Em Hotep! » Announcements

Tim Reid’s Top Ten Egyptology Stories of 2010

Shemsu Sesen — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 06:16:28 +0000

What would the holiday season be without Tim Reid’s list of the year’s top ten stories in Egyptology? Tim runs the website Egyptians ™, one of my favorite sources for trade news. This year brought us mummy mutations, repatriation demands and museum thefts, and ancient sites ripped up for amusement parks, littered with garbage, and strewn with sewage. Not a bad first year for Egypt’s new Vice minister of Culture! (Ok, ok, hitting below the belt!)

But seriously, do drop in on Tim’s Ten Events Concerning Egyptology.. Most of the news is good, and the source is impeccable!

By the way, I don’t mention often enough the outstanding websites out there that keep us informed without having to subscribe to trade journals with triple digit annual rates. Here are a few:

Required reading for all Egyptophiles from the professional to the mildly curious would be Andie Byrnes’ Egyptology News. Comprehensive and copiously updated, if it is at all relevant to Egyptology Andie will have it covered.
Kate Phizackerley’s News from the Valley of the Kings is the total source for Thebes and thereabout. Kate’s analysis is no-nonsense and she is not afraid to take on the Powers That Be when a story does not hold up.
I can’t say enough positive things about Vincent Brown’s Talking Pyramids, who’s critical eye and journalistic ethic let me know how high the bar is set when I first started Em Hotep.
Su Bayfield’s Egyptian Monuments is one of the online sources I check for nearly every article I write. It is a very well organized encyclopedia of Egyptology with photography that belongs in an art gallery.

Of course, all of the sites I link in the bars to the far right have been vetted and approved by the vast Em Hotep editorial staff, but these four plus Tim’s Egyptians are the places I go to pretty much on a daily basis and I highly recommend that you bookmark them.

Cleopatra’s World: Free Lecture Series to Include Bob Brier, Jenifer Houser Wegner and More

Shemsu Sesen — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 14:21:35 +0000

In conjunction with the Franklin Institute’s Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt exhibition, New Jersey’s Camden County College is offering a free lecture series called Cleopatra’s World, with some top Egyptologists on the schedule, including Bob Brier and Jennifer Houser Wegner.

The lectures will include an overview of the Franklin Institute exhibit, the origins of Egyptology as a discipline, and burial practices during the Ptolemainc Period.

For details, visit nj: Camden County College to host free lecture series on Cleopatra

Current Research in Egyptology Conference XII

Shemsu Sesen — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:27:42 +0000

CRE XII Durham University: Call for Papers

We are pleased to announce that CRE XII will be held from Wednesday 23^rd – Saturday 26^th March 2011 at Durham University, UK.

We invite papers from researchers across the world studying Egypt and the Sudan, from Palaeolithic to Islamic studies. The aim of this year’s conference is to shed light on the multidisciplinary nature of the field of Egyptology. Researchers from all disciplines that are directly engaged with ancient Egypt or using it as a comparative study are highly encouraged to participate.

Themes might include but are not restricted to…

Themes might include but are not restricted to:

Art History
Burial Customs
Commerce and Economy
Cross-Cultural Interaction
Current Fieldwork
Ethnic Archaeology
Identity and Self-presentation
Linguistics
Material Culture
Power and Influence
Reception
Religion

Contributions to the conference can be submitted in one of the following forms:

20 minute paper.
A0 Poster Presentation.

Please note that the language for the conference is English.

Abstracts (max. 200 words) should be submitted by the 15^th December 2010 to cre.xii@durham.ac.uk. You will then receive an email confirming that we have received your abstract. A confirmation email will be sent to those selected for presentation before the 15^th January 2011.

For further information please visit our website: http://crexii-durham.appspot.com/. Our Facebook group is: CRE XII-Durham, you can follow us on twitter:@CREXIIDurham or you can contact us on cre.xii@durham.ac.uk.

Jean-Pierre Houdin to be Honored at Archaeological Film Festival in Cairo

Shemsu Sesen — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:00:07 +0000

French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin, whose work is the subject of the Em Hotep series Hemienu to Houdin, and whose pioneering collaboration with Dassault Systèmes introduced industrial 3D architectural and engineering simulation to the field of archaeology, will be recognized for his work at a week-long archaeological film festival in Cairo next week.

An architect among archaeologists, Jean-Pierre will be addressing the French Institute of Eastern Archaeology, and his documentary film, Kheops Révélé, will kick off the festival.

