CLICK AND DOUBLE CLICK: INTERNET HELPS UNLOCK THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT EGYPT

Egypt. I have always been fascinated by the pharaohs, the pyramids and mummies -- way before "The Prince of Egypt" hit the screens. I remember traveling to Memphis a number of years ago to see a fabulous exhibit on King Tutankhamen. Perhaps it the mystery that makes antique Egypt so fascinating. How could this ancient culture be so knowledgeable on astronomy and mathematics? How could they build such massive pyramids with such precision without pulleys or sophisticated tools?

Last week I was lucky enough to see the "Mysteries of Egypt" at the St. Louis Science Center OmiMax. It's the secondary show so it's only shown at noon daily and Friday evenings, but it's wonderful. It is the first IMax show done by National Geographic and is narrated by Omar Sharif. It really fueled my interest to seek out Egyptian sites on the Internet, and I found plenty.

www.nationalgeographic.com/egypt

You can find the interactive edition of the magazine that goes along with the Imax presentation. It was February 1923 that the tomb was uncovered, quite by accident. You can read the National Geographic story that was printed at the time. It includes dispatches from the writer's arrival in Luxor, the official opening of the tomb, and what he saw upon entering the tomb.

I had forgotten that King Tut came after the time of the pyramids, that were looted many times. That's why his tomb was hidden under the hot sand and limestone in Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter had searched nearly 16 years before the discovery. The story is an interesting first-person tale.

You can also see a film clip of the IMax show in QuickTime or RealPlayer 5.0. You can also click on Digital Hieroglyphs. You can e-mail it to a friend. It will do a rough translation of your name, but the message remains in English. It's still very neat.

Under links and resources, there's a gigantic list of Web sites with information on Egypt. Some of the sites are out of date, however.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid

One that was particularly interesting, is brought to you by Nova, the PBS show. It provides the inside story of the pyramids. At this site, you can wander through the chambers and passageways of the Great Pyramid and follow the 1997 field season of a field of archaeologists as they excavated a bakery that fed the pyramid builders.

You can look more closely at the three pyramids at Giza, built by pharaohs Menkaure, Khafre and Khufu, or the Sphinx. History books generally point to 3200 B.C. as the date when the pyramid of Khufu was under construction, but scientists are still trying to pinpoint a more exact date with current digs.

To take a cyber tour of the Great Pyramid, you'll need QuickTime. You can pick high resolution, low resolution or a photographic route, which offers 360-degree views as still images. There's also a neat hieroglyphic alphabet on the site that would be good for writing messages.

www.british-museum.ac.uk/galleries.html

Egypt was under British rule when many of the Egyptian artifacts were discovered, including the tomb of Tutankhamen. The British Museum has a great collection of Egyptian antiquities include those found in the new Roxie Walker Galleries of Egyptian Funerary Archaeology.

The museum boasts that its Egyptian collections are unequaled in the world for their range and quality. They have more than 80,000 objects, many from the tombs. The mummies are one of the most visited exhibits of the museum. There's lots of information about the funeral practices here. You can find more under the Egyptian Antiquities button, but not much is online.

www.egypt.com

With a name like this, you're guaranteed visitors even if the site is a bit lame. They boast of more than 1.9 million visitors since January 1998. A button on the far left of the page boasts of Egyptian history and explains more about the Land of the Pharaohs.

You can find more information about such topics as why the Nile was so important to the people of Egypt and what life was like in Egypt 3,000 years ago. There's also a who's who on the kings and queens of Egypt that's pretty interesting.

At the top of this site, it will link you to other modern-day Egyptian interests, such as culture and art or tourism.

guardians.net/egypt

Guardian's Egypt will let you explore the mystery and splendor of Egypt from the comfort of your computer. At the top, you can click on Cyberjourney to Egypt or there are many other choices on the left of the page, including pyramids, kings and queens, hieroglyphs, mummies, Egyptian art and music and even a kid's section. There's also a chat area and place to read Egypt news.

On the cybertour, you can experience the pyramids through QuickTime clips and panorama views.

Under the kid's page, you can view Web pages built by 11- and 12-year-olds. You can also send an ancient Egyptian cyber postcard. You can learn more about mummies and pyramids from a kid's point of view or play the Mummified match game at Discovery.com. There are links to lots of Web sites for kids.

www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/mummy

For those who want to learn more about mummies, the University of Michigan has an interesting page. It takes a closer look at four topics:

What are mummies?; How are mummies made? Who were the mummies?' And all about the afterlife in which ancient Egyptians believed.

There's also more information about hieroglyphs, dateline and glossary. It's very organized and to the point.

www.verdenet.com/isis

You can learn more about Cleopatra, the last Queen of Egypt, and other Egyptian facts at this Web site.

This site has been around since 1996 and has lots of great information. It also is part of a Web ring on Egyptian sites or you can link directly off to other sites on ancient Egypt.

Are you fascinated by Egypt, too? What's your favorite sites?

See you in Cyberspace.

Joni Adams is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian. You can e-mail her at click@semissourian.com.