Figurines of King Tut, Ramses and Queen Nefertiti in Cairo's famous Khan Khalili bazaar all bear the hallmarks of pharaonic regalia, from the goats-hair beards to the golden sceptre.

But the slanting eyes framed by the ancient Egyptian rulers' trademark kohl lining betrays the statuettes' Chinese origins.

While Egypt is increasingly betting on the irresistible rise of China's economy for its own prosperity, the unbeatable prices of the Asian giant's products are breaking into the last strongholds of local manufacturing...

Egypt trembles in front of ‘made in China’ pharaohs, Middle East Online, UK, October 31, 2006.

Today, it sounds like a spring-break splurge on the order of "Girls Gone Wild": Drink huge quantities of beer, get wasted, indulge in gratuitous sex and pass out — then wake up the next morning with the music blaring and your friends praying that everything will turn out all right.

But back in 1470 B.C., this was the agenda for one of ancient Egypt's most raucous rituals, the "festival of drunkenness," which celebrated nothing less than the salvation of humanity. Archaeologists say they have found evidence amid the ruins of a temple in Luxor that the annual rite featured sex, drugs and the ancient equivalent of rock 'n' roll.

Johns Hopkins University's Betsy Bryan, who has been leading an excavation effort at the Temple of Mut since 2001, laid out her team's findings on the drinking festival here on Saturday during the annual New Horizons in Science briefing, presented by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing...

Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites, Alan Boyle, MSNBC, USA, October 30, 2006.

If you want truly to appreciate a work of art, there's no substitute for seeing it in person. To celebrate the launch of the Guardian's new arts blog, we're asking you to help compile a definitive list of must-see masterpieces. Jonathan Jones kicks it off with his own top 20...

Whilst the list if dominated by renaissance artists such as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio and several more modern artists such as Picasso and Mark Rothko, three ancient works are also present: San rock art, the Parthenon Sculptures, and the Funerary mask of Tutankhamun.

Unmissable, Jonathan Jones, The Guardian, UK, October 30, 2006.

The leading lot in Christie’s sale of Antiquities, to take place on December 7 [2006], is an Egyptian painted wood sarcophagus and mummy for Neskhons, Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty XXI, circa 990 – 940 B.C. (estimate on request). Sarcophagi of this quality rarely appear on the market and Christie’s is delighted to offer this exquisite consignment. The last time a mummy with sarcophagus was sold at auction was in May 2003, when Christie’s South Kensington sold the sarcophagus and mummy of a priest of Amun for $1.4 million which still stands as the world auction record for a sarcophagus and mummy.

“This is the finest quality sarcophagus to have come to the market in the past two decades,” says G. Max Bernheimer, International Head of the Antiquities department. “The fact that it still contains its mummy and that it comes with an impeccable provenance having been in the United States since the turn of the last century, makes it all the more exceptional.”

The death of many high-ranking or aristocratic Egyptians would have been lost to history but for the fact that they occurred in a time and a place where extensive efforts were made to assure a continuation of life for all eternity. The present mummy and superbly decorated sarcophagus are those of Neskhons, a Stolist — one who performs a ritual for anointing, clothing and otherwise potentiating the cult-image of the god in his Temple — who passed away due to unknown causes while in his twenties. His body was embalmed and the separately embalmed internal organs were replaced inside the body in wrapped bundles together with amulets. The body was expertly wrapped in good quality linen with amulets and placed inside a coffin of sycamore fig wood. The sarcophagus had been gessoed and extensively inscribed in hieroglyphs revealing the mummy’s identity. Neskhons’ burial took place during the Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty XXI, circa 990 – 940 B.C...

Egyptian Painted Wood Sarcophagus at Christie's, Art Daily, Mexico, October 30, 2006.

While we owe the ancient Egyptians a lot — the 365-day calendar, an early decimal system, massive public-works projects — who knew they were pioneers in dental care?

Archaeologists have discovered the 4,000-year-old tombs of three dentists. The markings suggest they were valued members of the community and probably looked after the teeth of the pharaohs and of their families. The hieroglyph for a dentist, in case anybody wants to run up some stationery, is an eye over a tusk. The names of the three dentists, a senior partner and two junior associates, were Iy Mry, Kem Msw and Sekhem Ka Hawass, eerily similar to the names of modern dentists when pronounced through a Novocain-numbed mouth packed with suction devices and Dr. Msw’s drill.

The tombs were protected by a curse. Would-be robbers were warned: Violate these tombs and you will be eaten by a crocodile and a snake. We would have thought the threat of a root canal would have been sufficient.

OK, nothing new here at all but I liked the title!

Did King Tut have crowns on teeth?, East Valley Tribune, Arizona, USA, October 30, 2006.

Alan Eames, a cultural anthropologist who specializes in the study of beer in ancient societies, will explain how beer and witchcraft go hand-in-hand tonight at the British Beer Company in Walpole.

His presentation is called "Order of the Goblin...

Beer, Eames said, has played an important part in societies, such as those in ancient Egypt. The beer was basically a form of non-perishable liquid bread. The wealthy Egyptians, when they died, would have an entire brewery buried with them.

"No society was more immersed in beer than the Egyptians," said Eames. "They assumed what we want in this life, we would want in the afterlife."

Eames is fascinating to listen to, either while talking about legends or his own experiences with indigenous people in various countries...

Any excuse to post about beer!

The beer nut: Spooky beer stories, Norman Miller, Milford Daily News, Kansas, USA, October 25, 2006.

Last night's 9 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT broadcast of the new one-hour special, King Tut's Mystery Tomb Opened was a huge success for Discovery Channel Canada, drawing a record-setting 407,000 viewers A25-54 and 314,000 viewers A18-49 in the Sunday night "Discovery Presents" timeslot. This hour is the highest ever A25-54 "Discovery Presents" audience in the channel's 11 year history. King Tut's Mystery Tomb Opened surpassed previous record holder, Nefertiti Resurrected, which attracted 371,000 viewers in that demo when it premiered in August 2003.

The lead-in companion special, Egypt's New Tomb Revealed, which aired last night at 8 p.m. ET/9 p.m. PT, also drew great numbers for Discovery Channel, attracting 263,000 viewers A25-54 and 193,000 A18-49. These gains represent an increase of +109 per cent and +56 per cent over last October 2005's "Discovery Presents" average.

These two specials follow the Discovery Quest expedition team as they sift through ancient crypts and artefacts to uncover the true identity of the unknown crypt linked to King Tutankhamun. Located less than 50 feet from the tomb of King Tutankhamun (KV62), both specials present startling new information about the remains found in the ancient burial grounds. The expedition team of world-renowned archaeologists excavate and explore this new cache (KV63) — first discovered in the Valley of the Kings in February 2006 — unearthing coffins and delicate artefacts, sifting through intricate inscriptions and discovering unprecedented treasures...

Discovery Channel Canada Nets New Audience Record With King Tut's Mystery Tomb Opened, Channel Canada, Canada, October 23, 2006.

Finding Egyptian tombs is a tricky business that often requires a fair amount of luck. Now geologists have found a way to take some of the chance out of the equation.

While cruising the Nile on a tour of Egypt, Katarin Parizek of Pennsylvania State University in State College noticed that many of the cavelike tombs that house the mummified remains of Egyptian royalty were carved in regions rich in limestone. These areas were likely chosen by the ancient Egyptians because limestone is relatively soft and well suited for excavating. What's more, Parizek — who teaches digital photography and was trained as a geologist — noticed that many of the tombs, including those in the famous Valley of the Kings near the city of Luxor, are located in fracture zones, which are even weaker — and thus more easily carved out by the tomb builders.

After returning to the valley with her father, Penn State geologist Richard Parizek, to map the fracture zones and tomb locations, the two predicted that hidden tombs might be found by following fracture traces on the surface. They were proven right last February when the 63rd known tomb in the area was discovered in a fracture zone...

Unfortunately, the same geology that makes the Valley of the Kings ideal for digging tombs also leaves those tombs susceptible to water damage. Limestone is very permeable rock, and fracture zones are even more easily penetrated by water...

A New Way to Find Hidden Tombs, Betsy Mason, Science Magazine, American Association for the Advancement of Science, USA, October 24, 2006.

cf. Previously: Geological feature key to protecting tombs.

I was able to see some of those beautiful treasures recently on a trip to the Field Museum of History in Chicago. On loan from Egypt, the King Tut artefacts, displayed in a special exposition currently at the museum, comprise only a small fraction of what was inside the tomb. What is in Chicago now, though, is still very impressive. There may not be a greater collection of gold in the United States at this moment, outside of Ft. Knox!

Individual audiotapes with personal earphones were available as people toured the exhibit, and I walked around for several hours listening to Egyptian actor Omar Sharif explain a lot of back-story on the King Tut items I was viewing.

There were many vessels and bowls and utensils King Tut’s subjects thought he would need in the afterlife. There were small, painted boats to carry him “to the beyond.” There were chairs and small cabinets. There were so many gold statues, there was gold jewellery and there was a stunning, simple, hand-made gold crown. There was just gold, as Carter said, “everywhere...”

King Tut's treasure worth the Windy City traffic, Princeton Daily Clarion, Indiana, USA, October 26, 2006.

Research Curator, Ancient Egypt and the Sudan, British Museum, UK, England, London.

