The mask of no return?

A legal challenge for the return of the 3,300-year-old mask of ancient Egyptian noblewoman Ka-Nefer-Nefer has failed after US attorneys missed a filing deadline, writes Nevine El-Aref

The controversial mask of a noblewoman, Ka-Nefer-Nefer, who once graced the court of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II was in the limelight again last week, when the case against the Saint Louis Art Museum in the US to have the mask returned to Egypt fell apart because the attorneys missed a filing deadline.

Presiding Judge James Loken remarked that the US government, which had brought the case, would now have to “beg for a do-over.”

According to the Daily RFT blog, the US Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant the government what it wanted. Loken, who wrote the judgement, chastised government lawyers who “knew many months prior to the order of dismissal of the possible need to amend the pleading.”

Accordingly, the court issued its decision that the mask would stay where it was and would not be returned to Egypt.

Judge Diana Murphy concurred with the ruling, but mentioned that the fight over the Ka-Nefer-Nefer mask has much greater significance than just a missed deadline. “I concur in the court’s opinion, but write separately to express my concern about what the record in this case reveals about the illicit trade in antiquities,” she said.

She added that “the substantive issues underlying this litigation are of great significance, and not only to museums which responsibly seek to build their collections. The theft of cultural patrimony and its trade on the black market present concerns of international import. These issues affect governments and the international art and antiquities markets, as well as those who seek to safeguard global cultural heritage.”

Egypt: Italian technology to save Egyptian museum papyri

High tech instruments part of cooperation project

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, NOVEMBER 18 - Italian technology will allow the restoration and preservation of thousands of very delicate papyri at the Egyptian museum in Cairo.

The initiative was presented on Monday morning during a ceremony at the museum attended by Gianpaolo Cantini, director general for the cooperation for development, Egyptian antiquities minister Mohamed Ibrahim, Italian ambassador Maurizio Massari and the museum's director Tarek el Awadi. It is part of the 'commodity aid' programme of Italian cooperation.

High tech instruments in particular provided by Italtrend Spa and produced by Bresciani Srl, which will play a role in saving the museum's secular papyri, were shown during the ceremony. They are a laser and a portable instrument. The laser, an Italian-made groundbreaking tool in the preservation of artwork, uses non-invasive technology to clean very delicate and sensitive surfaces and allows not to use chemical products. The spectrometer is used for chemical-physical measurements and to analyze material without the extraction of samples.

In order to save and preserve the precious papyri of the Egyptian museum, a low-pressure table with a humidifier to restore paper documents has been provided together with ten humidifiers and thermometers and five climatic chambers to preserve the findings to recreate the same condition as in the tombs where the papyri were found.

They were also especially planned for the museum overlooking the famous Tahrir square, one of the busiest in Cairo, and were made with special gas filters against pollution.

The initiative in favour of the Egyptian antiquities ministry is part of a programme of aid which aims to import to Egypt high tech Italian products and train specialized personnel in a number of sectors.

The programme which spans almost two decades was agreed in 1994, kicked off in 1996 and has funded until today the importation of Italian goods worth 37 million euros. The instalment for the Egyptian museum has a value of 300,000 euros.

(ANSAmed)

Source: http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/culture/2013/11/18/Egypt-Italian-technology-save-Egyptian-museum-papyri_9638580.html

Tutankhamun's sister goes missing

Alert issued after 'Daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaten' - Tutankhamun's sister - is stolen alongside hundreds of other exhibits in Egypt

By Richard Spencer, Mallawi, Egypt

Egypt has issued an international alert for the return of an exquisite statuette of Tutankhamun's sister, stolen with hundreds of other exhibits when a museum was looted amid clashes between police and Islamists this summer.

The carved limestone figurine of "A Daughter of the Pharaoh Akhenaten", dating from the 14th Century BC, has not been found since the destruction in August of the Mallawi City Museum in central Egypt.

Photocredit: The Telegraph

Experts fear that under the cover of days of riots it was stolen to order. It was Mallawi's prize exhibit, and due to be transferred to a new museum currently being built nearby to honour the family of Akhenaten, one of Egypt's most celebrated and unusual pharaohs as well as Tutankhamun's father.

During the riots in the town which followed the violent dispersal of protests in Cairo on Aug 14 and the killing of hundreds of Islamist supporters of the president, Mohammed Morsi, looters walked off with everything that could be carried from the museum - around 1,000 pieces in all.

