Bus accident in Egypt kills 6, 26 injured
A speeding tourist bus overturned in southern Egypt, killing six Belgian tourists and injuring 26 other Belgian passengers early Friday. The bus crashed en route from Aswan to Abu Simbel, a famous tourist attraction.
Twenty one of the injured had been taken to the Abu Simbel International hospital. Egypt’s state-run news agency MENA said four of the injured were in critical condition and were evacuated by military helicopters to hospitals in Cairo for surgery.
Egypt has a history of serious bus and car crashes because of speeding, careless driving and poor road conditions, with at least 8,000 people killed in accidents in 2006, the most recent statistics available.
Surprisingly affordable genuine antiquities
There have always been collectors of antiquities, especially when you consider the status of having a marble bust of a Roman emperor greeting your guests in the foyer.
By the 17th century the art of ancient Egypt was discovered and again students and collectors got involved. By the late 19th century British excavations stirred the interest of tourists and collectors alike. Hundreds purchased small artifacts, usually small figures and pottery sold to them as antiquities by mysterious Egyptian street vendors and shop keepers. Especially popular were amulets of Isis and Ra in blue faience. They still turn up at shows and auctions.
I know it sounds unbelievable that it is possible to pay as little as $200 for a small Egyptian station (954-853 B.C.) or a Neolithic painted pottery jar c. 2000 B.C. or a free blown amber marbled glass flask c. 1st century A.D. for $1,000/$2,000.
Surprisingly the answer is yes because they aren’t very rare. According to Bill Gage, in the expert department of James Julia Auctions, they turn up regularly at auction. “They are still digging it up and it was untouched for 2,000 years.”
Excerpted from an article by Anne Gilbert for Pioneer Local
Game: Nile Online
Immortal Cities: Nile Online is a persistent browser-based empire building game set in ancient Egypt. Play with thousands of other players as you construct cities and monuments worthy of your legacy as Pharaoh! Nile Online is casually paced; it’s something you can play throughout the day, minutes at a time.
The game is free to play and there is nothing to download or install - within seconds you’re commanding, tweaking and growing your empire from anywhere that you have access to the internet.
Recommended browsers: Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer 7+, Safari, Chrome.
Giacometti, The Egyptian: The Altes Museum organizes an exhibition showing the Swiss sculptor’s passion for ancient Egypt
Image by joelogon via Flickr
Now integrated into the sculpture halls of the Egyptian Museum’s permanent exhibition, works by Giacometti from the Sammlung der Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung in Zurich invite visitors to listen in to a dialogue between artists as they communicate with each other in a common language of forms which traverses several millennia. By being placed in this context, Giacometti’s work reveals how steadfastly rooted in the past it is, as well as allowing the art of the Ancient Egyptians to once again exude an extraordinary freshness and relevance.
Unlike other modern artists, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) lived obsessed by Egyptian aesthetics. The Altes Museum in Berlin celebrates the Egiptomania of Alberto Giacometti through twelve sculptures and two sketches by the Swiss sculptor, which today share the same space with the bust of Nefertiti and other works from the museum’s extensive Egyptian collection.
Cult of the Artist: Giacometti, the Egyptian, creates risky analogies between the mute and serene pose of ancient statues from the distant past and the famous elongated sculptures forged in the twentieth century. This experiment is the fruit of labor of two Egyptian art enthusiasts, Wildung and Christian Klemm, members of the sculptor’s foundation in Zurich, who stressed the “Egyptian” in Giacometti, as seen in the “structure” of his works, “the intensity in the gaze” of his characters, and “the spatial distribution of his figures.”
Next to Nefertiti, a muse for Berliners who see in her the most beautiful woman in this city, the spectator finds a bust of Annette Arm, the flesh and blood muse who Giacometti met in Geneva and whom he married in 1949, back in Paris, the city that most inspired him and where he lived for many years. The statuette on a large pedestal, 1952, shows clear plastic symmetries with the figure of an Egyptian gravedigger dating from 1850 BC. The most monumental work of Giacometti in this show is that of the Marching Man, which is oddly contrasted with a wooden figure only ten centimeters in height from 1900 BC. Equally curious parallels exist between the Cube in bronze by the sculptor, with engravings, and the granite statue in the form of a cube of Senenmut, full of hieroglyphics.
The exhibition runs through February 15, 2009.
Extracted and translated from elpais.com
Egypt awarded Outsourcing Destination of the Year at the 2008 National Outsourcing Association Awards
Egypt was awarded the prestigious title of Outsourcing Destination of the Year at the National Outsourcing Association’s 2008 Awards held in London, beating rivals Philippines and Romania to the accolade. The CEO of Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency, (ITIDA) Dr. Hazem Abdelazim, received the award on behalf of his government during a glamorous ceremony at the Park Plaza Riverbank.
According to the judges, Egypt won the award due to its language skills, young population and growing list of global sourcing investments. It has soared in the popularity stakes in the last few years as an offshore destination for Europe. The awards, which are in their fifth year, aim to reward organizations for success in outsourcing projects, as well as raising awareness of the importance of best practice in outsourcing. The awards acknowledge achievements in IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing, as well as sector specific achievements in telecommunications, finance and utilities.
