At an international press conference the minister [of tourism] yesterday said before [a] meeting with 380 owners of tourist companies from Spain, Portugal, and North America that there is one pyramid in the world and [it] is [the] largest of any competition and [it is] unbecoming to enter any competition with any old or new wonders.

A number of media representatives accompanying the foreign delegation asked the Minister about excluding the Egyptian pyramids from the New 7 Wonders institute's referendum led by the Swiss businessman Bernard Wiper, and the result will be declared on next July 07 in the Portuguese Capital [Lisbon]... ***

*** What are they announcing? The result of the question they asked? Or the result of the New 7 Wonders competition? The latter obviously but, nonetheless, a slightly confusing article! And they got the capital of Portugal wrong!

One does not have to exclude the Pyramids wonder of the world, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 27, 2007.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has formally requested the temporary display of unique ancient Egyptian antiquities kept in several museums abroad during the inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum in 2011.

SCA Secretary General Zahi Hawass said he met Ambassador Mona Saudi, Assistant Foreign Minister for Cultural Affairs, and discussed with her procedures to put into effect an agreement between Culture and Foreign Ministers Farouk Hosni and Ahmed Abul-Gheit respectively to contact foreign countries to allow the return of the monuments for display during the ceremony.

The objects in question are the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum in London, the bust of Nefertiti in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, the statue of Great Pyramid architect Hemiunnu in the Romer-Pelizaeus Museum in the German city of Hilesheim, the Denderah Temple Zodiac in the Louvre in Paris, and the bust of Khephren pyramid builder Ankhaf in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA.

Hawass said he hoped the foreign countries would accept the Egyptian request in the light of distinguished ties with these countries.

Egypt wants to showcase its unique antiquities abroad, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 30, 2007.

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass has said the government is planning to establish an up-to-date laboratory to conduct DNA tests on mummies.

Hawass said the lab will cost $3 million to be paid by the American National Geographic network.

The American TV will further produce a documentary on Queen Hatshepsut, he added.

Hawass noted that the lab will be equipped with state of the art technology and located at the basement of the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo...

Egypt to establish up to date labs to conduct DNA tests on mummies, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 29, 2007.

Egypt said Sunday it would seek the temporary return of some of its most precious artefacts from museums abroad, including the Rosetta Stone and a bust of Nefertiti.

The country's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, said the Foreign Ministry would send letters this week to France, Germany, the United States and Great Britain requesting that the ancient artefacts be loaned to Egypt.

Hawass has previously demanded the permanent return of many of the artefacts, claiming some of them were taken illegally.

This time, the country is requesting museums loan the artefacts so they can be exhibited either at the 2011 opening of the Egyptian Museum, near the site of the Great Pyramids at Giza, or the Atum museum, which is set to open in the Nile Delta city of Meniya in 2010, the Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement.

Egypt said it would request the loans from the British Museum, Paris' Louvre, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and two German museums...

Egypt will ask museums abroad to temporarily send back artefacts, Salah Nasrawi, AP via The Seattle Times, Washington, USA, April 30, 2007.

cf. Egypt Seeks Loans of Overseas Artefacts, Salah Nasrawi, AP via PhysOrg, USA, April 30, 2007.

The 6,000-pound red granite lion symbolizes the power of the Egyptian Pharaoh. But Mary Ellen Soles, curator of ancient art at the North Carolina Museum of Art, said the sculpture reminds her of “a big kitty cat.”

It’s the first thing people will encounter when visiting “Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from the British Museum.”

Soles pointed out the big cat’s casual pose. One front paw is crossed over another and his tail curls around the front of his body. There’s a benign expression on his face.

Soles noted the “acutely observed naturalism,” such as the animal’s ribs and a pouch of sagging skin incorporated into the sculpture...

The exhibition catalogue can be found here: , Edna R. Russmann, Nigel Strudwick, T.G.H. James, University of Washington Press, 2006, pp. 136.

Temples, tombs and more, Mike Wilder, The Times News, North Carolina, USA, ...

A love for mummies is not uncommon, but a love for figuring out the mysteries that surround their deaths is not an easy task.

Just ask , a man whose love for mummies has taken him halfway around the world to discover the mystery of a mummy known as Unknown Man E.

Brier recently spoke as part of a series held at Camden County College's Dennis Flyer Theatre. The lectures dealt entirely with the mysteries and history of Ancient Egypt and brought to the college experts on the subject from all around the world.

Not originally scheduled to speak that night, Brier, whose wife was unable to speak due to an illness, filled in and provided a glimpse into the mysteries surrounding an ancient mummy that had been labelled only by the name Unknown Man E...

Speaker gets wrapped up in talk on mummies, Drew Ciccotelli, The Philadelphia Record Breeze, Pennsylvania, USA, April 26, 2007.

Previously:

The Mystery of Unknown Man E, February 16, 2006.

Italy will return to Libya an ancient Roman statue taken from its former North African colony, a gesture Rome hopes will help its own campaign to retrieve allegedly looted antiquities from museums worldwide.

The 2nd century statue of the goddess Venus was found in 1913 by Italian troops near the ruins of the Greek and Roman settlement of Cyrene, on the Libyan coast, the Culture Ministry said Tuesday. It is now housed in Rome's National Roman Museum...

Libyan authorities requested the statue in 1989, but a protracted judicial battle ensued with a group that considered the work part of Italy's cultural heritage. Last week, a court ruled in favour of returning the statue to Tripoli, the ministry said in a statement. No date has been set for the return.

The ruling sets "a useful precedent to promote the return, in favour of Italy, of antiquities that were looted by other states," the ministry said.

Italy is aggressively campaigning to recover antiquities it says were smuggled out of the country and sold to museums worldwide...

Three Associated Press photographs can be found here on Yahoo! News' Archaeology & Anthropology slideshow.

Italy to Return Ancient Statue to Libya, Ariel David, AP via The Guardian, UK, April 24, 2007.

The dramatic scaling down of Scotland Yard's once renowned arts and antique squad has left organised criminals free to plunder the nation's heritage, according to a leading fine art insurer.

Police have sought private money to finance the squad after its annual budget of some £300,000 was halved earlier this year. But the Guardian has learned that Scotland Yard has failed to secure a penny from insurers or auction houses, after months of discussions.

Britain's art market is second only to the US and experts claim up to £200m worth of stolen art and antiques are sold in the UK each year. Interpol estimates that art theft is the fourth largest organised crime after drugs, people trafficking and arms...

[S]uccesses include the uncovering of a multimillion pound British smuggling operation in which precious antiquities and archaeological artefacts were stolen from Egypt, some of which were sold at Sotheby's...

Met's art theft squad has to go cap in hand, Sandra Laville, The Guardian, UK, April 21, 2007.

Seven years after being given the go-ahead, the Al-Arish National Museum is ready to open...

North Sinai's National Day celebration had a different flavour this year. Apart from the inauguration of new urban development projects that usually mark the event, the city's long-awaited LE50 million National Museum is at last finished.

The two-storey Al-Arish National Museum (ANM) will make a huge visual difference to North Sinai's capital city. The temple- shaped, honey-coloured edifice has finally been revealed after being hidden for almost a decade under ugly iron scaffolding, wooden panels and plastic sheets.

Although plans for the museum were drawn up in 1994 — shortly after the return of Sinai's archaeological collection taken by Israel during their occupation — the foundation stone was laid only in 1998. Lack of funds subsequently placed the project on hold for nearly four years. However in 2002 the Ministry of Culture put Egypt's museums at the top of its priority list in an attempt to preserve the country's priceless treasures, both stored and newly-discovered. The plan was to create the optimum environment to display the treasures, and thus release the pressure on overstuffed major museums. In line with the ministry's plan, steps were taken towards the museum's completion...

The gates of history, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Issue No. 842, April 26 - May 02, 2007.

I can’t wait for that touring King Tut exhibit I keep hearing about to come to New York.

Yes, but the closest that “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” will get to us is Philadelphia — it’s there through September 30 [2007].

Why’s that?

Well, Egypt’s antiquities director, Zahi Hawass, pitched it to a number of New York museums, and they all turned it down.

I get the sense it’s kind of a hypefest.

Perhaps. It’s atypical in that most blockbuster exhibits make at least gestures toward an intellectual conceit. Here, the wall labels are pretty basic, and the idea is mostly Look at all this awesome gold stuff. The museum’s shop even sells knockoffs of Hawass’s hat.

Is it not worth the trip, then?

No, it is — you just have to be willing to do a little reading on your own beforehand. If you do, you can take a lot away from the show. And of course it’ll interest kids...

The Gist: “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs”, Christopher Bonanos, New York Magazine, New York, USA, April 30, 2007.

I find it hard to imagine anyone visiting Egypt for the first time, no matter how well read on the subject, and not being impressed. It is amazing so many people spent decades building pyramids or digging, carving and painting elaborate underground vaults, long before some civilisations had cottoned on as to the potential of the wheel.

The legacy of buildings they have left is remarkable and we stare and wonder at it all. Yet the republican pulse still beats deep inside and I just feel all that ability, knowledge of higher mathematics, craftsmanship, energy and grotesque amounts of labour could have been used for the general good.

Instead thousands of workers were directed at the behest of a succession of deluded leaders who actually believed they were to become one of the gods, and despite this ethereal elevation, needed their worldly goods in the hereafter.

Not everyone swallowed this, however, for it is believed the tombs were cleaned out by robbers within 70 years of them being sealed...

A bit of envy for the simple life, Oliver Phillips, This is London, UK, April 20, 2007.

Our endless fascination with ancient Egypt owes much to the beauty of the tomb paintings, statuary, temple reliefs, and other magnificent artworks that are the legacy of this remarkable culture. But despite the multitude of objects and texts that have survived, questions abound, particularly about the true role of women in Egyptian society. This wonderfully illustrated, brilliantly researched book draws on unpublished material from author Zahi Hawass' own excavations as well as new analyses of older evidence to penetrate the silent images and paint an astonishing picture of women's lives. Hawass contrasts the stereotype-inspired by such symbols of femininity as the queens Nefertiti and Nefertari-with a more realistic view of the common woman's everyday involvement in matters ranging from family life to dress and adornment to the workplace and the legal system. Lavish photographs of places and objects, many made especially for this book, round out an enthralling, richly textured work. Zahi Hawass is a world-renowned archaeologist. He is director of the Giza Pyramids and field director of the Bahariya Oasis excavation, as well as a frequent lecturer around the world. He has written books on the pyramids and on kingship in ancient Egypt, and his articles have been published widely. He teaches archaeology at Cairo University and the University of California at Los Angeles. 150 illustrations in full colour, 9 3/4 x 11 3/4"

, Zahi Hawass, Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1995 (2000), pp. 207.

An exhibition mounted by the Department of Art and Archaeology offers a look at vintage photographs from the second half of the 19th century, during the concurrent development of photography and tourism. The exhibition, "Global Views: 19th-century Travel Photographs," runs through Friday, Sept. 28 [2007], in the first floor lounge of McCormick Hall.

In the second half of the 19th century, professional photographic firms arose in the major cities of Western Europe, as well as in more remote travel destinations such as Greece, Egypt, India, Asia and the Middle East. Catering to an influx of European and American tourists, a growing number of travel photographers documented historical monuments, archaeological sites and scenes of daily life from the Middle East and Asia.

The exhibition features some of these unique images, which have historical value in terms of the development of photography and the study of the architectural and social history of the regions in which they were produced...

Princeton University Department of Art and Archaeology.

Exhibition highlights vintage travel photographs, News @ Princeton, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA, April 24, 2007.

An 83-year-old man and his family have appeared in court charged in connection with the sale of a fake Egyptian statue which was thought to be worth £1m.

Bolton Council paid £440,000 for the Amarna Princess in 2003 believing it was 3,300-years-old — but in 2006 experts found it was counterfeit.

George Greenhalgh, his wife Olive, 82, and sons, George, 52, and Shaun, 46, appeared at Bolton Magistrates' Court.

They were bailed to appear at Bolton Crown Court on 24 July [2007]...

Family in court over fake statue, BBC News, UK, April 26, 2007.

cf. Family in court over sale of fake statue to council, Jon Land, 24dash.com, UK, April 26, 2007.

Previously:

Two men charged over fake statue, April 23, 2007.

Fake £1m statue: Bail extended for trio, March 01, 2007.

The ancient Egypt statue from Bolton (circa 2003), March 28, 2006.

More on £500,000 statue in police 'fake' probe, March 21, 2006.

Two held as '£1m Egyptian statue' is found to be a fake, March 21, 2006.

Egyptian statue in forgery claim, March 20, 2006.

Archive:

cf. Museum secures rare Egyptian sculpture, BBC News, UK, September 30, 2003.

Could this mysterious, 3,000-year-old ring be part of the lost — and cursed — treasure of Tutankhamun?

It's owner, Markas Dove of Kintbury, certainly believes so.

Since the ring was unearthed by a huge storm in 1987, Mr Dove has been offered a fortune for the ring, although bad luck has followed in its wake.

