Niagara Falls might seem to be a strange place for a large and important collection of Egyptian mummies. But it was not quite so strange in the late 1850’s, when Colonel Sydney Barnett, the son of the Museum’s founder, Thomas Barnett ... went to Egypt to purchase the Egyptian antiquities that would begin the collection. The Niagara Falls Museum, Canada’s oldest museum, opened in 1827.

Since Napoleon’s attempt to conquer Egypt in 1798, Egyptian mummies, coffins, statues and jewellery had been entering Europe and North America, inspiring artists and architects. Many cemeteries in the first half of the nineteenth century were built with Egyptian style gates. The decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs by Jean François Champollion in 1836 excited the Western world. American writers and philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Edgar Allen Poe, wrote on Egyptian themes. The Crystal Palace display in London in 1851 had whetted the public’s appetite for even more Egyptian materials. In Niagara Falls, two monuments had already been constructed in Ancient Style.

First, between 1850 and 1851, E.W. Serrell built a suspension bridge over the gorge at Lewiston, with Egyptian style pylons. Then, between 1852 and 1853, J.A.. Roebling (whose son, Washington Roebling, would later build the Brooklyn Bridge) spanned the Niagara River below the falls with a double-level suspension bridge built in Egyptian style. What could have been more reasonable than to create a dazzling display of Ancient Egyptian materials in the beautiful Niagara Falls Museum on Table Rock overlooking the Falls, in sight of the Egyptian pylons of the bridge?

During the late 1850s, negotiations began, and by 1861, Colonel Barnett, with the help of Canadian doctor, James A. Douglas, was able to bring the first six mummies from Egypt...

Niagara Falls: Repository of Egyptian mummies, Daily Trust, Africa, August 31, 2007.

Although some people wonder if he inspired Steven Spielberg’s daring archaeologist Indiana Jones, the “colorful character” and “adventurer” labels used to describe Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie in press releases are just marketing exaggeration. “He was more like an anti-Indiana Jones,” said Peter Lacovara of Emory University's Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta. “He was a real scholar, a very serious man.”

Of course, there is an account of Petrie swinging down to a pyramid doorway on a rope ladder to examine a flooded burial chamber by candlelight while wading through foul water littered with coffins and skulls. “Well, yes, you sort of had to do that,” Lacovara said.

But the man’s professional accomplishments are far more important than any of the more audacious means of exploration he may have found necessary, he added...

Excavating Egypt Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Keeping pharaohs out of the fire since the 1880s, Paul Weideman, The New Mexican, New Mexico, USA, August 30, 2007.

The earliest possible description of the plague that is known of is found in the Hebrew Bible in Samuel. The event has been dated to around the second half of the 11th century B.C. The Hebrew description of tumours in the Bible is interpreted as the 'swelling in the secret parts.' The Philistine city was said to have been stricken with mice which brought death to large segments of the population.

New evidence has been uncovered that leads some experts to believe that the plague's origins may come from Egypt. Eva Panagiotakopulu, who is an archaeologist and fossil-insect expert at the University of Sheffield, England, is the woman responsible for science's latest discovery. Eva has found archaeological evidence to back up the plague's possible origins in Egypt, and that evidence has recently just been published in the Journal of Biogeography.

Eva Panagiotakopulu fell onto evidence that the plague may have started in Egypt completely by accident. Eva had been looking at the remains of fossilized insects to learn about life in Egypt thousands of years ago. Since Egyptians lived so close to domestic animals, and thus pests, Panagiotakopulu decided to look at the different diseases that animals and people may have once had...

Did the Bubonic Plague Originate in Egypt?, Lily Eve, Associated Content, September 07, 2007.