The television series Egypt, and its accompanying book by Liverpool academic Joyce Tyldesley, show the colourful characters who rediscovered the ancient world.

It is hard to believe the world of ancient Egypt lay mostly hidden and almost forgotten for 2,000 years after the last Pharaoh ruled.

"Nobody went south of Cairo as it was regarded as highly dangerous to do so," says Dr Joyce Tyldesley, of Liverpool University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology.

"Then Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 opened western eyes and sparked a huge interest in the country's ancient civilisations...

Finding a lost civilisation, Liverpool Daily Post, UK, November 30, 2005.

... The Egyptian exhibit was far more modest in scale, being contained in one relatively small gallery. However, to me, it was probably more interesting because of the centrepiece of the exhibit, the Edwin Smith Papyrus. This papyrus was named after the American Egyptologist who purchased it in Luxor in 1862 and brought it back to the U.S. The papyrus dates to approximately 1600 B.C. and appears to be a copy of a document that dates back 200-300 years earlier still. What fascinated me is that this papyrus was a practical guide to the treatment of various ailments and embodied the medical thinking of Egyptian physicians of the time...

The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt: An Account by Orac, Medgadget.com, November 11, 2005.

A review of the Theban Mapping Project website from the blather.net blog.

Tomb by tomb, pharaoh by pharaoh the Theban mapping project is an online guide to the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens and a little known tomb called KV5...

Initially conceived and built by Egyptologist Kent Weeks, the Theban Mapping project website is a fast-growing portal of information on New Kingdom Egyptology — that's the period including the [Ramesside] kings and the ever popular Tutankhamun...

Wonderful Web: the Theban mapping project, blather.net, November 22, 2005.

One is a wrapped female — she has no name. The other is a man. A priest from the Temple of Mut at [Karnak]. His name is Ankhefenmut. They are two real life mummies — around 3000 years old.

Exhibit Curator Dr. Peter Lacovara says, "It's not just great sculpture and beautiful art, but really objects that touch every aspect of Egyptian civilization from its very beginning to the dawn of Christianity."

The exhibit is called Excavating Egypt and sponsored by General Electric. It's currently on a North American tour — on loan from the Petrie Museum in London. It's considered the primary teaching collection for Egyptology in the world.

"There are a lot of material in this show and in the Petrie Museum that are not represented in any other museum collections outside of Egypt so it's really a very important collection..."

Mummies Invade, WXXA-TV, New York, USA, November 09, 2005.

Throughout November, the Public Space at BBC Birmingham, in partnership with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Institute of Egyptology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham, is trialling a new exhibition experience incorporating genuine artefacts and treasures dating back to ancient Egypt, 3500 years ago.

The exhibition is based on and includes actual sets from the epic new BBC ONE series, Egypt.

The exhibition transports visitors on a magical mystery tour of exploration, as they take on the role of a correspondent from the fictional 'Gazette' newspaper, and are tasked with reporting on the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb, the mysterious curse, and the fate of those involved...

'Tomb' It May Concern... Egypt Interactive Exhibition At BBC Birmingham, Creative Match, UK, November 15, 2005.

Stephen Thompson likes a good challenge. That's one reason he enjoys studying ancient Egyptian languages.

It's a little like a puzzle, he said. "But you don't know what the puzzle is supposed to look like."

Now the Coral Springs resident has a new challenge. Instead of interpreting ancient hieroglyphics, he started as interim principal last month at Donna Klein Jewish Academy's high school in Boca Raton. After serving two years as dean of students, he takes the place of Steve Bogad, who was the school's principal for two years...

Academy head has passion for ancient Egyptian languages, Palm Beach Post, Florida, USA, November 23, 2005.

Christie’s New York will regale lovers of the Ancient World with an Antiquities extravaganza comprising three superb sales, spread out over two consecutive sale days. On December 8, the seventh edition of the highly successful Ancient Jewellery sale will take place, offering ancient luxury with a modern look. On December 9, the traditional Antiquities sale will be preceded by Ancient Egyptian Art from the Harer Family Trust Collection, a splendid private collection of Egyptian art.

Ancient Jewellery — Status, luxury, beauty, emotion — each piece of jewellery has its story attached. Versatile as they are, these pieces continuously reinvent themselves and what was a nobleman’s golden device to close his cloak will in a next life become some superbly elegant lady’s evening brooch. Browsing through the catalogue of the Ancient Jewellery sale reveals a world of amazing elegance and exquisite craftsmanship, while each of the pieces have their own reflection in the mirror of history. Highlights of the sale include a suite of Achaemenid gold jewellery, circa early 5th century B.C. (lot 41, estimate: $80,000-120,000); a Greek gold and garnet snake armband, Hellenistic Period, circa late 4th – 3rd century B.C. (lot 52, estimate: $25,000-35,000) and a Greek blue chalcedony scaraboid, Classical Period, circa 4th century B.C. (lot 47, estimate: $20,000-30,000) in the category of more expensive pieces. Easy holiday gifts include a pair of Roman gold and pearl earrings, circa 2nd century A.D. (lot 93, estimate: $1,000-1,500); a Roman gold and eye agate finger ring, circa first century A.D. (lot 77, estimate: $1,200-1,800) and a fascinating group of Egyptian scarabs and amulets, Middle Kingdom to Roman Period, 2040 B.C. – 100 A.D. (lot 30, estimate: $2,500-3,500)...

Ancient Jewellery, Ancient Egyptian Art at Christie's, Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency, Iran, November 29, 2005.

cf. Ancient Jewelry, Ancient Egyptian Art at Christie's, Art Daily, Mexico, November 29, 2005.

A mystery surrounding the death of one of the Hancock Museum's ancient residents is under investigation following a visit from world renowned Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher.

The mummy of Irt Irw, which dates back to 664-525BC, was found in a tomb near Thebes, Egypt.

Estimated to be aged between 30 and 40 years old she was first unwrapped during an autopsy in 1830 by three local doctors who removed 22.5 kg of bandages from her...

Mystery Mummy, N-e-life.com, UK, November 24, 2005.

In the cloisters of University College London in Bloomsbury is an unforgettable sight: the glass-fronted cabinet containing the Auto-Icon — philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham's bodily remains from 1832.

The Auto-Icon consists of a waxen head atop Bentham's skeleton clothed in one of his suits and arranged in the manner stipulated in his will — posed as he sat when thinking. One of his ideas was a prison surveillance system, the Panopticon — an octagonal tower with one-way vision so the warder could see into a surrounding octagon of cells but not be seen.

This was one inspiration behind Sarah Beddington's transformation of a security guard's kiosk in the cloisters into an art installation, the Panoptiscope.

