologists in the Sinai Peninsula but since returned to the Egyptian government have disappeared, according to the former director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass. Hershel Shanks writes of this revelation from a recent interview in which Hawass criticized Israel for not publishing the results of the Kuntillet Ajrud excavations.

In an editorial in the Jerusalem Post, Shanks declares that both problems have been or shortly will be resolved.

On March 3, the Egyptian press reported that 30 truckloads of antiquities had been moved for safekeeping from the Qantara storage facilities to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Included were “Sinai artifacts that were retrieved from Israel following the signing of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty.”

Concerning the publication of the excavations, Shanks reports:

I subsequently inquired about this of Joseph Aviram, president of the Israel Exploration Society. He told me that the publication of the inscriptions had recently been reassigned to two leading epigraphers, Shmuel Ahituv and Esther Eshel. They have completed their work and await only the contribution of excavator Ze’ev Meshel.
Aviram hopes to have the publication out this year. But, still, that’s 35 years after the excavation.

The artifacts involved include the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions that mention “Yahweh … and his Asherah.”

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Zahi Hawass Resigns

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities Affairs, has resigned in the wake of the resignation of former Egyptian Prime Minister Hosni Mubarak and the large scale looting of antiquities. Kate Taylor reports the following at the NY Times Art Beat blog.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s powerful and controversial antiquities chief,
resigned on Thursday along with the prime minister, after posting on
his Web site for the first time a list of dozens of sites that have
been looted since the beginning of the uprising that led to the fall
of President Hosni Mubarak.

Among the places Mr. Hawass named as having been looted were the
Metropolitan Museum of Art’s storerooms at its excavation site in
Dahshur, south of Cairo. In a statement the Met’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, described that incident as having taken place several weeks ago.

Mr. Campbell expressed alarm about continuing looting, calling it “a
grave and tragic emergency.” In a statement, which was issued before
Mr. Hawass’s resignation was confirmed, he said:
“The world cannot sit by and permit unchecked anarchy to jeopardize
the cultural heritage of one of the world’s oldest, greatest and most
inspiring civilizations. We echo the voices of all concerned citizens
of the globe in imploring Egypt’s new government authorities, in
building the nation’s future, to protect its precious past. Action
needs to be taken immediately.”

HT: Jack Sasson

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Weekend Roundup

Iraq
Efforts are underway to resurrect Iraq’s tourism industry. CNN reported in January on conservation work at the site of Babylon, and the Global Heritage Fund has been involved in similar work at Ur. In 2009 and 2010, the Iraqi government reported 165 tourists visited the country.

The online edition of Archaeology magazine has posted a piece entitled “Letter from Iraq: The Ziggurat Endures.” It was written by Michael Taylor, a National Guardsman who visited Ur in May, 2008. There are a few photos of the ziggurat and one of the royal tombs.

Last fall, American archaeologists returned to southern Iraq for the first time in 25 years. A report at PhysOrg outlines the research of Jennifer Pournelle. She is studying the importance of marshland resources, and how proximity to marshlands may have helped determine where ancients cities were founded in southern Iraq. A short video can be seen here.

Egypt
Last Sunday, the Cairo Museum reopened, along with five other museums and all of Egypt’s antiquities sites. On Wednesday night, looters attempted to make off with a 160-ton, red granite statue of Ramses II located at Aswan. Their efforts were thwarted by security personnel (and maybe the size of the statue).

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, has claimed that a 3,200 year-old funerary mask owned by the Saint Louis Art Museum was stolen from Egypt. The mask was discovered in excavations at Saqqara in 1952 and purchased by the museum for half-a-million dollars. The museum has filed suit to prevent seizure of the mask by the U.S. attorney’s office in St. Louis.

Beginning today and running through September 4, the Tennessee State Museum is featuring a three-part exhibition entitled Egyptian Relics, Replicas & Revivals: Treasures from Tutankhamun. The exhibit brings together objects and replicas from the University of Memphis, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Vanderbilt University, and the International Museum Institute of New York.

Admission is free. Details are available at the museum’s website.

Anson Rainey Tributes
A week ago Saturday, Anson Rainey passed away at the age of 81. This past week, the radio program LandMinds produced a four-part tribute to Rainey in which they conducted interviews with Paul Wright of Jerusalem University College, and Yigal Levin and Aharon Demsky of Bar-Ilan University.

Audio of the program can be found here. Biblical Archaeology Review also has a brief note about Rainey’s passing on their website.

Miscellaneous
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae has made available an online edition of the Classical Greek lexicon Liddell-Scott-Jones, with hyperlinks to texts in the TLG database. The lexicon can be found here and an account of its print and digital versions here.

On Monday, March 21, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, Thomas Levy will speak at George Washington University’s Capitol Archaeological Institute in Washington, DC. His lecture is entitled “Quest for Solomon’s Mines: Cyber-Archaeology and Recent Explorations in Jordan,” and will be presented at the Elliott School, 1957 E St. NW, Room 113. Both the lecture and a reception are free and open to the public. Some information is provided here.

HT: Joe Lauer and Jack Sasson

Tagged Egypt, Lectures, Museums, Resources, Tourism

Another Update on Egyptian Antiquites

In a steady stream of almost daily updates, Zahi Hawass continues to report on the status of Egypt’s archaeological sites and treasures. Many of the reports are preliminary and the extent of potential loss awaits further assessment.

On February 20, Egypt will reopen many of its archaeological sites to tourists.

Hawass’s blog features photos of the panther from a statue of Tutankhamun before and after its partial restoration.

Of the objects reported to have been taken from the Cairo Museum, three were found on the museum grounds. Last night, a fourth object, the limestone statue of Akhenaten, was handed over at a Cairo police station.

Akhenaten Statue before looting (www.drhawass.com).

Akhenaten Statue after return (Ahmed Amin, www.drhawass.com).

Hawass reports that antiquities storage magazines at Saqqara and Cairo University, and two tombs at Saqqara and Abusir were broken into. A storage magazine at Dahshur has been broken into twice, and several boxes of objects were stolen from another storage magazine at Qantara East, Sinai. Of the objects taken from Qantara East, 298 of them have been returned. The Egyptian military prevented additional break-ins at Tell el Basta and Lisht.

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Some Missing Objects Found in Cairo Museum

Today, Zahi Hawass, Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs, reported that three objects which were thought to have been taken from the Cairo Museum have turned up on the museum grounds. Four days ago, Hawass issued a press release stating that 18 objects were missing from the museum in connection with a break-in which occurred on January 29 (previously mentioned here and here).

Now, only 15 objects remain missing.

The objects recovered are (1) the Heart Scarab of Yuya, (2) one of the eleven shabti statuettes of Yuya and Thuya, and (3) fragments of the gilded wood statue of Tutankhamun being carried by the goddess Menkaret and all of the fragments of Menkaret. The objects had been dislocated and Hawass believes they were dropped when the looters fled. A final inventory of the museum is still being conducted.

More details can be found on Hawass’s blog (with photos) or in the Ahram Online news report.

HT: Jack Sasson

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Follow-up to “Sad News from Cairo Museum”

National Geographic has photos of four of the eighteen objects that were reported missing from the Cairo Museum as a result of the break-in just over two weeks ago.

Sandstone head of an Amarna princess (Kenneth Garrett, National Geographic).

Last week, Claude Mariottini drew our attention to other National Geographic photos of damaged artifacts in the Cairo Museum.

CORRECTION: There are eighteen, not eight, objects which were reported missing. There were eight items listed, but one of the items was actually consisted of eleven shabti statuettes.

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