Carrying out a routine spot of garden maintenance, Matthew McClelland was horrified to see a skull staring back at him from the hole he had just created with his spade.

Before he knew what was happening to him, police had sealed off the site and were maintaining a 24-hour watch over his home.

His worst nightmare then began to unfold in front of his eyes as police pulled a second human head from the garden - and he began to fear that he could become the chief suspect...

Further investigation by police revealed that the skulls were in fact Egyptian artefacts. They discovered that the previous owner of the house, a doctor...

‘I was worried neighbours might think I was Fred West’, Susannah Wright, The South Manchester Reporter, UK, June 14, 2007.

Greece [on] Thursday presented a Hellenistic-era torso of the ancient Greek god Apollo discovered in Switzerland more than 15 years after it was stolen from an excavation site on Crete.

The headless torso was in the possession of art dealer David Cahn in Basel, and the Greek authorities intervened just before it was delivered to a private buyer, culture minister George Voulgarakis told a news conference.

"This is the first result of cooperation between our two countries on cultural heritage protection," the minister said. "You will see more [examples] in the coming period..."

Greece reclaims stolen Apollo statue, Middle East Times, Cyprus, June 14, 2007.

Italian police have recovered an ancient Greek temple dug up in southern Italy by a construction crew who had dumped or looted the prized artefacts and begun to pour cement over the ruins, authorities said Tuesday.

After receiving information about the discovery during construction work on a tourist resort on the coast of southern Calabria, police used helicopters to locate the site near the town of Crotone, said art squad officials from the Carabinieri paramilitary police.

More than 50 artefacts, including columns and mosaics, had been excavated from the site and used to decorate another hotel complex nearby, while other pieces had been placed in a dump to be reused as construction material.

When police located the site last week, workers were preparing to lay the foundations of the resort hotel on the remaining ruins, said Gen. Giovanni Nistri, the head of the art squad...

Italy is full of archaeological treasures — many undiscovered — and developers are required to report any finds. Countless public and private works have been scrapped or delayed over the years as state archaeologists descended on building sites, and it is not uncommon for developers to fail to report a discovery and plough through ancient treasures...

Italian Police Recover Ancient Temple, Ariel David, AP via Newsday, New York, USA, June 12, 2007.

Michael Brand, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has a problem that won’t go away: a dispute with the Italian government over ancient artworks in the museum’s collection. Once-promising negotiations have completely broken down.

In the 18 months that Brand has led the museum, he’s strengthened its acquisition policy, hired several key staff members and helped organize new shows. He also helped repair the museum’s reputation and that of the parent Getty Trust, the world’s richest art institution with a $5.6 billion endowment.

The trust last year settled an investigation by the California attorney general into the Getty’s governance. Brand struck an agreement with the Greek government over disputed antiquities, returning four objects this year, and was making progress in talks with Italy’s Ministry of Culture over 52 disputed works.

“Everything was going along fine — which isn’t to say it was easy, but we knew what we agreed on and what we had yet to reach agreement on,” Brand recalled in an interview. “And then last November they placed a new condition on the table, that without the Getty Bronze there would be no agreement at all...”

Getty Museum's Brand Faces Impasse in Italian Artefacts Dispute, Stephen West, Bloomberg, USA, June 14, 2007.

Palaeolithic rock art depicting animal illustrations similar to those found in the Lascaux caves in France have been discovered in the Upper Egyptian town of Kom Ombo.

The discovery of huge rocks decorated with Palaeolithic illustrations at the village of Qurta on the northern edge of Kom Ombo has caused excitement among the scientific community. The art was found by a team of Belgian archaeologists and restorers and features groups of cattle similar to those drawn on the walls of the French Lascaux caves. They are drawn and painted in a naturalistic style which is quite different from those shown in cattle representations of the well-known classical, pre-dynastic iconography of the fourth millennium BC. Illustrations of hippopotami, fish, birds and human figures can also be seen on the surface of some of the rocks.

The first examination of the patination and weathering suggests that these bovid representations are extremely old, most probably predating the fish-trap representations and associated rock scenes previously found at several locations in the Al-Hosh area. They are also similar to cattle representations discovered in 1962-63 by a Canadian archaeological mission as part of an attempt to reserve land for habitation and cultivation by Nubians who had been displaced from their homes by the construction of the Aswan High Dam. The Belgian mission relocated the rock in 2004 to the area near the modern village of Qurta. This newly-discovered site is still in pristine condition since they have not been visited by archaeologists since the Canadian team in 1963...

Lascaux on the Nile, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 849, June 14 - 20, 2007.

cf. Lots of pictures here: ‘Lascaux along the Nile’: Late Pleistocene rock art in Egypt, Dirk Huyge, Maxime Aubert, Hans Barnard, Wouter Claes, John Coleman Darnell, Morgan De Dapper, Elyssa Figari, Salima Ikram, Anne Lebrun-Nélis & Isabelle Therasse, Antiquity, UK, Vol. 81, No. 313, September 2007.

Though not the only female ruler of Egypt, Queen Hatshepsut (1473-1458 BC), which means "united with Amun in front of the nobles", is one of the best known.

In ancient Egypt women often held high status, and could own and inherit property. Yet female rulers remained rare: only Khentkawes, Sobeknefru and, possibly, Nitocris, preceded Hatshepsut. Pharaoh was an exclusively male title and in early Egyptian history there was no word for a Queen regent, unlike Queen consort.

Hatshepsut slowly assumed the regalia and symbols of Pharaonic office, including the Khat head cloth topped with an uraeus, the traditional false beard, and the shendyt kilt.

She created a myth about her own divine birth in which Amun goes to Ahmose in the form of Thutmose I and awakens her with pleasant odours. When Amun places the ankh, a symbol of life, beneath Ahmose's nose, Hatshepsut is conceived. Khnum, the god who forms the bodies of human children, is then instructed to create a body and ka, or corporal presence/life force, for Hatshepsut. Khnum and Heket, goddess of life and fertility, leads Ahmose to a lion bed where she gives birth to Hatshepsut...

Queen for a day, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 849, June 14 - 20, 2007.

I recently wrote to Bernd Neumann, deputy minister of culture in Berlin, to ask for the return of the bust of Nefertiti to Egypt so that it could be exhibited for three months on the occasion of the opening of the Akhenaten Museum in 2010. The museum is now being built in Minya, near to where the bust of Nefertiti was found. The bust was discovered at Tel Al-Amarna, the site of Akhetaten (Akhenaten's capital city), which lies south of Minya.

I am waiting for a response from Germany to my request. Egypt has never pressed for the return of the bust of Nefertiti to Egypt. Only once, in 1986, was such a request made.

Mohamed Abdel-Qader, former chairman of the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation (EAO), asked the German ambassador at that time to meet him in his office in Zamalek. At the meeting, Abdel-Qader asked him to return the bust to Egypt. However, the German ambassador did not like this idea, and he complained about it to the Egyptian authorities. Abdel-Qader was subsequently fired.

I am sure that our request will also be refused. Then we will have to pursue another strategy. I am writing this column to warn the Germans that a refusal by the Berlin Museum will damage the scientific relationship between Egypt and Berlin. As a result, it will be announced that we are cutting scientific relations with the Berlin Museum and will never send exhibitions to Berlin. I am also sure that they will say that they do not care...

Dig days: Nefertiti should come back home, Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 849, June 14 - 20, 2007.