Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni has approved carrying out an urgent project to renovate and develop the biggest tomb at the Luxor Pharaonic cemetery in Thebes'.

The project will be implemented in cooperation with the French Strasbourg University and the French Institute for Oriental Studies.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said the project aims at reaching deep areas inside the tomb. Hawass said the tomb dates back to the 26th Dynasty.

Biggest tomb at pharaonic Thebes's cemetery renovated, State Information Service, Egypt, January 29, 2006.

A beautiful black granite statue of Queen Tiye, mother of the monotheistic king Akhenaten, was unearthed last Monday in Luxor, reports Nevine El-Aref. At Karnak's Mut Temple, a John Hopkins University archaeological mission stumbled upon the statue while brushing sand off the temple's second hall.

"The statue is mostly intact," said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), who added that although the 160cm tall statue has a broken arm and a missing leg, it was still considered very well preserved. It features a standing Queen Tiye wearing a wig and a cobra-decorated crown.

Initial examinations revealed that the back of the statue is engraved with two columns of hieroglyphic text bearing different titles of king Amenhotep III, who ruled for 38 years during the 18th Dynasty. According to Sabri Abdel-Aziz, head of the SCA's Ancient Egypt Department, the inscriptions written on the statue also include a cartouche of a 21st Dynasty queen called Henutaw, which reveals that the same statue was used in a subsequent era...

Discovering Queen Tiye, Zahi Hawass, The Plateau, Guardian's Egypt, February 2006.

cf. Statue of King Tut's Grandmother Found, Discovery Channel News, USA, January 26, 2006. This article is longer than most that were around last week.

cf. Johns Hopkins Team Discovers Statue of Egyptian Queen, The JHU Gazette, John Hopkins University, Maryland, USA, Vol. 35, No. 19, January 30, 2006.

Roman palaces were adorned by the precious emerald stone, while Cleopatra declared Egyptian emerald mines her personal property. Join Mohamed El-Hebeishy as he digs up the story behind one of the oldest emerald mines in the world.

The Emerald Mountain — or rather Mons Smaragdus as the Romans used to call it — is a complex of around 180 square kilometres located in the central Egyptian Eastern Desert. Marsa Alam and the village of Sheikh Al-Shazli are the nearest urban centres to the site. Mons Smaragdus is composed of around nine small mining communities, with the one in Wadi Sikeit representing the most important archaeological site, due to the large temple carved into the body of the mountain.

The temple of Sikeit was first built during the Ptolemaic times...

Snap Shots, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 780, February 02 - 08, 2006.

A week-long symposium on Christianity and monasticism opens today at Sohag's White Monastery, reports Jill Kamil.

The community in Sohag has been showing such immense interest in the activities going on in and around their city for months now, in preparation for the third International Symposium on Coptic studies, said Coptologist Gawdat Gabra, that Fawzi Estephanos, president of the St Mark Foundation for Coptic Studies, along with members of the organising committee, decided to stage a public presentation on the event at the Coptic Cathedral.

"It was an opportunity to inform the residents of Sohag of the rich Christian heritage of the area," said Gabra.

The presentation was scheduled immediately before the reception and dinner for participants hosted by Bishop Pachom of Sohag.

The third symposium, which follows those convened in monasteries in Wadi Al-Natrun and Al-Fayoum, will continue until 7 February. Sohag has two monasteries, popularly known as the White and the Red, in reference to their construction in limestone and red brick respectively, and both are associated with St Shenoute, a local saint born in a village near Akhmim in the 4th century...

Sohag's heritage in focus, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 780, February 02 - 08, 2006.

Fourth-graders and their families travelled back in time to ancient Egypt Friday for the school's annual Egyptian Feast, celebrating a three-month integrated study of the Middle Eastern country that has become a class tradition.

Fourth-grade teacher Chris Gestay said the students have been studying Egypt since October, and the unit incorporates not only social studies, but geography, math, reading and writing. The feast is the highlight of the unit, she said.

"It really represents what Lincoln is all about, when it comes to delving deeper into material," she said.

Fourth-grade team leader Nancy Pollock said students also took a field trip to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston's Egypt collection...

A feast fit for King Tut, Lincoln Journal, Massachusetts, USA, February 02, 2006.