According to research announced at the British Museum last week, King Tutankhamun drank red wine. As one just returned from her first, hugely enjoyable, trip to Egypt, I feel a twinge of sympathy for the poor boy. Egypt's wine production, now released from state control, is apparently much improved, but not improved enough for this confirmed lover of fermented grape juice.

After trial sips of reputedly the best domestically grown red and Obelisk, its counterpart made from grape concentrate imported from Italy, I resigned myself to my first week without wine in decades and substituted abstinence (a word I find shamefully that I have never tried to spell before) and beer — mainly beer, it has to be said. My family seemed strangely amused by my newfound enthusiasm for Sakkara Gold.

They should not have been. I had my beer epiphany a few weeks ago. I had previously found a few sips of beer perfectly nice on a very hot day but more than that quantity of most beers had proved too gassy, too bland or too bitter to enjoy. I had met Michael Jackson, the self-styled Beer Hunter and prolific author on brewing matters and matters brewed, on several occasions to swap tales of publishers and television producers but he had never tried to convert me from grape to grain...

Make mine a beer, Financial Times, UK, November 05, 2005.

In my best Homer voice – "Ahhhh Beer!". I didn't post many of the 'Tut liked red wine' stories, so here is a taster.

cf. King Tut was a red wine kind of guy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania, USA, November 01, 2005.

cf. Year 5 - King Tut's favourite tipple for the good afterlife, New Zealand Herald, New Zealand, October 28, 2005.

cf. Tutankhamen drank red wine: proof, decanter.com, October 27, 2005.

cf. King Tutankhamen preferred red to white, researcher says, AP via Boston Globe, Massachusetts, USA, October 27, 2005.

cf. Was a glass of Egyptian red King Tut's real poison?, The Times, UK, October 27, 2005.

A £384,000 improvement scheme for Swaffham Museum has run into a further delay because of structural problems at the town hall.

The scheme, which should transform the museum's displays, including that on famous Egyptologist Howard Carter, was originally intended to have been completed by now.

But then the official opening for the revamped museum was put back until Easter next year — and now it seems unlikely to be open before next summer at the earliest...

Problems hit work at town museum, King's Lynn Today, UK, November 07, 2005.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had just ushered a group of students from Santa Ana High School into the King Tut exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in celebration of the exhibit's extension for an extra week in Los Angeles.

The nearly 15-minute lecture provided by the mayor and a docent, however, was not appreciated by some of those held up by security officers.

An exuberant Villaraigosa told the waiting group: "We've got terrific news. King Tut is going to stay here an extra week."

To which one frustrated patron remarked: "I just want to see him today..."

Not everybody appreciated mayor's King Tut lecture, Los Angeles Daily News, California, USA, November 07, 2005.

cf. Mayor Villaraigosa to Visit "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" Exhibition to Discuss Its Economic Impact on Los Angeles, Business Wire, USA, November 01, 2005.

Archaeologists have begun to piece together the story of a mysterious massacre more than 4,000 years ago in the former royal city of Mendes, which flourished for 20 centuries on a low mound overlooking the green fields and papyrus marshes of the Nile delta north of Cairo.

Donald Redford of Pennsylvania State University had begun to excavate the foundations of a huge temple linked to Rameses II, the pharaoh traditionally linked to the biblical story of Moses, when he found an earlier structure destroyed by fire, and evidence of a grisly episode of death on the Nile, he told a Bloomsbury Academy conference in London on Saturday.

"We were under the misapprehension that it was a new temple on a new site," he said. "But in fact I sunk a trench below the existing temple and was really surprised beyond belief by what I found. There was a late Old Kingdom structure of some sort, a great mud brick platform 40 metres wide, on which a temple had once stood."

Under the fire-scorched rubble, the scientists discovered the first of at least 36 bodies, victims of some brutal event 40 centuries ago...

Mysterious case of death on the Nile, 4,000 years ago, The Guardian, UK, November 07, 2005. Thanks to Iain for alerting me to this one.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will extend the King Tut exhibit by five days to accommodate near-record crowds, an exhibit promoter said.

The exhibit will be open through Nov. 20, John Norman, president of Arts and Exhibitions International, a co-producer of the tour, said Wednesday. Longer visiting hours also may be announced.

Norman said the five-month LACMA exhibit — the first stop on a four-city tour — ultimately will be seen by about 900,000 people.

About 810,000 Tut tickets had been sold as of Oct. 25, said Michael McDowell, senior director of cultural tourism for LA Inc....

Near-record crowds prompt LA museum to extend King Tut exhibit, Contra Costa Times, California, USA, November 03, 2005.

Many ancient cultures practiced mummification. "Mummy" describes any body preserved by the environment or embalming procedures.

Mummies have been found in the Middle East, Andes mountains of South America, Peruvian desert, western China and parts of Scandinavia.

The most widely-known mummies are Egyptian, they are the focus of much folklore and superstition.

Egyptians practiced mummification as early as 3400 B.C. Ancient Egyptians believed in a spiritual rebirth after death...

Many ancient cultures practiced mummification, Guymon Daily Herald, Oklahoma, USA, October 25, 2005.