AKHENATEN/TUTANKHAMUN

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Fit to Travel?



The Egyptian government wants to borrow Nefertiti for three months so it can be displayed at the opening of the $550 million Grand Egyptian Museum near the Giza pyramids.

In April, German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said there were ``serious conservational and restorative concerns'' about transporting the bust of Nefertiti. He stressed that his country's procurement of the work was lawful and said Egypt had no grounds to demand its return.

That position hasn't changed after months of lobbying by the Egyptians. ``It's up to the owner of a work of art to decide whether it is fit to travel or not,'' says Mechtild Kronenberg, director of the German Museums Association.

Hawass, who has recovered about 4,000 artifacts from countries including Spain, France and Mexico since 2002, is also asking the British Museum to lend the Rosetta Stone to Egypt.

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Royal `Gift'



The stone, which provided the key to deciphering hieroglyphics, was discovered in Egypt in 1799. It is on display in London as a ``Gift of George III,'' according to the museum's Web site, referring to the British king at the time.

The British Museum's Board of Trustees is reviewing the request, says spokeswoman Hannah Boulton.

Egypt asked to borrow the works as part of a project to fill 19 new museums, of which the Grand Egyptian Museum will be the largest. The museum is under construction and is scheduled to open in 2012.

The country may need that long to bring Nefertiti and the Rosetta Stone back to Cairo, even temporarily.

It took two years of lobbying by Italy before the Getty Museum in Los Angeles returned 40 relics the Egyptian government said were looted.

Greece has been trying to retrieve the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum for 21 years. The large marble sculptures were removed from the Parthenon two centuries ago by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to Greece at the time.

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Prepared to Fight



In 1970, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, adopted a convention that binds member nations to help restore stolen or illegally exported artifacts when another member requests it.

The convention backs Egypt's claim, says Hawass, who alleges the bust was smuggled out of the country.

``If they won't loan them, we would recover them permanently,'' he says.

Hawass also threatened to impose a ``cultural embargo'' on museums that rebuff his requests. For example, Egypt could bar archaeologists associated with those museums from working in the country or stop lending artifacts to them.

Some experts question Egypt's right to antiquities discovered before 1983, when the government passed a law stipulating that all artifacts belong to the state.

``Certainly there is no legal claim for the Rosetta Stone because it was taken out centuries ago,'' says Salima Ikram, a professor of archaeology at the American University in Cairo.



                                                    ``For Nefertiti, maybe.''

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`Plunder'



El Beet Betak, a popular talk-show, has dedicated at least a dozen episodes to the issue.

``How dare they even dispute this?'' Mona El-Sharqawi, host of the nationally televised program, said of the Germans during one recent show. ``We are Nefertiti's descendants. She should be with us.''

Letters and columns in newspapers such as Al-Gomhuria have compared the plundering of Egyptian artifacts to the U.S.-led military occupation of Iraq, a fellow Muslim country.

Abeer Ali, 40, a nutritionist in Cairo, says the dispute over Nefertiti reinforces her view that the U.S. and Europe don't respect Arabs.

``The West wants to deprive us of anything we are proud of,'' Ali says at a restaurant, while watching an interview with Hawass.



                          ``They plunder the Iraqi oil and now they plunder our heritage.''



Abeer Allam in Cairo at

aallam@bloomberg.net. 

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                                               "Pharaoh Gets His Eye Back"


                                         (Amenhotep III - Akhenaten's Father)








Agence France-Presse
From correspondents in Cairo
September 10, 2008

SWITZERLAND is to return a pharaoh's "eye" stolen 36 years ago from the ancient Egyptian statue
of King Amenhotep III.

"The eye is around 50cm long and was stolen from Amenhotep III's statue, which was discovered in 1970 in his Luxor temple," Egypt's culture minister Faruk Hosni said.

The eye was stolen in 1972 when a fire broke out around the temple.

"The thieves sold it to an American antiquities dealer who then auctioned it at Sotheby's," he said.

There, the eye was bought by a German antiquities dealer before ending up in a museum in Basel, Switzerland.

"The Swiss museum unconditionally accepted to return the eye of Amenhotep III back to Egypt," antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass said.

Amenhotep III ruled Egypt for about 40 years during the 18th dynasty (1550-1292 BC), believed to be one of the most prosperous periods of ancient Egyptian history.   

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                                                          More than a blink



              After 36 years of globetrotting the lost eye of Amenhotep III is back in its homeland







Nevine El-Aref
AlAhram Weekly,
Sept. 17, 2008

Amenhotep III -- his name means Amun is Satisfied -- succeeded to the throne on the death of his father Thutmose IV. Much of his reign was spent consolidating the home base, strengthening Egypt's borders and in construction. He was one of the great Pharaonic builders.

Though many of Amenhotep III's building projects no longer exist, his makeover of Karnak Temples has survived, including embellishments to the already monumental Temple of Amun, the new East Temple to the sun god and his own festival building. He had his workers dismantle the peristyle court in front of the Fourth Pylon and the shrines associated with it, using them to fill for a new pylon on the east- west axis. At the south end of Karnak he began construction on the Tenth Pylon and to balance the south temple complex he built a new shrine to Maat, daughter of the sun-god.