As the Research Curator, you will be responsible for researching and cataloguing Coptic material from the archaeological site of Hagr Edfu in Upper Egypt in connection with work currently being carried out by The British Museum at the site...

Applications close Monday 30th.

Jobs: Research Curator, Ancient Egypt and the Sudan, Arts Hub, Australia, October 2006.

You’ve gone on a two-week guided tour of Egypt, and now you’re in Cairo. This morning, you went to the Egyptian Museum and peered at Tutankhamun’s funerary mask in a densely sweating crowd. This afternoon, you’re in a coach coming back from the Pyramids. Your fellow tourists are full of complaints about the lewd liberties taken by the camel-drivers, you're laden down with tawdry purchases, and the coach is stuck in traffic on one of the flyovers that cut through central Cairo. You look out, and in the middle of the expanse of biscuit-dry roofs is an extraordinary thing: a delicate stone pinnacle, carved into elaborate, fantastic forms. A little farther away, another and another; a dome rippling with lace-like arabesques.

The coach moves on and the disloyal thought occurs to you: why aren't we looking at that? But you’re flying to Luxor tomorrow and there won’t be time.

It’s a great oddity. Millions of tourists go to Cairo, and almost all of them take the same route, visiting only the ancient relics at Giza and in the Egyptian Museum. But Cairo was not a city of the ancient Egyptians. The city was founded by the Copts as Babylon — one theory holds that its name has nothing to do with the biblical city, but rather Bab il-On, the Gate of On. After the Arab conquest in 641, it became perhaps the greatest Islamic city in the world...

My secret Cairo, Philip Hensher, The Times, UK, October 28, 2006.

All serious researchers must wish to leave their subjects at least in the condition in which they found them. This might not be a problem for medieval Latin scholars, glycobiologists or infrared astronomers. But spare a thought for the Egyptologists who must record, curate, conserve and study the things they recover from the silent earth and simultaneously work out how to stop the whole lot turning back into pile of sand and broken pottery in a generation.

Kent Weeks, of the American University of Cairo, launched the Theban Mapping Project more than 20 years ago simply because no precise plan existed of the 60 or so tombs in the Valley of the Kings. He is still at it, not least because in the course of taking a closer look at a tomb known as KV5, under threat from a tourist car park, "undecorated, unimportant, uninteresting, unnecessary to save," he made the biggest find in Egyptology: 150 chambers and still counting. But there's the catch: as he and his team crawl through the rubble and flash flood debris of 3,000 years, trying delicately to excavate the burial chambers of the sons of Ramses II, more than 7,000 tourists a day are jostling their way into some of the other tombs in the Valley of the Kings, playing merry hell with the heat and humidity levels in dark places that have survived 30 centuries, but may not survive the next 30 years.

It isn't just the tourists. Egypt's history is under threat from growing cities, agriculture, manufacturing and pollution. So Prof Weeks and his colleagues — at the request of the Egyptian antiquities authorities — have drawn up and posted on the web a master plan to save ancient Thebes from further decay and, at the same time, keep it on the tourist map...

Preserving ancient treasures, Tim Radford, The Guardian, UK, October 27, 2006.

cf. The Theban Mapping Project Valley of the Kings Masterplan.

Seeing dead people is a way of life for Gerald Conlogue.

And although they're shrouded in mystery when he meets them, it is Conlogue's job to demystify his mummified acquaintances by uncovering the truth about them.

"What is amazing is, we think of Egypt as being the place where mummies are. Mummies are everywhere," Conlogue told an audience of about 20 people, half of them teenagers and younger.

A professor at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conlogue is co-executive director, along with Ron Beckett, of Quinnipiac's Bioanthropology Research Institute. In examining mummies, the scientists use a technique they pioneered using radiography and endoscopy, which minimizes the possibility of damage.

"Most of what we do is adapt medical imaging techniques to other types of situations," Conlogue said...

Professor unwraps truth of mummies, Felicia Hunter, The Connecticut Post, Connecticut, USA, October 25, 2006.

cf. The Mummy Roadshow.

Since the days of the pharaohs, priceless artefacts from Egypt have been falling into the wrong hands.

But Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, is on a mission to protect the relics of his country's storied past.

"I believe that the return of stolen artefacts is important not only to Egypt but also to everyone all over the world," Hawass said.

"These artefacts belong to everyone, and their return is of the utmost importance, because the past is important to our future."

Hawass wields strong influence over archaeological work in Egypt and over travelling exhibits of Egyptian objects that are ultimately in his charge.

Such clout — combined with a passionate and highly vocal presence — has aided his quest...

Egypt's Antiquities Chief Combines Passion, Clout to Protect Artefacts, Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, October 24, 2006.

Twenty-five historical sites in the Mediterranean partner countries have been selected for restoration through the program. Chief among its aims is increasing contact between endangered heritage sites and international investors — public and private — interested in financing restoration and conservation in order to support a responsible public/private partnership for cultural heritage to achieve social development and preserve educational value.

Among the seven Egyptian sites selected for this program is the Villa Antoniadis in Alexandria including the restoration of antique furniture and objects of art. In old Cairo, the mausoleum of Yunes El-Dawadar in Bab Al-Wadaa (Gate of Farewell), which boasts the narrowest dome, has been long neglected. Hama Al-Tanbali, near Bab Al-Shariya, is also earmarked for restoration after being neglected over the years since its construction during the Ottoman period in the 18th century.

Also chosen for restoration is the Geographical Society, which dates back to Khedive Ismail’s efforts to modernize Egypt in the late 1800s. The khedive was well aware of the European exploration expeditions to discover the source of the Nile in the late 19th century, and subsequently the Geographical Society acted as a staging post for explorers who came to Africa. The society houses an extensive library, cartography collection, and geographical maps. The Euromed Heritage Program is also sponsoring a project to “revive the memory” of the Egyptian museum by digitizing glass negatives.

One of the more ambitious projects is rescuing the site of Qasr Ibrim (ancient Primis), which has been surrounded by the waters of Lake Nasser since 1967...

Egypt earmarks seven national landmarks for renovation, African News Dimension, South Africa, October 26, 2006.

Two days ago, Egyptian antiquities authorities revealed that after they caught ancient grave raiders red-handed, they were led to bigger and better things — ancient remains. The 4000-year-old tombs of three royal dentists belonging to the 5th Dynasty were protected by a curse in the Pharaonic era. They have never been opened in the past.

"The local robbers launched their dig one summer night two months ago but were apprehended," said Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. "Archaeologists were led to the tombs, one of which included an inscription warning that anyone who violated the sanctity of the grave would be eaten by a crocodile and a snake," Hawass added. The antiquities chief detailed the towering, painted profile of the chief dentist staring down at passers-by from the wall opposite the inscription.

The graves are located near the Step Pyramid of King Djoser [at Saqqara]...

Hawass claimed the first tomb that was discovered belonged to the priest Haw Nefer, who performed official duties at the funerary temple of King Pepi I of the VI Dynasty. The priest, his wife and thirteen children are depicted in bas-relief carvings, of which the colours are as bright as on the day they were applied on the temple walls. Twelve complete statues have been found near the tomb of Haw Nefer, representing the priest Khnum Hotep in various positions. The French team had worked on the south Sakkara site since September 2000 to map the area. Excavations southwest of Sakkara began in October 2002.

The last dig of October 2006, by the tomb robbers, was an inexpensive operation turned interesting discovery — by accident. The thieves, now thrown behind bars, will never get to see what lies beneath Sakkara's sacred ground.

Raiders of the lost ‘tomb’ lead authorities to Egyptian treasures, Hazel Heyer, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, October 26, 2006.

Historians at the Linda Hall Library wanted to celebrate the library’s expansion in a big way.

So, they are preparing a display of giant books that describe Napoleon’s 1798 military invasion of Egypt that became better known as a scientific and cultural expedition. Napoleon, the emperor of France, took scientists, engineers and artists along with his soldiers.

The library, near the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus, has owned an original 23-volume set of illustrations and text since 1970 but has never publicly displayed the set because of lack of room, said Bruce Bradley, librarian for history of science at Linda Hall...

Napoleon’s days in Egypt inspire display, Kevin Murphy, The Kansas City Star, Missouri, USA, October 26, 2006.

Considered an extinct language, the Coptic language is believed to exist only in the liturgical language of the Coptic Church in Egypt. The ancient language that lost in prominence thanks largely to the Arab incursion into Egypt over 1300 years ago remains the spoken language of the church and only two families in Egypt.

Coptic is a combination of the ancient Egyptian languages Demotic, Hieroglyphic and Hieratic, and was the language used by the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt following the spread of Greek culture throughout much of the Near East. In essence, it is the language of the ancient Egyptians themselves.

Mona Zaki is one of only a handful of people that continue to use the language in everyday conversation. She speaks a colloquial form of Coptic with her parents and a few relatives that dates back 2,000 years...

Coptic Language's Last Survivors, Joseph Mayton, The Daily Star, Egypt, December 10, 2005.

Egypt will witness the annual celebration of the perpendicular sun fall on the face of Pharaoh Ramses II statue in Abu Simbel Temple in Luxor on Sunday October 22 [2006].

"The celebrations will kick off with parades moving from Luxor's entrance to the Abu Simbel Temple," said Saber Sanad, the head of the Abu Simbel municipality.

"Presents will also be offered to tourists whose dates of birth or marriage coincide with the occasion," he added...

Abu Simbel to witness perpendicular sun fall on Ramses II's face, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, October 21, 2006.

The World's Longest River?

In theory, yes. And staggeringly big it is, too. The Nile pips the Amazon to the post in world league tables, measuring some 6,695km (4,160 miles), as opposed to the South American river's 6,516km (4,049 miles). The valley covers more than five times the surface area of France. Of course, such statistics depend on where you actually deem this mighty African river to start. The measurement above is taken from the Kyaka river, a headstream in Burundi. However, opinions vary as to the exact source of the Nile; indeed the subject became something of an obsession for Victorian explorers.

Matters are somewhat complicated by the way the river begins as two substantial branches: the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The former is the longer (and arguably rises in Burundi), although the latter contributes substantially more water to the Nile proper into which it flows from Ethiopia. The White Nile turns a whiteish grey from clay suspended in its waters as it flows through southern Sudan, hence its name; the Blue Nile is so-called because it is purer and, well, bluer. These rivers merge near Khartoum in Sudan, and the Nile then continues northwards into Egypt, where its fertile flood plains have supported centuries of civilisation (indeed, the name Nile comes from the Greek nelios meaning "river valley").

At Egypt's wide Nile delta beyond Cairo, the river divides into a mass of waterways which drain into the Mediterranean, the principal two being the Rosetta and the Damietta...

The Complete Guide To: The Nile, Harriet O'Brien, The Belfast Telegraph, Northern Ireland, UK, October 24, 2006.

An important archaeological dig in southern Syria found evidence of extensive trade between ancient Egypt and Syria during the middle and old Bronze Age. An excavation team at Tel al-Dibbeh in Sweida, southern Syria, discovered clay pots with hieroglyphs used for burying children.

Most of the items date to the middle to old Bronze Age and show a link between Egypt and Syria during this period, most obvious in the use of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Tell al-Dibbeh kept watch over trade routes from the second millennium B.C. until the Nabatean and Ghassanid ages.

At the time, Tel al-Dibbeh was an administrative unit on equal footing with Bosra in the south. It is believed that the archaeologists are uncovering what is an ancient temple.

Excavation work will continue at the Salkhad citadel and other sites near the city of Sweida. Sweida is one of Syria's most notorious archaeological sites in the southern part of the country.

New Archaeological Find Links Syria And Egypt, Joseph S. Mayton, All Headline News, Florida, USA, October 23, 2006.

At 9 pm on October 9 [2006], the History Channel will launch their new weekly series "Engineering an Empire" with a two-hour special premiere episode on ancient Egypt, following various architectural marvels from the planning stage through the building phase. The program, which is arranged chronologically, includes background information describing what is happening in Egypt at the time of construction as well as mini bios on the rulers and architects who commissioned the work.

I thoroughly enjoyed the variation in monument types featured in " Engineering an Empire: Egypt" and learned a lot about the process of construction in ancient Egypt. The History Channel did a fantastic job featuring live re-enactments and computer animated recreations of how monuments were built using only simple machines, such as ropes, sleds and pulleys, and manpower, over the course of decades in some cases. These digital visuals helped illustrate how it really is possible to build a giant pyramid using men, ropes, and sleds; it just takes an incredibly long time. Instead of asking themselves, "How are we possibly going to construct an enormous monument to commemorate our god-king in the afterlife without the marvels of twenty-first century machinery?" the ancient Egyptians turned to the community and said "Hey, you 10,000 men! How about giving up the next 10 to 20 years of your life to build a tomb for your King? Food, shelter, and clothing provided, please bring own hammer." Too bad we don't see the invention of the labour union until much later in history. Not only was ancient Egyptian construction more advanced than anything else in the world during that time, but the sheer magnitude of organization and manpower is astonishing.

Using interviews with renowned Egyptologists, on-site narration by actor-historian Peter Weller, re-enactments of Egyptian workers and rulers, and pictures of artefacts and wall carvings and paintings, "Engineering an Empire: Egypt" tells how these monuments were constructed...

The DVD is available for pre-order on Amazon.com: The History Channel Presents: Egypt - Engineering an Empire.

Ten Thousand Men, One Million Stone Blocks, and a Couple of Sleds, Tracy Spurrier, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, USA, September 28, 2006.

Alexander's tomb is an object of archaeological obsession, not for the treasures it might contain — they were almost certainly looted long ago — but for the body of Alexander. While living, Alexander was a demi-god; after his death, his divinity grew. Roman emperors visited his tomb because they wanted to be associated with his greatness. He was revered even by early Christians — during the fourth century they wore medals with the name Jesus Christ on one side and the Macedonian conqueror on the other.

Alexander died in Babylon in 323 B.C. after a lingering illness, possibly malaria or West Nile virus. As his remains were being taken back to Macedonia, Alexander's trusted general, Ptolemy, hijacked the mummified body and brought it to Memphis in an attempt to legitimize his own new position as king of Egypt. Thus begins the incredible story of Nicholas J. Saunders's (Basic Books, $26.00, £15.99).

There is no shortage of potential sites for the lost tomb. The most notorious is, of course, the sarcophagus in the British Museum that Napoleon's savants believed was Alexander's. Later, when hieroglyphs were deciphered, it was revealed that the sarcophagus was carved for Nectanebo II, the last native ruler of Egypt. So it's not Alexander's. Or is it? Nectanebo fled Egypt and never used it, so it is possible that Ptolemy buried Alexander in the vacant royal sarcophagus. There was even a faint rumour that Nectanebo was Alexander's father...

Losing Alexander, Bob Brier, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, USA, Volume 59, Number 6, November / December 2006.

During the holy month of Ramadan many Cairenes flock at night to the heart of mediaeval Cairo, especially in the surrounding area of Al-Azhar for folklore performances and Oriental sohour. However, on Wednesday the scene was slightly different. In a departure from the norm, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Abul-Naga, Cairo Governor Abdel-Azim Wazir and a score of other high-ranking government officials paid a visit to Al-Azhar to attend a Nassir Shamma oud concert and help inaugurate three Mameluke edifices — Al-Ghouri, Mohamed Bek Abul-Dahab and Khan Al-Zaraksha — following their restoration.

In front of the awe-inspiring limestone façade of the Khan Al-Zaraksha edifice, embellished with fine mashrabiya windows on Al-Azhar Street, the tour began, led by archaeologist Ayman Abdel-Moneim, head of the Cultural Development Fund who explained the restoration works in progress.

Like so many Islamic monuments in mediaeval Cairo, decades of neglect and the steady encroachment of inhabitants have dealt a heavy blow not only to the historic structures but to the memory of Al-Azhar Street once filled with splendour. Pollution, subsoil water and high humidity have all contributed to the fast-decaying antiquities. Urgent steps are being taken to restore the mediaeval quarter's cultural heritage under the umbrella of the ambitious Historic Cairo Restoration Programme...

Hmm? It looks like all of Friday's posts have been lost in the ether!

Trio of ancients, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 817, October 19 - 25, 2006.

A few years ago, Egyptologists found a new Pharaonic burial site more than 5,000 years old. They opened up a tomb.

"They're expecting to find nobles, the highest courtiers," said Washington University archaeologist Fiona Marshall. "And what do they find? Ten donkey skeletons."

"The ancient Egyptian burial shows how highly valued (donkeys) were for the world's first nation state. After the horse came, they became lower status. Of course, they're the butt of jokes and all the rest of it. That has to do with the name mostly."

Hee haw. Marshall wants to know how the donkey was domesticated from the Somali wild ass. By travelling around the world, searching for bones in London museums and African deserts, she hopes to pinpoint the time and place of this event, which Marshall says was as revolutionary as the invention of the steam engine...

Domestication event: Why the donkey and not the zebra?, Eric Hand, Belleville News Democrat, Illinois, USA, October 22, 2006.

A 42-year-old method for finding water, monitoring pollution and helping with tunnelling may also be a way to locate and protect tombs in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens and other burial sites in Egypt, according to Penn State researchers.

The idea that fracture traces could bare some connection to the rock cut tombs found in Egyptian valleys came to Katarin A. Parizek as she toured Egypt. K. Parizek, the daughter of Richard R. Parizek, professor of geology and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State, is a digital photographer, graphic designer and geologist. In 1992, on a Nile cruise to the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, she recognized the geological structures.

"Many of the tombs were in zones of fracture concentration revealed by fracture traces and lineaments," says K. Parizek, an instructor in digital photography. "I knew that these fractures were what Dad used to find water or to plan dewatering projects."

Fracture traces are the above-ground indication of underlying zones of rock fracture concentrations...

While it does not often rain in the desert, when it does, water pours off hills and runs over the land and into the wadis — valleys. Paving of parking lots, roads and paths to allow tomb visitors increases the flooding. Even though the Egyptians build barriers at the tomb entrances, water often flows into the tunnels causing irreversible damage to the tombs.

The open entrances, however, are not the only way water enters the tombs. Water finds the fracture concentrations beneath the fracture traces and seeps into the ground. If tombs are built along or below the traces, eventually water insinuates itself through the fractured rock and enters the tombs. Water can ruin even undiscovered, unopened tombs in this way...

