You don't have to look hard around Southern Illinois to come across something "Egyptian."

And to learn about the ancient civilization, one need not go farther than the Science Center.

From now until May, the [Carbondale] Science Center in University Mall is hosting "Ancient Egypt in Little Egypt."

Pamela Madden, director of the Science Center, said the exhibit will give children and adults an opportunity to play Egyptian games, view real artifacts and get hands-on with the mummification process...

Science Center goes Egyptian: New exhibit displays real artifacts, hands on projects centered around ancient civilization, The Southern, Illinois, USA, December 24, 2005.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas from Mark at EgyptologyBlog!

Not disappointed with the accomplishment of this year’s target, Egypt’s tourism officials are hopeful that next year it will be able to lure 9.5 million tourists. Despite of the bombings, the land of Pharaohs saw a 5 percent increase in tourist arrivals up to this year. The target of a higher growth could not be achieved because of a stronger currency, weaker European economies and bombings in news agencies quoted Sharm el Sheikh, the tourism minister.

Ahmad Al Maghrabi said the government had aimed for nine million tourists in 2005 as part of its strategy to create more jobs in an industry that already employs 10 percent of Egypt’s work force. But by the end of the year, the number of visitors will stand at 8.5 million. “It’s the currency, the slowing down of the main exporting markets to us and the situation in Sharm,” Maghrabi said to explain the shortfall...

Egypt aims for 9.5m tourists in 2006, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, December 20, 2005.

Forget all those newfangled video games this Christmas. Forget the enemy armies and drooling zombies. Block your ears to the . Go back to the future of a far more profound adventure. Enter the tomb of Thutmose III.

In his day (1479-26 BC), Thutmose was a great and glorious pharaoh. The Napoleon of the New Kingdom, he was a military genius, a judicious administrator and a wise statesman to boot.

While his body was being mummified, the walls of his tomb were painted with a complete depiction of the Amduat: a key Egyptian text that chronicles the passage of the Sun god, hour by hour, through the darkness of night. His journey — made on a barque through a land of solar baboons, scarabs and serpents — is beset by dangers that must be overcome by incantatory magic if he is to be reborn the next day...

Immortal Pharaoh, a show that combines original artefacts with a full-scale replica of the burial chamber, is open at the City Art Centre in Edinburgh. This stereo-optical adventure is far more enthralling than any stocking-filler video game...

You'd better hurry though as this exhibition finishes on the 8th January 2006 and is closed on 25th and 26th of December and the 2nd January.

Step into the world of the pharaohs through this 21st-century tomb, Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times, UK, December 22, 2005.

By Zahi Hawass

The tomb of the great 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep I, which could be supposed to lie in the Valley of the Kings, has never been found. Amenhotep I was a very important member of this dynasty, and his tomb is one of the few undiscovered so far. Up to know all the evidence suggests that he is not buried with other royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, and Daniel Polz, who represents the German Institute in Cairo, believes that he is buried in the cemetery of Draa Abu Al-Naga. Polz has been excavating in this area for a long time.

Three years ago, when I became secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the Polish scholar Niwinski came to see me and asked what my plans were for the following week. When I asked him why, he replied that he was going to find an intact tomb and would like me to accompany him. He was convinced that the tomb of Amenhotep I was in the cliff of Deir Al-Bahri.

A year ago, I was visiting the Deir Al-Bahri area and entered the cache where the mummies were discovered by the Abdel-Rasoul family in 1871. These mummies were transferred to the Cairo Museum in 1881. While I was there, I noticed workmen removing huge stones from the cliff. I was worried because this was very dangerous work that could threaten the temple of Hatshepsut, which was directly underneath them. I learnt that this excavation was under the Polish scholar, Niwinski. The SCA permanent committee immediately stopped the work at this site to ensure the protection of the temple of Hatshepsut. Niwinski came to see me and I told him that the work above was dangerous and could ruin the first level of the temple. He said he was about to find the tomb, and we had just stopped him...

Dig days: Quest for the tomb of Amenhotep I, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 774, December 22 - 28, 2005.

Why do so few Egyptian and foreign tourists visit the Nubia Museum in Aswan, asks Jill Kamil.

In his press release on the occasion of the opening of the Nubia Museum in Aswan in 1997, Ahmed Nawar, head of the museum sector of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), wrote that the setting up of new museums in the provinces was based on sound research into the singular identity of each chosen area "because museums are expected to play a cultural role and contribute to the tourist industry".