At Luxor Temple his innovations include building the colonnaded court, a masterpiece of balance for which credit should be given to Amenhotep's architect.

In 1970, during routine excavations in the area of Amenhotep's mortuary temple on the West Bank at Luxor -- built on the flood plain little beyond the ground plan of the temple has survived -- a large limestone statue of King Amenhotep III was found. In 1972 it was moved to the Luxor Museum, and at some point during the short journey the left eye was chipped off the statue. Its whereabouts remained a mystery until 2006 when it reappeared in an exhibition shown at the Museum of Antiquities and Ludwig Collection (MALC) in Basel, Switzerland.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Al-Ahram Weekly that after being removed from the statue the eye was smuggled out of Egypt and fell into the hands of an American antiquities dealer called Norbert Shem. It was subsequently sold to a German antiquities dealer who lent it to MALC.

Negotiations for the return of the eye began in December 2006.

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                                               T U T   R E I G N S   E T E R N A L






Egypt's Greatest Antiquities On Show in Dallas


Wednesday, November 26, 2008
CST in Weekend
By Becca Bacon Martin
THE MORNING NEWS

Words couldn't do it justice -- then, or now.

Imagine statues and shrines, bracelets, brooches and beds, thrones and crowns, all gleaming with
gold and sparkling with jewels, emerging from the darkness and the desert sand. Almost no one knew the name Tutankhamun -- and no one had gazed upon these riches for more than 3,000 years.

Asked if he could see anything, the only words archaeologist Howard Carter could manage that day -- Nov. 26, 1922 -- in Egypt's Valley of the Kings were, "Yes, wondrous things."

Today, even experts like Dr. Anne Bromberg, curator of ancient and Asian art at the Dallas Museum
of Art, struggle to describe the beauty, the enormity, the fascination of


                                   "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs."


"First and most important, the things in it are absolutely gorgeous," she says of the exhibit, on show
at the museum through May 17. "Equally important is that it's a very romantic and sort of pop-fiction story, both in its historical period and in the discovery of the tomb in 1922."

Tutankhamun, Bromberg points out, was "a negligible king" but he reigned "bang in the middle of one of the most powerful and wealthy periods in Egyptian history."

And his tomb was discovered largely intact, not looted of its treasure as so many in the Valley of the Kings had been. Both factors have made "Tut" the most recognizable name in Egyptian history.


Sometimes called "The Boy King," Tut was born around 1343 B.C. in the Egyptian city of Akhetaten,
now known as Amarna. His father, Akhenaten, had set Egypt on its ear, turning away from the worship of multiple deities to one, the sun god Aten, and when he died, he was labeled a heretic and largely erased from history.

Originally named Tutankhaten, Tutankhamun -- renamed as "the living image of the god Amun" -- took the throne of Egypt when he was 9 or 10 years old.

When the Tut exhibit first toured the United States in 1972, scholars thought the Boy King had been assassinated around the age of 19. X-rays showed what they thought was evidence of blunt force trauma to the head.

Now, Bromberg says, they know the dark spot was just part of the elaborate embalming accorded to
the pharaohs.

"However, new, far more sophisticated analysis of the mummy also revealed that before he died, Tutankhamun had broken his thigh bone, and when he died, it hadn't healed," she says. "So the
current theory is perhaps he died from infection."

While Tut made "a considerable effort" to rewrite history and return the country to polytheism during
his reign, that was not his legacy to the modern world. It was the magnificence of his tomb, designated KV 62, discovered by Howard Carter early in November of 1922.

"It was the greatest archaeological discovery of the 20th century," Bromberg says simply. "Even if you ignore the curse."

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Archaeologist Carter knew the name Tutankhamun from objects found inscribed with his royal symbols, and he had an idea that Tut was buried somewhere in the Valley of the Kings, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Thebes. He'd searched for several years and was about to lose the funding provided by his patron, Lord Carnarvon, when a worker spotted steps leading down into the sand.

"The discovery of the tomb was just magical," Bromberg says. "Seeing all these wonderful things -- and everywhere, the glitter of gold."

The ancient Egyptians, Bromberg explains, really did think you could take it with you.

"They believed you could live in the Afterworld -- if you were buried with the appropriate magic -- just as you did in this life," she says. "That's why they devoted more energy to death than to their daily lives.

"Prominent people were buried with their inlaid chairs and perfume vessels and gold fans, their favorite inlaid tables, all of which appear in the exhibit here," she says. "And virtually everybody significant was buried with shawabtis, sort of small figures made out of clay or wood, copper or faience, whatever. Shawabti means 'I answer' in Egyptian, and if the deceased needed a workforce in the Afterworld, the shawabti would say, 'Yes, master,' and do the work."

While the riches of Tut's tomb might seem enough to make headlines -- and they did, around the world -- so did the death of Lord Carnarvon, just six months later.

