Months after Egypt boldly announced that archaeologists had identified a mummy as the most powerful queen of her time, scientists in a museum basement are still analyzing DNA from the bald, 3,500-year-old corpse to try to back up the claim aired on TV.

With a capacity of eight million volumes, the Library of Alexandria will host a Centre for Hellenistic Studies as of 2008.

Explorers just returning from the Sahara desert have claimed they found a remarkable relic from Pharaonic times. Mark Borda and Mahmoud Marai, from Malta and Egypt respectively, were surveying a field of boulders on the flanks of a hill deep in the Libyan desert some 700 kilometres west of the Nile Valley when engravings on a large rock consisting of hieroglyphic writing, Pharaonic cartouche, an image of the king and other Pharaonic iconography came into view.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities has stated that the mummy which had been unearthed at farms in the governorate of Al-Fayoum is Pharaonic and priceless.

Czech archeologists found an intact 4,500-year-old tomb chamber of an Egyptian dignitary in the Abusir Pyramids area, the Mlada Fronta Dnes daily reported Saturday. The Egyptologists discovered the bricked-up entrance to the four- by-two-metre chamber at the bottom of a 10-metre-deep shaft, the report said.

Since its inauguration in 1902, the neo-classical edifice of the Egyptian Museum has been the home of all ancient Egyptian artefacts unearthed at the nation's archaeological sites. This has led to the overcrowding of its various galleries, even down to the basement which for most of its history had been a storeroom.

The Egyptian antiquities mission has discovered several well preserved mummies covered with cartonage in Fayyoum that date back to the Greco-Roman period. One of the caskets contained a badly decayed mummy with a golden face mask, Zahi Hawass, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said Sunday. Some of the mummies were covered with eight layers of linen and tied with rope, he said.

The visit of Hungarian Culture and Education Minister Hiller Istvan marks 100 years of Hungarian monument excavations in Egypt, the ambassador said, noting that Budapest is interested in celebrating the event as well as organizing an exhibition in Hungary on Islamic and Pharaonic culture.
“Hungary gives a priority to its cultural cooperation with Egypt, which hosts the only Hungarian Cultural Center in Africa,” the ambassador said.

The University Museum at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is working on final details to return a Ptolemaic bronze cat reliquary to the Egyptian consulate's office in Chicago. It will eventually return to Egypt, where more than 5,000 artifacts have been retrieved through its Supreme Council of Antiquities. The council was established in 2002 to retrieve artifacts that were illegally shipped or smuggled out of the country.

Evidence of the brutal lives endured by some ancient Egyptians to build the monuments of the Pharaohs has been uncovered by archaeologists. Skeletal remains from a lost city in the middle of Egypt suggest many ordinary people died in their teenage years and lived a punishing lifestyle. Many suffered from spinal injuries, poor nutrition and stunted growth.The remains were found at Amarna, a new capital built on the orders of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, 3,500 years ago.