Mr Dove said: "My dad found the band with a metal detector after the hurricane of 1987 removed about 10 feet off the beach at the Isle of Wight...

Elisabeth O'Connell, the research curator at the British Museum's Egyptology department, said: "The inscription suggests it belonged to either Tutankhamun or one of his inner court.

"I would not like to try and put a figure on its value."

She added that an early-20th-century shipwreck of a vessel carrying Egyptian antiquities was the most likely explanation for the find...

King Tut's treasure, John Garvey, Newbury Today, UK, April 26, 2007.

The 3,400-year-old bust of the wife of the Sun King Akhenaten has been in German hands since it was dug out of the desert by the archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912. It was smuggled out of Egypt and became a central part of Berlin’s museum collection.

Now the Egyptians want it back, if not for keeps, then at least on loan to mark the opening in 2012 of a new Grand Egyptian Museum, near the Pyramid at Giza. If the Egyptian Museum in Berlin does not agree, says Zahi Hawass, there will be trouble. “We will make the lives of these museums miserable,” the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt said. “It will be a scientific war.”

German officials say that the bust is too fragile to travel. “Nefertiti is not a pop star that can simply go on tour,” a senior official said. Dietrich Wildung, head of the Egyptian Museum, says there is no doubt that Nefertiti is German property. “She was donated to the state museum in 1920 by James Simon [who sponsored the Borchardt dig].”

The bust, he says, has become globally famous in a way that it would not have had it stayed in Egypt. “Nefertiti has become an outstanding example of how the foreign can be integrated into society,” Dr Wildung says. “She is accepted, not assimilated. She keeps her separateness and her uniqueness, yet she belongs here.”

Nefertiti, in other words, is not budging. Mr Hawass has sent the Germans an ultimatum: “We will never again organise antiquities exhibitions in Germany if it refuses the request...”

Museums at war over a flying visit home for Queen Nefertiti, Roger Boyes, The Times, UK, April 26, 2007.

Previously:

Egypt officially requests Nefertiti bust, April 23, 2007.

Nefertiti: Face to face, April 20, 2007.

Egypt Vows 'Scientific War' If Germany Doesn't Loan Nefertiti, April 19, 2007.

Berlin museum rebuffs threat over Nefertiti, April 17, 2007.

Egypt threatens German ban in Nefertiti row, April 16, 2007.

Nefertiti Is Too Fragile to Visit Egypt, German Minister Says, April 13, 2007.

Everything is very cheap in Egypt. I had two rooms, with four beds, and a private bath, with a hot-water shower, for $60 a month. I recall that each day I would go out and get a plate of macaroni with meat, two mini-hamburgers on French-style bread, four small candy bars, a cola and a newspaper, all for $1.14. Seven pounds of Egyptian flat bread, like thick tortillas, or 20 small loaves, cost 45¢. A barbecued chicken was about $1.75. Egyptian teabags were 30¢ a hundred. Grapes and dates were 14¢ a pound. Buses and the surface-level trains charged 3¢ a ride. You could get a flat bicycle tire patched for 15¢.

This was in 1990 and 1991, at a time when the Egyptian pound was fluctuating between 30¢ and 35¢. Today, with the pound (junaih in Arabic) going for about 18¢, the figures would look even better, unless inflation has outrun the depreciation of the pound, which I doubt seriously, given the government controls in Egypt...

I was contemplating cycling the entire 113 miles, which would have taken me 2 days, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t find enough places to get water in the scorching semi-desert of the Nile Delta...

Cabbing To Cairo For 2 Cents A Mile, Thomas Keyes, Useless-Knowledge.com. April 24, 2007.

Previously:

A Quick Tour Of The Pyramids, The Sphinx And The Egyptian Museum, August 30, 2005.

Egypt Is A Safe, Safe Place, July 07, 2005.

[He] enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he and a roommate, who was studying Egyptology, decided to look at how bird representations in Egyptian art had changed through time. For months they spent evenings poring over books at the university's superb Egyptian collection, tracking changes in styles over 2,000 years. On a whim, they sent their finished study to , a famed Egyptologist at Yale University.

He called, immediately bought them tickets to the East Coast and helped them submit their monograph to the world's premiere Egyptology journal, which published it in 1979. "Who are you, anyway?" he asked the pair. Soon, at his urging, they'd found grant money to go to Egypt and study birds and historic records there.

"At that point, my life changed," Goodman remembers. "From then to now I've been on the same trajectory.

That has led him to wander with Bedouins on the remote Egyptian-Sudanese border... Along the way he helped create an transnational park on the Egypt-Sudan border..

Wild man, Laurie Goering, The Chicago Tribune, Illinois, USA, April 22, 2007.

The last North American tour of Tutankhamun-related relics, 29 years ago, was billed as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see them outside Egypt. So perhaps their return proves we've all now entered the afterlife in which the ancient Egyptians fervently believed, and which inspired the creation and preservation of many of the glittering objects on display.

But those who remember queuing for hours in their youth and who think they've seen it, done it and bought the catalogue should note that there are twice as many artefacts this time, only 11 of which visited before. And with online booking of timed-entry tickets, a clear view of the objects is guaranteed and long line-ups are now ancient history.

If the earlier exhibition was a portrait of Tutankhamun, who took the throne at age eight or nine and who died less than 10 years later, the new show is a family album also covering preceding generations of ancestors and monarchs, and setting the scene for the youngster's reign.

Containing items ranging from the monumental to the utterly domestic, the exhibition opens with a powerful grey granite statue of Tutankhamun himself, elegant and lithe, and pronounced by an inscription as being favoured by the gods...

Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs on display until September 30, 2007 at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute.

The exhibition catalogue is available from Amazon: , Zahi Hawass, National Geographic Books, 2005, pp. 287.

Tut's treasures, Peter Neville-Hadley, The North Shore News, British Columbia, USA, April 24, 2007.

Big Five Tours & Expeditions is pleased to announce that it is among the first tour operators selected to market Oberoi's new luxury ship, the Oberoi Zahra. Set for launch in the fall of 2007, this stylish cruiser will ply Egypt's Nile River. The ship is beautifully appointed in contemporary decor with large windows offering panoramic views of this timeless waterway.

Big Five has created a Nile River tour program to match this outstanding new Oberoi Nile cruise ship. Extraordinary Egypt is a 13-day program that provides guests with an unparalleled experience. They explore the frenetic lanes of old Cairo and the magnificent pyramids of Giza, bargain for treasures in Khan El Khalili Bazaar, discover ancient Alexandria and the temples of Luxor, and spend time in the Valley of Kings. They enjoy a special, private tour and reception at the temple of Hathor at Denderah, and travel to Abu Simbel to discover the remarkable temples of Rameses II and Queen Nefertari...

Big Five First Among Select Tour Operators to Offer Newest Oberoi Luxury Ship in Egypt, PR Web, USA, April 25, 2007.

The latest issue of Ancient Egypt Magazine is out now. Below is a summary of its contents.

• Through a Glass, Clearly
  Alan L. Jeffreys looks at an unusual and impressive display in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
• Egypt in Dubai
  Cathie Bryan looks at some of the many new Egyptian-style buildings that have been built in Wafi City in Dubai.
• The Dakhleh Oasis Project
  In the second in a series of articles, Dr. Peter Sheldrick looks at the physical remains of the ancient inhabitants of the Oasis.
• The Temple of Khonsu at Karnak
  Charlotte Booth takes us on a tour of the well-preserved small temple, showing how it demonstrates a power-shift from the Pharaoh to the Priests of Amun.
• An unwrapped mummified head in the Hancock Museum
  Gill Scott tells how a male mummified head has recently been conserved.
• From our Egypt Correspondent
  Ayman Wahby Taher with the latest news from around Egypt, including exciting discoveries in the major new excavation of the Avenue of Sphinxes between the temples of Luxor and Karnak.
• Technology Innovators of Ancient Egypt
  In the second of his series of articles, Denys Stocks looks at the technology of the great pyramid-building age of ancient Egypt, the Old Kingdom.
• A Pilgrimage to Abydos
  Blair Wilkins visits Abydos and a special grave there.
• Per Mesut: For younger readers
  This issue Hilary Wilson looks at grain.

Ancient Egypt Magazine, Empire Publications, Manchester, UK, Volume 7, No. 5, Issue 41, April / May 2007.

Subscribe to Ancient Egypt Magazine via Amazon.com.

A riddle of ancient Egyptian bones has been solved by two experts at Bolton Museum.

But they intend to keep people guessing — for the moment.

Two unique linen-wrapped bundles containing remains which could be up to 2m years old were unearthed in the early 1920s by celebrated archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie, who excavated many of the most important sites in Egypt.

The bulk of his finds went to University College in London [to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology], but for a long time it seemed the bundles had disappeared off the scientific map — until they turned up in Bolton.

Intrigued by the discovery, Tom Hardwick, keeper of Egyptology at the museum, and archaeology expert David Craven turned detective to reopen an investigation, hoping to find exactly what they had...

Experts bone up on ancient riddle, Don Frame, The Manchester Evening News, UK, April 25, 2007.

Legendary land of the Pharaohs and home of the goddess Isis and her husband Osiris, god of fertility and ruler of the afterlife — Egypt is a magical place for a holiday.

This fabled north-east African country — with its face to the Mediterranean, its back to the desert and flanked by the Red Sea — exudes a serious sense of the exotic.

Tutankhamen, the great Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza, the Valleys of the Kings and Queens, Abu Simbel — these are all names which cause a frisson of excitement.

And to such wonders of the ancient world, Egypt has added the modern Aswan Dam...

Travel: Fit for the Gods... Ancient and modern Egypt will change your Life, Aine Hegarty, Red Nova, USA, April 21, 2007.

[I]f it weren't for Terry Wilfong, of the University of Michigan, [a] part of Tamesia's burial papyrus would not come true.

Mr. Wilfong's painstaking interpretation of the papyrus, owned by the Toledo Museum of Art, is helping her name live forever — or at least through today — just like the papyrus promised.

Mr. Wilfong is among 100 presenters keeping ancient Egypt alive during the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Research Centre in Egypt. The meeting continues through [Sunday] at the Toledo Riverfront Hotel...

The papyrus of Tamesia is a window into a world where people continued to cling to the ancient practices of Egyptian religion, even as their world changed. Already, many spoke Greek in daily life, and saw the growing influence of that culture...

Tamesia's burial papyrus is nearly 12 feet long and 10 inches high, it is abbreviated compared to the book of the dead that would have accompanied her to the afterlife in earlier times...

Egyptologists keep ancient world fresh, Jenni Laidman, The Toledo Blade, Ohio, USA, April 21, 2007.

The mystery and splendour of ancient Egypt has come to the North Carolina Museum of Art.

"Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from the British Museum" opens today and continues through July 8 [2007].

Members of the media, along with the show's corporate sponsors, attended a preview on Thursday...

The 85 objects in the show represent ancient Egypt on a grand scale, but also showcase antiquities in unbelievably exquisite detail.

"Many of these objects haven't looked this good in the last 5,000 to 6,000 years," Maree said, complementing the show's lighting and dark-blue walls. "Every piece looks absolutely fabulous..."

Exhibition catalogue: , Edna R. Russmann, T. G. H. James, and Nigel Strudwick, American Federation of Arts, 2006, pp. 136.

Temples and Tombs, Susan Shinn, Salisbury Post, North Carolina, USA, April 15, 2007.

[A] University of Toronto doctoral candidate named Caroline Rocheleau spent two summer months at Madaba, as the Jordanian city is now known. Dressed in an old cotton T-shirt, cotton pants, wool socks and steel-toed boots, she would walk two miles with hoes, buckets and rubber baskets for a day of digging.

In the diary she kept there, she describes the careful measurements and record-keeping, and the removal of pottery shards that she would glue back together later. Piecing together the past is an exacting business.

Growing up in Kenya and visiting Egypt, Rocheleau knew early that she wanted to be an archaeologist. By the time she returned home to Canada to begin her college studies, the subject was far more tangible than just something she had read in textbooks...

I was initially confused when I found this story as I actually found the second one linked below first &8212; which is just a list of famous archaeologists — that I presume was a box-out in the printed edition.

Dig this, Craig Jarvis, The Raleigh News & Observer, North Carolina, USA, April 15, 2007.

You might have heard of these archaeologists, Craig Jarvis, The Raleigh News & Observer, North Carolina, USA, April 15, 2007.

There are still mysteries, but Bonnie M. Sampsell has been a super sleuth, helping the Wayne County Historical Museum answer many questions about its mummy and its Egyptian collection.

Richmond native Sampsell, who now lives in Chapel Hill, [North Carolina], started putting her passion for Egyptology to work for the museum last summer. She began cataloguing the artefacts, researching the collection and updating the mummy's display.

On Sunday, during the museum's annual meeting, Sampsell [discussed] what she learned.

"It just ties everything together well and gives us a lot more information that we did not know," said Jim Harlan, executive director of the Wayne County Historical Museum. "Everybody thinks it's a very professional job."

Many of the questions cantered on the mummy — a favourite of visiting school children for years. Museum founder Julia Meek Gaar bought the mummy during a 1929 visit to Cairo, Egypt. She was told the mummy had been on exhibition in a curio store there for 40 years before the shop owner decided to sell it to her.

Sampsell used X-rays taken of the mummy in 1974 and 2000, a CAT scan done in 2000, along with other photographs and information to seek answers during her own recent trip to Cairo...

Bonnie M. Sampsell is the author of (How the Land Made Egypt What It Is), The American University in Cairo Press, 2003, pp. 272.

Mummy's the word for museum meeting, Rachel E. Sheeley, Palladium-Item, Indiana USA, April 14, 2007, via EEF News.

A father aged 84 and his son have been charged over the £440,000 sale of an allegedly fake Egyptian statue.

The Amarna Princess was bought in 2003 by Bolton Council, which believed it was a 3,300-year-old antiquity.

Experts determined the 20in (51cm) sculpture was not genuine, after special tests last year.

George Greenhalgh, 84, and his son Shaun Greenhalgh from Bolton, have been charged with laundering the proceeds of sale of the statue...

Two men charged over fake statue, BBC News, UK, April 21, 2007.

cf. £1m fake statue: family charged, Amanda Smith, The Bolton News, UK, April 21, 2007.

cf. Four on fake statue charge, Manchester Evening News, UK, April 23, 2007.

cf. Egyptian statue that cost council £440,000 is a forgery, This is London, UK, April 23, 2007.

Previously:

Fake £1m statue: Bail extended for trio, March 01, 2007.

The ancient Egypt statue from Bolton (circa 2003), March 28, 2006.

More on £500,000 statue in police 'fake' probe, March 21, 2006.

Two held as '£1m Egyptian statue' is found to be a fake, March 21, 2006.

Egyptian statue in forgery claim, March 20, 2006.

Archive:

cf. Museum secures rare Egyptian sculpture, BBC News, UK, September 30, 2003.

Secretary of the Supreme Council for Antiquities Zahi Hawass confirmed on April 20 that he will send an official letter to the director of Berlin's Altes Museum, requesting the approval of officials of the museum on loaning Nefertiti bust to Egypt for a three-month period, on the occasion of inaugurating the largest world museum of antiquities in mid June 2011 and which is currently set up by Ministry of Cultural on 117-fedden area on Alexandria Desert Road.

Hawass said the request shows keenness of Cultural Ministry officials to provide the chance for Egyptian and foreign visitors of the grand museum to witness their beautiful queen Nefertiti amid her counterparts of Egypt's ancient Pharaonic history.

Hawass rejected statements made lately by the German culture minister and museum director on the disapproval of German officials to Egypt's request of their loaning Nefertiti bust as they claimed danger of its damage during freight and transport.

Egypt officially requests Nefertiti bust, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 21, 2007.

Previously:

Nefertiti: Face to face, April 20, 2007.

Egypt Vows 'Scientific War' If Germany Doesn't Loan Nefertiti, April 19, 2007.

Berlin museum rebuffs threat over Nefertiti, April 17, 2007.

Egypt threatens German ban in Nefertiti row, April 16, 2007.

Nefertiti Is Too Fragile to Visit Egypt, German Minister Says, April 13, 2007.

Some 775,000 tourists from different world's countries visited Egypt last February, up by 16% compared to February 2006, said chairman of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) Abu Bakr Al-Gendi.

Tourist nights spent by those tourists accounted for 6.4 million nights, with 15.3% increase versus February 2006, he added.

European tourists topped the list of tourists that visited Egypt last February followed by tourists from the Middle East countries, East Asia, North America and Africa.

Arab tourists totalled 124,600 up by 1.1% compared to February 2006.

775,000 tourists visited Egypt last February, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 20, 2007.

Egypt officially protested against a contest sponsored by a Swiss Tourist Company to choose the new wonders of the world.

The Giza Pyramids in Egypt were ruled out from the contest.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said that he sent an official address to the UNESCO Director General, the Chairman of the World Heritage Committee, and the UNESCO Culture Director General asking them to intervene and immediately stop this farce.

This is rather bizarre as on the same day we have “Egypt’s pyramids out of seven wonders contest”.

Egypt officially protests against the farce of new contest on world wonders, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 20, 2007.

Previously:

Egypt's pyramids out of seven wonders contest, April 20, 2007.

Remains of an ancient Egyptian wall used to prevent the leakage of the Nile flood waters from spreading over the Karnak temple in Luxor were discovered on Thursday at the temple’s eastern side, culture minister Farouk Hosni announced on Sunday.

Hosni revealed that the wall was accidentally found by Egyptian excavators during an archaeological inspection of the site undertaken as part of a development project aimed at removing encroachments accumulated over the years on the temple’s different sides.

Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), explained that the newly-discovered wall is only 400 km long and 7m in height.

More excavations will reveal more relevant structures, said Hawass...

A Karnak discovery shows how ancient builders shielded temples from Nile water, Ahmed Maged, The Egypt Daily Star, Egypt, April 22, 2007.

Some of the new mummies that have been unearthed of late are likely to be those of ancient Egypt’s most controversial royals, announced Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Egypt’s chief archaeologist, who spoke on Wednesday to a packed hall at the American University in Cairo, noted that the mummies that are awaiting confirmation of scanning tests are among some of the new discoveries in the field of archaeology. This is in addition to a number of new findings from excavations which were carried out in Heliopolis and the Valley of the Kings, Luxor.

Hawass also said that four doors that have been pinpointed inside the big pyramid could also reveal some of the secrets of that ancient wonder.

He pointed out that the controversial mummies are thought to be those of Queen Hatshepsut, the only female ruler in ancient Egypt, whose mummy was found in Al Deir El Bahari along with that of her father Thutmose I.

Hawass continued: “But the result of scanning will be announced on July 15 [2007] when tests are completed, along with a thorough examination of the mummies of her brother and husband Thutmose II and Thutmose III that will also be tested for purposes of comparison.”

Hawass also said that a tomb tucking away at a Ptolemaic site near Alexandria could be sheltering the mummies of Antony and Cleopatra...

As for discoveries within the big pyramid, Hawass said that the council is waiting for the arrival of the robot required to infiltrate the edifice and provide data.

Hawass also announced that a temple belonging to King Rameses II, as well as a number of other tombs, were unearthed in Heliopolis...

Chief archaeologist announces fresh discoveries, Ahmed Maged, The Egypt Daily Star, Egypt, April 19, 2007.

Washington University researchers have recently made a series of important discoveries based on examinations of the bones and DNA of a mummy recently added to the permanent collection of the St. Louis Science Centre.

Al Wiman, vice president of Public Understanding of Science at the Science Centre, found the mummy in the Centre's storage where it had been packed away since 1985. The mummy had been purchased privately in the Middle East at the turn of the 20th century-the same time that banker Charles Parson bought two mummies that he later donated to the University.

Wiman contacted the University's Department of Radiology [Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology] in order to learn more about the mummy without tampering with its contents.

"On the computer we could electronically unwrap layers of bandage and remove skin," said Charles Hildebolt, professor of radiology...

University researchers study mummy using modern technology, Andrea Winter, Washington University Student Life, Washington University, Missouri, USA, April 18, 2007.

The pyramids of Giza have been removed from an Internet competition to name the new seven wonders of the world, but the anger of Egypt's antiquities chief remained unmollified Thursday.

Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Bernard Weber's contest to choose the seven new wonders of the world through global voting enraged Egyptian officials when the pyramids — the one of the original wonder still standing — were included in the competition.

"After careful consideration, the New 7 Wonders Foundation designates the Pyramids of Giza — the only remaining of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World - as an Honorary New7Wonders Candidate," said a statement on the Web site that added that votes could no longer be cast for the pyramids...

Egypt's pyramids out of seven wonders contest, Middle East Times, Cyprus, April 20, 2007.

[T]he sands of time have taken their toll of the Step Pyramid. Most of its outer casing has gone, the core of the masonry has disappeared in some places, deep cracks have spread all over the walls and ceilings of the pyramid's underground corridors and its southern tomb, while several parts of the queen's tunnels, found beneath the pyramid's main shaft, have collapsed. For safety reasons the pyramid is closed to visitors.

Several solutions have been proposed to save this unique monument. Now, following three years of archaeological and scientific studies, a comprehensive restoration project to save and preserve this great pyramid from further destruction has been outlined.

... The restoration project is the first complete plan to rescue the Step Pyramid of Djoser and the southern tomb. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), described it as a pioneer project comparable to the salvage operation of the Abu Simbel temples. Hawass added that the project would be carried out by Egyptian engineers and archaeologists in three phases with a budget of LE25 million. Plans include consolidating the underground tunnels, monitoring the cracks, restoring the wall decorations and inspecting the natural ventilation inside the pyramid and the southern tomb.

The first phase, which started early this month, requires the cleansing of the pyramid from inside and outside as well as removing all accumulated dust and sand of the past decades in an attempt to reduce the load on the pyramid's structure...

Restoring Djoser's Step Pyramid, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 841, April 19 - 25, 2007.

Previously:

Culture Minister announces start of restoration of Djoser step pyramid, April 07, 2007.

There are always people in your life on whom you depend for advice and who you consider as a kind of guardian. In my life, this man is Ambassador Abdel-Raouf El-Reedi. I have depended upon him for many decisions in my life, and I always view his advice as sincere and useful. He is a man you can trust because he is genuine, honest, and loves his country without looking for a position or reward.

I met Ambassador El-Reedi in 1983 while I was pursuing a doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. His office called me and said he wanted to talk to me. I heard his voice on the other end of the telephone and felt that he could enter into the heart of a person very easily. We also both discovered that we were from the same city in the Delta, Damietta. I even began calling and speaking to him with a Damietta accent.

Ambassador El-Reedi came to the United States as ambassador after Ashraf Gorbal, who was considered one of the best Egyptian ambassadors ever and played an important role in Egyptian-American relations during the time of President Anwar El-Sadat. It was difficult for anyone to fill his position. But El-Reedi used another type of diplomacy, the diplomacy of being frank and sincere, which caused him to enter into the hearts of many Americans...

Dig Days: The ambassador who loved Egyptology, Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 841, April 19 - 25, 2007.

The long-standing dispute between Cairo and Berlin over the iconic bust of Nefertiti, currently housed in Berlin's Altes Museum, reached new heights this week when German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann rejected a request to loan the bust to Egypt for three months..

The decision came a year after the Supreme Council of Antiquities' (SCA) Secretary-General Zahi Hawass requested the loan in a speech delivered before presidents Hosni Mubarak and Horst Khöler at the inauguration of the Egypt's Sunken Treasures exhibition in Berlin last May. Hawass asked for the loan of the bust so it could go on show at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo to coincide with the centenary celebrations of the German Archaeological Institute in Egypt. In return, Hawass pledged during his speech, that the SCA would offer another statue to the Egyptian Museum in Berlin for the three months that Nefertiti was in Egypt.

"Experts have reservations about taking Nefertiti on a long trip, which we have to take seriously," said Neumann...

Face to face, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 841, April 19 - 25, 2007.

Previously:

Egypt Vows 'Scientific War' If Germany Doesn't Loan Nefertiti, April 19, 2007.

Berlin museum rebuffs threat over Nefertiti, April 17, 2007.

Egypt threatens German ban in Nefertiti row, April 16, 2007.

Nefertiti Is Too Fragile to Visit Egypt, German Minister Says, April 13, 2007.

In an escalating conflict over a famous 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, the head of Egypt's antiquities authority has threatened to ban exhibitions and tours of Egyptian artefacts from Germany.

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, had requested the sculpture for a temporary exhibition. But German officials say the iconic artwork is too fragile to travel.

Upping the ante, Hawass on Sunday told his country's parliament that he "will never again organize antiquities exhibitions in Germany if it refuses a request, to be issued next week, to allow the bust of Nefertiti to be displayed in Egypt for three months..."

"To lend the Nefertiti bust would be irresponsible," the German culture minister said...

"They fear we will be like Raiders of the Lost Ark and we will take it and not give it back," said Hawass...

Schulenburg, though, said Germany's sole concern was preserving the artefact.

"The ownership of Nefertiti by Germany is not in question," he said...

Egypt Vows "Scientific War" If Germany Doesn't Loan Nefertiti, Dan Morrison, national geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, April 18, 2007.

cf. Nefertiti travels campaign to start up a public debate about Nefertiti ... on whether the antique bust of the former Queen of Egypt can now travel to Cairo to be shown in her country of origin for the first time.

Previously:

Berlin museum rebuffs threat over Nefertiti, April 17, 2007.

Egypt threatens German ban in Nefertiti row, April 16, 2007.

Nefertiti Is Too Fragile to Visit Egypt, German Minister Says, April 13, 2007.

The latest issue of the French language magazine “Toutankhamon” is out now.

Dossier Special - Oasis
Les oasis, les principaux sites archéologiques, interview de François Dunand et Roger Lichtenberg, les 7 oasis d'Edfou
Les mystères d'Osiris
Les deux Horus

Aventurier
Belzoni

Découverte
La tombe de Ramosé

Égyptologie
Tadukhepa : Kiya ou Néfertiti ?

