I shall never forget the adventure I had in the tunnel of the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. I first thought about entering this tunnel two years ago. On the day that I first entered I took with me a very thick rope. I tied one end of the rope to the entrance and used it to guide me into the dark tunnel. I would also need the rope on my way out, because it slopes downwards and it would therefore be difficult to climb out. I took with me a flashlight and a metre stick. When I began to explore the tunnel, I found that for the first few metres it was easy to walk but then it became more difficult. The tunnel was very narrow, with cracks on the ceiling and stone rubble blocking my path. When I had gone about 175 feet I decided to turn back and continue investigating the tunnel on a later occasion.

The second time I entered was a real adventure in archaeology. I took the same tools and spent five hours in the tunnel. I cleared the way and found my way inside for 217 feet I felt I should not carry on any further because I began to feel tired and I was afraid that it would be dangerous to push ahead. However, I continued on and finally reached the end of the tunnel. I pushed myself forward step by step because I knew that I had to reach the end for the sake of the late Sheikh Ali Abdel-Rassoul.

About two years ago while in Luxor I went to Sheikh Ali's hotel, the Marsam, and met his son. We talked about Sheikh Ali's dream of exploring this tunnel. He believed that the Pharaoh's "real" burial chamber was at the end of it. Sheikh Ali, was a member of the famous Abdel-Rassoul family; one of his relatives was the water boy who discovered the step which led to the remarkable discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun...

Dig Days: The Valley of the Kings: Treasure without end IV, Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 800, June 22 - 28, 2006.

It takes talent as well as scholarship to summarise Egypt's ancient history in a readable and accessible form.

T G H James's The British Museum Concise Introduction: ANCIENT EGYPT has now been published in a paperback edition which makes for a concise yet comprehensive and up-to-date survey which is easy to handle, writes Jill Kamil.

Egyptology has become so specialised that the ordinary lay reader today can seldom find an introduction that takes in all that is important about the ancient Egyptian civilisation from its foundation up to the Roman period. Scholars in the first half of the 20th century -- James Breasted, John Wilson and Alan Gardiner among them -- wrote surveys of Egyptian history that were read by both the scholarly and lay public.

This is no longer so. Modern technology makes it easy to produce specialist books with contributions by several scholars on a single subject or period of ancient history. Thus we find numerous studies on the Old Kingdom and the Pyramids, Middle Kingdom documents, the New Kingdom's Tutankhamun and Ramses II, books on the pre-dynastic period, on art, architecture and sculpture, on women in ancient Egypt, on make-up and herbal remedies, as well as collections of artefacts in various museums. But when it comes to a concise and readable survey one is hard-pressed to find one.

James's Ancient Egypt fills this much-needed gap...

A new view of an old theme, Jill Kamil, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 800, June 22 - 28, 2006.

The sabil of Mohamed Ali remains closed four years after it was restored and a permanent exhibition installed in the conserved building. Jill Kamil asks why.

There it stands in a lively neighbourhood in the heart of historic Cairo, a spectacular sabil or public drinking fountain, one of Cairo's architectural gems saved from certain ruin by a team of 50 conservationists from six different countries in a project launched in 1998 by the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE) with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

The sabil remains closed four years after completion, so Al-Ahram Weekly has chosen to view, and review, a small but elegant and well-illustrated quality publication entitled Muhammad Ali Pasha and His Sabil which is on the market. It not only gives new insights into the extraordinary life and personality of the founder of the water fountain, but describes and illustrates the work of a team of dedicated and talented individuals who were involved in its conservation between 1998 and 2002.

The project was carried out under the direction of conservation architect Agnieszka Dobrowolska who, in the last decade and more, has worked on many archaeological and conservation sites in Egypt. Muhammad Ali Pasha and His Sabil is adorned with fine quality colour photographs "before" and "after" restoration, as well as various stages of work in progress. The beauty of the publication owes much to its quality of the photographs, the architectural drawings of Agnieszka's husband, Jaroslaw Dobrowolski — which both complement and explain the photographs — the subtle layout of the pages, and on Khaled Fahmy's text on "The Pasha — his times, his family and his achievements"...

