First, apologies for the lack of update yesterday. My desktop PC crashed and burned in a most spectactular manner, and I wasted the entire day trying to restore it. In the end I went and drowned my sorrows in the pub, and it meant that the blog wasn’t updated. I’m on […]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15475319/
A short piece describing new scenes found depicting the so-called Festival of Drunkeness: “Archaeologists say they have found evidence amid the ruins of a temple in Luxor that the annual rite featured sex, drugs and the ancient equivalent of rock ‘n’ roll. Johns Hopkins University’s Betsy Bryan, who has been leading […]

http://touregypt.net/teblog/luxornews/?p=306
Jane Akshar has updated her Luxor News Blog with a set of photographs demonstrating deteriorating conditions at the temple of Seti I, accompanied by a heartfelt commentary: “I am sorry there is no other word, the rising water damage has always been an issue there and has scared the living daylights […]

http://www.latimes.com/
http://tinyurl.com/uq4nt

“Under growing international scrutiny for buying potentially looted antiquities, the J. Paul Getty Museum has dramatically tightened its acquisition standards.The move, announced Thursday, is designed to screen out any item whose history since 1970 is murky. In doing so, two experts said, the Getty is essentially taking responsibility for making sure […]

http://www.glyphdoctors.com/
Glyphdoctors is developing a new Egyptology search engine, as a part of their Open Egyptology Forums. It is described by Nicole Hansen as follows: “Powered by Google, this search engine allows you to restrict your search to trustworthy Egyptological sites, both professional and amateur alike. I have added only a few sites […]

http://www.osirisnet.net/mastabas/kagemni/e_kagemni_01.htm
Thanks to Thierry Benderitter for the information that the mastaba of Kagemni has been entirely rewritten on the OsirisNet website. The hieroglyphic text has not yet been added to the pages, but they hope to have it updated soon when they have found a source for the texts. There are now more […]

http://www.abblogger.com/yourboatportal/2157362/
Not really news, per se, but a useful summary, posted on athe Your Boat Portal blog yesterday, about ancient Egyptian boats from Predynastic through Pharaonic times. Here’s an extract: “The ancient Egyptians were creating ships with technological skills far beyond their time, well before the invention of the wheel. Egyptologists suspect […]

http://www.freewebs.com/diggingsmag/photoalbum.htm
There’s a rather good photo album of Egytian images on the Archaeological Diggings website at the moment. See the above page. You will need a Flash 5 compatible plug-in to view it. Scroll using the left and right arrows, and click on the thumbnail image to see the bigger picture.

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prehistoric/reviews/06_08_wengrow.htm
A detailed review by Alice Stevenson of David Wengrow’s The Archaeology of Early Egypt: “The Archaeology of Early Egypt is ambitious in scope covering the period from the end of the last Ice Age (c. 10,000 BC) through to the emergence and early development of the state (c. 2650 BC). Accounts […]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20061028a6.html
“A Japanese research team has successfully removed a mural in an ancient Egyptian tomb at the World Heritage site of Saqqara, using a technique used on Japanese murals, so that preservation work can be done on it, team members said Friday.
A Japanese researcher prepares to remove part of a mural from […]