Tucson Children's Museum has scheduled the "Ancient Egyptian Art Festival of Friendship" on Saturday with hieroglyphic art activities, a show-and-tell presentation of Egyptian artefacts, a puppet-led "archaeological adventure" and a performance of Middle Eastern dances by a local group, Veils of Mystery.

The program is from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Egyptologist Mary Ann Marazzi and Tucson puppeteer Dennis Eustace will make the presentations, including Egyptian music and papyrus samples...

Egyptian Art Festival set at Children's Museum, Paul L. Allen, The Tucson Citizen, Arizona, USA, December 07, 2006.

There’s no smell like it — the cloying, nasty, burning-tooth stink created by cutting into the bones of an Egyptian mummy. A few weeks ago, a small group of Royal Ontario Museum and University of Toronto scholars inhaled the smell in the form of weird, brown-black, bitumen-saturated dust when they gathered to extract a sample of shin bone from a mummy lying in the apartment of antiquities dealer Billy Jamieson. After drilling, the scholars carefully prised away an olive-sized bit and dropped it into a plastic bag so it could be taken to the university for carbon dating.

These people could be cursed for their curiosity. Egyptologists have been known to fall ill after poking around mummies; anthrax and cholera last thousands of years. On this occasion, though, the mood was cheerful as the scholars discussed the padding under the mummy’s eyes and linen tampons up his nose, signs of a costly embalming. Probably the man was a priest from the Ptolemaic period, perhaps 300 BC, they agreed. “But if he’s earlier, that’s a whole different story,” Jamieson said.

Then everyone quaffed a beer (mummy prayers specify beer as offerings for the dead) and departed to await the carbon-dating test results.

Yet despite their prices and their popularity, mummies are being deaccessioned. Even in the wildly permissive 21st century, the public exhibition of human remains is controversial, as organizers of a recent Bog People show discovered. Institutions such as the Canadian Museum of Civilization have returned aboriginal remains to first nations for reburial. And there’s new protectiveness on the part of the descendants of ancient cultures. Egypt endured grave-robbing for millennia, but, led by its aggressive director of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, it recently brought in stiff penalties, and has also begun to demand that foreign museums send mummies and artefacts back to their ancient home. In this environment, says Christie’s director of antiquities, Max Bernheimer, few mummies will reach the market in the future: “Certainly, they're not coming out of Egypt any more...”

Tales from the crypt, Val Ross, The Globe and Mail, Ontario, Canada, December 07, 2006.

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered the funerary remains of a doctor who lived and worked in the country more than 4,000 years ago, including his mummy, sarcophagus and bronze surgical instruments.

The upper part of the tomb was discovered six years ago at Saqqara, 12 miles south of Cairo.

However, the sarcophagus only came to light in the burial pit as archaeologists carried out cleaning work.

The doctor, whose name was Qar, lived under the 6th dynasty and built his tomb near Egypt's first pyramid...

Mummy of ancient doctor comes to light, Russell Jackson, The Scotsman, Scotland, UK, December 06, 2006.

cf. Mummy of doctor dates back 4,000 years, Maamoun Youssef, AP via Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky, USA, December 07, 2006.

cf. Mummified MD and his tools unearthed, Maamoun Youssef, AP via New Jersey Online, New Jersey, USA, December 07, 2006.

cf. Mummy dating back to 6th dynasty in Saqqara discovered, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, December 06, 2006.

Bruce Trigger was a leading expert in three distinct fields of archaeology: as a historian of the discipline; as an Egyptologist; and as an authority on the aboriginal cultures of ancient North America. He placed archaeology as an academic discipline and a practice within a broader context of social and cultural evolution...

In Egyptology ’s fieldwork was mainly in Nubia, notably at Arminna West. Apart from many papers in professional journals, his books and monographs in this area included History and Settlement in Lower Nubia (1965), The Late Nubian Settlement at Arminna West (1967), The Meroitic Funerary Inscriptions from Arminna West (1970), Nubia under the Pharaohs (1976) and Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context (1993)...

Obituary: Professor Bruce Trigger, The Times, UK, December 07, 2006.