A good book I have read on the subject of tomb management in the Valley of the Kings is 's .

Geological feature key to protecting tombs, Spero News, Texas, USA, October 23, 2006.

The arrest of tomb robbers led archaeologists to the graves of three royal dentists, protected by a curse and hidden in the desert sands for thousands of years in the shadow of Egypt's most ancient pyramid, officials announced Sunday.

The thieves launched their own dig one summer night two months ago, but were apprehended, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told reporters.

That led archaeologists to the three tombs, one of which included an inscription warning that anyone who violated its sanctity would be eaten by a crocodile and a snake, Hawass said.

A towering, painted profile of the chief dentist stares down at passers-by from the wall opposite the inscription.

The tombs date back more than 4,000 years to the 5th Dynasty and were meant to honour a chief dentist and two others who treated the pharaohs and their families, Hawass said...

Tombs Of Three Royal Dentists Found In Egypt, Sierra Millman, AP via Hartford Courant, Connecticut, USA, October 23, 2006.

cf. Thieves first to discover 3 royal dentists' tombs in shadow of Egypt's oldest pyramid, Sierra Millman, AP via Augusta Chronicle, Georgia, USA, October 22, 2006.

cf. Thieves first to discover 3 royal dentists' tombs in shadow of Egypt's oldest pyramid, Sierra Millman, AP via Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, October 24, 2006.

cf. Four pictures can be found here: Yahoo! News Anthropology & Archaeology Slideshow, Yahoo! News, USA, October 22, 2006.

Zahi Hawass won the Emmy Oscar Award for the special that he did with David Jackson called Egyptian special. David Jackson came to Egypt on the Sept. 26 .2006 and presented the award to Zahi Hawass at his office in Zamalek. This is the first time that an Egyptian got this award and also the first time that non television person got this award...

Dr. Hawass Receives an Emmy!, Zahi Hawass, Guardian's Egypt, October 23, 2006.

The Land Rover is stuck, and the Manoosir tribesmen aren't lending a hand. In Sudan, where African generosity meets Arab politeness, this means trouble. Even our easygoing Sudanese driver tenses. A few miles downstream from this dusty mud-brick town on a remote bend of the Nile River, Chinese engineers are building the massive Meroe Dam that as early as next year may flood the villagers' homes, fields, and more than 100 miles of fertile valley. And archaeologists working to save what they can of this largely unexplored region before the waters rise are not welcomed by the locals. With our car and our equipment and our pale skin, we are harbingers of the end of their way of life...

The Meroe Dam already poses a humanitarian crisis. It will displace more than 50,000 people who live along this isolated region of the Nile, growing dates and herding sheep and goats. But the project is also creating a cultural heritage disaster largely ignored by the international media, UNESCO, and private preservation groups. Thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of ancient sites are likely to vanish underwater as early as next year without even cursory examination.

That impending destruction comes just as a half-dozen Sudanese and foreign teams discover that the obscure region was not the backwater archaeologists long imagined. During the past few seasons of hurried salvage work, the teams pinpointed hundreds of settlements and cemeteries spanning four millennia, rock art depicting everything from Neolithic giraffes, to Greek crosses, to an ancient pyramid. "We thought it was inhospitable and poor," concedes , a British Museum archaeologist who has spent five seasons digging in the region and hopes to return this winter if the violence subsides. "But what we're finding causes us to rethink that. This area is so incredibly rich in archaeology..."

Damming Sudan, Andrew Lawler, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, USA, Volume 59, Number 6, November / December 2006.

Nearly half a million people flocked to "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" in Berlin to see the ancient statues, inscriptions, and other artefacts recovered over the past decade from Alexandria's harbour and the submerged cities of Herakleion and Canopus in expeditions led by Franck Goddio, a French businessman turned archaeologist. Those who missed the show there and can't catch it in Paris, in January 2007, or in London later next year, may want to peruse the oversize companion volume of the same name.

(Prestel, $49.95) tries to be a scholarly work, a coffee-table book, and an exhibition catalogue all at once. There's no denying the expertise of the contributors, such as historian Manfred Clauss and Egyptologist Jean Yoyotte, but the text is far too detailed for the average reader. There are lengthy academic essays on ancient religion that present a mass of details, but the book does not provide enough of an overview for readers to understand the big picture. On the coffee-table side, there are pages upon pages of photos showing sculptures being hoisted out of the sea and divers looking into the eyes of ancient stone sphinxes, priests, and queens. Many of the underwater scenes seem staged; divers awkwardly point to hieroglyphs on inscriptions, but there's no indication in the caption or text that the glyphs being indicated are of particular significance.

Goddio's work as an underwater archaeologist has been criticized for yielding more exhibitions and coffee-table books than serious research...

Review: Egypt's Sunken Treasures, Mark Rose, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, USA, Volume 59, Number 6, November / December 2006.

Only one of the ancient wonders of the world still survives — now history lovers are being invited to choose a new list of seven.

Among 21 locations shortlisted for the worldwide vote is Stonehenge, the only British landmark selected.

The 5,000-year-old stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, will be up against sites including the Acropolis in Athens; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the last remaining original wonder, the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo...

Stonehenge makes list in new seven wonders vote, Reuters via Yahoo! News, USA, October 17, 2006.

The website of Michel van Rijn, the self-styled inkslinger investigating and reporting on the global illicit art trade, has closed up shop.

Regular readers may remember our report about van Rijn's site back in 2004, when he was embroiled in a legal battle with James E Ferrell, founder of propane distributor FerrellGas, and Bruce Ferrini, an art dealer.

He resurfaced this summer in connection with the recovery of a long-lost Peruvian head-dress...

And readers of this blog may remember Rijn being involved in outing the St. Louis Art Museum over the Ka Nefer Nefer mummy-mask's provenance.

Death threats force art website to close, Lucy Sherriff, The Register, UK, October 19, 2006.

cf. Earlier on this blog: Art Museum dismisses claim, January 23, 2006.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Anthropology will present a lecture by renowned Egyptologist Barry Kemp, “The Ancient Egyptian City of Tell el-Amarna: Its Religion and Its Life,” 5:30-7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14 [2006], at the UAB Bell Auditorium, 700 13th St. S. Admission is free to the public.

is a professor of Egyptology at Cambridge University and a fellow of the British Academy. His books include “ ,” “ ,” [cq] and his forthcoming manuscript, “ ”

Kemp is field director of the Amarna Project, which incorporates the archaeological expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society, working in association with the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt. He has directed fieldwork at the Amarna since 1977...

Nov. 14, Renowned Egyptologist Barry Kemp To Speak At UAB, Gail Short, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama, USA, October 16, 2006.

The elevation of any cultural or natural wonder to the status of World Heritage Site is understandably a source of national pride. Being awarded the status of a World Heritage Site, however, might prove to be a poisoned chalice.

“What better way than tourism to promote understanding between peoples by inspiring admiration for the shared natural and cultural heritage?” asked Federico Mayor, director-general of World Heritage: Ours Forever.

He goes on to hint at the potential problems: “But uncontrolled tourism and ill-planned development can cause irreversible physical and social damage, not only to the sites but to the communities surrounding them...”

Automobile traffic is becoming a major threat to many other World Heritage sites. The road close to Stonehenge in the United Kingdom has threatened the integrity of the site. The proposal to build a highway close to the site of the Great Pyramids in Egypt from Giza to Dahshur was stopped by the Egyptian authorities at the request of UNESCO. The World Heritage Convention, referring to the List of World Heritage in Danger, mentions the serious threat of “rapid urban or tourist development projects...”

World Heritage Sites: Threat or Promise?, Roger Harrison, Arab News, ???, October 16, 2006.

An exhibit in town is designed to inspire kids with something that shows them the way to adventure. It is at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, its title: Maps, Tools for Adventure.

"Say the word Egypt to a child of say, eight in this country and they say mummies, because mummies has magic," said Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egyptologist.

"The great pyramid, it has a riddle how it was built."

Dr. Hawass is in Indianapolis to speak about his passion for the riddles and mysteries of his country that have been uncovered and those that are yet to be discovered.

"We discovered until now only 30 percent. Every day there is a mystery you are solving," Dr. Hawass said...

Egyptologist Opens Children's Museum Exhibit, Steve Bray, WISH-TV, Indiana, USA, October 13, 2006.

cf. Amazing 'MAPS', S.L. Berry, Indianapolis Star, Indiana, USA, October 13, 2006.

The regular roundup of travel and antiquity news from TravelVideo.TV covers the following:

• Saint Catherine Coptic artefacts to be displayed in US
• Coptic artefacts found in Luxor
• Rare Egyptian antiquities now on-line
• Garana: Tourists to Egypt up
• Egypt among top six countries for Austrian tourists

Egypt Travel News, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, October 10, 2006.

Medieval and Renaissance Madonnas will no longer risk their vibrant blue mantels turning into yellowish grey robes, according to U.S. researchers who have discovered why natural ultramarine blue sometimes fades in frescoes.

Known as "ultramarine sickness," the irreversible form of discoloration has been observed in frescoes at the Church of Saint Augustine in San Gimigniano, near Siena, and in the Basilica of Assisi.

"Our studies explain for the first time the process of fading in ultramarines and may lead to the design of proper art conservation treatments and the development of more-permanent pigments..."

