Manchester has been chosen as the surprise location of Britain's first Las Vegas-style super-casino.

The decision is a blow for Blackpool and London's former Millennium Dome, which were the bookmakers' favourites...

I hope that this will please Zahi Hawass who had threatened not to allow the Tutankhamun exhibition to come to the Dome, London, if it won its casino bid. Unfortunately Philip Anschutz (the US billionaire behind AEG) had previously threatened to curtail investment if a casino license wasn't granted which may affect Tut! This could drag on for a while though as there are bound to be appeals.

Manchester wins super-casino race, BBC News, UK, January 30, 2007.

cf. The Dome misses out, Harry Wallop, The Telegraph, UK, January 30, 2007.

Previously: King Tut held to Ransom, August 31, 2006.

Previously: King Tut hit by the curse of the dome, December 27, 2006.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have teamed up with colleagues in Egypt in a bid to discover what medicines were used by the ancient Egyptians.

The KNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology in the Faculty of Life Sciences and the Egyptian Medicinal Plant Conservation Project in St Katherine's, Sinai, have formed a partnership to research Egyptian pharmacy in the times of the pharaohs.

The 'Pharmacy in Ancient Egypt' collaboration, which is funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust, will compare modern plant species common to the Sinai region with the remains of ancient plants found in tombs.

Researcher Ryan Metcalf said: "We know that the ancient Egyptians had extensive trade routes and it is entirely possible that both medicinal plants and the knowledge to use them effectively were traded between regions and countries...

Discovering the pharmacy of the pharaohs, Exduco, Italy, January 29, 2007.

Nearly 5,000 years old, a monument known today as the Shunet el-Zebib, the only surviving example of a series of monumental cultic buildings built by Egypt’s earliest kings at Abydos, has been ravaged by the elements, attacked by animals and insects, and structurally compromised by humans over the millennia; its present day survival seems almost miraculous. One of the most mysterious of ancient Egypt’s monuments was in danger of imminent collapse. In 2001, the experts all agreed that unless steps were taken immediately this massive mud-brick structure would not remain standing much longer.

A conservation and stabilization program was developed, sponsored by New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and surprisingly the most suitable methods recommended by the experts for saving the monument turned out not to be highly technical ones of modern construction, but rather those more traditional, and ancient, in nature. Work began soon after using many of the same techniques to save the monument that were employed to build it five millennia ago. The conservation of the monument, which occupies more than two acres, is now nearly fifty percent complete...

“At the start of the project, our primary goals were to record the current state of the monument, assess its structural problems, and design and implement a program of conservation measures,” said Dr. O’Connor. “We did not want to restore it to its original appearance, but rather to preserve the monument in a way that reflects its nearly 5,000 year history. The centuries of damage from the elements, animals, and later human activity are part of that history, and, while their most serious consequences are being repaired, their effects will continue to be a visible aspect of the monument...”

Ancient Techniques Employed to Rescue 5,000 Year Old Egyptian Monument by NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, Exduco, Italy, January 29, 2007.

For over 100 years, four blue-glazed jars bearing the nametag of Rameses II (1302-1213 B.C.) were believed to contain the Egyptian pharaoh’s bodily organs. But analysis of organic residues scraped from the jars has determined one actually contained an aromatic salve, while a second jar held the organs of an entirely different person who lived around 760 years later.

Now the question is, who was this individual?

“We do believe that the unknown person was of importance for at least two reasons,” said Jacques Connan, one of the study’s authors. “First, he or she had access to the famous jars and secondly, his or her organs were embalmed with pure Pistacia resin, which is uncommon according to our present chemical knowledge on balms of Egyptian mummies, especially during the Roman period.”

The mystery concerning the jars began in 1905, when they were brought to Paris’ Louvre Museum, where they are still housed. Shortly after that time, researchers cut into a packet inside one of the jars and plucked out a piece of heart. The packet is now lost, but from that point on, the containers were labelled as “the canopic jars of Rameses II...”

Human Remains in Ancient Jar a Mystery, Jennifer Viegas, Discovery Channel News, USA, January 23, 2007.