A robot archaeologist is to be sent deep inside Egypt's largest pyramid in a bid to solve secrets revealed by a first foray more than four years ago, antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass said.

"The new robot will be sent down very narrow passages in the so-called Queen's Chamber, where the first robot was sent in 2002," said Hawass, who heads Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Teams from Egypt and Singapore and a joint group from Britain and Hong Kong plan to insert the robot in February inside the Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, near to Cairo.

Equipped with tiny cameras, the robot will be sent down the chamber's north and south passages in the hope of discovering what lies behind two inner walls — or doors — revealed during the first robotic expedition in September 2002...

Robot to penetrate deep inside Cheops pyramid, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, November 30, 2006.

An Egyptian-Polish archaeological mission discovered a large collection of pottery fragments, pieces of car tonnage and parts of the priest Bani-mesu's sarcophagus while excavating at Queen Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari on Luxor's west bank.

Numerous pieces of ostraca, pottery, ushabti figurines, papyri written in Coptic and fragments of a nemes headdress of king Thutmose III have also been unearthed.

The team also continued its programme of restoring, documenting, and drawing of the New Kingdom shrines on the third terrace of Deir el-Bahari, including those of Thutmose III, Queen Hatshepsut, and the northern and southern shrines of Amun-Re.

Artefacts found in Luxor, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, November 30, 2006.

Driving in Cairo is a true test of bravery.

Lane etiquette is a secondary factor as cars, buses and dangerously speeding taxi’s compete for space on the busy roads.

Don’t be surprised to see rickshaws pulled by lumbering horses or more nimble donkeys trotting along in the fast lane; while pedestrians with a death wish attempt to cross this Egyptian equivalent of the M1.

Add the constantly blaring horns and the regular scream of ambulance sirens and you are a million miles away from the original Land of the Pharaohs. Or just a few miles... for on the edge of this densely packed city sit the Pyramids of Giza, three massive signatures of another age...

Surviving a visit to the pyramids, Craig Lewis, Milton Keynes News, UK, November 29, 2006.

It is commonplace for American museums to dispose of works of art. But eyebrows are being raised at the sale of an irreplaceable collection of antiquities from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, to free up funds to purchase work by emerging contemporary artists.

More than 200 objects will be sold by Sotheby's, New York, in its specialist sales next March, including some pieces so important that their likes have never been seen at auction before. The sale is estimated to total $15 million (£7.8 million).

London dealer Giuseppe Eskenazi, kingpin of the Chinese art market, describes the Chinese sculpture on offer - including a massive limestone chimera from the sixth century BC - as "outstanding". "This is a hugely exciting sale," he says.

Antiquities is traditionally a market in which dealers dominate and the best objects change hands discreetly, with minimum publicity and no questions asked. "Top-quality works like the ones in the Albright-Knox sale are normally traded privately," says Sotheby's Indian art expert, Anu Ghosh-Mazumdar...

Doesn't strike me as a good idea.

Antiquities sold to pay for new art bonanza, Elspeth Moncrieff, The Guardian, UK, November 28, 2006.

Courtesy of the Italian government, visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will find an unfamiliar antiquity on view today in each institution’s classical galleries.

The artefacts are the first fruits of separate agreements that Italy reached this year with those museums to return antiquities that Italian officials have long contended were looted or removed illegally from their country. In exchange for the return of the objects — which will include the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old Greek bowl considered one of the world’s finest, from the Met’s collection — Italy agreed to offer extended loans of other antiquities that have rarely or never been seen outside Italy.

The arrival of the artefacts at their temporary homes was timed to coincide with a visit to the United States by Italy’s culture minister, Francesco Rutelli, who has taken a high-profile role in his country’s campaign for the return of looted antiquities.

The two museums are handling his arrival, and that of their new antiquities, in starkly different ways.

The Museum of Fine Arts, which was not the first museum to make a deal with Italy but was the first to return disputed objects, held a news conference with Mr. Rutelli yesterday and stressed that it was also the first American museum to receive loans of Italian antiquities under the new arrangement. (Its loan, a large marble statue from the first century A.D., arrived a couple of weeks ago for conservation work, museum officials said.)

By contrast, the Met, where Mr. Rutelli is scheduled to meet today with Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s director, planned no ceremony and did not even issue a news release to announce the arrival of its loan, a kylix, a type of drinking cup. Citing security issues, museum officials would not say exactly when the cup arrived at the Met...

Italy Lends Antiquities to 2 Museums, Randy Kennedy, New York Times, New York, USA, November 29, 2006.