Which approximately says...

Special File - Oasis
Oases, principal archeological sites, interview with François Dunand and Roger Lichtenberg, the 7 oases of Edfu
Mysteries of Osiris
The two Horuses

Adventurer
Belzoni

Discovered
The tomb of Ramose

Egyptology
Tadukhipa: Kiya or Nefertiti?

Toutankhamon Magazine, Editions Neptune Diffusion, France, Issue 32, April / May 2007.

Edward Loring, a research fellow of the Centre for Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (CESRAS), has emailed me the following information.

Please note this info from the Centre for Egyptological Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (CESRAS) and the Russian Institute of Egyptology in Cairo (RIEC).

Websites: www.cesras.org (English), www.cesras.ru (Russian), www.cesras.ru/eng (English)

Flickr photo gallery: www.flickr.com/photos/horemachet

Flickr group "Egyptology"

Sites are regularly updated.

Berlin's Museum of Egyptology on Monday rebuffed a threat from Egypt's top antiquities official to block all art loans to Germany unless the "world's most beautiful woman", Queen Nefertiti, goes home to Cairo.

Though one eye is missing, the 3,000-year-old painted limestone bust of the queen is celebrated as one of the finest female representations ever created. It was taken to Germany from Egypt under a 1913 contract.

, the museum director, said on the radio channel Deutschlandradio Kultur he was not too concerned at the threat, since Egypt had not lent any art to Germany since 1985 anyway.

"Even without loans we can manage comfortably and put on a good show," he said...

The transcript of the Deutschlandradio Kultur interview with Dietrich Wildung can be found here: "Diese ganze Geschichte ist ein Politikum" , including an MP3 audio version as well.

Berlin museum rebuffs threat over Nefertiti, Sapa-dpa via The Independent Online, South Africa, April 17, 2007.

cf. Egypt and Germany step up quarrel over Nefertiti's bust, AFP via The Daily Star, Lebanon, April 17, 2007.

cf. Germany, Egypt In Row Over Nefertiti Bust, All Headline News, Nevada, USA, April 17, 2007.

Previously:

Egypt threatens German ban in Nefertiti row, April 16, 2007.

Nefertiti Is Too Fragile to Visit Egypt, German Minister Says, April 13, 2007.

Seeing the artefacts found in the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh without having to travel to Cairo Museum. This is the proposal of a photography presentation that shows objects in three dimensions and provides archaeological explanations about the items. The project was developed by doctor Ciro Ferreira da Silva and by Egyptologist Antonio Brancaglion Junior...

It all began with a visit of neurologist and University of São Paulo (USP) professor Ciro Ferreira da Silva to Cairo Museum, in October 2001. With his camera in hands, Silva, who studies ancient Egypt, registered the images of the objects found in the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, which are exhibited at Cairo museum. The items were found by the British Howard Carter, in the Valley of the Kings, southern Cairo, in one of the largest archaeological discoveries of all times, in 1922. "The tomb was practically intact," stated Silva. There, over ten thousand pieces were found as well as the mummy of the pharaoh himself.

Taking all the photographic material, Silva returned to Brazil and added his knowledge of 3D technology to that of archaeologist and Egyptologist Antonio Brancaglion Junior. They both prepared a presentation in which the articles of the tomb of Tutankhamun may be seen without travelling to Egypt. The pictures were taken simultaneously by two cameras placed side by side, imitating the human eyes, and were later aligned on the computer. The pictures are then projected on a Data Show with a filter and special screen, permitting that, while wearing special glasses, the objects may be seen in three dimensions...

Exhibition to show the treasures of Tutankhamun, Isaura Daniel and Mark Ament (translator), ANBA, Brazil, April 16, 2007.

Egypt on Sunday threatened to ban future displays of its ancient artefacts in Germany if Berlin refuses to return a 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti for a temporary exhibition.

"(Egypt) will never again organise antiquities exhibitions in Germany if it refuses a request, to be issued next week, to allow the bust of Nefertiti to be displayed in Egypt for three months," antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass told parliament, according to the official MENA news agency.

His comments came after German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann refused to allow the bust of Nefertiti — renowned as one of history's great beauties — to be exhibited in Egypt because it was too delicate to be transported...

Maybe this story should be titled Zahi throws rattle out of the pram in German Nefertiti row.

Egypt threatens German ban in Nefertiti row, AFP via Yahoo! News, USA, April 15, 2007.

cf. Egypt threatens German ban in Nefertiti row, AFP via Middle East Times, Cyprus, April 16, 2007.

cf. Egypt warns Germany in Nefertiti row, AFP via Gulf Times, Qatar, April 16, 2007.

cf. Egypt says never to organize antiquity display in Germany without return of Nefertiti bust, Xinhua via People's Daily, China, April 16, 2007.

Previously:

Nefertiti Is Too Fragile to Visit Egypt, German Minister Says, April 13, 2007.

AWT is delighted to announce The Ancient World Conference to be held at Reading University on 15th and 16th September 2007. This conference presents a series of illustrated lectures from an exclusive and exciting panel of experts covering a range of fascinating and absorbing subjects. We delve from prehistory to the present day examining archaeology and history from new and intriguing angles over a long weekend in comfortable surroundings with like minded people. Just take a look here at the host of experts we have lined up for your education and entertainment.

We are honoured to have film maker and historian who is well known for his thought provoking and exciting television series that have taken him, and us, around the ancient world. We are also pleased to have historian and television presenter lecturing. Both Michael and Bettany will also be doing book signings during the weekend. We are privileged to have Dr Sabry Abdel Aziz, head of the Egyptology Sector at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, attending too. Our great friend Professor is giving two lectures during the weekend.

adds a fascinating geological angle to the weekend, as will , our astronomy consultant. AWT stalwart and great favourite will also be lecturing. There is also a most stimulating lecture from Professor . We have invited a variety of archaeological societies to host displays and are thoroughly looking forward to a very exceptional weekend.

The Ancient World Conference, Ancient World Tours, Reading University, UK, September 15 - 16, 2007.

Egypt starts to weave its magic the moment we leave the airport. Elaborate mosques and sprawling government buildings compete for space alongside housing blocks...

Our airport transfer becomes a highlight of the trip the moment we see them. Well, two pyramids, to be exact, because the third and much smaller one is lost for some time behind the city view.

They appear, rising above the buildings, casting a watchful eye over the city.

A thin fog, no doubt the result of the much-talked-about Cairo pollution, gives them a magical appearance.

At our hotel we discover the country's bustling capital has built itself right up to the fringe of these mighty objects.

It's a 10-minute walk from the Le Meridien Pyramids hotel to their base. I soon discover I am not the only tourist on our trip who had the romantic notion of pyramids in the middle of the desert...

Cairo's original high-rise, Jessica Hurt, The Courier Mail, Australia, April 14, 2007.

The Tutankhamun exhibition opening at the Dome (now renamed the O2) on 15 November [2007] could transform the UK exhibition scene. Over 2m visitors are expected for the Egyptian treasures which will remain on view in Greenwich for nine and a half months. This would represent over 7,000 visitors a day — more than any exhibition surveyed for our global attendance report attracted last year. A standard ticket for “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” will cost £15 ($29) during the week and £20 ($39) at weekends, record prices for an art exhibition in Britain.

If the predictions of the Los Angeles-based Anschutz Entertainment Group are correct, their show will beat the British Museum’s 1972 Tutankhamun blockbuster as the most successful art or antiquities exhibition ever held in the UK. The 1972 show attracted 1,694,000 visitors over nine months (6,160 a day).

Anschutz promises the design of the Tutankhamun show will be “theatrical” and that The Dome/O2 will become an “entertainment destination”.

This new player on the London exhibition scene will represent competition for the established venues. The Tutankhamun show could affect visitor numbers at the British Museum’s show on China’s terracotta army, which opens on 13 September. The museum is expecting over 400,000 visitors for the seven-month run...

Tutankhamun show will transform exhibitions in the UK, Martin Bailey, The Art newspaper, UK, April 12, 2007.

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.

Pharaoh Fanatics I

After years of bureaucratic wrangling that saw most international film productions heading to Jordan or Morocco for location shooting, Egypt’s Media Production City recently announced that an international film on ancient Egypt’s queen Cleopatra would be partially filmed in its studios.

Youssef Sherif Rizkallah, head of international productions at Media City, revealed that Syrian-American director Jalal Marhi would be on his way to visit Cairo in April to scout locations and cast Egyptian actors to co-star in the film. The four-week shoot will begin in May [2007].

But the red tape is still very much uncut, and permission from Egyptian censorship is pending. Approval will take place after the production company submits the film script.

Cleopatra is only the first in Historical Legends, a series of 10 films chronicling the youth of historical figures.

Pharaoh Fanatics II

Trouble was brewing over at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), which last month objected to the historical content in the French-Belgian animated feature The Princess of the Sun, currently showing in Cairo theatres.

SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass had reportedly called for a committee to view the film, which is based on the era of Kings Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. The committee is said to have ruled that the film is full of historical inaccuracies and that the events portrayed in the film are very different from the political, historical, religious and military events of the era.

The committee has asked the distributing company, GoodNews4Me, to include a message clarifying that the events of the film are imaginary and bear no resemblance to Ancient Egyptian history.

Culture 101: Pharaoh Fanatics, Manal el-Jesri and Sherif Awad, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

Animated Ancients

Distribution companies often run afoul of censorship heavies over international blockbuster releases, but over a cartoon film? Officials at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) have taken offence at French animated film La reine soleil (The Princess of the Sun, 2007), the Good News Group’s latest import.

In the film, princess Akhesa, daughter of eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten, enlists the help of Tutankhamun to search for her exiled mother Queen Nefertiti. Pursued by the Pharaoh’s enemies, the teenagers survive a torrid desert trek and capture by the mercenary Zannanza.

The SCA howled that the plot does not come even close to historical fact; officials were appeased only after Good News agreed to run a statement saying that the movie is pure fiction...

Animated Ancients, Sherif Awad, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

Previously:

Zahi takes a pot-shot at Christian Jacq film, March 09, 2007.

Christian Jacq book being filmed, January 16, 2007.

For centuries Egypt has served as a cradle of civilizations, religions and cultures, and it would be next to impossible to include all the historic Islamic and Coptic sites riddling the nation’s streets...

The heart of Islamic Cairo is Khan El-Khalili and Al-Azhar, where you’ll need a few days and a good pair of walking shoes to canvas the maze of mosques and monuments. You could spend a lifetime here and still find surprises, but there are a number of sights and sounds any visitors wanting to get a true sense of spiritual Egypt should never miss out on...

With Coptic once being synonymous with the word ‘Egyptian,’ it’s little wonder that Egypt is home to a myriad of Christian sites inside and outside the capital. For a concentration of Coptic churches, head to Old Cairo, which is best reached by taxi or metro (Mar Girgis Station) because of the winding streets and lack of parking spaces. First on any visitor’s list should be El-Muallaqa, or the Hanging Church, believed to have been built in the seventh century on the site of an older fourth-century church. Perched on top of the Roman walls, it is actually more suspended than hanging and is possibly the first built in the Basilican style. The church is home to a beautiful collection of restored ancient icons and an old iconostasis inlaid with ebony and ivory...

Quest for Knowledge, Noha Mohammed, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

Siwa, one of Egypt’t continually inhabited settlements dating back to 10,000BC, is like nowhere else on Earth.

At 12,000 years and counting, the lush oasis of Siwa is ancient on a scale that makes the Pyramids seem like teenagers. To a first-time visitor, the town can seem from another world — a place where people really do still live in mud-brick dwellings under the shade of palm trees, in sight of bubbling mineral springs. Siwa represents a beautiful, peaceful slice of how life once was — both for its residents and a growing number of tourists...

There are of course a few things that should not be missed, such as the Pharaonic antiquities in Gabal Al-Mawta, where you’ll find early Graeco-Roman sites, four of which are open to tourists. Others are the Temple of Amun — worth a visit despite reconstruction — and the Temple of the Oracle. Situated up on a hill amid the ruins of a salt-mud village, it has withstood the test of time much better.

The Temple of the Oracle had a powerful patron in Alexander the Great, who came seeking the oracle’s confirmation that he was the son of Zeus — a key endorsement in the conqueror’s ambitions to rule Egypt (and eventually, all of Asia). A little deeper into the palm grove is Cleopatra’s Bath, a hot spring that historians believe owes its name more to clever marketing than documented history. Right on the tourist circuit though, Cleopatra’s Bath gets a lot of local traffic...

Eternal Siwa, Hassan Hassan, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

A short drive out of the city will put you in a whole new world of vast dunes and bare rock.

There’s so much to see and experience that you don’t necessarily have to be a happy camper to enjoy the desert. And with sand stretching from the Western Desert to the oases of Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga, you don’t even need a long weekend to try your hand at desert exploration.

What makes taking a desert day trip so special is that you don’t have a fixed itinerary and can explore as much as you want ’ as long as you know where you’re heading and how to get back to where you started...

