When Amy Jackman learned of an opportunity to go to Egypt and get college credit, she jumped at the chance.

Jackman, a sophomore at Dana College and 2005 Seward High graduate, visited Egypt as part of a Discovery Term class called The Legacies of Egypt, offered in January through Dana. She and 16 other people spent three weeks overseas.

"It was awesome. It was amazing," Jackman said.

Although the trip was for credit, the students didn't attend any actual classes, she said. Instead they chronicled their experiences-what they learned and reflections on what they did-in journals, which were graded...

Aloha from Egypt, Stephanie Croston, Seward County Independent, Kansas, USA, February 14, 2007.

Join us on our journey through the ancient and not so ancient cultures of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

The us in question is an American family with three children taking a seven month sabbatical. Some people have all the luck!

Journey to Ancient Civilizations, Marty Robertson, 2006 - 2007.

Greece and the J. Paul Getty museum have signed an agreement for the return of two ancient treasures that Athens claims were illegally excavated and smuggled out of the country, officials said on Wednesday.

The artefacts — a 4th century B.C. gold wreath and a 6th century B.C. marble statue of a young woman — are the last of four antiquities successfully reclaimed by Greece from the Getty.

They will be handed over to Greek officials by the end of next month, under the deal signed in Athens late Monday by Greek Culture Ministry Secretary-General Christos Zachopoulos and Michael Brand, director of the private Los Angeles museum.

"This signing confirms the climate of trust and mutual understanding (between Greece and the Getty), and creates new prospects in their relations," the Culture Ministry and the museum said in a joint statement...

Getty Museum signs deal to return 2 ancient treasures to Greece, AP via The San Jose Mercury News, California, USA, February 07, 2007.

Brooklyn Museum has an online dig diary for their MUT Temple Precinct excavation works here: Brooklyn Museum: Dig Diary. This is not to be confused with John Hopkins University's Hopkins in Egypt Today dig diary for the same site as the two teams have shared the site for several years now.

I notice also that Brooklyn Museum has a Flikr channel containing many photosets from the MUT excavation: Brooklyn Museum on Flikr.

To the west of the Serapeum, during routine excavations, the Japanese mission from Wasida University discovered five Middle Kingdom shaft-tombs. Removing the sand from one of them they uncovered four splendid painted wooden sarcophagi, the first a "black type" anthropoid sarcophagus with yellow lines and scenes featuring the four sons of Horus decorating two sides.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said early studies suggest the sarcophagus belonged to Wiai, a New kingdom craftsmen's chief of the house of Amun. "It probably dates from the 18th or early 19th Dynasty..."

Meanwhile, deeper in the desert of Saqqara necropolis, on the eastern side of Meryneith's tomb, a mission from Leiden Museum and University has unearthed an Amarna tomb decorated with wall paintings. The tomb consists of an open courtyard surrounded by pillars and, to the west, three cult chapels. Limestone revetment has been preserved along both the courtyard's north and east walls.

According to Maarten J Raven, head of the mission, more relief panels may be hidden under the sand still covering the base of the other walls. The bases of three limestone papyrus columns and one fluted half-column already jut from the sand...

There's a nice relief featuring two monkeys playing beneath the chair of the tomb owner's wife here. And another one of the sarcophagi unearthed in the Saqqara necropolis by a Japanese excavation mission this week.

Secrets unearthed, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 832, February 15 - 21, 2007.

Three BYU professors have uncovered mysteries in ancient Egyptian writings aided by new technology that allows people to see inscriptions invisible to the naked eye.

The professors Roger Macfarlane, Stephen Bay and Thomas Wayment, have been working on deciphering these writings on papyrus found in an Egyptian dump where an ancient city known as Oxyrhynchus previously existed. The papyri are now housed at the University of Oxford in England and studied by various scholars around the globe.

The technology developed by BYU called multispectral imaging, can penetrate through dirt, stains and other material on the papyri, making it possible to expose obscured lettering.

"BYU has made the most substantial advance in reading these papyri in over 100 years," said Macfarlane, associate professor of classics at BYU. "We are beginning to learn where the BYU technology makes given problems go away..."

Mysteries of Ancient Egyptian Papyri Revealed, Jared Preusz, BYU NewsNet, Brigham Young University, UTAH, USA, February 14, 2007.

1923 — King Tutankhamen’s tomb was unsealed by Howard Carter.

Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation, The Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK.

Today in History Site, Tammy Cordani, Bella Online, February 16, 2007.

UPDATE cf. The original New York Times article from 1923: Tut-ankh-Amen's Inner Tomb is Opened Revealing Undreamed of Splendors, Still Untouched After 3,400 Years, The New York Times, New York, USA, February 16, 1923.