Archive for December, 2008

Egypt’s Ministry of Culture has called off official celebrations of the New Year in solidarity with Palestinians during Israel’s attack on the Gaza strip. The minister’s office said Wednesday state-sponsored events, including a popular concert in the Opera House, were called off because of the massacre on Gaza. The Information Ministry also called off its major... »

Image via Wikipedia The city of Alexandria will host a museum displaying royal jewelry dating back to 1805, when Mohammad Ali’s era started. The museum will be open for tourists and visitors early 2009. Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said the museum’s restoration took three years and cost LE50 million. “It is the largest Egyptian museum... »

When King Tut rolled into town in October, Bonnie Pitman, the new director of the Dallas Museum of Art, predicted that 1 million visitors would see the show, with ticket buyers traveling from hundreds, even thousands of miles away. But neither Ms. Pitman nor the international promoters of “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of... »

Image by EGraf via Flickr Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said 70 per cent of Egypt’s artifacts and monuments have been not discovered yet, Al Akhbar reported. He said the diligent work of up to 200 Egyptian and foreign missions operating in Egypt has led to the discovery of only 30... »

Daniel Knox, a dive instructor and former archeologist, is just one of many characters searching for Alexander the Great’s lost tomb in British author Will Adams’s less than suspenseful debut. Aboard a dive boat in the Red Sea, Knox goes against his better judgment and rescues an attractive young blonde from the clutches of... »

Image by Jeff_Werner via Flickr Many Greeks and other foreigners left Egypt en masse in the post-nationalization years that were initiated in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As they departed, the once- Alexandrian Greeks sold properties that included tearooms such as the Grand Trianon in Ramleh Square. The Grand Trianon is one place where the... »

Image via Wikipedia Pope Shenuda III, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Patriarch of Alexandria and the See of St. Mark has banned the faithful from confessing their sins to priests over the telephone because intelligence agents might be listening in. He also said confessions over the Internet were invalid because they might be read... »

By Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson (Princeton Press, in association with The British Museum) For more than a decade, this attractive single-volume reference has been the most informative and user-friendly dictionary of ancient Egypt available. The new edition features a completely revised text, hundreds of illustrations in full color and more than 600 up-to-date alphabetical... »

An Australian teacher who stuffed his luggage with 2,000-year old animal mummies and religious figurines wrapped as gifts was arrested Wednesday, an Egyptian airport security official said. The 61-year teacher was heading to Thailand when a security official became suspicious of the wrapped figurines that were placed amid souvenir ceramic pots in his suitcase. When... »

Image via Wikipedia Images from space have been around for decades. Yet only in the past decade or so has the resolution of images from commercial satellites sharpened enough to be of much use to archaeologists. Today, scientists can use them to locate ruins — some no bigger than a small living room — in... »