Without the people of ancient Egypt, and their overwhelming urge to keep records of all their doings, there would be no Internet. Medical and legal papyri, school texts, stories, hymns and descriptions of battles surviving from ancient times are testimony to the desire in all of us to remember and to be remembered. Yes, we’ve developed, over 5,000 years, through writing and printing to videotape, satellite and the World Wide Web, but the basic principles are still the same.

Well, if those ancient people were around today, they would find much to entertain them and amuse them while surfing the net. This column is devoted to finding out what is available, categorising it and commenting on it. It’s written from the point of view of the interested amateur Egyptologist, not the Internet fanatic.

The first point to make is that there is a huge quantity of material available on ancient Egypt. There is the good, the bad and the downright incomprehensible. Refining your search doesn’t always solve your problem, either. It might just increase the number of sites available to you. (One such "refined" search resulted in over one million possibilities worldwide. I refined it further and it came up with over six million!)

And so, here you won’t find any jargon. Just suggestions as to where to look, particularly if you are a relative newcomer to the subject.

This month, we’re going to look at a couple of museum sites, some general ones, and one or two "just for fun".

Still with me? Right. The pages offer a selection of choice pieces from the Museum and a brief history of it. You can zoom in on the gold mask of Tutankhamun or the mummified body of Ramesses II. Since the Museum itself has over 120,000 exhibits this is little more than an appetite-whetter and it should only encourage you to make that visit you’ve been promising yourself. If you want lots of information this isn’t really the site for you, but one can see that it would be an immense headache just deciding what to include and what not to include. If you’re new to Egyptology, you can at least feel that you’ve made your first link with Egypt itself.

You might like to have a look at the other museum pages in Cairo or Egypt while you’re visiting this site. The museums are many and varied and cover every period of Egyptian history and prehistory, everyday life, art and culture.

One would expect a thoroughly professional site from the British Museum, and this is what they have provided at www.british-museum.ac.uk/egyptian/ea

This is the place to go for information on exhibitions, the Egyptian collection itself, news and events. The new Roxie Walker Funerary Galleries were well covered and the layout plans are clear (and useful for the infrequent visitor). You can view a selection from the BM’s 80,000 Egyptian artefacts.

Even better, though, is their education page for kids of all ages. This can be accessed through the BM home page – look for education - and is beautifully designed and laid out, and includes a "staff room" for teachers involved in Key Stage 2. The glossary is very useful and there are games and plenty of interactive choices.

One final point. This is no doubt a problem that everyone who uses the web comes across. Some of the sites associated with this subject are woefully out of date, and even some of the professional ones are well behind the times. Shame! No point in having a website if it’s not kept up to date. Even when your subject matter is 7,000 years old!

(Hapy is the Egyptian God of the Inundation of the Nile. Contact him via the editor).