Egyptian archaeologists open 2,600-year-old sarcophagus

September 24th, 2009 FBI paying wrongly detained Egyptian man $250,000NEW YORK — The FBI has paid $250,000 to an Egyptian man detained when a pilot's aviation radio was found after the Sept. 11 attacks in his hotel room overlooking the World Trade Center.

July 9th, 2009 CAIRO - Archaeologists have unearthed a cache near the Western gate of the National Museum in Cairo, which contained a table made of limestone, a fragment of a slab with hieroglyphic inscriptions, some stones, and the base of a pharaonic pillar, which date back to the pharaonic period around 1,300 years BC. "This type of slab was quite widespread during the era of the Pharaohs, who used it to mark a special occasion," Hawass told The Egyptian Gazette.

June 29th, 2009 Pope: Scientific analysis done on St. Paul's bonesROME — The first-ever scientific test on what are believed to be the remains of the Apostle Paul "seems to confirm" that they do indeed belong to the Roman Catholic saint, Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday.

June 1st, 2009 Family axes wedding plans, Egyptian cuts off organCAIRO — A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday. After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.

May 31st, 2009 Family axes wedding plans, Egyptian cuts off penisCAIRO — A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday. After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.

May 19th, 2009 DUBAI - Archaeologists in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have discovered potsherds dating back to around 3,000 B.C., WAM reported Tuesday. The discovery was made in the Ed-Dur archaeological site in the emirate of Umm Al Qaiwain.

April 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The Rosetta Stone, an ancient Egyptian artefact, has allowed 19th century scholars to translate symbols left by an ancient civilization thus enabling them to decipher the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics. But the symbols found on many other ancient artefacts remain a mystery, including those of a people that inhabited the Indus valley between Pakistan and India.

April 26th, 2009 Egypt unveils ancient necropolis south of CairoILLAHUN, Egypt — Egyptian archaeologists on Sunday unveiled mummies, brightly painted sarcophagi and dozens of ancient tombs carved into a rocky hill in a desert oasis south of Cairo. The 53 tombs — some as old as 4,000 years — were discovered recently on a sandy plateau overlooking farming fields in the village Illahun, located in the Fayoum oasis about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of the Egyptian capital.

March 16th, 2009 CAIRO - An international team of archaeologists has reconstructed an ancient Egyptian ship of the first quarter of the second millennium BC called "Min of the Desert", in order to find how the ancient Egyptians sailed to the fabled Land of Punt. Until a few years ago, there was a widely held belief that the ancient Egyptians did not travel long distances by sea because of their poor naval technology.

February 25th, 2009 CAIRO - Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old statue as they carried out routine cleaning work at one of the Giza pyramids. The 149-centimetre-long statue was found Tuesday buried just 40 centimetres below the surface of the sand in the northern part of the King Men-Kau-Re's pyramid (2551-2523 BC).

February 9th, 2009 CAIRO - An Egyptian archaeological team has found about two dozen mummies in a tomb dating back to the 3,000-year-old Pharaonic era. The mummies were unearthed in the tomb which lies to the west of Zoser's step pyramid in the Saqqara area.

January 26th, 2009 TEHRAN - The Iranian foreign ministry Tuesday summoned the top Egyptian diplomat in Iran to lodge Tehran's protest over what it said Cairo's obstruction in getting Iranian aid to the Gaza Strip, the official news agency IRNA reported. The head of the Egyptian interest section in Iran, Amr Ahmed A.

January 15th, 2009 CAIRO - A Lebanese antiquities dealer was arrested in Bulgaria after being charged with smuggling stolen ancient Egyptian artefacts, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has said. 'Ali Abu Taam was accused of smuggling more than 1,000 antiquities and helping Egyptian dealer Tareq al-Sweissi smuggle Egyptian pieces that belonged to different dynasties,' said SCA chief Zahi Hawas.

January 6th, 2009 JERUSALEM - Israel said Wednesday that it viewed as 'positive' the Egyptian-French attempts to advance a diplomatic solution to the conflict in the Gaza Strip. A terse official statement said: 'Israel is working to improve the security reality in the south of the country.

January 1st, 2009 CAIRO - An Egyptian ship with a crew of 28 was seized off the Somali Coast, an Egyptian official said Thursday. Some 15 heavily armed pirates captured the ship Blue Star, which is now on its way to the Somalian coast, Ahmed Rizk, assistant to Egypt's Foreign Minister said in a press statement.