Today, while Nubians regularly flock to the museum, singly or in groups, on family or school outings, they outnumber by far foreign and Egyptian tourists and sightseers. It is worth looking into the reason why the museum is failing to fulfil its role as an income-generating destination for tourism.

The loss of Nubia was one of the world's great tragedies. Not only did it mean the inundation of an entire land and the loss of its ancient monuments, but it uprooted an entire population from its native soil. Nubia was one of the few places remaining on earth that was unspoiled by humanity...

Misplaced museum, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 774, December 22 - 28, 2005.

by Zahi Hawass

I received this week a proposal for collection of the pins and debris sampling inside the shafts leading from the so-called Queen's Chamber inside the Great Pyramid from Dr. Tc Ng, an independent researcher from Hong Kong.

As many know, we received a proposal for a robotic exploration of the shafts from National University in Singapore (NUS). But this proposal described devices that can developed that could be added to the NUS robot with resistible impact, that will significantly enhance the upcoming robotic exploration, by reliably collecting the pins as well as other small artefacts.

The Honk Kong robots are totally self-contained and require no resources. Their umbilical wires will add negligible mass to the Singapore robot. The Honk Kong expert said to me: "they added in their robots devices that are carefully designed to protect the pyramid's shafts." He added that all of the robots have been tested on slopes up to 45 degrees, on a variety of materials, including polished limestone. However, it is known that the floor of the shafts is the region of the pins and debris is rough and as such are ideal for maximizing the grip of our miniature rovers.

Now that the two robots have been studied we will make a decision soon...

News on the Robot and the Secret Doors inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu, The Plateau: Official Website of Dr. Zahi Hawass, December 2005.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak and his wife are to witness the cultural evening held by Culture Ministry on the occasion of the opening of Mohamed Ali Pasha Palace in Shubra, Cairo due in next Monday, the government noted.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni was reported saying that Mubarak will tour the palace the restoration of which has lasted for four years at a cost of LE 50 million "which will be turned into an international centre to host festivals, conferences and high-ranking guests."

Mohamed Ali Pasha Palace to open Monday, Arabic News, December 21, 2005.

The King Tut show is shamelessly overpriced, but — Holy Osiris! — the art is terrific!

When I told a neighbour last week that I was going to the King Tut exhibition, a look of relief came over her face. "Oh, gosh, I thought I missed it," she said. "I thought it had come and gone." This was the day before the show opened.

That overbearing drumbeat announcing the imminent arrival of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," now at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, has been so insistent recently — from newspaper supplements and posters to whimsical little features on local television news — that a lot of people probably think Tut has been in town for months.

Well, finally, here's the real deal. The Boy King has arrived — in a manner of speaking. Of course, the mummy of Tutankhamun, discovered in 1922 in a burial chamber near Luxor, Egypt, remains in its home country, as does Tut's elaborate gold-plated sarcophagus (three "nested" coffins within four "nested" shrines, each element fitting snugly within a larger version of itself). But 50 burial objects are now on display at the museum, as well as 70 objects from other tombs and a nifty video reproduction of the grimacing mummy...

Chip Off the Old Blockbuster, New Times Broward-Palm Beach, Florida, December 22, 2005.

The wonders of Ancient Egypt have arrived in Madrid, with an exhibition of more than 120 pieces from Cairo Museum on show at the Isabel II Exhibition Centre until 14th May [2006].

All of the exhibits have incalculable archaeological value, and some of them have never been seen in Spain before. Many of the pieces are more than 4,500 years old.

The exhibition, called ‘Faraón’ or Pharaoh, is actually two exhibitions in one. The other part is a three dimensional journey, produced by the British Museum, through the inside of a mummy.

The documentary shows how the mummy of Nesperennub was put through a scanning machine in a London hospital, producing more than 1,500 transversal sections at one minute intervals. The projection is shown inside an specially-constructed 18 metre high pyramid.

Ancient Egypt arrives in Spain, TypicallySpanish.com, Spain, December 20, 2005.

The official title is “Faraón. El enigma en Madrid”.

cf. Spain Culture Review - Wed Dec 21st 2005, TypicallySpanish.com, Spain, December 21, 2005.

cf. Spain Culture Review - Wed Dec 21st 2005, TypicallySpanish.com, Spain, December 21, 2005.

cf. Lots of Spanish language coverage via Google News España.

