* Astronomy

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Fake Amarna Princess statue

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RE: Egyptian Archaeology

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Following five years of recreating the Avenue of the Sphinxes that once connected Luxor and Karnak temples, the processional route is now back near as can be conjectured to its original appearance. In February visitors to Luxor will be able to walk along the historical avenue in much the same way as the ancient Egyptians did in the days of the Pharaohs.
The magnificent aspect of the route, where priests, royalty and the pious walked in procession to celebrate the annual Opet festival, is being rekindled. Many of the 1,350 sphinxes with human heads and the bodies of lions that once lined the avenue have been restored.
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An ancient Egyptian city believed to be Avaris, the capital of the Hyksos people who ruled 3,500 years ago, has been located by radar, Egypt's culture ministry says.
A team of Austrian archaeologists used radar imaging to find the underground outlines of the city in the Nile Delta, a now densely populated area.
The Hyksos were foreign occupiers from Asia who ruled Egypt for a century.
Avaris was their summer capital, near what is now the town of Tal al-Dabaa.
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Egyptian kingdoms dated

A three-year study of hundreds of artefacts looks set to settle several long-standing debates about Egypt's ancient dynasties.
The study, which appears in today's issue of Science1, is the first to use high-precision measurements of radioactive carbon isotopes to produce a detailed timeline for the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs from about 2650 BC to 1100 BC.
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Radiocarbon Dating Constrains the Reigns of Egyptian Rulers

For several thousands of years, ancient Egypt dominated the Mediterranean world - and scholars across the globe have spent more than a century trying to document the reigns of the various rulers of Egypt's Old, Middle and New Kingdoms. Now, a detailed radiocarbon analysis of short-lived plant remains from the region is providing scientists with a long and accurate chronology of ancient Egyptian dynasties that agrees with most previous estimates but also imposes some historic revisions.
Although previous chronologies have been precise in relative ways, assigning absolute dates to specific events in ancient Egyptian history has been an extremely contentious undertaking. This new study tightly constrains those previous predictions, especially for the Old Kingdom, which was determined to be slightly older than some scholars had believed. The study will also allow for more accurate historical comparisons to surrounding areas, like Libya and Sudan, which have been subject to many radiocarbon dating techniques in the past.
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Sahara cave may hold clues to dawn of Egypt

Amateur explorers stumbled across the cave, which includes 5 000 images painted or engraved into stone, in the vast, empty desert near Egypt's southwest border with Libya and Sudan.
Rudolph Kuper, a German archaeologist, said the detail depicted in the "Cave of the Beasts" indicate the site is at least 8 000 years old, likely the work of hunter-gatherers whose descendants may have been among the early settlers of the then-swampy and inhospitable Nile Valley.
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Westerwelle says Nefertiti stays in Berlin

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has approached the delicate matter of the Nefertiti bust while on an official visit to Egypt, telling his counterpart the statue would not be moved.
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A headless granite statue, believed to be of King Ptolemy IV, has been unearthed in northern Egypt by archaeologists who were searching for Cleopatra's tomb, the ministry of Culture said on Tuesday.
Behind the Taposiris Magna temple, built by Ptolemy IV, a huge Greco-Roman cemetery was unearthed.
All the heads of the bodies were laid to point towards the temple, indicating the burial of someone important inside, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said.
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Door to afterlife from ancient Egyptian tomb found

Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,500-year-old door to the afterlife from the tomb of a high-ranking Egyptian official near Karnak temple in Luxor, the Egyptian antiquities authority said Monday.
These recessed niches found in nearly all ancient Egyptian tombs were meant to take the spirits of the dead to and from the afterworld. The nearly six-foot- tall (1.75 metres) slab of pink granite was covered with religious texts.
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