Research to go on without 'hobbit'
ALTHOUGH their famous fossils were not returned as promised by the prominent Indonesian researcher who snatched them last year, the Australian scientists who helped discover the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" will return to Indonesia this month to pursue their work.
"The research will continue," said Mike Morwood, an archaeologist with the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, who led the Australian arm of the team that made the discovery.
The scientists will carry on despite the fact that 79-year-old paleoanthropologist Teuku Jacob, of Gadjah Mada University in Jogyakarta, has reneged on a written agreement that he would return all the "borrowed" fossils by the end of 2004.
Note: There are numerous pictures of peoples' cats named Smeagol out there on the Internet. Please refrain from doing so. It's weird.
Mystery! Archaeologists Narrow Down Theories on Origin of Lewes Artifacts
The investigation continues into those historical artifacts that recently washed up on the shore of Lewes.
Archaeologists say they are hinting more and more towards their ship wreck theory. They say that is the most logical explanation for the recent findings.
People showed up at a public meeting Thursday night at the Zwaanendael Museum in Lewes holding bags of items found on a nearby beach last month. Archaeologists told the public about their plans to figure out how these artifacts ended up in Delaware. They say they have not been able to give definite answers as of yet but say all of that will soon change.
"We are set to find out a lot more," said archaeologist Craig Lukezic. "We will have some divers on the site probably within a month or two to go down and do some preliminary research."
That's the whole thing.
Um. . .riiiiight. Legend of ‘mummy’s curse’ reawakened
Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, who supervised the first CT scan of the mummy of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun this week, said the experience suggested it might be unwise to write off the legendary “curse of the pharaohs.”
The CT, or computed tomography, scan produced three-dimensional images X-ray of the boy pharaoh’s remains.
“I cannot dismiss the legend of the curse because today many things happened. We almost had an accident in a car, the wind blew up in the Valley of the Kings and the computer of the CT scan was completely stopped for two hours,” Hawass said in videotaped remarks released by his office Friday.
Yes, those certainly are odd occurrences for Egypt. . . . .
We figure Zahi was probably jesting. Kind of irritating for it to be the headline though.
More Viking burials
'High status' Viking site found
Archaeologists in Cumbria say they have discovered what could be the country's most important Viking burial site.
Experts are so excited about the find and its wealth of treasures, they are keeping its location a secret so they can work undisturbed.
All that has been revealed is that it is near Barrow and contains artefacts dating back to the 10th Century.
And now for the weekly EEF news:
In memoriam: "Prof. Dr. Lech Krzyzaniak (1940 - 2004)", former director of the Poznan Archaeological Museum, Poland
http://www.muzarp.poznan.pl/muzeum/muz_eng/wspomnienie/index_lechk.html
[Eds. This was some time ago, but it's nice to see such a nice memorial site. And EVERY archaeologist needs at least one of these:
Thanks, Lech.]
Press report: "Chephren Pyramid open for visitors Saturday":
http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html11/o311224g.htm
The restored pyramid of Khafre is now open, and the king's funerary temple will be restored. Some other pressreports on this [submitted by Albert Prince (albert.prince1@btinternet.com)], adding that the pyramid of
Menkaure/Mykerinus is next in the Gizeh restoration cyle, so is now closed:
http://snipurl.com/bqr5 (Al Jazeera)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1275203.htm
Press report: "International company to shoot blockbuster on Hatshepsut"
http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html12/o030125c.htm
"An international financial company announced on Sunday it is making a feasibility study for a big film on the famous Queen Hatshepsut."
Press report: "Nefertiti gets new home in Berlin"
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/01/05/2003218102
Berlin's Egyptological collection, scattered by WWII, will be reunited under one roof. Nefertiti's bust will be part of an exhibition [see exhibition Germany (k) on the EEFNEWS website], and then move into the rebuilt Altes Museum.
Press release: "Archaeologists discover evidence that courtiers were sacrificed to accompany early Egyptian Kings into the Afterlife" "Dig at Abydos Yields Important Discoveries About Egypt's First Dynasty":
http://snipurl.com/bsn4
[Cp. the EEF thread "New finds in Abydos (human sacrifice?)" of March '04]
The "Rundbrief Sept. '04" of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Abteilung Kairo is available as PDF (0.99 MB, 33 pp., in German):
http://www.dainst.org/medien/de/rundbr04.pdf
[With progress reports of DAIK missions at over a dozen sites; with e.g. photos of the pyramidions of the Intefs from Dra'Abu el-Naga (see EEFNEWS 331).]
