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New law on the way

Can the new antiquities law put an end to the antiquities trafficking business?

- Sobre el robo de antigüedades egipcias y el esfuerzo de las autoridades por combatirlo -

Grave robbing has thrived in Egypt from the days of the ancients. The tombs of royals and the elite were most at risk, since they contained great riches in the form of valuable funerary objects including gold jewellery and domestic objects inlaid with precious stones, alabaster and faience. Even the graves of the poor, however, were prey to robbery for the sake of the meagre offerings and adornments entombed with the deceased. Despite the curse-invoking texts engraved on tomb walls, certain architectural steps taken to prevent theft, severe punishments and warnings that robbers would be judged by the gods in the afterlife, grave robbers continued to plunder tombs...Continuar leyendo

Sixty years of beauty
Perhaps the first organisation of true human globalisation, UNESCO's projects for protecting history and culture are themselves a heritage to be proud of, writes Chafik Chamass With the UNESCO campaign for safeguarding the Nubia monuments, initiated  some 45 years ago, Egypt marked the launch of one of the first large- scale cultural heritage salvation initiatives in the history of mankind. By weight of its unique, ancient civilisation, Egypt ensures the centrality of the  role it still plays internationally today. Thus, in 1959, when UNESCO launched its first international cultural heritage  salvation campaign, it was with the aim of helping Egypt safeguard the Abu Simbel temples in the Nile Valley. These treasures of ancient Egyptian civilisation were threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam...Continuar leyendo
 
Dig days: Imhotep: the first gifted architect
By Zahi Hawass
Imhotep, the brilliant architect of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, should be universally remembered. He (transformed) the construction of the king's tomb from a mastaba (bench tomb) to a pyramid, and for the first time used stone in the construction. The Step Pyramid is in fact the first large scale structure to be built out of stone.
Imhotep's title was "the overseer of all the king's work". King Djoser honoured Imhotep by inscribing his name on one of his royal statues. In the Late Period, he was worshipped as the incarnation of Asklepios, the god of medicine. The Egyptians considered Imhotep a patron of the arts and recited his name before commencing any  type of writing. Thousands of tourists visit Saqqara today to see his creation, the magnificent Step Pyramid. However,  most of them are not aware of new discoveries at the site. I always say that  Saqqara is a virgin site; almost every day we discover more artefacts, tombs, statues and even new pyramids...Continuar leyendo
  
Dig Days:
Treasures under the modern houses
By Zahi Hawass
I have spent most of my life excavating in the sand, revealing the secrets of the ancient Egyptians. I am especially proud of my discovery and ongoing excavations at the tombs of the pyramid builders at Giza. The cemetery is divided into two parts (lower and upper). The lower cemetery is for the workmen who transported the stones to build the pyramids. The upper cemetery is for the skilled workers such as the artisans and the overseers of the workmen. They all participated in the national project to build the  king's pyramid to ensure his divinity in the afterlife. The workmen came through the support of the households from Upper and Lower Egypt. The households  sent fo d, supplies and workers. This excavation revealed important  information about the lives of these men and women. We discovered that  10,000 workmen were involved in building the pyramid. They worked year round
in rotation for about 32 years...Continuar leyendo
   
Arrests in 'museum curse' case

- Arrestos relacionados con los robos en los sótanos de El Museo Egipcio de El Cairo -
The three Ancient Egyptian limestone statuettes which disappeared three weeks ago from the basement of the Egyptian Museum have been recovered in an undercover operation.

It seemed that the Egyptian Museum's basement had been afflicted with the Pharaohs' curse. Three weeks ago, when the Giza archaeological inspectors asked for the return of 14 objects placed on loan with the museum last April to celebrate World Heritage Day, curators realised that three of the pieces had vanished. In an attempt to find the missing objects up to 40 inspectors have been exploring the museum's basement, sorting through the overwhelmingly large collection of stored artefacts, but with no luck. That was until early this week, when the Tourism and Antiquities Police (TAP) arrested two men who were trying to sell the objects to a policeman working  undercover as an antiquities trader. Culture Minister Farouk Hosni has called for an investigation into the theft.
The three statuettes date back to the Old Kingdom era. They are a headless, seated limestone figure of the commander of the royal guard; a seated pair statuette of the director of artisans, Neferref-Nessu, and his wife, who wears a colourful collar; and a burnt clay Osirian statuette...Continuar leyendo

