In 2002, the Egyptian government tried to get the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to surrender a pink granite relief depicting a god; Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, sent a letter seeking the return of the piece, which is on permanent display.

But the claim was sketchy and confusing, says Suzanne Hall, spokeswoman for the Virginia museum.   Hawass' letter described the piece, supposedly looted from a temple at Behbeit el-Hagara, as a depiction of the god Hapi — but it's the museum's belief that the relief ... shows a different god, Khonsu.

Hall says the museum researched the sculpture's provenance ... and found no evidence that there was a problem.   Museum attorneys twice wrote to the Egyptian government asking for more information, and received no answer, she says.

When [Hawass] was in Los Angeles in mid-June for the opening of Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hawass told The Times that the theft apparently had not been reported properly when it occurred and that his staff was gathering information to support the claim against the Virginia museum.

Veteran of ownership disputes, Los Angeles Times, California, USA, August 28, 2005.

King Tut got me busted in the Egyptian Museum in 1989.   My wife and I, recently married, were visiting Cairo.   Romantic vacation — but I was also obsessed with an object I’ll call the Org.

I had first seen the Org in 1978 at the L.A. County Museum of Art, during Tut’s first visit.   Gold-plated and as tall as a woman, it looked like a tree trunk around whose single branch coiled the tail of (maybe) a headless, limbless animal skin, which hung straight down.   Its soft, unadorned lines resembled nothing else from pharaonic Egypt, with reason: The placard suggested that it may have been as remote to Tutankhamun as he was to us — over 6,000 years old.   Archaeologists didn’t know what the hell it was.   I had stood outside of time and stared at it.   Fascinated.

Eleven years later, Cairo’s dim and dusty Egyptian Museum was empty of patrons and filled with marvels, but I could not rest until I re-connected with the Org.   When at last it loomed before my hungry eyes, I worshipped it for only seconds before raising my camera to steal its image.   The flash was set to automatic — pop, whirr...

A Considerable Town: the Curse of Tut, LA Weekly, California, USA, September 02 – 08, 2005.

The Dayton Art Institute presents today The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt. This exhibition ... represents the largest collection of ancient artefacts to ever travel outside Egypt.   It consists of more than one hundred objects that focus on the Egyptian search for the afterlife in a culture that existed 3500 years ago.   The objects — sculpture, jewellery and numerous funerary artefacts — reflect the Egyptian burial rituals, religious beliefs about gods and goddesses, concepts of the afterlife, and the pursuit of immortality.   Much of the exhibition dates to the New Kingdom period (c.1569-1081 BCE) and the life of a particular pharaoh, Thutmose III.   However, objects dating through the Late Period (c.724-333 BCE) are also included...

The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt, Art Daily, Mexico, September 01, 2005.

The main thing to remember about what ancient Egyptians ate and drank is that they had beer.   Lots of it, from all the grain they grew along the fertile Nile Valley.

All right, that's not the main thing   but it certainly is another thing to like about the rich and interesting society whose workings are to be seen this fall in the exhibition of art and tomb relics at the Dayton Art Institute.   The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt opens Thursday and runs through Jan. 3.

While food is not necessarily an over-prominent feature of the artwork in the show, there are enough depictions of life in those days, thousands of years ago, that one might reasonably wonder how the people dined.   In such a hot and dry climate, being able to grow wheat and barley did help with beer, as noted.   Bread was a staple of the ancient Egyptian diet, along with stews and porridges made of grain...

Eat like an Egyptian, Dayton Daily News, Ohio, USA, August 31, 2005.

cf. Ancient Egyptian Alcohol and Beer, Caroline Seawright, Tour Egypt, April 01, 2001.

Has Startgate's bad guy come back to life?   Nope.   It's an asteroid called Apophis!

Asteroid's path could put Earth in its sights, Quad-City Times, Iowa, USA, August 31, 2005.