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Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass insisted Tuesday that Tutankhamun was not black despite calls by US black activists to recognise the boy king's dark skin colour. "Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilisation as black has no element of truth to it," Hawass told reporters. "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa," he said, quoted by the official MENA news agency. Hawass said he was responding to several demonstrations in Philadelphia after a lecture he gave there on September 6 where he defended his theory. Protestors also...

Zahi Hawass doesn’t like what he’s seeing. Clad in his familiar denim safari suit and wide-brimmed bush hat, the famed archaeologist is standing inside the burial vault of the Step Pyramid of Djoser, a six-tiered, lopsided mound of limestone blocks constructed nearly 5,000 years ago. The huge, gloomy space is filled with scaffolding. A restoration and conservation project, at Saqqara outside Cairo, initiated by Hawass in 2002, has been shoring up the sagging ceiling and walls and staving off collapse. But the February 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak—and also ended Hawass’ controversial reign as the supreme chief of all...

Egypt’s antiquity minister Zahi Hawass will not serve any jail time and will remain in his position, according to the leading Egyptologist’s blog. "The National Council of Egypt’s Administrative Court issued a decree today (April 18, 2011) accepting a proposal to stop the recent court ruling against me in my former role as Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in a case involving the bookstore at the Egyptian Museum,” Hawass wrote. Centering on the bookstore that was looted during the Egyptian revolution in January, the verdict on Sunday seemed to put to an end Hawass’ career. The Egyptian...

World-renowned Egyptian archeologist and former head of the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass has been renamed Egypt's Minister of Antiquities. Hawass resigned earlier in March saying that he was leaving because the Egyptian Army could not protect all the ancient sites during the uprising that led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak after 30 years in power, AFP reported. The veteran archeologist said on March 29, 2011, that he did not ask to come back, but that there was no one else who could do the job. “I cannot live without antiquities, and antiquities cannot live without me,”...

A few days ago, in the shadow of the great Pyramids at Giza, the Egyptian monuments that draw millions of tourists to visit Egypt every year, the opinion among workers on the lower rungs of the economy was unanimous: The big man had to go. No, they weren't talking about Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian dictator chased from power last Friday. On the president, opinions were mixed. But the answer to the question "what would you most like to see changed about the regime" could be boiled down to two words: Zahi Hawass. Mr. Hawass, who has run Egypt's Supreme Council...

In little over two months, famed Egyptologist Dr Zahi Hawass hopes to unearth the discovery of his lifetime: the tomb of one of history's greatest women, Cleopatra. The celebrity archaeologist, who is on a whistle stop lecture tour of South Africa, said that "the discovery would even be bigger than that of King Tut". Hawass told The Star on Wednesday that he suspects Cleopatra is buried with her Roman lover Mark Antony at a temple 30km from Alexandra called Tabusiris Magna. "I believe it is a very sacred place and this is where they would have hidden Cleopatra and Marc...

At a preview of a King Tut display at Chicago's Field Museum last month, Hawass, whose critics call him "the Show-Biz Pharaoh," a "media whore" and "part P.T. Barnum, part Indiana Jones," asked museum officials to remove one of the exhibition's corporate sponsors after learning its chief executive owned a 2,600-year-old Egyptian coffin... In April, he fired off a letter to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, asking him to return a 71-foot-high Egyptian obelisk in Central Park if he didn't start taking care of it. The pillar, which is in poor condition because of neglect, has been in the park...

Beyond Egypt’s political demonstrations and suicide bombings lies a country where history lives outside classrooms. A country that draws inspiration — and money — from its past to fuel its present.And while tourism is good for the economy, too many tourists can destroy the very monuments they flock to see, warns Dr Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s top archaeologist and the person who led the CT scan on King Tutankhamun’s mummy. “Egypt’s monuments can finish in a 100 years if we don’t control the tourists now, and I mean NOW. Think, no more pyramids, no more sphinx, no more temples. All our...

A new robot, currently being designed by a Singaporean university, will hopefully explore the bowels of the Great Pyramid next year, a noted Egyptologist said on Wednesday. "The manufacturing of the robot will start in October, with the university footing the bill. The exploration will likely start next year," Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters. "Stone doors inside the Great Pyramid could not just be there as an ornament. They must have a function and hide something behind them," he said. "They could not just be there for dead King Cheops (Khufu) to slip...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A pair of French Egyptologists who suspect they have found a previously unknown chamber in the Great Pyramid urged Egypt's antiquities chief to reconsider letting them test their theory by drilling new holes in the 4,600-year-old structure. Jean Yves Verd'hurt and fellow Frenchman Gilles Dormion, who has studied pyramid construction for more than 20 years, are expected to raise their views during the ninth International Congress of Egyptologists in Grenoble, France, which starts Monday. They also published a book about their theory this week. Standing in their way is Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme...

Robot made in Singapore to reveal secrets of pyramids August 07, 2004 The Supreme Council of Antiquities SCA Secretary-General Dr. Zahi Hawwas said the secrets of the pyramids will be revealed next year, noting that the council agreed with a Singaporean University to manufacture a robot for revealing what are behind the secret doors inside the pyramid, especially the second and the third ones. He added that work is underway in the radar project that will be used in revealing what is inside the ground between the second Pyramid and the Sphinx. This came during the meeting that was held...

Khufu and the chamber of secrets November 28 2002 at 02:24PM By Owen Coetzer History calls it a tomb. Yet no mummy was ever found in it. It is attributed to the 4th Dynasty pharaoh Khufu, (Cheops in Greek) yet the only reference to his name is upside-down in red paint on some quarry blocks discovered by sheer accident in an almost totally inaccessible pressure-relieving vault high above the so-called King's Chamber. In fact, no inscriptions of any kind appear anywhere in the Great Pyramid. And absolute proof is still needed - after some 4 500 years - to attribute its...

The Great Pyramid of Khufu has always fascinated people because it is the only ancient wonder of the world that exists today. It is also possible people are fascinated because Khufu’s pyramid, especially the interior, is very complex. The modern entrance to the pyramid was created in the Ninth Century A.D. by el-Mamoun son of Haroun el-Rhasied. The true entrance is above this one. This passage goes down through the pyramid, and then connects to another corridor that ascends to the King’s and Queen’s Chambers. The original passage continues downwards into an unfinished chamber directly under the pyramid. Discussion about...