Ancient Egypt News 09/09/2019

Ancient Egypt and Solar EclipsesCredit: Wikimedia

Two articles on this topic:

Khepri - Total Solar Eclipse Scarab God
The Internet Archive has done a pretty good job of preserving my 'Khepri - Total Solar Eclipse Scarab God' eclipsology "web site". Here is the complete text of the original website with the two main GIF animations that it displayed.

The Winged Sun Disk Symbol Of Ancient Egyptian Religion Was Inspired By Total Solar Eclipses
The Internet Archive has done a pretty good job of preserving my 'The Ancient Egyptian Winged Sun Disk Symbol' eclipsology "web site". Here is the complete text of the original website with some of the images that it displayed along with some new ones.

10 Reasons Why Egypt Is One Of The Most Fascinating Countries In The World

From head to toe, Egypt is one of the most intriguing places you will ever get the pleasure of visiting. It has something of a bad reputation and that isn't entirely unjustified, and it's certainly worth discussing from time to time. However, we aren't here to debate the ins and outs of Egyptian law—we're here to work with the word 'fascinating.'

Tutankhamun Exhibition in Paris Surpasses 1.3 Million

The French and international news outlets reported that the temporary exhibition of King Tutankhamun currently on display at the Grande Halle La Villette in Paris broke records of turnout of the French cultural exhibitions.

International media outlets stated that the exhibition is the most visited exhibition in France, where the total number of registered visitors so far has reached 1,371,476, according to the latest official census issued by the exhibition officials, explaining that the number will increase. Visitors

A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of Giza’s Grand Egyptian Museum
Photograph: Alamy

Egypt’s vast, much-delayed museum is scheduled to open in 2020. But while Tutankhamun’s treasures are being readied for tourists, some critics see the building as a vanity project.

In the vast, shade-dappled atrium of Egypt’s new Grand Egyptian Museum, construction work surrounded a colossal statue of Ramses II, his left foot striding forward and fists clenched in readiness.

10 Marvel Gods We Hope To See In The Eternals
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Hint: 10 is Khonshu, and 9 is Bast

As Marvel fans begin looking ahead to the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the time has come to look at the announced films and projects coming in the MCU’s Phase 4. One of the most prominent films that everyone is talking about has to be Marvel’s The Eternals.

A relatively unknown property to casual Marvel fans, the Eternals are a race of immortal beings created by The Celestials millennia ago. Bestowed with their own unique abilities, The Eternals have been around long enough to see the Marvel gods emerge. Here are ten Marvel gods we hope to see appear.


Watch | A Night At The Museum With Egyptian Icon Sawsan Badr

Proudly showcasing her silver locks, Egyptian screen siren Sawsan Badr takes an enchanting tour of the Egyptian museum in downtown Cairo, Egypt.

Lovingly dubbed ‘the fugitive from the museum’ due to her uncanny resemblance to the Ancient Egyptian queen, Nefertiti, Sawsan’s reputation precedes her. Add to that a career that has spanned nearly 40 years, and her persona in the public eye is almost unparalleled.

Peripatjau, Trumpeting Thief

This next excerpt from Lewis Holmes’ book The Mystery of Music reads more like a pulp-fiction mystery novel. However, the story is preserved on 3000 year old papyri. It has torture, conspiracy, bribery and, yes, a bit of music.

The setting: Egypt, 1080 BCE. It was the end of the second Ramessid dynasty, during what Egyptologists call “The New Kingdom.” Law and order had decayed in the once great cities. Crime and corruption were on the rise as gangs looted old tombs and palaces for the precious treasures buried with the dead.

The scene of this crime was the "Valley of the Queens," an ancient burial site for the wives of pharaoh over the centuries.

Hawass: Tutankhamen Wasn’t Murdered, Ramses III was Stabbed Brutally

Renowned Egyptian archaeologist and former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass gave an important lecture at the Italian university of Perugia.

Hawass tackled in his lecture issues pertaining to the royal mummies, the story of King Tutankhamen’s death and the harem conspiracy.

The veteran archaeologist discussed as well the latest archaeological discoveries and excavations in the Valley of the Kings.

Good News For A Nerd’s Ears: The Find The Path Podcast Is Doubling

The Find the Path podcast is an officially-licensed partner of Paizo, the makers of the Pathfinder roleplaying game. Comprised of a group of longtime friends, the Find the Path podcast invites gamers and non-gamers alike into the world of Golarion and the Pathfinder RPG system.

