A magic spell to keep snakes away from the tombs of Egyptian kings, adopted from the Canaanites almost 5,000 years ago, could be the oldest Semitic text yet discovered, experts said Tuesday.

The phrases, interspersed throughout religious texts in Egyptian characters in the underground chambers of a pyramid south of Cairo, stumped Egyptian experts for about a century, until the Semitic connection was found.

In 2002 one of the Egyptologists e-mailed the undeciphered part of the inscription to Richard Steiner, a professor of Semitic languages at Yeshiva University in New York. Steiner discovered that the phrases are the transcription of a language used by Canaanites at some point in the period from 25th to the 30th centuries B.C...

Spell May Comprise Oldest Semitic Text, Laurie Copans, AP via Discovery Channel News, USA, January 25, 2007.

Previously: Earliest Semitic text revealed in Egyptian pyramid inscription, January 31, 2007.

Previously: Deciphering of earliest Semitic text reveals talk of snakes and spells, January 23, 2007.

Egypt succeeded in attracting 9,082,000 visitors in 2006, a 5.5% increase over the 8.7 million visitors of the previous year, announced Minister of Tourism Zoheir Garranah. These are strong results given that the global growth rate for tourism worldwide is 4.5%, according to the World Trade Organization.

For the first time ever, England now ranks as the top country for visitors to Egypt, having broken the one million mark with 1,033,000 visitors. This is a phenomenal 23.4% increase over 2005.

Russia held its second-place spot for the second year in a row, with 998,000 visitors to Egypt in 2006. This is a particularly significant result given that Russia is a relatively new market with a strong performance in the last two years. At third place is Germany with 966,000 visitors, a slight 1.4% decrease from last year when it held the top spot. Italy ranked fourth, the same as last year, with 786,000. Others ranked in the top ten include France, with 372,000, and the United States, with 210,500 visitors. Visitors from Canada in 2006 were 52,000...

Egypt's visitors up 5.5% in 2006 to 9.1 million, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, February 01, 2007.

Police from Attica’s illegal antiquities unit were yesterday questioning a 72-year-old woman following the discovery of dozens of ancient Egyptian artefacts in her sons’ homes in the central town of Lamia. Officers said they were seeking the two sons, aged 42 and 45, who live in London. The artefact haul included an alabaster chamber pot with a cap in the form of the Egyptian hawk god Horus, several necklaces with precious stones, an inscribed scarab stone and a church incensory. The woman said she had inherited the artefacts from her father who grew up in Egypt. Meanwhile yesterday, two men, aged 28 and 68, faced a Thessaloniki prosecutor on charges of illegal antiquities trading after allegedly trying to sell two undercover policemen three artefacts for 30,000 euros. Officers confiscated a Roman-era bust of a woman and two statuettes.

Mother questioned on artefacts found in sons’ Lamia homes, Kathimerini, Greece, February 02, 2007.

Mummy experts from Manchester are searching for the forgotten medicines of the Pharaohs.

A team from the university is comparing modern plant species common to the Sinai region of Egypt with the remains of ancient plants found in the country's tombs.

The scientists, from the Centre of Biomedical Egyptology, led by Prof Rosalie David, have teamed up with colleagues at the Egyptian Medicinal Plant Conservation Project in Sinai, to research pharmacy in the time of the Pharaohs...

Mummies unravel the Pharaohs' secrets, Paul R Taylor, Manchester Evening News, UK, February 02, 2007.

Previously: Discovering the pharmacy of the pharaohs, January 30, 2007.

While not drawing quite the crowds making their way to the Grand Palais for Trésors engloutis d'Égypte, an exhibition of mostly Ptolemaic artefacts ... Afghanistan, les trésors retrouvés across Paris at the Musée Guimet should nevertheless be on the itinerary of every visitor to the French capital.

This exhibition features discoveries of international importance made by French archaeological missions in Afghanistan over the course of the last century, most of which have never been seen before outside the country. In what is being seen as quite a coup both for the Musée Guimet, an institution specialising in south and south-east Asian art, and for the French capital, the exhibition allows visitors to gain their first glimpses of material that not only has never been lent before by the Afghan National Museum in Kabul, but that was also considered lost during the decade of civil war that wracked Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989, destroying much of the country as it did so.

The material includes the famous "Bactrian gold" discovered by joint French and Afghan archaeologists in northern Afghanistan shortly before Soviet forces moved into the country in 1979. This material, long thought lost, survived the later civil war locked in the vaults of the National Bank in Kabul, where it was "rediscovered" following the US-led invasion in October 2001...

Alexander's Afghan gold, David Tresilian, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 830, February 01 - 07, 2007.

Excavators from the Brooklyn Museum stumbled upon the unique lintel painted with five gilded deities during routine cleaning of the precinct enclosure wall of the temple. Topped with a cavetto cornice embellished with painted stripes, the lintel is well preserved. It is framed by rounded moulding and the decoration includes raised relief figures. The five gilded solar deities appear sitting on lotus blossoms against a blue backdrop, representing the sky, each with a finger in its mouth. The first and last are crowned with the sun disk, the second wears a double crown, the third a hem-hem crown and the fourth a two-plumed crown. The golden child gods sit before an offering table to the right of which are two figures, the first an ape, whose face still bears some gilding, wearing a modius and feather with his arms raised in a gesture of worship. Apes are often shown in connection with the sun. The second figure is of the goddess Taweret, crowned with cow's horns, a sun disk and two feathers.

Sabri Abdel-Aziz, head of the Ancient Egyptian Department at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, says early studies suggest the lintel may date from the late Intermediate Period. The newly discovered artefact is now being cleaned and restored.

Gilded youth, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 830, February 01 - 07, 2007.

This is a good time to remind you that John Hopkins University has daily updates on the excavation online here: John Hopkins University Mut Temple Precinct Excavation. No details are online from this week which is possibly due to a press embargo awaiting the release of the information about the above discovery - this certainly happened last year.

UPDATEI have just realised that I have linked the John Hopkins MUT Temple Precinct excavation above rather than the Brooklyn Museum MUT Temple excavation. Easy to get them confused! Brookly Museum: Dig Diary.

Italian police arrested 52 people and recovered several hundred smuggled archaeological artefacts as part of their “tomb raider” investigation into international art theft.

More than 300 carabinieri of the finance police and paramilitary art squad searched suspects’ homes in eight Italian provinces early today and found smuggled goods of “considerable worth,” Italy’s Culture Ministry said in an e-mail.

Three years of investigations into a group of Sicilian “tomb raiders” led to the searches, arrests and uncovering of a wider international network, with contacts in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, the U.K. and U.S., the statement said. The investigation and raids were coordinated by the magistrates from the Sicilian province of Gela, the e-mail said...

Italian Police Arrest 52 People in 'Tomb Raider' Smuggling Case, Alessandra Migliaccio, Bloomberg, New York, USA, January 31, 2007.