The use of this colour was usually reserved to artworks of great importance, such as the funeral mask of Tutankhamen. The pigment found its most extensive use in 14th and 15th century Italian paintings, and was often reserved for the robes and mantels of Christ and the Virgin Mary...

Study Reveals Why Blue Frescoes Fade, Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, USA, October 13, 2006.

Cairo has long been a favourite with holidaymakers wanting to discover the Pyramids of Giza, and offers a host of cultural attractions besides.

The Old Cairo and Islamic Cairo areas will keep you entertained for hours as you navigate the narrow streets and discover the hidden mosques, churches, museums and souks.

The main market is the Khan al-Khalili, where you'll find yourself haggling for silk and spices and the many outdoor cafes provide the perfect place to rest weary legs and do a spot of people-watching...

Cairo is a strong cultural draw, Go Travel News, UK, October 16, 2006.

Since 1929, the Egyptian Theatre, 135 N. Second St., has been a colourful fixture in DeKalb. Since the non-profit organization Preservation of the Egyptian Theatre (PET) took over the building in 1978, more than $2.3 million has been put into renovation projects to return the theatre to its original state. Even so, many people know little about this historic DeKalb landmark.

"The biggest thing people don't know about is how much actually goes on here," said operations director Alex Nerad. "We aren't open during the summer because we don't have air conditioning, but during our 42-week season, we have over 75 events. More than 35 professional groups use our facility every year, as do student organizations and university departments. We also play movies - all independent, art, foreign and classic films. No new releases."

Every year the Egyptian Theatre sees events range from rap shows to comedians, bodybuilding competitions, circuses and more...

Survive like an Egyptian, Northern Star, Illinois, USA, October 13, 2006.

Egyptian police have broken up a trafficking ring that was trying to sell stolen and highly valued ancient busts of Pharaohs and mythical figures at an undercut rate of $2 million, a security source said Sunday.

The five-person ring included a former employee of the Superior Council for Egyptian Antiquities and acquired the busts, valued at $10 million, through illegal excavations, the source said.

The ring was cracked after a policeman posing as an intermediary for an Arab buyer made contact with its members, who were subsequently arrested in a Cairo suburb.

The busts include the ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, the falcon-headed god Horus, and the goddess Sekhmet, among others.

Egypt police bust antiquities traffickers, AFP via Middle East Times, Cyprus, October 16, 2006.

The latest issue of Ancient Egypt Magazine is out now. Below is a summary of its contents.

• From our Egypt Correspondent
  Ayman Wahby Taher with the latest news from Egypt and details of the new museum at Saqqara.
• Friends of Nekhen News
  Renée Friedman looks at the presence of Nubians in the city at Hierakonpolis, and their lives there, as revealed in the finds from their tombs.
• The New Tomb in the Valley of the Kings
  The fourth update on the recent discovery and the final clearance of the small chamber.
• ANOTHER new tomb in the Valley of the Kings?
  Nicholas Reeves reveals the latest news on the possibility of another tomb in the Royal Valley.
• Royal Mummies on view in the Egyptian Museum
  A brief report on the opening of the second mummy room in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
• The Ancient Stones Speak
  Pam Scott in the first of three major articles, gives a practical guide to enable AE readers to read and understand the ancient texts written on temple and tomb walls, statues and stelae.
• The Rekhyt Bird
  Kenneth Griffin explains how the many representations of the lapwing are much more than a simple image of a bird; they have a more significant meaning.
• Per Mesut: for younger readers
  In this edition, Hilary Wilson looks at pomegranates.

Ancient Egypt Magazine, Empire Publications, Manchester, UK, Volume 7, No. 3, Issue 37, October / November 2006.

Subscribe to Ancient Egypt Magazine via Amazon.com.

There is seldom a rise without a fall — so history has taught us throughout the ages. Great civilisations that have grown to incredible heights, invariably sank to degrading depths, notwithstanding the length and breadth of their prominence, among them China, India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece and Rome.

Rome, however, would not lay low for long. Time and again the Eternal City's flame would flicker and glow, and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Why do we continue to marvel at the rise, and rise again of Rome, a name now synonymous with greater Italy? Why do we all thrill at the sounds of Italian music, salivate at the sight of a spaghetti Bolognese, dream of viewing the seven hills of Rome, of throwing a coin in the Fontana di Trevi, sailing on a gondola on a sleepy lagoon in Venice, window gazing at the shops in Milan, strolling up and down the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, or basking on the beaches of Capri or Amalfi? For answers we turn to the pages of history that witnessed the incomparable feats of the Great Empire of Ancient Rome...

Nothing to do with Egypt I know! But heh, it's in Al-Ahram.

The glory that is Rome, Lubna Abdel-Aziz, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 816, October 12 - 18, 2006.

A fan of Egyptian culture, April Anderson waited in Sunday's long lines into the Frist Centre for the Visual Arts because she didn't have time to go before the last day of "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt."

"And then I thought about the last day being more exciting to see it," Anderson said. "I'm interested in seeing the artefacts up close and personal rather than seeing them in a book."

Anderson, 38, was among a bevy of museum visitors who flocked to the Frist Centre on Sunday for a last chance to see the centre's Egyptian exhibit featured there since June.

At 4 p.m. the day of the final viewing, admission tickets were sold out until 8 p.m. The centre extended its hours to midnight, and visitors were able to purchase tickets until 11 p.m. Each 15-minute start had a 100-person viewing capacity.

With more than 125,000 visitors having seen the exhibit, it's on track to be one of the biggest ever at the Frist Centre, said Mark Scala, chief curator. During the exhibition, the Frist celebrated its 1 millionth visitor...

Next stop: The Portland Art Museum, Oregon on November 05, 2006.

Visitors brave long lines to get last glimpse of Egypt exhibit, Ailene Torres, Hendersonville Star News, Tennessee, USA, October 09, 2006.

With too much text to be called a pictorial guide, too much history to be a guide book and too much of the modern to be an illustrated history, ’s is in a category of its own.

The book begins with an outline of the events and people that have shaped Cairo since around 3000 BC. By the end of the book, just over 90 pages later, the reader has been whisked through more than 5,000 years of the city’s history. The author leapfrogs around the city and its history, starting his first chapter in Coptic Cairo and winding a circuitous route to the Great Pyramids of Giza. Each chapter is filled with the history of a specific area of Cairo and its place in the modern megalopolis. Haag also wanders off the tourist track and offers a glimpse of life in Fustat, as well as that of the squatters in the City of the Dead. The photographic illustrations are beautifully shot and richly complement Haag’s prose.

He describes the chaos and the allure of the city: “as the sun sets over the Nile, the present slips away into timelessness. The call of the muezzins floating across the darkening city and the Pyramids of Giza, magnificently silhouetted against the shimmering horizon, are reminders that the monuments of the pharaohs and sultans lie within the compass of the city Egyptians call ‘Mother of the World.’”

Writing about the heart of medieval Cairo, along the western edge of Khan El-Khalili, Haag muses, “There is still enough mystery and beauty to remind you that this was the original city of A Thousand and One Nights.”

Cairo Illustrated serves as an excellent first-time tour of Cairo, but the author’s reasonably fresh point of view will also show long time residents a new way to look at the old city.

Book Reviews, Cache Seel, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 10, October 2006.

The Ministry of Culture’s, working through the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)’s Cairo beautification project, has been working to restore Beit El-Qadi since 2001. Dilapidated, its walls and floors decaying, the building had been annexed by neighbouring residents who used it as a mosque and rented out its hawasel (granaries) as storerooms to local shopkeepers. Work on the complex included restoring faded engravings on the walls and ceilings, righting the crooked façade and replacing rotting doors and windows.

The ministry is set to wrap up by the end of Ramadan, at which time it will once again open Beit El-Qadi’s doors to the public.

Swallowed up by nearby attractions including the magnificent Islamic architectural collection of Sultan Qalawun’s edifices, Beit El-Qadi, which lies in the maze between Mash’had Al-Hussein, Khan Ga’far and El-Muizz Li Din Allah streets, is often overlooked by tourists scouring the district’s avenues and alleys for belly dancing outfits, souvenir tarbouches, sibah (prayer beads), galabeyyas and blue knickknacks to ward off the evil eye...

House in Order, Zeinab Abul-Gheit, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 10, October 2006.

Hunters stalked giant camels as tall as some modern-day elephants in the Syrian desert tens of thousands of years ago and archaeologists behind the find are wondering where the camels came from and what caused them to die off.

The enormous beasts existed about 100,000 years ago and more of the bones, first discovered last year, have been found this year in the sands about 150 miles north of the capital, Damascus.

The animal, branded the "Syrian Camel" by its Swiss and Syrian discoverers, stood between three and four yards high — about twice the size of latter-day camels and the height at the shoulder of many African elephants...

Ordinary camels appeared in the (Middle East) region some 6,000-7,000 years ago and, for the first time, we have a wild form and very, very old," he said.

Scientists find more bones of big camels, Albert Aji, AP via Yahoo! News, USA, October 10, 2006.

cf. Previously on this blog: Ancient Giant Camel Found in Syrian Desert Pushes Back History.

