What if it is all true — Moses parted the waters, 10 plagues fell on Egypt, the Israelites took a mass journey out of Egypt? Simcha Jacobovici, an investigative reporter and filmmaker, contends that he has assembled a compelling case for the veracity of the biblical story of the Exodus. He unveils his theories in a 90-minute documentary called “The Exodus Decoded,” to be broadcast at 8 p.m. Sunday on the History Channel.

Mr. Jacobovici, an Emmy-winning documentary maker, directed, produced and narrated “Exodus Decoded,” based on six years of research and three years of filmmaking. The $3.5 million film was broadcast on the Discovery Channel in Canada in April and was shown in Israel in July at the Jerusalem Film Festival. He made front-page news in both countries with the film.

Among his attention-getting ideas is that the Exodus occurred more than 200 years earlier than most scholars believe. He suggests that the biblical plagues and the parting of the Red Sea can be attributed to a volcanic eruption some 3,500 years ago in what is modern Greece. And he believes that he has located the lost Ark of the Covenant (in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens) and identified the real Mt. Sinai (Gebel Hashem el-Tarif in Northeast Sinai, close to the border of modern Israel)...

Plagued by No Doubts, a Filmmaking Detective Turns to the Exodus, Felicia R. Lee, New York Times, New York, USA, August 17, 2006.

A couple of reviews follow.

‘The Exodus Decoded’: A Biblical Theory in Video Game Graphics, Virginia Heffernan, New York Times, New York, USA, August 19, 2006.

Unearthing Clues to the Exodus, Judith S. Gillies, Washington Post, District of Columbia, USA, August 20, 2006.

For the ancient Egyptians, beliefs about life after physical death demanded elaborate preparations in hopes of ensuring immortality.

For them, there was life after death only if funeral preparations were successful, one had a heart of sufficient goodness, and if powerful spiritual beings did not undermine the effort, according to Diana Hutchison, resident anthropology/archaeology expert at the South Florida Science Museum. If all went well, one existed. If not, one's soul — actually, several separate components of the soul — perished forever. Hutchison gave a talk on ancient Egyptians and the afterlife Thursday at the museum...

Mummy talk a soul connection, David Rogers, Palm Beach Daily News, Florida, USA, August 20, 2006.

The people of Richmond, Ind., are preparing for a big birthday bash this weekend as the city is marking its 200th birthday.

There will be parades, tours and special art exhibits planned to celebrate the bicentennial celebration.

One of the exhibits that is being put together is The Life and Death In Ancient Egypt which is being shown at the Wayne County Historical Museum...

Wayne Co. Historical Museum Offers Egyptian Exhibit, WHIO-TV7, Indiana, USA, August 16, 2006.

Liverpool's prestigious Egyptian collection is to get a new look – thanks to a £300,000 grant.

World Museum Liverpool is one of 43 institutions across the country to benefit from grants totalling almost £4m, jointly funded by the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Wolfson Foundation Museums amp; Galleries Improvement Fund.

The grant will involve completely refurbishing the museum's Egyptian gallery, which is now 30 years old...

£300k for exotic Egyptian collection's new gallery, Alan Weston, Liverpool Daily Post, UK, August 16, 2006.

The Dahesh Museum of Art presents the exhibit Napoleon on the Nile: Soldiers, Artists, and the Rediscovery of Egypt through December 31 [2006]. This summer the Museum will focus on the Description de l’Egypte, the seminal multi-volume work that remains the single most important European scholarly study of ancient and modern Egypt. Initiated under the patronage of the young General Napoleon Bonaparte as he invaded Egypt in 1798, and completed in 1829 during the reign of King Charles X, the Description was among the most significant, and certainly the most tangible, consequences of the French military’s occupation of Egypt (1798-1801). Not only did it form the foundation for the modern discipline of Egyptology, but its large and magnificent plate illustrations influenced the course of “Egyptomania” and “Orientalism” in western fine and decorative arts for two centuries. These plates, along with letters, documents, medals, decorative artworks, maps, and prints, will be selected by Dahesh Associate Curator Lisa Small from the Bob Brier Collection. The majority of paintings in the exhibition were drawn from the Dahesh Museum of Art’s permanent collection of Orientalist works. The Museum’s Trustees and staff gratefully acknowledge our colleague Professor Bob Brier (C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University), the renowned Egyptologist and host of the TLC Series, The Great Egyptians, for his advice and enthusiastic encouragement. The Museum is also indebted to Princeton University Museum of Art, the Fordham Library and to generous private collectors, including The David Markham Collection, for their loans to the exhibition...

