I had a very nice visit with the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Joseph Kabila. He contacted my office and requested to meet with me while he was visiting Cairo and so I went to see him at the pyramids. The President was very interested in seeing several of the monuments at Giza and we spent nearly an hour there.

Cultural Minister, Farouk Hosni, announced that a gold Umayyad coin was unearthed last Thursday during an excavation at Deir Yehnes el-Koseir (Monastery of St. John the Little), an area in Wadi el-Natrun. The excavation is a joint venture between Yale University in the USA and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

I recently received a group of letters from a 5^th grade class at Friends Select School in Philadelphia. The students wrote letters about the Sphinx because it was a part of their studies. 

 A collection of 45 ancient Egyptian tombs was discovered last week by an Egyptian mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) at the site of Lahoun, in the Fayoum.

This week I travelled to Bulgaria to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Veliko Tarnovo.
 

A red granite colossus of the ancient Egyptian deity of wisdom, Thoth, was unearthed at the northwestern side of King Amenhotep III’s funerary temple on the west bank of Luxor.

Archaeologists have unearthed a huge headless granite statue of an as yet unidentified Ptolemaic king at the temple of Taposiris Magna, 45 km west of Alexandria. The joint Egyptian-Dominican team is supervised by Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).

Last week I was in New York City for the opening of the King Tut exhibit: “King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.” It was a very good trip to open an incredible exhibition.

In April we held a very important conference here in Cairo concerning looted antiquities, where we gathered countries together to discuss problems that each country faces, and try to find solutions.

I had a very nice experience the other day, when a group of children from Indiana came to visit my excavations at the tombs of the pyramid builders at Giza. These children were visiting Egypt in association with the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis with the President of the museum, Jeff Patchen.