Step into King Tut’s on North Main Street in Mansfield, and you step into another world.

The unique jewellery and antiques store had its grand opening in August. Before that, the store’s owner, Magdy Nawar painstakingly transformed the store’s space so its ambiance matches the goods available for sale there.

Nawar, a Mansfield resident, also owns MGN Painting, which specializes in murals and other unique interior and exterior work. The interior and exterior of King Tut’s reflect his talent in that area.

Nawar was born in Egypt, and about half of the merchandise for sale at the store is Egyptian.

Before coming to the United States, Nawar lived in France so the other half of the merchandise reflects more of a European flavour.

Nawar buys antiques and restores them, creating one-of-a-kind pieces...

An example of an Egyptian treasure is a hookah, a traditional Egyptian water pipe...

Lovely hand-painted plates, designed to be hung on walls, imported from Europe and from Egypt also grace the glass cases at King Tut’s. The European plates are signed by the artists, Nawar said, and the Egyptian plates are handmade and engraved.

Egyptian dresses and accessories for ladies are also available, as are several different types of Egyptian statues...

Egyptian touch downtown, Deborah Knight Snyder, Mansfield News, Massachusetts, USA, September 14, 2007.

Some lands are so ancient, it's like they're forever new. Libya's like that - from Neolithic times before the dawn of history, down through Egyptians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, and Muslims, the ancient peoples of Libya's coasts and deserts assimilated new ideas and made trade worthy accommodation (eventually) with all comers. The political entity we think of as a somewhat-misshapen box on Africa's Mediterranean shore only came into existence in 1951; prior to that, Libya had, like so many other lands in regions of overlapping imperial interests, changed hands many times as the powerful waxed and waned...

Neolithic culture was alive and well in Libya by the 7th millennium BCE, flourishing on a broad, well-watered savanna that stretched far to the south - petroglyphs of elephants, giraffes, and other non-desert dwelling beasts show that the area wasn't always a desert. Sometime around 2000 BCE, the process of desiccation accelerated, the beasts moved away, and the Sahara inched northward and southward a little each year, on its way to becoming the broad swath of un-inhabitability we know and love today. The people of the savanna migrated toward the more fertile fields of the Sudan, or stayed put and melded into the tribes of Berbers, who'd been arriving from the east for the past few hundred years...

Things didn't go quite as well for the Berbers during the Middle Kingdom BCE), as the pharaohs were able to extend their dominance over them and begin exacting tribute. As is so often the case with over-loaded peoples, Berbers began serving in the Egyptian army in large numbers, and eventually started making their way up the pharaonic social ladder. Around 950 BCE, a Berber officer usurped the reigning pharaoh, installed himself as Shishonk I, and established the Twenty-Second and Twenty-Third Dynasties (the so-called "Libyan Dynasties"), which lasted from 945-730 BCE...

Culture: Libya Through the Ages Part I: Ancient Libya, R. Scott Peoples, Bits of News, September 10, 2007.

The new issue of Minerva magazine is available now. It contains several articles of interest to Egyptophiles.

• The Return of Tutankhamun
  Jerome M. Eisenberg, Ph.D. and Dr Sean Kingsley. Full text online.
• Chariots, Horses or Hippos: What killed Tutankhamun?
  W. Benson Harer
• The Tomb of Ptahemwia: Akhenaten’s ‘Royal Butler, Clean of Hands’
  Maarten J. Raven
• Heracleion & Canopus Arise from the Waves
  Sean Kingsley
• The Sphinx Revealed: A Forgotten Record of Pioneering Excavations
  Patricia Usick
• Online Book Reviews
• 
  by Thomas E. Levy and Thomas Higham

Minerva Magazine, London, UK, Volume 18, Number 5, September / October 2007.

Subscribe to Minerva Magazine via Amazon.com.

More than a million Britons journeyed to Egypt last year. Almost all of them either battled the regimented coach parties to glimpse ancient Pharaonic monuments, or flocked to the beach resorts that offer world-class diving and windsurfing, and which sadly are also devastating the ecology of the Red Sea coast. But there are many other Egypts.

One of the country's neglected places is Alexandria, immodestly named by its founder, Alexander the Great. This Mediterranean port is also famous as the home of Queen Cleopatra, from the days when it vied with Rome as the world's greatest city, trading every ancient commodity and boasting 700,000 scrolls in its library. A second era of celebrity came in the century up until the 1950s, when Alexandria's commercial prowess came again to the fore, allowing a cosmopolitan hedonism captured in the novels of Lawrence Durrell and others.

Now the foreigners are gone (though its 30km of beachfront draws Egyptians in the summer) and it has something of the taste of old Havana. Once-imperious early 20th-century buildings stand in glorious dilapidation along the waterfront Corniche and twisting backstreets. Overstaffed, high-ceilinged coffee houses like the Trianon regret the passing of the Armenian cotton traders, Greek shipping agents and European aristocrats who were once their patrons...

The city that fell into the sea, Dan Whitaker, The Observer, UK, July 29, 2007.

The British Museum’s touring exhibition of 270 of some of its best artefacts opens in Hong Kong today, including a Leonardo da Vinci drawing, an Egyptian mummy and two of the world’s oldest tools.

“Treasures of the World’s Cultures from the British Museum” has exhibits from stone-age Europe, ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Americas, Africa and Asia on show until Dec. 2 [2007] at the Hong Kong Museum of Art in Kowloon.

“The museum aims to reach a broader worldwide audience,” Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Director Thomas Chow said at a packed preview of the event late yesterday.

Highlights include 2 million-year-old “chopping stones” from Africa, a drawing of a nude man by Da Vinci, an Egyptian mummy board from 945 BC called the “Unlucky Mummy” because of a supposed curse; and a Nordic walrus-ivory chess piece found in Scotland...

British Museum Show Spanning 2 Million Years Opens in Hong Kong, Tom Kohn, Bloomberg, UK, September 14, 2007.

The Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee will host Dr. , Egyptologist and research associate at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, who will present "Belzoni to UNESCO: A History of Collecting Egyptian Antiquities" at 7 p.m. Friday [September 14, 2007]. This lecture is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture.

Teeter received a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago in 1990. Her area of specialization includes the history and religion of second millennium B.C. Egypt with emphasis upon popular religion and cult ritual. She has participated in expeditions at Giza, Luxor and Alexandria.

Teeter is the author of a wide range of scholarly and popular articles that have been published in journals in the United States and abroad as well as the monographs " "; " "; and " ." She also is a frequent contributor to archaeology magazines for young readers...

Egyptian expert to lecture at Mabee-Gerrer, Shawnee News-Star, Oklahoma, September 12, 2007.

It has been some time since my last update as many administrative issues necessitated my attention this summer.

As of June 30th, our contractual agreement with the University of Memphis (UM) expired hence requiring a search for a new affiliate.

Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to announce that the Amenmesse Project [KV-10 and KV-63] is now affiliated with the prestigious, Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) ˜ The Egyptian Ministry of Culture.

The SCA, as ‘Guardians of the Monuments’ in Egypt require all missions to report directly to them for their approval and sanction. This amiable relationship has been the case during past seasons with KV-10 and during the clearance of KV-63, so this closer affiliation with the SCA should be beneficial to all concerned.

With the exception of transferring the name of our affiliation, no other changes are expected. I will continue as Director of the mission and Earl Ertman as Associate Director.

Our mission will now be identified as:
Amenmesse Project [KV-10 and KV-63]
A Supreme Council of Antiquities Mission

A few issues still remain unresolved but we are planning to resume our work in the King’s Valley this coming winter.

KV63: Otto's Dig Diary, Dr. Otto Schaden, Amenmesse Project [KV-10 and KV-63], A Supreme Council of Antiquities Mission, Egypt, September 12, 2007