News from the Valley of the Kings

We have published Edition 4 of the Journal and Edition 6 of the Magazine this morning on Egyptological, with more content in In Brief as well as a new photo album.

I wrote a lengthy editorial to introduce the contents so that is your best place to find out about all the new goodies. There isn't a lot this time which is specifically about Upper Egypt but a couple of weeks ago we did publish a review by Patricia Spencer of the the all-day colloquium “Recent Archaeological Fieldwork in Sudan,” held by the Sudan Archaeology Research Society at the British Museum (London, UK) on May 14th 2012.  The day covered updates from the expeditions at Sesebi and Amara West among 13 speakers.  If you haven't taken a look at that yet, you might like to.

The Egypt Independent reports arrests and seizure of 17 Roman-era antiquities near Luzor.  Allegedly a pit 10m deep had been dug to loot an unspecified site.  The report lacks both details and photographs.

I am pleased to say that we have just published an interview with Salima Ikram on Egyptological. Not Valley of the Kings but we are very happy with it so I wanted to share.

http://www.egyptological.com/2012/05/egyptologically-speaking-an-interview-with-professor-salima-ikram-8833

With thanks to the SSEA I would like to highlight the Preserve the Middle Nile blog. The most recent item is a report from the recent Sudan Meeting at the British Museum. The BM is interested because one of the sites which will be flooded is Amara West where their team has been working.

I am sooo far behind with news.  I look at the backlog and it deters me so I think the best it just to skip it and resume normal service (although there are one or two pieces of news I may go back to.)

So with thanks to Andie Byrnes here is a piece of news from the Amarna Project that they are conserving a group of six coffins.  They are important because they are the only decorated, non-royal coffins ever found at Amarna so presumably they represent the noble elite.  They have insciptions and publication is something which very much should be welcomed.