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tutankhamun

Tutankhamun: The Truth Uncovered

I must confess when I read the blurb on the BBC for their new Tutankhamun programme, Tutankhamun: The Truth Uncovered, I was not entirely impressed. It talks about “new scientific research” and how “presenter Dallas Campbell […] carries out unique experiments to get to the truth.” and then proceeds to talk about stuff that sounds like a re-hash of the 2010 Hawass et al paper ( JAMA. 2010;303(7):638-647). So I was sceptical going in about the likelihood of it being anything new. Interestingly, Zahi Hawass is not mentioned once during the programme, but some of the other authors of that paper (Ashraf Selim and Albert Zink, if I remember correctly) are extensively interviewed. So my overall impression is that this is a second go at making a layperson-accessible documentary based on the 2010 paper, with the intention of distancing itself from Hawass who has now fallen from grace. The programme… Read More »Tutankhamun: The Truth Uncovered

Discovering Tutankhamun (Exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum)

In the middle of August we went to the Discovering Tutankhamun exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum. When we were there we met up with other people from the Essex Eygptology Group who’d come across for the day (we were staying with my parents for the weekend so were already in Oxford). A lot of the items in the exhibition came from the Griffith Institute, who have all the papers and so on relating to Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. The first third of the exhibition was about the discovery itself. It started with a bit of biographical information about Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon before moving on to the discovery and the start of the excavation. This section included some of the original index cards for the objects, and the photographs taken by Harry Burton. As the photos are all in black and white they annotated the… Read More »Discovering Tutankhamun (Exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum)

Peeling Back the Shadows (SSAE Chesterfield Study Day 12 July 2014)

On Saturday J and I visited Chesterfield to go to a study day being held there by the SSAE called Peeling Back the Shadows. This consisted of two talks (each split into two parts), one given by Chris Naunton about Tutankhamun and one given by Barry Kemp about the latest work at Amarna. We’d originally signed up for it because the holiday we were booked to go on last year was accompanied by Barry Kemp – that holiday got cancelled, but when we signed up for the study day we were signed up for it again for this year so this seemed a neat way to get a preview of our holiday. Sadly it got cancelled again (due to Foreign Office advice about travel to Middle Egypt) and we’re actually going on a different holiday (still to Egypt) this year instead. However, it was still an interesting study day to… Read More »Peeling Back the Shadows (SSAE Chesterfield Study Day 12 July 2014)