Archeology Egypt

It is a creation of the great, rich J. Paul Getty Trust, and it resembles nothing so much as a Popular Mechanics home workshop project. And that is part of its beauty. The little glass box revealed last week by the Getty Conservation Institute in Marina del Rey is a prototype of bigger things to come, holding out the promise of preserving some of the world's museums' decaying treasures--on a shoestring.

University of Pennsylvania archeologists have unearthed a gargantuan dinosaur in a corner of Egypt that paleontologists have ignored since World War II, when earlier finds from the region stored in German museums were blasted from existence by Allied warplanes. They report in Friday's Science that the new species, dubbed Paralititan stromeri, or tidal giant, walked in ancient mangrove swamps in what is now the Sahara Desert.

The Earl of Carnarvon, grandson of one of the men who opened the Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, discovered a hoard of Egyptian antiquities at the family castle, the Times of London reported today. More than 300 objects, including a carved and painted face of Tutankhamen's grandfather, Amenophis III, were found in a hidden cupboard and in unused rooms at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, southern England, the paper said.

A Greek archeological team believes it has found the 2,300-year-old tomb of Alexander the Great in the sands of Egypt's Western Desert near Siwa. If the find is confirmed, it will resolve the centuries-old question of what happened to Alexander, who conquered most of the ancient world from Greece to India before he died at 33. The archeologists disclosed late last week they had discovered two limestone plaques near what appeared to be a large tomb.

The National Geographic Society has released pictures of an Egyptian boat photographed by special cameras in a stone chamber where the vessel was entombed beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu 4,600 years ago. National Geographic officials said the photographs were taken with remote cameras lowered through a drill hole and that the chamber then was sealed, leaving the ancient craft undisturbed. A similar boat was found in a chamber nearby in 1954.

The recent discovery of the remains of a 4,500-year-old bakery on the Giza Plateau may be a key element in determining the sociopolitical structure of Egypt in the 27th Century BC. The bakery, along with a massive wall that cordoned off part of the site, suggests further that Egypt's rulers also lived there for much of the year. This gives the scientists hope of finding a palace nearby.

Ancient, precious gold coins stolen by workmen from their hiding place behind a wall in a medieval house have been recovered by police and turned over to a Cairo museum. Three-quarters of the 3,611 medieval coins in the priceless collection were minted in Europe, mainly in Italian city-states that produced the money of international commerce in the Middle Ages. Such coins never had been found in Egypt. Stashed for centuries, the cache contained nearly 28 pounds of gold.

Egypt was an ancient, religious land under the stranglehold of Nero's Rome when the first strains of Christianity came quietly and swiftly across the Sinai Desert from Judea. How did the new religion arrive, who were the first Christians, what were the early teachings and how did the message spread and change? Legends and stories are far more plentiful than facts. German archeologist Peter Grossmann, who specializes in early Christian sites of the Near East, is trying to unlock the mysteries.

Using magnetic sensors and computers, Egyptian experts have located and mapped an important Pharaonic city in the Nile Delta, officials said Tuesday. Ahmed Gouda Husain of the Geophysical Research Center said the experts have been able to create detailed images of Qantir, which was a capital of one of Egypt's most famous kings, Ramses II. Ramses II, a pharaoh in the so-called New Kingdom era, ruled Egypt from 1304 to 1237 BC.

Archeologists have found what they believe is the world's oldest paved canal, built about 4,500 years ago near the pyramids of Giza, an Egyptian scholar said Saturday. The canal was probably used to carry water from the Nile for the ritual bathing of the body of Pharaoh Chephren, who ruled from 2558 BC to 2532 BC and whose pyramid is the second largest of the three at Giza, said Zahi Hawass of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority.