Luxor Archaeology Documentary.
Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 6:02 pm
There are a lot of them around and those like the BBC and National Geographic that once did them well have descended into cheap ‘glamorous’ ones with pretty boys and girls as presenters who can’t even pronounce the names of locations whilst they adjust their designer jeans.
The decline of the National Geographic into ratings chasing is very sad.
This doco is European (French 2017) so Brexiteers should go no further, get the gun out and shot the TV screen. "Egypt's Sun King the Mystery Tombs" – in English. Slightly unusual because it stays well away from the crowd pleasing obvious. Unusually it tries to link several sites in Luxor into a single story. (Other than Tut 95% of Egyptology docos have very little to do with Luxor - wonder why)
It’s the University of Basel, detailed, technical, not boring but complicated and tries to link a minor tomb, KV 40, in the VOK to Amenhotep 3 and his much bigger projects. Their team has been in Luxor since at least 2010 and they present as organized, low-key, intelligent and practical. They are not TV babes nor would they want to be. There are some unexpected results in their work.
Significant practical observations for those who are interested in how things are done/not done:
1. Overwhelmingly the successful project leaders/dig leaders are women and should have been expelled by Hawass At the least these careful, reasoned, intelligent women should have be forced to do a course in Egyptian/western media whoredom – Egypt style, with special training in fiasco and farce.
2. No Egyptian doing anything significant except menial work.
3. Basic equipment like very simple X-Rays had to be brought in from Europe even though Hawass had ‘taken’ all the western money and ‘set up’ a big science lab. Where is it?
4. Europeans use gloves at all times whereas Egyptians never – even when handling 3500 year old sarcophagi. Amazing.
5. Big lumps of Amenhotep 3’s west bank temple was recycled after its earthquake collapse into the fabric of Karnak.
6. Western dig teams have an interdisciplinary skill base – including evolutionary medicine and anthropology. Egyptian teams have none of this and therefore miss most.
7. These western teams have no Egyptians in responsible positions. Whether that is racism or good judgment I don’t know.
8. Storage facilities (presumably at Luxor) are badly designed and not climate/moisture controlled. In no case was there a raised table/inspection table so every examination was with archaeologists crouching down on all fours. I assume the Supreme Antiques built these storage facilities because they are badly designed, not very functional and with the poor workmanship the Antiques are famous for. There seemed no obvious scientific lab type aspect to these facilities, not reduced lighting (very surprising) or spotlighting for careful examination which is exactly as one person would want it - leave it to the discriminating eye of a genius and the PR conference.
9. Major work on Amenhotep’s west bank temple/Colossi a few years ago used basic technology and scores of local staff to pull big objects around. No similar archaeology work in Italy, Greece or even India would be so backward and primitive. Its pathetic. Complicated tasks were not performed by Egyptians, locals seemed to have few skills on big movement/objects tasks and again some basic technology had to be brought from Europe. The local skill base for work below that of a full archaeologist but above that of a digger seemed to be zero maybe because middle class Egyptians have a deep distaste for high level technical/practical work as beneath their elevated, but fragile, social status.
Egypt is unique. There is no country on earth that so lacks the initiative or skills to do any significant work on its heritage/history. Even dirt poor Colombia tries harder. The achievement of 70 years of the Supreme Antiques is to go back to where they started 200 years ago – sit back and let others do it. They achieved nothing except graft and bribes and always saw their history as a travel pull card rather than doing their job. The lack of local skills, proper university courses of standing, and journals of standing and relevant science is staggering. They don't even have an inventory of what is in the Tahir museum after 10 years of saying they were doing it (with volunteers - a fiasco) - and millions of western money. If you don't even know what you've got how can you work out what to do with it?
It is also more than likely that they have no single document/data base on all the sites and holdings of objects in the storage facilities - nor have even tried to do this.
I think its true there is no central record/data base of the holdings in the 18 or so regional museums and the same is probably true of the dozens of other museums/art galleries.
A reference to the doco is at: https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/Ne ... alley.html but can’t find any video/YouTube link – that is very odd. Others might have success. Reviews of it are scant but its not impossible that as a new doco its neither posted nor reviewed. The Basels also found the world’s oldest sun-dial – but Hawass said he found it – 30 years ago, and that all Basels lie.
Like a lot of media things in life - without a promoter/muscled presenter/big breasts it gets lost.
Links:
https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/Ne ... ldren.html
https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2014/ ... -children/
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/basel-team- ... s/38477170
The doco is interesting because it tries to avoid the three ring circus/McDonalds type objects and focuses on how the small and interesting is linked to the large. A bit like Rohmer 4 decades ago. It avoids dramatic music, panning, tight jolty edits and ariel shots - thank god.
The decline of the National Geographic into ratings chasing is very sad.
This doco is European (French 2017) so Brexiteers should go no further, get the gun out and shot the TV screen. "Egypt's Sun King the Mystery Tombs" – in English. Slightly unusual because it stays well away from the crowd pleasing obvious. Unusually it tries to link several sites in Luxor into a single story. (Other than Tut 95% of Egyptology docos have very little to do with Luxor - wonder why)
It’s the University of Basel, detailed, technical, not boring but complicated and tries to link a minor tomb, KV 40, in the VOK to Amenhotep 3 and his much bigger projects. Their team has been in Luxor since at least 2010 and they present as organized, low-key, intelligent and practical. They are not TV babes nor would they want to be. There are some unexpected results in their work.
Significant practical observations for those who are interested in how things are done/not done:
1. Overwhelmingly the successful project leaders/dig leaders are women and should have been expelled by Hawass At the least these careful, reasoned, intelligent women should have be forced to do a course in Egyptian/western media whoredom – Egypt style, with special training in fiasco and farce.
2. No Egyptian doing anything significant except menial work.
3. Basic equipment like very simple X-Rays had to be brought in from Europe even though Hawass had ‘taken’ all the western money and ‘set up’ a big science lab. Where is it?
4. Europeans use gloves at all times whereas Egyptians never – even when handling 3500 year old sarcophagi. Amazing.
5. Big lumps of Amenhotep 3’s west bank temple was recycled after its earthquake collapse into the fabric of Karnak.
6. Western dig teams have an interdisciplinary skill base – including evolutionary medicine and anthropology. Egyptian teams have none of this and therefore miss most.
7. These western teams have no Egyptians in responsible positions. Whether that is racism or good judgment I don’t know.
8. Storage facilities (presumably at Luxor) are badly designed and not climate/moisture controlled. In no case was there a raised table/inspection table so every examination was with archaeologists crouching down on all fours. I assume the Supreme Antiques built these storage facilities because they are badly designed, not very functional and with the poor workmanship the Antiques are famous for. There seemed no obvious scientific lab type aspect to these facilities, not reduced lighting (very surprising) or spotlighting for careful examination which is exactly as one person would want it - leave it to the discriminating eye of a genius and the PR conference.
9. Major work on Amenhotep’s west bank temple/Colossi a few years ago used basic technology and scores of local staff to pull big objects around. No similar archaeology work in Italy, Greece or even India would be so backward and primitive. Its pathetic. Complicated tasks were not performed by Egyptians, locals seemed to have few skills on big movement/objects tasks and again some basic technology had to be brought from Europe. The local skill base for work below that of a full archaeologist but above that of a digger seemed to be zero maybe because middle class Egyptians have a deep distaste for high level technical/practical work as beneath their elevated, but fragile, social status.
Egypt is unique. There is no country on earth that so lacks the initiative or skills to do any significant work on its heritage/history. Even dirt poor Colombia tries harder. The achievement of 70 years of the Supreme Antiques is to go back to where they started 200 years ago – sit back and let others do it. They achieved nothing except graft and bribes and always saw their history as a travel pull card rather than doing their job. The lack of local skills, proper university courses of standing, and journals of standing and relevant science is staggering. They don't even have an inventory of what is in the Tahir museum after 10 years of saying they were doing it (with volunteers - a fiasco) - and millions of western money. If you don't even know what you've got how can you work out what to do with it?
It is also more than likely that they have no single document/data base on all the sites and holdings of objects in the storage facilities - nor have even tried to do this.
I think its true there is no central record/data base of the holdings in the 18 or so regional museums and the same is probably true of the dozens of other museums/art galleries.
A reference to the doco is at: https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/Ne ... alley.html but can’t find any video/YouTube link – that is very odd. Others might have success. Reviews of it are scant but its not impossible that as a new doco its neither posted nor reviewed. The Basels also found the world’s oldest sun-dial – but Hawass said he found it – 30 years ago, and that all Basels lie.
Like a lot of media things in life - without a promoter/muscled presenter/big breasts it gets lost.
Links:
https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/Ne ... ldren.html
https://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2014/ ... -children/
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/basel-team- ... s/38477170
The doco is interesting because it tries to avoid the three ring circus/McDonalds type objects and focuses on how the small and interesting is linked to the large. A bit like Rohmer 4 decades ago. It avoids dramatic music, panning, tight jolty edits and ariel shots - thank god.
) just get in the way of what could be a good story in the right hands.
). It was wonderful. Early in, I remembered a couple of years ago I had heard Prof. Bickel speak of the tombs at an Egyptology conference at Macquarie Uni, Sydney. An excellent day.
for you.