Wadi El-Hitan is a 30-kilometer drive west of Lake Qaroon and one of the largest fossil graveyards in Africa. Wadi Al-Hitan translates to ‘Valley of the Whales,’ so named because it features fossilized skeletons of primitive whales. There are also fossils of ancient species of shark, Dogfish and some land mammals...

Also located west of Fayoum is Kasr El-Sagha, which snuggles up on the side of Gabal Qatrani range. Kasr El-Sagha, or what remains of it, is a small temple that dates back to the Middle Kingdom.

If you go south of Kasr El-Sagha, you’ll find the remains of the Ptolemaic cities of Dimeh El-Siba and Kranis [Karanais?]. Few tourists visit here, but they’re definitely worth checking out...

Desert Day Trips, Yasmeen El Mallah, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

Look up, look down, look all around and in every district of Cairo you’ll find something to catch the eye be it architecture, shops, galleries or restaurants. Let our walking tour be your guide.

It’s easy to forget just how much Cairo has to offer, but the city remains a Mecca of art and culture. Plunge into all the city has to offer with our walking tour.

Slip on your most comfortable (ideally very ragged) set of trainers, your oldest pair of jeans and head down to your chosen district for the culture and refinement that only Cairo can offer. The easiest way to see everything is to divide it into a district for a day. Most bookstores have specific maps for both the Zamalek and Downtown areas, which makes it infinitely more fun — and easy — to get around...

The tour then goes on to mention Giza, Zamelek, downtown, The Egyptian Museum, Azhar and Khan El-Khalili, and the Cairo Opera House.

The Quest for Culture, Hassan Hassan, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

If Egypt is the gift of the Nile, then Alexandria is the gift of the Mediterranean, and a great destination for a weekend break...

To make sure you get a chance to see everything, get an early start, beginning at one end of Alexandria. Go to Anfushy, where you can visit the Qaitbey citadel, which was renovated in the fifteenth century and is home to a naval museum (open daily from 9am-2pm). You can work your way down along the Corniche and admire the Greco-Roman themed architecture — most of these buildings remain untouched since they were originally built. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a couple of small grocery stores owned by Greeks with the same décor seen in old black-and-white Egyptian movies.

By the time you’ve walked around these sights, no doubt you will have worked up an appetite, and what better to eat in Alexandria than seafood? With a fresh selection of squid, octopus, a variety of fish, shrimps, calamari, mussels and crabs, you can’t go wrong at the Arous El-Bahr restaurant in Anfushy...

Egypt’s Mediterranean Jewel, Yasmeen El Mallah, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the man who is perhaps the world’s most-recognized archaeologist, scoffed when Egypt Today asked him what he would do if he had a long weekend.

“Me?” he asked, incredulously. Hawass is a busy man and was interrupted repeatedly during our brief interview with calls and questions from his staff, underscoring the notion that very idea of a short vacation was laughable.

He was game, though, and recounted what he would do if by some miracle he were to have a three-day weekend...

The biggest mistake in my life was ruining the Bahariya Oasis. The Bahariya Oasis before 1999 was a paradise: beautiful, quiet, silent. But since I made the discovery in the Valley of the Golden Mummies? Well, there were no hotels when I went there except one. Now there are more than 25 hotels. This is how I ruined paradise — I call it Paradise Lost...

A sad but inevitable consequence of the discovery. The tourist trade marches ever forward. Hotels are even springing up around Amarna and even at Abu Simbel.

Three Days Without a Necktie, Dan Reese, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 28, Issue 04, April 2007.

[A]n obscure State Department advisory panel has become the bête noire of collectors of everything from Roman vases to African statuary. The panel, the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, has been the focus of fierce battles between archaeologists, who say that the art market fosters the looting of historic sites, and dealers, who say that broad import restrictions threaten collecting by private individuals and museums in the United States.

Congress established the committee in 1983 to balance the interests of these adversaries, deterring pillage abroad while also protecting the legal antiquities trade. But critics claim that it now tilts heavily in favour of the archaeological lobby, even in cases when the foreign countries seeking import restrictions have not met the criteria set down by the law.

"I don't think the committee has been fulfilling the intent of the original legislation," said Meredith Palmer, a New York dealer in 20th-century art who worked on cultural patrimony issues at the State Department in the 1970s and helped establish the Cultural Property Advisory Committee, known as CPAC.

Just how did an entity intended as a grand compromise and welcomed by archaeologists and dealers more than 20 years ago come to be seen as the enemy of the commercial art market? ...

In the U.S., a clash of concerns in the antiquities market, Jeremy Kahn, International Herald Tribune, France, April 09, 2007.

cf. Is the U.S. Protecting Foreign Artefacts? Don't = Ask,

Jeremy Kahn, The New York Times, New York, USA, April 08, 2007...

Treasures and wonders of ancient Egypt will be showcased in the Tutankhamen exhibition opening at the Bahrain National Museum at 9.30am today.

Bahrain is the first country in the Arab world to host an exhibition of Egyptian antiquities, which have been seen by millions of people all over the world and in 14 countries including the US and Europe.

Treasurers of Ancient Egypt is held under the patronage of Prime Minister Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa.

Thousands of people from Bahrain and abroad are expected to visit the exhibition, which continues until July 31 [2007].

A total of 122 objects dating back thousands of years ago will be displayed at the exhibition... The oldest artefacts date back to 2,600 BC during the time of Pharaoh Sneferu... Other pieces come from the time of ancient Egyptian King Rameses II... Artefacts found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun ... will also be on display...

Treasures of Egypt on show, Rebecca Torr, Gulf Daily News, Bahrain, Vol XXX, No. 22, April 11, 2007.

Previously:

Chance to see King Tut's tomb treasure, January 10, 2007.

Bahrain to host Tutankhamun exhibition, January 08, 2007.

'King Tut' coming to Bahrain, November 07, 2006.

'King Tut' set for Bahrain, September 27, 2006.

US scientists using satellite data have found evidence of an ancient mega-lake in northern Darfur that might lead to new groundwater sources in Sudan.

Boston University researchers Eman Ghoneim and Farouk El Baz made the finding while investigating Landsat images and Radarsat data. Radar waves were able to penetrate the fine-grained sand cover in Darfur province's hot and dry eastern Sahara area to reveal buried features.

The scientists said that the lake occupied an area of about 19,100 square miles (30,800 square kilometres) but they made no inferences regarding its age. However, they said that its vast extent suggests that it existed for a long period of time when rainfall was plentiful in the eastern Sahara.

"One thing is certain," said Baz, "much of the lake's water would have seeped through the sandstone substrate to accumulate as groundwater."

Ghoneim said that the ancient lake represents indisputable evidence of the past rainy conditions in the eastern Sahara. "It will have significant consequences for improving our knowledge of continental climate change and regional paleohydrology," he added.

A paper detailing the discovery is to be published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing.

Ancient 'mega-lake' discovered in Sudan, UPI via Middle East Times, Cyprus, April 12, 2007.

Previously:

Largest Crater in the Great Sahara Discovered by Boston University Scientists, March 07, 2006.

"Remnants of hair, linen bandages and resin used in the mummification of the 19th Dynasty King Rameses II have been returned to Egypt after 30 years in France," Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni on Tuesday 10/04/2007 announced the return of the hair and other items at a press conference held at the Egyptian Museum, central Cairo.

He declared that the return of the items was a result of diplomatic efforts between Egypt and France which reflected the strong relationship between both countries.

It also reflects Egypt's strategy and devotion to the return of its heritage, which has been smuggled out of the country.

Farouk Hosni also highlighted the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)'s efforts to track the selling of such objects on the internet until they are retuned to their homeland...

Rameses II's hair returned, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 11, 2007.

Pharaoh's hair on display again

Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, said the internet was an important tool in tracking down stolen antiquities.

"We open the internet everyday, and the most important source you have are my spies," Hawass was quoted by AP as saying.

"I have spies all over the world, and those spies, they inform me every day of things you would not believe..."

Pharaoh's hair on display again, BBC News, UK, April 10, 2007. Includes video.

Previously:

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.

The powerful head of Egypt's antiquities department Tuesday ruled out any onsite tests to check the veracity of a new French theory about the building of the Great Pyramid.

"It makes sense, but not great sense," Zahi Hawass said. "Everybody can have a theory, you have 300 people and 99 percent of them are non-specialists, I cannot let them all go onto the site."

French architect Jean Pierre Houdin put forward a theory on the construction of the Great Pyramid in March, suggesting that it had been built using an internal spiral ramp, rather than an external ramp as had long been suggested...

Houdin proposed mounting a joint expedition of Egyptian antiquities experts and French engineers to examine the pyramid using non-invasive methods, such as infrared and radar.

"I cannot allow these people to check their theories unless they have a well-known institution backing them," said Hawass...

And the he goes on to say...

But he announced that teams from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Manchester are competing to develop camera-toting robots to explore a series of small shafts, blocked by doors leading off the Queen's chamber in the Great Pyramid.

A decision will be announced in three months, he said.

Egypt says no onsite tests for French pyramid theory, AFP via Middle East Times, Cyprus, April 11, 2007.

cf. Egypt rules out Pyramid tests, Sapa-AFP via The Sunday Times, South Africa, April 11, 2007.

cf. Egypt rules out Pyramid tests, AFP via The Gulf Times, Qatar, April 11, 2007.

Previously:

How to Build a Pyramid, April 09, 2007.

The inside [out] story, April 07, 2007.

Great Pyramid Built Inside Out, French Architect Says, April 03, 2007.

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid's construction is turned inside out, March 30, 2007.

Real-time 3D Helps to Finally Solve the Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Kheops!, March 30, 2007.

Independent researcher and author Pat Remler will present a unique one-time lecture on the birth of Egyptology at the Fleming Museum on Thursday...

Emerging in the wake of Napoleon's disastrous military expedition to Egypt in 1798, the discipline of Egyptology was founded by a group of scientists, engineers, artists and intellectuals who accompanied Napoleon for the purpose of documenting the ancient and then foreign land.

Pat Remler has worked and studied in Egypt for more than 20 years.She has a bachelors degree in art history and philosophy from Long Island University and is the author of ...

Egyptology lecture at the Fleming, The Burlington Free Press, Vermont, USA, April 09, 2007.

Egypt: Beyond the Tomb brings the ancient Egyptian world of the dead to life right here, under the Dome at Auckland Museum.

This extraordinary exhibition follows Keku, an Egyptian woman who lived 2700 years ago, as she makes the perilous journey through the underworld towards the eternal afterlife.

With over 200 ancient Egyptian burial treasures from animal mummies to the magnificently decorated sarcophagus (coffin) of Keku — Egypt: Beyond the Tomb gives visitors fascinating insights into the mysterious death rituals of this age-old civilisation.

The mysteries of Ancient Egypt have continued to capture the imagination of both young and old since discoveries of this fascinating civilisation first came to light. Auckland Museum is proud to present the most comprehensive collection of Egyptology artifacts to arrive in New Zealand for many years when Egypt: Beyond the Tomb opens at the Special Exhibition Hall under the new Dome on May 25 [2007]...

Egypt: Beyond the Tomb Coming to Auckland, Scoop, New Zealand, April 06, 2007.

Archive: Egypt: Beyond the Tomb [Coming to Te Papa], Scoop, New Zealand, November 30, 2007.

As you can see from the above archive story the exhibition was previously at Te Papa. Their website for the exhibition can be found here: Egypt: Beyond the Tomb, and includes 30 minutes (or so) of MP3 podcasts that you can listen to.

The Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt, will soon be granted new protection in an attempt to control tourism, traffic and vandalism, Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News...

Italian publisher De Agostini is working on a project which aims to produce the most complete digital archive of Egypt's ancient art and architecture.

New imaging technology can detect and even revive faded paintings. The technology has yielded, for the first time, accurate reproductions of the tombs' scenes that were supposed to guide dead pharaohs through the afterlife...

The pictures are published by De Agostini in Hawass's new book, " ..."

Egypt Tomb Paintings Imaged in Hi-Res, Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, USA, April 06, 2007.

On a desert site within view of the pyramids, an immense museum, built by the Chinese-American architect Shih-Fu Peng, is about to rise which will transform the Giza experience. The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) will be the biggest museum of Egyptology in the world, and (it is claimed) the largest archaeological museum of any sort. It is designed to become the modern complement the pyramids have always lacked.

It will rise at the point where the Nile's flood plain hits the sand plateau that marks the start of the Sahara desert. The first glimpse of it, through a grove of high palms, will be a vast wall running the entire length of the site composed entirely of triangular segments of onyx. "The face of the plateau is exactly aligned with the Great Pyramid of Chephren," says Yasser Mansour, the project director. "It is the line between fertile land and the desert, between life and death. So what kind of line should this be, how to represent its aesthetic qualities? The architect answered that it should be a timeless surface, and as light is timeless, it should be translucent."

Initially the architect wanted alabaster, the luminous pink stone that some believe once covered the pyramids. "But the quality and quantity of alabaster seemed very thin," says Mansour. He settled instead for semi-precious onyx: the contractors are now scouring the world's markets for a quantity sufficient to cover six football fields.

