Dr. Zahi Hawass Lecture

[tenaya]

Thursday night, a small group of us went down into Irvine to hear Dr. Zahi Hawass give a talk on "Hidden Treasure of Ancient Egypt." He covered many, many topics, from the Sphinx, to the Pyramids to the mummies of Saqqara, to Egypt's attempt to stop theft and acheive the return of important objects currently in other museums (the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum...etc.) He's a very energetic man and peppers his talking with lots of humor. IIRC, he thinks the Sphinx is only about 5000 years old--not the 10,000 that that geologist believes. He denies having a secret tunnel from his bathroom to a chamber in the great pyramid. He showed us slides of the Ramses mummy return to Egypt and the new wing to a museum they built to house him. In fact, he mentioned many new museum projects that were in the works, along with redesigning current sites to handle tourists better--with a shop at the end, just like how Disney does. The bottom line that they would need cash to complete them. As a result, they were sending the King Tut exhibit back to the States! It's a four city tour, with LA being the first stop. I believe this was going to start in a couple of years. I remember being thunderstruck with the beauty of those artifacts as a young girl so I can't wait to see it again.

He also mentioned the stuff they are finding in Alexandria, and the classrooms there. I believe they found 13 classrooms that could house 600 students each. Just think of all those students from all over the Mediterranean coming to study the library there. It just sounds so intriguing.

It sounds like he keeps his website updated for current news and it is at:
http://www.guardians.net/hawass/

I believe he is giving a talk at LACMA today at 3pm.

Comments

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

Arrgh! Wish I'd known yesterday that you'd been to this, I would have loved to talk about it with you! Was it an ARCE lecture? When I lived in OC, ARCE had a very active membership and I used to belong and go to Egyptology lectures once a month. Saw John Romer once. I miss it.

Re: An URL for you on Alexandria, and this one just for fun. But come to think of it, you might also be interested in this one too!

Tut coming back to LA - fantastic! That would make three times I've seen the treasures - once as an 11 year old at the Natural History Museum in LA, then the big exhibit at LACMA, and now this one coming - too cool! :-D

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

Wow! Those are fantastic links. Thanks. It is good to read more about Alexandria, the bit about plague in Amarna is fascinating (one wonders if that helped to end that religious movement and caused the city to be abandoned) and the Rasputin article is just plain bizarre. I thought it a joke, but it isn't, is it? When I was in Berlin, there was a museum of the Erotic on the corner down from my hotel. It looked like a Victoria Secrets display window on the outside. I didn't go in. Thank you for sharing those.

The lecture was brought there by the Bower's Museum. They had an amazing Egyptian exhibit there a couple of years ago, and since his next talk was at LACMA, I assumed he was networking the museum angle. What is ARCE, please?

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's an interesting thought, that perhaps Amarna might have been abandoned partly because of plague. Here's another thought - maybe Nefertiti died of it? Since they don't really know why she "disappeared" so suddenly.

Ol' Grigori was fairly well endowed, hmm? Oy! I wonder how they pickled it erect?!

The apt. I lived in which burned down was fairly close to the Bowers Museum, so I know where it is.

ARCE is the American Research Center in Egypt. The Orange County chapter is very active: http://www.arce.org/chapters/chapter_events.html (and scroll down). When I lived in Irvine, they had monthly lectures at UCI that I attended regularly, and I paid yearly dues. They used to have an LA Chapter but I think it went bye-bye as I don't see it listed any longer.

I was mentioning the lecture to Kathy Resch, and sent her the URL for Zahi Hawass' web site. Kathy, and also Robbie (and I/me!) are very into Egyptology and archaeology. If you come across any more lectures or exhibits, let us know - we'd love to attend with you!

[tenaya.livejournal.com]

Re Rasputin...I think I really don't want to know!

Thanks for the info on ARCE. I'll have to check it out when I get back form MWC. And if I hear of any Egyptian stuff in the future, I'll be sure and mention it here and on the list.

Actually, there was a tour that was in North America and I've been trying to figure out if it might go to Vancouver. It's called, "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt." I don't think it's going to be anywhere near us, and I've been looking for an excuse to go to Vancouver. This site is also interesting:
http://www.ancientneareast.net/exhibitions.html

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links & the info on the bash list. I'd love to see it, but I suspect I won't even be able to make it to Vegas. Sigh. Nice that it's closer than Vancouver, though!

I hear about a (to me) surprising numer of archaeological exhibits (not all Egyptian) that you would think make it either to LACMA or the Natural History Museum, but never come to LA. It's frustrating! The one I would have killed to see was the "Bog Bodies" exhibit.

[(Anonymous)]

I was there, the tall bald guy in red if you noticed me.

I only came across your LJ because Im searching for that picture of Dr. Hawass' bathroom to link on my site, Heru-ur.org :P