University of Memphis archeology team members could know soon whether a bandage-wrapped body rests inside one of the seven ancient coffins they discovered in February in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.

Team members were pleasantly teased last week when they opened the fifth of the chamber's seven coffins and discovered a gold infant-sized sarcophagus under 3,000-year-old pillows. There was no mummy inside.

The team hopes to get a portable X-ray machine and scanner to the site within "a week or so" to peer into the last two, made brittle by ravaging termites, the team's leader, Dr. Otto Schaden, said in a phone interview from Luxor, Egypt, shortly before his 9 p.m. bedtime Thursday.

"The big coffin in the back looked very good," Schaden...

With 5 coffins down, no mummy to be found, Commercial Appeal, Tennessee, USA, June 02, 2006.

Ancient Egyptian tombs are priceless, and conserving them is a challenge to conservators. For the first time ever, researchers have used laser light to remove the accumulated dirt of millennia. The setting was the tomb of a high-ranking official not far from the Valley of the Kings.

If only Neferhotep could see it: 3,300 years after his death, a researcher enters his tomb, directs a beam of light at the wall, and the accumulated dirt of millennia comes off with no trouble at all! Dr. Michael Panzner of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden is the first scientist to use a laser for cleaning an Egyptian tomb. Adorned with wall paintings, stone sculptures and reliefs, the tomb was once that of the senior scribe Neferhotep, who served in the temple of the god Amun. "The paintings on the walls are immeasurably valuable, for they tell us a great deal about the life of a high-ranking official", explains conservator Birte Graue. In this project sponsored by the Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung, she and her colleagues Susanne Brinkmann and Christina Verbeek are seeking new techniques for cleaning the surfaces of ancient Egyptian tombs. The team is supported by the physicist Michael Panzner.

Armed with a mobile laser supplied by Clean-Lasersysteme GmbH, the Fraunhofer researcher went up into Neferhotep's burial chamber and started his pioneering work on a narrow strip of wall just a few millimetres wide...

High Tech Laser Cleaning Egyptian Tomb, Technology News Daily, undated.

Here's the scene: I'm riding into the Sahara Desert, inhaling a dry wind that has remained unchanged for thousands of years. I'm on my way to run my fingertips over the last remaining Wonder of the World — the hulking and hauntingly beautiful Pyramids of Giza, silhouetted against a sky so bright it's white. And I'm on the back of a camel named Michael Jackson.

Hold the phone. Let's talk about temporal confusion.

I came to Egypt expecting, as I suppose everyone does, a nation steeped in antiquity. It is, after all, the seat of one of the oldest advanced human civilizations. As any sixth grader worth his salt will tell you, it's where writing was invented, where nomadic wandering became an agricultural bureaucracy, and where architectural feats impressive even to those equipped with modern technology were completed with a flourish of human willpower. Beyond all that, I'm beginning to discover that Egypt is a nation whose 5000-year-old recorded history has been — and continues to be — profoundly moulded by outsiders. In the last 2000 years alone, this place has been run by Persians, Romans, Turkish Mamluks, Arabs, the French (briefly under Napoleon), the Ottomans, and the British. And now, even an independent Egypt (since 1952) depends, as the cornerstone of its economy, on the droves of tourists who enter its borders each year, cameras and guidebooks and Euros and dollars in tow...

A week in Egypt with Michael Jackson, the pyramids and unrelenting beauty, The Seattle Times, District of Columbia, USA, June 02, 2006.

The burnt remains of a 2,400-year-old scroll buried with an ancient Greek nobleman may help unlock the secrets of early monotheistic religion — using new digital technology.

A team of U.S., British and Greek experts is working on a new reading of the enigmatic Derveni papyrus, a philosophical treatise on ancient faith that is Europe's oldest surviving manuscript.

More than four decades after the papyrus was found in a grave in northern Greece, researchers said Thursday they are close to uncovering new text from the blackened fragments left after the scroll was burned on its owner's funeral pyre.