Some 64 centuries ago, a prehistoric people of obscure origins farmed an area along Egypt’s Nile River.

Barely out of the Stone Age, they produced simple but well-made pottery, jewellery and stone tools, and carefully buried their dead with ritual objects in apparent preparation for an afterlife. These items often included doll-like female figurines with exaggerated sexual features, thought to possibly symbolize rebirth.

Despite the simplicity of their possessions, a new study suggests these people, the Badarians, may have ultimately given rise to one of the world’s first major civilizations some 14 centuries later: the glittering culture of Egypt.

Indeed, the Egyptians seem to have been basically the same people from the end of the Stone Age through late Roman times...

Study traces Egyptians’ stone-age roots, World Science, December 17, 2005.

A Dutch chemist has claimed the fabled Mahogany Ship could be evidence that ancient Egyptians discovered Australia more than 4000 years ago.

Dr Reinoud de Jonge is the co-author of the controversial book , which postulates that various megalithic structures and caves around the world hold clues to Egyptian fleets being the first to visit every continent except Antarctica.

Mr de Jonge said he knew little about the Mahogany Ship but such stories about ancient ships of discovery were interesting.

“I read about the findings of 3500-year-old wood in the neighbourhood of the ship ... it does not surprise me at all,” Mr de Jonge said...

Egyptians the 'first', Warrnambool Standard, Australia, December 14, 2005.

cf. How the SunGod Reached America official website.

When Egyptologists entered the tomb for the first time more than four decades ago, they expected to be surprised. Explorers of newly exposed tombs always expect that, and this time they were not disappointed – they were confounded.

It was back in 1964, outside Cairo, near the famous Step Pyramid in the necropolis of Saqqara and a short drive from the Sphinx and the breathtaking pyramids at Giza. The newfound tomb yielded no royal mummies or dazzling jewels. But the explorers stopped in their tracks when the light of their kerosene lamp shined on the wall art in the most sacred chamber.

There, carved in stone, were the images of two men embracing. Their names were inscribed above: Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep. Though not of the nobility, they were highly esteemed in the palace as the chief manicurists of the king, sometime from 2380 to 2320 B.C., in the time known as the fifth dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Grooming the king was an honoured occupation.

Archaeologists were taken aback. It was extremely rare in ancient Egypt for an elite tomb to be shared by two men of apparently equal standing...

... David O'Connor, a professor of ancient Egyptian art at the [New York University] Institute of Fine Arts, said: "My suggestion is that Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were indeed twins, but of a very special sort. They were conjoined twins, and it was this physical peculiarity that prompted the many depictions of them hand-holding or embracing in their tomb-chapel."

Dr. O'Connor elaborated on his hypothesis in a recent lecture and in an interview in New York. He is describing and defending the idea before scholarly peers at a conference, "Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt," this week at the University of Wales in Swansea...

A Mystery, Locked in Timeless Embrace, John Noble Wilford, The New York Times, New York, USA, December 20, 2005.

Plans have been announced for the $550 million Grand Egyptian Museum, to be established near the Pyramids near Cairo. It will be among the world’s largest museums, and is by far the biggest to be built from scratch. The venture is expected to attract up to five million visitors a year, slightly more than the British Museum in London, which is the world leader. There will be some 100,000 Egyptian artefacts on show (compared with the British Museum’s 80,000 displayed objects, covering all major cultures).

Project director Dr Yasser Mansour told The Art Newspaper that the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) will open in 2010. He was in London, for the Museums Association conference last month, to unveil the plans. The new museum will become the home for most of the huge collection housed at the present Egyptian Museum, in the centre of Cairo, in Tahrir Square.

The existing Cairo museum was opened in 1902, for 10,000 antiquities, but it rapidly filled up, as discoveries were made, and there are now 120,000 objects on display, with many tens of thousands in the basement store...

Plans unveiled for $550 million museum near the Pyramids, The Art Newspaper, London, UK, December 19, 2005.

The latest scientific technologies were employed to re-examine Tutankhamen's wine goblets which had been found in his graveyard. The Spanish nutrition and Egyptology team discovered that the goblets had a residue of poison in them, leading them to conclude that Tutankhamen was poisoned while drinking his red wine. (From Al Ahram)

Hmmm. Either this is new or refers back to the Red Wine articles from last month which do not mention poison.