This stupendous facade, which Mansour describes as one of the museum's two "icons", along with the grand staircase, suggests that the design is offering competition for awesomeness to the pyramids. Mansour denies that flatly. "The highest point of the museum — the top of the facade — is actually the lowest point of the pyramids, which are built on the plateau. This way you don't compare the museum with the greatness of the pyramids: it's a humble statement..."

Legacy of the Pharaohs: Welcome to the treasure dome, The Independent, UK, April 06, 2007.

John Romer's The Great Pyramid is subtitled "Ancient Egypt Revisited" — and for an excellent reason. The focus of the book is on Khufu's pyramid on the Giza Plateau, built 4500 years ago for the 4th dynasty Old Kingdom pharaoh Khufu over an astonishingly brief 14 year period. But Romer's decades of study have led him to identify not simply the patterns of construction or the amount of labour involved in such a process, but a thorough examination of the pyramid-making tradition of Old Kingdom Egypt, including the lives of the people who made the pyramids, who inspired their construction, and who spent their lives studying them...

... the book expresses Romer's awe for the pyramid, and instils it deep within the reader. Romer realizes for the reader the complexities of inventing the ideal pyramid, such as evidence for the plans of the pyramid, drawn at a one-to-one scale on the ground surface at the Giza plateau. The amazing success of the intricate granite cobweb of passageways within the Great Pyramid are highlighted with the great previous failures. The ancient Egyptian concepts of death and the importance of keeping one's dead rulers in view are contemplated. Throughout, Romer's writing is impassioned...

The Great Pyramid is a book I plan on revisiting many times in the future. The many photographs, the depth of information and the writing style make this a perfect companion for people, like me, distant admirers of the Egyptian pyramids, seen floating in a desert mirage in our imaginations...

, John Romer, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 586.

The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited, K. Kris Hirst, About.com, USA, April 02, 2007.

Previously:

Book Review: The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited by John Romer, March 01, 2007.

Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Mofeed Shehab said during the inauguration of the 4th conference of the Arab Tourist Guides Federation that the government plans to increase the tourist investments in Egypt.

Shehab indicated that Tourism Ministry seeks to bring the number of tourists to 16 million tourists in 2014.

Shehab cited efforts exerted by the ministry during the recent period in this regard.

Shehab indicated that some $15 billion are required as investments to develop the new tourist destinations in Egypt...

Egypt seeks to attract 16 million tourists, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 08, 2007.

Locks of 3,200-year-old hair from the pharaoh Rameses II were unveiled at the Egyptian Museum on Tuesday, returned to Egypt after being stolen 30 years ago in France and put up for sale on the Internet.

The small tufts of brown hair were displayed alongside pieces of linen bandages and 11 pieces of resin used in the mummification of Rameses and his son Merenptah in a glass display case. Photographers mobbed the case as Egypt's culture minister and antiquities chief showed off the returned items.

The hair will eventually be put on display next to Rameses' mummy at the museum.

The theft of the items was discovered when the pieces of hair were put up for sale on a Web site last November by a French postman, Jean-Michel Diebolt, who gave the hair a price tag of $2,600...

Ancient pharaoh's hair returns to Egypt, Setarreh Massihzadegan, AP via The Boston Globe, Massachusetts, USA, April 10, 2007.

Previously:

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.

I've been wondering for some time now what to do with all of my empty Epson printer cartridges from the last several years. I'm on my second Epson printer and I have been storing the empties hoping to find a way to recycle them as every company that recycles cartridges says NOT to send Epson's.

Cartridges4Charity.co.uk has details of what to do with them... You send them back to Epson Themselves through Epson Express Centres. Details here: Epson Cartridge Recycling.

Cartridges4Charity also collect other inkjet cartridge brands and old mobile phones for charity.

[W]e don't know exactly how [the pyramid] was built, a question that has been debated for millennia. The earliest recorded theory was put forward by the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt around 450 B.C., when the pyramid was already 2,000 years old. He mentions "machines" used to raise the blocks and this is usually taken to mean cranes. Three hundred years later, Diodorus of Sicily wrote, "The construction was effected by mounds" (ramps). Today we have the "space alien" theory--those primitive Egyptians never could have built such a fabulous structure by themselves; extraterrestrials must have helped them.

Modern scholars have favoured these two original theories, but deep in their hearts, they know that neither one is correct. A radical new one, however, may provide the solution. If correct, it would demonstrate a level of planning by Egyptian architects and engineers far greater than anything ever imagined before...

then goes on to discuss the external ramp, crane, and internal ramp theories including the recent work by Jean-Pierre Houdin.

How to Build a Pyramid, Bob Brier, Archaeology Magazine, American Institute of Archaeology, New York, USA, Volume 60, Number 3, May - June 2007.

Previously:

The inside [out] story, April 07, 2007.

Great Pyramid Built Inside Out, French Architect Says, April 03, 2007.

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid's construction is turned inside out, March 30, 2007.

Real-time 3D Helps to Finally Solve the Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Kheops!, March 30, 2007.

A team of ten Hungarian archeologists will soon begin excavations at two sites in northern Egypt's Nile river delta, the head of the expedition told MTI on Tuesday.

Commissioned by the Egyptian Archeology Office, the Hungarian experts will excavate in June a tomb dating back to the 12th century BC and a large archeological site in the middle of a village now called Kom Truga, near Alexandria, to trace the past of a once-thriving agricultural centre under the rule of the Ptolemies, said Zsuzsanna Vanek.

Egyptian archeologists in 1950 and 1997 made two unsuccessful attempts to verify whether the centre, which was sitting along a key trade route to Libya, was indeed destroyed by an earthquake in the 2nd-3rd century AD. The two main obstacles were several buildings underneath a Muslim burial site, which had to be left intact, and a high level of ground water...

Hungarian archeologists to excavate sites in Nile delta, MTI, Hungary, April 03, 2007, via EEF News.

The mystery as to how the Great Pyramid of Khufu was built has always been fascinating. Numerous theories have been put forward but none has yet stood up to the acid test. This week, after eight years of research, French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin developed what has been called a new revolutionary hypothesis that rubbishes all previous theories, suggesting in the latest version that the pyramid was built using either a vast frontal ramp or one with a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.

In a gala ceremony in Paris, Houdin said the ancient Egyptian builders constructed the Great Pyramid from inside out by erecting an outer ramp to build the pyramid's first 40 metres, then constructed an inner ramp in a corkscrew shape to complete the 137-metre-tall structure.

During the 3D computer simulation, Houdin showed drawings from a 1986 survey of the pyramid of a "spiral anomaly" inside that conforms exactly to this theory...

Houdin said he thought no more than 4,000 workers could have built the pyramid using these techniques rather than the 100,000 or so assigned by past historians to the task of burying the Pharaoh.

"This goes against both main existing theories. I've been teaching them myself for 20 years," Egyptologist Rainer [Stadelmann] told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding, "Houdin's vision is credible but right now this is just a theory. Everybody thinks it has got to be taken seriously."

To prove Houdin's theory, an international team is now being assembled to probe the pyramid using radar and heat-detecting cameras supplied by a French defence firm. However, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, has turned down Houdin's request to have his theory proved. Hawass said Houdin had issued his request using an Egyptian "cover institution" that did not have the proper expertise to examine the Great Pyramid...

The inside story, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 839, April 05 - 11, 2007.

Previously:

Great Pyramid Built Inside Out, French Architect Says, April 03, 2007.

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid's construction is turned inside out, March 30, 2007.

Real-time 3D Helps to Finally Solve the Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Kheops!, March 30, 2007.

, Jean-Pierre Houdin, Dar al-Mushaf, 2006, pp. 160.

Tourists today pose no less of a threat, [to the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, than the depredations of the 19th-century European explorers]. With large groups pressing into narrow corridors, the increase in humidity is a major problem. Darkened areas near some of the most striking scenes, particularly at the corners of gateways or on pillars, are probably due to the walls being touched, and there is even evidence of scratching.

Dina Bakhoum, a young Egyptian engineer specialising in restoration and conservation of monuments, brushes aside the suggestion that there is no way to stem the tide of destruction of the tombs so long as tourism remains a mainstay of the Egyptian economy. She concedes, nevertheless, that serious action must be taken immediately to ensure that this valuable artistic and historic heritage is protected for future generations.

Bakhoum is working under the direction of , director of the University of Chicago's Theban Mapping Project (TMP) in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). The aim of the project is to carry out a photographic survey, identify problems, specify the cause of the deterioration, and describe the technical questions related to the type of damage observed...

A royal destruction, Jill Kamel, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 839, April 05 - 11, 2007.

Pumice from Santorini Volcano, which erupted in the Mediterranean Sea in 1500 BC, have been found at an ancient Egyptian military site in Qantara East, North Sinai...

After 10 years of digging in Horus road, where remains of several military forts, granaries, dormitory and temples were found, Egyptian archeologists of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) came upon 20 pumice stones or solidified lava inside a pit at Tel Habuwa from Santorini Volcano which erupted in 1500 BC, killing 35,000 people and demolishing several coastal cities in southwest Turkey, Crete, north of the Saudi Arabia, Palestine and the Sinai.

The pumice, which was found among several 18th Dynasty clay vessels that date back to the Hyksos era, was probably brought to Sinai by a tsunami caused by the volcano.

On Monday, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the SCA along with Egyptian and foreign journalists and photographers, embarked on an inspection tour at Qantara East to check on the new discovery.

At the site, Hawass said the new discovery confirms what has been written and drawn on ancient artwork and documents that recount the destruction of coastal cities in Egypt and Palestine during the Hyksos reign right towards the early New Kingdom...

Fruitful is the find, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 839, April 05 - 11, 2007.

Previously:

Video: 'Atlantis' Volcano Devastated Ancient Egypt?, April 05, 2007.

Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say, April 03, 2007.

Sinai Pumice Linked to Ancient Eruption, April 03, 2007.

With the advent of mass tourism, some important sites increased their income, but at the cost of ugliness and vandalism. They became dumps for discarded soda cans and plastic bags, and were marred by ranks of stalls selling fake artifacts to souvenir hunters. Ancient, labyrinthine streets were made intolerable by noisy, sweaty crowds. As for the works of art, the very breath of the millions of tourists damages them. The feet of certain statues of saints have been worn smooth by the constant handling of the faithful, and not even the Pyramids can withstand the daily shuffling of visiting feet much longer.

What are we to do? Deny the masses access to art, thus flying in the face of all democratic ideals? Discourage visitors — as already happens with Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" in Milan, to which limited numbers are admitted?

We should exploit the natural tendencies of mass tourism — which is another way of saying that there are some who probably find Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas more Roman than the Coliseum.

Just think how many people will be more satisfied by the fake temple at Albanella, all in one piece, shining and splendid, than by the real thing that has struggled to survive in nearby Paestum. Let the crowds in search of easy satisfaction be directed to Albanella, leaving Paestum to those who know why they want to see it and who won't litter...

Temples for the tourists, Umberto Eco, International Herald Tribune, France, April 02, 2007.

Culture Minister Farouk Hosni announced Saturday 31/03/2007 the start of restoration work on the step pyramid Zoser [Djoser] at Saqqara area in Giza.

Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass said that the project is the first of its kind to rescue step pyramid and the southern tomb.

The restoration project will be carried out over three stages, at a cost of L.E.25 million, Hawass said.

Culture Minister announces start of restoration of Zoser step pyramid, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 01, 2007.

The North Carolina Museum of Art has chosen MarketSmart Advertising, a full-service, integrated marketing communications firm and part of Think Partnership’s Think Advertising division, to develop and implement a comprehensive media plan for the upcoming exhibit “Temples and Tombs: Treasures of Egyptian Art from The British Museum.” The exhibit will bring 85 masterworks and seldom-seen treasures to the Triangle area April 15 through July 8 [2007].

“Working with the Museum is an honour — especially during this time of renovation and growth,” said Jan Johnson, MarketSmart’s director of account management. “The Museum experienced unprecedented success with the ‘Monet in Normandy’ exhibit, and we want to help them maintain momentum with ‘Temples and Tombs...’”

North Carolina Museum of Art Selects MarketSmart Advertising to Help Promote Egyptian Exhibit, PR.com, USA, April 05, 2007.

For orthodontists, patients tend to be young — adolescents mostly, with the occasional adult requiring specialized treatment. But [University of South Carolina] orthodontist James Mah may have the oldest client ever — a 2,000-year-old Egyptian girl

His patient was the mummy of a 4- or 5-year-old Egyptian girl. Wrapped and embalmed two millennia ago in North Africa, she called the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California, her home for the past 75 years.

Until 2005, the actual contents of the sarcophagus remained a mystery to museum curators — the plate where you typically find hieroglyphic inscriptions bearing the name and rank of the deceased was missing...

Show Me the Mummy, Ben Creighton, Los Angeles Downtown News, California, USA, April 02, 2007.

