Eidos Interactive Ltd, the publishers of Tomb Raider issued a public apology last week to a French archaeologist who was miffed that a character appearing alongside cyber heroine Lara Croft seemed to resemble himself.

In a statement published in the French daily Le Monde, Eidos said any likeness between Jean-Yves Empereur and the archaeologist Jean-Yves in version four of its adventure game was purely coincidental.

Empereur, famous for discovering the remains of the Pharos lighthouse - one of the seven wonders of the ancient world - near the Egyptian city of Alexandria, objected to the character of the same name and profession in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, which is partly played out in Egypt.

Jean-Yves Empereur is the Director of Research at the CNRS (French National Research Center), and the Director of the French Center for Alexandrian Studies in Alexandria, Egypt, as well as the author of several book including Alexandria Rediscovered and Eternal Egypt: Pharaohs, Caesars, Caliphs & Sultans.

The British computer games maker and its French distributor said Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation would continue to be sold in its present state for technical reasons, but that no such character would appear in any of its games in the future.

Tomb Raider is one of the most popular computer games around the world, having sold almost 25 million copies since 1996.

Tomb Raider: Chronicles, the fifth game in the series, which does not include the Jean-Yves character, has been on sale since the November 2000.