In contrast, the Getty museum has no reciprocal loan agreement for returning artefacts and talks have collapsed.

Italy Expresses Dismay With Getty’s Stand on Disputed Art, Elisabetto Povoledo, New York Times, New York, USA, November 24, 2006.

cf. Getty Museum Ceases Talks With Italy Over Antiquities, Hugh Eakin and Elisabetto Povoledo, New York Times, New York, USA, November 22, 2006.

Seeking to build on its success in bargaining with a few American museums, Italy has asked the New York collector Shelby White to consider returning more than 20 ancient artefacts that it argues were illegally mined from its soil, officials involved in the negotiations say.

The request was relayed this month in a letter to Ms. White’s lawyers, they said. Rather than implicitly threaten legal action, however, as it occasionally has in pursuing objects in major museum collections, the government hopes to rely on moral suasion, said Maurizio Fiorilli, a lawyer for the Italian Culture Ministry. He said negotiations would begin in earnest in December.

Mr. Fiorilli said the Italian government was not implying that Ms. White or Leon Levy, her husband, who jointly amassed the collection over 30 years, were involved in any crime. (Mr. Levy died in 2003.)

Rather, “we’re showing her that there is significant evidence that links objects in her collection to illegal digs in Italy,” said Mr. Fiorilli, who leads the government commission seeking restitution of illegally excavated archaeological artefacts...

Top Collector Is Asked to Relinquish Artefacts, Elisabetta Povoledo, The New York Times, New York, USA, November 29, 2006.

cf. Shelby White on this blog previously here: $200 Million Gift Prompts a Debate Over Antiquities.

A 50-year-old Frenchman has been arrested for trying to sell locks of hair he said were taken from the mummy of Egypt's most famous pharaoh, Ramses II, officers have said.

Jean-Michel Diebolt, a postman from the French Alps, had placed an ad on an Internet site (www.vivastreet.fr) offering snips of hair, samples of the mummy's embalming resin and bits of bandages for more than 2,000 euros (2,633 dollars).

He claimed the lot came into his possession via his father who was part of a team of French scientists tasked with analysing the royal mummy 30 years ago.

Police arrested the man at his home in the Alpine village of Saint Egreve late Tuesday and were holding him for questioning on suspicion of trying to sell Egyptian property without authorisation...

Frenchman arrested for trying to sell lock of pharaoh's hair, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, November 29, 2006.

Frenchman tries to sell Ramses II hair, Reuters, UK, November 29, 2006.

Man held for 'pharaoh relic' sale, BBC News, UK, November 29, 2006.

'We want full transparency about scandal', Independent Online, South Africa, November 29, 2006.

The latest issue of Current World Archaeology is out now and contains three article of interest to Egyptophiles.

• Revealing terra incognita, Dangeil, Sudan
  Excavations at the late Kushite (3rd century BC – 4th century AD) city of Dangeil in Sudan reveal a temple of Amun, and a massive bread-making facility. By Julie R. Anderson and Salah Mohamed Ahmed. (9 pages)
• News: Tomb Radar. New Tomb in the Valley of the Kings?
  Archaeologist Nicholas Reeves led a radar survey of the Valley of the Kings in 2000, as part of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project (ARTP). Information revealed by the survey suggests that a new tomb, tentatively being labelled KV-64, lies in the vicinity of the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV-62). (1 page)
• Letters: Desert Glass
  Professor Saeed A. Durrani replies to the article View from the Field: In search of desert glass from CWA 18.

Current World Archaeology, Think Publishing, London, UK, Volume 2, No. 7, Issue 19, October / November 2006.

Subscribe to Current World Archaeology Magazine via Amazon.com.

One king’s reign heralded revolution. The other’s brought restoration. And after a later ruler set out to erase the pair from history, both were forgotten for more than 3,000 years.

The beginning of the now-famous story of King Tut and the revolutionary pharaoh who was his probable father is on display in “Amarna: Ancient Egypt's Place in the Sun,” running through October 2007 at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

The exhibit, featuring more than 100 artefacts from the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun’s birthplace of Amarna, serves as a sister exhibition to the Franklin Institute’s blockbuster Tut show that opens Feb. 3 [2007].

“We wanted to get something up that would truly complement that show,” said Pam Kosty, a Penn Museum spokeswoman. “This was just perfect. It's the childhood home of Tut...”

King Tut and his radical dad, Alison Lapp, AP via The Morning Call, Pennsylvannia, USA, November 26, 2006.

