King Tut's artifacts may return to LACMA
BY: Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
The fabled treasures of King Tut may return to the United States
next June, the first time they have appeared in the United States
since their widely heralded visit in 1978, according to Egyptian
officials.
The details of the tour have not been confirmed, but the exhibit
would visit Los Angeles, Chicago and two other cities that have not
been chosen, said Zahi Hawass, president of Egypt's Supreme Council
of Antiquities.
Hawass said he would like for the tour of the treasures to! begin
at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Nancy Thomas, deputy
director of the museum, said LACMA was very interested but had yet
to receive a formal proposal. "We would love to host it if
possible," she added.
The exhibit was a huge success when it previously visited the
United States, with people lining up to get into museums. LACMA
sold 661,000 advance tickets for its 16-week run.
Museum officials said it should be equally successful this time
around, albeit with a slightly different group of artifacts.
Tutankhamen's tomb was found nearly intact in 1922 in Egypt's
Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, by archeologist Howard Carter. The
discovery is considered one of the greatest archeological finds of
the century because of the magnificence of the artifacts.
Tut, who was most likely a son of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, died in
1323 BC at age 18.
A collection of 50 items from Tut's tomb along with 70 other
artifacts from the Valley of the K! ings is on display at the Basel
Museum of Ancient Art in Switzerland, the first time the artifacts
have been out of Egypt in 20 years.
Among the items in the show is a miniature gold burial casket,
inlaid with precious stones. Another is an alabaster portrait of
the king that was originally the stopper from a canopic jar.
Also included are artifacts from the tomb of Yuya and Tuyu, parents
of the wife of Amenhotep III. That tomb was discovered about 20
years before Tut's and was considered the greatest find until
Carter's was revealed.
Officials expect more than half a million people to visit the Basel
exhibit before it closes in October.
The exhibit would then visit a European city before coming to the
United States, perhaps after being reconfigured slightly, Thomas
said.
The tour of the artifacts is being organized to raise funds for the
construction of the planned Grand Museum in Cairo, a $350-million
edifice to be constructed near the pyramids. The museum, scheduled
to be completed by 2007, will house many! of the works from Cairo's
Egyptian Museum, which was built in 1900. It has inadequate display
space and poor visitor facilities.
The 3,500 pieces from Tutankhamen's tomb, of which only 1,700 are
on display, will be the centerpiece of the new museum. It is only
fitting that the artifacts should help raise funds for it, Hawass
said.
"King Tut is building the new museum," he said.
Historians discover pay dirt in volunteers
In digging up clues to early Texans and the state's archaeological heritage, historians are relying more on volunteers to help stretch the budgets.
A 2,000-year-old flint dart point is one of the findings from the Bowmer site, where scientists are helping to fill in the missing pages of early-day life in the Hill Country.
"The volunteers that we have are absolutely critical to preserve archaeological heritage," Jim Bruseth, director of the archaeology division of the Texas Historical Commission, told the Austin American-Statesman in Monday's online edition.
"In archaeological projects, we never have enough funding to hire all the people we might like, and so when you have volunteers that can come on out, they can extend your precious dollars. Those people make a huge difference," he said.
Really, good volunteers are worth their weight in gold. Once you get some experience with excavation, much work can be had in certain parts of the country.
Bad, bad, baaaaad. . .(and our first story from Guam!) Ancient remains at Ylig site destroyed by stalled project
More than a year after backhoes leveled thousands of cubic feet of ancient burial sites near the Ylig bridge, most of the human bones and artifacts that were there have been washed away or are missing.
Meanwhile, the Route 4 widening and renovation project that exposed the site has stalled in that section, causing delays and headaches for southern residents who must drive past the site every day.
The Department of Public Works and the other agencies involved are holding a meeting tonight at the Yona community center to hear the public's concerns about the situation.
Yona Mayor Jose Terlaje said he regularly receives complaints about the slow-moving traffic past the site.
Unearthing canyon's clues
Mysteries of Anasazi revealed in Chaco's centuries-old corn
As Rich Friedman twists the handle of the T-shaped auger, the steel blades bite into loamy brown soil in a field where scientists suspect Anasazi farmers grew corn 1,000 years ago.
Friedman is part of a Boulder-led research team that collected 60 soil samples around the Chaco basin this month in an ongoing effort to determine where the Anasazi grew all the corn they would have needed to feed the thousands who periodically gathered in the canyon.
Chaco is rather like the Egypt of North America. Fascinating place. It's often been called the "Chaco Phenomenon" because of the immensity of the settlement in the area. One of the true "mysterious" civilizations.
How to rescue the Osirion tomb of Abydos
The tomb of Osirion in Abydos, Suhag is a unique one because it is designed to be an island in the Nile since it is related to the famous myth of the drowning of Osiris.
The name of the tomb is also attributed to Osir, the god of the Under World.
. . .
The extraordinary tomb is currently being jeopardized by underground water, which is leading to the decay of the stones. The rising level of underground water has covered the island.
Antiquities Market update `Red list' to target art thieves
Tactic used in Iraq to help recover pre-Columbian antiquities
The Mixtec Indian with the misshapen head lived in the mountains of southern Mexico at the end of the first millennium.
When he died as a teenager, his peculiar skull was engraved with pictures and symbols and was used to decorate a tomb of a Mixtec nobleman. There it lay for a thousand years, until it was dug up by grave robbers and later sold to an American art dealer named Frank Stegmeier.
Stegmeier smuggled the skull to Seattle, a court was told, and put it up for sale on the black market. But he slipped up when he tried to peddle it for $160,000 to an undercover U.S. Customs agent who posed as a rich art collector. A court sentenced the dealer to 41 months in prison as part of a plea agreement, and the decorated cranium was returned to Mexico.
. . .
Now, an organization that represents museums in 140 countries has unsheathed a weapon last used in a worldwide push to find some of the objects of Mesopotamian art looted from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad after the city fell to U.S. forces. The International Council of Museums has drawn up a "red list" of the types of Latin American objects most at risk.