Large sections of the mid-4th century B.C. document — written in ancient Greek — were read by scholars years ago.

But now, archaeologist Polyxeni Veleni believes U.S. imaging and scanning techniques used to decipher the Judas Gospel — which portrays Judas not as a sinister betrayer but as Jesus' confidant — will considerably expand and clarify that text...

Not Egyptology I know but I thought it might be of interest.

Technology could 'fill in many gaps' of ancient papyrus, The Miami Herald, Florida, USA, June 02, 2006.

The ad said, "Mummy: The Inside Story."

It promised the inside skinny, so to speak, for anyone visiting Nesperennub, a 2,800-year-old Egyptian mummy on display at the Gulf Coast Exploreum in downtown Mobile.

The Exploreum is across the street from a stylish new convention centre and a huge cruise ship — two items that Pensacola talked about acquiring but never did.

Nesperennub is under a glass case at the Exploreum, a kid-friendly place that makes subjects fun and educational — a tough combination.

It's also thought-provoking for adults, especially those who like "CSI: Miami" and other television shows where medical examiners and forensics experts help unravel clues and answer questions...

After 2,800 years, mummy gets new life as teaching tool, Pensacola News Journal, Florida, USA, May 29, 2006.

An exhibition showing ancient Egyptian papyri opened in Sofia's National Library.

"The eternal charm of Egyptian papyri" is organised by the Egyptian Embassy in response to the active interest of Bulgarians towards the history of this ancient civilisation.

Much of the knowledge of Ancient Egypt comes from papyri and tomb paintings, created as early as 4000 BC.

Papyrus is first known to have been used in ancient Egypt, but it was also widely used throughout the Mediterranean region, as well as inland parts of Europe and south-west Asia...

Egyptian Papyri Art Secrets Unveiled in Sofia, Sofia Morning News, Bulgaria, June 02, 2006.

The regular antiquities roundup from TravelVideo.TV includes:

• Restoration of Rosetta
• Key archaeological finds in Sinai
• Queen’s mummy arrives in Cairo
• SCA to take legal action to retrieve mask
• Tutankhamen Antiquities Exhibition in US harvest $20M

Antiquity News from Egypt June 2006, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, June 01, 2006.

... Although finding the mummified remains of a member of the royal family would be a boon for Schaden and his team, it's perhaps more important to public perception than it is to the archaeologists working in the Valley.

"The public perception is that the dig is a failure if there's no mummy, and that's just not true," Nystrom said. "For archaeologists, it's just as incredible to find a name, an inscription."

Nystrom says that's an important distinction because what gets the public excited isn't always what gets archaeologists excited.

Still, it's the public's furore over finds like KV 63 that keep the money flowing and the digs going...

A Royal Find in Valley of the Kings?, ABC News, USA, June 02, 2006.

German President Horst Koehler has conferred Merit on illustrious Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Ali Radwan, Professor of Antiquities at Cairo University.

Radwan was granted the medal for his contribution in enhancing cultural cooperation between Egypt and Germany.

Meanwhile, Director General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass, in statements to MENA, lauded Radwan's efforts and described him as the doyen of Arab and Egyptian archaeologists...

German President confers order of merit on Egyptian archaeologist, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, June 01, 2006.

By Zahi Hawass

Although I have spent most of my life working around the Pyramids, at the beginning of my career as an archaeologist in 1973 (right after the war) I worked in the Valley of the Kings. At that time, for security reasons, foreign expeditions were only allowed to work in Luxor, Aswan or Saqqara. I was sent with about 15 other Egyptian archaeologists to accompany foreign expeditions working on the West and East banks in Luxor. I left my post at Abu Simbel and joined the Yale-Pennsylvania mission working at Malqatta on the West Bank of Thebes. While I was there I met two great Egyptologists who have contributed to the field with their excellent work, David O'Conner and Barry Kemp.

