Scientists are finding ways to protect Egypt's ancient tombs from the ravages of time and tourism. Tim Radford reports.

A plan to control tourism, limit traffic, deflect flash floods, reduce theft and vandalism and even alter farming on the banks of the Nile could soon begin to change the face of the Valley of the Kings.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has asked the archaeologists, architects and engineers of the Theban Mapping Project - launched 25 years ago simply to make a detailed map of the 62 tombs and temples of the pharaohs and nobles buried more than 3000 years ago - to complete a plan for the conservation of the valley by the end of 2005...

[More], The Age, Australia, December 08, 2004, via The Forum of Amun.

The US-Egyptian excavation committee unearthed an archaeological monument in the Western Desert.

The committee asserted that the ancient Egyptians in the Pre-Historic Age lived in Toshka.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said that the excavation committee discovered some paintings which date back to eight thousand years ago.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary of the Supreme Council for Antiquities said that the excavation committee also found some animal skeletons and cereal warehouses which confirm this historical fact.

[More], Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, December 07, 2004.

cf. Ancient Egyptian man lived in Toshka eight thousand years ago, ArabicNews, December 07, 2004.

Feeling guilty about taking his kids out of school for a beach holiday in Cyprus, Tim Moore tacked on a cruise to Egypt, cradle of the Year 4 history project.

After a boarding process delayed by our fellow passengers' cheerful unfamiliarity with air travel we were 45 minutes late out of Heathrow. Five hours later we stumbled off Europe's longest scheduled flight to find ourselves one suitcase short at the Larnaca carousel. That meant another hour, and then another couple in the hire car, watching in bleary silence as the EU's first sunrise gradually illuminated the scrubby, undulating and disconcertingly vast Cypriot landscape...

[More], The Observer, UK, December 05, 2004.

I wonder if the author is the same travel writer who wrote the excellent French Revolutions?

Archaeology.org's Mark Rose reviews Discovery Channel's Rameses: Wrath of God or Man?

Bones from Egypt's Valley of the Kings are a sure-fire attention getter, but a big budget and lots of computer-generated images are not guarantees of a great program as the Discovery Channel's heavily promoted Rameses: Wrath of God or Man shows. Here, what could be an interesting, if less ambitious, documentary about trying to identify the human remains from KV 5 is hijacked by the biblical tale of the plagues and Exodus. The two threads — bones and Exodus — are followed by Kent Weeks (excavator of the tomb designated KV 5) and Charles Sennott (a Boston Globe reporter)...

[More], Archaeology.org, USA, December 02, 2004.