God's been on trial a whole lot lately, poor fellow. Now it's even going on retroactively. For proof, check out Vagabond Acting Troupe's The Trial of Akhenaten, a 25-minute play written specifically to be performed in the Penn Museum of Art and Architecture's exhibit " Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun." The city of Amarna was built by the pharaoh Akhenaten (believed to be the father of King Tut), and razed just a generation later. His legacy turned to rubble so quickly because he angered the Egyptian people by replacing the traditional pantheon of gods with worship of just one, Aten (Akhenaten means "he who works for Aten"). In the play, things go even harder for the pharaoh after his death; he arrives in the underworld only to learn that the gods are putting him on trial for abandoning them (choose: Guantanamo or the underworld court of Osiris?). Despite the high stakes, "it's a fun, light piece," says Vagabond founder and director Aileen McCulloch. And it's performed in front of a 12-foot sphinx. This isn't Vagabond's first site-specific project with the museum; in 2003, Vagabond garnered a Barrymore for Three Worlds Intertwined, a play written to accompany the museum's newly opened Mediterranean World galleries.

The Trial of Akhenaten, The Philadelphia City Paper, Pennsylvania, USA, November 21, 2006.

More than several dozen times a day, the imaging specialists at the University of Illinois Veterinary Teaching Hospital take high-tech X-rays of dogs, cats, horses, potbellied pigs, birds and other animals.

“I’ve seen a tiger,” Sue Hartman, the senior imaging specialist at the hospital, said recently. “We’ve seen a pelican. We’ve seen snakes. We’ve seen large turtles.”

So a hawk coming in the door is no big deal.

But a 2,500-year-old hawk or more likely a kestrel, harrier or falcon that’s potentially an ancient Egyptian mummy is another matter...

U of I Veterinary school finds mummified bird, Greg Kline, AP via Illinois Pantagraph, Illinois, USA, November 20, 2006.

She was one of Egypt's most enigmatic figures, reigning as both queen and king during an era of prosperity and artistic creativity before mysteriously vanishing.

What exactly happened to Queen Hatshepsut has been lost to history, but artefacts from her 20-year reign have survived to dazzle visitors to museums on three continents.

Almost 200 of those artefacts — including sculpture, pottery and jewellery — were assembled from 25 museums in Egypt, Europe and the United States by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco for a 14-month tour of the United States. The unique and unprecedented exhibit, " Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh," is in its final leg at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth after stops in San Francisco and New York. It closes Dec. 31 [2006]...

From queen to pharaoh, Robert Buckman, Washington Times, District of Columbia, USA, November 21, 2006.

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced Tuesday it will return 26 ancient artworks that Italy contended were looted or smuggled from the country.

The decision came despite a recent announcement of a breakdown in negotiations over Italian demands for Getty antiquities that had Italian officials threatening to break cultural ties with the Los Angeles museum.

Before the breakdown in negotiations was announced earlier this month, the parties had reached an agreement under which the trust that operates the museum would return some items while Italy's Ministry of Culture would provide long-term loans of other objects, museum director Michael Brand said Tuesday.

"While we continue to hope that the Italian government will honour its commitment to work collaboratively with the Getty in the future, as it agreed to do in October, the Getty's transfer of objects is not conditioned on any such arrangement..."

Getty Museum in LA will return 26 ancient artworks to Italy, Robert Jablon, AP via The San Jose Mercury News, California, USA, November 21, 2006.

A Greek prosecutor on Tuesday charged a former curator of the American J. Paul Getty Museum with knowingly buying an ancient artefact which had been illegally dug up and smuggled out of Greece 13 years ago.

The accusation that former antiquities curator Marion True illegally obtained a 4th-century BC golden wreath is the latest controversy surrounding acquisitions she made for the wealthy Los Angeles-based museum.

True resigned from her post in a whirlwind of publicity last year when Italian authorities charged her with conspiring to receive stolen antiquities.

In the Greek investigation, police raided her Aegean island villa earlier this year and retrieved what authorities say are dozens of unregistered ancient objects...

Former Getty curator charged with Greek art theft, Karolos Grohmann, Reuters, USA, November 21, 2006. Link fixed.