This Sunday (May 2, 2010), Jean-Pierre Houdin will be the Guest of Honor on the opening night of a week-long archaeological film festival organized by the French Center for Culture and Cooperation (CFCC) at Mounira, Cairo. The festival, which runs from May 2 through May 6, is part of the CFCC’s Year of Science and Technology, and is presented in partnership with the Cairo-based French Institute of Eastern Archaeology (Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale—IFAO) and the Center for Alexandrian Studies (Center d’Etudes Alexandrines—CEAlex).

The festival opens with the documentary Kheops Révélé, which was directed by Florence Tran and produced by Gedeon Programmes and Dassault Systèmes. The film details Jean-Pierre’s work with the Pyramid of Khufu and his internal ramp theory, which is also the subject of the on-going (and soon to be resumed!) Em Hotep series Hemienu to Houdin.

According to the brochure, the film challenges the assumptions of previous theories of how the Pyramid of Khufu was constructed by “proposing [Jean-Pierre’s] idea that the pyramid was built from the inside out… A brilliant hunch he confirms with the help of the latest 3D technology from Dassault Systèmes.” The film treats us to Jean-Pierre’s remarkable 3D animations which not only demonstrate how his theory works, but how it addresses questions that have remained unanswered for millennia and explains the functions of puzzling features, such as the Grand Gallery and the small enigmatic “tunnels” leading out of various points in the structure.

The brochure goes on to point out that Kheops Révélé is regularly presented at the prestigious La Géode at Paris and has already been seen by over 30,000 school children.

Jean-Pierre’s work with Dassault Systèmes has opened a new world for both experiential 3D simulation and archaeology, as evidenced by the recently announced partnership between Peter Der Manuelian of the Giza Archives Project, and Dassault’s Mehdi Tayoubi, who is also one of Jean-Pierre’s collaborators on Project Khufu.

This latest honor signals that M. Houdin’s work continues to garner support in the field of Egyptology, and that the official excuses for not allowing him to put his theories to a more direct empirical test are looking increasingly threadbare.

Bob Brier to Deliver Lecture on Jean-Pierre Houdin’s Work with the Great Pyramid

Shemsu Sesen — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 03:44:56 +0000

If you are curious about how the Great Pyramid was built, and want to have the best theory to come along explained by one of its earliest advocates, then you are in luck.

Dr. Bob Brier, co-author with Jean-Pierre Houdin of “The Secret of the Great Pyramid”, will be delivering a free lecture, open to the public, at Poughkeepsie, NY, on January 27, 2010.

Dr. Bob “The Mummy” Brier, one of the top experts on Egyptian mummies in the world, will be speaking on January 27, 2010, at the Vassar Brothers Institute’s 2010 Science in Your Life lecture series. Dr. Brier will be the first of three lecturers at the event, which will be held in the Our Lady of Lourdes High School Auditorium in Poughkeepsie, NY. The subject of Dr. Brier’s lecture will be “The Secret of the Great Pyramid,” based on the book of the same name, and admission is free and open to the public.

Having established himself as the top guy on mummies, Dr. Brier has been branching out into Egyptian architecture in recent years. In his lecture at Poughkeepsie Dr. Brier will be discussing the work of French architect, Jean-Pierre Houdin, whose work we are currently covering in a series here at Em Hotep, Hemienu to Houdin. According to the source article (Poughkeepsiejournal.com: “Save the Date for Science Lectures”), Dr. Brier states of M. Houdin’s work:

“After five years [of work], he came out with this radical new theory [about the Great Pyramid] that looks like its right. All the other theories of how it was built, we knew didn’t work; this one seems to work. It’s really a remarkable story. After he visited me in New York and I saw what he had I basically took a year off from the university just to help him. I wrote a book with him called ‘Secret of the Great Pyramid’.”

Dr. Brier has recently returned from a tour of Egypt, and Em Hotep will keep you informed of his lectures here in the States. With regard to our own series on Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work, Hemienu to Houdin, I apologize for the delay—holidays intervened! But I am back on track with it and I can absolutely promise that Part 2 will be online before Dr. Brier’s January 27 lecture. Part 2 will cover the construction of the Great Pyramid up to the fiftieth course, which is where construction of the King’s Chamber begins.

Topics of Part 2 will include the building materials of the Great Pyramid, the external and internal ramps, construction methods, and how the ramps were built. Sources for the article will include not only Dr. Brier’s and M. Houdin’s book, but also personal correspondence with Jean-Pierre and a book about the subject that is not yet available in the U.S. In fact, I have the only copy this side of the Atlantic! Curious? More details to come!