Lower Tourism Revenue Expected for Egypt
Image via Wikipedia
Global financial crisis and its impact on the Egyptian economy may mean lower tourism revenue this year, according to Egypt’s minister of tourism.
Zohair Garanah said in an interview on Oct. 23 that the private sector is panicking because of the economic turmoil and is starting a price war, which will harm the industry in the long- term.
Tourism is the number one source of foreign currency income for Egypt, generating revenue of nearly $10 billion last year. Tourism accounted for 11.3 percent of gross domestic product in the last fiscal year, according to the minister. The country attracted 11 million tourists last year.
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First day on the job for Egyptian first and only female marriage registrar
Amal Suleiman Afifi , Egypt’s first female marriage registrar performed her first wedding ceremony at a mosque in the Delta town of Zaqaziq, north of Cairo, over complaints by some conservative clerics.
Many conservative clerics believe Islamic law, or Sharia, prohibits a woman from becoming a registrar because it states the testimony of two women is equivalent to one man in court. Therefore they believe a marriage contract signed by a woman would be illegal. More liberal minded clerics believe a marriage registrar is an official who purely plays an administrative role for the state, and therefore her signature on the contract does not violate Shariah.
The Egyptian constitution doesn’t specifically bar women from becoming marriage registrars.
Afifi first approached the Egyptian government last year seeking approval to become a marriage registrar, but the Ministry of Justice turned her down. The ministry eventually approved her position in September, after Afifi took her case to a family court and was appointed over 10 other male applicants for the job because of her “distinguished legal qualifications.”
Book: Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt
by Joyce Tyldesley
A new biography of the Macedonian ruler attempts to debunk many myths surrounding her legacy. Egyptologist Tyldesley (Egypt: How a Lost Civilization Was Rediscovered, 2006, etc.) digs deeply into Cleopatra’s life, piecing together a unique portrait of her successes and failures.
Many biographers focus too much on Cleopatra’s reputation as a temptress, but Tyldesley gamely analyzes her politically astute nature at work against the backdrop of the bloody, brutal times in which she operated. In chronological fashion, the author covers the major historical issues surrounding Cleopatra, but she wisely avoids lingering too long on well-traveled ground. Tyldesley examines many of the burning questions that continue to puzzle historians - Was she black? Did she marry her brother? Was she beautiful or ugly? - and that have helped create such a beguiling picture of the queen.
Exhibition: Egypt – Back to the Source
10 Oct. 2008 – 8 Feb. 2009
Glypkotek, Copenhagen, Denmark
Around 1890, the brewing magnate, Carl Jacobsen, founder of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, engaged Denmark’s leading Egyptologist, Valdemar Schmidt, to create an Egyptian collection in the newly-planned museum, and in the course of the following 35 years, Schmidt succeeded in putting together a collection of ancient Egyptian art matching Jacobsen’s other excellent collections of ancient art, from Greece, Etruria and the Roman Empire.
This exhibition is an opportunity to see the works which Schmidt brought back to Denmark from his extensive travels in Egypt. Other works on display come from excavations in that country which Schmidt persuaded the wealthy Jacobsen to sponsor.
Today it would be quite impossible to create a comparable collection, but Schmidt and Jacobsen lived in an age when the Egyptian authorities still permitted a limited, controlled export of antiquities. As a result, the Glyptotek today can present an Egyptian collection of truly international standing.
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is an art museum of international stature in the center of Copenhagen. It houses over 10.000 works of art divided up into two principal collections: Mediterranean cradle of Western culture and Danish and French art from the 19th and 20th centuries.
A celebration of Egyptian tribal heritage, nature and cultural diversity
(Photo by Charles Domingue)
Despite the fact that approximately 300,000 people from 45 tribes lead a nomadic existence in Egypt, according to Founder of the EDPS Walid Ramadan, they are almost always forgotten. Marginalized and misperceived, these tribes continue to uphold and develop their unique value systems and traditions, formed in the unforgiving beauty of their desert environment.
The brainchild of Wadi Environmental Science Centre (WESC) and the Egyptian Desert Pioneers Society (EDPS) the “Characters of Egypt” festival (Oct. 29-31) is a three-day extravaganza celebrating the cultural heritage of tribes from seven desert areas of Egypt: Siwa and Farafra from the Western Desert, North and South Sinai, Nubia, and the Eastern and Southern Deserts which stretch from Marsa Allam to Alba Mountain.
Held in the pristine Fustat Wadi El Gemal National Park, 45 km south of Marsa Allam on the Red Sea, this first cultural event of its kind will showcase the diversity of fauna and flora in the area and the intricacy of tribal costumes and jewelry. Attendees will also learn how to shadow-read, navigate the desert and will participate with the tribesmen in a variety of activities including music, dance, poetry, sports, games, food tasting, a camel race, educational lectures on the tribes and the environment.
To learn more, visit www.charactersofegypt.com
Source: Daily News Egypt
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