Ten years ago, during a visit to the tomb of Menna in the West Bank of Luxor, Queen Sofía of Spain caught sight of a child spinning wool on the cliff above. Intrigued, she asked permission to have a look around the area.

Peeking into the open door of a house, she saw an old man, Nassif, weaving kilims (handmade Egyptian carpets). The Queen was impressed by the whole atmosphere of Nassif’s home — the charm, the family, the simplicity of the house and studio, the skill and modesty of the weaver and the pictures of saints plastered on the wall. She chatted with the weaver for a while before making her way back down the cliffs. On the way down, she stopped and spoke with the Shahy brothers, who were carving the delicate features of Ramose on a bas-relief, while their mother sat on a dikka (a traditional wooden bench found in rural Egypt) adding beads to multi-coloured scarves.

Sofía ever returns to Gurna, she will probably ask, “Where have all the artisans gone?” As of last month, they are all earmarked for relocation to a new settlement, their houses marked for destruction as part of the Supreme Council for Antiquities’ drive to protect the priceless antiquities of the area. Indeed, one of the dwellings was ripped down by a front-end loader last month as part of a media spectacle to showcase the move of Gurna’s residents to a new “model” community...

Killing The Goose?, Nawal Hassan, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 01, January 2007.

The CUNY Graduate Center is hosting a sold-out first-ever gathering on Tuesday of the Athanasius Kircher Society in honour of 17th-century Jesuit polymath, an oddball natural scientist, historian, and rhetorician who explored Egyptology, Coptic grammar, the study of wind, and obelisks, and explored the connection between magnetism and love.

"Athanasius Kircher was the last of these great dinosaurs of erudition who can trample any fence between fields," a professor at Princeton University who will read a letter at the gathering about Kircher's descent into a volcano, Anthony Grafton, said.

Kircher lived just at the point when specialization in the university was commencing. Although the rationalist René Descartes helped eclipse his reputation, the once famous Kircher made contributions to Egyptology, volcanology, Sinology, ethnomusicology, and a dozen other eclectic subjects, writing 30 books and opening a public museum...

Exploring the Curious Mind of Kircher, Gary Shapiro, The New York Sun, New York, USA, January 11, 2007.

Two members of the Egyptological Society of Malta are promoting the theory that the many ancient Egyptian artefacts unearthed in Malta were brought over by the Egyptians themselves, and not, as commonly thought, by traders.

In an article titled Did The Ancient Egyptians Ever Reach Malta?, published in the Egyptian Egyptological journal, Anton Mifsud and Marta Farrugia analysed Egyptian artefacts found here and went through old and recently published material on which to base their conclusions.

Dr Mifsud and Ms Farrugia argue that because of their beliefs in afterlife, the ancient Egyptians were extremely reluctant to leave their country to live and possibly die miles away from home. However, war and trade with the Eastern Mediterranean nations and islands lured the Egyptians out of their homeland.

The authors note that though it has always been assumed that it was the Phoenicians who brought the earliest Egyptian artefacts to Malta, the items found here span a time frame that pre-dates the arrival of the Phoenicians in the eighth century BC...

I'm not sure what the "Egyptian Egyptological journal" is but the authors published an article with the title "Did The Ancient Egyptians Ever Reach Malta?" in the UK's Ancient Egypt Magazine, Volume 6, Number 5, Issue 35, April / May 2006.

'Ancient artefacts brought over by Egyptians, not by traders', Natalino Fenech, The Malta Times, Malta, January 11, 2007.

Remarkable discoveries on the fringes of the Sahara are forcing a rethink of the origins of ancient Egyptian civilisations

It was February 1999, and Carlo Bergmann had spent five days wandering through the desert with just his camels for company. His eyes were sore from the dust and from scanning the ground in front of him. Then he spotted them — two shards of pottery lying in the sand. They didn't look like much, but Bergmann knew at once what they meant. This one-time Ford motor company management trainee with no formal archaeological training had discovered an ancient trail that had eluded professional Egyptologists for almost a century. Here was a key piece in the puzzle surrounding the origins of the great civilisation of the pharaohs.

Eight years on, and amazing discoveries by Bergmann and a small band of researchers in the desert west of the river Nile are forcing Egyptologists to reconsider the origins of this ancient civilisation. In the 5th century BC, the historian Herodotus described pharaonic...

You'll need to be an online subscriber to see the whole article or nip down to your local newsagents and buy a printed copy for £2.70 as it is on the shelves now. Hurry as, if I remember correctly, when the cover published date says 13th then that is basically when the next issue hits the shelves.

Pharaohs from the stone age, Emma Young, New Scientist Magazine, UK, Issue 2586, January 13, 2007, pp. 5.

cf. Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa (ACACIA).

Related:

Climate-Controlled Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Motor of Africa's Evolution, August 11, 2006.

Cattle first kept in Sahara, archaeologist says, July 25, 2006.

Exodus From Drying Sahara Gave Rise to Pharaohs, Study Says, July 21, 2006.

Ancient humans 'followed rains', July 21, 2006.