"It was purely natural causes," Bromberg says, "but it was interpreted by newspapers in the best media tradition as the mummy's curse. Even a fake inscription was passed on! The thing that fascinates me is that one of the writers most responsible was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- that in itself is kind of fun!"

The mummy of Tutankhamun is not with the exhibit in Dallas, and neither is the solid-gold funerary mask, which never leaves Egypt. But the exhibit is bigger and better than it was in the 1970s, Bromberg says.

"Having seen the original exhibit, this exhibit is even more interesting," she says, in part because it includes the history of the 18th Dynasty before Tutankhamun took the throne. One "wonderful addition," she says, is a collection of the photographs taken on that November day in 1922 when the tomb was opened for the first time. They were shot by Harry Burton, a famous archeological photographer working for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Egypt.

"We borrowed from the Met a number of the Burton photos to display in the concourse," Bromberg says. "They give a sense of just how magical and fascinating this discovery was."

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Bromberg, who has visited Egypt several times and saw the original Tut exhibit more than once, says she's still finding something new to enjoy every time she walks through "The Golden Age of the Pharaohs."

"Just in terms of sheer artistry, the pair of standing statues of Tutankhamun as king of Upper and Lower Egypt," she says when asked to name her favorites. "They're so elegant, a perfect example of one of the finest periods artistically in Egyptian history. They also sum up the idea of the king as immortal, going to live with the gods -- and they're shown brilliantly, leading into the gallery of things from Tut's tomb.

"The other piece -- and I'm not alone, people who saw the exhibit in the '70s remember this fondly -- is a cosmetic container with a wonderful lion lolling on top of a gorgeous alabaster jar. The figures on the side are the traditional enemies of Egypt, and the lion is suppressing them."

Bromberg promises visitors to "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" a "really beautiful show" that captures "the immense drama of the tombs."

"The visual quality is absolutely mesmerizing," she says. "I haven't run into anybody who was disappointed!"



Road Trip


'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs"

Dates & Hours: 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Sunday; 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursdays; through May 17

Venue: Dallas Museum of Art

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Tut's coffin before
the initial unveiling of
his mummy.










                                                                     The Boy King






Ironically, our greatest royal treasure from ancient Egypt comes from a short lived boy king. King Tutankhamun was not even in the same category of achievement as the great Egyptian kings such as Khufu (builder of the Great Pyramid), Amenhotep III (prolific builder of temples and statuary throughout Egypt), or Ramesses II (prolific builder and usurper), in terms of the length of his reign or the depth of his accomplishments.
Indeed, it is his little known status that contributed to the successful hiding of his tomb, which was covered over by a later pharaoh who was clearing away an area in which to cut his own tomb.

On November 26, 1922, Howard Carter made archaeological history by unearthing the first Egyptian pharaonic tomb that still contained most of its treasures. Still, even this tomb had been robbed in antiquity, although the the robbery attempt was apparently thwarted before the thieves could make away with most of the treasure.

This tomb also yielded something else that had never been found in modern history - the pristine mummy of an Egyptian king, laying intact in his original burial furniture.

Thus, Tut's tomb gives us a unique opportunity to explore the life of King Tut and allows us to learn more about this essential period in New Kingdom Egyptian history.

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                                                                       Tut Links





Here are links to information about King Tut, available over the Internet. Be sure to check out the actual entries from Howard Carter's journal which are included for your enjoyment.





Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation



FINALLY! The long awaited online electronic publication of Howard Carter's records of the excavation of the tomb of King Tut! Brought to you by the Griffith Institute.






Tutankhamen

Learn more about King Tut including his tomb, his name and his treasures.






Who Killed King Tutankhamen

Here's an article that speculates on the cause of the death of King Tut






Tutankhamun Boy King

Here's another nice presentation by Anthony DiPaolo, featuring info about Tut's attendants, death of the king, discovery of his tomb and more!






In The Tomb of Tutankhamun

Learn about the discovery and preservation of Tut's tomb.






Eighteenth Dynasty: King Tut'ankhamun

Enjoy viewing some of the treasures from  Tut's tomb through this virtual museum site.






The Death of Pharaoh

A concise accounting of the life and death of King Tut including some history about the timeframe in which he lived.






The Diaries of Howard Carter

Check out this two part installment of the journal of Howard Carter around the time of his discovery of Tut's tomb.



Part ONE

October 28 - December 31, 1922




Part TWO

January 1 - May 31, 1923



http://www.guardians.net/egypt/tut1.htm


http://www.fieldmuseum.org/tut/story_pharaoh3.asp

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Cartouches of Tutanhamen's birth and throne names are displayed between rampant Sekhmet lioness warrior images (perhaps with his head) crushing enemies of several ethnicities, while Nekhbet flies protectively above

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SENET BOARD GAME INSCRIBED WITH NAME OF AMUNHOTEP III NAME FOUND IN TUT'S TOMB

BROOKLIN MUSEUM

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ONE OF TUTANKHAMUN'S PECTORALS

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TUTANKHAMUN'S DIADEM OF POWER