Tell el-Dab'a (a.k.a. Avaris) has its own homepage. Avaris was the capital of the Hyksos in Lower Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period. The Hyksos were Canaanite immigrants and Manetho referred to the them as heku-shoswet, and, Hellenised, it became "Hyksos," which means rulers of a foreign land. This later became a general Egyptian term for Asiatic foreigners. Pharaoh Ahmose I (18th Dynasty) sacked Avaris and chased the Hyksos to southern Canaan to their fortress, Sharuhen near modern day Gaza. Ahmose laid siege to the fortress for three years before he stormed it.

has been excavating here for some time now.

Egyptology Online Karnak and Avaris, C. Feagans, Hot Cup of Joe, Texas, USA, January 18, 2007.

Queen Nefertiti's bust, a symbol of female power and beauty that has survived more than three millennia, is too fragile to leave Berlin for a trip to Egypt, German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said.

Neumann rejected a campaign by a Hamburg-based lobby group demanding the loan of Nefertiti to Egypt. CulturCooperation e.V., partly funded by the European Union, says Egypt has been requesting the return of the regal bust for more than 90 years, most recently just for temporary exhibition.

"Experts are of the view that there are serious conservation and restoration concerns that argue against any long-distance transportation of Nefertiti," Neumann said in a statement today. He added that in general, such cultural exchanges are welcome...

Nefertiti Is Too Fragile to Visit Egypt, German Minister Says, Catherine Hickley, Bloomberg, UK, April 13, 2007.

cf. Minister rules out lending Nefertiti bust to Egypt, dpa via EUX.TV, Netherlands, April 13, 2007.

There was excitement at the Egyptian Museum on Tuesday when dozens of Egyptian and foreign journalists and photographers crowded on the first floor to view a small plexi-glass showcase in hall number 39. In the case was a lock of hair from one of the most famous heads of all time — that of Rameses II.

The hair is now on display along with remains of linen bandages and resin used in the mummification of the great ruler. The case also contains samples from the mummy of Rameses's son and heir, Merenptah...

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) said he could not tell whether or not the samples were taken out of Egypt legally, but he was sure that keeping any samples in private possession and putting them up for sale on the Internet was illegal.

Hawass said the samples were taken from both mummies for scientific purposes and not for any other reason, and that action would be taken to avoid similar thefts in the future. "From now on all scientific research and studies carried out on ancient Egyptian mummies will be executed by Egyptian Egyptologists or under complete surveillance by Egyptians," he announced...

A hairy tale for Rameses II, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 840, April 12 - 18, 2007.

Previously:

Rameses II's hair returned, April 11, 2007.

Ancient pharaoh's hair returns to Egypt, April 10, 2007.

Egyptian archaeological returns from France with mummy's hair, April 02, 2007.

Egypt's team heads for France to retrieve mummy's hair, March 30, 2007.

France to return 'pharaoh's hair' to Egypt, February 26, 2007.

France Says 'Pharaoh's Hair' Scandal in Police's Hands, December 04, 2006.

Frenchman arrested for trying to sell lock of pharaoh's hair, November 29, 2006.

Out of 18 sand seas that exist on this planet, four are in Africa. The largest is the rightly-named Great Sand Sea. Occupying a massive part of the Western Desert of Egypt, it misleads people into thinking there's nothing to see but endless sand dunes. Indeed there is sand, loads of it, but there also lies Silica glass. Mohamed El Hebeishy, among many, would like to know where it came from.

In this wide world of ours, only a part of the Great Sand Sea plays host to a unique natural formation, Silica glass. Silica glass comes in varying degrees of clarity ranging from cloudy to transparently clear. Its colour ranges from steak grey to pale green while its weight may vary from a few grammes to a 27kg-chunk, the biggest whole piece ever found...

To add a touch of charm to the enigma, Vincenzo de Michele of the Centro Studi Luigi Negro examined Tutankhamen's pectoral jewellery in October 1998 and was literally floored by what he found. The well-polished giant lime green scarab adorning the young Pharaoh was not a Chalcedon, a form of crystalline quartz, as had been previously thought. It was actually Silica glass. Did the Pharaohs discover the precious gem long before envoys of Haj Hussein of the Kufra Oasis reported it to the world? Or had they already resolved its origin mystery and buried the secret in their sealed tombs? Questions lurk as we try to crack the ancient code encrypting Silica glass...

Snap Shots, Mohamed El Hebeishy, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 839, April 05 - 11, 2007.

Previously:

Mysterious Egyptian Glass Formed by Meteorite Strike, Study Says, December 29, 2006.

More on Meteorite Crash Helped Form King Tut Necklace, June 30, 2006.

King Tut’s glass beetle came from outer space, June 27, 2006.

Forty million years ago a vast area of the northern part of the Egyptian Western Desert was nothing but a sea. The whole of Fayoum was submerged; it was part of the Tethys Sea. In reality, Tethys Sea was so enormously big that some scholars call it Tethys Ocean rather than sea. When it finally receded, it formed what we know today as the Aral, Caspian and Black seas. In its bluish- green water dwelled creatures that evolved and survived or did not and became extinct. One of the biggest inhabitants of the ancient sea was Zeuglodon, the famous whale of Fayoum.

In the early years of the 19th century, fossils were being systematically destroyed in Louisiana and Alabama in the US. Locals were using it as raw material to make furniture. Somehow, one vertebra made its way into the hands of anatomist Richard Harlan. When he examined the fossil, Harlan mistakenly thought it a reptile and named it Basilosaurus isis, king of the reptiles. In reality, though, it was a Zeuglodon fossil. The gigantic marine mammal known academically as Zeuglodon cetoides, or yoked-tooth, averaged 20 metres in length and had a slender eel-shaped body and saw-like teeth. To add to the oddity, Zeuglodon had small, fully- developed hind legs with a femur, patella, tibia, fibula and four toes...

Desert whales, Mohamed El-Hebeishy, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 839, April 05 - 11, 2007.

This was meant to be the review of an exclusive Aswan-to-Luxor Nile cruise — so exclusive, I was told, there would be no more than eight people on the boat. I pictured myself sunning in true colonial style, a gin-and-tonic in one hand and Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile in the other. In the distance would be a magnificent temple framed by the white-and-green prospect of a Nubian village while right there, below the regally furnished deck, deep blue water would ripple and glitter, ceaselessly.

Alas, what my brief turned out to be was "Aswan on a shoestring"; this meant, among other things, up to 15 hours on "the sleeping train", as the Railway Authority so aptly identifies it. The thought erroneously evoked Paul Theroux's Iron Rooster : an opportunity to interact with the people and study the land. I took heart...

Cut the shoestring, Youssef Rakha, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 839, April 05 - 11, 2007.

[T]he heady exhilaration that drove the scientific movement of the Enlightenment [of 18th and 19th century Europe] is remote, amusing, or unfathomable. Brian Fagan's The Rape of the Nile brings that heady dangerous destructive exhilaration to life.

Begun in the 1960s as a commissioned biography of that quintessential showman, Giovanni Belzoni, The Rape of the Nile was first published in 1975. This new edition from Westview Press, has been extensively revised and updated. Far from a simple catalog of the sins of the tomb robbers, The Rape of the Nile communicates that intellectual fever that created such havoc...

The Rape of the Nile is, as is usual with Brian Fagan's many general public books, eminently readable — and in this case awful and awe-inspiring in its resonant description of those days when science and scientific thought was being forged.

, Brian M. Fagan, Basic Books Inc., 2004, pp. 301.

The Rape of the Nile - A Book Review, K. Kris Hirst, About.com, USA, June 14, 2005.