Greg has posted a review of Robert Bauval's The Egypt Code over at the Daily Grail website. I picked this up as the paperback version is released today

It has been twelve years since ‘The Orion Correlation Theory’ (OCT) was announced to the world in , by and in , and has also been met head-on by an Egyptological orthodoxy not willing to accept that the pyramids of Giza may have been laid out to mimic the stars of the constellation Orion.

It is a little difficult to understand why the OCT has been rebuked so ferociously by not only Egyptologists, but also astronomers such as Ed Krupp. The likeness is quite apparent, and there is much to suggest that the ancient Egyptians revered the Orion constellation in particular — even if one day it is ultimately proven incorrect, it still seems a topic well worth some serious discussion. In all likelihood, the orthodox opposition to Bauval’s research comes not so much from that core theory, but from the other subjects associated with him from the ‘alternative history’ genre throughout the 1990s — the Age of the Sphinx controversy, the 10,500 BCE date given by Bauval for the perfect mirror image of the Giza layout to be present in the sky, and the confluence of this date with theories of a lost civilisation (notably the big ‘A’: Atlantis).

It seems that in The Egypt Code, Bauval has set himself the task of re-establishing his core theory — and the wider gestalt of the Ancient Egyptian cosmology being firmly rooted in events happening in the sky — to the academic establishment. And while he still sits firmly on the fringe, in this book he stays within arms-length of orthodox Egyptology. So, while he cites Colin Reader’s ideas on an earlier dating for the Sphinx, there is no mention of or ...

Ultimately, The Egypt Code offers a glimpse into Ancient Egyptian culture and architecture which suggests that they attributed an immense significance to living in tune with the cosmos, in particular the cycle of the stars. In Bauval’s words: “I believe that I have been able to make visible an ancient ‘code’ that can help Egyptology to shed more light on the greatest and most spiritually enlightened civilisation the world has ever known or is likely to know again in the future. Our present civilisation is in dire need of this ancient model of wisdom.” That is about as New Age as Bauval gets in this book — readers seeking an adventure into the Hall of Records, replete with Atlantean civilisation should stay away. However, for those wishing to revisit Ancient Egypt and the OCT with Bauval, it is definitely a stimulating read.

, Robert Bauval, Century, 2006, pp. 336.

The Egypt Code, Greg, The Daily Grail, October 06, 2006.

Official Egypt Code website.

Were ancient Egyptian cities levelled by the massive volcanic eruption that may have inspired the legend of Atlantis?

Egyptian archaeologists Monday announced they had found traces of solidified lava on the Sinai peninsula while excavating an ancient fort. According to Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, the lava hails from Santorini, whose giant eruption 3,500 years ago destroyed the Minoan civilization on nearby Crete.

See the evidence that may show how Santorini wrought destruction hundreds of miles away, and learn why experts believe the cataclysmic eruption may have helped free Egypt from the grip of foreign invaders.

Video: "Atlantis" Volcano Devastated Ancient Egypt?, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, April 04, 2007.

cf. Ancient Egypt Cities Levelled by Massive Volcano, Lava Find Suggests, Dan Morrison, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, April 02, 2007.

Previously:

Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say, April 03, 2007.

Sinai Pumice Linked to Ancient Eruption, April 03, 2007.

DW-WORLD.DE spoke to French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio, who brought lost parts of the legendary port of Alexandria and the ancient cities of Heracleion and Canopus back to light.

"Egypt's Sunken Treasures," an exhibition of artefacts unearthed during Goddio's excavations, went on show in Bonn on Thursday.

DW-WORLD.DE: After thousands of excursions to sunken cities and shipwrecks around the world, your living room must look like an adventurous place.

Franck Goddio: Well, it's not an adventure. I would say it's a job, and we are doing this job very professionally. We plan each mission carefully and train our staff for that, and before starting, there is a lot of paperwork that has to be done.

Before you started to search for sunken treasures, you studied mathematics and worked as a financial consultant. How does that fit with archaeology?

As a matter of fact, it does help. After 10 years in finance, I decided to take a one-year break. I looked at what at the time has been done in underwater archaeology, and I realized that there was a need for a privately funded independent institute that could work for governments and other institutions...

"It's a Bit Like Modern Surgery", Richard Fuchs, Deutsche Welle, Germany, April 05, 2007.

Catharine Roehrig, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Department of Egyptian Art, describes the multifaceted career of the popular novelist and adventurer, Amelia Edwards. Edwards founded the Egypt Exploration Fund, which helped professionalize the field of archaeology.

In MP3 format. This relates to the ongoing exhibition Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.

Distaff Discoveries: Women in Early Egyptology, Catharine Roehrig, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA, March 02, 2007.

cf. MHC Art Museum to Host Egyptian Exhibition February 17 - July 22, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA, January 08, 2007.

Previously:

Treasured seekers: A Mount Holyoke College exhibit celebrates the contributions of two pioneers in archaeology, March 08, 2007.

Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum, January 02, 2007.

In 1897, 25 years before Carter would make his celebrated discovery in the Valley of the Kings, two excavators from Oxford began digging in an infinitely less glamorous location. Oxyrhynchus — "the City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish" — could boast of no hints of buried kings; but it did offer some promising rubbish dumps.

Peter Parsons is uniquely well qualified to act as a guide to what they found. For more than 50 years he has been working on the treasures exhumed a century ago from Oxyrhynchus: scraps of papyrus, some 500,000 of them, all inscribed with Greek. They date from a period long after the reign of Tutankhamen, when Egypt, having been conquered first by Alexander the Great, and then by Rome, was ruled by men whose culture was proudly classical. The contents of the average municipal tip back then appear to have been a good deal more high-brow than they are today: the Oxyrhynchus elite were endlessly dumping masterpieces of Greek literature, and the fragments of these poems and histories, many of them lost for centuries, are still being painstakingly pieced together by scholars such as Parsons. So too are documents from the earliest days of Christianity: it was at Oxyrhynchus, for instance, that a section of the suppressed Gnostic Gospel of Thomas was first unearthed...

, Peter Parsons, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007, pp. 320.

Everyday stories of ancient folk, Tom Holland, The Guardian, UK, March 31, 2007.

An antique dealer from Leeds who paid £50 for a tray of unwanted silver discovered a hidden treasure inside which is expected to fetch up to £4,000 when it goes under the hammer.

Martin Roberts, of Stanningley, found the miniature alabaster torso figure after buying a drawer of discarded silver in a house clearance sale.

Experts confirmed the four-inch high artefact is a royal shabti dating back to 1386BC and found in the tomb of the Egyptian king Amenophis [Amenhotep] III in 1799...

Return on Egyptian find is none too shabti..., Debbie Leigh, The Yorkshire Evening Post, UK, March 28, 2007.

New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World has named a classics professor and former Graduate School dean at Columbia University, Roger Bagnall, as its first director.

In July [2007], he will take the helm of this new, interdisciplinary advanced study centre, located in a seven-floor townhouse at 15 East 84th St., a half-block stroll from the Metropolitan Museum. The institute is funded by a $200 million gift from the Leon Levy Foundation. Asked what his reaction was when offered the post, he said, "I thought, 'This is going to be fun.'" Imagine a professor who studies cuneiform seated alongside an archaeologist of Afghanistan, or a Greek literary researcher talking with a scholar of South Asia. Mr. Bagnall said there is nothing in antiquity — from Portugal to China that is not potentially within the centre's purview. "It's ambitious," he said...

Mr. Bagnall is a papyrologist who has researched the social, administrative, economic, religious, and demographic history of Roman Egypt. He has studied papyri produced under Ptolemaic and Roman rule, and even specimens from after the Arab conquest of the region...

Trained at Yale and the University of Toronto, Mr. Bagnall directs Columbia University's archaeological project at Amheida, in the Dakhla Oasis of Egypt, a site which looks late Roman but dates back much further...

Books by on Amazon.

NYU Antiquities Centre Director Is Named, Gary Shapiro, The New York Sun, New York, USA, April 05, 2007.

A rib bone supposedly found at the site where French heroine Joan of Arc was burned at the stake is actually that of an Egyptian mummy, according to researchers who used high-tech science to expose the fake.

The bone, a piece of cloth and a cat femur were said to have been recovered after the 19-year-old was burned in 1431 in the town of Rouen. In 1909 — the year Joan of Arc was beatified — scientists declared it "highly probable" that the relics were hers.

But starting last year, 20 researchers from France, Switzerland and Benin took another look. Even they were surprised to find the rib bone came from an Egyptian mummy. Their best guess is that the fake was cooked up in the 19th century, perhaps to boost the process of Joan of Arc's beatification. She was canonized as a saint in 1920 by the Roman Catholic Church...

The research team was headed by Dr. Philippe Charlier at the Hôpital Raymond Poincaré, Garches, France.

Supposed Joan of Arc Bone Is Mummy's, John Leicester, AP via Discovery Channel News, USA, April 04, 2007.

cf. Joan of Arc Relics Are Actually Egypt Mummy Remains, Research Reveals, Kate Ravilious, National Geographic News, USA, April 04, 2007.

Update: added the Nature article as this is where the story broke.

cf. Joan of Arc's relics exposed as forgery, Declan Butler, Nature, USA, April 04, 2007, doi:10.1038/446593a.

Until recently, residents of this central Bosnian town never gave Visocica hill much thought.

Roughly pyramid-shaped and covered in woods, Visocica loomed 720 feet above the town. Occasionally, tourists or picnic parties would drive up the track on the back side to take in the scenery or to poke about the ruins of the medieval castle on its summit. Most of the time it was left to the sheep.

But over the past year and a half, this sleepy town of 12,000 has become one of Bosnia's busiest tourist destinations, with thousands of daily visitors coming in summer to see what is purported to be the world's largest pyramid. Four more purported pyramids are scattered around Visoko, disguised as hills.

Foreign geological experts who have visited the site report that it is a natural hill, and Bosnia's archaeological community has condemned ongoing digs here as a waste of the nation's limited resources and a threat to real sites. But for many Bosnians, it's a tourism dream come true...

Come see the pyramids ... in Bosnia?, Colin Woodard, Yahoo! News, USA, March 29, 2007.

Strolling around the base of the Great Pyramid, drifting further away from the group, I realized I was being followed. Four giant camels, accessorized with furry pom-poms, blocked my path. I was surrounded.

Seated atop these sandy desert dwellers were merchants, aggressively hawking tourist souvenirs. They forced alabaster trinkets, papyrus scrolls and snow globes into my hands, first offering them as "gifts," then demanding money.

Though I tried to be polite, the vendors were persistent. "Camel ride? Camel ride" they shouted.

As a perceived "rich" Westerner, local vendors can make you feel like a walking pocketbook, a living, breathing dollar sign. It can be pretty exhausting sometimes. Though I should be a pro at handling aggressive vendors and beggars, I'm not. I get frustrated. I flip flop between guilt and anger, humanitarianism and a hardened heart...

Dodging hawkers at the Great Pyramids, Julia Dimon, Toronto Metro, Ontario, Canada, April 04, 2007.

Today, Bonn will witness the opening of the [Egyptian] Sunken [Treasures] Exhibition amid expectations of an unprecedented turnout given that more than 850,000 visited the exhibition in Paris and Berlin. The exhibition, being the first of its kind, comprises 489 pieces unearthed by the European Institute Mission for Sunken Monuments [Institut Européen d'Archéologie Sous-Marine (IEASM)] working in Alexandria since the 1990s.

Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said he agreed to hold the exhibition in Berlin, Bonn and Paris to enable the world to learn about a historical part of Egypt's ancient civilization. Hosni also added that the exhibition would move to the Crystal Palace in Madrid, Spain from February 19, 2008 to August 31, 2008. The chief of the Egyptian delegation said pieces on display include a black basalt painting, a statue for Habi, the Nile god and pink granite painting written in three ancient languages. My emphasis.

There appears to be two Crystal Palaces in Mardid...

Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Art and exhibition hall of the Federal Republic of Germany), Bonn, Germany.

Opening of Sunken Monument Exhibition in Bonn, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, April 04, 2007.

Previously:

Sunken treasures in Bonn, April 02, 2007.

Medical science has made great leaps in the last several decades, but — as "Post Mortem: Solving History's Great Medical Mysteries" by Philip A. Mackowiak, MD, MBA, FACP, reveals — some of our "modern" illnesses have been around for centuries.

Published by the American College of Physicians (ACP), "Post Mortem" endeavours to solve 12 of history's most perplexing medical mysteries:

• Whether Alexander the Great was a victim of West Nile virus...
• The cause of Pharaoh Akhenaten's bizarre appearance — the father of King Tut was described as a "humanoid praying mantis..."

, Philip A. Mackowiak, American College of Physicians, 2007.

'Post Mortem' Diagnosis: Present-Day Ailments Plagued Some of History's Great Figures, American College of Physicians via Yahoo! Finance, USA, April 02, 2007.

Ancient Egyptians built the 480-foot-high (146-meter-high) Great Pyramid of Giza from the inside out, according to a French architect.

Based on eight years of study, Jean-Pierre Houdin has created a novel three-dimensional computer simulation to present his hypothesis. He says his findings solve the mystery of how the massive monument just outside Cairo was constructed.

