On our Nile cruise we were told to put a tip in an envelope and leave it with reception at trip's end. Of course, that did not stop the housekeeper, who folded our towels to make wonderful animals, from expecting another handout.

At an alabaster factory on the West Bank, young, handsome staff pressed alabaster good luck scarab beetles into our hands and we paid outrageous prices for pottery "exactly" like that found in Tutankhamen's tomb.

Amani Talaat Kamel, our guide in Cairo, said tips should be given only to people who serve you.

"It is bad for Egypt's reputation, but some people make their living out of it," she said. "In the 1970s and '80s, some even made fortunes out of it. Some guests encourage them, so they will keep doing it..."

Baksheesh, miss?, Diana Plater, Sunday Herald Sun, Australia, February 18, 2007.

Tutankhamun And The Golden Age Of The Pharaohs will open in a new, 60,000 sq ft exhibition centre at O2, the £500 million venue inside what used to be the Millennium Dome, in November.

It will showcase 130 Egyptian treasures, all between 3,000 and 3,500 years old and including 50 from the tomb of Tutankhamun.

There had been fears the exhibition would be canned after the Greenwich site lost out to Manchester in the race for the first supercasino.

But Anschutz Entertainment Group, the company behind the O2, confirmed today that it is pressing ahead with the display...

The Millennium Dome: Tutankhamun Exhibition.

The official Tutankhamun And The Golden Age Of The Pharaohs website.

King Tut swaps pyramids for the Dome, Tom Teodorczuk, This is London, UK, February 21, 2007.

Superbreak Offers Breaks to London's Tutankhamun Exhibition

Superbreak, the UK's online holiday specialists in short breaks, offers budding Egyptologists breaks to London for the launch of the 'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' exhibit in November [2007].

'Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' (www.superbreak.com/tutankhamun-exhibition/) will be the largest exhibition ever hosted in Britain, and Superbreak offers visitors the chance to book tickets and accommodation early through both its website and a promotion that will reach over 3.2 million homes via a pullout in Saturday's Daily Mail. The exhibition begins on 22nd November 2007 and will (subject to confirmation) be held at The 02 (formerly the millennium dome) in Greenwich over the following 10 months...

My emphasis. Nice to see an actual date being given in November at last but strange that the venue is still 'subject to confirmation'.

Superbreak Offers Breaks to London's Tutankhamun Exhibition, PRWeb, USA, February 21, 2007.

The new issue of KMT is out now. A summary of its contents appears below.

• KV63: An update
  by Otto J. Schaden. Final stages of the cache-tomb's clearance.
• Sakkara's New Imhotep Museum
  by Zahi Hawass. With exclusive photos by Gustavo Camps.
• Seti I & the Ghosts of what had been
  by Philippe Martinez. A reappraisal of Qurna Temple & its history.
• Tutankhamun's Missing Ribs
  by Dennis Forbes, Salima Ikram & Janice Kamrin. A proposed solution to the problem.
• Collection of the Birmingham Museum
  by Lucy Gordan-Rastelli. Ancient Egypt in the Midlands of the U.K.
• The Pharaohs' Apiaries
  by Gene Kritsky. Beekeeping along the Nile in antiquity.
• Cleopatra had a Jazz Band
  by Donald P. Ryan. Egypt in early 20th Century sheet music.

KMT, KMT Communications Inc., Sebastopol, California, USA, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2007.

Subscribe to KMT Magazine via Amazon.com.

French archaeologists have found a temple dating from the middle of the 1st millennium BC in Kharga oasis in Egypt's Western Desert, the Egyptian state news agency MENA said on Wednesday.

The temple is at Dush in the southernmost edge of the oasis and dates from the Persian period, it said...

The MENA report gave no details of the condition of the new temple and officials were not available at the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology, which sent the team to Kharga...

MENA quoted the local director of antiquities as saying the irrigation works dated back to about 500 BC and that the French mission has also found statues and gold coins from the period...

French team finds Persian-era oasis temple in Egypt, Reuters, India, February 21, 2007.

The latest issue of Current World Archaeology is out now and contains two articles of interest to Egyptophiles.

• Dakhleh: Exploring an Oasis
  The environmental study includes work at the Old Kingdom site at Ain el-Gazareen, temples at Deir el Haggar and Ain Birbiya, the Roman period town of Kellis, and the Moslem town at el-Qasr. (11 pages)
• Books:
  By Joyce Tyldesley, Thames and Hudson, 2006, pp. 224. (1 page)
  
  

  Queens of Egypt provides a beautiful yet handy reference book that spans from Early Dynastic times to the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC and includes special features such as ‘Personal Hygiene’ and ‘Sexual Etiquette’ as well as genealogical trees and time-lines.

Current World Archaeology, Think Publishing, London, UK, Volume 2, No. 9, Issue 21, February / March 2007.

Subscribe to Current World Archaeology Magazine via Amazon.com.