For the forthcoming couple of months the Egyptian Museum is hosting an exhibition of five dozen ancient Egyptian artefacts unearthed at three archaeological sites by the mission from Waseda University over the past 40 years. These unique objects have never before been exhibited. They derive from Abusir, the site of 11 pyramids south of Giza; Dahshour, the site of King Senefru's pyramids; and Malkata on Luxor's west bank, where the grandfather of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Amenhotep III, dug a lake and built a palace for his beautiful and powerful wife, Queen Tiye.

Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities is looking to protect the Giza pyramids by transforming the area’s largely unregulated industry of camel drivers, docents, and peddlers into a carefully controlled tourism complex by October, according to officials. Hawass sketched his vision: a $35 million complex with tourists - in buses and cars, on camels and horses - expected to arrive at a visitors center. From there, they would buy a ticket and take an electric tram to the pyramids and the adjoining Great Sphinx.

A group of Egyptian researchers claims to have determined the exact date for the construction of Khufu's pyramid. The team, led by Dr. Abdel-Halim Nureddin, says work on the pyramid was started on 23 August, 2470 BC. Nureddin said the team had proved the date using "historical facts and astronomical calculations."

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, announced today that the tomb of Haremhab, in the Valley of the King’s on Luxor’s West Bank, has been reopened following the installation of state-of-the-art equipment to control the rate of humidity within. He added that this tomb is the first to have such technology installed in an attempt to reduce and control the rate of humidity and heat, which has affected the tomb’s wall paintings in the past, leading to its original closure.

Four thousand years ago Egyptians had mastered the process of making madder, a red dye. The discovery that the color was madder is the earliest evidence for the complex chemical knowledge needed to extract the dye from a plant and turn it into a pigment. The find is some 700 years earlier than any previously known use of madder, which became highly popular in the Middle Ages.

The ornate pharaonic tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Kings are doomed to disappear within 150 to 500 years if they remain open to tourists, the head of antiquities has warned. Zahi Hawass said humidity and fungus are eating into the walls of the royal tombs in the huge necropolis on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor.

The mummy is owned by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. He is thought to be Iret-net Hor-irw, a minor priest in the Egyptian city of Akhmim who died at a young age of unknown causes. He, and the data collected from Thursday's scan, will be the centerpiece of a new exhibition opening Oct. 31 at the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco.