Italian authorities say Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, one of several major U.S. museums accused of harbouring looted artefacts from Italy, has agreed on the outline of a deal to return multiple items.

In a joint statement, MFA Director Malcolm Rogers and Italian officials stopped short of claiming a complete agreement or disclosing details on artefacts, saying only that in a daylong Tuesday meeting, they "made significant progress toward a final agreement that establishes a cultural partnership."

But in an interview, Italian Cultural Ministry attorney Maurizio Fiorilli, the country's lead antiquities prosecutor, indicated that the conversation included discussion of 16 MFA-held objects with disputed provenance and that the core of the pact would include return of more than one object.

He also said he expected the deal to be finalized by Sept. 30 and the first object to be back on Italian soil by Oct. 4 [2006]...

Boston museum agrees to return artefacts, Italy says, Christopher Reynolds and Livia Borghese, Los Angeles Times, California, USA, July 28, 2006.

She's beautiful. She has emotion, character, serenity. And though she's but a plaster reconstruction, she's far more personable than her namesake whose mummified remains lie upstairs in the Reading Public Museum.

Nefrina the mummy was a woman who lived about 2,300 years ago in the Nile River city of Ahkmim.

The museum has had her X-rayed and CT-scanned. From that it has learned much about her life and her death from complications resulting from a badly treated hip fracture.

Still, the dry, gaunt face lying in linen tells little about her spirit.

Nefrina the reconstruction, however, looks at you with a quiet smile, and instantly takes life...

Science takes centuries off mummy's looks, Don Spatz, Reading Eagle, Pennsylvania, USA, July 28, 2006.

The notable French astronomer André Méchain, whose career spanned the French Revolution, said that when war divides peoples, art and science can serve to reunite them. This unusual and fascinating exhibition circles around Méchain’s claim while demonstrating, arguably, that modern democratic principles are deeply rooted in conflict, science, and art — or more precisely, symbolism based upon the visual culture of ancient civilizations.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign of 1798-1801 began when the young general set sail from France in 1798 with a fleet of 400 ships carrying some 55,000 soldiers and artist-technicians (known as “savants”). The expedition’s military objective — to block British trade with India — was inseparable from its scientific and artistic ambitions. Napoleon was bringing the French Revolution to Egypt, the better to annex it. Having set events in motion, however, he soon suffered defeat by the British, returned to France, and left the cultural mission in the hands of his soldiers and savants.

These young men, inspired by the ideals of the new France of the Revolution, mapped an area from Upper Egypt to the Nile’s vast delta and somewhat further north to Palestine’s borders. Along the way, they drew, catalogued, categorized, and ordered everything in sight.

What remains of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign today is known as the “Déscription de L’Egypte...”

Egypt Rediscovered, Deborah Garwood, Gay City News, New York, USA, Volume 5, Number 30, July 27 - August 02, 2006.

NAPOLEON ON THE NILE: SOLDIERS, ARTISTS, AND THE REDISCOVERY OF EGYPT, Dahesh Museum. The site also includes a podcast by Bob Brier: Podcast with Egyptologist Bob Brier.

Archaeologists who measured the Egyptian pyramids at Giza more than 100 years ago were surprisingly accurate, a review of historical surveys has shown.

The paper, posted online by the Queensland University of Technology, reviews the major surveying projects of the pyramids Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus, built around 2600 BC, south of what is now the city of Cairo.

"They weren't that far out; their surveys were quite diligent and systematic and we're getting fairly good agreement using modern technology," said the paper's co-author Robert Webb, a lecturer in surveying in the school of urban development.

But Mr Webb says laser scanning, computer modelling and other modern technology has not brought us any closer to answering one of the most intriguing questions about the pyramids...

Pyramid pioneers were spot on, Judy Skatssoon, ABC News, Australia, July 28, 2006.

cf. Modern science can't unravel the pyramids, rediff News, India, July 28, 2006.

Tomorrow at 2am, when Cairo's traffic is at its quietest, Tahrir Square will be the stage of a major feat of transportation as a replica of the gigantic 19th-Dynasty statue of Ramses II — now at Bab Al-Hadid train station square — is taken on a trial run to the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking the Giza Plateau.

The decision was announced on Monday by Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), at a press conference held in the SCA's premises in Zamalek. Hawass pointed out that the aim of the rehearsal was to experience the circumstances under which the actual move would take place. This will include the technique used in uplifting the statue, putting it in the steel cage and uploading it on the vehicles right through the journey to its new home at the GEM. Hawass said that if the trial proved a success the removal of the actual statue would take place on 25 August.

He told reporters that the statue would be transferred as it was, in one piece, mounted in an iron cage attached on two special vehicles capable of bearing the 83-tonne statue on its 30km trip. The vehicles were fabricated by the Arab Contractors Company, which will handle the moving operation in collaboration with German experts. The statue's scheduled route has been worked out in collaboration with the Cairo and Giza governors as well as the army, police and all the ministries concerned so that any obstacles will be removed.

"Moving the magnificent statue of Ramses II from the chaos that usually defines Ramses Square is the best decision that could be taken to protect this statue from decay," Hawass noted...

Rehearsing the move, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Issue No. 805, July 27 - August 02, 2006.