Egypt Archives - Page 88 of 94

Weekend Roundup

If you would like to try your hand at identifying objects found in an archaeological excavation, the team at the Temple Mount Sifting Project is now soliciting input from those who may have information related to their finds. You can head over to the photo gallery to begin.

Zahi Hawass is back as Egyptian Minister of Antiquities because he learned that “antiquities cannot live away from me.” The nation’s trials have not ended and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo is again closed.

The spring season at Tel Burna has wrapped up, and the website now has links to photos and an easier way to donate.

Ferrell Jenkins recently explained the connections of Libya to the New Testament.

G. M. Grena debunks the claims that the earliest depiction of Jesus was found in the lead codices from Jordan.

Gerald Mattingly lectured yesterday afternoon at Lee University on the topic: “Is Anybody Finding
Anything Important Over in Jordan: The Top 10 Discoveries from Transjordan that Relate to the Bible.” Perhaps he will turn the presentation into an article one day.

Iran has cut ties with the Louvre. It’s too bad it’s not the other way around.

Glo users now can access the program on all of their PCs, Macs, iPads and soon iPhones.

Logos has released an updated version of Shibboleth and Mark Hoffman explains why it’s good and when an alternative may be better for you.

Only rarely does one see an original copy of the Survey of Western Palestine maps (26 sheets) for sale. A bookseller in the UK has one listed now, if you act quickly and are ready to part with $3,826 plus shipping. Alternately, you can get an electronic copy for $35 (including shipping) from us. In either case, you’ll benefit from the 160-page index (which we have painstakingly digitized).

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Egypt, Jerusalem, Lectures, Museums, Resources, Shephelah, Weekend Roundup

Zahi Hawass Reappointed

After protests against his leadership, Zahi Hawass resigned from his post as head of Egyptian antiquities. Now he has returned, according to Ahram:

Zahi Hawass‎, chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced that he had been re-‎appointed as Minister of Antiquities following a meeting with Prime Minister Essam Sharaf ‎on Wednesday. ‎ Hawass first took up the newly-created post in the cabinet when ex-president Hosni ‎Mubarak installed him late in January.‎ After a number of artefacts had been declared missing in the wake of the 25 January revolution the Egyptian archaeologist had stepped down from his post.

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Egypt

Stolen Egyptian Antiquities Recovered

A police trap has led to the recovery of 12 objects recently stolen from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. From the Luxor Times Magazine:

Ahmed Attia Mahmod lives at Dar El-Salam district in Cairo formed a group to attack the Egyptian Museum on 28th January, during the clashes that occurred around the museum which distracted the attention.
This was revealed when he was arrested with a friend of his who owns a coffee shop in the same district and a third partner with 12 objects of the Museum’s missing objects. The perpetrators started to spread videos and pictures of the objects to mobile phones of others trying to find a buyer. The Antiquities police in co-operation with the Armed Forces tracked them and set them a trap with the help of a foreigner who works at the American Embassy in Cairo convening the criminals that he will buy the objects for 50 million dollars when the police and military police arrested them.

The full story is here. The same source provides a list of all 54 missing objects from the museum.

HT: Jack Sasson

Tagged Egypt

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.”

Tagged Egypt

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

Tagged Egypt

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