News & Events

Ancient Egyptians enjoyed humour

A recent series of lectures on ancient Egyptian humour given by a leading historian reveals that people thousands of years ago enjoyed jokes, political satire, parodies and cartoon-like art.
Related evidence found in texts, sketches, paintings, and even in temples and tombs, suggests that humour provided a social outlet and comic relief for the ancient Egyptians, particularly commoners who laboured in the working classes.
The evidence was presented by Carol Andrews, a lecturer in Egyptology at Birbeck College, University of London, and former assistant keeper and senior research assistant in the Department of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum.
Scott Noegel, and president of the American Research Center in Egypt's (ARCE) Northwest Chapter and is an associate professor in the Department of New Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Washington, told Discovery News that ancient Egyptian humour consisted of at least five basic categories.
For satire, Noegel explained that commoners would make fun of leaders by showing pharaohs in an unflattering manner. For example, some leaders were depicted unshaven or "especially effeminate."

Slapstick comedy included drawings that showed people suffering unfortunate accidents, such as hammers falling on heads, or passengers tipping out of boats.

New for Golfers

The 18-hole layout centerpiece of the Taba Heights Golf Resort is the newest addition to golf courses in Egypt. Located under the table mountain of Taba Heights at the northern point of the Gulf of Aqaba near the border of Egypt.
The resort covers 900 acres with a three-mile-long secluded beach on a private bay. Golf course architect John Sanford is back in Egypt this summer as work resumes on a pair of golf courses he designed and plan to open in the near future.” They restarted the project due to the economic recovery in the region,” Sanford says. “Construction is underway and should be completed in about a year.”

Farther down the Red Sea coast, south of Cairo, is Makadi Bay Golf Resort near Hurghada. Sanford’s 18-hole design will be part of an existing five-hotel resort in Makadi Bay, a fashionable destination area. Three new hotels and 200 villas are planned around the course, which will include a comprehensive golf academy featuring a 20-acre practice range, nine-hole pitch-and-putt, and three practice holes. The 18-hole championship course will have six sets of tees and reach almost 7,500 yards from the tips. The layout works its way through existing sand dunes, with elevation changes of 170 feet affording views of the hotels, Red Sea and mountains. It will also be planted with paspalum turf grass Construction is scheduled to begin in two months, with the golf academy opening in a year and the full course in two years. The sandy topography will require minimal earth moving. Water will come from a deep well located in the mountains and be delivered to an irrigation pond located on the 7th and 8th holes. The course will be planted with paspalum grasses, which should thrive even with irrigation water containing 4,000 parts per million of salt.

Sanford is well known in Egypt as designer of the 18-hole layout at The Jolie Ville Movenpick Golf & Resort located between the Sinai Desert Mountains and Red Sea on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The course is planted in Bermuda grass and features six lakes, excellent practice facilities and a par-3 course.

Canadian dig unearths Sinai desert fortress

A Canadian archeological expedition in Egypt has uncovered the remains of a 4,200-year-old fortress near the Red Sea coast in the Sinai Desert, a discovery that sheds some light on life at the time when the Great Pyramids were built.

Details of the discovery will be published soon in the Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research, and archeologists say it offers important clues on what was going on during the last years of the period in Egypt called the Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC).

The team first learned of the site two years ago -- and returned this past summer -- while mapping archeological sites in the Sinai Desert. Led by a brief report of ruins in the area of Ras Budran and information from local Bedouin, they went south along the Red Sea coast to the remains of the fort.

Project director Gregory Mumford recalls shrieking: "Wow, this is massive!'' when the team first surveyed what was on the surface.

They did not have time to conduct a formal excavation and left after doing a survey of the surface remains with the belief that the ruins dated from no earlier than 1500 BC. But this past summer, the team returned to Ras Budran and excavated the site.

They found that the fortress walls were seven metres thick and had an unusual circular shape that gave the fort a diameter of 44 meters. And the walls were not built with the more commonly used mud brick but with limestone blocks.

Geo-archeologist Dr. Lawrence Pavlish, who was part of the survey team in the summer of 2003, said it made a "good checkpoint'' for anyone travelling down the Red Sea coast of the Sinai Peninsula in the ancient world.

The pottery found at the site indicated that it was older than originally thought, dating to around 2250 BC, in the sixth dynasty of Old Kingdom Egypt.

The Sinai expedition was staffed almost entirely by Canadians with support from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. It was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the American Research Centre in Egypt and private donors.

King Tut Exhibit Could Prove to Be Gold Mine

The gilded treasures of King Tutankhamun are on their way back to the United States in what could prove a gold rush for Egypt and big business.

"Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" starts a 27-month tour of the United States in June 2005 that will mark the first return here in more than two decades of the precious artifacts buried with the mysterious boy king.

The exhibit is twice the size of the late-1970s King Tut global tour, which launched an era of "blockbuster" museum exhibitions. "It is a new business model. It seems like a lot of museums have trouble financially in organizing major exhibits. The costs are getting really exorbitant," said John Norman, president of Arts and Exhibitions International, one of the companies providing the funding.

AEI is joined by Anschutz Entertainment Group, which operates sports stadiums, promotes pop concerts and theatrical productions, and National Geographic magazine.

Ancient Egyptians
Ancient Egyptians enjoyed humourA recent series of lectures on ancient Egyptian humour given by a le...
New for Golfers
The 18-hole layout centerpiece of the Taba Heights Golf Resort is the newest addition to...
Canadian dig
Canadian dig unearths Sinai desert fortress A Canadian archeological expedition in Egypt has uncover...
King Tut Exhibit
King Tut Exhibit Could Prove to Be Gold Mine The gilded treasures of King Tutankhamun are on their ...

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