Alexandria's elegant showcase
With the upcoming international conference on museology opening in Alexandria the city can be proud of its latest gem, says Alexandria National Museum in a 20th century mansion in central Alexandria is a state-of-the-art museum in which objects of all epochs are displayed in uniquely suspended showcases. When it was officially  opened last winter it caused a great impact. How could it not? The building itself is an Italian-style mansion  built in 1928; the objects on display are in diagonally-placed cabinets that do not detract from the elegant architectural features  of the building and, what is more, they have not been seen before; they were hitherto in storage  in the Egyptian, Coptic and Islamic Museums in Cairo andin the Graeco-Roman and Jewellery Museums in Alexandria. The collections on display in their sophisticated and well-designed setting, superbly lit and with well-placed and accurate labels, were praised by all. The launching was a great success...Continuar leyendo
 
Dig Days:
Treasures under the modern houses
By Zahi Hawass
I have spent most of my life excavating in the sand, revealing the secrets of the ancient Egyptians. I am especially proud of my discovery and ongoing excavations at the tombs of the pyramid builders at Giza. The cemetery is divided into two parts  (lower and upper). The lower cemetery is for the workmen who transported the stones to build the pyramids. The upper cemetery is for the skilled workers such as the artisans and the overseers of the workmen. They all participated in the  national project to build the king's pyramid to ensure his divinity in the afterlife. The workmen came through the support of the households from Upper and Lower  Egypt. The households sent food, supplies and workers. This excavation revealed important information about the lives of these men and women. We discovered that 10,000 workmen were involved in building the pyramid. They worked year round in rotation for about 32 years...Continuar leyendo
 

Dig days: Unearthing the museum's basement
By Zahi Hawass
I have always dug in the sand, and this is where I have made my most important discoveries -- such as the Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis, and the Tombs of the Pyramid Builders at Giza. But recently I have become interested in digging in a new place, a place without sand -- the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
There is a maze of corridors lying under the museum. For decades, no one knew what was hidden down there: boxes of all sorts of treasures discovered by foreign and Egyptian expeditions were brought in and stored over the years, without proper recording of the artefacts. There were objects of stone and wood, mummies, and even objects made of precious metal. But no one knew exactly what was there. It became known among scholars that if anything was sent to the basement it would be lost forever.
At the beginning of my career I excavated at Kom Abu Billo, an important site in the Delta. I worked there for nine years, from 1970 until 1979. We discovered a great cemetery of the Graeco-Roman period: many of the people interred were devotees of the goddess Isis- Aphrodite, the Egyptian-Greek goddess of beauty and love. Near the cemetery was a temple to the god Apollo. We had begun excavations at this site because a grand canal, five kilometres-long, was being cut through the desert, so we had to excavate along its designated route. Each year I took a truck full of boxes packed with jewellery -- especially bracelets -- and gold amulets, stelae, and 12 beautiful statues of the goddess Isis-Aphrodite.
When I came to Cairo much later I tried to find these artefacts in the museum, but no one could tell me where they were. So when I became head of Egypt's Antiquities Service in 2002, which coincided with the centennial of the museum, I decided to deal with this issue. I asked the curators at the museum to begin cleaning the basement and opening the boxes to see what lay inside. We cleaned out several basement galleries on the west side of the museum and turned it into an exhibition area. The first exhibition held here was of treasures found in the basement, along with objects from storerooms around the country and exhibits from the overcrowded showcases in the museum. We called the exhibition, which contained about 250 objects, "Hidden Treasures", and it was a great success.
The cleaning of the basement has been ongoing, and has become an important project with specially-chosen curators inspecting and recording each of the objects. We are also in the process of building a new inventory database for the museum where all these objects, along with their exact locations, will be recorded. We expect that all the objects in the basement will be in the new database by the end of this year. This will bring an enormous change, and will help to take the museum into the new millennium.
We have made many interesting discoveries in the treasure trove beneath the museum, finding artefacts that no one could imagine. A beautiful mummy encased in cartonnage belongs to Djed-Khonsu, son of Neskhonsu, and dates from the 22nd and 23rd Dynasties. This has many important religious scenes in vibrant colors, and the face is very impressive. Unfortunately we do not know who found it, or where. This information has been lost in the maze of corridors below the museum.
Another discovery was the wooden statuette of a man wearing a short kilt and a short wig. In this case we know that it was found at Saqqara. The curators also found a painted ushabti box, used to hold small funerary statuettes that were designed to work in the afterlife in place of the deceased person. They also came across wooden statues that I found in my excavations at the Teti pyramid cemetery at Saqqara less than 10 years ago, and which had been lost among thousands of pots and boxes. Other special finds were a unique vase bearing the name of the Pharaoh Horemheb found at Qantir in the Delta, tools bearing the name of Queen Hatshepsut from a foundation deposit at Karnak, and more than a hundred coffins and mummies of priests of Amun from a cache found at Deir Al-Bahari in 1891.
In October of this year we will put on a new exhibition of these treasures to show the world that it is not only in the sands of Egypt that beautiful things are hidden.

