You’ll be able to journey to ancient Egypt without leaving the country when King Tut and his treasures arrive in Chicago for an exhibit at the Field Museum from May 26 [2006] through Jan. 1 [2007].

The exhibit has had two very successful runs in Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and will travel to the Franklin Institute Philadelphia in 2007, completing its American tour.

Field Museum has sold nearly 170,000 advance tickets, according to its Web site, www.fieldmuseum.org...

Treasures of Tut to shine in Chicago, Canton Repository, Ohio, USA, May 11, 2006.

Those lips, those eyes, that perfect nose and flawless skin:

It's Tut.

Or is it?

As the Field Museum Tuesday began installing its Tutankhamun exhibit, which opens May 26, officials showed reporters one of the show's 130 items, a wood and plaster bust of the boy king.

That's a good lookin' kid.

But it's not how Tut actually looked, experts say...

Tutankhamun show unmasks king, Chicago Sun-Times, California, USA, May 10, 2006.

Traces of pollutant lead found in harbour sediments have revealed that Alexander the Great did not found the Egyptian city of Alexandria — he just rebranded it.

One of antiquity’s most opulent economic and cultural centres, Alexandria is named after the Macedonian emperor Alexander the Great, who was believed to have ordered its construction on the western branch of the Nile River in 331 B.C.

But new geochemical data, published by Alain Véron from the Paul Cézanne University in Aix-en-Provence, France, and colleagues in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters, revealed that this part of the Nile was settled 4,500 years ago, more than two millennia before Alexander's arrival...

Sediments Reveal Alexandria's Hidden History, Discovery Channel News, USA, May 11, 2006.

The lost world of Cleopatra’s palaces has been dug out of the muddy Mediterranean sea bed by a man dubbed the Underwater Indiana Jones.

The results of Franck Goddio’s excavations, comprising 500 priceless finds that shed light on 1,500 years of ancient history, will be put on public view today for the first time.

President Mubarak of Egypt will open the exhibition in Berlin, and it will later transfer to Paris and London and eventually to a specially prepared site in Egypt...

... The exhibition [of “Egypt's Sunken Treasures” (Ägyptens versunkene Schätze)] at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, a converted Kaiser-era palace near the former Berlin Wall, will be open until September 4 [2006].

That's the first time I've seen London mentioned!

Ten photographs can be found on Yahoo's Anthropology & Archaeology slideshow.

Cleopatra's gems rise from the deep, The Times, UK, May 11, 2006.

cf. PORTRÄT FRANCK GODDIO , Spiegel, Germany, May 10, 2006.

More on the goings on at the Getty. This one being about an Italian claim for a ancient Greek bronze statue that left the country illegally after being netted by an Italian fishing trawler in international waters.

... The statue depicts a young athlete. Remnants of flax found in its core suggest that it was made in the ancient Greek city of Olympia, where the grain grew abundantly, said Carol Mattusch, an expert in Greek bronzes at George Mason University in Virginia.

Several experts have concluded that the statue is perhaps one of dozens depicting Olympic victors that Lysippos, the personal sculptor of Alexander the Great, created to line the pathways of the birthplace of the games. But proving that Lysippos was the artist may not be possible, Mattusch and others say. If Lysippos did sculpt the statue, it is the only one of his 1,500 works thought to have survived. His craftsmanship is known today only through several Roman copies of his work...

... When, in March 1989, Italian authorities requested that the bronze be returned, Getty Museum director John Walsh replied that the request was an "unwelcome surprise." The statue has "little possibility of being related to Italian cultural heritage," he wrote, and only a "tenuous relation" to Italy's patrimony.

When Italy renewed its demand in 1996, Getty antiquities curator Marion True said it was "not realistic" for Italy to think the bronze would be returned, noting that the statute of limitations for a claim had expired...

The Amazing Catch They Let Slip Away, Los Angeles Times, California, USA, May 11, 2006.

A 10-year-old fourth-grader finally got to show students her science fair project Tuesday.

Whitney Ingraham's project on the mummification of pigs was deemed too graphic for the science fair at her Colorado Springs elementary school, but school officials finally let her show it to high school students.

Ingraham, an avid reader on life in ancient Egypt got the OK for the project from Stetson Elementary School officials, but when they saw the finished result, they thought it was not appropriate for elementary school audiences...

Ingraham had used dead piglets that a butcher discovered in a sow and used mummification techniques used by Egyptians to preserve the piglets. That included removing the tiny organs herself and pulling the brains out of the animals with a hook through the nose — the same way humans were mummified thousands of years ago...

Fourth-Grader's Mummified Pig Project Creates Controversy, ABC 7 News Denver, Colorado, USA, May 10, 2006.