Velikovsky and Rohl would have been proud. Sementawy depends for her operation on the balance of eight forces which the universe has identified as scotch, cigarettes, cold fury, Champagne, charm, persuasion, certainty... and bloody-mindedness. She is the type of person who stands on craggy mountain tops during thunderstorms wearing wet copper armour, pointing a fist to the sky and shouting "All gods are bastards!" An Australian citizen, born to Irish and French-Norman parents, she retains strong family connections to Ireland's County Kerry's Sleive Mish Mountains and to Bayeux, France, despite being "dragged up" in Australia and remaining thoroughly Aussie. Despite all this, Sementawy dreams of the city of Ieper in Belgium... which by no means explains her persona but does go a long way to explaining what she is most passionate about in real life. She and her Northern Irish husband Fenton Brigantes have recently moved house from Phillip Island Australia, back to their old home in Belfast Northern Ireland where they continue to share their lives with a belligerent pc, an unkindness of ravens, 4000 books, a black Bombay kitten named Rashid el din 'Sinan' (the ultimate assassin) and a thuggish black Oriental kitten named Jaiya-Surya who has a penchant for shredding toilet paper.

An unknown connection to ancient Egypt asserted itself when Sementawy was 4 years old and her penchant for mummifying and burying her sister's Barbie dolls was indulged until, aged 15, she travelled to Egypt on a school work experience trip to indulge her passions on a dig in Tod, near El Aksur. Destiny led her to complete a PhD in Egyptian Archaeology at The Petrie Institute of Egyptian Archaeology, University College London; her thesis being on Horemheb. Her minor was in Russian-Varangian history, which she says defies explanation, but probably lies in a fondness for Faberge eggs. Upon completion, she returned to Egypt for some years to perfect the art of baksheesh and her pyramid climbing techniques, which have involved (but are not limited to) vodka, golf clubs and bribes. An accident on The Wall of Crows -(Giza Plateau) which involved "bloody tourists - climbing where they bloody shouldn't," took her back Australia where she settled down to do some real archaeological work (even though pyramids aren't exactly thick on the ground down under, despite Australia being 70% desert).

Sementawy's favourite things are... the town of Bayeux in France, a place in Flanders - Belgium called Passchendaele, the thoroughly charming Irishman named Fenton Brigantes, the General Pharaoh Horemheb, ravens, heraldry, archery, Egyptian and Mameluke antiques, the memory of her Persian cat Koshka (the most sublimely beautiful creature ever created) expensive but awfully pretty shoes and the history of the Australian involvement in The Great War (1914 -1918). Sementawy tends to become sick if she does not manage to purchase at least 5 new books every week and believes... that "if your morals make you dreary, depend on it... they are wrong." The things that trip her trigger... you really truly don't wish to know about.

They see me as a repository, a living mausoleum, a rescource (as they term it). Why should I do them any favours? As far as I'm concerned, they're scavengers, hyena's the lot of them! Jackals on the scent of carrion. Raven's hunting for road-kill. Corpse flies. They want to pick through me as if I'm a bone heap, looking for scrap metal and broken pottery; for shards of cuneiform and scraps of papyrus. For curio's, lost toys, gold teeth. If they ever suspect what I've got stashed away here, they'd jimmy the locks. They'd break and enter, knock me over the head and make off with the baubles... and feel more than justified."

Excerpt taken from... The Blind Assassin. Margaret Atwood, ©:2000.

Sementawy rarely posts AEgyptian historical snippets, nor does she translate without a pay cheque. Many are tempted to ask and find that a refusal often offends. Some may find this bizzare, given that the sharing of information is the reason for Ancient World's existance... however, as Egyptology was Sementawy's day job in RL, it stands to reason that she has neither the time (nor tolerance) to extend this 24/7. Her particular historical interest in Egypt is the general Pharaoh Horemheb and only Horemheb. This does not extend to AEgyptian Role Play, Early Dynastic Period, Old Kingdom (especially pyramids), the 1st Intermediate Period, Middle Kingdom, 2nd & 3rd Intermediate Periods, nor the Greco-Roman Period. In regards to the Late Kingdom... She believes that Akhenaten was a diseased sociopath who should have been charged with treason, criminal culpability and murder in the name of his scapegrace god, found guilty and promptly executed (impaling for preference); Nefertiti was an obsequious yet self obsessed attention seeker and Tutankhamun was really, truly, honestly...a wretched little nobody who should have been drowned at birth.