Yet another delay, Jill Kamil, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 800, June 22 - 28, 2006.

Two mummies from the Milwaukee Public Museum have received computerized tomography, or CT, scans to help determine how they lived and died.

The scans will produce three-dimensional images of the mummies that also will help researchers visualize what they looked like and build sculptures of their faces.

The scans, performed Friday, are part of a larger effort by the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium to gather images of mummies collected from the Akhmim site in Egypt. The Milwaukee Public Museum is one of the founding members of the consortium.

So many mummies were found at the Akhmim site that in the late 1800s, the Cairo Museum began selling the mummies. Adolph and Ferdinand Meinecke purchased two, named Djed-Hor and Padi-Heru, in 1887 and later donated them to the Milwaukee museum.

"This population dispersed before we had a chance to study it," said Carter Lupton, an archaeologist who will analyze the images over the next few weeks.

Museum scans mummies for clues to past, AP via St. Paul Pioneer Press, ???, USA, June 25, 2006.

Researchers from the University of Memphis are unsure what they'll find when they examine the last of seven ancient coffins found in the first tomb uncovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings since King Tut's in 1922.

"I can't control what is there," said Dr. Otto Schaden, team leader of the archaeologists who made the discovery. "So it doesn't do any good to have false hopes or high hopes or low hopes."

Schaden said the last coffin is also very brittle and the team plans to X-ray it this week before opening it. He declined to say what might be inside...

Researchers to examine last sarcophagus, AP via USA Today, Virginia, USA, June 25, 2006.

Egyptian archaeologists have found two ancient sarcophagi close to the pyramids, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities said on Sunday.

The sarcophagi, found about a kilometre (0.6 miles) south of the pyramids in Giza, dated to the late 26th dynasty, or about 2,500 years old, council chief Zahi Hawass said in a report by the state MENA news agency.

Hieroglyphs referring to the ancient Egyptian gods Osiris, god of the dead, and the sun-god Ra were painted on the larger sarcophagus, which measured about 2 meters (6 ft 6.74 in) tall, 70 cm wide and 60 cm deep and was painted red, blue and green, the report said.

The name of sarcophagus' owner, Neb Ra Khatow...

Egypt archaeologists find sarcophagi near pyramids, Reuters via ABC News, USA, June 25, 2006.

cf. Sarcophagi found near Cairo pyramids, Reuters via Independent Online, South Africa, June 26, 2006.

One day while I was sitting and watching the excavations, I put my hand on a big limestone block.

I looked down, and examined it more closely; I realised that it was the capstone of the pyramid, which Egyptologists call the Pyramidion. Recently discovered, were limestone blocks decorated with scenes showing the huge celebration that took place when a royal Pyramidion was installed at the top of its pyramid. We found these at the site of Abusir, north of the causeway of the 5th Dynasty King Sahure (c. 2487-2475 B.C.). I had decided to prepare the site of Abusir for tourists, and asked that an area be cleared in which the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt, excavator of the complex of Sahure, had used as a dump. I never imagined that we would discover anything. My workers hit limestone blocks, and stopped immediately. After cleaning off the blocks, they saw wonderful scenes carved on them. These blocks originally lined the northern wall of Sahure's causeway corridor. The scenes depict the completion of the pyramid: the trip to quarry stone and bring it back to the pyramid site, the dragging of the gold-covered Pyramidion, the reporting to the king, and the celebrations and ceremonies that marked this important occasion. The last scenes include dancers, wrestlers, archers, and men fighting with staves, as well as groups of courtiers and officials bowing in the direction of the pyramid and architects holding under their arms papyrus rolls that would have contained the plans for the pyramid complex itself. The most fascinating scene depicts a group of squatting desert nomads, watched in amazement by a group of Egyptian courtiers and high officials. The nomads are emaciated, and raise their hands in a gesture of supplication. One of them is so weak from hunger that he cannot lift his arms. A fragment of a similar scene, discovered decades ago in the causeway of Unas, last king of the 5th Dynasty, had been interpreted that a widespread famine occurred at the end of the third millennium BC and may have brought an end to the Old Kingdom.

Discovering the story of the Pyramidion, Zahi Hawass, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, May 26, 2006.