"King Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things' from the Pharaoh's Tomb" opens Friday and will run through Jan. 31 [2007] at the Branigan Cultural Centre, 500 N. Water St. on the Downtown Mall. Courts said arrangements have already been made to allow thousands of regional school children to view the exhibit.

Tamara Gillis of Las Cruces said she is excited about the show.

"I think it's going to be awesome, I'll be taking all my nieces and nephews. They're 6 to 13 and I wish I could have seen something like this when I was their age," said Gillis, who is also eager to shop in the gift shop accompanying the exhibit.

"That'll be great," she said...

Wonderful' replicas on display in Las Cruces, S. Derrickson Moore, Las Cruces Sun-News, New Mexico, USA, October 07, 2006.

Fifteen minutes of 3D animation, compositing and graphics by Match Frame San Antonio illustrating the amazing architectural feats of the ancient Egyptians appear in “Egypt: Engineering an Empire,” premiering October 9 [2006] on The History Channel. Match Frame created full 3D animations, blueprint and map animations plus the title sequence and legacy graphics for the two-hour program, which launches Kralyevich Productions, Inc.’s (KPI) 13-episode “Engineering an Empire” series. Last year Match Frame teamed with KPI on the special, “Rome: Engineering an Empire,” a double primetime Emmy Award winner.

“The team at Match Frame did a superb job of bringing ancient Egypt’s most stunning structures back to life,” says Christopher Cassel who produced, wrote and directed the show for KPI. “Their 3D modelling capability is unmatched — I’ve never seen anything else that comes close in terms of being photoreal, crisp, detailed and believable. And their blueprint-style animations were integral to making complex engineering principles digestible for the average viewer.”

“Since we worked on ‘Rome’ we had a good idea of the direction the Egypt show would take and how to push our work further creatively and technically,” says Match Frame vice president/director of computer animation Stephanie Schneider who executive produced the project. “The chance to travel back in time to witness the building of the pyramids and experience this extraordinary civilization along the Nile was something we couldn’t resist...”

Match Frame San Antonio helps KPI depict the wonders of ancient Egypt, DMN Newswire via Digital Video Editing, USA, October 11, 2006.

The mystery surrounding Pa-Ib, a 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy owned by the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, has begun to unravel.

Little was known about Pa-Ib before Wednesday, but a CT scan done at Advanced Radiology Consultants revealed the mummy most likely was a woman and at least 30 years old.

"We're leaning toward female," Dr. Ruben Kier, chairman of the board of Advanced Radiology Consultants, said to a flock of media about 5:20 p.m. "That's preliminary — probable girl."

Kier said CT scans showed evidence of arthritis in the pelvic area, which is common with women who have given birth...

CT scan reveals mummy likely mommy, Andrew Brophy, The Connecticut Post, Connecticut, USA, October 12, 2006.

cf. Pa-Ib a real person, but royalty?, Meg Barone, The Connecticut Post via Barnum Museum, Connecticut, USA, September 15, 2006.

cf. Previously on this blog: P.T. Barnum was right about his mummy.

Not much about Egypt in this article about the De Young museum except this snippet at the end.

Other exhibitions to look forward to over the next year, Buchanan remarked, include a retrospective of punk and new wave fashion icon Vivienne Westwood and — “several generations of school children later” — an exhibition of King Tut artefacts, marking the 30th anniversary of the King Tut exhibition first visit to San Francisco.

De Young ages well, Jennifer Liss, The San Francisco Examiner, California, USA, October 12, 2006.

Sara Orel, associate professor of Art at Truman State University, spoke at Passport to Egypt programs "Kings and Commoners: Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt" Oct. 6 in Pegasus Theatre at 11 a.m. At 2 p.m. the same day, UCO's legal counsel, Dr Brad Morelli talked on the subject of illicit traffic in antiquities.

Orel, art historian and anthropologist, outlined the basic geography of Egypt tracing the development of the ancient civilization.

"Egypt wouldn't last a day without the Nile," she said. "But it was essentially a very stable civilization. Even the Roman emperors are shown wearing the same costume as ancient Egyptians."

In ancient Egypt, the dead were buried in pits in the dessert, surrounded with grave goods. These earliest mummies are the best-preserved bodies, said Orel.

"A lot of the Egyptian paintings are focused on alleviating death," said Orel. "Egyptians couldn't predict death but they did not consider it as a definite border. They had an incredibly complicated belief about life after death and sought to preserve the soul too..."

Tomb robbing at its finest, Abha Eli Phoboo, The Vista Online, University of Central Oklahoma, Oklahoma, USA, October 10, 2006.

Tutankhamun, ancient Egypt's famous boy pharaoh, grew up 3,300 years ago in the royal court at Amarna, the ancient city of Akhetaten, whose name meant the "Horizon of the Aten." This extraordinary royal city grew, flourished — and vanished — in hardly more than a generation's time.

Amarna, Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun, a new exhibition at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, offers a rare look at the meteoric rise and fall of this unique royal city during one of Egypt's most intriguing times.

The exhibition, centrepiece of Penn Museum's event-filled "Year of Egypt," opens with a free celebration Sunday afternoon, November 12, 2006, and runs through October 2007. Talks, tours, Saturday "crash courses" on ancient Egypt, theatre in the galleries, family workshops, even a "Hollywood on the Nile" film series, are all part of the "Year of Egypt."

Amarna, Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun will feature more than 100 ancient artefacts, some never before on display — including statuary of gods, goddesses and royalty, monumental reliefs, golden jewellery, as well as personal items from the royal family, and artists' materials from the royal workshops of Amarna...

Royal City of Tutankhamun's Childhood Is Focus of New Exhibition, PRNewswire via Yahoo! News, USA, October 11, 2006.

The Western Desert of Egypt, near the Dakhleh Oasis, appears to be one of the most uninhabitable places on the planet. Any search for signs of life on this Martian surface seems pointless. But as we crest a ridge of sand, with chunks of ironstone clinking underfoot, archaeologist Mary McDonald is about to show me something that puts paid to that notion: evidence that she has found not only the beginnings of settled life in North Africa, but almost certainly the beginnings of the longest-lasting civilization the world has ever known — the Pharaonic, or Dynastic, civilization of the Nile Valley, heretofore thought to have derived from elsewhere in the Middle East.

McDonald, a petite and sprightly Canadian with gray streaks in her long black hair, wears a broad smile underneath her straw hat and a Foreign Legion-style bandana. Her delight comes from telling me about the scene that now lies before us: hundreds of round, oval and rectangular spaces the size of camping tents, defined by flat stones stuck on their edges in the sand, many with flagstone floors about 30 centimetres (12") below ground level. They’re clustered in what may have been a village the size of three football fields. “Many hundreds of people lived here,” she beams. “It’s the largest Neolithic site in Africa.”

The question of where the great Pharaonic civilization came from and how it arose has never really been answered, not by the ancient Greeks nor by the first European explorers and archaeologists, who explored and plundered it in the 19th century. Until just a few decades ago, the received wisdom was that a “superior culture” must have invaded Egypt, or migrated there, from the Levant or Mesopotamia — regions that had civilizations a thousand years earlier. But for more than 200 years, precious few archaeologists had the inclination to explore this question of origins...

Before the Mummies: The Desert Origins of the Pharaohs, Graham Chandler, Saudi Aramco World, Houston, Texas, USA, September / October 2006, pp. 2 - 11.

Egyptian authorities have put a ban on idling vehicle engines in Saqqara, southwest of Cairo, after cracks started to show on the country's oldest pyramid.

The head of Egypt's supreme council for antiquities, Zahi Hawass, had "decided to ban the running of engines of all cars and buses waiting for tourists in the archaeological area of Saqqara," a council statement said.

"The running of engines has caused the area to experience some shaking, which has in turn caused cracks in the pyramid of Djoser," the statement said...

Hawass warned that anyone caught running a car engine would be charged with damaging archaeological sites and face legal action.

Egypt bans idling engines after pyramid cracks found, AFP via Middle East Time, Cyprus, October 10, 2006.

A pair of sniggering schoolboys grope the breasts of a 3,500-year-old bust of an Egyptian queen, while a sarcophagus dating from 1500BC is used as a makeshift rubbish bin and a climbing frame.

It sounds like a scene from Carry On Cleo, but it's just another day at the British Museum.

The boorishness and schoolboy antics frequently witnessed in the museum, have forced curators to put the bulk of their precious Egyptian collection behind glass. Documents reveal that staff fear deteriorating public behaviour is putting exhibits at risk.

The papers also show that curators have pleaded in vain with management to put "Do Not Touch" signs in Gallery 4, which houses much of the Egyptian collection.

In a letter in February, Jeffrey Spencer, the deputy keeper of the collection, sympathises with an outraged member of the public who witnessed 17 inappropriate incidents on a single visit...

Vandals sack glories of ancient Egypt, Chris Hastings, The Telegraph, UK, October 08, 2006.

UPDATE: cf. Priceless artefact – or playground furniture?, Karyn Miller, The Telegraph, UK, October 08, 2006.

Centuries of silence cannot keep ancient Egyptian mummies from sharing their secrets with scientists. From archaeologists determining cultural practices to chemists studying embalming, mummies have revealed libraries of information. Now such mummies are also yielding evidence about the diseases of the past by giving up the facts encoded in their preserved DNA, and new research may have pinned down the ancient homeland of a modern scourge.

