A few weeks ago I told you about a group of students from the Friends Select School in Philadelphia. These students had written letters to me about their studies of the Great Sphinx. Because of their hard work and their love of ancient Egypt, I invited the students to go on a personal tour of the brand new exhibit Cleopatra: The Search for Egypt’s Last Queen. This exhibit opened at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on June 5.

Sometimes you can dislike people without reason and this is wrong. I came to this realization at a garden party held by the French Institute in Cairo last week. The former director of the IFAO in Cairo, Dr. Bernard Mathieu, was removed from his position as director by someone in France. This person, whom I will not name, is conceited and made many people, including several French archaeologists, very angry with his decision to remove Dr. Mathieu. I do not understand why this person seems to go out of their way to harm relations between France and Egypt.

If someone were to ask me what I thought was one of the best things I had done during my term as Secretary General of the SCA, I would say the building of storage magazines all over Egypt. Over the last eight years I’ve supervised the construction of 36 new storage facilities. All of them are equipped with conservation rooms and photography labs, and the objects are stored in a secure and environmentally protected space.

The Archaeology faculty at Cairo University has discovered a new tomb at Saqqara. The mission uncovered the tomb of Ptah Mes, arm leader and royal scribe, in the 19^th dynasty cemetery of top governmental officials, which is located at the southern side of the ramp of king Unas’ pyramid in Saqqara.