Hi, this is Alice. Kent Weeks and Zahihawas talk about ancient Egypt with such sparkle and

zest. You might just believe they were sent on a mission by Osiris, God of the dead, to uncover the secrets of the past and share them with the rest of us.

I think part of it is the thrill of discovery.

And the second part of it, my dad was a police officer.

And this may have something to do with it because I have always looked upon archaeological

work as being very much akin to detective work, taking little clues

here, little pieces of evidence there, putting them all together and trying to reconstruct,

in effect, the crime scene. What led up to the event in the tomb, the burial

of a pharaoh, or the abandonment of an ancient house or what have you.

But I've always enjoyed this, and I don't think it's any coincidence

that a lot of my favorite leisure reading is Detective novels.

I love going through these. I like reading books on forensic medicine, all this kind of stuff.

It's the puzzle and it's working toward the solution that I really enjoy.

Now there are any number of areas of archaeology where you could have that same

thrill. I happen to pick up on ancient Egypt and I cannot tell you precisely why.

But it was the idea of being an archaeological detective trying to reconstruct one of the most ancient, most spectacular civilizations the world has ever known,

that appealed to me then and that continues to fascinate me as much now as it did 40 years ago, 50 years ago.

When I give a lecture, even in this lecture I give one thousand times,

but each time I'm like a child on the first year of college trembling.

Because I want to be successful. I don't want to have one second to make someone

asleep in the audience I want all of them to be awake listen to me and therefore every time I make a lecture as if the first

time and this why I'm really happy that many people I meet in the streets, foreigner, they say we came to Egypt because of you.

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