As the moratorium on new excavations within Egypt's Nile Valley continues, it is having one unexpected side-effect: Egyptologists around the world are having to offer inferior answers when questioned about the 'coolest' thing they have excavated during their career. As recently as ten years ago this question, carefully answered, would rarely fail to elicit kudos. Indeed, conversations triggered by it have been credited with bringing many young Egyptologists of both genders their first fumbling sexual experience at the trembling hands of easily-impressed, physically unremarkable prey.

In recent years, increasingly few archaeological missions to Egypt have consisted of anything more than the meticulous recording of objects discovered many years ago, and a swelling body of anecdotal evidence suggests that the phenomenon is rapidly becoming part of the subject's past. Interviews conducted by egyptastic.co.uk with the current generation of recently graduated Egyptologists certainly seem to suggest that the so-called 'that-sounds-so-cool effect' can no longer be relied upon to blind a member of the opposite sex to an unhealthy interest in books and lack of social skills. One PhD candidate told us: "what chance have I got of copping off at a party if earlier in the evening I've admitted that the most interesting thing I've ever done Egyptologically is to draw thousands of pieces of pottery that I didn't even dig up myself? If I could at least say that I'd found an amulet or two, I reckon I'd definitely get tops. At least."

Our findings seem to be confirmed by independent research carried out by Dr. Nigel Williams of Swansea University's new Advanced Centre for the History of Egyptology (ACHE). Dr Williams provided the chart reproduced here, which clearly indicates that the steady decline in the mean wow-factor of Egyptological discoveries over the last two centuries has now started to accelerate. "If you go back to Napoleon, he practically discovered the whole country of ancient Egypt, so far as we can tell here at Swansea, and he never struggled for female attention," Dr. Williams told our reporter. "Even as recently as eighty years ago, Howard Carter found enough gold coffins to keep him in anecdotes and thinly veiled chat-up lines for the rest of his career. Interestingly, diaries in the archives of the Egypt Exploration Society from the years after his biggest discovery make a number of clear references to him having to beat off admirers - sometimes more than one at a time. But in the last ten years, no-one except Zahi Hawass has found anything more than a few bits of old pottery in Egypt, and the effect has been catastrophic. Even amongst themselves, some Egyptologists have now resorted to talking about their other hobbies and interests."

Shaking his head dolefully, Dr. Williams added: "Yes, that's how bad it's become."

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