Archive for July, 2008

Two Egyptian citizens were rewarded for turning in two pieces of antiquities they found while each was redecorating his house in the northern Menoufiya governorate. “The Egyptian Ministry of Culture decided to give each citizen five thousand Egyptian pounds (970 US dollars),” said Zahi Hawass , Head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). The two... »

Youssef Chahine, the Arab world’s greatest film-maker and recipient of the 50th annual lifetime achievement award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, died in his home in Cairo yesterday at the age of 82. Born in 1926 in Alexandria into a Christian family, Chahine attended prestigious Victoria College, the alma mater of many Arab and... »

Egypt State Information service has announced that the number of tourists who attended the sound and light shows at the temple of Ramses II and Nefertari in Abu Simbel city during the past six months reached 44 thousands  of different nationalities. Director of the Sound and Light area in Abu Simbel, Ali Mahmoud said... »

Manchester Museum has reversed its decision to cover up its Egyptian mummies in response to public opinion. The museum covered up three unwrapped mummies on display, sparking accusations of political correctness, two months ago. The cover-up was part of a consultation on how the mummies will be displayed when the museum’s ancient Egypt gallery is... »

The 40 minute film is projected on the largest screen in Utah and one of the largest in the world – measuring 60 feet high and 82 feet across. Sound is delivered through an eight track digital Surround Sound system capable of 22,000 watts. The projection system was designed by iWERKS Entertainment, a world... »

The tomb of a woman who died around 2,600 years ago on the eastern Italian coast is helping archaeologists piece together the vast trade network that once linked this area with the Middle East, North Africa and Greece. Experts working on a tomb near the port of Ancona say the site contains over 650 artefacts... »

Luxor is in the process of creating an open-air museum on the city’s west bank, where a third of the world’s archeological sites are located, including such renowned monuments as Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple and the Valley of the Kings. The project is part of an overall endeavor to make Luxor a modern tourist site, where... »

A small but significant find made during a geological survey provides evidence of the oldest human presence yet discovered along the northernmost margin of Egypt’s Nile delta. A rock fragment carried by humans to the site was discovered in a sediment core section north of Burullus lagoon near the Mediterranean coast. This long, thin object,... »

About 70 texts in Stanford’s collection of several hundred papyri kept in storage since the 1920s were brought to the university’s conservation lab in April. They were soaked in water to wash away the remains of an adhesive material applied to them for use as cartonnage—material molded into masks and panels to cover the... »

Although it lies a mere 65 km east of Alexandria, few tourists venture out to its neighboring city of Rosetta, known in Egypt as Rashid. Home to the Rosetta Stone, which French scholar Jean-Francoise Champollion used to decipher ancient hieroglyphics, Rashid was the scene of the first encounter between East and West in modern times.... »