More than 600 have been returned or seized by police. But hundreds of fine pieces, including a collection of Greek gold coins, statues of ibises, the birds still common to the region which were held in reverence in pharaonic times, and the figure of the princess have still not been recovered.

Some archaeologists believe the raid may have been orchestrated with her statue in mind. Relics of the Akhenaten era, source of the most celebrated finds of ancient Egypt, fetch the highest prices on the international black market and families of antiquities smugglers are known to operate in the area.

"I think the looters knew what they were taking," said Monica Hanna, an Egyptian archaeologist prominent in the campaign to prevent the desecration of its historic sites.

Looted artefacts recovered in sting operation

by Aaron T. Rose

More still missing from Mallawi museum

The Ministry of State for Antiquities announced on Wednesday that it has recovered 13 artefacts recovered from the looted museum in the Minya city of Mallawi.

With the help of the Tourism and Antiquities Police, the ministry was able to recover items that were stolen from the museum after it was attacked by a mob and ransacked during protests on 14 August.

The artefacts were recovered in Giza on 16 September when Essam Al-Sakkat, 36 year-old butcher from Mallawi, attempted to sell the stolen items to an undercover law enforcement agent posing as a buyer, reported the Egypt Independent.  Al-Sakkat was arrested, the first arrest of someone in possession of looted items from the Mallawi museum.

According to the statement by the Antiquities Minister Dr Mohammed Ibrahim, the artefacts recovered include “a statue of Jehuty, the god of wisdom, a group of Terra-cotta statues’ heads made of pottery and limestone in addition to six lanterns and pieces of flint and stone objects.”

Of the 1,050 artefacts stolen, nearly 900 have been recovered, according to Ibrahim. Reports indicate that mummies in the museum were vandalised and burned, and items too big to be carried out of the museum were destroyed.  UNESCO and Interpol both have lists of the missing items to deter black market dealing.

Mallawi is located 300 km south of Cairo in the Minya governate.  Its museum housed items spanning from the Pharaonic era to the Islamic caliphates.

Al-Sakkat has been referred to prosecution after admitting to the charges, reported the Egypt Independent.  He has criminal convictions in cattle theft, drug trafficking and possession of unlicensed weapons.

Source: http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2013/09/18/looted-artefacts-recovered-in-sting-operation/

Ransacked! Egypt's Malawi National Museum

AP released some photos yesterday from the ransacked Egyptian antiques museum Malawi National Museum. Apparently 1040 of the 1089 objects were stolen from the museum last thursday.

The following photos by AP show what is left of the museum after the looting.

For more info about the stolen objects:

http://www.facebook.com/StopTheHeritageDrain

http://www.facebook.com/EgyptsHeritageTaskForce

Egypt's archaeological sites and museums closed indefinitely

Following violence across the country as security forces move to break up pro-Morsi sit-ins, minister announces archaeological sites and museums closed

by Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 14 Aug 2013

Egypt's Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) has closed all archaeological sites and museums across Egypt, as well as the ministry’s administrative premises.

The decision came in response to violence in Egypt following police attempts to break up Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins at Rabaa Al-Adawiya in Nasr City and Al-Nahda Square in Giza.

Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim established an emergency operation room to follow up on security measures taken at archaeological sites and museums across the country, in order to protect them from looting or encroachment.

During clashes, pro-Morsi protesters destroyed guard kiosks at the entrance to the National Museum of Alexandria, and at the Malawi National Museum in the Upper Egypt city of El-Minya.

Ibrahim told Ahram Online that both museums are safe, however. "Thank God, nothing happened to the museums themselves," he said.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/79035/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Egypts-archaeological-sites-and-museums-closed-ind.aspx

British Museum and archaeologist confirm identity of stolen Egyptian artefact

With 1 stolen artefact identified and saved from a Christie's auction, officials continue to investigate 5 more in the largest-known theft since the January 2011 revolution

Amer Sultan in London , Friday 9 Aug 2013

Archaeologist Hourig Sourouzian and the British Museum have identified the exact provenance of one of six artefacts allegedly looted from Egypt and meant to be auctioned through Christie's in London on 2 May.

British Museum Assistant Keeper of Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department Marcel Marée recounts to Ahram Online that he and his colleagues spotted the stolen ancient Egyptian objects from Christie’s latest catalogue listing antiquities up for sale, among which were the six artefacts that are claimed to have been in a private UK collection since the 1940s. "But I had reason to doubt this," he reveals.