Fuente: Al Ahram Weekly

The Knight of Karnak 

(Egypt through the eyes of Prisse d' Avennes)

One man's crusade to save Pharaonic heritage from becoming, quite literally, a pile of stones or a source of building material for a factory. Before the publication of Description de l'Egypte after Napoleon's 'great scientific and military expedition' of 1798, only a handful of bold, religious men traveled to Egypt in search of ancient Coptic manuscripts. Few scholars or pilgrims passing through Egypt stopped to look at ruins on their way to and from the Holy Land. Apart from mummies, which were at a premium in Europe, they showed little enthusiasm for Pharaonic artifacts. The publication of Description de l'Egypte's 23 massive volumes over nearly 20 years directed the world's attention to ancient Egypt and helped spark the modern study of the nation's ancient history. Muhammad Ali's 'open door policy' quickly put Pharaonic heritage to the fore. Travelers flocked to the Valley of the Nile in search of the newly discovered remnants of ancient civilization. It did not take long for them to start planning a massive exportation of its monuments to their home countries, earning themselves both fortunes and reputations in the process. They encountered little resistance in these early years. The Pasha did not seem aware of the value of Egypt's heritage; he only marveled at the immense quantity of stones that had been quarried to build the temples. He believed the stones remained, only to be used by Ali, to expedite the construction of his factories. Why then, should visitors have felt guilty about removing statues, sarcophagi and bits of pottery? They didn't, especially since it was relatively easy to obtain digging concessions. Their only worries had to do with the fierce competition in the field and the difficulties of transporting the more massive monuments from their original sites to Alexandria, where they were loaded onto ships and whisked away to Paris, London, Berlin, Milan or Turin. His determination provoked several violent incidents.He was beaten, stabbed, jailed, but still would not give up. Under the influence of Rifaa El-Tahtawi (1801-1873), Muhammad Ali did sign an ordinance forbidding the removal of antiquities from Egypt. Ali ordered the fellahin to provide him with 100 kg of stone per cultivated feddan in order to speed up the construction of numerous factories that were essential for the modernization of the country. This latter requirement resulted in the demolition of countless temples, particularly around ancient Thebes. Furthermore, the Pasha, to curry favor with European powers, was receptive to the demands of foreign missions for permissions to search for antiquities. Many archaeologists and scholars who had come to study and record the monuments with no intention of personal gain or glory, lost all scruples when they witnessed the annihilation of many priceless remains. Others became obsessed with the necessity of creating a pictorial archive of sorts that documented extant monuments before they were blown to smithereens by the charges of gun powder ignited by the fellahin demolition squads. Among the aforementioned archaeologists was John Gardner Wilkinson (1797-1875), author of Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians and Handbook for Travellers in Egypt. Wilkinson asked Prisse d'Avennes, another ancient Egyptian history enthusiast, to provide him with information "on the demolitions taking place at Karnak" and asked him "to copy, if there still is time, the ancient Pharaohs' legends that are said to cover the old stones used in these monuments." D'Avennes was a multitalented man whose unconventional path led him to dedicate his life to discovering and painstakingly recording Egyptian architectural treasures, both Pharaonic and Islamic. An architect and engineer by training, he was hired by Muhammad