Egyptian culture revealed in exhibition at Mint [Museum of Art].

It's one of the oldest clichés in the book, built on years of pot- boiler novels and Grade B movies: Ancient Egyptian culture was obsessed with death.

Not true.

Rather, the Egyptians so loved life on earth they hoped to continue its pleasures into the next, which explains much of the everyday items reproduced in their funerary art.   An opportunity to see this for yourself and get past all that bushwa about the mummy's curse happens today when the Mint Museum of Art opens "Ancient Egyptian Art for the Afterlife." ...

A shining love of life, The Charlotte Observer, North Carolina, USA, July 15, 2005.

By Zahi Hawass.

I have always dug in the sand, and this is where I have made my most important discoveries — such as the Valley of the Golden Mummies at Bahariya Oasis, and the Tombs of the Pyramid Builders at Giza. But recently I have become interested in digging in a new place, a place without sand — the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

There is a maze of corridors lying under the museum.   For decades, no one knew what was hidden down there: boxes of all sorts of treasures discovered by foreign and Egyptian expeditions were brought in and stored over the years, without proper recording of the artefacts.   There were objects of stone and wood, mummies, and even objects made of precious metal.   But no one knew exactly what was there.   It became known among scholars that if anything was sent to the basement it would be lost forever...

Dig days: Unearthing the museum's basement, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 751, 14 - 20 July 2005.

There are few locations in Egypt where evidence of Ancient Egyptian, Semitic and Nabataean culture overlap.   Sinai's varied heritage should be given due consideration, says Jill Kamil.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities has launched an LE10 million project to upgrade the temple of Serabit Al-Khadem and the nearby turquoise mines in Sinai for what is loosely called "safari tourism".   The vagueness of the term is disquieting.   "Safari" suggests excursions, either by camel caravan or four-wheel drive; "tourism" brings to mind paved roads and a visitors' centre; while upgrading a temple leads one to suspect an attempt at reconstruction — a difficult and totally unnecessary exercise.

Few places on earth have played so decisive a role in the history of mighty nations as this triangular peninsula that juts into the northern end of the Red Sea.   Before the construction of the Suez Canal it provided a land-bridge to western Asia.   As such it saw the passage, along the "Way of Horus", of the Pharaohs' armies to and from the Levant, the Assyrian hordes, the Persian army of Cambyses, Alexander the Great with his mercenaries, Antiochus and the Roman legions, the Arab army of 'Amr, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks...

Save central Sinai, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 751, 14 - 20 July 2005.

Egypt has submitted a request to UNESCO asking that five of its most prominent historic treasures — including the Rosetta Stone — be returned.   Nevine El-Aref reports.

The summer heat notwithstanding, temperatures are rising in the international antiquities world following a call by Egypt for the return of five Ancient Egyptian pieces on display abroad.

In a speech at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin held at UNESCO in Paris, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said Egypt had been deprived of five key items of Egypt's cultural heritage.   "They should be handed over to us," Hawass said.

The objects in question are the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum in London, the bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, the statue of Great Pyramid architect Hemiunnu in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Hilesheim, the Denderah Temple Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris, and the bust of Khafre pyramid builder Ankhaf in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston...

Antiquities wish list, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 751, 14 - 20 July 2005.