A good year for the record
Nevine El-Aref from Al-Ahram Weekly sums up the most interesting archaeological events of 2007 — all part of this year’s work for Egyptologists:
• Identifying the mummy of the female Pharaoh, Queen Hatshepsut
• Uncovering the real face of the boy-king Tutankhamun
• Restoring the Step Pyramid of Djoser
• Reopening the Kuttub Khana
• Discovering a New Kingdom fortress in Sinai
• Discovering an intact tomb brimming with fine funerary pieces in the Delta
• Discovering Palaeolithic rock art depicting animals in Upper Egypt
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/877/heritage.htm
Copyright claimed over Egypt’s pyramids
Egypt is to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the sphinx, are reproduced.
Zahi Hawass, the charismatic and controversial head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the move was necessary to pay for the upkeep of the country’s thousands of pharaonic sites.
“The new law will completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments which the Supreme Council of Antiquities considers 100-per cent copies,” he said.
“If the law is passed then it will be applied in all countries of the world so that we can protect our interests,” Hawass said.
He said that a ministerial committee had already agreed on the law which should be passed in the next parliamentary session, while insisting the move would not hurt Egyptian artisans.
“It is Egypt’s right to be the only copyright owner for these monuments in order to benefit financially so we can restore, preserve and protect Egyptian monuments.”
However, the law “does not forbid local or international artists from profiting from drawings and other reproductions of pharaonic and Egyptian monuments from all eras - as long as they don’t make exact copies.”
“Artists have the right to be inspired by everything that surrounds them, including monuments,” he said.
Is she or isn’t she?
Months after Egypt boldly announced that archeologists had identified the mummy of Hatshepsut, scientists in a museum basement are still analyzing DNA from 3,500-year-old corpse to try to back up the claim aired on TV.
Progress is slow. So far, results indicate the linen-wrapped mummy is most likely, but not conclusively, the female pharaoh who ruled Egypt for 22 years in the 15th century BC.
Running its own ancient-DNA lab is a major step forward for Egypt, which for decades has seen foreigners take most of the credit for major discoveries in the country.
But the Hatshepsut discovery also highlights the struggle to back up other recent spectacular findings in Egypt, including the unearthing of ancient tombs and mummies, investigations into how King Tutankhamen died, and even the discovery in the Siwa oasis of possibly the world’s oldest human footprint.
Most of the evidence that led Zahi Hawass to declare the mummy to be Hatshepsut did not come from DNA but from CT scans. Those scans showed that a tooth found in a relic box displaying the pharaoh’s insignia matched a gap in the mummy’s jaw. CT scans also showed facial similarities between the mummy and already identified mummies of Hatshepsut’s royal relatives, as well as evidence of a skin disease that the queen may have shared with some of them.
Hawass has ambitious plans for DNA testing in Egypt, including examining all the royal mummies and the nearly two dozen unidentified mummies stored in the Egyptian Museum. He believes DNA tests will show that some royal mummies on display are not who archeologists thought they were.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071220/mummy_claim_071220/20071220?hub=SciTech
Egypt working to reclaim the desert
Abu Minqar, 404 miles southwest of Cairo, had previously been a bleak moonscape before the government began drilling for water in 1987 in the vast Nubian Sandstone Aquifer. Now, this area is a green stretch of wheat fields and lemon trees.
Reclaiming Egypt’s desert lands, which cover about 96 percent of the nation’s territory, has been a major government objective for more than 50 years. Successive presidents have said reclamation is a key component in countering not only urban crowding - the population grows by 1.5 million annually - but high unemployment. The official unemployment rate is 10 percent, but many believe it is twice that amount. Currently, 98 percent of Egypt’s 78 million inhabitants live in the densely populated Nile River Valley or along the Mediterranean Sea.
But in the past five decades, development experts estimate that as many as 2 million people have moved to reclaimed lands in the Sinai and Sahara deserts. Such desert plots now account for almost 25 percent of Egypt’s 8 million acres under cultivation, these same experts say.
But in spite of its success in lessening pressure on urban areas, state reclamation projects have experienced the same difficulties associated with cities and towns across Egypt, observers say.
Water experts fear the repercussions once the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, which Egypt shares with Sudan, Libya and Chad, goes dry.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/19/MN34TPJ51.DTL
Alexandria back to Greatness
Situated on the Mediterranean along Egypt’s north coast, Alexandria is a city of legend. This is where Euclid sired geometry, Aristarchus deduced that the Earth revolved around the sun (about 18 centuries before Copernicus) and, of course, the young Alexander the Great founded the city as his capital in 331 B.C.
The city flourished through the 19th century as the hub of Egypt’s commerce, especially the cotton trade, drawing a cosmopolitan mix of Greeks, Italians, French, Jews and Levantine Arabs, who brought their languages, architecture and food. But things had changed by the time of the Suez Crisis in 1956, when Egypt privatized the Suez Canal, prompting military attacks by Britain, France and Israel. In its aftermath, many foreigners left or were expelled from Alexandria, and the city’s cultural grandeur began to crumble - much like the ancient part of the city that lies at the bottom of the sea.
In recent years, however, efforts by preservationists and the government to restore the city’s luster have started to bear fruit. The first sign of Alexandria’s renewal was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the glimmering vision in steel and glass that opened on the Corniche in 2002.
