Mark Lehner has probably done more than anybody to advance our understanding of the ordinary Egyptians who built the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza. That he has never been a conventional Egyptologist may be the reason why.

When I caught up with him recently, he was moving out of his office at Harvard's Semitic Museum and into rented offices near the Massachusetts Turnpike. "No one gives up an office in a university," he said as he hauled his own photocopier into his new digs. Ten years ago, he gave up a tenure-track position at the University of Chicago to excavate at Giza, near Cairo, with private funds. "People thought I was crazy to leave Chicago," says Lehner, 55. But he wanted to work at the dig full time, not just between semesters. When Harvard offered him space at its museum with no teaching responsibilities, he gratefully accepted. Now his project has outgrown even Harvard's largesse, requiring new quarters. "If our funding dries up and we run out of money, we can always sublet them," he says...

35 Who Made a Difference: Mark Lehner, Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institute, District of Columbia, USA, November 2005, via Archaeology Briefs.

An ancient Egyptian mathematical scroll believed to be more than 3,500 years old will go on display in Wales on Thursday [24th November 2005]. The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus has been lent to the University of Swansea from the British Museum for a year.

Its unveiling will coincide with the first public demonstration of a draft virtual reality game inspired by the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and developed by Swansea's School of Engineering.

The Rhind Papyrus [BM10058] comes from a site at ancient Thebes, modern Luxor. It is believed to have been found in the tomb of a Theban official who lived around 1530 BC. It was acquired by AH Rhind in the 1850s and bought by the British Museum in 1865.

Egyptian maths scroll on display, icWales, UK, November 22, 2005.

by Zahi Hawass

Tomb 55 is a ten foot shaft tomb in which we found four burial chambers, one on each side of the shaft. The entrance to the northern and western chambers had been carved, with pylons and cornices on each entrance, and the western chamber was blocked by a piece of sandstone.

Inside the western chamber we discovered four mummies in poor condition, pottery vessels and a terra-cotta statue of Bes, the god of pleasure.

The northern chamber contained three skeletons, pottery vessels, a copper anklet and a faience-beaded necklace with a wadjet-eye amulet (eye of the falcon god Horus) in the centre.

The southern and eastern chambers had not been finished or used, but we found a well-preserved mummy at the bottom of the shaft.

At the end of our season, Mr. X travelled to Cairo for examination and x-rays which would ascertain causes of death, types of diseases, deformities, and dental practices during different periods of ancient Egyptian history.

We prepared a wooden box for transit and packed the mummy well. It was a very emotional moment. Many questions were in my mind: Did he or she ever visit the pyramids? Is he or she unhappy about leaving home for a strange new place?

On the day of our departure, Mansour asked me "Doctor! What will we name it? Does it already have a name?" No, I realised, it didn't. There are no inscriptions in Graeco-Roman tombs and it needed a name before the journey. So, I decided to call it Mr or Mrs X."

Normally, the trip from Bahariya to Cairo takes three hours but our trip took eight. Our driver carefully avoided potholes and other hazards as he carried the precious cargo.

Dr Azza Sarry e-Din, a physical anthropologist for the National Research Centre examined the mummy. The mummy was a male, who died at age 35-40 years old. He has two molars removed proving that dentistry was still actively practised during the Graeco-Roman Period. After the examination of Mr. X, I got an x-ray machine for the Bahariya site in order to carry out further studies there.

The hammer didn't fall, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, November 21, 2005.

The Attorney General has contacted authorities in Germany to put a stop to the auctioning of 86 Egyptian antiquities.

It was thought that they were going to be purchased by an American dealer for export to the USA.

It was the Egyptian Ambassador in Berlin who warned colleagues back home in Egypt and a team from the Supreme Council of Antiquities flew to Germany to recover the precious artefacts.

The antiquities had been smuggled out of the country by brothers Farouk and Mohammed el-Shaer, Abdel-Karim Abu Shanab and others, who were recently sentenced to up to 15 years with hard labour by Cairo Criminal Court for smuggling offences.

Since starting its major campaign, the SCA has managed to retrieve over 31,000 antiquities that have been smuggled out of the country since the 19th century.

The hammer didn't fall, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, November 22, 2005.