Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Ten Events Concerning Egyptology

1. The most interesting news of the year must be the DNA results on the mummies believed related to king Tutankhamun and the mummies of Yuya and Thuya. Not surprisingly the human remains from Valley of the Kings tomb 55 still just as mysterious even if the foils inside said mummies coffin do give a name for the body found there in.


2. South of the worker's cemetery at Giza a new tomb was found which may be the discovery of a new necropolis of the royal court.


3. An international convention was held with more than a dozen countries in attendance in an effort to discuss ways of repatriating cultural property in foreign collections though the countries in possession of many of the most important of these objects did not attend.


4. Then must come the issue of the value of repatriating objects to historically vulnerable countries like Egypt or Greece and whether in the long run such objects could be better cared for by their current international institutions than by those countries who's culture they represent.


5. Luxor is all abuzz over the ongoing unprofessional digging up of the avenue of rams to help create an outdoor museum/theme park.


6. After decades of an unspoken scandal, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is set to return 19 different objects that have come to that institution through Howard Carter and believed to have come from king Tutankhamun's tomb.


7. A painting by Vincent Van Gogh titled "Poppy flowers" was easily stolen from the Mahmoud Khalil museum in Cairo. The museum's alarms and cameras were not working.


 8. The year also solved the mystery of whether a pharaoh of Egypt had been buried at Vergina in northern Greece?


 9. We find at Mit Rahina a temple to the god Ptah built by Ramesses the great (1279-1212bce)and now littered with garbage and sewage.


10. Certainly, 2010 dispelled a centuries old curiosity with the final exploration of the tunnel in the tomb of the Pharaoh Seti I (KV17) in the Valley of the Kings by Dr. Zahi Hawass and alas some funerary trinkets were found but the long suspected burial chamber was not there.

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