The British Museum relies on an extensive network of Egyptologists who are helping trace the provenance of the possible stolen antiquities, including Hourig Sourouzian, who used to work for the German Archaeological Institute and has been conducting excavations at the Amenhotep III mortuary temple on Luxor's west bank for many years now.

Revolution Brings Hard Times for Egypt's Treasures

By FARAH HALIME

Published: October 31, 2012

CAIRO — Cairo’s salmon-colored Egyptian museum is a conspicuous landmark on Tahrir Square, where it stands in almost perfect condition despite the intense protests that took place on its doorstep almost two years ago.

At the height of the revolution last year, a human chain formed to protect the priceless artifacts within the museum. A few yards away, the burnt out husk of former President Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party headquarters is a reminder of a different possible fate.

But the revolutionary, carnival enthusiasm of the square has since given way to neglect and disrepair and the difficult job of retrieving stolen antiquities is proving to be an uphill struggle.

Despite the efforts of its protectors, looters managed to make off with 50 of the museum’s treasures, including a statue of King Tutankhamun carried by a goddess, and a sandstone head of a princess from Amarna, a vast archaeological site in the southern province of Minya.

Of the stolen pieces, 29 have since been recovered. The most valuable, a statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, was found by a protester soon after it was taken and returned to the museum, the Antiquities Ministry said at the time.

At the same time, however, reports have started to come in of sophisticated and systematic looting occurring across major Egyptian archaeological sites, according to Egyptian and U.S. officials involved in the repatriation of antiquities.

The number of illegal excavations and thefts has worsened to the point that groups are organizing heavy machinery to carry out extensive digs.

Last fragments from 'magical' Egyptian 'Book of the Dead' from 1420 BC found - after century-long search by archaeologists

By ROB WAUGH

PUBLISHED: 16:37 GMT, 20 April 2012

The last missing pages from a supposedly 'magical' Book of the Dead from an Egyptian priest, Amenhotep, have been found after a century-long search - in a museum in Queensland.

British Museum Egyptologist Dr John Taylor said he was 'floored' by the discovery of the 100 fragments. 

It's the end of a worldwide search by archaeologists for the papyrus scroll - which supposedly contains spells to guide spirits into the afterlife.

Ms Bates said British Museum Curator and world renowned Egyptologist Dr John Taylor had stumbled across a section of the manuscript as part of a Queensland Museum display.

‘After spotting the piece Dr Taylor was shown the other 100 plus fragments held in the Museum’s stores and was floored by what he had uncovered,’ Ms Bates said.

‘These unsuspecting papyrus pieces form the missing part of a highly historically valuable ‘Book of the Dead’ that belonged to the Chief Builder of the temple of Amun, Amenhotep. 

‘Sections of this precious manuscript have laid scattered across the globe for a hundred years with some of the pieces held safely in the collections of British Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), New York. 

However, archaeologists had been unable to piece it together in its entirety and have long been looking for the missing sections to complete the story of this important Egyptian figure’s journey into the afterlife.’

A ‘Book of the Dead’ is an Egyptian manuscript, up to 20 metres in length, of magical spells written on papyrus that were commissioned by families upon the death of a loved one to guide them on their hazardous journey into the afterlife.

Amenhotep’s manuscript is particularly significant as it is an early example of a Book of the Dead manuscript that has several unusual features found on only four or five manuscripts ever found. 

These include borders featuring five pointed stars and sun-disks along the top and bottom, and a large inscription in one line on the back of the papyrus, all of which indicates a person of considerable rank, wealth and importance.

Ms Bates said the Queensland Museum’s sections were donated and have been meticulously kept in the stores of the Museum for almost 100 years.

‘It is so gratifying to find that it is our own Queensland Museum team that have been the guardians of this tomb secret have perfectly preserved such incredibly fragile and rare artefacts for over a century.’

Ms Bates said the Queensland Museum would support future research into the Amenhotep ‘Book of the Dead’.

‘We’re proud the Queensland Museum will help close the book on this mystery,’ Ms Bates said.

Dr John Taylor said once back in London, he would like to start trying to piece the Queensland Museum fragments into the British Museum’s manuscript electronically.

‘Reuniting manuscripts like this is incredibly important and meticulous work and we hope by piecing together the fragments we will be able to see what mysteries they reveal,’ Dr Taylor said.

‘Archaeologists don’t find manuscripts like this so often nowadays. It is finds like this and bringing the pieces together that provide the most significant discoveries.’

 ‘Queensland can make a significant contribution in helping the world to better understand one of the most fascinating and sophisticated civilisations in the ancient world,’ Ms Bates said.

