One of the star exhibits at the Louvre's Egyptology wing, a collection of four jars said to have contained the embalmed organs of Egypt's greatest pharaoh, Rameses II, have a sadly less glamorous vintage.

The beautiful turquoise-blue earthenware pots, emblazoned with Rameses' name in hieroglyphs and with incantations to the gods Mut and Amun, are genuine.

But the belief that they held Rameses' preserved innards to help ease the pharaoh into the afterlife is false, French investigators say.

Writing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by chemist Jacques Connan of the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg carried out molecular tests and carbon-dating on two samples of residue scraped from two jars...

Oh mummy: Louvre's pharaoh jars are not what they seemed, AFP via The Nation, Thailand, March 15, 2007.

Previously:

Human Remains in Ancient Jar a Mystery, January 30, 2007.

In November of 2006, I was invited to accompany a friend, Nadia Geleil, to her homeland, Cairo, Egypt. It is hard to believe that you can board a jet in New York City and 10 hours later arrive in a land of full of mummies, tombs and treasure.

Nadia’s extended family met us at the airport. It wasn’t long before I realized that Egyptians are warm and friendly people. We all piled into cars and headed to the family apartment. The cars on the highway are mostly small older models, even Chinese- and Russian-made.

The highways are very crowded. They drive bumper to bumper and use the horn to let others know where they are and where they want to go. I realized I was in a foreign land when no one stopped for a red light. OK, I thought, maybe in Egypt red means go and green means stop. Well in a few minutes we went through a green light. Wrong again. I finally asked why no one stops for red lights. “They just don’t” was the response. At the busiest intersections there were traffic police to help keep order...

Local women travel to the pyramids of Egypt, Ann Thorpe, The Jamestown Post-Journal, New York, USA, March 03, 2007.

John McDonald, Egyptologist and Smithsonian researcher, will present "Who is Really Buried in Tut's Tomb, and Other Mysteries of the Kings' Valley" at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 22 [2007], in Hager Auditorium at the Museum of the Rockies.

McDonald will share his insights into the questions surrounding Tut's tomb and other royal burials. King Tutankhamun was buried in haste and for security reasons in a small, private tomb in the Kings' Valley in Egypt, while an excavated tomb prepared for Tut in the West Valley was used instead by his successor. The remains of Tut's funerary meal were buried in a different location, and his mother, a little-known princess, Kiya, may have been buried in a fourth tomb.

After the lecture, people are invited to join McDonald for an informal question and answer session and a viewing of the exhibit "Tutankhamun: 'Wonderful Things' from the Pharaoh's Tomb..."

Egyptologist lectures about King Tut's tomb and other mysteries of Egypt's Kings' Valley, Montana State University, Montana, USA, March 13, 2007.