René O'Deay gBlog

"At a rough estimate, over 2 million objects from ancient Egypt are kept in about 850 public collections, dispersed over 69 countries around the world. This website aims to collect them into a global virtual museum, which can be visited at any time, from any place.

The Global Egyptian Museum is a long-term project, carried out under the aegis of the International Committee for Egyptology (CIPEG).

The Basic Mode, currently showcasing 1301 highlights, is geared to the interested public. A glossary of more than 400 items explains Egyptian terms and themes. Many objects are provided with audio comments and 3D-movies.

The Advanced Mode, equipped with a powerful search and data entry engine, opens up the full database - presently 11321 objects - to professionals and amateurs.

Kids! offers information for children at the age of 8-12 years in an interactive way."The Global Egyptian Museum

I've also posted about this fabulous online directory at my Yahoo360 blog: Blasts from the Past.

A fabulous example of how useful this site could be, check out this link to one of the jewels of King Tut.It breaks down the symbols with translations.

Enjoy!

René

Yesterday morning I cried. I didn't know why until I checked my forum on Glyphdoctors.com.

News | Africa - Reuters.com: "LUXOR, Egypt (Reuters) - Egypt put the mummy of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun on display in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings on Sunday, giving visitors their first chance to see the face of a ruler who died more than 3,000 years ago. In the dimly lit burial chamber workmen removed the gilded lid of Tutankhamun's mummy case and then hoisted the padded box containing the mummy out of the stone sarcophagus where it has lain for most of the time since Tutankhamun's early death. They then moved it to a climate-controlled acrylic glass showcase in the tomb's antechamber and sealed the cover. His wizened face is visible at one end, a white linen cloth covers his body and his blackened feet protrude at the other end. The mummy's face has high cheekbones and cracked and blackened skin with an intact nose."

Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian government's chief archaeologist and a passionate promoter of ancient Egypt, supervised the operation, broadcast live on some television channels.

"The face of Tutankhamun is different from the face of any king at the Cairo Museum," Hawass told reporters.

"He has these beautiful buck teeth and ... the tourists will see a little bit of a smile on the face of the golden boy," he added. "This will ... make the golden boy live forever."

The mummy will be visible to the general public from Monday.

First reactions from tourists were mixed.

Sergei Gostev, a Russian who said he based his opinion on his Christian beliefs, opposed the display. "I think any corpse of a body, even a mummy, should stay in its original place. It should not be a subject of a show," he told Reuters.

Although the artefacts have toured the world, the mummified body has been examined in detail only a handful of times.

Until Sunday, Tutankhamun's mummy had rested in a gilded coffin inside the stone sarcophagus inside the tomb.

But Hawass said humidity caused by the breathing of thousands of visitors a day threatened to further damage the mummy, which has deteriorated over the years.

Here's some of the photos of the operation from Fox News:



They take Tut out of his beautiful gold-covered coffin and his sarcophagus.



And put him in a plain wooden box under glass, with his bare head and feet exposed.

No beaded skull cap nor the golden headband. What did they do with them? Did they remove them for the xrays or the Cat scan?

And what about the gold covered coffin? Where is that?

And Hawass promised to open the last remaining offerings left this King who has brought economically untold millions, perhaps billions, to Egypt since his tomb was discovered and stripped in 1922.

He'll undoubtedly remove those too, "for safe-keeping'.

René O'Deay

"Archaeologists from Leiden University and from the National Museum of Antiquities have discovered the remains of a further 3300 year old tomb in a cemetery in Saqqara. It belongs to Ptahemwia, who was the ‘King’s cupbearer’ in the time of pharaoh Akhenaton (1353-1335 BC)."

The newly found tomb provides important new information about the so-called Amarna period (named after Akhenaton’s capital city in Central Egypt).

The Dutch archaeologists are doing an incredible job on these sites. There will be some posts on Tales of King Tut's Blog with some photos and their reconstruction of tomb layouts in Saqarra.

Dutch Expeditions: Egyptian tombs

See my post about this "New" 3,300 year-old tomb: 'Who's that Sexy Mummy?'


René