A tantalising snippet from Egypt Today magazine.

Approved, by Supreme Council for Antiquities head Zahi Hawass, a joint US-Egyptian expedition to map the bed of the Nile in a first step toward recovering monuments submerged beneath the river's depths.

[Source]   Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume #26, Issue 02, February 2005.

I wonder how many obelisks the Ancient Egyptians lost en-route down the Nile between the upper-Egyptian quarries in Aswan and lower-Egypt?

Livonia firm's X-ray system will help unravel ancient Egypt's mysteries.

Livonia-based distributor of X-ray equipment met with an improbable opportunity recently: the chance to help unravel some of the mysteries of ancient Egypt.

Mikron Digital Imaging Inc. has developed a portable system for digitally X-raying artifacts and some researchers believe the technology will become an indispensable tool at museums and archaeological digs...

[More]   The Dertroit News, Michigan, USA, February 23, 2005.

Somber workers in turbans pulled the mummy of King Tutankhamen out of its tomb in the Valley of the Kings last month and carried it outdoors for the first time in 70 years.   Suddenly, gusts of wind swept dust up through the canyon.   The high-tech machinery put in place to probe Tut's 3,000-year-old remains broke down.

There he goes again yet another event in a long string of weird happenings that have made Tutankhamen the most storied of mummies.   He is the boy king who died young in a tumultuous period of ancient Egyptian history.   By luck, his tomb lay undisturbed for millenniums and stored a collection of marvels: gold masks, jewelry, alabaster vases for his preserved organs, sarcophagi within sarcophagi, graceful statuary of gods and animals alike, and furniture...

[More]   Santa Fe New Mexican, New Mexico, USA, February 23, 2005.

Earth is showered constantly by particles called muons that are created by cosmic rays, and clever scientists are finding ways to use them as probes of dense objects, including a massive pyramid in Mexico and volcanoes in Japan.   American researchers also have proposed using the energetic particles to detect smuggled nuclear materials in vehicles and cargo containers.   Muons are formed when cosmic rays from deep space interact with the atmosphere.   The particles, which strike earth's surface at the rate of about 10,000 per square meter per minute, pass through large amounts of rock or metal with ease, yet their charge makes them easy to track.

...

...In the late 1960s, Alvarez placed muon detectors in a tunnel beneath the Great Pyramid of Chefren in Egypt in search of hidden burial chambers. None were discovered...

[More]   PhysOrg.com, February 21, 2005.

No expense is spared in recreating ancient Egypt in this big-budget drama. Tony Davis reports.

"Often when you see ancient Egyptians on TV, it is recreated in a way that is almost as if Ancient Egyptians were some sort of extraterrestrials who landed in the desert and built pyramids," Ben Goold says.   "In fact, all the great monuments that have survived were part of a living and breathing culture that was very grand and monumental and, as we look back, glamorous, but with real people with passions and emotions and ways of living that we could recognise..."

[More]   Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, February 25, 2005.

Excavators are finding surprisingly late signs of intellectual life in the ancient capital of Hellenistic Egypt and discovering that geology played a dramatic role in the city's fall.

[More]   Andrew Lawler, Science, 307, 2005, pp. 1192 - 1194, requires subscription.

Also Oxford Center Raises Controversy

Scholars are hotly debating a controversial agreement that gives a nonscientist control over underwater archaeological data collection in Alexandria's port for Oxford University.

[More]   Andrew Lawler, Science, 307, 2005, pp. 1192 - 1193.

Museums rely on patronage and patrons, and for Willamette University's Hallie Ford Museum of Art, its essential benefactor is Hallie Ford, a university alumna and lifetime trustee who helped establish the museum with a $1.85 million gift in 1997.

The museum just announced that Ford has given it another hefty sum -- $1 million -- to endow a major art exhibition fund in perpetuity.   The gift raises dramatically the potential for the modest-sized museum at one of the best liberal arts colleges in the West.   It increases its endowment to $4.5 million and allows it to produce a major exhibit each year.

The museum was founded in 1998 and is known for its eclectic programming focusing largely on regional artists.   The strongest part of its permanent collection are more than 250 Indian baskets and roughly 200 artifacts collected by Egyptologist/art historian Mark Sponenburgh and his wife, the late artist Janeth Hogue Sponenburgh.   The museum's director is John Olbrantz.

