The Tomb of Seti I, Tomb KV17 is located in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and is also known by the names “Belzoni’s tomb”, “the Tomb of Apis”, and “the Tomb of Psammis, son of Nechois”. It is the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty, father of Ramses the Great. The tomb of Seti I is one of the largest and best decorated tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but now is almost always closed to the public due to damage. It was first discovered by Giovanni Battista Belzoni on 16 October 1817. When he first entered the tomb he found the wall paintings in excellent condition with the paint on the walls still looking fresh and some of the artists paints and brushes still on the floor.

The tomb contains very well preserved reliefs in all but two of its eleven chambers and side rooms. One of the back chambers is decorated with the Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, which stated that the mummy’s eating and drinking organs were properly functioning. Believing in the need for these functions in the afterlife, this was a very important ritual. A very long tunnel (corridor K) leads away deep into the mountainside from beneath the location where the sarcophagus stood in the burial chamber. Recently, the excavation of this corridor was completed. There was no ’secret burial chamber’ or any other kind of chamber at the end. Work on the corridor was abandoned upon the burial of Seti I.

The sarcophagus of Seti I was removed from the tomb on behalf of the British consul Henry Salt. KV17 was damaged when Jean-François Champollion, translator of the Rosetta Stone, removed a wall panel of 2.26 x 1.05 m in a corridor with mirror-image scenes during his 1828-29 expedition. Other elements were removed by his companion Rossellini or the German expedition of 1845. The scenes are now in the collections of the Louvre, the museums of Florence and Berlin.

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Abu Simbel comprises two massive rock temples in southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser. In 1959, an international donation campaign began to save the monuments of Nubia: the southernmost relics were under threat from the rising waters of the Nile resulting from construction of the Aswan High Dam. The salvage of the Abu Simbel temples began in 1964, and cost US $80 million. Between 1964 and 1968, the entire site was cut into large blocks, dismantled and reassembled in a new location – 65 m higher and 200 m back from the river, in what many consider one of the greatest feats of archaeological engineering. Today, thousands of tourists visit the temples daily.

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In 2007, French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin proposed that the most effective way for the ancient Egyptians to build the Great Pyramid at Giza is the use of an internal ramp that according to the architect still exists inside the ancient Egyptian man made structure.

The first stage of construction, according to Houdin, used a traditional external ramp. The next stage involved building the internal ramp in the shape of a spiral. Once the bulk of the pyramid was finished, the open corners of the ramp were filled in as the pyramid was finished off, but the ramp’s tunnels were left empty. Scientists are now seeking permission from the Egyptian government to do more non-invasive tests that would prove or disprove Houdin’s theory.

Work conducted by the Supreme Council of Antiquities to restore, preserve and manage the pharaonic, islamist and other monuments and museums in Egypt.

A summary of the efforts conducted by the Supreme Council of Antiquities to restore, preserve and manage the monuments and museums across Egypt.

Kom Ombo or Ombos was originally an Egyptian city called Nubt, meaning City of Gold. It became a Greek settlement during the Greco-Roman Period. The town’s location on the Nile 50 km north of Aswan gave it some control over trade routes from Nubia to the Nile Valley, but its main rise to prominence came with the erection of the temple in the 2nd century BC.

There are two temples at Ombos. The more magnificent of two stands upon the top of a sandy hill. The smaller temple to the northwest was sacred to Isis. Both are of an imposing architecture, and still retain the brilliant colors with which their builders adorned them. They are, however, of the Ptolemaic age, with the exception of a doorway of sandstone, built into a wall of brick, part of a temple built by Tuthmosis III in honor of the crocodile-headed god Sobek, held in especial honor by the people.

In Kom Ombo there is a rare engraved image of what is thought to be the first representation of medical instruments for performing surgery, including scalpels, curettes, forceps, dilator, scissors and medicine bottles dating from the days of Roman Egypt.

An over view of King Djoser’s step pyramid at Saqqara in Egypt showing diagrams, photos and a 3D reconstruction.

Religious rituals carried Cleopatra’s message, “I am a deity, Caesar is a deity, and our child is the product of a divine union.

The “Dendera light” comprises three stone reliefs (one single and a double representation) in the Hathor temple at the Dendera Temple complex located in Egypt. The images are interpreted by traditional Egyptologists as depicting lotus flowers spawning a snake, representing aspects of Egyptian mythology:

The splendid but enigmatic reliefs of the crypt are cosmogonical and depict the serpent (dualizing principle underlying all creation: In Genesis the separation of heaven and earth) borne aloft by the lotus, the symbol of creation as a manifestation of consciousness.

In contrast to the mainstream interpretation, there is a fringe hypothesis according to which the reliefs depict Ancient Egyptian electrical technology, based on comparison to similar modern devices (such as Geissler tubes, Crookes tubes, and arc lamps).

The Temple of Luxor is a large Ancient Egyptian temple complex located on the east bank of the River Nile in the city today known as Luxor (ancient Thebes) and was founded in 1400 B.C.E.

Known in the Egyptian language as ipet resyt, or “the southern sanctuary”, the Temple of Luxor was dedicated to the Theban Triad of Amen, Mut, and Khons and was built during the New Kingdom, the focus of the annual Opet Festival, in which a cult statue of Amen was paraded down the Nile from nearby Karnak Temple (ipet-isut) to stay there for a while, with his consort Mut, in a celebration of fertility – whence its name.

The earliest parts of the Temple of Luxor still standing are the barque chapels, just behind the first pylon. They were built by Hatshepsut, and appropriated by Tuthmosis III. The main part of the temple – the colonnade and the sun court were built by Amenhotep III, and a later addition by Ramses II, who built the entrance pylon, and the two obelisks (one of which was taken to France, and is now at the center of the Place de la Concorde) linked the Hatshepsut buildings with the main temple.

To the rear of the temple are chapels built by Tuthmosis III, and Alexander. During the Roman era, the temple and its surroundings were a legionary fortress and the home of the Roman government in the area.

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