Another sign of the city’s resurgence is the sumptuous Four Seasons Hotel Alexandria. Opened in July, it has nine restaurants, a large infinity pool and 118 plush, modern guest rooms, many facing the Mediterranean.
Outside the city, one of the two airports, Borg Al-Arab, is being expanded to accommodate more passengers. There are now regular flights from Germany and Britain.
And there are plans, though still not financed, to restore the city’s Eastern Harbor with an underwater archaeology museum, a waterfront promenade and hotels, including one inspired by the third-century B.C. Pharos lighthouse, whose ruins lie underwater.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/16/MN79TSNA1.DTL&feed=rss.news
Archaeologists rebuild Egypt’s 3,000-year-old glass furnace
An Egypt Exploration Society team of archaeologists, led by Cardiff University professor Paul Nicholson, has rebuilt an ancient glass furnace following the same methods used by Egyptians some 3,000 years ago.
It was previously thought that the ancient Egyptians might have imported their glass from the Near East during that time. But with reconstructing the glass furnace, the excavation team proved that the ancient Egyptians were not importing glass, rather they were making it by themselves using local sand.
Glassmaking was part of an ancient industrial complex built during the rule of Akhenaten. The site is located on the banks of the Nile at Amarna in the modern Egyptian province of Minya, some 312 km south of the Egyptian capital Cairo. It also contained a potter’s workshop and facilities for making blue pigment and faience, a material used in amulets and architectural inlays.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=309595
Egyptians still making it big
Egyptian artist Taha al-Korany worked seven years to produce the largest mural in the world, entered in the Guinness Book of Records. The painting, now on display at the Cairo Opera House, is 23 meters (aprox. 75 feet) long and depicts images of street vendors, female sellers carrying their infants and buyers bargaining for cheaper prices at Souk al-Gom`a - The Friday Market in Cairo`s old Sayda Aisha neighborhood.
The Friday market is a famous Egyptian market, hosting people coming from all over Egypt who usually spend Thursdays in Cairo and sell their diverse merchandise on Fridays and then return to their home villages or towns with a few pounds in their pockets. The market reflects the Egyptian identity with a panorama of people from different backgrounds, whether sellers or buyers. No single face looks like another in the painting.
Egypt reveals health tourism drive
The Egyptian Tourism Authority (ETA) has announced plans to drive more health tourism to the country.
And to kick start its campaign, Cairo will host an international conference on health and therapeutic tourism on December 11.
The development of Health Tourism in Egypt was initiated through cooperation between the Ministry of International Cooperation and The Office of the European Commissioner in Egypt who would extend technical assistance in support of establishing this sector in Egypt.
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/505615-egypt-reveals-health-tourism-drive
Egyptian Harvest Festivals
The ancient Egyptians were always ready to party and celebrate. In fact almost all the days in the year they seemed to be celebrating something or a god.
In ancient Egypt, crop failures and the resulting famine are suspected as being at least in part the cause of several intermediate periods of governmental collapse between strong dynasties. Good harvests were a source of pride and bragging rights by kings who could take considerable credit for the good fortune because the gods were pleased with his deeds.
The start of the harvest in ancient Egypt involved celebrations in honor of Min, which were often opened by the king himself, who reaped the first ears of grain with a sickle. This was the month of Shemou (harvest), and a statue of Min, represented as an ityphallic god of fertility in iconography, was placed on an inclined pedestal, which was the symbol of Ma’at (the goddess if truth and justice). This pedestal represented the primordial mountain, a symbol of resurrection, renewal, and rebirth. During the processional honoring Min, songs were sung and ritual dances were performed. Many festivals around the land honor the harvest.
Heqet, goddess of childbirth was also associated with grain germination while Renenutet was also a goddess of grain, as well as a fertility goddess. Isis, who caused Osiris to rise after his death, was closely associated with the harvest festivals for she was seen as the reviver of the grain who caused it to sprout.
http://unusualhistoricals.blogspot.com/2007/12/holidays-celebrations-egyptian-harvest.html
14 days in Egypt
Now, I can’t even remember why Egypt wasn’t a top destination for me. Maybe it was the travel — 10 hours there from New York, 12 hours back. But too many positive experiences have washed the Egypt Air plane ride from my memory, leaving the country’s color, smiles, tastes and a camel ride in its place.
Smoking strawberry-flavored tobacco out of a water pipe in a carpet walled sheesha café, a camel ride to a Nubian village for falafel and henna hand painting, a frank discussion with a religious professor about Islam and the war in Iraq, and a visit to a school for handicapped children were only a few of the experiences awaiting us.
Barreling along the Cairo highway following the 10-hour flight from New York, the fog-shrouded pyramids appeared on the horizon — an awe-inspiring, surreal image, like a movie set — and that’s when it truly hit my rowdy band of travelers that we were in the land of the eternal Nile.
My favorite monument was the colorful and towering temple of Kom-Ombo, built for the crocodile god Sobek and the falcon god Horus. It was one of the stops we made as we glided down the Nile on a relaxing four-day cruise in a 30-passenger riverboat.
Shopping gave us a chance to interact with locals and our group agreed some of the best and most interesting experiences we had were the everyday observations of life in Egypt and the conversations with people we met.
Although a guard accompanied us on most tours, at no time did I feel in danger in Egypt. The majority of Egyptians, except for some of the more aggressive vendors, were friendly and accommodating, and often spoke English.
http://www.miamiherald.com/986/story/321144.html
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