The 4,500-year-old tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, he concluded, was built using a ramp that spirals around the pyramid's interior 30 to 45 feet (9 to 14 meters) behind the exterior surface (see image at left).

"I am completely comfortable with this theory," Houdin said in a telephone interview from Paris. He was in the French capital on Friday to show the simulation to 400 spectators wearing 3-D goggles...

3D Unveils the Mystery of the Great Pyramid, Dassault Systemes.

Great Pyramid Built Inside Out, French Architect Says, Dan Morrison, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, April 02, 2007.

Previously:

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid's construction is turned inside out, March 30, 2007.

Real-time 3D Helps to Finally Solve the Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Kheops!, March 30, 2007.

I also found this at YouTube: Khufu Pyramid Building Mystery in Real Time 3D

On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt’s chief archaeologist took a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency's latest discovery.

It didn’t look like much — some ancient buried walls of a military fort and a few pieces of volcanic lava. The archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, often promotes mummies and tombs and pharaonic antiquities that command international attention and high ticket prices. But this bleak landscape, broken only by electric pylons, excited him because it provided physical evidence of stories told in hieroglyphics. It was proof of accounts from antiquity.

That prompted a reporter to ask about the Exodus, and if the new evidence was linked in any way to the story of Passover. The archaeological discoveries roughly coincided with the timing of the Israelites’ biblical flight from Egypt and the 40 years of wandering the desert in search of the Promised Land.

“Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom...

“If they get upset, I don’t care,” Dr. Hawass said. “This is my career as an archaeologist. I should tell them the truth. If the people are upset, that is not my problem...”

Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say, Michael Slackman, The New York Times, USA, April 03, 2007.

cf. Did the Red Sea Part? No Evidence, Archaeologists Say, Michael Slackman, International Herald Tribune, France, April 03, 2007.

Previously:

Sinai Pumice Linked to Ancient Eruption, April 03, 2007.

Just a quick reminder about this blog written by the American Robertson family on a seven month sabbatical. They have moved on from Egypt now to Greece taking in Crete, Santorini and the Greek mainland.

Marty has also posted a number of videos on YouTube: Marty Robertson such as this one entitled "Khufu's Tomb".

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

Previously:

Interesting Blog, February 16, 2007.

Egyptian archaeologists showed off white pumice Monday that they theorize was swept onto the northern Sinai desert by a tsunami triggered by the ancient volcanic eruption on Santorini island 530 miles away.

Traces of the solidified lava foam from the eruption have been found on the island of Crete and in southwestern Turkey, but the archaeological team now believes it also reached the Sinai site where they were digging at an ancient fort 4 miles from the Mediterranean coast.

The Santorini explosion in the 17th century B.C. was devastating. It sank most of the now-Greek island and killed more than 35,000 people of a thriving Minoan community.

The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said the discovery of the pumice would open a new field of study in Egyptology...

The archaeological team found the pumice while excavating at Tel Habuwa in the desert northeast of Qantara, a town on the Suez Canal nearly 95 miles northeast of Cairo.

They were searching for Pharaonic forts that helped protect the Nile Delta from foreign invasion, and last month they uncovered remains here of an 18th Dynasty fort with four rectangular towers built of mud bricks...

Click on the picture above for seven photographs from the Associated Press and Reuters on the Yahoo! News Archaeology & Anthropology slideshow.

The excavations are directed by Mohammed Abdel-Maksoud whose "work has demonstrated that Tell Heboua is equated with Tjaru of Dynasties 17-20, a massive Egyptian fortification guarding the East Delta and military Way of Horus across North Sinai".

Tjaru seems to also be variously know as Tjaru, Tharo, Tharu, Zarw, or Sile. Habuwa, similarly, goes by several variant spellings: Heboua, Haboua, Habuwa, Habua, Hebua.

Sinai Pumice Linked to Ancient Eruption, Katarina Kratovac, AP via The San Francisco Examiner, California, USA, April 02, 2007.

Egyptian Archaeologists Find Ancient Lava, Katarina Kratovac, AP via CBS 11, Texas, USA, April 02, 2007.

Egypt says has evidence volcano destroyed cities, Reuters, USA, April 02, 2007.

Egypt says has evidence volcano destroyed cities, Reuters, Africa, April 03, 2007.

Volcano 'destroyed cities', Reuters via News 24, South Africa, April 03, 2007.

Previously:

King of the wild frontier, August 12, 2005.

Unearthing Sinai, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No.565, December 20 - 26, 2001.

The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) Has recently heard that, in two years' time, it will lose its funding from the British Academy...

The British Academy is reorganising its grants to move away from the present Mediterranean and Near East bias, and to reflect more of a worldwide basis. They wish to move away from the traditional emphasis on archaeology so that the British Schools reflect more its overall remit to support the humanities and social sciences. They are therefore eliminating the grants to the EES and to the British School in Iraq, though both will receive reduced grants for the next two years as a transitional measure...

The EES is now facing up to the challenge of life after the British Academy grant ends. It will continue to concentrate on Ancient Egypt and Nubia and on multidisciplinary archaeological research, covering 5,000 years of Egyptian history from the earliest traces of human activity in Egypt to AD 1800. The EES recently launched an appeal for its 'Excavation Fund' and the Society is also raising its annual subscription rates to members for the first time sine 1999. Membership of the society is open to anyone with an interest in ancient Egypt and applications and donations can be made on-line (www.ees.ac.uk) as can donations to the Excavation Fund, which will help the society's exciting fieldwork and research programme to continue. For further information on how you might support the EES, please visit www.ees.ac.uk/supporting_ees.htm Or contact the Society on contact@ees.ac.uk...

Full membership to the Society gets you access to their library in London, lectures in London, Manchester and Cairo, two issues of the Bulletin of Egyptian Archaeology and a copy of The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology every year.

Funding British Archaeology abroad: The British Academy axes Egypt and Iraq, Think Publishing, London, UK, Volume 2, No. 10, Issue 22, April / May 2007, pp. 48 - 49.

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

• Howard Carter: Tutankhamun's discoverer
  The life and times of Carter from the biography by H.V.F. Winstone 2006. (6 pages)
• Return of the King: Tutankhamun on Tour.
  
  Following the success of the 1970s tour of Tutankhamun, the boy-king is back on the road, currently wowing crowds in the US. (5 pages)
• Diary
  
  The British Academy axes support for the British archaeological institutions in Egypt and Iraq. (5 pages)
• Guiding Lights
  
  Michael Ackroyd lists tips and ideas for the archaeo-traveller. (1 page)
  
  Ackroyd is the Product Director of Ancient World Tours Ltd (AWT) and he mentions that his favourite place is Egypt's Gilf Kebir.

Current World Archaeology, Think Publishing, London, UK, Volume 2, No. 10, Issue 22, April / May 2007.

Subscribe to Current World Archaeology Magazine via Amazon.com.

The mystery of how the pyramids were built has been claimed to be 'solved' by a French architect. However, his theories have now been categorically debunked by eye witnesses.

According to a number of Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, who were interviewed as reanimated mummies, the pyramids were in fact built upside-down.

"Yeah, we started by sticking the pointy bit in..." says Pharaoh Djedefre "...then we just stacked the rest on top. Keeping it from falling over was hard but the hardest part was turning it over once it was built. Fortunately we had hundreds of thousands of slaves and we didn't care how many we sacrificed during the 'great flip'."

'Solving' of Great Pyramids False, Truth Revealed, Tom Taylor, The Spoof, March 31, 2007.

... many prominent Egyptologists in Cairo refute the idea that the pyramids were built by slaves at all. The list of scholars who align themselves with this train of thought is headed by Egypt's Chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass. In 2002, a team led by Hawass explored unopened chambers inside the pyramids using new technology, and at the end of the process a triumphant Hawass told the world press that his findings, particularly the skeleton of a fourth-century Egyptian, showed that the pyramids were "not built by slaves," but rather by the "great Egyptians..."

Following the exploration, which was broadcast worldwide by National Geographic, Dr. Hawass held an interview with the Arab daily El-Gomhoreya [al-Gomhuriya / al-Jumhuriyah], in which he said his findings "refute the allegations reiterated by Jews and some Western countries that the Jews built the pyramids."

Speaking with The Jerusalem Post at the Egypt Museum in Cairo, Dr. Nawab Shoeab, a prominent Egyptologist, argues that claims that the Israelites were coerced into building the pyramids are not held up by historical research. She points out that the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt during the 19th Dynasty, under the reign of Rameses II, around 1300 BCE. The pyramids, she notes, were built some 1,400 years earlier, during the Fourth Dynasty. This is clearly too large a space in time for claims of Israelite involvement to be plausible, she says...

War of the pyramid theorists, Yaniv Salama-Scheer and Jorg Luyken, The Jerusalem Post, Israel, April 01, 2007.

The Egyptian authorities have evicted hundreds of peasants from a small village in southern Egypt because their mud brick houses, which have sat on top of some of the world's most treasured tombs for centuries, were leaking sewage on to priceless antiquities.

The families have been resettled in a nearby new town with running water and telephones. But 80 are holding out, saying they want more from a government that has been reluctant to use brute force...

In Gurna — which sits on tombs that date back 3,500 years — much of the familiar tableau of village life has been razed into piles of mud brick rubble. Egyptian officials say that in Gurna they will finish the task because science and decency are on their side.

Under the plan, every married man receives a two-bedroom house in what is known as New Gurna. But opponents are pressing for one house for every son.

"Each family man is asking for a house for himself, and for one for his children," said Sabry Abdel Aziz, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Sector. "It is a problem of greed..."

Peasants living above treasured tombs defy eviction from mud homes, Michael Slackman, The Scotsman, UK, April 01, 2007.

The joint Egyptian-Australian expedition found 4 thousand year old tomb that was built of clay nearby Saqqara Pyramid after few weeks of finding the tomb of the royal seal holder "Pitah".

Dr. Zahi Hawass, the General Secretary of the Higher council for Antiquities, said that the tomb belongs to "Ka-Hay" the sacred archives writer and his wife.

The clay tomb dates back to the end of the fifth dynasty and the earliest of the sixth dynast, namely more than 4300 years B.C. The tomb contains private records and private royal property.

Meanwhile, Dr. Zahi Hawass will declare after tomorrow 02/04/2007 an important antique find from Al Kantara East location. The declaration includes 4 big finds which will trigger a great propaganda for Egypt in different world countries that will change some of the historical concepts.

The Australian Centre for Egyptology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

Note also, the teaser about a forthcoming announcement regarding another big find.

Discovering of the writer of sacred archives tomb at Saqqara, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 31, 2007.

An Egyptian archaeological delegation returned home Monday from Paris after having retrieved locks of hair from the mummy of Rameses II, the official news agency MENA reported.

The French authorities handed over Rameses II's hair to the Egyptian embassy in Paris after arresting a French man who sought to sell them via the Internet for 2,500 euros.

The tress of Rameses II's hair has been lost for 32 years before appearing in France when it was offered for auction in the Internet last year...

Egyptian archaeological returns from France with mummy's hair, Xinhua via People's Daily, China, April 02, 2007.

Previously:

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.

Around 2,000 archaeologists from around the world will gather at Cairo University on April 10-12 [2007] for an international archaeological conference, reports.

Held under the Cairo University, Alexandria University and the Dutch Institute of Archaeology, the conference will discuss papers on aspects of the ancient Egyptian civilisation such as the language, architecture, arts and science. The conference will honour Abdel Halim Nour Eddin, an ex-Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, the dean of the Cairo University's Faculty of Archaeology and an advisor to the Library of Alexandria. A book, entitled "Excavations in a Human Heart" on Nour Eddin's life will come out to mark the occasion.

Major archaeology meet at Cairo Univ, Hassan Saadallah, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 02, 2007.

After Berlin [and Paris] ... is Bonn Next Wednesday, Egyptian Sunken Antiquities will be exhibited in Bonn. The number of visitors is expected to hit one million. The first exhibition was in Berlin in May 2006-September 2006 when President Mubarak opened it with his German counterpart. The number of visitors reached half million. Egyptian Ambassador to Berlin Mohamed El Orabi expects this year's number of visitors to reach one million because the first exhibition timed with the World Cup games. In the first exhibition there were a number of splendid Egyptian activities. Wednesday's exhibition will witness a series of lectures for one month by PhD holder Wafaa Seddiq who is also fluent in Germany. Bonn will also receive in September an Egyptian band from the Academy of Arts in Cairo for one-week show. This exhibition will include 500 pieces of antiquities that were picked up from the Mediterranean Sea in front of Alexandria governorate. These antiquities represent 15 centuries, from 700 BC to 800 BC. The period includes the last days of Pharaohs, Alexander the Great, then the Roman invasion, the spread of Christianity and finally the introduction of Islam. The exhibition runs until January 2008 and then will be exhibited in Madrid in March 2008.

Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Art and exhibition hall of the Federal Republic of Germany) in Bonn. Notice also above the announcement of a fourth date in Madrid.

Sunken treasures in Bonn Wed, Salah Attia, The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 02, 2007.