Father Christmas,

Merry Christmas.

My name is Zahi but you probably know this already, as you will have seen me on TV. I am 62 and will be 63 in May. I have been good and bad this year, but mostly good. Thank you very much for the new hat and socks you brought me last year. Even though I was too busy and important to write to you, I was very happy with them. It is difficult to find good denim socks in Egypt. They go very well with my denim pants and vests.

I have decided to be more organised this year and write to you in plenty of time so that I can get the things I really really mega definitely want, more than anything. I have tried really hard in lots of other ways to get these things, but do not have them yet, so please please please help me. If you can send me these things, I will do lots of wonderful charity work next year by selling copies of my famous hat. I will even send some hats to the nice men who make the hats. Mummy says they work in a sweat shop, and I think it must be very difficult to sell sweat - I make lots on my forehead, but I haven't sold any of it yet. Also, if you do give me everything I'm asking for, I promise not to demand so many toys and sweets from the people who make the TV shows that I am in. I will only ask for two or three Barbie dolls for me to play with in my dressing room, I promise.

I didn't have to think too hard about what I wanted for Christmas this year.

What I really really want is the Rosetta Stone and, ooh, the Nefertiti Bust. I want these things because then my museum will be the bestest museum, better than the British Museum and squillions of times better than the Berlin Museum. I know that I have some royal mummies and the treasures of Tutankhamun already, but I'm bored with those now. Maybe I will share them with the other boys in the neighbourhood if I get these things (the Rosetta Stone and Nefertiti Bust), that I really really want.

I know you probably don't have much room on your sleigh but I would really love it too if you could bring me all of the little sphinxes from the Serapeum Way. I've heard that the French don't play with them any more and I would love them all so much. I would feed them special sphinx food and give them their little sphinx baths and everything. I would.

Please send my love to Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, and Rudolph with his big red shiny nose. I have always felt particularly close to Rudolph. I will leave you one of Mrs Hawass's mince pies and some Sakkara beer on the mantelpiece, and will be ever so good in 2010.

Sincerely, Zahi Hawass.