For the first time, The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens is selling tickets to their upcoming exhibit. But this exhibit is unlike any other that has been at the museum.

“Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum” opens Dec. 22 [2006] and runs through March 18 [2007].

“As an international exhibition, there are higher finance conditions than most exhibits,” said Maarten van de Guchte, director of the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens. “We wanted to bring a first-rate, blockbuster to Jacksonville, but to do so we had to increase ticket prices.”

The museum is expecting record attendance and tickets are on sale now...

Cummer expects huge crowds for Egyptian exhibit; but it’ll cost, Caroline Gabsewics, Jacksonville’s Financial News and Daily Record, Florida, USA, November 28, 2006.

Egyptian radiologists who performed the first-ever computed tomography (CT) evaluation of King Tutankhamun’s mummy believe they have solved the mystery of how the ancient pharaoh died. The CT images and results of their study were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Ashraf Selim, M.D., radiologist at Kasr Eleini Teaching Hospital, Cairo University in Egypt, was part of an international team of scientists that studied the 3,300-year-old mummy of King Tut in Egypt. Using a mobile multi-detector CT scanner, the researchers performed a full-body scan on the king’s remains, obtaining approximately 1,900 digital cross-sectional images.

"We found the mummy was in a critical stage of preservation," said Dr. Selim. "The body was cut into several parts with some missing pieces."

With the help of the CT images, researchers estimated King Tut’s age at death to be between 18 and 20 years. His height was 180 centimetres or approximately 5 feet 11 inches. The researchers discovered a possible premortem fracture to the femoral (thigh) bone. While they cannot assess how the injury occurred, the findings suggest that the injury may have been an open wound that became infected and ultimately fatal...

Radiologists attempt to solve mystery of Tut’s demise, EurekAlert, USA, November 27, 2006.

cf. Clues in King Tut's CT scan, Ronald Kotulak, Seattle Times, Washington, USA, November 28, 2006.

cf. Boy king may have died in riding accident, Ian Sample, The Guardian, UK, November 28, 2006.

An inscription has been found by archaeologists conducting excavations in the Lower City of Amathus that provides new information about Cypriot society in the Ptolemaic period, a statement from the Antiquities Department said yesterday.

The inscription was found on the floor of the interior doorway connecting two rooms and is as old as 3rd century BC. Although it is quite worn, it consists of 12 verses and is one of the longest texts from the Hellenistic period discovered in Cyprus. This inscription with arithmetic in Greek may refer to land portions given by the Ptolemaic General. It appears that it was laid in the floor in secondary use. Once the inscription is studied further, it is expected to provide more information about that period.

Another noteworthy find was a large gold cross that must have belonged to a high ranking official of the early Byzantine period (7th century AD). It was discovered in the complex of rooms with few fragments of paintings on the walls, and a lot of coins were found on the floor in the same room with the cross. The official may have resided in the room or in the entire complex.

Apart from the above, the movable finds also consisted of plaster interior architectural fragments with plant and geometrical motifs, vessels, lamps, copper objects, Hathoric capital and a pithos jar found in the southeastern corner of a room on the main avenue leading from the Amathus West Gate to the Agora. Also an almost life-size head depicting Alexander the Great was found in the room with inner arch, but its features were almost worn away.

The dig lasted six weeks and this was the last season of the second series of excavations carried out by the Department of Antiquities in the Lower City of Amathus. Overall conclusions will be published in separate volumes in the near future. Following the necessary conservation work, the excavated remains will be open to the public.

New clues about Ptolemaic past, Tatiana Yalamova, Cyprus Mail, Cyprus, November 27. 2006.

It may be a decade or more before this city’s monumental Museum Island finally shakes off the twin legacies of World War II and East Germany’s Communist regime, but with the reopening of the Bode Museum, this cultural park in the former East Berlin has taken another step toward recovering its place as one of the world’s great centres of art.

With the restoration of the Alte Nationalgalerie, or Old National Gallery, in 2001, two of the island’s five museums are now in fine shape. After an eight-year, $209 million refurbishment, the Bode probably has never looked better since its inauguration as the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in 1904.

Occupying a triangular plot overlooking the Spree River on the northern edge of the island, the museum is once again a true palace of art, welcoming visitors into its vast neo-Baroque entrance hall with an equestrian statue and leading them through naturally lighted galleries with marble floors and wood-panelled ceilings.