It was commissioned to mark the move in 2008 of UCL's Petrie Museum from its current location in a former stables into a custom-built gallery in the college.

Beddington inspired by Bentham, Hampstead & Highgate Express, UK, November 18m, 2005.

The new King Tut exhibit coming to Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art next month revisits an old discussion that has burned for decades: What did ancient Egyptians look like?

The exhibit, which runs Dec. 15 to April 23, features computer-generated re-creations of Tut that some activists say portray the young king with white features.

The opening of the exhibit in Los Angeles sparked protests in June. Though the event hasn't created a stir among black activists in South Florida, some agree that the new computer renderings of Tut that are part of the Fort Lauderdale exhibit, which has sold more than 275,000 tickets already, fail to portray him with Afrocentric traits...

Tut exhibit fails to face facts, some scholars say, Miami Herald, Florida, USA, November 25, 2005.

Egypt and Britain next Sunday will celebrate the passing of 83 years since discovering the tomb of Tutankhamun (King Tut), said Thursday Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

In a press statement, SCA's Secretary-General Dr. Zahi Hawass said Egyptian and British cultural organizations will celebrate the discovery, which was made in 1922, through a number of activities, including a screening of a documentary regarding the king who ruled Egypt during 1332-1322 BCE.

The celebration at the Egyptian Museum, he explained, will include a photo exhibition of the tomb and the process of its discovery, adding that although Tutankhamun was somewhat of a minor king in comparison to other rulers, the treasures found in his tomb made him quite a noteworthy pharaoh.

To share King Tut's heritage with others, 50 of the tomb's major artefacts are being shown at international exhibitions, such as in the US, Germany, Switzerland and Britain.

King Tut belonged to the 18th dynasty that ruled Egypt throughout 1539-1292.

Egypt, Britain to celebrate discovering King Tut's tomb, Kuwait News Agency, Kuwait, November 24, 2005.

The December 2005 issue of the Royal Geographical Societies (UK) magazine Geographical has the Giza Pyramids on the cover relating to an article inside entitled “Time Travel: Why we keep going back to Ancient Civilisations”

History is repeating itself. After the sun, sea and sand mass tourism of the 20th century, travel to sites of historical interest, one of the prime motivations behind the Grand Tour, is back in vogue. And, as Tom Chesshyre discovers, today’s historical tourists are often just as well educated as their forebears.

Time Travel, Geographical Magazine, The Royal Geographical Society, Richmond, UK, Volume 77, No. 12, December 2005.

Subscribe to Geographical Magazine via Amazon.com.

By Zahi Hawass.

The term "site management" is often used today by Egyptologists and archaeologists, but very few people understand its meaning. They use this term because it sounds good, and also to show that they know it. Site management is a programme designed to protect archaeological sites through conservation and restoration training, and to meet tourist goals. I was fortunate to go on a scientific cruise with archaeologists from all over the world, from Tunisia to Greece, arranged by the Getty Conservation Institute. Site management was the topic of discussion. We explored theories and ideas to ensure that we conserve our historical sites; we debated and heard from the experts and learnt that for the most part they concentrated on the conservation of a tomb or a temple but neglected the surroundings — the general area of the site. We were left with the important question: how can we protect these sites?

First, we can say that site management must look at the site as a whole and not only focus on a single monument in the area that needs restoration. In addition, site management needs to look not only at the site itself but also at the personnel on the site. Most important is the protection of the site from adverse surroundings, and the establishment of a safe zone. This can easily be achieved by building a wall, unless the site will have natural protection. Then vehicles must be prevented from approaching the site. With safe zoning the parking should be at least five kilometres away from the site. At the entrance of the site we should have a visitors' centre to educate visitors about the history and archaeology of the site and give directions round the site that will enable the visitor to view the site in the proper way...

Dig days: Protecting history, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 770, November 24 - 30, 2005.

By Nevine El-Aref.

The black basalt Rosetta stone was found in 1799, a year after the French expedition to Egypt began, in a fortress located on the outskirts of Rashid by a young French officer named Pierre-François Bouchard. It measured 113cms tall, 75.5cms long and 27cms thick, and contained three distinct bands of writing. The most incomplete was the top band containing hieroglyphics; the middle band was written in the demotic script and the bottom was in Greek. Studies carried out on the stone by scholars revealed that the stone was a royal decree which stated that it was to be written in the languages used in Egypt at the time. Scholars began to focus on the demotic script, since it was more complete and resembled alphabetical letters rather than the pictorial hieroglyphs. This was essentially a shorthand form of hieroglyphics and had evolved from an earlier shorthand version of Egyptian called hieratic.

The first scholar to make any sense of the demotic script on the Rosetta Stone was a French linguist named Silvestre de Sacy, who succeeded in identifying the symbols which comprised the names "Ptolemy" and "Alexander", thus, establishing a relationship between the symbols and sounds. Using the Coptic language, Swedish diplomat Johann Akerblad was able to identify the words for "love", "temple" and "Greek" thus, making it clear that the demotic script was not only a phonetic script but it was also translatable...

Rosetta stone, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 770, November 24 - 30, 2005.

A massive restoration project is breathing new life into the long-neglected Rashid National Museum. Nevine El-Aref witnesses the preparations for the opening.

On the Rashid branch of the Nile, famous for its splendid Islamic buildings, stands the Arab Killy house — now the Rashid National Museum — with its moulded, grouted burnt bricks alternatively coloured red and black and its very fine mashrabiya (lattice woodwork) façade.

This 400-year-old residential house of Rashid's Ottoman governor is the largest house in the town, a three- storey building with a large ground-floor area. It reflects the tall style of architecture, construction and carpentry typical of the time. Designed to echo the Islamic style, the house contains, as well as its exquisite mashrabiya, decorative inscriptions, inlaid sea shell work, a ceiling dome and a densely-ornamented door.

In its heyday, the ground floor housed a storehouse with a cross-vaulted ceiling, a cistern and a sabil (fountain). The second floor, which was reserved for men, contains a courtyard surrounded by a number of rooms with windows of iron grilles. The third floor was similar to the second, but was the domain of the women of the household...

The rose of the Nile, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 770, November 24 - 30, 2005.

The Edward W Said Memorial Lecture was delivered on 1 November — the day that would have marked the Palestinian scholar's 70th birthday — by distinguished visiting professor David Damrosch, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and most recently author of What is World Literature? (Princeton University Press, 2003). Damrosch, while warmly remembering his former colleague and reflecting on his legacy, paid Said the tribute of avoiding hagiography...

