Egyptologists around the world anxiously await news from Cairo.

Science Insider reports that the tomb of Maya, King Tut’s wet nurse, may have been destroyed by looters at Saqqara. “We still don’t know the extent of the damage, but things have been bad and out of control,” said an unnamed Western archaeologist.  

A law requiring that all human remains uncovered during archaeological investigations in England and Wales be reburied in two years could be passed. “Archaeologists have been extremely patient because we were led to believe the ministry was sorting out this problem, but we feel that we cannot wait any longer,” wrote one of 40 archaeology professors who signed a letter addressed to the justice secretary.  

David Kennedy of the University of Western Australia has spotted nearly 2,000 archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia using high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth. The sites have been confirmed on the ground.  

Here’s more on the story of the discovery of James Madison’s chess set at his Virginia estate, Montpelier.

Violence threatens the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. “So far the museum is safe, but we don’t know what’s going to happen, because [the protests] are out of control,” said an unnamed official.  

But Egypt’s newly appointed Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass says that the museum and monuments are secure. “I want people to know that after nine days of protests, the monuments are safe. Why? Because the Egyptian people are protecting them,” he wrote on his blog.  

Czech archaeologists are excavating a temple and the palace of Queen Amanishakheto at the ancient city of Wad Banaga in Sudan. The palace was built in the fifth century B.C.  

Fragments of two chess pieces have been unearthed at Montpelier, James Madison’s eighteenth-century estate in Virginia.  

Does eighth-century Viking DNA survive on the Isle of Man? Researchers from the University of Leicester will collect samples from men whose grandfathers were born on the island and who have one of several common surnames.  

Meet some of the people who are working in the Veterans Curation Project at the Carnegie Library in Washington, D.C.  

China has asked the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to remove two mummies from the Tarim Basin and other artifacts from the country’s western deserts from an exhibit set to open this weekend. The items had already appeared at two other museums in the U.S.