True to the ethos of its founding director, Wilhelm von Bode, who believed in mixing art collections, the museum is also now presenting Byzantine art, 15th- to 18th-century sculptures, and coins through the ages as well as a selection of Renaissance paintings and decorative arts. And it is doing so with a majestically spacious installation...

Thus, along with restoring Museum Island, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which owns the 17 museums, is gradually reorganizing the collections, which last year meant moving Egyptian art, including the famous bust of Princess Nefertiti, to the Altes Museum...

German Museums Move Closer to Reunification, Alan Riding, The New York Times, New York, USA, November 27, 2006.

cf. Re-opening of the Bode Museum on Berlin's Museum Island, Bode Museum, Germany, October, 2006.

ONE of archeology’s most enduring mysteries — how Tutankhamun, the Egyptian boy king, met his death — may finally have been solved after a study of his mummified remains.

Ever since his grave was found 83 years ago researchers have suggested Tutankhamun, known popularly as King Tut, was murdered, probably by Aye, his closest adviser, who succeeded him.

The case for the prosecution had rested on medical examinations and x-rays from the 1960s that appeared to show a fracture in his skull. This week, however, sees the publication of a far more detailed examination of the mummy suggesting Aye has been wrongly accused...

King Tut’s death was a bad break, The Sunday Times, UK, November 26, 2006.

cf. Fair go, pharaoh: Tut's vizier gets even break, Jonathan Leake, The Australian, Australia, November 27, 2006.

cf. King Tut may have died from broken leg, UPI via Monsters & Critics, UK, November 27, 2006.

Since the closing of KV10 and KV63 on July I6th I have been busy with reports to the SCA and a proposal for the 2007 season which will commence in February or March 2007. Our immediate plans will include continued conservation work on the coffins, exploration of the remaining storage jars, consolidation of various artefacts, and mending of ceramic vessels. The conservation work on the coffins will be a top priority, as we attempt to identify names and texts on the KV63 coffins.

Till next year,

Otto Schaden

There is a new set of photos on page two also.

Otto's Dig Diary, Dr. Otto Schaden, Amenmesse Project, University of Memphis, Tennessee, November 26, 2006.

The large national exhibition "Egyptian mummies – immortality in the country of the Pharaoh" is to be shown in the federal state museum Wuerttemberg from the 6th October 2007 to 24th March 2008 in the Alten Schloss Stuttgart . On the basis of a considerable own existence of the museum the exhibition wants to obtain a comprehensive overview of the mummifying technology, the dead cult and the other world conceptions of the ancient Egyptians. It gives answers to questions about the life and faith of this millennia-old advanced culture: Who were these people, why they mummified their dead and what techniques were applied, in order to prepare their bodies for an "eternal life"? ...

Unsterblichkeit im Land der Pharaonen , Damal Geschichte Online, Germany, November 22, 2006.

Washington University owns one of the world's most prized mummies, currently on display at the St. Louis Art Museum. Many in the university community would like to see her moved to campus.

Prominent St. Louis banker and private collector, Charles Parsons, donated two mummies to the University in 1896. Both mummies have been on permanent loan to the St. Louis Art Museum since 2002. They were displayed at the University from August to December of 1999. Prior to this showing, they were in storage at the University.

One of those is Pet-Menekh, a male mummy, from the 4th or 3rd century B.C.E., whose wrapped toes can be seen at the foot of the coffin. The female mummy, Henut-Wedjebu, from roughly 1391-1350 B.C.E., is held in much higher esteem...

Buried treasure: University-owned mummy kept at St. Louis museum, Andrea Winter, Student Life, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, November 15, 2006.

A new list of seven wonders of the world is being created for which you can vote for your favourites. HappyNews.com has created a list of the seven wonders of the internet world starting with e-mail.

Email

U.S. Postal mail, now referred to as snail mail due to the agonizing number of days it takes to be delivered, can be traced back to its origin over 4,000 years ago. Historical references to a postal system can be found in Egypt and Cappadocia, dating from around 2000 BC. One of the oldest letters discovered is a tablet from the mid-14th century BC containing condolences from the king of Mitanni to Amenhotep IV, king of Egypt (and husband to the famous Queen Nefertiti) on the death of his father. Since then, it remained pretty much unchanged until 1860 when the Pony Express, a relatively slow network that ran on hay instead of electricity, lowered the delivery time of a message from weeks to, well, fewer weeks...

Seven Wonders Of The Internet World, Byron Reese, HappyNews.com, USA, November 15, 2006.

Conservation groups today claimed a rare Egyptian-style cinema in Glasgow would be "completely ruined" if a developer is allowed to convert it into flats.