Ali to contribute his expertise to the Pasha's grand modernization program. Unfortunately, his independent character inconvenienced several powerful figures around the Pasha. He was thus relegated to the post of tutor to the children of Ibrahim, Muhammad Ali's oldest son. He disliked the job, and so resigned and proceeded toward Upper Egypt without the advantages of vice-regal protection. In 1838, he established an observation post in the vicinity of the Temple of Abu Simbel and settled for a life of small skirmishes with minor government officials. By this time d'Avennes had a mission: He wanted to save the stones of Karnak from being used to build the Pasha's saltpeter factory. His determination provoked several violent incidents. He was beaten, stabbed and jailed, but still would not give up. One of his young assistants, George Lloyd de Beynestyn, having been assailed by a fellah, used the butt of his gun in self-defense, but accidentally shot himself instead. Alone, d'Avennes resolved to work harder, although historians hint at the immense depression that followed the death of this special friend. But d'Avennes had little time to dwell on his personal losses. Soon after the death of de Beynestyn, he learned of the arrival of the Prussian archaeological mission led by Lepsius and suspected that the worst devastation was still to come. During his numerous forays, d'Avennes discovered Toutmes III's Hall of Ancestors (also known as Hall of the Kings of Karnak), a chronological monument as important as the famous Turin Papyrus and the two Tables of Abydos. Lepsius, thought d'Avennes, would surely realize the value of the memorial, and decided he preferred to see it taken to Paris rather than Berlin. However, he had no financial means and no official permission to remove the monument, let alone transport it to France on his own. This is nevertheless what he decided to do. With the help of 20 faithful fellahin, he began paring the façades of the stones to their inner surfaces, which were covered in figures and cartouches. Since he was working in secret, he could only proceed during moonless nights. It took him 18 months to complete his task. D'Avennes had just finished packing and hiding his precious reliefs, when the police arrived to confiscate his treasure. After a month of procrastination, d'Avennes decided to rely on the 'universally acknowledged way of doing business in the Orient'- he bribed the policemen who were guarding the treasure and managed, finally, to load his 27 crates of antiquities onto his vessel. He was ready to sail down the Nile to Cairo. D'Avennes accompanied his booty on its voyage, according to his son's memoirs. Having reached Beni Hassan, d'Avennes' boat encountered the Prussian mission sailing toward Luxor. He invited Lepsius to his boat and, while drinking coffee, the latter explained that he had an order from the Pasha to remove the Hall of the Ancestors of Toutmes III, which had been donated by the Pasha to the Prussian government. D'Avennes smiled benignly and was careful not to inform Lepsius that he was sitting on one of the crates containing the monument. In Cairo, the French ambassador refused to store the crates under French protection, and d'Avennes had no choice but to place them as cargo in the Egyptian Government Stores. Meanwhile, the British had learned of the crates ' content and tried to negotiate a deal with d'Avennes, offering him 100,000 francs for his find. D'Avennes was not interested in the money, although he had been poor all his life. He appealed to the authorities in France and, after a few months of heated discussions, obtained permission to load the famous crates labeled "objects of natural history destined for the Musée de Paris" on a ship sailing for the port of Toulon. D'Avennes was decorated with the Légion d'Honneur, the only reward he ever reaped for his efforts.

