Bag lost for 65 years found in Egypt desert
A bag belonging to a Second World War British soldier which was lost 65 years ago has been found by a tour guide in Egypt.
Irene Porter, 75, was amazed when she was told on Monday that her brother Alex Ross’s army bag had been found near Cairo.
Alex, who died three years ago, was a dispatch rider in Egypt during World War Two.
He lost his bag in 1942 while riding in the desert and thought that it, and his belongings inside, had been lost forever.
The bag still contains letters written to Alex by Irene, then 8 years old, and other members of his family as well as some of the soldier’s belongings.
It was found by Halid Mackram, a tour guide in the Cairo area who discovered it under a thin layer of sand.
More on this story at http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.1870112.0.bag_lost_for_65_years_found_in_egypt_desert.php
Egypt World’s Best Country Brand for History
Egypt has topped the Best Country Brand for History category in the 2007 Country Brand Index (CBI), ahead of a renowned group of historically rich destinations that include Italy, China, Greece and France. The nation also figured prominently in the Best Country Brand for Art and Culture category, joining Italy and France in the top three, ahead of India and United Kingdom.
The distinction underscores Egypt’s strength in the tourism sector and reflects a successful marketing strategy that has improved its status in the two categories and its performance in the tourism market.
http://www.ameinfo.com/139568.html
Prehistoric desert art in danger
In Egypt’s southwest corner, in one of the most-isolated reaches of the Sahara straddling the borders of Sudan and Libya, rock art preserved for millennia in the mountains of Gilf Kabir and Jebel Ouenat are being threatened by a rising tide of travelers seeking out the new frontier of Egyptian tourism.
Some 500 kilometers (330 miles) from the nearest habitation, the desert offers little sanctuary for these masterpieces and any effective protected designation first requires a deal between the three nations.
The elegant paintings of man and beast dates from the time the desert was a receding prairie 5,000-7,000 years ago.
Irreparable damage is done when tourists with a colonial mentality or expats from Cairo drive their 4×4s to this isolated area, put water or oil on the paintings to make the faded colours look brighter, trace the paintings, leave trash in the caves, scribble graffiti on its walls or plainly take away artifacts as souvenirs.
Paying up to $10,000 for a two-week expedition, travelers drive through the desert to reach Gilf Kabir, site of the Cave of the Swimmers made famous by the 1996 film “The English Patient.”
Just across the border in Libya, artwork at Ain Dua appear to have been shot at by bored soldiers.
Efforts to have the area designated as a trans-boundary cultural landscape UNESCO World Heritage site requires Egypt, Sudan and Lybia to all first declare individual national parks.
So far, only Egypt has designated a park, but officials from all three countries are due to meet in Cairo in December in the hope of hammering out a deal, despite their occasionally fraught diplomatic relations.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iT_ardF438bfvqtv8×2P7b0NuwrQ
Ancient Egypt revealed by modern eyes in the sky
In a computer lab on Birmingham’s Southside, UAB anthropology professor Sarah Parcak scours satellite images for hidden Egyptian archaeological sites half a world away. With the help of the new technology, Parcak and collaborators are hoping to map the sites and explore them before urbanization and development destroy them.
In the new $150,000 lab, equipped with 10 computer workstations running a series of geographic information system and remote sensing programs, Parcak can travel the world, zooming in close enough to note the outlines of forgotten settlements, some buried beneath modern cities.
She has identified more than 100 previously unknown ancient sites, including a lost temple buried beneath agricultural fields, a major town in the East Nile Delta dating to the time of the pyramids, a large monastery from 400 A.D. in Middle Egypt and a massive, largely buried city beneath a field on the East Delta dating to 600 B.C.
That view from the sky is matched up with on-the-ground investigations, traditional earth-digging archeology in which spotted sites are excavated, dated and mapped using GPS technology.
“This technology is changing the way we do archeology,” said Parcak, who travels to Egypt two or three times a year working with her husband, Greg Mumford, who also teaches anthropology at University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Despite all the archaeological attention Egypt has received at the well-known sites, Parcak estimates that only 0.01 percent of the archaeological sites have been identified and studied for a civilization that spanned 6,000 years and covered a landmass of 387,000 square miles.
