Airport authorities detained a British man for questioning Monday after they allegedly found valuable Islamic and Coptic manuscripts in his luggage, officials said.

Douglas Ross was trying to board a flight to Paris when customs officers stopped him for a detailed search after he had passed through metal detectors, a security official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to make statements...

Egypt detains Briton over manuscripts, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, August 22, 2005, via PaleoJudaica.

An Egyptian king rewrote history, obliterating three millennia. Today, thousands of visitors travel to Los Angeles to learn about one of the Egyptian kings history tried to forget: Tutankhamun...

Almost forgotten Egyptian king immortalized by museum exhibit, Arizona Daily Sun, Arizona, USA, August 20, 2005.   Requires subscription.

More on the CT scan of the mummy of “Sherit”.

Frame by frame, layer by layer, the images of a mummified Egyptian child who died two millenia ago spring to life on a 25-foot computer screen, revealing every remarkable detail of the skeletal remains, down to the last vertebrae.

The three-dimensional images, the result of high-resolution scans done at Stanford, reveal a girl of 4 to 5 years old with short, resin-coated black curls, a receding chin and an angular face reminiscent of her famous counterpart, King Tut.

“The scans are spectacular,” marveled Rebecca Fahrig, PhD, associate professor of radiology. “The fact that we were able to get such high-resolution images is pretty cool.   Some of the detail in the teeth is absolutely phenomenal.   You wouldn’t get that with a normal scanner.”

The girl, who has been dubbed, Sherit, ancient Egyptian for “little one,” has been a resident of the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose for the last 75 years—her story a complete mystery until now, said museum curator Lisa Schwappach-Shirriff...

Stanford Images Offer Unprecedented View Inside Mummy, Science Daily, USA, August 29, 2005.

MGH doctor helped analyze ancient Eygptian artifact, is director of hospital's High Resolution Volume CT lab.

To be at the forefront of medical imaging technology, Dr. Rajiv Gupta has made himself a truly interdisciplinary man.   He has integrated his studies of electrical engineering, physics, computer science, and medicine to advance the quality and applications of computer tomography in medicine.

Most recently, the self-taught student of Egyptology was part of a team at MGH that used their experimental imaging machine to take very detailed CT scans of a special patient — Djehutynakht, a 4,000 year old mummy artifact of an Egyptian governor from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts...

Who's this Mummy?, India New England News, Massachusetts, USA, August 01, 2005, via Archeo-News-Blog.

cf. MGH helps ID a mummy, MGH Hotline, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts, USA, June 24, 2005.

The government is to launch within the next few days the development project of the Wadi Hittan (Whales Valley) nature reserve in Rayan Valley in Fayoum governorate.

The project aims at placing this area on the environmental tourist map after it has been registered as the first Egyptian site on UNESCO list of world natural heritage...

Wadi Hittan Nature Reserve developed, placed on tourist map, State Information Service, Egypt, August 20, 2005.

A joint Egyptian-German mission have found wooden artefact, coins and old manuscripts in Minya governorate, 250 kilometers south of Cairo, Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said on Thursday.

The finds date back to the Ptolemaic and Roman ages, said Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, noting that the wooden statues are in bad shape.

Some of the coins, Hosni added, are in good shape, and they date back to the time of Cleopatra, an Egyptian queen noted for her beauty and charisma.

Archaeological finds unearthed in Egypt, State Information Service, Egypt, August 19, 2005.

Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif discussed on Sunday a report on plans to develop Fatimid (Islamic) Cairo.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said that some 76 Islamic sites in Fatimid Cairo have been renovated so far, adding that measures were underway to restore 28 others.

He said Al-Moez street in Fatimid Cairo will be reopened after completion of development work.

In another meeting, the prime minister reviewed a report on plans to develop the Upper Egyptian City of Luxor with the aim of attracting more tourists to the city.

New projects worth L.E. 375 million will be carried out in the city as part of the development plan.

76 ancient sites restored in Fatimid Cairo, State Information Service, Egypt, August 22, 2005.

The writing's on the wall, in a dead cursive script.

Northern Arizona University history professor Gene Cruz-Uribe studies a language no longer written, but the marks of which can still be found in quarries, temples and tombs in Egypt.

"You mostly find prayers or a culture related to prayers," Cruz Uribe said.

He was in Egypt this summer reading the prayers of people who wanted to live forever.   Ancient people wrote their names on the wall, in hopes people would read their names, he said.

It was thought their spirit would live eternally in the afterworld if their names were spoken.

This cursive language is Demotic, a language used later than the hieroglyphics most people associate with ancient Egypt. It was used from 700 B.C. to 200 A.D...

Prof finds insight into Egyptians in dead language, Arizona Daily Sun, ARizona, USA, August 20, 2005, via Archaeologica.   Requires subscription.   Tip: Click the Google It! link above and select the azdailysun.com story from the Google cache to get the full article.

The new issue of KMT landed on my doormat whilst I was away.   There follows a summary of its contents.

• Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh by Dennis Forbes
  An unprecedented presentation of the female king & her times is the inaugural exhibition at San Francisco's new M.H. de Young Museum.
• Maatkare Hatshepsut by Dennis Forbes
  History's first great woman profiled.
• The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt by James P. Allen
  A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of objects from the MMA collection.
• Ancient Egyptian Art for the Afterlife by Peter Lacovara
  Selections from an American private collection exhibited at the Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina.
• The Petrie Museum by Sally MacDonald
  A world-class collection at risk.   Petrie Museum.
• Virtual Pyramids — Real Research by Peter Der Manuelian
  The Giza Archives Project goes live online.

KMT, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2005.

The discovery of the un-looted tomb of Amenhotep I that was announced in Pravda the other day appears to be the result of poor translation and not, as I supposed, Zahi hyping it before a discovery had been made.   Sorry Zahi.

Poor translation lead to the news in the Russian media about the discovery, which had not been made actually.

The Egyptian archaeology provides us with a lot of surprises and unexpected discoveries every year.   However, sometimes a "sensation" turns out to just journalists' mistake.   This is what happened with the supposedly discovered untouched tomb of the king Amenhotep I that was even compared with the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb.   Poor translation and misinterpretation of the words of Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt, lead to the news in the Russian media about the discovery, which had not been made actually...

The lost tomb of 'the father of Egypt'. Discovery that has never been made, Pravda, Russia, August 23, 2005.

cf. Scientists discover non-looted tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh.