Manal and Alaa's bit bucket

please can I make a special plea to preserve the monuments. I have noticed recently that many visitors and I am sad to say Tour Guides touch the monuments. This leaves tiny traces of grease and acid and eventually destroys the reliefs. Down at Sakkara there used to be a hieroglyphic for 1 million which [...]

I haven’t visited this temple for a long time and part of the reason is the barriers that were put up on the second collonade which meant you could hardly see the reliefs. These are such fantastic low relief that unless you can get close you can hardly make them out. But that has [...]

2006 John Hopkins Season at the Mut temple/Enlarging the view of Mut lecture at the Mummification museum - Dr Betsy Bryan Dr Bryan gave a summary of the work of previous season in order to set the scene of the work they are doing in 2006. The earliest stone temple at the site was Tutmosis III [...]

EGYPTOLOGISTS have discovered two 3,400-year-old statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet and a rare statue depicting a king with Nubian features, an archaeological conservation director said yesterday. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=154842006 thanks to Mary for the link

My favourite hotel/restaurant has just got a new website and what a fab domain name.http://www.hotelsinluxor.com/. This has the be the cleanest place on the West Bank and I regulalry go there both for food and just for a drink. They recently had a group of disabled visitors from France and have to be the only [...]

2nd Feb 2006 Season at the temple of Mut - Dr Betsy Bryan9th Feb Recent Work in the Mut Precinct - Richard Franzini16th Feb The Apprentice Board from Dra Abu el Naga TT11 Dr Jose M Galan23rd Feb Excavations in the Court of 9th Pylon at Karnak Prof Van Siclen These are all at the Mummification [...]

I have been really bad writing this lecture up and I shouldn’t have been because it was most instructive and certainly gave me a whole new set of ideas. Earl Ertman and Otto Schaden have worked together for years (KV10) and Prof Ertman joked how some people even think they are related. The lecture was about [...]

A link to my story about the Controversy at Qurna http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/qurnacontroversy.htm

Today at Karnak I was able to see a newly discovered block. This was found by the team investigating foundation deposits of the VI pylon. The block is approx 1 metre by 1/2 meter and is covered in the most amazing hieroglyphics in amazingly well preserved colour. The white was particularly striking. The block was [...]

Great news here news story together with a photo of a lovely black granite statue of Queen Tiye mother of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaton and wife of Amenhotep III. This has been found in the Mut temple excavations currently being undertaken by the John Hopkins team

This week’s lecture at the Mummification Museum was the one of the best ever. It was given by Dr Mary McKercher (Fazzini) who is working on the Mut Temple project for the Brooklyn Museum and it was on the influence of Egyptian art and style on America. She was a totally brilliant lecturer and [...]

I heard this week of a tour group that did visit Nefertari and other closed tombs like KV5 and Seti I. This was a special fund raising tour by Dr Kent Weeks for the Theban mapping project Seven Wonders Tour. Obviously a tour like this is a once in a life time experience and [...]

less than a month to go before the Egyptian Marathon, there is an excellent website http://www.egyptianmarathon.com/ which gives all the details. According to the map the route is right by our flats (we are on the main road from the ferry) so we will get a grandstand view. It actually starts and ends [...]

The lecture this week was about Karnak, one of my favourite sites. The area under discussion was the Ipet-sout and the two young lecturers were Romain Mensa and Shaima Abo El Hajaj. The Ipet-sout is the area between the 4th pylon and Tutmosis III festival hall. This area is the earliest part of the temple [...]

thank you so much to everyone that has participated in the survey so far. I am going to give the results to Mr Mansour at the lecture tonight. I am glad to say the the consensus of opinion is against having the projector screen at Karnak and this result will help Mr Mansour in his [...]

A special photo because if the government has it’s way this lovely coffee house will be removed. I must admit i am in two minds about this. As an Egyptologist I agree that some of the houses in Qurna do damage to some tombs. But as a local I defend the right of the people [...]

looks like our old friend water damage is having a go at Edfu as well. These photos were taken just over a week ago and you can clearly see the water rising up the wall and on the cartouche the sandstone is turning back to sand again. This water damage is really concerning [...]

Well it would seem that Westerners are not the only people to have drunken parties. This interesting article talks about parties Ancient Egyptian style. www.greatnewsnetwork.org story /

Please don’t forget to fill in our Karnak survey http://www.egyptresources.com/survey/ we have had a good response so far but we want more.

Exciting news brought to me by Goggle the excavations at the Mut Temple are now being brought to us online http://www.jhu.edu/neareast/egypttoday.html

The new entrance way which leads one into the first open court has now opened. This is a huge improvement to the site as it takes visitors to the start of the temple instead of the middle. The restoration of the colours on the top of the capitals has now been completed and the scaffolding [...]

In part 1 Edwin gave a technical description of the work being undertaken to drain the area around both Karnak and Luxor temples. At this lecture he described some of the many discoveries that the team have made whilst clearing the drainage ditch. The team have found an unknown gateway belonging to Ptolemy XII, stele, sand [...]

Just resurfacing after an extremely hectic Christmas and New Year. This is the busiest season for Luxor with the weather being particularly nice at the moment. Normally the days in winter are sunny warm with the nights being quite chilly but this year it has been balmy in the evenings. This attracts huge numbers of [...]

At last weeks lecture at the Mummification Museum Mr Mansour asked the audience what they they thought of the plan to put up a projector screen at Karnak . The audience felt that whilst the sound track and script badly needed updating and the lightening could be improved the site was so fantastic it need [...]

Last nights lecture at the Mummification Museum was by Edwin Brock. He talked about the project to drain the temples of Karnak and Luxor. Because of the lack of data projector for the power point presentation he did this weeks lecture without visual aids except for some large scale maps. Next week they hope to [...]

I spoke today to François Larché who head the Franco Egyptian team at Karnak. Rosemary, one of his team who is working in the area of the doorway and obelisk of Hatshepsut has found 2 new foundation deposit. Apparently they are having a very good season. These normally consit of miniture tools and [...]

There was furious activity at the temple of Amenhotep II the other day. This a mud brick temple situated next to the Ramasseum. According to the sign it is the Italian Archaeological Mission directed by Dr Angelo Sesana. If I find someone to talk to next time I will try and get more information about [...]

Mr Mansour a new appointee to Luxor is organising the lectures after the departure of Dr Holeil. He explained that part of the problem is that they have to borrow a projector in order to present PowerPoint slide shows. But they are working on that and hope they might be able to resolve it. Francesco is [...]

I have just been informed that the lectures at the Mummiication Museum will start tonight at 7pm. Tonight’s lecturer will Francusco Tiradritti. I am really excited about this as the last two years have been really interesting.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/772/he1.htm During his lecture Hawass announced that Carter’s house on the Luxor West Bank would be converted into a museum to demonstrate how the great archaeologist lived while searching indefatigably for Tutankhamun’s tomb. I have heard this rumour for years now and it will be a wonderful use for the Carter House.