A 4,000-year-old burial chamber which belongs to an ancient Egyptian queen has been found outside Cairo.

The necropolis of Saqqara outside Cairo has yielded a string of new discoveries as 10 different teams excavate a previously untouched area of these burial grounds were used continuously for more than 2,000 years until Roman times.

French mission head Philippe Collombert said the mummy of Queen Behenu was destroyed, but the chamber contained green hieroglyphics picked out on white stone known as the “Pyramid Texts.”

“We are excited because the texts are well conserved,” he told The Associated Press, adding the queen’s titles were written on the walls of the 33 by 16 foot (10 metre by 5 metre) burial chamber inside her small pyramid.

The text is primarily concerned with protecting the queen’s remains and her transition to afterlife.

[Full story] [Discuss here]

The project to recreate the “Avenue of the Sphinxes”, which once connected the temples of Luxor and Karnak in the ancient city of Thebes, is causing controversy as families are being uprooted to make way for the 2.7km tourist attraction.

“I will not be forced out of my home without fair compensation,” the village elder vows as a hydraulic hammer reduces his neighbor’s brick home to rubble. “If they try to destroy my house I will lock myself inside it.”

Khodari is the patriarch of an extended family of 14 who live in the two-storey house, its exterior walls adorned with paintings of his pilgrimage to Mecca four years ago. He has defied a municipal eviction order and demands “equitable compensation” before vacating the home he claims is built on land his family has occupied for over 200 years.

“For the past month the government has cut off our water and electricity during the day to pressure us to leave,” he says. “Then they came a week ago and told us we must go. Go where? Into the streets, the desert… to Israel?”

Hundreds of low-income families have lost their homes since Luxor city officials approved a controversial plan to excavate an ancient processional route and develop it as a key tourist attraction.

[Full story] [Discuss here]

A 3,000-year-old Egyptian sarcophagus which was seized by customs in 2008 is set to return home.

The nearly 5-foot-long wooden coffin was confiscated by U.S. customs officials at Miami International Airport from a Spanish merchant in 2008.

The dealer did not possess the necessary documentation to prove ownership of the artifact.

Suspecting that the object might have left Egypt illegally, U.S. authorities began an investigation.

“They determined that the coffin had left Egypt after 1970 as the earliest public record of the piece dated to 2007 when it was exhibited in Madrid,” Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement.

Arrangements are currently underway for the coffin to be handed over Hawass on March 10 in Washington, D.C., during an official gala ceremony.

[Full story] [Discuss]

A 1,600-year-old monastery, the world’s oldest, has been restored in Zaafarana, Egypt.

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities spent eight years and $14.5 million dollars to carry out a comprehensive restoration and conservation of the ancient monastery, situated in the rugged desert mountains near Egypt’s Red Sea coast.

It was in this remote spot, at the end of the 3rd century that renowned Christian ascetic St. Anthony took up a residence in a cave, with little more than a spring and some palm trees to sustain him.

Upon his death in A.D. 356, his followers built cells and created the world’s first Christian monastery, which now houses 120 monks, the burial place of four saints, and ancient church paintings dating to the Middle Ages.

Monks say the restoration and discovery of the cells of the monks sheds important light on the early years of monasticism and bolsters the country’s long monastic tradition.

“For the monastery itself, this is very important, we have found a missing part of our history with this restoration, for there is nothing written about the beginning of the monastery,” said Father Maximus, who oversaw the renovation.

[Full story]

The Avenure of Sphinxes in Luxor, Egypt, it undergoing excavation and restoration in order to turn it into part of an open-air museum.

Built by the 30th Dynasty king Nectanebo I (380-362 BC), the avenue is 2,700 meters long and 76 meters wide, and lined with a number of statues in the shape of sphinxes. Queen Hatshepsut recorded on her red chapel in Karnak temple that she built six chapels dedicated to the god Amun-Re on the route of this avenue during her reign, emphasising that it was long a place of religious significance.

The Avenue of Sphinxes is one of the most important archaeological and religious paths in Luxor, as it was the location of important religious ceremonies in ancient times, most notably the Beautiful Feast of Opet.

The Opet Festival was celebrated annually in Thebes, during the New Kingdom period and later. The statues of the gods of the Theban Triad – Amun, Khonsu and Mut – were escorted, hidden from sight in a sacred barque, in a joyous procession down the Avenue of Sphinxes from the temple of Amun in Karnak, to the temple of Luxor in order to relive their marriage.

Dr. Hawass said that developing the Avenue of Sphinxes is part of the SCA’s collaboration with the Luxor government – one of the issues is to tackle air pollution damaging the monuments – to develop the whole city into an open-air museum.

[Full story]