‘We have seen the awe and delight Mummy: Secrets of the Tomb has brought to so many Queenslanders already and for us to be able to share some of our own Egyptian treasures with the world is truly wonderful.’

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2132755/Last-pages-magical-Egyptian-Book-Dead-museum-Queensland--worldwide-search-archaeologists.html

Such Magnificent Beasts the Egyptians Made ‘The Dawn of Egyptian Art’ at the Metropolitan Museum

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: April 12, 2012

In many ways the art of dynastic Egypt brought nature to a standstill, freezing the figure in an elegant, quietly pulsing suspended animation. Especially in its grandest, most monumental expression — the eerie, somnolent statues of the gods and of the pharaohs who were their earthly junior-god emissaries — Egypt offers us the sleekest, longest-running style in the history of art. It is also probably as instantly recognizable and firmly imprinted on human consciousness as any we know.

This style’s consistency is, if you think about it, frightening. It bespeaks an authoritarian power that was consolidated under the first Pharaoh around 3100 B.C., and that, despite political ups and downs, maintained a firm grip on the country’s aesthetic program for nearly three millenniums. The duration of Egyptian art may dull curiosity about how it began, since it is hard imagining a time when it didn’t exist. But of course everything starts somewhere: the high Egyptian style did not spring fully formed from the forehead of Osiris, god of the afterlife.

This is demonstrated by “The Dawn of Egyptian Art,” a sublime, view-shifting exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art dominated foremost by small, startlingly personable sculptures and vessels from around 3900 to 2649 B.C. The show’s around 190 objects include animal sculptures and figures carved in wood, ivory and stone or modeled in clay; ceramic vessels painted with boats and their regal occupants. There are game boards, also of carved stone, including one in the shape of a coiled rattlesnake, and numerous wafer-thin hand-size stone palettes for mixing makeup whose minimally inflected silhouettes nonetheless intimate various animals, including fish, lions and a pair of mating turtles. 

Mummies divulge Scotch secrets

By Ian MacKenzie

EDINBURGH: Modern technology reveals the secrets kept for thousands of years by Egyptian mummies in a major exhibition at Scotland’s National Museum.

Scientists used advanced scanning techniques on the mummified corpses of a young woman and a girl child laid over her feet to reveal jewelery in the binding and also plan to tap their DNA to discover whether they are related.

The show, including the mummies and objects dating back 6,000 years from the collections at the Scottish museum and the National Museum of antiquities at Leiden, The Netherlands, opened at the weekend and runs through to May 27 when it will go on to Spain.

The exhibition is being staged in a new purpose-built space created during a $73.64 million renovation of the Edinburgh museum completed last July.

The vastly expanded space has allowed the museum to display objects not seen by the public for generations. Officials said 3 million people have visited the museum since July.

Jim Tate, head of conservation at the museum, said scientists at Liverpool University who scanned the mummies had identified a gold amulet in the young woman’s binding and created an exact copy as a gold-gilded titanium artefact.

Scientists now plan to use nuclear DNA tests to determine if the woman and child are related, Tate said.
The area holding the mummies and a series of coffins has been designed to resemble a tunnel into pyramids and tombs, providing an evocative and somewhat eerie atmosphere.

Museum director Gordon Rintoul said Edinburgh had a major Egyptology collection, with Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scottish traveller in the mid-19th century, one of the first collectors to scientifically record his discoveries.

Hanneke Kik of the Leiden museum said the institution had cooperated with an exhibition on Egyptology with the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City, Canada, three years ago. The current joint exhibition in Edinburgh had been two years in the making, and will go from the Scottish capital to six locations in Spain later this year.

Source: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Art/2012/Feb-17/163559-mummies-divulge-scotch-secrets.ashx#axzz1mf1JVwqz

Crocodiles Museum to open in Aswan by end of January

New Aswan museum to share significance of crocodiles and ancient Egyptian god Sobek ‎in bid to attract tourists

by Nevine El-Aref , Monday 9 Jan 2012

After three years of construction, the Crocodiles Museum in Aswan will share the significance of crocodiles and the ancient Egyptian crocodile god Sobek with visitors by the end of January.

Overlooking the Nile and across from the historic temple of Kom Ombo in the upper Egyptian City, the museum aims to become the next big tourist attraction. Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim told Ahram Online that the official inauguration of the museum will coincide with Aswan National Day in January.