Leishmaniasis — a disease caused by microscopic parasites, like malaria, and transmitted by sand flies — results in painful skin sores and in its most vicious form causes at least 500,000 deaths worldwide every year. Endemic to northeastern Africa, it also afflicts South and Central America as well as the Middle East; as many as 650 U.S. soldiers experienced it during the first year of the invasion of Iraq. The lethal form — visceral leishmaniasis, also known as kala azar, or black fever in the Hindi language of India, where the disease was first discovered by British doctors — is particularly prevalent in Sudan, and some authorities have claimed it originated there.

Albert Zink of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich and his colleagues tested the DNA of bone samples from 91 ancient Egyptian mummies and 70 from old Nubia — modern Sudan — to determine if they had suffered from leishmaniasis...

Mummy DNA Reveals Birth of Ancient Scourge, David Biello, Scientific American, USA, October 06, 2006.

Swiss researchers have discovered the 100,000-year-old remains of a previously unknown giant camel species in central Syria.

“This is a big discovery, a revolution in science,” said Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, a prehistory professor at the University of Basel. “It was not known that the dromedary was present in the Middle East more than 10,000 years ago.”

He said it was about 12 feet tall, “as big as a giraffe or an elephant.” Professor Tensorer, who has been excavating at the desert site in Kowm since 1999, said the first large bones were found some years ago but were only confirmed as belonging to a camel after more bones from several parts of the same animal were recently discovered.

“We found the first traces of a big animal in 2003, but we were not sure it was a giant camel,” he said...

Not Egyptology I know but I thought it was interesting.

Ancient Giant Camel Found in Syrian Desert Pushes Back History, Reuters via The New York Times, New York, USA, October 08, 2006.

cf. Prehistoric Syrian giant evolved into modern-day camel, Jerome Taylor, The Independent, UK, October 09, 2006.

Tourist guides in Egypt called Sunday for a "licentious" Ramadan television series to be pulled because it shows one of their number, played by popular actress Leila Olwi, "wooing" a tourist.

"In this series, 'Nur Al Sabah' (Light of Day), we see licentious scenes such as when she woos this tourist by dancing," the head of the tourist guides' union, Mohammed Ghareeb, said.

He said that he had called on information minister Anas Al Fiqi and the government censor to ban the series being shown on state-run television since the Muslim fasting month started late September...

Egypt guides angered by seductive portrayal, AFP via Middle East Times, Cyprus, October 09, 2006.

cf. Leila Olwi has been mentioned on this blog before: The Pyramids in Mafia Colors.

Amidst the mountains in the heart of divinity it is believed to be one of the oldest continuously functioning monasteries in the world, Mohamed El-Hebeishy sets out to establish the facts. Located at the foot of Mount Sinai, where it is said that Moses received the Ten Commandments, the Monastery of St Catherine was built to the order of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I in 527 AD, with construction coming to completion 38 years later.

Though it is known as the Monastery of St Catherine, the original name was the Monastery of Transfiguration. The site is associated at large with St Catherine of Alexandria, who at the age of 18 is said to have attempted to persuade the pagan Roman emperor at the time to halt the Christian persecution; she only succeeded in converting his wife. St Catherine was condemned to death; 25 November marks her feast...

Snap Shots, Mohamed El-Hebeishy, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 815, October 05 - 11, 2006.

There are few who would endure a nine-hour bus ride to see an oasis. A closer look at Kharga and then Dakhla, however, might prove worth the journey. Pierre Loza enjoys two of the most interesting desert spots in Egypt.

"The desert has endowed me abundantly and now it is over," said prominent Egyptologist Mohamed Fakhri to his companions in the Kharga oasis before he left for France where his life ended less than a month later. Fakhry's statement exemplifies the enigmatic nature of the Egyptian oases as a perpetual haunt for all those that come in contact with it. The oases however have never fulfilled their potential on the Egyptian tourism map due to longstanding neglect.

The greatest problem facing the New Valley oases is the scarcity of flexible transportation options. In other words, if you don't catch the petroleum services plane to Kharga which makes the round trip from Cairo about once a week and is not always consistent, then you're pretty sure you will probably be taking the bus. A suggestion to take the train to Assiut and from there head to Kharga by bus is also a bit risky because you stand the chance of missing the bus. What I opted for to make the nine-hour trip a bit more bearable was to buy two tickets, allowing me the luxury of spreading my feet across a few extra centimetres of space for LE80 . My response to queries about why I had taken two seats for myself was of course "leg problems"...

Desert magic, Pierre Loza, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 815, October 05 - 11, 2006.

Early this week the Upper Egyptian city of Esna was peacefully going about its usual business. Farmers were busy in the fields, merchants were trading in the market and weavers sat in front of their looms. Housewives were cooking Ramadan's iftar meals. Yet on Monday the city woke up to breaking news: a Ptolemaic obelisk dating from the reign of the famous Queen Cleopatra VII, found half-buried under the house of an Esna resident named Sayed Mahmoud, was up for sale with an asking price of $100 million.

The obelisk was said to be six metres high, carved of schist and decorated with hieroglyphic texts, lotus flowers and cartouches featuring Queen Cleopatra's face and profile. The news appeared on the Internet as well as in several Egyptian and foreign newspapers.

Intensive investigations carried out by the Esna police and antiquities inspectors, however, revealed the story to be a hoax and an attempt by Mahmoud, a well-known local crook, to defraud tourists by spreading a rumour that antiquities lay buried under his house...

A tall tale, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 815, October 05 - 11, 2006.

In Bosnia's Valley of the Pyramids, only one man is king. Semir Osmanagic, new-age philosopher and amateur archaeologist, splits his time between Texas and Sarajevo, but these days is mostly to be found scraping away at a hillside 40 minutes north of the Bosnian capital.

It is here that he claims to have made the most extraordinary discovery of the millennium: Europe's only pyramids, dating back to the late Ice Age, exceeding in scale and perfection those of ancient Egypt or Latin America. "This is the most magnificent construction complex built on the face of the planet," he said. "These pyramids are so old and so unique, it's hard to compare them to anything else in the world."

The experts strongly dispute his claims. Mr Osmanagic, 46, says they are jealous. And at Visoko, an army of amateurs is busy digging up the hillsides to uncover traces of man-made structures that the Houston Bosnian insists date from a prehistoric cycle of civilisation rich in its sophistication and washed away "in the flood"...

Tourists flock to Bosnian hills but experts mock amateur archaeologist's pyramid claims, Ian Traynor, The Guardian, UK, October 05, 2006.

The sarcophagus is beautiful — wooden, conformed to a woman’s shapely body, decorated with bright colours depicting a woman’s face and a multitude of small geometric shapes and mysterious symbols.

The sarcophagus is at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, one of the objects in the travelling British Museum exhibit of Egyptian art and funerary objects that will be in the capital until Nov. 26 [2006].

You don’t get buried in a casket like that today. You are put into a plain metal box with its adornment limited to the side carrying handles, and down you go.

With caskets like ours, it’s not worth getting excited about dying.

But from the amount of time the Egyptians devoted to death, they considered it a thing of importance...

Sketches: Ancient Egypt confronted terrorism, David Gerard, The Muskogee Phoenix, Oklahoma, USA, September 30, 2006.

A new exhibit at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia called Treasures of Ancient Egypt lets people crack the code with over 200 artefacts, from a tiny make-up pot to a full mummy coffin-set, on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This exhibit on the gallery's entire third floor to Aug. 21 is "one of the most comprehensive and impressive samplings of Egyptian antiquity on view in our nation," says gallery director and chief curator Jeffrey Spalding.

"The Royal Ontario Museum would be proud to have it. In Montreal the Egyptian area is the size of these two rooms. Here it is very comprehensive and 7,000 years of history not 2,000 to 3,000..."

Exploring ancient treasures, Elissa Barnard, The Halifax Chronicle Herald, Nova Scotia, Canada, October 05, 2006.

Indiana Jones's adventures in archaeology had nothing on McGill Professor Bruce Trigger's, whose achievements were celebrated recently with the launch by McGill-Queen's University Press of . Armed with his keen intellect and theoretical empiricism, Trigger, in a career spanning almost 50 years, didn't need a bullwhip or the Raiders of the Lost Ark to make his mark on how archaeology is practiced around the world.

The book, edited by Ronald F. Williamson and Michael S. Bisson, contains articles written by an international Who's Who of archaeologists outlining Trigger's influence. It originated in a 2004 symposium at the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archaeology. "There were at least 600 people there. I've attended these events for 30 years and I've never seen anything like it," recalled McGill anthropologist Michael Bisson. "It was so easy to get contributors." His co-editor, Ronald Williamson, a former student of Trigger's and now president of Archaeological Services Inc. in Toronto, said, "Just look at 's bibliography. No other scholar has one like it. He's a role model for all of us. An unattainable one, but a role model nonetheless."

In a field full of almost arcane specialists, Trigger was truly a Renaissance man. His work ranges from ancient Egypt to the aboriginal cultures in northeastern North America...

Honouring Bruce Trigger, Rena Okada, McGill Reporter, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, October 05, 2006.

The latest issue of the French language magazine “Toutankhamon” is out now.