Parcak’s work has been focused on the flat flood plain of the Nile. The satellite imagery is helping create a better understanding about how the Mediterranean coastline and the course of the Nile have changed through time and how settlements shifted accordingly.
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews//index.ssf?/base/news/1195377767218300.xml&coll=2
The Beautiful One may come home
Germany is willing to consider whether the Bust of Nefertiti can be returned to Cairo for display.
Berlin has proposed to set up a joint committee with Cairo to examine if the statue, currently housed in Berlin’s Altes Museum, can safely make the trip to Egypt for display within two years, Egypt’s antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said during a ceremony to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the German Archeological Institute in Egypt.
The two countries have frequently clashed over the 3,400-year-old limestone bust, which was unearthed in 1913 by German archaeologists on the banks of the Nile and taken to Germany. The Supreme Council of Antiquities threatened earlier this year to ban future exhibitions of its ancient artefacts in Germany if Berlin refused to return the statue.
Egypt wants to display Nefertiti at the opening of the Akhenaton Museum in Minya, Upper Egypt.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hxPqqngFv10-uZajMSF2Fqs1pMUw
A remembrance
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the massacre at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, where 58 tourists died at the hands of terrorists. Our sympathies to the families of the victims of this totally unjustifiable attack.
Giza Sphinx not threatened by water
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities rebuked reports that the Sphinx is in danger after some media reported that water below the surface nearby could damage the 4,500-year-old monument. “There is not any danger at all to the Sphinx from the effects of this water, which remains at a distance from it of about 50 metres,” Egypt’s state-run MENA news agency quoted antiquities official Sabry Abdel Aziz as saying.
Concerns about potential damage to the limestone statue were raised last month after reports of salt deposits near the statue. The Giza complex that contains the Sphinx and pyramids is one of Egypt’s most popular draws for tourists, whose numbers hit a record 9.7 million in the year ending in June.
http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL1544311.html
Egypt to limit tourists to Tutankhamen tomb
The number of visitors to the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings will be restricted to 400 a day starting next month.
The tomb will close to visitors indefinitely from May next year in order to carry out restoration work, Supreme Council for Antiquities secretary general Zahi Hawass said in a statement.
Every day hundreds of visitors file through his tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile in the southern city of Luxor, bringing with them into the royal tomb bacteria, humidity and other pollutants.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gqQH7QXr-ov3MKURbj12xQ9ZLeVQ
King Tut Trivia: How much you know?
Gold treasures, exquisite jewelry, beautifully preserved artifacts from an ancient and mysterious civilization, a boy king, an untimely death and finally, an astonishing discovery at the verge of failure, there are are so many reasons why an exhibit of Tutankhamen’s treasures still draws so many visitors.
Click the link below and play the game.
http://competegames.com/tutgaroo.php
Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs is at the O2, SE10, London, Great Britain from Thursday November 15, 2007 until August 30, 2008. The city’s famous landmarks are glowing in shimmering gold light.
Revenue generated from the millions of tickets sold for the exhibition of Tutankhamen’s treasures will go towards the cost of the new Grand Egyptian Museum, a modern facility near the pyramids at Giza that will enable the artefacts to be more appropriately displayed, studied and conserved. The exhibition will therefore help to rehouse Tutankhamen’s treasures for the next 100 years.
London landmarks glow gold
Four London landmarks will be bathed in golden light every night next week to mark the return to the city for the first time in 35 years of the treasures of Tutankhamen.
The Tower of London, the Wellington Arch, the London Eye and the O2 arena, which will house “Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs”, will be lit up in gold to emulate the precious metal that the tomb’s discoverer Howard Carter said he saw everywhere in 1922.
325,000 advance tickets have already been sold for the exhibition which opens on Nov. 15 and runs through August 2008.
In all, 130 objects will be on display, including 50 from the tomb itself such as a coffin made of gold and precious stones, and the boy king’s royal head dress.
http://africa.reuters.com/country/EG/news/usnL0963557.html
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