Stone blocks believed by Bosnian researchers to be part of Europe's first pyramid are nothing but a natural formation, European experts said on Friday after examining the hillside site near Sarajevo.

"My opinion and the opinion of my colleagues is what we saw was entirely geological in nature," said Anthony Harding, head of the European Association of Archaeologists.

Harding, a professor of archaeology at the University of Exeter in Britain, was speaking here after a brief visit on June 8 to the hills near Visoko, a town some 30 kilometres (19 miles) north of Sarajevo, where excavation work has been taking place since April.

"Further work of the same kind would simply produce the same results. I don't think it would change any view about what the nature of the hill is," he told reporters...

Click the photograph above for five pictures from the press conference.

Bosnian 'pyramid' created by nature, say European experts, AFP via Middle East Times, Cyprus, June 12, 2006.

A 4000-year-old Egyptian alabaster container shaped like a duck and used for a funeral offering has been withdrawn from auction because it may be stolen property, Christie's auction house said on Monday.

The Old Kingdom alabaster offering vessel dating from 2575 to 2134 BC was expected to sell for $20,000 to $30,000 before it was withdrawn from the sale, according to the Christie's online catalog for its June 16 sale of antiquities in New York.

"Upon receiving information which led us to believe that the object had possibly been improperly taken out of Egypt, we contacted the appropriate U.S. authorities and withdrew the item from the sale," Christie's said in a statement...

Stolen Egyptian artefact removed from NY auction, Reuters, USA, June 12, 2006.

cf. Stolen Egyptian artefact removed from NY auction, Reuters via Yahoo! News, USA, June 12, 2006.