A travel article from the pages of the Australian.

Aswan is Egypt's largest southern settlement, an oasis north of the Sudanese border.  The town is alive with the memory of French and British colonialism, and the ghosts of Napoleon, Kitchener, Winston Churchill and various princesses of Wales.  Elephantine Island — a resort island dotted with hotels, the Aswan museum and villages — is an archeology-lover's paradise that transports the visitor to ancient Egypt.

A vibrant Nubian community of African Egyptians enlivens Aswan with its linguistic and cultural heritage.  And the town's location, near the shores of man-made Lake Nasser and the Aswan Dam, makes it the beginning or end point of many an Egyptian odyssey through Luxor or Cairo...

Aswan curtain call, The Australian, Australia, August 20, 2005.

[T]he [Gulf Coast Exploreum] museum[, Mobile, Alabama,] will get a replica of the Rosetta stone from the British Museum in London to go along with "Mummy: the inside story," says Lipscomb.   A few factoids: The replica, created in 1999, is made of resin and papier-maché and is the size of the original, discovered in 1799.   The piece was made from a cast of the original.

Newsy notes and arty bits lighten 'dog day' mood: "Mummy" note, Mobile Register, Alabama, USA, August 21, 2005.

I've added the link to the bottom of the post now!

A priceless set of ancient jewellery, probably from Egypt, is the latest archaeological jackpot experts have struck on this southern Italian island.

Excavations at the 16th-century BC settlement of Mursia, on the north-western part of the isle, have uncovered a beautiful oriental style ring, necklace and pair of ear-rings.

The discovery comes on the back of a string of spectacular recent finds made here which date back to ancient Roman times...

Ancient Egypt gems on Italian isle, ANSA.it, Italy, August 25, 2005, via Mirabilis.ca.

Until now the image of Egyptian queen was associated mainly with such beauty ideals of the 20th century as Vivien Leigh, Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor.   However, scientists knew long time ago that the queen did not looked impressive.   Either the taste of Roman emperors was different from ours or the beauty was not the main merit of the queen.   Still, sculptures of that period provide us with the image of petite big-nosed lady with bandy legs and a need for dentist's service.   Nevertheless, even researchers who were well informed of Cleopatra's imperfection could not imagine how ugly the first lady of Egypt had been...

Hollywood brightens up Cleopatra's looks to conceal her true ugliness, Pravda, Russia, August 25, 2005.

One week after [UK] A-level pupils were told they faced a "desperate scramble" for a dwindling number of university places, Ucas, the central admissions service, admitted yesterday that more than 20,000 places were still unfilled at 200 institutions.

Most striking, however, was the number of academically respectable universities that have still not filled courses in traditional and previously popular subjects such as American studies, ancient history, archaeology, classics, criminology, education, English, French, German and philosophy.

20,000 places left unfilled at universities, The Telegraph, UK, August 25, 2005.

Michaywé resident Judy King recently returned from England where she gave a presentation on her Isis Thesis at the third annual conference on New Directions in the Humanities at the University of Cambridge.   King was one of more than 200 presenters from all over the world.

Each room at the conference only allowed for a small group of about 30 people.

"I was happy with the turnout," said King, who added her presentation was filled.

"Everyone was wide-eyed and sort of confused because they were setting up new neural pathways," said King.   "They were piecing everything together, and they got the whole picture."

King's "whole picture" uses biosemiotics — biology interpreted as sign systems — to read and decode 870 Ancient Egyptian signs in eight funerary texts by assigning each Egyptian symbol with a biological twin.

After three years of research, King came to the conclusion that Egyptian gods and goddesses "point to different proteins and processes describing a specific chemical pathway."

King succinctly summarizes her complex theory with a handful of words: "What happens above, happens below."

King wrote both "The Isis Thesis" and a companion text which is a fictional text based on her thesis findings called "The Road from Orion" from her findings.

Word of her work is sparking some interest with the Discovery News, the Discovery Channel's on-line news source.

Back from Cambridge: Author returns from conference, Gaylord Herald Times, Michigan, USA, August 24, 2005.

cf. Previous post — Author links bacteria and Egyptian symbols.