Only in Egypt! King Tut poisoned, Middle East Times, Cyprus, December 19, 2005.

The exhibition's official image is the face on a small coffin discovered in the tomb of King Tutankhamun, the famed boy-pharaoh of ancient Egypt.

The unofficial symbol might be found in the museum gift shop: A tissue box in the shape of a pharaoh's head, with the paper dispensed through its nose. Price: $24.99.

After drawing nearly a million visitors in Los Angeles, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" opened Thursday at Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art. From the start, the exhibition was designed to be a profit-making "blockbuster."

After all, the King Tut show that toured the U.S. from 1976 to 1979 was an eye-popping success. It pioneered the age of the blockbuster exhibition — heavily marketed spectacles devoted to popular artists or subject matter and featuring well-stocked gift shops.

After Tut, instead of offering dry, what-you-see-is-what-you-get exhibitions, some museum officials took off their tweeds and got into the entertainment business.

Tut-mania is a proven psychosis...

Exhibit Sells Tut as the Boy King of Bling, The Ledger, Florida, USA, December 18, 2005.

Assembling “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” must have been much like recording a favourite mix tape: The first few tracks should feel like a warm-up, an invitation to search further for the jewels tucked within. You might start by throwing on a bit of ambient lounge; then take it up a notch with some swirling, dark guitar work. Slowly, you coax your audience deeper into the realm you've imagined.

The Tut exhibit at Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art follows this tack: Visitors enter a small foyer for a quick 90-second mini-flick introducing them to the show. A soundtrack of soft chanting and bells is heard. The initial gallery, "Egypt Before Tut," offers statues of lioness and serpent goddesses, ancient model boats set against a wallpapered backdrop of dunes and rivers and the green scrub that fringes Egypt's deserts. The spell is cast, but its force doesn't take hold until one arrives at the entrance to the underworld.

Yes, it sounds dramatic, and it most certainly is. Shaded in Hades black and ghostly hieroglyphs, The "Death, Burial & Afterlife" gallery is described as a "miniature universe for the deceased." Its contents were excavated from the tombs of Yuya and Thuya...

The king and I, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, December 17, 2005.

The new issue of Archaeology Magazine is out now and contains a review of Hatshepsut The Female Pharaoh at the de Young Museum.

After the death of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most famous female pharaoh, her stepson and successor, Thutmose III, looking for a return to tradition, set out to erase the identity of this aberrant ruler by defacing her monuments and omitting her from an official record of kings.

"Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh," at San Francisco's rebuilt M.H. de Young Memorial Museum (through February 5), celebrates this singular ruler and the richness of her time. A collaboration of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the exhibition features some 250 objects, from tiny ornaments to colossal statuary, loaned from museums in the United States, Europe, and Egypt...

The Female Pharaoh, Blake Edgar, Archaeology Magazine, New York, USA, Volume 59, Number 1, January / February 2006.

The latest issue of Ancient Egypt Magazine arrived on my doorstep on Saturday. Here is a rundown of its contents.

• Replicating and Egyptian Relief
  Annemarie La Pensée describes how an important artefact from the World Museum Liverpool was replicated, at the request of Egypt’s SCA, using the latest technology.
• Ancient Egyptian Medicine
  Ancient Egyptian literature contains some surprisingly modern diagnoses and treatments for illnesses, as Dr. George M. Burden discovered.
• Made in Egypt
  Zaghloul Ibrahim is interviewed by Ayman Wahby Taher about his work re-creating replicas of Egyptian masterpieces.
• A Lion of Amenhotep III
  AE investigates a lion at the Citadel in Cairo, and compares it with other well-known sculptures carved in the reign of the great pharaoh.
• Black Athena
  Who is or was “Black Athena”? Janet Robinson gives some answers and sees the concept as opening up the world of ancient Egypt to many who felt excluded in the past.
• Ancient Egypt on the Small Screen
  The BBC’s new series on ancient Egypt reviewed by AE’s Editor, who finds a great deal to criticise.
• The Temple of Ptah at Karnak
  Charlotte Booth gives readers a guided tour of this rarely-visited corner of the Karnak site.
• Mummies at the Movies
  Mark Walker examines the influence of ancient Egypt, especially the modern fascination with mummies, on the fantasy world of the Big Screen.
• The Baron’s Palace
  AE tells the story of one of Cairo’s most unusual landmarks.
• Sphinx
  Bob Partridge looks at some of the many examples of sphinxes in Egypt.