In the afternoons we used to gather at the Marsham Hotel. Sheikh Ali Abdel-Rassoul was the owner of the hotel, and more importantly he was the last member of his family to know the secrets of the valley. It was this family that found the cache of royal mummies in 1871, and they even helped Victor Loret find the other cache in the Valley of the Kings known as KV 35. Also, everyone believes that the water bearer who found the entrance of the tomb of golden- boy Tutankhamun was a member of the Abdel-Rassoul family.

At that time, two things bothered me. The first thing that plagued my mind was something I had seen on a television film which featured the young — at that time — American Egyptologist Kent Weeks. In one scene the foreign film director showed Weeks entering the tomb of Nefertari. The tomb had been opened by the chief inspector of the West Bank, who held a lamp in his hand to make the scene more dramatic. Weeks was explaining the tomb to the chief inspector, who was holding the lamp and listening with his mouth open. He did not say a word..!

Dig days: Treasure without an end IV (Valley of the Kings), Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 797, June 01 - 07, 2006.

After more than eight decades in Germany, will Nefertiti make the trip back to her homeland, Nevine El-Aref asks.

When I first saw the serenely elegant bust of Queen Nefertiti in Berlin's Egyptian Museum, where a stream of visitors crowds in front of her gleaming showcase, I wondered if this fragile beauty, painted so vividly as if it had been completed only yesterday, would ever return to its homeland? This question is being debated by Egyptologists since it was raised recently in a speech by Zahi Hawass, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) before presidents Hosni Mubarak and Horst Khöler during the official inauguration of the “Egypt's Sunken Treasures” exhibition in Berlin. Hawass asked the German government to offer the famous bust to Egypt on a three-month loan so that it could go on show at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to coincide with the centenary celebrations of the German Archaeological Institute in Egypt in November 2006.

In return, Hawass pledged that the SCA would offer another statue on loan to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin for the three months while Nefertiti was in Egypt.

Hawass told Al-Ahram Weekly that the SCA was willing to provide the Germans with all the guarantees required to assure the return of the bust after the completion of the exhibition. "However that would not affect or contravene Egypt's request to repossess this key item of the country's cultural heritage which it had been deprived of for almost a century," Hawass insisted...

The most beautiful of all, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 797, June 01 - 07, 2006.

By Lubna Abdel-Aziz

He is everywhere — London, Paris, New York, Rome, Luxor, Sharm, Hurghada, Alexandria. You can see him on NBC, ABC, BBC, CNN, TV5, DEUTSCHE WEILE, also, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic, The History and the Learning Channels. You can read about him on the pages of The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and Le Figaro. His 33 books are in every bookstore around the globe, and if you cruise the Internet, you are sure to Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia him. You are likely to run into him at meetings, lectures, seminars, receptions, re-unions, graduations and memorials. He is charming, accessible and knowledgeable, and there is a sun that shines with constant splendour within him. Judging by his attire, he is an ultra-modern man, judging by his grey mane, he is a very ancient soul. His smile is permanent and infectious, his voice animated and passionate, his conversation, intense and engaging. Despite his swinging gait, his burden is heavy, for on his shoulders he carries a colossal legacy, passed on by those who came before him. Clearly, he was chosen to reclaim the glory of his forefathers.

Among the numerous awards bestowed upon him in the last two decades, the most recent was by TIME Inc in its 8 May issue of the world's 100 Most Influential People. This is the culmination of a tireless effort to keep the spotlight on his beloved Egypt, blazing and burning like the desert's midday sun. Zahi Hawass — for that is his name — has been selected by the popular US publication as one of 100 people who shape our world. Hawass's importance unquestionably lies in his activism, but also in his persona. He is confident, authoritative, flamboyant, and charming. It is not only what Zahi does, it is what Zahi is...

Limelight: Son of Pharaoh, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 797, June 01 - 07, 2006.