Kathleen Nicoll, "Radiocarbon Chronologies for Prehistoric Human Occupationy and Hydroclimatic Change in Egypt and Northern Sudan", in: Geoarchaeology, Vol. 16, No. 1, 2001, pp. 47-64; in PDF (481 kB):
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~knicoll/ww/geoarch_nicoll_c14_esahara.pdf
Compiles 500+ published Late Prehistoric radiocarbon ages from localites in the Western Desert and Oases region, and illustrates hydroclimatic changes ("wet-dry" cyles) from them. Population began to move out of the desiccating area, towards the Valley, after 6000 Before Present. The establishing of the current hyperarid conditions around 4500 BP coincides with the end of the Old Kingdom.
Kathleen Nicoll, "Recent Environmental Change and Prehistoric Human Activity in Egypt and Northern Sudan", in: Quaternary Science Reviews, 23 (2004), pp. 561-580; in PDF (588 kB):
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~knicoll/mi/nika.pdf
(or alternatively:
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~knicoll/ww/qsr_nicoll_eg_sud.pdf)
Same scope as previous article. But also has an interesting chart which scetches the state of the Nile flood during AE history.
C. Vance Haynes, Jr, T.A. Maxwell, A. El Hawary, K.A. Nicoll, S. Stokes, "An Acheulian Site Near Bir Kiseiba in the Darb el Arba'in Desert, Egypt", in: Geoarchaeology, Vol. 12, No. 8 (1997), pp. 819-832; in PDF (335kB):
http://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/~knicoll/ww/geoarch_nicoll_acheulian.pdf
Describes the geology and archaeology of a site in the Western Desert that turned up Acheulian artifacts.
Online version of: Jeffrey Jacobson, Jane Vadnal, Multimedia in Three Dimensions for Archaeology; Information Retrieval With Interactive Models, in: Proceedings of the SCI'99/ISAS'99 Conference, vol. 8
http://www.planetjeff.net/IndexDownloads/sci-isas-99.pdf
"An interactive three-dimensional model is an effective tool for the display of archeological data. Spatial data from a site can be directly visualized as the central model, while much of the non-spatial information can be
presented with text, sound, animations or other such tools. ... We discuss the structural and cognitive (learning) advantages of this approach and present our three examples: The Temple of Isis, The Temple of Horus and the
Tomb of Lady Hao." - pdf-file: 270 KB
The Friends of the Petrie Museum will be holding a second book auction to raise funds for the mummy cartonnage appeal. If you would like to receive a list of the books, and details of the email auction,
please send an email to Jan Picton, Secretary of the Friends, at:
petriebooks@ijnet.demon.co.uk.
EEF members who participated in last year's auction will automatically receive details of this year's auction (unsubscribe by sending subject header 'delete' to the above address).
[Submitted by Karine Gadre (karine@culturediff.org)]
A Culture Diff' lecture was given on October 16, close to Lyon, France. Its title "The creation of the world: ancient Egyptian myths and scientific reality". Its goal: recounting fifteen milliard years of evolution through
myths and theories. Here follows a summary of this lecture available online as a dossier (34 pages and 29 pictures) for 15 euros only:
"At the very beginning there was the myth, and more particularly the myth of the creation of the world. Because of their big analogy with funerary conceptions, several extracts of the cosmogonic myths were integrated within
the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, the Book of the Dead, ... Through these stories, the ancient Egyptians attempted to explain at best the observed reality: the world made up of the sky and the earth, populated by gods,
humans, animals, plants, ... For this reason, certain aspects of the cosmogonic myth evolved with time, whereas others were enriched with many versions. This evolutional and probabilistic approach is most often
described as modern. It guides the anthropologists, the paleontologists, the biochemists, the astrophysicists, the cosmologists, the physicians of the particles, in charge of recounting the history of the created world, from
the primeval big bang to the appearance of mankind, going through the structuring of our matter universe, the appearance and evolution of life on earth. The similarity between the ancient and modern approaches is not the
sole and only thing which the cosmogonic myths and theories have in common. The descriptions of the primeval universe, the notions relating to the end of the created world, are other things which they have in common, as the
reading of this dossier testifies". Further details can be found at :
http://www.culturediff.org/english/astroegypto9.htm
"Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (TLA)"
See EEF News (327), November 4, 2004
The database of AE texts will be updated these days: Pyramid texts, letters of the MK and late handbooks of priests were added. - In addition the so-called "Vormanuskript" [preliminary manuscript], an early draft of the
"Wörterbuch", is included. Written in 1906-1909, it consists of more than 2100 pp. with 850 lemmata. It is more detailed than the "Wörterbuch", discussing the meaning and usage of the words. Therefore it is not only of
historical interest, indicating Erman's concepts about the structure and content of an AE dictionary, but still points the way to future lexicographical work, according to Dr. Seidlmayer, leader of the project.
URL: http://aaew2.bbaw.de/tla/
End of EEF news