Part 3 of Hemienu to Houdin will cover the construction of the King’s Chamber and the remainder of the pyramid. You will be surprised to see how the pyramid itself was transformed into a machine for the building of the King’s Chamber. After that we will have a lengthy discussion with M. Houdin with possible hints about what he is working on now. Stay tuned for details!

Meanwhile, if you haven’t picked it up yet, Dr. Brier’s and M. Houdin’s book, The Secret of the Great Pyramid, is available worldwide in various languages. Here is a link to the English language paperback version to get you started. And if you are anywhere near Poughkeepsie, please do yourself a favor and go see Dr. Brier’s lecture. Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work continues to build momentum—go see for yourself why.

Photo “brier_headshot.jpg” courtesy of the C.W. Post Campus, Long Island University. Graphic “pyramid to king’s chamber.png” courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systèmes, all rights reserved.

The Year in Review: Tim Reid of “The Egyptians” Covers the Top 10

Shemsu Sesen — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:14:21 +0000

Tim Reid, proprietor of The Egyptians, one of the most excellent Egyptology blogs on the internet, has posted his Top 10 stories of 2009. I couldn’t possibly improve on his coverage, and why reinvent the wheel? So if you haven’t checked it out yet, here is Tim Reid’s 2009 in Review!

Vincent Brown’s “Talking Pyramids” Website Has a New Address!

Shemsu Sesen — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:08:19 +0000

Vincent Brown’s website, Talking Pyramids, has changed addresses, so please update your links! The new address is: http://www.talkingpyramids.com/

If you have read any of the reference articles on Em Hotep!, particularly anything having to do with pyramids, then you have most likely come across Talking Pyramids in my Further Reading section at the end of the articles. Vincent’s network of websites is always one of the online resources I check when writing a reference piece.

Did I say network of websites?

Talking Pyramids is just one of several online resources Vincent offers. Check out Ancient Egyptian Pyramids Network for Pyramid Texts Online, YouTube videos you will want to see, the Pyramid of Man website, and resources for hieroglyphs and learning ancient Egyptian.

Vincent offers up-to-date news, book reviews, and thoughtful and informed commentary on Talking Pyramids, so if you haven’t been there yet, you should drop in!

De Hemienu a Houdin: A Série Está Disponível em Português.

Shemsu Sesen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:24:37 +0000

A série ”De Hemienu a Houdin”, de Em Hotep!, que explora a obra e as teorias do arquiteto francês Jean-Pierre Houdin sobre como a Grande Pirâmide de Khufu foi construída, estará agora disponível em Português.

Isso foi possível através de uma parceria exclusiva com o escritor brasileiro José de Anchieta, que estará publicando os artigos em seu Web site O Antigo Egito para Leigos. Para sua facilidade, foram traduzidos os seguintes artigos:

Verifique regularmente em O Antigo Egito para Leigos e em Em Hotep! o próximo capítulo dessa saga histórica!

For my english readers, this is an announcement that the Hemienu to Houdin series is available in Portugues via special arangement with José de Anchieta of O Antigo Egito para Leigos.

Jenny Needs Your Vote!

Shemsu Sesen — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 02:59:47 +0000

Jenny Hale, who Em Hotep! readers will know from the Blogroll Roundups as The Egyptian Scholar, of The Egyptian Yell fame, needs our help! She has entered the @ your library Design a Tote Bag Contest with the design shown to the left, which she has named “The Alexandrian Library Pun.” If you read the hieroglyphs then you will get the pun.

Aside from the fact that her design kick’s butt, Jenny is one of us, part of the ever-growing online Egyptology community. To vote for her design just click on this link: “The Alexandrian Library Pun” by Jennifer Hale. It will take you to the Flickr page where her design is featured. Once there click on the Add as Favorite button at the top of the picture. You will have to have a Flickr account to do this, but signing up is free, just takes a minute, and is for a good cause!

Good luck Jenny from Em Hotep!

Article Update: The Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu

Shemsu Sesen — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:41:38 +0000

The Em Hotep! reference article on the Great Pyramid–the Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu–has been updated and expanded. This article was one of the first written back in the days when Em! was running on WordPress.com‘s free servers. As the scope of this website has grown, some of the earlier articles are out of date (or at least not as thorough as I want them to be), and so they are getting an overhaul.

I will be updating these articles when I have time and in the order of popularity. In other words, Khufu’s article was first because it continues to get hits throughout the day, every day. The Pyramid of Menkaure.. eh, maybe not so quickly.

This announcement is mainly for archival purposes. If you should have need of the text of the original article for some odd reason, let me know.