Known for their strong grasp of the Pathfinder rules system and genuine, cooperative table dynamics, Find the Path tells an engaging and exciting story set in an Ancient Egypt analog that is full of diverse, multifaceted characters and epic fantasy adventure.

Egyptian Prime Minister: GEM Inauguration Ceremony Plans Underway

According to various local media outlets, Egypt’s government is stepping up preparations for the inauguration ceremony of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) which is set to open by 2020.

Working jointly, Prime Minister Mostafa Mabdouly and the Museum’s supreme committee have been arranging several logistical aspects of the ceremony such as the actual date, its program spanning multiple days, and the consultation of specializing international companies which can organize and arrange the ceremony.

Subterranean World Discovered Below Pyramid – 'Treasure Trove!'
Millions of animals were also found (Image: CHANNEL 5)

EGYPT archaeologists uncovered a “subterranean world” hidden below the city of Saqqara, just metres from one of the most famous pyramids of the ancient world.

Saqqara is best known for being home to the Pyramid of Djoser, also known as the Step Pyramid. Built in the 27th century BC, during the Third Dynasty, the six-tiered structure is the earliest known attempt of what the ancient civilisation became best known for. However, below the constructions lies something more sinister.

4 Nile Valley Exhibits in North America this Fall

This month many of us are preparing for another academic semester, as teachers or as students. This fall promises to be an exciting season as several compelling exhibitions will be on display in North American museums in Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, and Quebec. The Nile Scribes are excited about these four upcoming exhibitions about the Nile Valley cultures in Egypt and Sudan. Why not plan a weekend to visit one of these exhibitions for your next Egyptological getaway?

Top 5 Guidebooks for Your Trip to Egypt

With the end of summer upon us, the Nile Scribes are getting closer to our first ever Scribes on the Nile tour leaving for Egypt on October 17 from Toronto! With our group of 15 participants, Thomas and Taylor will be travelling up and down the Nile from Cairo to Aswan and back, taking in the sights and enjoying the culinary wonders Egypt has to offer. In our blog this week, we round up our Top 5 favourite guidebooks any prospective visitor should consider getting to learn as much as you can before, and during, your trip to Egypt!

Famous in its day: The Pyramid Supper Club

I was initially attracted to The Pyramid Supper Club because of its kooky architecture and its surprising location on a rural Wisconsin road next to a cornfield. I admit I thought it was a joke.

As a 1991 advertorial noted, “The Pyramid Supper Club on Highway 33 east of Beaver Dam is surrounded by a bare, flat-land setting much like the original pyramids depicted in the interior wall paintings.”

Pieces of Ramsis II Obelisk Arrive in Cairo for Re-Assembly

In an attempt to develop Tahrir Square and to show the whole world Egypt’s unique civilisation, eight blocks of one of Ramses II’s obelisks, found in his temple at San Al-Haggar archaeological site in Zagazig, arrived in Cairo on Friday.
They will be restored, assembled and erected in Tahrir Square.

Egypt to Display Coffin of Famous Ancient Queen for 1st Time

Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities decided on Friday to display the coffin of ancient Queen Tausert, the last ruler of Egypt's 19th Dynasty, to the public for the first time since its discovery two decades ago.

In a statement, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Mostafa Waziri said that the coffin will put on display within the few coming days at the Luxor Museum in Upper Egypt.

He explained that the coffin has already been transferred on Thursday from the place of its discovery, at the closed tomb of King Bay in Luxor's west bank, to the Luxor Museum.

Hatshepsut Died of Cancer, Was a Diabetes Patient

The director of Antiquities Museum at Bibliotheca Alexandrina and the supervisor of Zahi Hawass center for Egyptology Hussein Abdel Baseer revealed that the famed ancient Egyptian Queen Hatsheput died because of cancer at the age of 50 and was a diabetes patient as well.

Abdel Baseer announced that in a lecture entitled ‘’Egyptian Queens..Drama of Love and Power’’ at Zahi Hawass center for Egyptology.

Anubis Dog?

The Xoloitzcuintli (Mexican hairless dog). A dog considered to be the guide for the dead to reach the underworld. It resembles Anubis. Also it most commonly believed to be behind the legendary chupacabra.
















