While reaffirming that it still intends to transfer ownership of one of its most prized artefacts, a statue of the goddess Aphrodite, to Italy, the J. Paul Getty Museum says it will convene a panel of scholars in two months to plan scientific detective work needed to settle unanswered questions concerning the piece, which the Italian government claims as a looted antiquity.

Since last fall, the Getty has been at an impasse in its negotiations with Italian cultural officials over the fate of 52 works in its collection that Italy believes were looted.

Lacking input from the Italians, the Getty has decided to go ahead on its own with a study of the Aphrodite it proposed last October as a prelude to returning the piece.

"We would not be saying we were prepared to transfer title if we did not think that is the right thing to do, but scholars here think we would be remiss" in not trying to answer questions about the statue in the meantime, Ron Hartwig, a spokesman for the J. Paul Getty Trust, said Thursday...

Disputed statue to be studied, Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times, California, USA, March 09, 2007.

Two more online dig diary entries have been added for the Hierakonpolis 2007 dig season.

2007 Field Note 3 - More From the HK24B Predynastic Industrial Site

After New Years, the time available for the excavations at HK24B flew by in a flash. Although frustrating at time, the piles of potsherds and burnt mud eventually gave up their secrets and hidden surprises, but only after a good deal of earth shifting and detective work...

2007 Field Note 4 - All Drawn Out!

Any excavation at Hierakonpolis would not be complete without collecting bucket after bucket of ceramic sherds. At parts of the site the ceramic pieces are so abundant you literally cannot take a step without stepping on a few or even several. What do we do with all of these collected broken ceramics? We draw them and by doing so we can re-create the pottery vessel from which they originated...

Archaeology's Interactive Dig: Hierakonpolis, Jeremy Geller and Kyle Mullen, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, New York, USA, March 2007.

[R]umour has it the Ministry of Culture is planning to invite the private sector to invest in restoring historic Cairo.

Major hotel chains are reportedly being allowed to turn some of the monuments into hotels. Word on the street holds that the first building to be considered is going to be Wekalet Qaitbay next to Bab El-Nasr.

The Wekala was built in 885 by the Mamluk King Al-Ashraf Abul Nasr Qaitbay as a place for travelling merchants to sleep and peddle their wares. It displays all the beautiful characteristics of the Mamluk era's intricate architecture...

Palace Hotels, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 03, March 2007.

Germany is a key tourist exporting market to Egypt, said the Egyptian Minister of Tourism. Zuheir Garana said that about 1.1 million German tourists visited Egypt last year, expecting the figure to go up to two million in 2011.

Speaking to German reporters on Friday on the sidelines of Egypt's participation in the International Tourist Bourse in Berlin, Garana said Egypt is a key tourism destination for German tourists...

Germany key tourist exporter to Egypt, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 10, 2007.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni decided to carry out the urgent project of maintaining the blocks of Khufu's Great pyramid in the frame of the related great enterprise implemented by the ministry for the last 8-years in 3 stages.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities stated that a technical and engineering committee comprising of a group of scientists and experts in antiquities, including Dr. Farouk el-Baz, was formed to test the condition of the great pyramid's blocks and prepare for its restoration.

Hawass said that it is the beginning for other pyramids restoration process that extends to 10years because of its difficulty...

Integrated project to restore pyramids blocks, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 11, 2007.

Grand Palais Museum in central Paris witnesses a great attendance from the French people to visit "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" Exhibition that will end next week.

Despite bad weather and heavy rains, masses are standing in rows in front of the museum to wait for the visit. Franck Goddio, Chief of the European Institute pointed out the large number of attendants to visit the exhibition because of the French fondness of the Egyptian antiquities. Number of the visitors reached more than half a million.

Half million visitors to Egypt's "Sunken Treasures" Exhibition in France, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 11, 2007.

This week, plans for another Egyptology-fest in London will be unveiled. The Anschutz Entertainment Group is blowing trumpets for a Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition, which will open in November at The O2, the venue formerly known as the Millennium Dome. It's fairly safe to predict it will not cause the same fuss. The explanation for that lies as much with the epoch of the early Seventies as it does with the intrinsic merit of antiquity's best-known, yet most mysterious, pharaoh.

The Sixties, as a mythical era, did not coincide with the calendar period of the same name. The Sixties began in 1963, sometime between the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover and the Beatles' first LP, and carried on until 1972, or perhaps even the year after that. It was a time of affluence and full employment, of flower-power and counter-culture, of the civil rights movement and exotic Eastern religions, of both social and sexual unzipping.

But already by 1972 there was a sense that things were coming to an end...

The return of Tutankhamania, Sophie Morris, The Independent, UK, March 12, 2007.

cf. Tutankhamun Treasures to Return to Britain After 35 Years, PRNewswire, PR Inside, UK, March 12, 2007.

cf. Tutankhamun exhibition to come to London , AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, March 12, 2007.

Video here: King Tut artefacts on display, BBC News, UK, March 12, 2007.