A top official in the Egyptian authority for antiquities has been arrested as part of an investigation into bribes for restoration contracts.

The head of the technical department, Abdul Hamid Qutb, was arrested on Saturday and his office was searched.

The contracts, worth tens of millions of dollars, cover some of Egypt's best known monuments, local media say.

Mr Qutb's boss, Zahi Hawass, defended his department and said Mr Qutb was not in a position to award contracts...

Egypt antiquities official held, BBC News, UK, September 17, 2007.

Traverce Harrison (pronounced "TRAVers") crossed the Atlantic and northern Africa this past March to participate in a photography workshop in Egypt.

He met 30-some other photographers in Cairo, as well as two professional photographers — the teachers, who were an Egyptologist and a translator.

The group flew to Aswan, saw sights on a charter bus, took a two-day cruise getting to Luxor, and then retraced their modes of transport back.

All seen, Harrison took over 500 photos. Each night, the group uploaded photos onto their respective laptops and showed choice ones to the instructors for critique. He learned about Egypt in the meantime and shared a few of his photos with the MP News. At the pyramids in Cairo, Harrison photographed an Egyptian family. The woman's head is covered, but not her face. Harrison noted that though most women in Egypt wear the head scarf, many do not wear the facial veil associated with more socially conservative Islamic nations.

The group dined in numerous establishments including a restaurant that baked its bread and fried its fish in outdoor ovens, of which he got pictures, and in a Bedouin café where they drank real, thick-as-mud Bedouin coffee. "You could put a stick in it and it would stand up," Harrison joked...

MP man's photo shoot: Harrison traverses, shoots Egypt, Mira Cash-Davis, Mount Pleasant News, Iowa, USA, September 14, 2007.

A number of rare and invaluable medical and astronomical manuscripts have been found at the National Library of Egypt (also known as Dar al-Kotob).

A senior official at Alexandria Library said Saturday that the ancient documents were just laying there in the forgotten Dar al-Kotob archives for many years but thanks to his Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) they were "technically rediscovered".

"They are really priceless," he reiterated. The medical papers give prescription of the treatment of some chronic diseases, bone fractures and bruises and lessons in body and eye anatomy, CULTNAT chief Fathi Saleh said...

Rare medical, astronomical manuscripts found at Dar al-Kotob, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, September 16, 2007.

"Egyptologists are now secretly admitting, but only amongst themselves in their inner cabals (colloquiums), that the chronology framework for ancient Egypt between 2000 and 500 BC is chaotic and that a 'new political history for ancient Egypt will take another hundred years to establish'". Mr Don Stewart, currently auditing the Egyptology Profession, and a former economist for the United States Department of Agriculture's FAS, also former analyst for New Zealand Science Ministry 'MoRST', today announced these findings from an Egyptology colloquium he attended in 2002. He added, "Egyptologists at the Colloquium raised the possibility of considering a new process whereby they will in future ignore any evidence which is not found 'in situ' in archaeological investigations or anything that is not either pottery-, statue- or building- or any other physical object-based." Mr Stewart is the author of 'Memphis, Merenptah and Rameses and the Winged Disk of Judah'. The book, currently deposited at the British Library and Ashmolean Museum Library, analyses William Flinders Petrie's excavations at Memphis between 1908 and 1914. Mr Stewart said, "my book proves, as far as anything can be proven, that Pithom and Rameses, two cities the ancient Israelites built in Egypt, were actually the City of Memphis or Mem-phit, Phit-mem - 'Pithom', referred to in Exodus 1:11..."

Egyptologists Know Egyptology's Chronology is False, Don Stewart, PR-GB.com, UK, September 14, 2007.

In the same vein today we also have...

Redating the Egyptian Dynasties serves as Proof for Moses, David Down, via ProgressiveU.org, September 14, 2007.

Back in 1972 I was among the teeming crowds snaking in front of the British Museum to shuffle past cabinets showcasing Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.

The darkened room in which a single downlight revealed a solitary treasure — the young king's jewel-encrusted death mask, banded in blue and gold — will be stamped forever in the memories of those who entered it.

Which is fortunate for us because the mask was subsequently deemed too fragile to travel, so now we must make do with 50 objects which tell the fuller story. Many of these are also dazzling artworks in their own right.

Otherwise there are new riches in store, for although the British Museum is advising on a show which drew 1.2 million visitors on a recent American tour, it will be hosted by what will soon be the most all-embracing cultural venue in Britain. Three cheers for what we used to call the Dome...

Lifting the coffin lids, Ian Collins, EDP24, UK, September 15, 2007.