Actualités :
Tombe 64 de la vallée des rois, avec interview de Nicholas Reeves

Découvertes:
Abydos, le 8e merveille du monde
Le flash : inoffensif !
Les papyrus médicaux

Egyptologie
L'armement au Nouvel Empire
Un relief amarnien à Assouan
Les techniques scientifiques au service de l'égyptologie
L'ours fut-il pharaonique ?

Dossier
69 énigmes de l'égypte ancienne !

Aventurier
Prisse d'Avennes

Voyager
Lac Nasser : une découverte sauvage
Mer rouge : au paradis des plongeurs

Which approximately says...

Current events:
Tomb 64 from the valley of the kings, an interview with Nicholas Reeves

Discovered
Abydos, 8th wonder of the world
The flash: inoffensive!
Medical papyri

Egyptology
The armament of the New Empire
An Amarna relief in Aswan
Scientific techniques with the Service of Egyptology
Was the bear Pharaonic?

File
69 enigmas of ancient Egypt!

Adventurer
Prisse d'Avennes

Travel
Lake Nasser: a wild discovery
Red Sea: a divers paradise

Toutankhamon Magazine, Editions Neptune Diffusion, France, Issue 29, October / November 2006.

Egypt is where history first emerged. It is here that we have the first pictographic record of events and persons. Hieroglyphics, the system of writing used by ancient Egyptians can be traced back to about 3200 BC. At about 3180 BC, the nations of Upper and Lower Egypt were brought under the rule of a single king titled Pharaoh. The first Pharaoh is thought to have been Menes, who set his capital at Memphis, 22 km south of Giza in today's Cairo. The Pharaohs established the systems that brought forth the highly successful Egyptian civilization.

The history of Ancient Egypt lasted for about 3,000 years. Ancient Egypt declined, was overrun and thereafter ruled by foreign powers. The Greeks and Romans who ruled after the decline were aware of the great similarity between their own gods and those of the Egyptians. They not only tolerated Egyptian religion, but also expanded existing temples and dedicated new ones to existing cults. Some of the new overlords, Alexander the Great for example, styled themselves as divine priest-kings in imitation of the Pharaohs.

Emperor Theodosius, who reigned after Christianity became the state religion in Rome, extinguished the last remnants of the living culture. The Egyptians worshipped hundreds of gods — a great offence against the monotheistic religions; whose first article of faith is that there is only one God. Theodosius decreed in AD 391that all pagan temples in the Roman Empire be closed. The Arabs, who brought Islam to Egypt in 640 AD, also had no time for deities such as Anubis the jackal, Horus the falcon god or even Amun the king of the gods...

The Nile Cruise — In the Footsteps of the Pharaohs, Andrew Muigai, Market Day, October 03, 2006.

Archaeology spoke about recent excavations and discoveries at Amarna with Barry Kemp, who has since 1977 directed the Amarna Project, which includes an expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society in association with the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt. The Amarna Project is supported by the Amarna Trust, a UK registered charity. is a Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. His books include (2nd edition 2005), , and (forthcoming).

Q. What evidence do we have for why Akhenaten chose this place for his new capital? And because it was created from scratch, how does Amarna compare to other Ancient Egyptian cities such as Karnak, Thebes, and Memphis?

A. A series of large tablets or stelae carved in the face of the cliffs behind Amarna (and across the other side of the river) record the foundation of Amarna in Akhenaten's own words. He was simply led there by his god, the Aten. That is not a good enough reason for us; we want a more rational explanation (perhaps misguidedly). He called the place "Horizon of the Aten" and it has become fashionable to see the silhouette of the cliffs behind Amarna, cut in the middle by more than one deep valley, as a natural representation of the Egyptian hieroglyph for "horizon," but this may be modern fancy. You can find similar silhouettes at other places. He wanted his city to be on ground that had not belonged to any person or god beforehand. Amarna does seem to have met this criterion. It was also important that it was in the east, the place of sunrise. It happens to be roughly halfway between Memphis and Thebes, but we cannot know if this convenience factor contributed to his choice....

Excavating Amarna , Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, New York, USA, September 27, 2006.

Ankylosing spondylitis has afflicted people for centuries. St Banus [Coptic. Apa Bane] suffered from it in the 4th century AD, and Rameses II in the 12th century BC — although his stiff, painful, stooped back did not prevent Rameses from leaving his mark on both the landscape and the population of Ancient Egypt. The great pharaoh built more temples than any other Egyptian ruler and had between 90 and 160 children. His son Merenptah and an earlier pharaoh, Amenhotep II, are also thought to have had ankylosing spondylitis.

Hippocrates, who lived more than a millennium after those pharaohs, recorded the clinical differences between what we now call ankylosing spondylitis and rheumatoid arthritis. The arthritic features of ankylosing spondylitis were first described in medical literature in 1559, and its association with iritis and uveitis — inflammation in the eye — was noted in the 1700s, but most of its other features were not recognised until the 19th century.

It is not surprising that ankylosing spondylitis attacked more than one of the pharaoh’s family, as it is associated with a group of diseases in which the patient is HLA B27 positive...

New drugs help to lift the pharaoh’s curse, Dr Thomas Stuttaford, The Times, UK, October 02, 2006.

cf. Apa Bane Monastery near El-Minya, Jimmy Dunn, Tour Egypt, Texas, USA.

Members of the public who sell archaeological items on the internet auction site eBay.co.uk could soon find themselves on the wrong side of the law after a scheme to stem the flow of internet sales of antiquities was launched by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS).

Working in partnership with eBay.co.uk a team from PAS, which is the government funded scheme that records archaeological objects found by the public, will be monitoring sales of antiquities on the auction website to ensure that sellers have the right to trade them.

By law, certain objects, such as old gold and silver coins, can only be sold if they are reported under the 1996 Treasure Act. Not only is the sale of some objects illegal says PAS, but it also means valuable insights into our past are lost forever...

Portable antiquities scheme to monitor sale of artefacts on eBay, 24 Hour Museum, UK, October 03, 2006.

Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif chaired a meeting Thursday at the Smart Village on tourism development.

During the meeting, Nazif listened to a report by Minister of Tourism Zuheir Garana on a plan by his ministry for increasing incoming tourism and number of tourist nights.

The plan, which comes within the framework of President Hosni Mubarak's electoral platform, aims at increasing the number of incoming tourists to 14 million by 2011 versus the current 8.6 million tourists...

Integrated plan to develop tourism, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, September 29, 2006.

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), won Thursday the Oscar Emmy Award presented by the Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences for the best TV film at the international level.

Hawass won the Prize over commenting at the background of a documentary film on Pharaoh King Tutankhamen and the Valley of Kings and expounding the old Egyptian civilization.

Also, the film's director won the same prize on the movie which was produced by the CBS channel in 2005.

The award is a golden statue of a winged woman holding ball with Hawass's names written at the bottom.

Hawass is the first Egyptian to win such a prize and it is the first time that the winner of such award was not working in the media domain.

SCA chief wins Oscar Emmy Award, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, September 29, 2006.

Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has returned 13 disputed ancient artefacts to Italy, including a statue and a bas relief believed to have decorated Hadrian's Villa near Rome, as part of a deal with the Italian government.

The pieces, including 11 vases in the ancient Greek style from central and southern Italy, were displayed for journalists Thursday at the Italian Culture Ministry before a signing ceremony in Rome.

In July, officials said the museum and Italy had reached a tentative deal for the return of the antiquities, which Italian authorities contend were stolen and later sold to the institution.

Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and museum director Malcolm Rogers were scheduled Thursday to sign the final agreement, which also deals with loans of other Italian treasures...

Boston's MFA returns 13 disputed artefacts to Italy, Ariel David, AP via The Boston Globe, Massachusetts, USA, September 28 2006.

The Egyptian Tourism Authority has today revealed that its official website www.egypt.travel has attracted a staggering 1,596,096 visits since its launch in March 2006.

Created to provide travellers with a one-stop resource for finding out more about the country, Egypt was also the first international tourist board to pioneer the new '.travel' domain name.

The portal has been designed to appeal to a wide range of potential visitors to Egypt and provides users with information on the destination's wealth of historical and cultural attractions, as well as highlighting its beautiful beaches and range of activity based holidays such as diving, desert safaris, yachting and golfing...

Egyptian Tourism Authority reports record visits to www.egypt.travel, Lara Lynn Golden, AME Info, Dubai, September 27, 2006.

Near Sallum: talk about good timing. The moon's just taken its first bite out of the sun and here comes Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's entourage, all sleek cars, flapping flags and one aristocratically waving hand. I wave back.

It's 11.20am. Mubarak, 14,000 astronomy geeks and I have gathered in the Egyptian desert to watch a total eclipse of the sun. We are here, not far from the Libyan border, because the pros say that's where we'll get nearly five minutes of totality. That's the, well, total time that the moon fully covers the face of the sun when all three bodies line up, one behind the other.

Evidently, totality doesn't get much longer than this. My British astronomer friends Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest — collectively known as Hencoup — say this will be one of the best in a decade. That's why they've signed on as celebrity astronomers for this two-week eclipse tour of Egypt, and I'm along for the ride.

It seemed a great idea. I would see my first eclipse and take in the sights with friends. I never guessed we three would join two busloads of 63 eclipse fanatics...

Fun with the Egyptian sun, Leigh Dayton, The Australian, Australia, October 02, 2006.