The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will lend significant portions of its collection for an exhibition in China, the museum said Thursday.

Penn Museum officials lent 48 "important and representative objects" of its Near East collection to the Beijing World Art Museum for its "The Great Civilizations" exhibition, which opens Sept. 28 [2006].

The exhibition is "dedicated to disseminating knowledge of world arts to the broad Chinese public," the Penn Museum said.

The Penn Museum regularly lends parts of its collection, but this is the first time it has lent items to be shown in mainland China.

Other lending institutions include the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, California Work was also gathered from India, Greece, Rome and Egypt.

Penn Museum lending pieces for exhibit in Beijing, Philadelphia Business Journals, Pennsylvania, USA, September 14, 2006.

The Kimbell Art Museum presents Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, on view through December 31, 2006. Can a queen be a king? In ancient Egypt she could, as will be seen in the landmark exhibition Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. This major and spectacular exhibition explores the 20-year reign of Hatshepsut (c. 1479-1458 B.C.), the first great female ruler known to history...

Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh examines the phenomenon of Hatshepsut as a female pharaoh and the effects of her reign on Egyptian history, culture, and the astonishingly creative artistic output of the time. The exhibition traces the history of her reign, including the main characters of her family and inner circle, through the court and funerary art that has survived. Particular attention is given to statuary of the royal steward Senenmut, the most powerful man in Egypt, who oversaw Hatshepsut's estates when she was queen, was tutor to her daughter Neferure, and served as the overseer of the estates of Amun, then the chief god in the Egyptian pantheon. Of all the members of Hatshepsut's court, Senenmut was the most powerful, the best known, and most often represented. Among the many sculpted images of him, one of the most exquisite and beautifully preserved is in the Kimbell's own collection.

The exhibition features a number of monumental statues of Hatshepsut herself, including images of her as a female ruler, as a masculine king, and as a sphinx. They include one of only two statues of Hatshepsut from Deir el-Bahri (the site of her mortuary temple), in which her dress style and adornment depict her as female royalty. Numerous objects that belonged to courtiers and other elites during the rule of Hatshepsut are also presented, including elegant stone vessels, lavish gold jewellery, and furniture.

A fully illustrated exhibition catalogue, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, is available...

, Catharine H. Roehrig, Renee Dreyfus, Cathleen A. Keller, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, 2005, pp. 356.

Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh Opens at Kimbell, Art Daily, Mexico, September 10, 2006.

Details of the life and death of an ancient Egyptian woman began to emerge yesterday after her mummified body was scanned at a Tyneside hospital.

Experts from the Hancock Museum in the city are examining the first of 800 images of the 3,000-year-old mummy Bakt Hor Nekht.

The mummy was bought in Egypt in 1820 by Thomas Coates from Haydon Bridge, in Northumberland, who gave her to the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle.

The mummy, inside her linen and plaster inner coffin, or cartonnage, was given a Computerised Tomography (CT) scan at Newcastle General Hospital.

It revealed that she has a full set of teeth, including her wisdom teeth.

Gill Scott, Egyptologist at the Hancock Museum, said that this meant she was probably aged between 21 and mid to late-30s when she died...

That's a nice set of teeth, mummy, Tony Henderson, The Newcastle Journal, UK, September 13, 2006.

Modern medicine reveals secrets of a middle-class mummy

The mummified remains of Bakt Hor Nekht, encased in a linen and plaster inner coffin, were bought at a local market and brought to Britain in 1820. Now a full Computerised Tomography (CT) scan at Newcastle General Hospital is yielding a wealth of information.

Bakt Hor Nekht was 5ft tall and had a full set of teeth, including wisdom teeth, and no signs of arthritis or bone disease, which suggests she was between 21 and 35 when she died. A substance found on her teeth may have been painted on as a cosmetic exercise after her face was damaged during embalming...

Modern medicine reveals secrets of a middle-class mummy, Paul Stokes, The Telegraph, UK, September 14, 2006.

The new issue of Minerva magazine is available now. It contains an article that may be of interest to Egyptophiles as follows.

• The Fitzwilliam Egyptian Galleries, Cambridge

Minerva Magazine, London, UK, Volume 17, Number 5, September / October 2006.

Subscribe to Minerva Magazine via Amazon.com.

An Egyptologist who investigated two hills in central Bosnia, believed by some to be ancient pyramids, on Wednesday recommended that archaeological digs be carried out there.

After investigating the two hills for a week, Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Ali, a professor of Egyptology in Cairo, said nobody should be jumping to conclusions but having in mind everything he had seen in Visoko, his recommendations would be that "it is worth digging here."

"You have to be patient. This might take decades," he said...

The theory has been disputed by a number of local and international experts, who claim that at no time in Bosnia's history did the region have a civilization able to build monumental structures...

Egyptologist backs Bosnian excavation, Aida Cerkez-Robinson, AP via MSNBC, USA, September 13, 2006.

cf. Archaeologist backs dig at Bosnia hills, Aida Cerkez-Robinson, AP via The Houston Chronicle, Texas, USA, September 13, 2006.

cf. Archaeologist Backs Dig at Bosnia Hills, Aida Cerkez-Robinson, AP via The los Angeles Times, California, USA, September 13, 2006.