Fuente: Egypt Today

Sailing to distant lands
New finds are bringing added understanding to the way ancient communities in Upper Egypt functioned, and to the importance of commerce and cultural development. 
The mysterious Land of Punt, at one time identified with the Somali coast and now thought to be located in the southern Sudan or the Eritrean region of Ethiopia, was Ancient Egypt's source of luxury products, the place from where they imported valuable items not available in their own country.
Regular missions set sail southwards through the Red Sea from the Fifth Dynasty or earlier, returning to Egypt with gold, ivory, ebony, gum and incense to be burned in temple rituals. The hides of giraffe, panther and cheetah, which were worn by temple priests, were imported along with live animals -- either for the priests' own menageries or as religious sacrifices -- as well as the sacred cynocephalus or dog-faced baboon. Little wonder, then, that Punt became known as the "Land of Gods", and as the personal pleasure garden of the great god Amun.
The oldest surviving record of a journey to Punt is inscribed on one of the fragments of what became known as the Palermo stone, which dates from the Fifth Dynasty. Egyptians appear to have brought pygmies from this remote region, judging from inscriptions by the expedition leader Harkhuf on his funerary monument. By the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) there was regular trade with Nubia, and an 11th-Dynasty record reveals that Mentuhotep III ordered no fewer than 3,000 men to sail to this source of plenty -- a place also mentioned in contemporary poems.
Trade between Egypt and Punt appears to have been suspended after the 12th Dynasty and not resumed until early in the 18th, when the most famous expedition to Punt, that of Queen Hatshepsut, came as an outcome of a consultation with the oracle of the god Amun in which she was instructed to send a fleet of ships there. The expedition is featured in relief in Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir Al-Bahri, which shows, in different registers, the finest representations of ships we have from the New Kingdom. 
The relief portrays a total of 10 ships, five entering harbour and five loading and departing. It is assumed that the ships were prefabricated on the Nile at Coptos, a point where it most closely approaches the Red Sea, then were stripped down and the components transported through Wadi Al-Hamamat by donkey caravan to Qusseir where they were reassembled. On completion of the mission to Punt, an often dangerous journey, and the equally dangerous return journey to the Egyptian port, the ships had to be stripped down again and their parts carried back through the desert valley along with their rich cargoes to the Nile, where they would be re-assembled, re- loaded, and set sail to Thebes. 
There are few material remains of this necessarily well-organised procedure and the arduous but necessary journey to Punt. Early last month, however, at the ancient port of Marsa Gawasis, south of Hurghada, an American-Italian team stumbled upon interesting evidence of trade between the two regions. 
They discovered a large, man-made cave. Just inside the entrance they unearthed two cedar steering oars, limestone block-anchors, rigging ropes and other items, Zahi Hawass secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) described the discovery as the first complete parts of a Pharaonic seafaring ship ever to be discovered. Pottery dating from the early 18th Dynasty (1500-1400 BC) was also found, possibly linking the discovery to Hatshepsut's expeditions to Punt. Substantial evidence of copper smelting was found in the area below the cave, though its source has yet to be determined.
The walls of the cave were reinforced with re- used stone anchors, two large cedar beams, mud brick and plaster. To the north a curved antechamber led to two rectangular rooms about 12 metres long, while a smaller antechamber led to yet another rock-cut chamber to the south. 
A number of small carved niches were found outside the cave entrance, four of which still bore limestone stelae. A preliminary examination of one of the stelae revealed that it was divided into two parts, the upper section bearing the cartouche of Amenemhet III -- who ruled in about 1800 BC -- above an offering scene to Min, the god of fertility. The lower section was inscribed with hieroglyphic text relating the story of two expeditions to Punt and Bia-Punt. Based on early studies of the stelae, Rodolfo Fattovich, head of the Italian team from the University of Naples, said that Amenemhet III had ordered hitherto unknown expeditions to both lands.
The ships built for voyages to Punt, although shaped, according to surviving reliefs -- like ordinary travelling vessels on the Nile with keels and stem and stern-post -- appear to have been more securely constructed for fast voyages in dangerous waters, and are more correctly described as trading galleys. 
Along the shoreline of Wadi Gawasis, a roughly oval platform made of stone slabs and rocky coral has been excavated, along with hundreds of conch shells that had been left on its surface. "These were probably the sailors' offerings to their gods," Fattovich suggests. 
Fattovich has given two presentations on the caves found by him and his co-leader of the mission, Kathrym Bard of Boston University, one at the 56th annual meeting of the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE) in Cambridge, Mass. USA, and last week's lecture at the Italian Institute in Cairo. 

Fuente: Al Ahram Weekly.