Since 1994, Betsy Bryan, the Alexander Badawy Professor of Egyptian Art and Archaeology and chair of Near Eastern Studies in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, has led a two-and-a-half-month excavation in Egypt, assisted during January by a team of undergraduate and graduate students.

Throughout this month, armchair archaeologists can witness the dig in the Precinct of the Goddess Mut at Luxor from the comfort of their computers as a Johns Hopkins team chronicles the excavation with daily progress reports and photographs posted on the team's Web site, Hopkins in Egypt Today, at www.jhu.edu/~neareast/egypttoday.html.

This is the third year daily updates will be posted online and the third year Bryan's group is exploring the area surrounding the Temple of Mut at South Karnak, where they were visited last week by university President William R. Brody and his family.

Professor Betsy Bryan, center, shows President William R. Brody, his wife, Wendy, and their son, John, the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings.

Through a combination of excavation and examination of carved inscriptions and relief scenes on the temple's sandstone blocks, the archaeologists aim to determine what the temple looked like between 1500 and 1200 B.C. The team will continue to explore the temple's gateway as well as the ancient brick houses behind the temple's sacred lake, searching for clues to the daily lives of ancient Egyptians. The excavation work is a collaboration of Johns Hopkins and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

In January 2002, the Web site registered more than 34,000 hits.