tenaya | Dr. Zahi Hawass Lecture (Reply)

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.