Ancient Egypt Magazine, Empire Publications, Manchester, UK, Volume 6, No. 3, Issue 33, December 2005 / January 2006.

... This was hardly a Seabourn cruise. We'd met Ali in a dusty Nubian village on Elephantine Island, near the river's First Cataract at Aswan, and hired him to sail us down the Nile to Luxor on his felucca.

These graceful, lateen-rigged boats have been scudding up and down the river since the days of the pharaohs, and their technology hasn't evolved a whole lot over the millennia. Ali's felucca, the Reiko — named for his Japanese girlfriend — was 22 feet long, and what little space there was below deck was used for storage.

The six of us — Ali, my wife, Jeri, and me, plus Gayle and two British backpackers we'd met in Aswan — slept beneath the stars on the wooden deck and dined on boiled eggs and rice prepared on a smoky little Primus stove. In four days on the river we never bathed, and whenever we wanted to use the facilities we had to ask Ali to pull over to the bank...

Travel misers love company more than just travel misery, San Francisco Chronicle, California, December 11, 2005, via Nigel Hetherington at Archaeologist at Large.

The first ever virtual museum on Islamic art and architecture in the Mediterranean, launched last week, gives navigators an opportunity to explore the splendid Islamic monuments of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Nevine El-Aref navigates.

The second phase of Museum with no Frontiers project (MWNF) — aimed at developing cultural relations between countries north and south of the Mediterranean by enhancing the landmarks of a shared history — has been a year in the making. It finally saw the light last Friday.

"The Discover Islamic Art Virtual Museum" gives instant access to 850 artefacts and 385 monuments, linking every Islamic item exhibited to sites on the MWNF itineraries, which was created between 1999 and 2004.

The electronic display was achieved through the installation of a special network through 17 European and Mediterranean museums in 14 countries — Algeria, Egypt, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Kingdom — as a gateway to a veritable museum-with-no-frontiers on Islamic art and architecture in the Mediterranean.

www.discoverislamicart.org, which is available in English, French and Arabic in addition to the local language of each participating country, creates an innovative exhibition style showing the Islamic heritage of the Mediterranean basin, alongside the collections of Islamic art held by the participating museums...

Surfing Islamic art, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 773, December 15 - 21, 2005.

Aten the Egyptian sun god had just painted the skyline gold when Jack and Beverly McDermott arrived at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. They were astounded to be first in line to see the new, highly hyped show "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs."

"I can't believe there aren't more people," said Jack McDermott, looking around as if to make sure he was in the right place. It was 7:30 a.m. and the McDermotts, who live in Hollywood, were entitled as museum members to enter the first day of the Tut show at 8 a.m.

Above them, not obelisks but a thicket of transmission towers on television trucks reached for the sun. Inside the trucks, cameramen dozed.

The Tutankhamun show, which will stay in Fort Lauderdale until April 16, will move on to Chicago, Philadelphia and London.

That the show began in January in Los Angeles, home of artful ballyhoo, is highly appropriate. Tut has been preceded by wave upon wave of pre-publicity, as skilfully choreographed as a Rolling Stones tour, if somewhat more dignified in style...

Crowd awed as King Tut show opens, Palm Beach Post, Florida, USA, December 15, 2005.

cf. Museum-goers flock to King Tut exhibit, Times Leader, Pennsylvania, USA, December 15, 2005.

cf. An audience with King Tut, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, December 15, 2005.

cf. King Tut exhibit opens to fanfare in Florida, The Mercury News, California, USA, December 15, 2005.

cf. Museum-goers flock to King Tut exhibit, Contra Costa Times, California, USA, December 15, 2005.

cf. King Tut reigns, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, December 16, 2005.

cf. Show resurrects Tut fans' passion, Palm Beach Post, Florida, USA, December 16, 2005.

cf. The return of King Tut, The Southwest Florida News-Press, Florida, USA, December 16, 2005.

cf. King Tut exhibition brings treasures of the pharaohs to the U.S., The Winston-Salem Journal, North Carolina, USA, December 16, 2005.

cf. Mummy Dearest, The Miami Herald, Florida, USA, December 16, 2005.

cf. Mummy Dearest, The Miami Herald, Florida, USA, December 16, 2005.

The hair is of biblical proportions, long and silvery, straight out of The Ten Comman