The Summer 2005 issue of KMT magazine is now available.   A summary of its contents follows.

• King Tut Returns by Zahi Hawass
  "Tutankhamun & the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" begins its U.S. 4- venue run in Los Angeles.
• Beyond the Tomb by Dennis Forbes
  The historical Tutankhamun from his monuments.
• "Mummies: Death & the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt" by Megan Shockro
  The Bowers Museum presents treasures from the British Museum.
• "Excavating Egypt" by Peter Lacovara
  Great discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College, London.
• Ancient Egypt in "Little Paris" by Lucy Gordan-Rastelli
  Leipzig University's Antiquities Collection.
• Egyptian St. Petersburg by Victor V. Solkin & Vladimir N. Larchenko
  Egyptianizing architecture on the banks of the Nera River.

[KMT], KMT Communications Inc., Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2005, California, USA.

A tourist travel article penned by a couple from India.

We arrived in Egypt and were, at once, absolutely enchanted and completely baffled.   We visited the Cairo museum and were buried under fascinating regalia of the death of a 4,000-year-old civilisation.   We went through halls full of coffins, caskets, tombstones, shrouds, mummified remains and death related jewellery...

[More]   Egypt Election Daily News, Egypt, May 31, 2005.

Apologies for the sporadic posting at the moment.   I am having problems with my internet connection and the posts are stacking-up and being applied in one go when the connection is re-established.

Hopefully normal service will be resumed shortly.

Mark.

I just had to blog this one!   It is reviewed by Aidan Dodson in the latest KMT magazine.

A highly original and educational twist on a much treasured tale.   The full and complete text of Beatrix Potter's world-famous and universally loved Tale of Peter Rabbit faithfully translated and transcribed page for page into the hieroglyphic script of an Egyptian of the Middle Kingdom.   The book is illustrated with all the original colour artwork by the author herself.   Based on the official centenary edition published in 2002, the translation combines the familiar face of the original with the British Museum's world-renowned expertise and scholarship.

Includes brief footnotes from the translators on the difficulties of turning Edwardian English into Ancient Egyptian.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit: Hieroglyph Edition, Beatrix Potter, translated by J.F. Nunn and R.B. Parkinson, British Museum Press, London, 2005, 0-7141-1969-5

Buy it from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, or Amazon.ca.

Robert Twigger goes in search of rock art in the Egyptian desert, and discovers depictions of man's daily life from a time before the Pyramids were built

... The goal of the trip was to visit a cave.   In doing so we would be following in the tracks of Laszlo Almasy, the model for Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient.   Almasy was a homosexual Hungarian, founder of the Magyar boy scout movement, educated at Eastbourne School, a pilot and probable spy, and altogether more exotic than Ralph Fiennes.   He also discovered a rock-art site, the Cave of the Swimmers, which is where Kristin Scott Thomas dies in the film.   In real life, the place has graffiti from the Second World War next to ancient paintings of pot-bellied figures diving...

[More]   The Independent, UK, May 28, 2005.

This New York Times article attempts to set the record straight over recent Oxyrhynchus Papyri decipherment breakthroughs apparently announced in the Independent last month.

... Scholars have become accustomed to the decorous pace of the Oxyrhynchus work, which is published as it goes along, in a new volume every year or two...

... So in the small but passionate world that follows such things, it came as something of a shock when the British newspaper The Independent printed an article in April announcing a major Oxyrhynchus breakthrough...

... As is so often the case with British newspapers, the Independent article turned out to be both true and not true. It was right to say that new technology was indeed making it easier, in some cases, to read the Oxyrhynchus material, and that new discoveries were being made. But it was not right to say that the technology had just been discovered, or that it was functioning as a sort of Rosetta stone, or that so many new revelations were emerging as to herald "a second Renaissance..."

[More]   The New York Times, New York, USA, May 30, 2005.

cf. Imaging Technology Makes Ancient Text Readable, Washington Post, District of Columbia, US, May 30, 2005.

cf. NASA science uncovers texts of Trojan Wars, early gospel, Chicago Tribune, Illinois, US, May 19, 2005.

Via rogueclacissism and PaleoJudaica.

Crowds flocked to Tewkesbury Museum on Saturday for an Ancient Egypt day.   Visitors aged from nine to 90 learned to write in hieroglyphics and unravel the life of the Pharaohs.

They investigated the mysteries of the ancient Egyptians - such as why figures walk sideways, why bodies were mummified and why the pyramids were built.

Egyptologist and archaeologist Chris Kirby, the Barton Street museum's former curator, gave a talk about Tutankhamun...

[More]   Gloucestershire Echo, UK, May 30, 2005.

Far north of Khartoum, where modern steel bridges cross this legendary river, the architecture goes way back in time: thousand-year-old temples, towering pyramids, elaborate cities from civilizations that lived and died and were then buried by the surging sand.

The uncovering of these ancient wonders has proceeded slowly, but steadily over the past century as archaeologists have sifted through the earth for clues of the great Nilotic cultures that once flourished in Sudan...

[More]   International Herald Tribune, France, May 31, 2005, via Archaeologica.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced the discovery of grains warehouses dating back to the Greek and Romanian ages.   In addition, an old house dating back to the Ptolemaic age and the remnants of a house have been unearthed in Fayoum governorate.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said a mission from Bologna University in Italy has discovered during excavation works some grain warehouses including nine boxes for storing wheat and cereals.

They also found some potteries and silos dating back to the Coptic era, added Hawass noting that the building had been renovated during the Coptic age.

[More], Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, May 30, 2005.