The museum boasts a display of forty mummified crocodiles, ranging from two to five metres long, along a crocodile foetus and eggs. Also on show is a collection of wooden and granite crocodile statues and replicas of crocodile holes in rocks.

Ibrahim explained that a visitor’s centre adorned with posters would screen a documentary before entrance to the museum as an introduction to Sobek and crocodiles in Egypt.

Sobek, who was depicted as a crocodile or a man with the head of a crocodile, was viewed as a very powerful ancient Egyptian god; he was even believed to have created the world. Eventually he became a symbol of the Nile’s fertility.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/31132/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Crocodiles-Museum-to-open-in-Aswan-by-end-of-Janua.aspx

Ancient Egyptian chariot trappings rediscovered

Forgotten drawers in Egyptian museum yield 'astonishing' leather find.

by Jo Marchant

The beautifully preserved leather trappings of an ancient Egyptian chariot have been rediscovered in a storeroom of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Researchers say that the find, which includes intact harnesses, gauntlets and a bow case, is unique, and will help them to reconstruct how such chariots were made and used.

The ancient Egyptians used chariots — typically with one or two riders and pulled by two horses — for hunting and warfare as well as in processions. They are frequently shown in ancient Egyptian art, and several examples of the wooden frames survive, including six dismantled chariots found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb, dating to around 3,300 years ago.

But researchers knew little about the leather trappings and harnesses used with such chariots, as leather decomposes quickly if any moisture is present. Barely any leather survives on the chariots from Tutankhamun’s tomb, though some fragments are known from chariots found in other tombs, such as that of Yuya and Thuya, Tutankhamun’s great-grandparents.

Egyptian mummy portraits go on display at Ashmolean museum

£5m Egypt project is allowing Oxford's Ashmolean museum to display stunning objects kept in storage for years

by Mark Brown for guardian.co.uk Wednesday 19 October 2011

Three beautifully restored mummy portraits of well-off young people who were, 2,000 years ago, probably members of a mysterious group called "the 6475" are to go on display at the new home for one of the most important Egyptian collections in the world.

The three faces - an enigmatic, beguiling young woman and two handsome men - will go on permanent display at Oxford's Ashmolean museum next month as part of the second phase of its redevelopment.

The £5m Egypt project is allowing the museum to display stunning objects which have been in storage for years with twice as many mummies and coffins being shown.

The oldest, on linen, is of a young woman dating from 55-70AD, excavated by Flinders Petrie - the founding father of Egyptology in the UK - at the Roman cemeteries of Hawara in Fayum, south-west of Cairo, in 1911.

Petrie had to do some immediate field conservation which involved him heating up paraffin wax in a double boiler and pouring it over the portraits he found.

Final section, completing rare ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, on view at the Brooklyn Museum

BROOKLYN, N.Y.- Following a three-year-long conservation project, the final section of the rare, thirty-five-centuries-old Egyptian Book of the Dead of the Goldworker of Amun, Sobekmose will go on long-term view on September 28. One of the most important funerary texts of the New Kingdom, in part because it is an early version of the Book of the Dead and casts light on the development of all later manuscripts, the papyrus is about twentyfive feet long. In an unusual feature, it is inscribed on both sides.

The Book of the Dead is a present-day name for ancient Egyptian texts containing a number of magic spells intended to assist the deceased in the afterlife, and which were placed in the coffin or burial chamber. The Book of the Dead of Sobekmose, created during the Eighteenth Dynasty, probably during the reign of Thutmose III or Amunhotep II (circa 1479–1400 b. c.e.), contains nearly one hundred “chapters,” almost half of the total known group of Book of the Dead texts. Several of the chapters are close in content to those found in the Coffin Texts, the collection of funeral texts used in the previous historical period.

The texts on the front are written in approximately 530 columns of hieroglyphs reading down and from right to left. English translations are provided in the gallery for certain key passages. Although portions of these funeral texts have been translated, understanding them is often challenging even to Egyptologists, who do not yet know the meaning of certain phrases and sentences.

The final third of the Book of the Dead of Sobekmose will join the previously completed sections, which have been on view in the Mummy Chamber installation in the Egyptian galleries since May 2010. That installation marked the first time the object had been on view in the Brooklyn Museum. It entered the collection in 1937 as a part of a purchase from the New-York Historical Society but had never previously been displayed because it was in poor condition.

The conservation project, supported by the Leon Levy Foundation, has made it possible for this exceptionally rare object to be put on public view.

Source: www.artdaily.org