From CCNews in the USA:
Fossils From Ancient Sea Monster Found in Montana
2006-11-03
A fossil-hunting trip to celebrate a son’s homecoming resulted in the recent discovery of an ancient sea monster in central Montana.
Believed to be approximately 70 million years old, its skull and lower jaw represent the first complete skull of a long-necked plesiosaur found in Montana, according to Montana State University experts.
The skull is said to be one of the best specimens of its kind in North America.
It is an
elasmosaur plesiosaur; see
here.
See also here.
Today, there was a guided tour on ancient Egypt in the Leiden antiquities museum.
Especially on the history of hieroglyphs.
The earliest hieroglyphs are from about 3000 BCE, just when Egypt became one kingdom.
Then, there was usually relatively much images and few text on inscriptions.
And those early hieroglyphs are often only partly readable for scholars today.
The famous Narmer Palette, possibly of the first pharaoh, of which a copy of the original in the Cairo museum is present, is only partly readable.
It is still uncertain how king Narmer and his successor Aha relate to Menes, the first pharaoh according to later tradition.
The time of the early pharaohs was also when people gradually moved from stone tools to copper tools.
Including for sculptors: at first they still had to get used to those tools, but gradually their tools and skills improved.
From the fifth dynasty, the museum has the sarcophagus of royal minister Minnofer.
The museum has also part of a statue of queen Hatshepsut.
The other part is in the USA. Probably the statue was broken by Hatshepsut’s cousin, successor, and rival Thutmoses III.
Ancient Egypt, Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism: here.
The Cairo museum: here.
Each year in the beginning of November, there is Museum Night in Amsterdam; when museums, usually open only during daytime, have special evening programs.
Last year, I was in the Vincent van Gogh museum, and National museum.
This year, I was in the archaeological Allard Pierson Museum.
There were lectures on various subjects.
Including museum objects which can’t stand sunlight, and counterfeit objects.
The Allard Pierson Museum has about 16,000 objects.
Only some 8,000 of those are on view for the visitors (in many other museums, this proportion is even smaller).
One of the reasons why the Allard Pierson museum does not show all its objects is that some of them would get damaged from long exposure to sunlight.
These include Coptic Christian textile from Egypt.
So, the Allard Pierson Museum’s collection of those textiles is usually hidden from visitors.
The museum also has some counterfeited Coptic textile objects, often made in Egypt today, in its collection, to teach students of archaeology at Amsterdam university the difference between true and false objects.
Roman glass is also often counterfeited today.
Research of radioactivity of objects may help in establishing whether an object is genuine.
The museum also had a “murder mystery tour”.
Visitors had to find out who had committed a certain murder in antiquity, and with which weapon.
Actors impersonating five notorious murderers from antiquity were present in the museum, to be questioned by visitors.
They were: Cleopatra, the last ruler of independent Egypt in antiquity.
Paris, prince of Troy.
Heracles, who had to perform twelve heroic tasks after murdering his family in a fit of insanity.
Due to lack of male actors, an actress played Heracles. Not completely wrong, as Heracles, according to legend, commanded to so when he was the slave of queen Omphale, did women’s tasks like spinning.
Also, princess Medea of argonaut fame,
Finally, Livia, the wife of Augustus, the first emperor of Rome.
It turned out that the murder mystery’s solution was the killing by Cleopatra of her brother and rival to the throne with an Egyptian magical knife, supposed to protect babies from harm.
Like in the antiquities museum in Leiden, such a knife is present in the Allard Pierson Museum.
