The largest exhibit in the Museum of Arts and Sciences' 50-year history, a collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts that includes three mummies and spans 4,200 years, opens today.

Museum officials said they have waited two years to play host to "Glories of Ancient Egypt" because the exhibit is in such demand. Brown & Brown Inc., a national insurance company with headquarters in Daytona Beach, has sponsored the entire $250,000 exhibit.

The artefacts, many taken from the excavated burial sites of pharaohs, minor officials and ordinary citizens, are on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Its ancient Egypt collection is the oldest in the United States and considered one of the best in the world.

This is the first time most, if not all, of the artefacts have been seen in Florida, museum officials said...

Egypt reveals its secrets, Orlando Sentinel, Florida, USA, November 18, 2005.

The story of Hatshepsut is a remarkable one. She led armies and trade expeditions, built one of the greatest monuments in Egypt, and switched her appearance from female to male in order to rule as pharaoh. In a fundamentally patriarchal society, she ruled for nearly twenty years.

After her death, someone tried to erase the memory of Hatshepsut as king. She was left off lists of rulers; her statuary was demolished; her image was systematically erased; and her name on monuments and reliefs was covered over by the names of other kings. For nearly two thousand years, she was forgotten, and she may have remained that way except for the discovery of her mortuary temple.

In 1828, Jean Francois Champollion, famous for deciphering the Rosetta Stone, made his one and only trip to Egypt. Among the places he visited was Deir al-Bahri, where a nearby temple had been buried under centuries of desert sand and piles of rocks fallen from the cliffs above. There he noticed a curious inconsistency. He discovered the partially erased name of a king, Amenenthe, accompanied by feminine titles and forms. Pictorially, the king was shown as male, bearded and dressed as a pharaoh, but hieroglyphically, he seemed to be a she...

The Woman Who Would Be King, Caroline Kim-Brown, Humanities Magazine, National Endowment for the Humanities, USA, Volume 26, Number 6, November / December, 2005.

Egyptologists are again looking to converge on Egypt in order to continue excavating one of the most important archaeological sites in recent, years. The Helwan necropolis, 15 miles south of Cairo, is home to over 10,000 tombs that date from pre-dynasty Egypt to the third dynasty (5,000 years ago).

According to Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist and professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, Helwan is the flagship site in Lower Egypt.

"It is one of the most important sites in the north due to the necropolis' sheer size," said Ikram.

Under the direction of the Australian Centre for Egyptology at Sydney's Macquarie University, teams of archaeologists have unearthed thousands of tombs over the years at Helwan – this year is sure to bring more of the same...

Helwan necropolis attracts Egyptologists, The Daily Star, Lebanon, December 05, 2005.

Ancient Thebes, a ghost of the centuries, lives on in colourfully painted tombs deep beneath the dry desert and towering columns of ruined temples.

This city, built on and around Thebes' treasures along Upper Egypt's life-giving Nile, holds the grandeur of the finest Egyptian monuments dating to 2000 B.C.

The vast site has lured travellers for centuries.

Greek historian Herodotus described the "hundred gates of Thebes" after his visit around 450-440 B.C. During Thebes' twilight in 19 B.C., Roman emperor Germanicus found one of the last Theban priests to explain the mysteries of hieroglyphics gracing temple columns, obelisks and walls.

More recently, French writer Gustave Flaubert, sailing down the Nile in 1850, described the sensations of a visit in a letter to his mother...

Tombs, temples and a bustling market draw travellers to the ancient city along the Nile, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Kansas, USA, December 04, 2005.

Nine-year-old Stacy Wolfe once waited five hours to see King Tutankhamun. After flying from Ohio to Washington, D.C., in a small plane piloted by her father, the two took their place in a winding line at the Smithsonian. To pass the time, the girl wandered about the Museum of Natural History, marvelling at the jigsaw puzzle of dinosaur fossils and how her father could calmly read the paper when the "Boy Pharaoh's" jewelled and gold riches lay only steps away.

The year was 1976, and Tut had begun his seven-city tour in the United States, one that would run three years and draw about 8 million viewers. Today Wolfe, 38, is a biology teacher at the Art Institute in Fort Lauderdale, but she still recalls what most dazzled her young eyes: an ornate gold throne and the alabaster jars that house the internal organs of ancient Egyptian royalty.

"The way these artefacts have been preserved, and the technology of the time — it's amazing," Wolfe says, her interest in Egyptology still keen...

King Tut show excites South Florida business owners and fans, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, December 05, 2005.