Oblique refractions, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 769, November 17 - 23, 2005.

cf. Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at the American University in Cairo Transcript, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 769, November 17 - 23, 2005.

by Dr Joyce Tyldesley, covers the history of Egyptology, from the end of the Dynastic age to the present, beginning with little known Egyptians who investigated the country's ancient monuments to famous archaeologists such as Howard Carter, who uncovered the resting place of the boy king, Tutankhamen.

Dr Tyldesley, from the University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, said: "Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 sparked a huge interest in the country's ancient civilisations. Stories of lost treasure and mummies gripped the public's imagination and the world became obsessed with everything Egyptian. Explorers and collectors who went in search of Egyptian artefacts produced some of the first Egyptologists and a new area of scientific study. Amongst these 'explorers' are some of the most fascinating characters in modern history."

The book also looks at current archaeological research, such as underwater archaeology at Alexandria and the work of Dr Steven Snape in the excavation of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham — that is now the centre of one of the biggest projects currently in progress in Egypt, a fortress-town built by Rameses II in the 13th century BC...

Egyptologist brings lost civilisation to life for television series, EurekAlert!, November 23, 2005.

Search for Joyce Tyldesley books at

Search for Joyce Tyldesley books at

By the time LACMA West closed "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" Sunday night, 937,613 visitors had viewed the ancient Egyptian artefacts from its June 16 opening to its 24-hour marathon closing weekend.

While it will remain overshadowed by the 1.25 million visitors to the 1978 blockbuster "Treasures of Tutankhamun," officials at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art clearly were delighted with the result. The museum reported that 46 percent of Tut customers said it motivated them to visit LACMA for the first time, and more than 20,000 purchased memberships. Some 150,000 children saw the exhibit, 60,000 of them on field trips.

"In addition to providing an opportunity to experience outstanding works of art and to learn about ancient Egypt, 'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' helped draw significant new audiences to the museum..."

937,600 see 'Tut' during 5-month LACMA run, LA Daily News, California, USA, November 23, 2005.

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.

Sand and sarcophagi go hand in hand west of Cairo, with a string of oases that provide insights into Egypt’s golden past being found amid the world's greatest expanse of desert.

Amr Elezabi, Canadian director of the Egyptian Tourist Authority, says the outposts of greenery found amid Saharan sand enable tourists to see another side of Egypt that is overshadowed by such famed ancient landmarks as the Sphinx and the Pyramids.

Among those oases is Bahariya, found four hours from the Egyptian capital, and home to the Valley of the Golden Mummies, so named because an Egyptian archaeologist four years ago uncovered decorated sarcophagi dating back to the Greco-Roman period – a find that drew international attention to the site...

Greenery In The Desert: The Other Side of Egypt, Mathaba, UK, November 17, 2005.

Egypt is to recover more than a 100 stolen antiquities, smuggled out by a massive trafficking ring, from the United States, Canada and Germany.

Some of the antiquities were located after Egypt's largest-ever trafficking trial in August, which led to heavy prison sentences for seven people, antiquities chief Zahi Hawass told the official Mena news agency on Thursday.

He said members of his Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) had found some of the missing pieces on the websites of several auctioneers across the world...

Egypt to Recover 100 Stolen Antiquities, Egypt Election, UK, November 17, 2005.

Italian researchers have found a pig-related disease in a mummy, squashing a common belief that Ancient Egyptians had a dietary ban on pork.

Until now historians have found evidence suggesting ancient high priests in Egypt prohibited pig meat, in common with many Middle Eastern peoples who still don't eat pork today.

"It has hitherto been thought that there was a sort of religious-hygienic ban on eating pork in Ancient Egypt," said Pisa University historical pathologist Fabrizio Bruschi...

No pork ban in Ancient Egypt, ANSA, Italy, November 15, 2005.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni has ordered the removal of the makeshift theatre at the Giza Pyramids, used for performances of the opera Aida. The theatre was built in 1998 as a temporary measure. This decision has come in the light of an urgent request made to the Minister by Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass to remove the theatre, as it poses a threat to this famous archaeological area. Mansour Beirk, responsible for the Pyramids Archaeological Area, stated that the dismantling of the theatre will take place in the next few weeks.

Pyramids bid farewell to Aida, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, November 18, 2005.

cf. Opera Aida bids farewell to Egypt's pyramids, People's Daily, China, November 18, 2005.

David Silverman urges students to attend exhibit coming to Philadelphia in 2007.

He was the "Original King of Bling."

Or so reads the 40-foot billboard in Times Square advertising the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibit that is scheduled to open at the Franklin Institute in February 2007.

The blockbuster exhibit's curator, Penn Near Eastern Studies professor David Silverman, offered an insider's look at its creation last evening to a mostly non-student audience.

The presentation was appropriately held at the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where Silverman serves as curator of Egyptology...

Prof plugs exhibit on King Tut, The Daily Pennsylvanian, University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, USA, November 17, 2005.

I found a spot just beyond the riverbank, well out of sight of the felucca, and answered the call of nature. That was when the camel came nosing around. It gave me a bit of a shock, as you can imagine. One second I was alone with my bodily functions, the next looking up at a pale, yellow mane and dark, mournful eyes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Such an encounter is probably to be expected on a trip promising a duck’s-eye view of the Nile.

Egypt’s main artery is big business: about 2m people cruise this section of the Nile every year. Most choose one of the 260 river liners that plough the southern stretch between the ancient cities of Aswan and Luxor, stopping en route to view the antiquities that have made this one of the few countries on earth worthy of its own “ology”. And while these floating hotels certainly have their attractions (air conditioning, deck-top pools, on-board loos), to me they seemed out of place: too mechanical, too dirty, simply too big for this ancient land.

I wanted something different: the same antiquarian excitements, but a more intimate experience of the river along the way; the sort of experience you get by exploring the Nile in the simplest of sailing boats: the felucca...

Egypt's Nile in style, The Times, UK, November 13, 2005.

Egypt is to recover from the United States, Canada and Germany more than 100 stolen antiquities that had been smuggled out by a massive trafficking ring, said reports.

Antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said some of the antiquities were located after Egypt's largest trafficking trial in August, which led to heavy prison sentences for seven people.

He said members of his Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) had found some of the missing pieces on the websites of several auctioneers across the world.

Hawass explained that the pieces to be recovered from Germany had been seized by police as they were being sold to a buyer in the US...

Egypt claims stolen treasures, News 24, South Africa, November 17, 2005.

TravelVideo have a round-up of the travel and antiquity news in Egypt.

Travel News from Egypt - November 2005, TravelVideo.TV, Canada, November 10, 2005.

... the respectable Arab newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published several sensational photos taken in the Amon Ra Temple in Karnak. At that, the newspaper asked its readers whether they believed that ancient Egyptians knew about battle aviation. The question would have seriously puzzled readers under some different conditions. But the photos the newspaper published demonstrated the bas-reliefs of an ancient temple built under Seti I who ruled 3,000 years ago; and on the bas-reliefs an ancient artist engraved a battle helicopter with a distinct rotor and a tail unit. Nearby, the artist depicted several other aircrafts astonishingly resembling contemporary supersonic fighters and heavy strategic bombers!

After the sensational publication of the photos it became clear why Egyptologists of the 19th century could not tell what was depicted on the walls of the temple in Abydos. Indeed, the researchers did not know how helicopters and aircrafts look.

Pharaoh Seti I was always known as the most famous and successful regents in Ancient Egypt who actively expanded his estates and had to repulse attacks of enemies. Do the published sensational pictures mean that the Pharaoh even employed battle aviation to fight enemies?

Well-known Egyptologist Alan Alford left to the Nile banks to study the Abydos mystery...

Ancient Egyptians used helicopters and airplanes for battles?, Pravda, Russia, November 11, 2005.

cf. The Official Website of Alan F. Alford.

By Hassan Sadallah

It might be strange to know that Fayyoum, the large fertile depression in the desert, used to have a large number of whales, fish and dolphins specifically at Wadi Hitan (Valley of the Whales).

It was a few months ago that Wadi Hitan was included on the UNESCO list of international natural heritage. The site which is the first Egyptian and sixth Arab one on the list will not be the last because the Ministry of Environmental Affairs is working on another 26 potential sites that could be gradually put on the list of natural heritage.

Since the early 20th century, the area has been the focus of scientific attention. Studies show that Wadi Hitan incorporates 406 skeletons of whales of which 205 are complete in addition to skeletons of mammals, sharks, mermaids and dolphins.

The coordinated efforts of the Geology Museum, the Geological Survey Authority, the Environmental Affairs Agency and Egyptian universities have rendered an all-embracing study of Wadi Al Hitan, which ultimately entitled the site for inclusion on the international list.

Generally speaking, Egypt has joined the UNESCO agreement of international heritage in l975. According to the list, there are more than 570 accredited cultural sites across the world compared to l30 sites of natural heritage in addition to 30 sites that combines both cultural and natural heritage.

Wadi Hitan, being a nature reserve, is a great asset for tourism. But as Wahid Salama of the Environmental Affairs Agency said, the site needs to be upgraded in order to be converted into an outdoor museum that displays some 406 skeletons of whales. The first step, he said, would be paving the way leading to the site and then prepare the site itself for visits.

About the historic background of the area, Khaled Saad, the Director of Pre-dynastic Antiquities Administration, told Egyptian Mail that up until the Palaeolithic period the area had a vast salt water lake. The lake actually dated back to 42 million years but owing to weather changes, desertification and the retreat of water through millions of years the topography of the area has changed. Fayyoum has actually witnessed one of the oldest civilisations that pertained to the pre-dynastic age. Historians and archaeologists estimate that the Fayyoum civilisation is about 7500 years old, said Saad.

However, Wadi Hitan might face a problem in the near future if officials do not take precautionary measures. Agrarian encroachment is likely to take place since large areas of land are being reclaimed in its vicinity. Irrigation of this land could pose a threat to environmental life in the area.

Saad explained that among the perils facing Wadi Hitan is a rally held annually. For despite measures taken by the Environmental Affairs Agency, some cars cause damage to Wadi Hitan, which is as old as 5000 years BC.

Saad noted that files on other potential sites are being prepared as for instance the dinosaurs site at the Bahariya Oasis, the White Desert in Farafra Oasis and the Great Sand Sea area.

The Western Desert, added Saad, is one of the most important and richest sites of natural heritage whose potential was only recently discovered. As illustrated by Dr Mohamed Fathi Awad in his book Geological Excursions in the West Desert of Egypt, up until the middle 20th century there were only a few journeys made by Kennedy Char in the Darb Al Arbeen area.

When the second largest dinosaur worldwide was discovered four years ago in the West Desert, there was much talk about the need to dig into the history of this promising area. One wonders when many sites in the Western Desert will be turned into open museums relating the history of the natural environment of Egypt.

Unlocking the secrets of Wadi Hitan, The Egyptian Mail, Egypt, November 12, 2005.

by Hassan Sadallah

Egypt is going to have its first museum for prehistoric relics, according to a decision taken by Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni.

The museum will include 1,400 archaeological treasures, currently located in the storehouse of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

An area of land has already been set aside in Qena Governorate for the construction of the museum. Qena is a very appropriate location, bearing in mind that the oldest skull ever found in Egypt was found here, while this Upper Egyptian Governorate is home to many ancient tombs and other structures.

A blueprint for the museum has already been drawn up, including rooms for exhibitions about the life of prehistoric man and how the first urban communities were established.

There will also be displays about the agricultural work and industries of ancient man, as well as the pottery utensils he used.

Meanwhile, moving forward in history, there will be an exhibition about the life and times of the Pharaohs.

Prehistoric museum for Qena, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, November 15, 2005.

By Hassan Sadallah

The first phase of the project to overhaul el-Ghouri Mosque, concentrating on its dome, fountain and school, has now been completed by the Ministry of Culture, at a cost of LE8 million . The phase took 12 months.

According to Ayman Abdel-Moneim, the supervisor of the Fatimid Cairo development project, the Ghouri group of buildings, located in el-Ghouriya Street, were built by Sultan el-Ashraf Abul Nasr Qonsoua el-Ghouri (1446-1516). El-Ghouri, who died in the Battle of Marg Dabeq, north of Aleppo, was infatuated by architecture. He loved gardens and rare birds. He ordered his men to build the mosque and its associated buildings in 1503.

However, in recent years, the Ghouri complex was affected by the groundwater in the area, which caused serious damage. "The restoration project included architectural work, as well as repairing the decorations of the buildings," said Abdel-Moneim. "The most damaged part of the mosque was the dome. The second phase of the project will start next year, costing LE27 million , which will include the whole of el-Ghouri Mosque. The first phase is now finished and it will be officially inaugurated within the next few days," he added.

First phase of el-Ghouri project completed, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, November 16, 2005.

Quite what the history department would have made, meanwhile, of Dan Cruickshank is anyone's guess. When he hove into view riding on an ass last night, it looked like a director's little joke. But as he proceeded to tell the tale of the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti, a familiar performance began to emerge.

Cruickshank could gush for Britain. He can enthuse to an Olympic standard. He is not an Egyptologist, as such, and much of his series is in any case being duplicated by BBC1's Egypt, but he can become awestruck at the drop of a Panama hat, a knack that is always hard to criticise.

Akhenaten believed that the ancient Egyptians needed only one god and decided that sun worship was just the ticket. This threatened to do the priestly class out of jobs. As history likes to remind us, and as Akhenaten discovered, religious phonies never go quietly.

It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it, The Herald, UK, November 14, 2005.

The Colossi of Memnon, two lonely sentinels, have greeted visitors to the Theban necropolis since Roman times. More recently, as you look beyond the seated monoliths, a temple can be seen progressively re-emerging from what, to an unprofessional eye, earlier appeared as no more than slight elevations and depressions in the packed earth. In this age of advanced technology, what is officially known as The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project, simply "Memnon/Amenhotep III Project", under the auspices of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), is casting light on a great monument that was swept away soon after its completion. "Despite the difficulty of our task," announces Hourig Sourouzian — Egyptologist, art historian and project director — "I feel wonderfully privileged to be working on this project."
Interview by Jill Kamil

Summer is over. A new archaeological season is underway. And of the many missions, local and international, commencing work at Luxor, the Memnon/Amenhotep III Project is unquestionably the most extraordinary. To put it in Sourouzian's words, "whereas in other monuments we are in presence of walls, sometimes even ceilings, but nothing from the temple furniture remains — no statues, stelae, altars, etc. — what we have at this site is exactly the opposite; parts of the equipment and remains of statues survive, and their positions give us a clue to the locations of pylons and walls that are no longer there." Such thinking reflects the general assumption that the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III (1387-1348 BC), of which the colossi are part, was totally swept away by a particularly high flood or an earthquake some time after its completion. All that remained were collapsed pylons, walls, columns and statues, some of which were re-used by later Pharaohs for their own temples, or collected by modern travellers and scholars. The ruin was subsequently obscured — all, that is, but for the seated colossi, solitary relics of the Pharaoh's Golden Era — and, a quarter of a mile to the rear, a sandstone stelae inscribed with a dedicatory text.

The magnitude of this ancient catastrophe is best assessed by placing its construction in historical context. Amenhotep III reaped the benefits of his predecessors' conquests and Thebes was at the peak of its glory during his long reign. With economic conditions sound, wealth pouring in from the distant reaches of the Egyptian empire..

Hourig Sourouzian: Resurrection, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 768, November 10 - 16, 2005.

Egypt has halted the sale of 50 ancient Egyptian artefacts on display in Medousa auction hall in Canada. The pieces were part of a collection of Ushabti figures, or wooden statuettes, and Udjat eyes and amulets which had been stolen and sold by two antiquity traders. The pair, brothers, have since been arrested.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) said the SCA had found the objects while combing the websites of international auction halls known for possessing priceless archaeological objects. The SCA informed the Egyptian prosecutor- general who then asked the Canadian authorities to confiscate the objects on display. Hawass said Egypt would recover the collection within a month.

Newsreel: Sale stopped, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 768, November 10 - 16, 2005.

Behind its elegant façade, the state of Oxford's Ashmolean has long been an embarrassment — but a £49m rebuild is about to change that, says Giles Worsley.

The Ashmolean in Oxford is one of the great museum buildings of the world and arguably the most sophisticated classical building ever erected in this country. But as a modern museum it fails lamentably.

This is not the fault of the architect, CR Cockerell, whose galleries make a wonderful museum space. But venture behind them and you find a rabbit warren of later additions with none of Cockerell's distinction and every problem known to modern curators.

It is, quite simply, an unworthy setting for a museum whose collections are finer than some national collections — including the largest and most important group of Raphael drawings in the world, the greatest collection of Egyptian pre-dynastic material outside Cairo, the finest Anglo-Saxon treasures beyond the British Museum, and the only great Minoan collection outside Heraklion...

Heroic collections find a worthy setting, The Telegraph, UK, November 08, 2005.

cf. More about the Ashmolean Museum's Proposed Development, The Ashmolean, UK.

cf. Rick Mather Architects.

An Egyptian-Japanese team have completed the first phase of the restoration of the Tomb of Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty.

This first phase included cleaning the tomb and photographing the walls with their engravings of the King and the gods. Other work involved repairing some of the engravings that were damaged and strengthening the walls and columns.

Meanwhile, the fungi and bacteria on the walls were killed by the team, using chemicals that would not harm the engravings.

By taking X-rays of the monument, the Japanese members of the team were able to pinpoint the constituents of the paints used by the Pharaohs to colour their engravings, including the pigments orpiment (used to make a yellow colour), hematite (for white) and arsmeti (for orange).

The tomb, located in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, consists of a long corridor with three halls. The corridor descends steeply to a well surrounded by gods.

There is also a room with two square pillars, descending to 21 small rooms with damaged engravings. Meanwhile, there is a burial chamber with columns. It also contains parts of a broken coffin.

Some of the rooms were looted in the era of King Rameses IX. There is a papyrus in existence which records the confessions and names of the thieves.

Restoration of Amenhotep Tomb progresses, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, November 08, 2005.

This is satire, obviously!

President George Bush returned from the fourth Summit of the Americas held in Mar del Plata, Argentina on Monday with his tail between his legs, stung at being called “human trash” by Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona, and called “an imperialist” by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez...

“But I’m not really Jewish, since my lineage goes back even farther than that,” he exclaimed. “The Bush family line including Godfrey and Jesus extends all the way back to King David and before and then even back to that Egyptian sun king, you know, the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep IV who started monotheism and married Nefertiti and later renamed himself Akhenaten...”

George Bush Claims He is Descended from Jesus Christ and Akhenaten and is Not “Human Trash”, The Spoof!, November 07, 2005.

Museum directors hope the artwork they display will inspire visitors — but not necessarily to ask, "Did they steal that?" Yet that is precisely the question being asked at museums from New York's Metropolitan to California's Getty and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). The former antiquities curator of the world's richest museum, the Getty, goes on trial next week in Italy on charges that she helped the museum acquire stolen art.

Armed with new information from the memoirs of a controversial art dealer, Italian authorities want at least 42 items in the Getty collection returned. New York's Met may have to return a "supergem" of its collection, a 6th century BC painted vase. They want at least 22 items back from Boston's MFA, including a prized 2,500-year-old Greek vase.

The revelations have stunned the public, but cries of "Gimme my stuff back!" have been resounding through the art world for centuries — mostly falling on deaf ears. Greece still wants the Elgin marbles back from Britain ... Greece may well get them soon, say observers, because the political climate and national attitudes about culture have changed.

The bad old days of Indiana Jones-style museum acquisition no longer fly...

Ancient art, modern crime, The Christian Science Monitor, USA, November 07, 2005.

What does a visitor to Egypt recall on return- Pyramids, Sphinx, Tutankhamun, museums, temples, desert, food... Yes, certainly all this and so, so, so much more. ‘The Land of the Dead’ is made up of hundreds of monuments, each with a story to tell.

During my recent visit to Egypt, time was limited and our week's stay was packed with as much as was possible to, make the most of the seven days. Yet, what stays with me most vividly on our return was the visit to the Pharaonic village. Not listed in the guidebooks and travel literature, the village comes as a pleasant surprise. Situated in the heart of Cairo, the Pharaonic village is the private property of one Dr Hassan Ragab who decided to use his papyrus plantation to showcase life in an Egyptian village, as it would have been around 2000 B.C.

Work on the village started in 1977. As many as 500 trees were planted on the five acres to screen the village from the city. Canals and waterways were dug through leaving a central mound of an island. The village is created on the island, which is surrounded by narrow waterways- obviously in an attempt to recreate the Nile. “Welcome, travellers to Egypt,” a deep voice greets us as we seat ourselves on cushioned chairs on a beautiful wooden boat...

A village like no other, Deccan Herald, India, November 06, 2005.

... A hallway at the school was turned into the boy king's tomb. A bookcase — shipped from Egypt — borrowed from travel agent Don Hoffman that looks just like the tomb, sat in the centre of the hallway and student-made hieroglyphics like the ones inside his tomb adorned the walls, said art teacher Paige Gates. Even the bathroom doors had hieroglyphics to show who they were designated for.

This is the first time the school has borrowed the bookshelf/tomb and will keep the display up for a while.

Both rooms were decorated with pyramids made by the kids in everything from baseballs, to dice to candy boxes to Dr Pepper cans. Eleven-year-old Jimmy Essman pointed out a mummified chicken with separated heart and gizzard. Table salt was used for this process and Egyptians used sea salt...

Egypt Day a hit at Trinity School, My West Texas, Texas, USA, November 05, 2005.

One can imagine researchers' disappointment when they unsealed Khufu's sarcophagus and found a small statuette in lieu of a mummy.

The French scientist Lauert arrived in Egypt 60 years ago. He was going to unravel the mystery of the pyramids. The scientist is still in Egypt. These days the 90-year old researcher says he has to crack more mysteries than before. Pyramids still remain the world's wonder No.1 since everything we know about them is mostly guesswork and speculation. Tatyana Shakurova, an Egyptologist at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, shared her views of some mysteries relating to the Egyptian pyramids.

Why pyramids?

On the face of it, the answer looks cut-and-dried. A pyramid is the simplest most complete structure. In the meantime, a pyramid may embody the myth about afterlife. The myth evolved along with the architectural concept as time went by...

Mummies of Egyptian pharaohs mysteriously disappear from pyramids, Pravda, Russia, November 08, 2005.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni approved to display Egyptian antiquities at the "Arts Centre Museum" in the Spanish capital Madrid under the title "The Pharaohs". Two similar exhibitions of the Egyptian antiquities in Italy and Paris have scored quite a success.

Hosni said 120 pieces of antiquities will be put on display in Madrid and that Egypt will receive one million and 330,000 euros in return.

Insurance for the antiquities against theft, acts of terrorism, quakes etc... is put at $220,890,000, Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities Dr. Zahi Hawass said.

Egyptian antiquities in Spain, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 06, 2005.

A plan to electronically secure the "Pyramids Plateau," implemented over the past 3 years, will be given the go-ahead by President Hosni Mubarak early next year. The plan is a collaborative effort of the Ministry of Culture and the National Security Agency.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said that the project cost LE55 million, and includes the establishment of a 15-km fence around the plateau, to protect against squatting. The fence is entirely away from the panorama of the pyramids, and does not have a negative impact on the aesthetic scenery of the Plateau.

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Dr. Zahi Hawass said that the plan provides the area with about 20 electronic gates to regulate and control visits.

Pyramids plateau electronically secured by 2006, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 07, 2005.

On a 3-year mission, a research team from the National Institute for Geophysics and Astronomy, "Helwan Observatory" will resume its project to survey and determine sites to dig for monuments in the Kharga Oases region. This will be carried out in cooperation with the Computer Science Lab in Technology Institute in Tokyo as well as the Supreme Council for Antiquities.

Such enterprise aims at the detection of antiquities around Al-Zaiyan Temple in Polaq district in Al-Kharga Oases, in which state-of the art-technology will be used to determine and locate significant antiquities sites.

Notably, a similar field study was carried out before to locate the underground water surrounding Hebes Temple in the New Valley.

Egyptian-Japanese team to locate artefacts of the New Valley, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 08, 2005.

Egypt has managed to foil an attempt to sell 50 Pharaonic artefacts at the Medousa auction in Canada, said Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni.

Secretary of the National Council of Antiquities Dr. Zahi Hawass said that the Council has been monitoring 43 auctions all over the world to trace Egyptian artefacts on sale there.

Hawass said that the Prosecutor-General was notified and the Canadian authorities contacted in order to halt the sale and have the artefacts returned to Egypt.

He said that the Canadian authorities have already taken measures to impound the pieces until Egypt sends a technical and judicial committee.

Egypt foils attempt to sell 50 artefacts in Canada, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 08, 2005.

After a powercut knocked out the PC that hosts my blogging software I've had to perform major open-heart surgery on my machine to get back online.

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.

November 04, 1922, Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings.

November 4, Wikipedia.

cf. Tutankhamen's tomb, Portalino, Italy, November 04, 2005.

The Third International Seminar on Coptic Studies will be held in Sohag early next year. Jill Kamil looks at the preparations.

"People have come to know that the series of Coptic studies seminars that take place in monasteries are serious affairs," well-known Coptologist Gawdat Gabra says. "Already we have had a most satisfactory response to our announcement that the next seminar will take place in Sohag early next year, and it promises to be even more successful than the other two."

Gabra, editor-in-chief of the St Mark Foundation and an active participant at international congresses on Coptology, was in Cairo recently following an inspection of the arrangements in Sohag. He is delighted that everything seems to be going so well so far in advance of the event.

"Finance is coming from different quarters. Various individuals and institutions are contributing accommodation, transport and other facilities," he says. "You'd be surprised to see the change, both in Sohag city and in the monasteries..."

Scene set for Coptic studies, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 767, November 02 - 09, 2005.

cf. Framework of the seminar, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 767, November 02 - 09, 2005.

As a prelude to the King Tut exhibition opening in December, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale will present a lecture tonight on "The Curse of the Pharaohs," by David Silverman, a University of Pennsylvania Egyptologist and curator in charge of the exhibition.

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, a display of more than 130 artefacts from the crypts of Tut and other ancient Egyptian royals, will be shown Dec. 15 [2005] through April 23 [2006].

Tonight's lecture is at 7 in the Norma and William Horvitz Auditorium at the museum, at 1 E. Las Olas Blvd. Admission is $5 for museum members, $10 for non-members. Reservations are required. Call 954-525-5500, ext. 239.

'Curse of the Pharaohs', The Miami Herald, Florida, USA, November 03, 2005.

Lancaster Museum Art Gallery opens Saturday an Egyptian display of its own with more than a millennium's worth of sculpture, jewellery, cosmetic objects and funerary equipment - and admission is free.

A Middle Kingdom coffin from about 1800 B.C. and wooden sarcophagus masks from 1500 B.C. — both older than Tut's treasures — will be on display, along with mummified falcons, wooden statuettes, bronze figurines, and headrests.

The exhibit also includes a life-size replica of a chariot, a re-created everyday house scene, and replica Osiris, sphinx and hawk statues that provided scenery in the 1956 movie "The Ten Commandments..."

A.V. museum showcases Egyptian display, Los Angeles daily News, California, November 04, 2005.

The van Gogh's dazzle, and the lustre and subtlety of the Rembrandts take one's breath away. But visitors to Amsterdam seeking diversity after the Rijksmuseum and the van Gogh Museum, will find it at the Allard Pierson Museum, which houses an extensive collection of ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Etruscan art.

The Allard Pierson, which is part of the University of Amsterdam and sits on the Singel Canal near the city's popular shopping streets, offers everything from mummies and an explanation of the process by which they were buried to an elegant collection of Roman glass, Greek vases and Etruscan votive offerings...

The Allard Pierson was built around a collection assembled by C.W. Lunsingh Scheurleer, a Dutch banker, who died in 1941 ... and gave money to the Egypt Exploration Society. In exchange for gifts, donors were allowed to keep some of the finds. The group did excavations at a number of ancient sites, including Amarna, home of King Akhenaten...

Amsterdam secret: A den of antiquity, International Herald Tribune, France, November 03, 2005.

A review of the first episodes of both Egypt and Rome from one of the UK's tabloids.

At first glance, it looked like another boring history programme. Instead, it kept seven million viewers glued to their screens at the weekend.

BBC1's historical drama-documentary Egypt told the fascinating real-life tale of how, at the turn of the last century, a geeky Brit uncovered the resting place of Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

As well as Howard Carter's tireless battle against all odds to find the tomb, it featured romance, intrigue and a satisfying smattering of bare-chested young men...

Rome vs Egypt, The Daily Mirror, UK, November 04, 2005.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni will inaugurate the Rosetta National Museum after refurbishing works in the second half of November.

The rehabilitation operations of the museum took two years to be completed at a total cost of LE 4 million, said Dr Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) on Wednesday.

Hawass said that the rejuvenation operation of the museum came as part of a national plan undertaken by the Ministry of Culture and the SCA with a view to creating a number of provincial and specialized museums in Egypt...

Rosetta national museum to be inaugurated in November, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 03, 2005.

The disappearance of three small statues from the basement of the Egyptian Museum in the last week of September had newspapers in a tizzy well into October. Although the pieces were discovered in mid-October, the fact that maintenance workers had smuggled the three artefacts out of the museum in burlap sacks revealed a security problem of the first order: The unprotected basement of the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square houses over 60,000 pieces of varying importance, to say nothing of hundreds of thousands more at storage magazines around the nation.

According to Zahi Hawass, chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), that negligence has grown from 100 years of bureaucracy and corruption. Hawass points out that as bad as the basement is, the same applies to a number of storage areas and buildings — the Saqqara storage building, for instance, is suffering from rot and many of the pieces have turned to powder...

Culture 101: Sack ‘em!, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume #26, Issue 11, November 2005.

Over in Alexandria, another venue has also been closed down, this time the Graeco-Roman Museum.

Does that remind anyone of what happened to Royal Jewellery Museum in the seaside capital recently? Officials maintain the closures are temporary and cite the reason as “improvements” to the historical buildings, including adding on an extra floor.

Architecture activists are in an uproar over the proposed modifications, claiming that the historical structures should be protected in their own right and not tampered with.

So is it Graeco-Roman or Greco-Roman?

Culture 101: We’re closed, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume #26, Issue 11, November 2005.

Egyptian reliefs dating back thousands of years could disappear within a decade because the demands of the living undermine the pharaohs’ bid for immortality, archaeologists said on Thursday.

As Egypt’s population grows, agricultural plots encroach ever closer to land reserved for ancient temples and funeral monuments, the archaeologists said. Water for irrigation is weakening temple foundations and eroding the carvings.

“We’ve seen it. We have photographic evidence of something we took a picture of 10 years ago and we go and take a picture of the reliefs now and they are simply not there,” said Nigel Hetherington, an archaeological conservation manager.

“What’s happened is that farming land, as the population increases dramatically, now stretches out into the desert and into (the Nile’s west bank at) Luxor, which was once considered the realm of the dead in the pharaonic period,” he said in a recent interview...

This appears to be a rehash of an article from September Farming threatens ancient Egyptian sites.

Farmers threaten pharaohs, Globe and Mail, Ontario, Canada, November 02, 2005.

Test your King Tut knowledge with About.com's Tutankhamun quiz. Now boys and girls, I expect no less that 9/10! The last one is quite hard and you either know it or you don't. I would also dispute the answer on one and say that another of the questions is ambiguous and yet another has opposing arguments from different corners of the Egyptology world. But it's just for fun.

Tutankhamun's Tomb, About.com, undated.

About.com have a short article on Nabta Playa.

Nabta Playa is an archaeological site in the western deserts of southern Egypt, where some of the earliest known evidence of domesticated cattle have been identified. The site has three periods of occupation dated to the Early Neolithic (9,800-7,500 BP), Middle Neolithic (7,100-6,700 BP), and Late Neolithic (6,500-4,800 BP)...

Nabta Playa (Egypt), About.com, November 02, 2005.

In a bid to boost turnout for boy king's return, LACMA extends run by five days. The 1978 exhibition was seen by more than 1.25 million.

King Tut's L.A. empire will probably number more than 900,000 subjects by the time his reign ends at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where his treasures have been on display since mid-June. That figure for an L.A. art exhibition would be topped only by Tut himself: More than 1.25 million people turned out for his 1978 LACMA show.

In a down-to-the-wire bid to maximize the boy king's draw, LACMA is extending the run five days, through Nov. 20, the head of Arts and Exhibitions International, a tour co-producer, said Wednesday. Longer visiting hours also may be announced. Museum officials declined to comment; a news conference on the exhibition's economic impact is scheduled for this afternoon at LACMA.

Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian government's antiquities chief and prime mover in sending artefacts from Tut's tomb on tour, said Wednesday that he would be disappointed if Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs didn't command a million viewers in L.A., its first stop on a four-city U.S. tour...

Tut Show Likely to Draw 900,000, Los Angeles Times, California, November 03, 2005.

Egyptian archaeologists recently found hundreds of amazing artefacts, which were lying under layers of dirt in the basement of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, reports the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

The artefacts, which include mummies and coffins, were found inside dusty cases, which were forgotten for decades in the museum's basement. Following the theft of several statues, the museum's management decided for the first time to compile a full list of all its artefacts. During the work on the list, the basements were searched, and the treasure was revealed.

"During the whole of the past century, the museum's managers sat on their chairs drinking tea, and did not fulfil their duties," said General Secretary of the High Council for Archaeology, Zahi Hawass.

So far, some 600 coffins and 170 mummies have been found in the museum basement.

The museum was established 104 years ago, and contains some of the most important archaeological artefacts in the world, including the mummy of Rameses II who died in 1212 B.C. (B.C.E.).

Ancient Mummies Discovered in Cairo, The Media Line, November 02, 2005, via Archaeo-News-Blog.

To coincide with the BBC's new series on Egypt, BBC History Magazine has two articles on ancient Egypt.

The first is entitled "Who's afraid of the Pharaoh's curse?" and is penned by Joyce Tyldesley.

In conjunction with a new BBC series on the early Egyptologists, Joyce Tyldesley recalls Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun and asks why a supernatural curse gripped the world.

The second is "The circus archaeologist" about Giovanni Belzoni and written by Aidan Dodson.

Egyptologist and circus strongman Giovanni Belzoni was far more than a tomb-raider, says Aidan Dodson.

BBC History Magazine November 2005, Issue. 71, Volume 6, No. 11, Origin Publishing, Bristol, UK.

... The German Archaeological Institute has just finished excavating at Heliopolis (Matareya) one of the most important sites in Egyptian history: the remains of the ancient city of On. The temple area is older and larger than that of Karnak. Now, building of a huge shopping mall has started right on top of the temple! It will cut through the temple's main axis and its causeway. The Supreme Council of Antiquities doesn't want to get involved so as not to cross the authorities in Heliopolis. The Germans are frightened and don't want to say anything, as they might lose their permit to excavate. How is this allowed to happen? Would they build a mall in Karnak? ...

Letters from readers: Comments on Qatameya, Cairo Magazine, Egypt, October 20, 2005.

The permanent committee for monuments agreed to allow a German archaeological mission to conduct a study on Tuna Al-Jebal tombs in Minya, Upper Egypt, in preparation for renovating them.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said the German mission will launch an archaeological survey in the area in preparation for the renovation of the site and turning it into a world tourist destination.

Egyptian-German project to renovate Minya monuments, State Information Service, Egypt, October 31, 2005.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said that the first two sites in the Grand Egyptian Museum which the ministry establishes at Cairo, Alexandria desert road will be inaugurated early next year.

The two sites are the power station and the World Centre of Restoration, which represent the beginning of the giant museum which is considered the largest in the entire world.

The museum will be built on an area of 117 feddans, and will embrace more that 100,000 pieces of antiquities that tell the various stages of Pharaonic civilization.

The museum will be implemented over the coming five years, and will provide more than 3000 job opportunities to the distinguished graduates.

The Minister added that President Hosni Mubarak follows up the various steps of the project by the contributes effectively in surmounting any difficulties or obstacles that delay the construction of the museum.

The museum would be the greatest cultural world project in the current century.

Farouk Hosni: opening of first two sites at grand Egyptian museum, State Information Service, Egypt, November 01, 2005.

The Pyramids of Egypt are arguably the most famous and grandest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, yet only a small percentage of people have ever viewed them live — until now. PyramidCam.com provides the first live view of these ancient and beautiful monuments, seen through the lens of a high definition network camera (www.pyramidcam.com).

"The Internet and network cameras make it possible for anyone with a computer to view the Pyramids during the daylight hours in Cairo in all their varying moods under changing light and local weather conditions," said Jim Sorenson of PyramidCam.com. "Our main objective is to make the Pyramids visually available to the entire world on a real-time basis: to schools and universities; to those who cannot travel; and to those who only know them from pictures in books, from television or from scanned photos taken off the web..."

Live Webcam Captures the Beauty of the Pyramids, Yahoo! Finance, USA, October 26, 2005.

Although now at home in the Rutgers University Geology Museum, the female mummy that resides on the Old Queens campus building spent many years in a far more undignified place: one of the closets of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

That's right, mummy.

Few students here are aware of the opportunity to catch a rare glimpse into the burial ceremony of a foreign and strange culture.

Of course, other than its resting place, there is very little known about the mysterious mummy.

"We know it came from Northern Egypt, but that's about it," said William Selden, the collections manager of the Geology Hall...

Mysterious mummy lays in Geology Hall, The Daily Targum, New Jersey, USA, October 28, 2005, via ArchaeoBlog

World-renowned Egyptologist Kent Weeks, director of the Theban Mapping Project and professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, will speak at Connecticut College on Thursday, Nov. 3 [2005], at 5 p.m. His lecture, "The Future of Pharaohs: Protecting Egypt's Heritage," will take place in the Charles Chu Asian Arts Reading Room in Shain Library.

This event is free and open to the public.

Weeks made international headlines in 1995 when he uncovered the entrance to a massive "lost tomb" in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. That coup, according to the Discovery Channel, is considered to be on a short list of the 20th century's most important discoveries in Egypt, second only to finding King Tut...

Egyptologist on "Future of the Pharaohs" Nov. 3, Connecticut College, Connecticut, USA, October 31, 2005.

Egyptian archaeologists, who normally scour the desert in search of treasures of the past, have discovered that one of the greatest caches of antiquities may well be in the basement of the Egyptian Museum. For the last century, artefacts have been stored away in crates there and forgotten, often allowed to disintegrate in the dank, dusty cavern.

Forgotten until now. The recent theft and recovery of three statues from the basement have prompted antiquity officials in Egypt to redouble an effort already under way to complete the first comprehensive inventory of artefacts in the basement.

"For the last 100 years, curators sat down to drink tea, but they did not do their jobs," said Zahi Hawass, the general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. "How many artefacts are in the basement? It was awful."

Step through a small, Hobbit-sized door, down a steep flight of stairs and through a locked gate. The basement is a maze of arched passageways and bare light bulbs hanging from decaying wires. It is packed with wooden crates, hundreds of them, sometimes piled floor to ceiling...

Those Forgotten Mummies in the Cellar Must Be Cursed, The New York Times, New York, USA, November 01, 2005.

cf. Digging for antiquities at the Egyptian Museum, International Herald Tribune, France, November 01, 2005.