The global debate over the black market in ancient art is heating up.

At issue is whether art museums encourage looting of ancient sites when they buy works without detailed ownership histories, such as the large bronze statue of "Apollo the Lizard Slayer," bought in 2004 by the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Tuesday, the Archaeological Institute of America criticized guidelines on collecting of antiquities issued by the Association of Art Museum Directors, of which the Cleveland museum is a member.

"The need for museums to adopt acquisitions policies that recognize the connection between their acquisitions and the problem of looting of archaeological sites is pressing..."

Archaeologists urge museums to help curb looting of ancient art, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio, USA, March 03, 2006.

cf. Archaeologists Call For Responsible Museum Acquisitions Policies, Archaeological Institute of America, Massachusetts, USA, February 28, 2006.

In London on Nov. 24, 1922, I was a little girl celebrating my fourth birthday. Two days later, Howard Carter made his momentous discovery: the tomb of Tutankhamen, an unbelievable experience.

This meant nothing to me at the time, but when I was 10, I went with my elementary school to see the tomb's artefacts at the British Museum and was duly impressed.

My next encounter with the King Tut was 30 years ago when I visited my son and his family in Washington, D.C. There was an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution, and the museum had reproduced the steps leading to the tombs. Visitors were able to walk through and experience what Carter saw and the exhilaration he must have felt at the time. It was such a thrill and I was delighted to experience it with my family.

Last month, I went with a group from the Davie adult senior program to the Tutankhamen exhibit at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, and all these memories flooded back. This exhibit is beautifully mounted and quite awe-inspiring. I thoroughly recommend it and hope all who see it enjoy it as much as I did.

King Tut exhibit wonderful déja vu, Joan Barren, The Miami Herald, Florida, USA, March 09, 2006.

Paramount Pictures has acquired the pitch King Tut from screenwriter Neil Crawford for studio-based Lorenzo di Bonaventura to produce, says Variety.

The story is described as an action-adventure/romance film, loosely based on Howard Carter's discovery of King Tut's treasures in 1922 Egypt.

At the studio, the project is being overseen by production co-president Brad Weston and executive Dan Levine.

Paramount Opens the King Tut Tomb, ComingSoon.net, March 09, 2006.

cf. Par ready to strut its Tut, Variety, USA, March 09, 2006. Subscription required.

Massive wooden planks, ropes, and cargo boxes found in a series of caverns near the Red Sea have been identified as parts of the oldest seafaring ships ever discovered.

The find supports evidence that ancient Egyptian mariners set sail on ocean waters as much as 4,000 years ago on voyages that spanned about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) each way.

Previously, the world's oldest known seafaring ship dated from 1300 B.C., and only small fragments of it are left.

The newly found ships likely carried sailors on missions to obtain incense and other treasures from a mysterious place the Egyptians called God's Land, or Punt.

"It's very exciting," said Steven Snape, an Egyptologist at Britain's University of Liverpool, who was not involved in the work.

"It looks as though they created ships in kit form, carried them over the desert, sailed to Punt, got what they required, and abandoned the ships," Snape said...

World's Oldest Ocean Vessels Discovered in Egypt, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, March 07, 2006.

cf. World's oldest ship timbers found in Egyptian desert, EurekAlert, District of Columbia, USA, March 06, 2006.

History fans and students throughout Alabama are looking forward to meeting an unlikely but unforgettable visitor — a priest who has travelled across 6,000 miles and 3,000 years to reveal in dramatic detail how ancient Egyptians preserved and honoured their dead.

With “Mummy: the inside story,” The British Museum’s hit exhibition that showcases the mummy of Nesperennub, an ancient Egyptian cleric, the Gulf Coast Exploreum will play host to an array of priceless artefacts and high-tech visualizations that unravel the mystery of mummification. Currently on the U.S. leg of a world tour that later will include cities in Asia, “Mummy: the inside story” recently completed its showing at the Houston Museum of Natural Science and is set to open in Mobile, Alabama on March 9, 2006 for a six-month run.

“Calling this simply an ‘exhibition’ does not do justice to the extraordinary experiences that await visitors to this remarkable presentation,” said Exploreum Executive Director Michael Sullivan. “The interactive, 3D elements offer us an unforgettable chance to view, up close and in amazing detail, a world that has been clouded in mystery for thousands of years...”

SGI Technology Powers World Tour of British Museum’s Remarkable Mummy Exhibition, WebWire, Georgia, USA, March 08, 2006.