Violence threatens the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. “So far the museum is safe, but we don’t know what’s going to happen, because [the protests] are out of control,” said an unnamed official.  

But Egypt’s newly appointed Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass says that the museum and monuments are secure. “I want people to know that after nine days of protests, the monuments are safe. Why? Because the Egyptian people are protecting them,” he wrote on his blog.  

Czech archaeologists are excavating a temple and the palace of Queen Amanishakheto at the ancient city of Wad Banaga in Sudan. The palace was built in the fifth century B.C.  

Fragments of two chess pieces have been unearthed at Montpelier, James Madison’s eighteenth-century estate in Virginia.  

Does eighth-century Viking DNA survive on the Isle of Man? Researchers from the University of Leicester will collect samples from men whose grandfathers were born on the island and who have one of several common surnames.  

Meet some of the people who are working in the Veterans Curation Project at the Carnegie Library in Washington, D.C.  

China has asked the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to remove two mummies from the Tarim Basin and other artifacts from the country’s western deserts from an exhibit set to open this weekend. The items had already appeared at two other museums in the U.S.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, February 3, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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