Napoleon on the Nile at the Dahesh Museum of Art, Art Daily, Mexico, August 11, 2006.

Miroslav Barta, an Egyptologist with the Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague, will speak next week about recent discoveries at the Abusir pyramid cemetery in Egypt.

The free talk will begin at 7:30 p.m. Aug. 24 [2006] in Room 294 of the Smith Memorial Student Union at Portland State University.

Barta will discuss how excavations and satellite imagery are giving insights into what ended the age of the pyramid builders.

The talk is sponsored by the Oregon chapter of the American Research Centre in Egypt. Call 503-725-8566 for more information.

Egyptologist to discuss discoveries at cemetery, The Oregonian, Oregon, USA, August 16, 2006.

In the fifth century BC, Herodotus wrote of Egypt that "nowhere are there so many marvellous things".

Now, some of those wondrous items — or in some cases replicas of them — are here in Port Macquarie.

The Seventh-day Adventist School is presenting about 300 historical pieces in an Egyptian Exhibition.

Principal Phil Lillehagen said the display had been brought to town because "children in regional areas don't often get close contact with this sort of stuff"...

Get ready to walk with the Egyptians, Terri Van Dijk, Port Macquarie News, Australia, August 18, 2006.

Nearly 130 Egyptian treasures from the tombs of King Tut and his royal ancestors are on display through Jan. 1, 2007, at the Field Museum.

When the exhibition came to Chicago in 1977, millions came to see it. Thirty years later, it has returned with many objects that are travelling to the United States for the first time. The exhibition, from National Geographic, is enhanced with technology such as a CT scan of Tut's mummy...

New exhibition brings King Tut to Field Museum, The Northwest Indiana Times, Indiana, USA, August 17, 2006.

Though it has not had the same gee-whiz, almost non-stop media attention that the 1977 "Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit enjoyed, this year's King Tut show at Chicago's Field Museum has all the signs of being a blockbuster in its own right.

Visitors — including those who also saw the 1977 show — seem pleased with the new extravaganza that features selected riches buried with the boy king 3,400 years ago. Lines to get in have been long and constant, forming before the museum opens at 8 a.m.; tickets usually sell out by early afternoon every day, often by 9 a.m. on weekends.

"Your best bet is to get here early in the morning to buy a ticket for the same day," spokeswoman Pat Kremer said recently as she walked through the Field Museum's air-conditioned east entrance hall, where people waited to enter the exhibit. "We have lines waiting outside every morning before we unlock the doors..."

Visitors queue up to see latest King Tut exhibition, William Mullen, Reno Gazette-Journal, Nevada, USA, August 13, 2006.

In little over two months, famed Egyptologist Dr Zahi Hawass hopes to unearth the discovery of his lifetime: the tomb of one of history's greatest women, Cleopatra.

The celebrity archaeologist, who is on a whistle stop lecture tour of South Africa, said that "the discovery would even be bigger than that of King Tut".

Hawass told The Star on Wednesday that he suspects Cleopatra is buried with her Roman lover Mark Antony at a temple 30km [19 miles] from Alexandra called Tabusiris Magna.

"I believe it is a very sacred place and this is where they would have hidden Cleopatra and Marc Antony from Octavian," Hawass explained...

First Tut, now Cleo in Dr Zahi's sights, Shaun Smillie, Independent Online, South Africa, August 17, 2006.

[The] response from Hawass, known for insisting on researchers publishing reports in scientific forums, has not been a positive one. In a letter to USA TODAY, he writes, "If what Mr. Reeves says is true, then why didn't he present this report to the Supreme Council of Antiquities." He adds: "Radar can also show anomalies that are not necessarily tomb shafts. It seems to me that Mr. Reeves wants publicity more than conducting his work through a scientific approach. For this reason, I am writing you to state that the information is not true."

Reeves responds that he alerted Hawass and the Supreme Council to KV 63's location in August of 2005, but received no reply. Anticipating a similar response for KV 64, "rightly or wrongly," Reeves says, he decided to release the information about the possible new tomb without any delay. "Yes, I am clearly seeking publicity - but not for my own ends," he says by e-mail. "My sole ambition in this is to see archaeological work in the Valley of the Kings carried out with the care and attention it deserves and so desperately needs."

Undoubtedly, the contested site will attract the attention of more researchers, who may resolve the question of its existence within the year. On Egyptology websites there is some support for a go-slow approach, and big doubts about whether Reeves will be allowed by Egypt to be part of any research in the area. The tombs date from more than 3000 years ago, so perhaps some waiting to open this latest discovery wouldn't be too surprising...

Egyptian tomb digs up controversy, Dan Vergano, USA Today, New York, USA, August 13, 2006.

The second Royal Mummies Hall which opened last week crosses the Ts on mummification and reveals an obscure era of instability in the history of ancient Egyptians...

Preserving the likeness of the deceased was of utmost importance to ancient Egyptians. The immortal spirit, released upon death, needed to be able to identify the body in which it was to repose. Century upon century, efforts were made to perfect a technique once believed to have reached its peak during the New Kingdom in the 19th Dynasty to the 21st Dynasty, with mummies like that of Ramses II, and began to decline thereafter.

The Pharaohs of the New Kingdom hid their tombs in the Valley of the Kings, hoping this would help keep their mummies safe from tomb robbers. But the glittering jewels and precious funerary furniture that filled the royal burials frequently proved too alluring to thieves, and some tombs were violated and robbed soon after their royal occupants were laid to rest. Tutankhamun's tomb, for example, was threatened with robbery at least twice in antiquity, but each time the thieves were caught or frightened away by the necropolis police and the tomb remained intact. On the whole, apart from isolated incidents such as this, the tombs were well-guarded for many years and were relatively secure...

The elite of the millennia, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 808, August 17 - 23, 2006.

Excavations continue in the Valley of the Kings inside tomb KV63, which has now been identified as a storage place for embalming materials. The little curse of this tomb continues. In a previous article, I told the story of this remarkable discovery and the fight between the two Egyptologists Otto Schaden and Lorelei Corcoran, who both wanted to be director of the excavation. Since that article was published many things have happened. Corcoran came back to Egypt from Memphis and wanted to take photographs of the excavation. Schaden, as the official director according to the concession, prevented her from doing so. Mansour Boraik, director of Luxor antiquities, told me that Corcoran had been seen sobbing in the valley.

I do not know what we can do to resolve this problem but I believe we must encourage them both to finish their work, because the wood is deteriorating and they still have two coffins (one for an adult and one for a child) that have not been opened. Schaden wanted to leave the excavation for 10 days while he presented a talk at the American Research Centre in New Jersey, and planned to close the excavation because he would not be there. I thought this might be dangerous because the work should have continued and conservation needed to be done. The Discovery Channel was also filming a documentary, and they cannot just stop production for 10 days. This film is not exclusive. In fact, it will be aired all over the world and shown free on Egyptian TV...

Dig Days: Secrets from the embalming storeroom, Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 808, August 17 - 23, 2006.

The concrete base of the giant statue of Pharaoh Ramses II, scheduled to be moved to a new location, has been disconnected safely here, Director of Arab Contractors Company Ibrahim Mehleb has said.

The company, in charge of a project to move the statue to another location, confirmed that no damage was done to the Pharaoh in the process.

The 125-tonne statue will be moved next week to a more serene home near the Great Pyramids from a congested square in downtown Cairo named after him in a bid to save the megalithic statue from corrosive pollution, Egypt's Antiquities Chief Zahi Hawass had said...

Concrete base of Ramses II disconnected, PTI via New Kerala, India, August 21, 2006.