A Virgil Finlay illustration from Weird Tales, October 1936

The Opener of the Way

Ancient Egypt February 12

HILDA AND FLINDERS – A RELUCTANT ROMANCE

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, today’s post takes a look behind the scenes, delving into the archives to tell the story of an unlikely couple, whose tireless work shaped Manchester Museum’s Egyptology collection, and proving that you can find love in the most unexpected places … and that sometimes, opposites really do attract!

Egyptian ibis mummy holds clues to crooks behind ancient clothing caper

The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna has discovered an ancient Egyptian scroll hidden inside a vessel containing a mummified ibis. In the lengthy text, which are business notes, the scribe names three men he accuses of theft. It dates from around 1100BC.

Janet May Buchanan Scotland's forgotten heroine of Egyptology
Cover of the catalogue put together by Janet May Buchanan, 1912. ©CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection

Women in Victorian and Edwardian times made a considerable contribution to British Egyptology. The accolades and academic positions, however, were dominated by men. It was a time when female emancipation was the largest domestic issue in Britain and the politics of most Egyptologists in Britain still mirrored the anti-suffrage views of the majority of contemporary society. Although the contributions to the subject by a few women of this period have received the credit they rightfully deserve, most still remain unsung heroines.

All You Need Is Love: Modern Themes in Ancient Egyptian Love Poems
The site of Deir el-Medina; its unusual location has led to a very good rate of preservation(photograph by Kingtut, distributed under a CC A-SA 3.0 license).

It is easy to get distracted by the largest and most obvious material from ancient Egypt – vast tombs, colossal statues and beautiful jewellery. This can lead to a disconnect in our understanding of what ancient Egyptian life was really like – how ‘normal’ people felt, behaved, and acted. One of the ways that scholars try to connect with ancient Egypt at a personal, individual level is through the translation and understanding of literature written by ancient Egyptians themselves; and on Valentine’s Day, what better way is there to do that than to read some ancient Egyptian love poetry?

Edwardian aristocrats went to Egypt hoping for glamour — but they got dysentery instead
The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, 1910 CREDIT: BUYENLARGE 
Was Egypt the first place ever to have been mourned by the seasoned traveller as “ruined”? At the close of the 1900s, a leisured clergyman and Oxford Professor of Assyriology called the Rev Archibald Sayce, who had spent the previous 18 winters cruising the Nile, sold his beloved “dahabiya” – a kind of houseboat, later incarnations of which will be familiar from Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile – and left Egypt, as “life on the Nile had ceased to be the ideal existence it once was... The smoke of the steamer [had usurped] the sights and scents of the fields”.

Artistic Licence: I was here… in Ancient Egypt
Hieroglyphic graffito of the scribe Ashakhet in the Ptah temple at Karnak. Photograph: CNRS-CFEETK/Pauline Batard

Names, dates, bad jokes, life advice: we find graffiti almost everywhere in modern life.

But not many people realise that scrawling on walls isn’t anything new. At least three thousand years ago, in the dusty heat of Ancient Egyptian temples, people did the very same thing.

Pyramids of the Kingdom of Kush – Map

Image Credit : Valerian Guillo

The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient African kingdom located in Nubia, a region along the Nile rivers encompassing the areas between what is today central Sudan and southern Egypt.

The region was home to three periods of Kushite development through antiquity. The first had its capital based at Kerma (2600–1520 BCE) which was Nubia’s first centralised state with an indigenous form of architecture and burial customs.

Newly discovered buildings reveal clues to ancient Egyptian dynasties (video)

Photo by

G. Marouard

The archaeological excavation of an ancient Egyptian city at Tell Edfu in southern Egypt, led by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has discovered well-preserved settlement remains dating to an important turning point in ancient Egyptian history, when the pharaohs began to renew interest in the provincial regions in the far south of their kingdom.

For more on this story, see: Ancient Egyptian beer-making facilities found by archaeologists (video).

Scans to shed light on identity of mummified Egyptian baby on display at Maidstone Museum

Scans are to shed more light on the identity of a mummified Egyptian baby – one of the youngest ever discovered – which for centuries was believed to be the remains of a bird.

The rare relic, part of the collection at Maidstone Museum, underwent more tests after it was found to be the body of a miscarried foetus, and not a 2,300-year-old hawk as originally thought.

Picture of the Week

A picture showing some workers weaving linen from the Egyptian Textile Museum.

