Memphis-Saqqara-Dashur is a quiet stretch of history, just off Cairo; a superb combination of greenery as well as the barren and rugged desert. We set out on our self guided tour one fine morning to reach Memphis, once the glorious capital of ancient Egypt, now converted to an open air museum, beautifully flanked by the tall date palm trees.

The museum houses a colossal limestone statue of Ramses II, which is kept is a lying position as its legs are broken from the knees and the left arm is totally battered. It is guessed that the statue must have fallen from a great height, causing this condition. The double head gear represented upper and lower Egypt and the waist band has his name written in hieroglyphics, which was only done to pharaohs. The other attraction here was an alabaster sphinx weighing about eight tonnes.

When Memphis was the capital of Egypt, Saqqara was its necropolis. The area around is beautiful with white sand stretching up to the horizon on both sides of the driving road. Apart from King Zsoser’s step pyramid, the other attractions here are a few ancient tombs with magnificent paintings giving a vivid idea about Egypt's wild life at that era and the pyramid of Teti, the first king of the 6th dynasty...

Memphis Marvels, Bidisha Bagchi, Economic Times of India, India, July 11, 2007.

The Egyptians did not invent beer. Rather they had learned the art of brewing from the world's first known brewers, the Sumerians, Babylonian, and Assyrians further to the east in what is now Iraq. The Egyptians, however, left us with the best documentation of ancient brewing practices. Most of the many depictions of Egyptian brewing that have come down to us are murals in vaults, pyramids, and sacrificial chambers. These attest to the importance and high esteem in which the art of beer-making was held in Egyptian society. Yet the find in Meketre's tomb probably ranks among the best preserved and most instructive.

The brewery model in the Metropolitan Museum apparently dates from around 2009 to 1998 B.C. A card at the exhibition in the Museum explains what is going on in the brewery: "The overseer with a baton sits inside the door. In the brewery two women grind flour, which another man works into dough. After a second man treads the dough into mash in a tall vat, it is put into tall crocks to ferment. After fermentation, it is poured off into round jugs with black clay stoppers..."

In Egypt, beer was regarded as food. In fact, the old Egyptian hieroglyph for "meal" was a compound of those for "bread" and "beer". This "bread-beer meal" plus a few onions and some dried fish was the standard diet of the common people along the Nile at the time. Beer came in eight different types in Egypt. Most were made from barley, some from emmer, and many were flavoured with ginger or honey. The best beers were brewed to a colour as red as human blood. The Egyptians distinguished between the different beers by their alcoholic strength and dominant flavour...

Egyptian Beer for the Living, the Dead ... and the Gods, Horst Dornbusch, Beer Advocate, February 28, 2005.

See also the later article in the series "Whatever Happened to Sumerian Beer?"

Museum visitors are being given the chance to help unlock the secrets of ancient Egypt in an innovative exhibition.

The public will be able to vote for six artefacts from an Egyptology exhibition at Harrogate's Royal Pump Room Museum, prioritising the items which will then be taken away for in-depth scientific research.

The idea followed studies of a vase which had been in the museum's collection for almost 30 years but was thought to be a fake because of its pristine condition.

Investigation However, it was established that the artefact did in fact date back 5,000 years.

The latest project is part of the museum's Egyptology: Science Investigation exhibition, which is due to be made a permanent feature later this year after an GBP80,000 grant was secured from the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts.

Museum staff will now work alongside York University's Egyptologist Dr Joann Fletcher and scientist Dr Stephen Buckley to study the artefacts selected by the public vote.

Unlock ancient Egypt's secrets, Macroworld Investor, UK, July 18, 2007.

I first met David O'Connor when he came to pick me up from Malawi in Minya, where as a young man I served as an inspector of antiquities at Tuna Al-Gabal. I was lucky to work with him in 1974 at Malkata on the west bank at Luxor, where Amenhotep III built his palace and the lake used for recreation by his wife, Tiye. In 1979, I spent three months with the Pennsylvania-Yale University expedition at Abydos, supervised by O'Connor and William Kelly Simpson. At Abydos, O'Connor used to rest after a long day work and have a beer. After dinner, we would talk about politics with the young American archaeologists. I was very impressed by President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, but when we began arguing O'Connor would always say, "No politics — we are at a dig house, not a congress." Um Seti ("mother of Seti"), the English woman who believed she had served Seti I in an earlier life, would visit us at Abydos and was keen to help me improve my English.

O'Connor and Simpson invited me to Philadelphia, Boston, and Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and I stayed for a while at his house in Philadelphia. When I went to the University of Pennsylvania as a Fulbright scholar in 1980 he was my adviser for my doctoral dissertation, and became a lifelong friend.

O'Connor is unique. Originally from Australia, he received a postgraduate diploma in Egyptology in 1962 from University College London. He then studied for his doctorate at Cambridge. He was always honest, a good excavator, and a true leader. I learnt a lot from him...

Dig Days: An Egyptologist to be remembered, Zahi Hawass, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 854, July 19 - 25, 2007.

Egyptologist Dr. Kara Cooney visits "The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson" to discuss the Pharaoh Hatshepsut and the Discovery Channel special "Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen".

Dr. Kara Cooney on the Late, Late Show - 7/11/07

Thanks to Anthony Cagle over ArchaeoBlog for this one.