The supreme council for Antiquities (SCA) announced that the Polish mission excavation in the Qurna has made one of the biggest Coptic finds in Egyptian history.   While working in one of the tombs in Luxor's Barr Gharbi (west bank), the Polish group discovered three papyrus books including important Coptic writings, dating back to the sixth century AD.   Although the tomb where the books were found dates to a much earlier era, Dr. Zahi Hawass, director of the SCA, explained that the early Copts, who suffered from persecution, had probably hidden the important books in an ancient tomb for fear of discovery.   Hawass further added that the finds are equal in importance to the Naga Hammadi manuscripts, which were discovered inside some clay urns.   This find is likely to shed light on the practices of the early Egyptian Copts and includes a book with a decorated wooden cover (22.5cm by 17cm) and another book comprising 50 pages and bound in a leather cover.   The third book has both wooden and leather covers, but is in very bad condition.   Theologists cannot wait for the restoration processes to begin, so as to start deciphering the information to be found inside the books.

[Source]   Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume #26, Issue 03, March 2005.

Customs die hard, nowhere more than in Egypt.   Archaeological documents show that from as early as the Old Kingdom up to modern times, an endemic and persistent distrust in medicine and justice, as practiced in the land, often led the Egyptians to address their requests for health and legal redress directly to their dead relatives and the gods.   Later, when monotheistic religions prevailed, they were addressed to saints whose extraordinary powers had become firmly rooted in popular belief.

In a paper presented to the Eighth Congress of Egyptologists, Cairo, 2000, ("Letters to the Dead in Ancient and Modern Egypt"), historian Hisham El-Leithy cites 15 letters from the Old Kingdom [c.2613-2181 BC] written in hieratic (a script based on hieroglyphics but simplified and using abbreviations), sent to dead relatives as well as other letters, written in demotic (the everyday script used from the middle of the 8th century BC until the 4th century BC) to certain gods.   He noted that letters from the Middle Kingdom [c. 2050-1786 BC] were no longer addressed to the deceased but to deified humans such as the god Prince Hekayeb.   It's a practice that continued until the late New Kingdom [c. 1567-1320 BC] when letters were found addressed to Amenhotep son of Hapu (c.1546-1526 BC), an Old Kingdom physician and architect remembered for his miraculous cures.   El-Leithy mentions a letter in hieroglyphics addressed to Amenhotep by a princess who called him a great physician and complained about trouble with her eyes...

[More]   Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume #26, Issue 03, March 2005.

Museum to exhibit golden pieces discovered in 1989.

A collection of Roman-era gold treasures has spent centuries hidden from view, either concealed by thieves in a clay jar, buried under the desert or languishing in a dusty corner of Cairo's rambling Egyptian Museum.

Yesterday, the set of magnificent gold necklaces, crowns and coins dating to the second century were put under the spotlight when Cairo's 102-year-old museum began a program to give prominence to many of its neglected exhibits in new monthly displays.   The pieces being exhibited were discovered in 1989 by a French archaeology team digging in Cairo's vast Western Desert...

[More]   AP via Winston-Salem Journal, USA, March 16, 2005.