Goodbye, Hello! The journey continues

2015 was a good year. Some highlights:

• The rewrite of my novel, Queen of Heka is within 50 pages of being done.  Many thanks to my editor, Jason Sitzes, who is the cold, clear voice in my ear when I get silly. A few agents and one publisher have requested a full manuscript.
• Started seriously researching and thinking about the second novel, Reeds of Time.
• "Pulled the trigger" and became a part time employee so I can devote more time to writing. I'm not used to the new schedule. Yet. It still rather feels like I'm on vacation. 
• This blog grew from 400 visits in 2014 to 15,000+ this year as well as becoming a featured item in Tour Egypt and getting a "like" from Zawi Hawass. 
• As always, the support of my fantastic children and friends continue to lift me up.

So, what's up for 2016?

• Finish those final 50 pages. Duh!
• Establish a better writing schedule, particularly for those extra two days a week I now have.
• Simplify, simplify, simplify. I spent  New Year's day with an old friend who told me a bit about moving her parents into a nursing home and the even more stressful task of dealing with a lifetime of family possessions. We agreed this is not a tradition we want to pass on. Even before the holidays and this chat, I felt the weight of my possessions. I have boxes of things I haven't opened for two moves. Seriously. I need to lighten the load.
• Move up to 20,000 visits to my blog in 2016. Aim low; achieve high is my motto.
• Get back to my garden. When I left Texas for Illinois, one of the things I looked forward to was easier gardening. While I planted a few herbs and other things, gardening definitely took a back seat to settling in. One of the first things on the 2016 list is to plant blueberry bushes beneath the Eye of Horus. As this photo shows, that area is a bit bland.
  
  
• Prepare for and enjoy the two writing conferences I've signed up for this year with my fellow writer and conference attendee, Ellan.
• I am beyond excited about the Iceland Writers Retreat in April. I've wanted to go to Iceland since I helped my son with a sixth grade research project. This seemed to good an opportunity to pass up. My classes look amazing.
  
  Neel Mukherjee: Changing the point of view  How does a writer denote this? When we read something in a novel, through whose eyes are we seeing that world, the writer’s, the narrator’s, or a character’s? What marks the distinction between these three? Should a scene stick to a single point of view or can you have a roving point of view, moving from character to character within one scene or even within one paragraph?
  
  Gerður Kristný: Mythologies Classical mythology and the great body of works founded on myths from the Mediterranean formed the motive reservoir of Western literature for centuries. With better knowledge of other cultures and traditions, modern writers began to use non-occidental mythologies as a source of inspiration and the narrative power of the myth often enables them to shape their stories and transform the mundane to the metaphysical. Using the pre-Christian Nordic myths preserved in the Prose Edda or Snorri’s Edda from the 13th Century, the participants will rewrite an ancient story of their choice in a modern context.
  
  Kate Williams: Finding your voice in the historical novel The historical novel is currently enjoying a renaissance. We are fascinated by the past. But how can we best capture the voices of the past? What are our responsibilities to historical fact and veracity? What about the sources - if we can't find any, can we invent them? Unless we have someone's private diary, we can't say exactly what they are thinking - but a novel requires us to go deep into our protagonist's consciousness. And can we explore the consciousness of someone who lived in a completely different time? This workshop explores how to write a historical novel, considering questions of research and sources, style, construction, voice - and most of all, how to get into that historical person's head.
  
  Neel Mukherjee. Addition and Subtraction One of the great strengths of fiction, unsurpassed by any other form, is its capacity for building a world. How does one describe a world in all its details and density? What did Henry James mean when he talked of the ‘solidity of specification’ in his essay, ‘The Art of the Novel’? How much detail is enough and when is it too much, or too scant? How much should a writer put in and how much should she take out? This workshop will address the subject of physical details and world-building.
  
  Miriam Toews: First-Person Fiction When your narrator is also the protagonist in your novel, there is greater pressure on the author to write with distinctive style, to possess a strong character voice. The first-person narrator is always an insufficient witness to the story he or she sets out to tell, but how to acknowledge this in a way that helps the reader interpret the meaning of what is related? In this workshop we will discuss what makes a first-person narration work.
• Also excited to participate in the Historical Novel Society conference in Oxford, England, where we can expect to see a reenactment of the Norman Invasion. The list of workshops is not yet available, but IT'S OXFORD. We're taking a side trip to Highclere Castle, which most people know as Downton Abbey. While I'm a big Downton fan, I have another reason for going. Highclere is the family home of the  Earl of Carnarvon. The Fifth Early of Carnovan financed the Tut excavation. I'm hoping to see the Egyptian Room. Afterwards, we're going to Scotland or Italy.