[Source]   The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, February 25, 2005.

Schwabtis [Shabtis] and lotus blossoms may well be the top two items on Mattacheese Middle School students' Christmas lists this year.

Molded from mud, schwabtis are small replicas of a mummified person that come to life as the person's servants in the afterlife.   Lotus blossoms, composed of pure serotonin, a hormone secreted by the brain, provided ancient Egyptians with an intense boost of happiness and well-being.

Egyptologist Paulette Morin fascinated sixth graders last Friday as she supplemented their year-long social studies unit on ancient lands and cultures, including Egypt, with a program on the practices and beliefs of the ancient people with a special focus on jewelry, clothing, customs, mummies and tombs...

[More]   Yarmouthport Register, Massachusetts, USA, February 24, 2005.

Also Paulette Morin, Tewksbury Advocate, Massachusetts, USA, February 23, 2005.

Experts from Manchester University are trying to unravel the mysteries of an Egyptian mummy.

Using X-rays, DNA testing and an endoscopy, Dr Rosalie David and her team from the Centre for Biomedical Egyptology have looked inside the body of the mummy.

Dr Caroline Wilkinson, from the university's school of art in medicine, will produce a three-dimensional reconstruction of its face...

[More]   The Manchester Evening News, UK, 24th February 2005.

THE Farmer and the Breadwinner have made it back to one of the magic places.   They are in Aswan, in Upper Egypt, where it hasn't rained for 10 years.   And yet there is unlimited water from the Nile and the enormous Lake Nasser they have made there by damming it...

[More]   The Herald, UK, February 21 2005.

Traveling through Egypt: From 450 BC to the Twentieth Century, ed Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel-Hakim, American University in Cairo Press, 2004.

Walk through the second court of the mortuary temple of the Ramasseum on the West Bank of Luxor and behold the compelling fallen colossi of Ramses II.   Know, then, that you are not the first to be moved by the sight of unabashed self- glorification in ruins, which inspired Shelly's famous sonnet, Ozymandias :

"On the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look upon my words ye Mighty and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 731, 24 February - 2 March 2005.

I will tread the valleys and climb the hills, I will brave floods and fire to reach a desolate cliff, battling with day and night, struggling to the death.   But I will never forsake my quest, and neither boredom nor exhaustion will deter me, for I am the hunter of my tribe.   -- Maybe the exact words of the hunting incantation coursing through these valleys were different, but the gist can only have been the same.   The words were inescapably present in my mind when I first laid eyes on the amazing rock art of Wadi Al-Reshrash...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 731, 24 February - 2 March 2005.

A stolen antiquities collection is unearthed at a downtown apartment after 34 years in hiding, reports Nevine El-Aref.

At No. 8 Al-Alfi Street downtown last week, the scene was more bustling than usual.   A large number of police officers, archaeologists and journalists were on hand as a huge cache of artefacts … hidden since 1971 … finally saw the light again.

The collection includes a number of anthropoid sarcophagi, painted mummy masks, Ancient Egyptian ushabti figurines (wooden statuettes), limestone reliefs, necklaces, amulets, and scarabs, as well as a group of Graeco-Roman statues, Islamic vessels, clay chandeliers and coloured textiles.

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 731, 24 February - 2 March 2005.

The usually sedate town of Abu Simbel was abuzz with Ramses fever as the sun's rays penetrated through the temple to illuminate the eternal king's face.   Nevine El-Aref was there.

A crowd of over 4,000 people descended on Abu Simbel, 280km south of Aswan, on Monday and Tuesday to witness a phenomenon that only takes place twice a year, during the equinox.   On February 22 and October 22 every year, the sun's rays travel through the temple of Ramses II to illuminate the eternal king's face.

The visitors stayed awake all night waiting for sunrise, entertained by a musical troupe performing Nubian folkloric songs and dances.   French tourist Françoise Hubert told Al-Ahram Weekly that the performance was "magnificent".   Hubert was there with 200 of her colleagues from an NGO that was on a four-month tour of Mediterranean cities. Egypt was their third stop...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 731, 24 February - 2 March 2005.