Ancient Egypt

Hundreds of unpublished photographs taken by the amateur Egyptologist George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, as he helped to bring the lost tomb of King Tutankhamun to light, have been discovered in the family's private collection. Approximately 900 photographs, taken mostly between 1907-14, convey the enormous scale of excavations that Lord Carnavon and the archaeologist Howard Carter conducted in the decade before their most sensational discovery, which was first announced to the world by The Times.Fiona, 8th Countess of Carnarvon, found the photographs recently inside three ordinary-looking albums in the archives of the family home, Highclere Castle,Berkshire. She said that that the discovery of the photographs was "like going back in time".John Taylor, an assistant keeper in the British Museum's Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, described the images as "important historically .

. . very evocative of what it was like to be an Egyptologist in 1910 and 1920". "They give an idea of the scale of it. Nowadays, Egyptologists are concerned with quite small areas, with small numbers of workers digging. In those days, there were dozens and dozens of workers clearing large areas. These photographs show them carrying baskets, the dust flying up, the hive of activity. You see them bringing objects out of the tombs, including mummy cases. You wouldn't see that kind of thing happening today." There are also imagesof Carnarvon and Carter directing the operation, wearing three-piece suits despite the intense heat of the Egyptian sun. The Earl is shown in shots from 1911 at the cobra-infested Tel el Balamun site in the Delta, and at a tomb discovery in 1910 at Thebes. Carter can be seen staffing a desk as he supervises the workers' pay day. Some of the treasures went to Carvarvon's collection, which is today open to visitors at Highclere Castle. Others were transported to Cairo and the Metropolitan in New York. The photographs have emerged as more than 130 spectacular treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, including the gold crown that adorned the boy-king's head, are set to go on display in the Millennium Dome, the 02 in Greenwich, on November 15. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs comes to London after a four-city tour of theUnited St......

The face of Egypt's most famous ancient ruler, King Tutankhamun, has been put on public display for the first time. Archaeologists took the mummy from its stone sarcophagus and placed it in a climate-controlled case inside his tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings. The event comes 85 years to the day after the pharaoh's tomb was discovered by British explorer Howard Carter.Until now, only about 50 living people have seen the face of the boy king, who died more than 3,000 years ago. As experts lifted Tutankhamun from his coffin they briefly set aside the white linen coveringhis remains, revealing a shrivelled black face and body.

The move is part of a plan to protect the remains. Archaeologists say they are under threat from the heat and the humidity brought into the tomb by the vast numbers of tourists visiting each year. "The golden boy has magic and mystery and therefore every person all over the world will see what Egypt is doing to preserve the golden boy, and all of them I am sure will come to see the golden boy," Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told reporters before the body was moved. Tutankhamun ruled Egypt from 1333-1324 BC and is believed to have ascended to the throne aged about nine. Although in life he was of only moderate historical significance, in death Tutankhamun achieved worldwide fame thanks to the virtually intact state of his tombwhen it was opened by Carter in 1922. The tomb was packed with a fabulous trove of gold and ebony treasures of such luxury that when Carter first looked inside the tomb and was asked if he saw anything, his famous reply was: "Yes, wonderful things."

Cause of death The centrepiece of the tomb was the pharaoh's mummified body, covered in amulets and jewels and wearing a solid gold burial mask. In an effort to extricate the treasures, Carter and his team cut the body into pieces, chopping off the limbs and head, and using hot knives and wires to remove the gold mask which was fused to Tutankhamun's face by the embalming process. The body was reconstructed and returned to its original sarcophagus in 1926, only being removed for x-ray testing threetim......

Submitted by Stance: The true face of ancient Egypt"s boy king Tutankhamen was revealed to the public for the first time on Sunday since he died in mysterious circumstances more than 3000 years ago. The mummy was moved from its ornate sarcophagus in the tomb where its 1922 discovery caused an international sensation to a nearby climate-controlled case where experts say it will be better preserved. Tutankhamen"s body is entirely wrapped in strips of white linen, except for his face which, until now, had been seen by only a handful of experts. Made pharaoh at the age of nine, Tutankhamen became famous with the discovery of his tomb and the treasures within by Briton Howard Carter. His iconic solid gold burial mask weighs 11 kilograms,encrusted with lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones.

The mummy had to be reconstructed after Carter cut it into 18 pieces to gain access to amulets and other jewellery, Mustafa Wazery, director of the Valley of the Kings, said. "What you will see is a beautiful face," Wazery told journalists ahead of the mummy"s displacement. "He"s a good-looking boy, with a nice smile and buck teeth." Every day hundreds of visitors file through his tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, bringing with them into the royal tomb bacteria, humidity and other pollutants. "The mummy risked being reduced to dust because of the rising levels of humidity due to the visitors," Egypt"s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said. "The mummy was already damaged by Howard Carter, who used sharp tools to remove thegolden mask," Culture Minister Faruq Hosni said. He said Carter damaged the mummy by "exposing it to burning sunshine for many hours" in the desert landscape. A silicone representation of the face of the pharaoh, who died about 3300 years ago at the age of just 19, was reconstructed in 2005 using images collected through CAT scans of his mummy. Egyptian, Swiss and Italian experts have deduced Tutankhamen died after an injury to his left leg led to rapid gangrene, rejecting a previously popular theory that the king had been killed by a blow to the neck.

View: Full Article | Source: Sydney Morning Herald

"Heya hup!" Deep in a muddy pit, a dozen workers wrestle with Egypt's fearsome lion goddess, struggling to raise her into the sunlight for the first time in more than 3,000 years. She is Sekhmet—"the one who is powerful"—the embodiment of the fiery eye of the sun god Ra, but now she is caked in dirt and bound by thick rope.As the workers heave her out of the pit and onto a wooden track, the sand shifts and the six-foot-tall granite statue threatens to topple. A half-dozen men in ankle-length robes grab the taut ropes, again shout the Arabic equivalent of "heave, ho!" and steady her just in time.Within thehour, the seated Sekhmet is once again imperious: her breath creates the desert wind, her anger feeds on disease and war, and her power protects mighty pharaohs.

Or did. This long-buried statue is one of 730—one for every day and night of the year—that guarded a vast collection of gates, colonnades, courts and halls built by the great Egyptian king Amenhotep III, who reigned over Egypt for 38 years in the 14th century B.C., at the height of peace and prosperity. In its day, "The House of Millions of Years" was the largest and most impressive temple complex in the world. But it was no match for earthquakes, fires, floods or Amenhotep III's successors, who scavenged stone blocks and statues for their own temples. Much of the site, near the Valley of the Kings along the west bank of the Nile River, is covered with sugar cane. HourigSourouzian, an Armenian archaeologist, is directing the effort to rescue the long-neglected site and its many statues. "They didn't deserve this treatment!" she says as a worker hoses off the mud and salt coating a Sekhmet lined up with a dozen similar statues in the bright sun. Egyptologists had long assumed that all that remained of the temple complex were the imposing Colossi of Memnon, two seated statues of Amenhotep III at the entrance to his temple, and some stones and fragments of statuary. Sourouzian had been working at a neighboring temple, Merentptah, from which she would visit the Amenhotep complex. "I was always interested in the fragmented statuary of the site and dreamed about seeing them reconstructed instead of lying in vegetation, water and junk," she recalls. Then, in 1996, a brush fire swept over the area, charring the stones andfragment......