Egypt
ScienceBlogs blog (Darren Naish)
With photos
- Sample, Don't Trample
The Scientist (Bob Grant) Historical, archaeological, and paleontological artifacts are precious. And often preciously small: a 500-millimeter fossil fragment, 2 milligrams of charcoal from a prehistoric fire. Decoding the chemical composition of a material—especially...
- Blog Update
Hello to everyone Thanks HUGELY to Ben Morales-Correa for doing such a fantastic job whilst I was soaking up the sun and sights in Italy. You would not believe how much it has lightened my load to know that, thanks to Ben's work, I don't have...
- Travel: Highlights Of Luxor
Egyptian Gazette This is a really badly formatted feature on the Egyptian Gazette website. It probably made a lot more sense in the print version of the newspaper. It deals with key archaeological highlights in Luxor: The tombs of the nobles, the Luxor...
- New Ways To Combat Looters
Times Online (Ben Mcintyre) Numerous attempts have been made to stamp out the trade in stolen artefacts, and a number of prominent curators and dealers have recently been prosecuted for handling stolen goods. But still the market for looted antiquities...
- Egyptian Deputy Minister Detained Over Van Gogh Theft
Egypt's top prosecutor has ordered the detention of deputy minister for culture Mohsen Shalaan in a case which involved the theft of a painting by Van Gogh from the Mahmoud Khalil museum in Cairo. The painting known as "poppy flowers" was stolen from...
Egypt
The puzzle of Rekhmire's pygmy mammoth
ScienceBlogs blog (Darren Naish)
With photos
One of the things that came up in the many comments appended to the article on Bob's painting of extinct Maltese animals was the famous Egyptian tomb painting of the 'pygmy mammoth'. You're likely already familiar with this (now well known) case: here's the image, as it appears on the beautifully decorated tomb wall of Rekhmire, 'Governor of the Town' of Thebes, and vizier of Egypt during the reigns of Tuthmose III and Amenhotep II (c. 1479 to 1401 BCE) during the XVIII dynasty...
In 1994, Baruch Rosen published a brief article in Nature in which he drew attention to the small, tusked, hairy elephant in the painting, shown as being waist-high to the accompanying people. The people next to the elephant seem to be Syrian traders, carrying objects that include tusks (note that a small bear is shown in the painting as well: that's very interesting but I don't have time to discuss it here). African elephants Loxodonta and the now extinct Middle Eastern population of the Asian elephant Elephas maximus were both known to the ancient Egyptians, but Rekhmire's elephant doesn't seem to be either.
- Sample, Don't Trample
The Scientist (Bob Grant) Historical, archaeological, and paleontological artifacts are precious. And often preciously small: a 500-millimeter fossil fragment, 2 milligrams of charcoal from a prehistoric fire. Decoding the chemical composition of a material—especially...
- Blog Update
Hello to everyone Thanks HUGELY to Ben Morales-Correa for doing such a fantastic job whilst I was soaking up the sun and sights in Italy. You would not believe how much it has lightened my load to know that, thanks to Ben's work, I don't have...
- Travel: Highlights Of Luxor
Egyptian Gazette This is a really badly formatted feature on the Egyptian Gazette website. It probably made a lot more sense in the print version of the newspaper. It deals with key archaeological highlights in Luxor: The tombs of the nobles, the Luxor...
- New Ways To Combat Looters
Times Online (Ben Mcintyre) Numerous attempts have been made to stamp out the trade in stolen artefacts, and a number of prominent curators and dealers have recently been prosecuted for handling stolen goods. But still the market for looted antiquities...
- Egyptian Deputy Minister Detained Over Van Gogh Theft
Egypt's top prosecutor has ordered the detention of deputy minister for culture Mohsen Shalaan in a case which involved the theft of a painting by Van Gogh from the Mahmoud Khalil museum in Cairo. The painting known as "poppy flowers" was stolen from...