Govanhill Picture House, which opened in 1926, is one of only five cinemas in the world built in the unique Arabian fashion and is the only one of its kind in Scotland.

But Hanison Estates, based in Cathcart, want to create a five-storey development of 43 flats at the site and their revised planning application will shortly be considered by Glasgow City Council...

Call to save old cinema, Graeme Murray, The Glasgow Evening Times, Scotland, UK, November 21, 2006.

Four members of a shipping family were charged yesterday in connection with a large collection of illegal antiquities that was found earlier this year at a villa on a tiny Aegean island.

Prosecutor Eleni Raikou brought criminal charges against Despina Papadimitriou, the alleged owner of the villa on the island of Schinoussa, and her three children, Alexandros, Dimitris and Angeliki.

The four suspects have been charged with illegally possessing, receiving and trading antiquities. Authorities said that 152 artefacts were found at the villa on Schinoussa and at the family's Athenian home in Psychico, northern Athens...

Four charged over artefact stash, Kathimerini, Greece, November 23, 2006.

cf. Previously: Former Getty curator charged with Greek art theft.

Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said that an offer by the J. Paul Getty Museum to hand over 26 disputed antiquities doesn't go far enough and that the museum needs to return all of the artefacts Italy has requested.

Italy is asking for 21 others, including “Statue of a Victorious Youth,” known as the Getty Bronze. The Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Museum, the world’s richest private art institution, said on Nov. 21 [2006] that it would return only some of the contested objects...

Italy Says Getty Needs to Surrender All Disputed Artefacts, Farah Nayeri, Bloomberg, New York, USA, November 23, 2006.

Despite the inset of the rainy season in the American west cost city of Portland, Oregon, hundreds of people were queuing last week at the front gate of the Portland Art Museum to take an incredible journey with the Pharaohs through the afterlife. The street in front of the museum, which looks much like Park Avenue, was also packed with luxurious vehicles as the crème of Portland society flocked into the museum to attend the opening of "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt", the largest collection of antiquities ever loaned by Egypt for a North American exhibition.

The exhibition displays 107 artefacts illustrating the Pharaohs' dramatic voyage to the afterlife. Items were carefully selected from the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, the Luxor Museum and archaeological sites in Deir Al-Bahari on Luxor's west bank and Tanis in the Delta, where the intact royal burial of Psusennes I was discovered in the 1940s.

"The gold masks and jewellery are at least as beautiful as the pieces from Tutankhamun's tomb, but they were discovered on the eve of World War II, when there just wasn't time to deal with that sort of thing," Bill Mercer, curator of native American and ethnographic art at the museum, told reporters during a press conference held in the museum a day before the exhibition's official opening. Mercer went on to say that not only were the objects beautiful, splendid, magnificent and significant, but the scope of the exhibition was huge and included 45 pieces from Tutankhamun's collection...

Pharaohs in the city of roses, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 821, November 23 - 29, 2006.

The BBC have update their Egypt timeline page.

Timeline: Egypt, BBC News, UK, November 21, 2006.

The mention of ancient papyrus conjures images of profound proclamations carefully preserved through generations. In reality, though, most document shreds that have survived the last few thousand years are what Duke classics professor Joshua Sosin calls "grubby documentation of daily life."

Yet, Sosin said the findings are extremely profound because they represent our only link with ancient civilizations.

Sosin is among the experts consulted in a new PBS special on efforts to unlock the secrets written on a collection of ancient and hitherto indecipherable papyrus — a plant native to the Nile valley used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans to create the earliest form of paper...

Duke professor will appear on PBS special, Gregory Phillips, Durham Herald-Sun, North Carolina, USA, November 18, 2006.

cf. PBS: NOVA ScienceNow: Papyrus.

An environmental drama played out on the world stage in the late 18th century when a volcano killed 9,000 Icelanders and brought a famine to Egypt that reduced the population of the Nile valley by a sixth.

A study by three scientists from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and a collaborator from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, demonstrates a connection between these two widely separated events. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The investigators used a computer model developed by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies to trace atmospheric changes that followed the 1783 eruption of Laki in southern Iceland back to their point of origin. The study is the first to conclusively establish the linkage between high-latitude eruptions and the water supply in North Africa...

Icelandic Volcano Caused Historic Famine In Egypt, Study Shows, Science Daily, Maryland, USA, November 22, 2006.

cf. NASA link added: Historic Volcanic Eruption Shrunk the Mighty Nile River, NASA, USA, November 21, 2006.

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.