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Gary has been a photographer for over 20 years, specializing in nature,landscapes and event photography.Besides visiting most of the United States, he has traveled to such places as Egypt,the Canary Islands,much of the Caribbean, and having studied Mayan Cultures in Central America, and the Australian Aboriginal way of life, photography has given him the opportunity to observe life in many different cultures!He is experienced in both still and video and operated his own darkroom for several years before the advent of digital photography.Everything he now does is edited and formatted via computer and Photoshop using the latest technology available.
For more information on his travel and event photos, travel blog, common sense blog, T-shirts, bumper stickers, cards or other paraphernalia, and clocks depicting photos from his travels, just clink on the corresponding link.
Thank You.

Land of the Pharoah

Gary has been a photographer for over 20 years, specializing in nature,landscapes and event photography.Besides visiting most of the United States, he has traveled to such places as Egypt,the Canary Islands,much of the Caribbean, and having studied Mayan Cultures in Central America, and the Australian Aboriginal way of life, photography has given him the opportunity to observe life in many different cultures!He is experienced in both still and video and operated his own darkroom for several years before the advent of digital photography.Everything he now does is edited and formatted via computer and Photoshop using the latest technology available.
For more information on his travel and event photos , travel blog, common sense blog, T-shirts, bumper stickers, cards or other paraphernalia, and clocks depicting photos from his travels, just clink on the corresponding link.
Thank You.

Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study. The study's authors suggest that the stones that make up the examined monuments at Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos must have been carved out of natural stone since they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4,000 years ago, when the buildings were erected. "The observed random emplacement and strictly homogenous distribution of the fossil shells within the whole rock is in harmony with their initial in situ setting in a fluidal sea bottom environment," wrote Ioannis Liritzis and his colleagues from the University of the Aegean and the University of Athens. The researchers analyzed the mineralogy, as well as the chemical makeup and structure, of small material samples chiseled from the Sphinx Temple, the Osirion Shaft, the Valley Temple, Cheops, Khefren, Osirion at Abydos, the Temple of Seti I at Abydos and Qasr el-Sagha at Fayum. X-ray diffraction and radioactivity measurements, which can penetrate solid materials to help illuminate their composition, were carried out on the samples. The analysis determined the primary building materials were "pinky" granites, black and white granites, sandstones and various types of limestones.

The latter was found to contain "numerous shell fossils of nummulites gen." At Cheops alone, "(they constituted) a proportion of up to 40 percent of the whole building stone rock." The findings have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Reprinted from unexplained
mysteries

Cruise Blowout Sale: Expires 2/24/08 (125x125)

King Tut Tomb Fetuses May Reveal Pharaoh's Mother

Andrew Bossone in Cairo
for National Geographic News

August 7, 2008

Two mummified fetuses found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun will undergo DNA testing to determine their relation to the famous pharaoh, Egyptian officials announced today.

The fetuses may also solve a longtime puzzle: the identity of King Tut's mother.

The young Tut, who reigned from 1336 to 1337 B.C., is controversially thought to be the son of Pharaoh Akhenaten

and his wife Kiya. But some archaeologists believe he could be the son of Akhenaten's other wife, the powerful Queen Nefertiti.

"The fetuses will help us determine whether [King Tut's wife and daughter of Nefertiti] Ankhesenamun was a half sister or a full sister," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

"If the fetus DNA matches King Tut's DNA and Ankhesenamun['s DNA], then they shared the same mother."

The testing will also reveal whether the fetuses are offspring of Ankhesenamun and Tut.

Scientists caution, however, that they will probably not establish a direct link between the fetuses and Tut because such genetic matches are extremely difficult to prove.

Additionally, mummies of fetuses found in a tomb are not necessarily the children of the buried pharaoh.

"I personally feel they are not the sons of Tutankhamun," said Hawass, who is also a National Geographic Explorer in Residence. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

"I think they are children put in the tomb to be reborn in the afterlife."

Mystic Evenings

A Journey to the Land of the Pharaohs

Standing Tall on the Plain overlooking Cairo are the the most famous man made monuments of all time, the Giant Pyramid of Giza!

Hotel Habou situated in the Valley of the Dead, across the Nile River from Luxor.

Egypt is famous for its ancient civilization and some of the world's most famous monuments, including the Giza pyramid complex and the Great Sphinx

SAQQARA, Egypt — Egypt unveiled a newly uncovered 4,000-year-old "missing pyramid" and a ceremonial procession road where high priests, their faces obscured by masks, once carried mummified sacred bulls worshipped in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis.

The pyramid was actually a "rediscovery," said Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass.

It is believed to have been built by King Menkauhor, an obscure pharaoh who ruled for only eight years.

In 1842, German archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius mentioned it among his finds at Saqqara, giving it number 29 and calling it the "Headless Pyramid" because its top was missing.

But the desert sands covered Lepsius' discovery, and no archaeologist since was able to find Menkauhor's resting place.

"We have filled the gap of the missing pyramid," Hawass told reporters on a tour of the discoveries at Saqqara, the necropolis and burial site of the rulers of ancient Memphis, the capital of Egypt's Old Kingdom, about 12 miles south of Cairo.

Only the pyramid's base — or the superstructure as archeologists call it — was found after a 25-foot-high mound of sand was removed over the past year and a half by Hawass

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