Santa Fe exhibit reveals everyday life in ancient Egypt
Tweezers, razor and a tiny applicator for eye make. These everyday objects are part of the exhibit “Excavating Egypt”, on display at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, featuring the discoveries of Sir William Flinders Petrie, “the father of scientific archaeology.”
The 220-plus items in the show reflect the breadth of Petrie’s work over five decades in Egypt.
An Englishman who first headed to Egypt in 1880 - and promptly set up his hammock in an abandoned tomb - Petrie is credited with transforming archaeology into a science, in a time when tomb raiders where looting for ancient treasures.
“Petrie gathered and analyzed artifacts overlooked by others and used them to help reconstruct the past”, said Peter Lacovara of the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta. “He was sort of like a crime-scene investigator. He realized that every piece of evidence would help to tell the story,” he said.
Lacovara organized the exhibit from the collection of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College, London, the first time many of the items have been out of England since they were taken there from Egypt. Items in the exhibit - some of them dating back more than 5,000 years - include sculpture, ceramics, tools, weapons, writing utensils and texts, jewelry, glass, gaming pieces, dishes, bowls, jars and pots. Among the most remarkable pieces are a fishnet-looking, fitted dress of beads and shells more than more than 4,000 years old and a small limestone model of a pyramid that Lacovara calls “the world’s oldest architectural model.”
“Excavating Egypt” exhibit is on display in Santa Fe until Jan. 6. Then it heads to South Carolina, Florida, California and Kentucky, through mid-June of 2009.
More information here
Egypt draws record 9.7m visitors
The numbers reflect a 13 per cent increase on the previous fiscal year, the state news agency MENA reported. The visitors brought revenues of $8.2 billion to the country, a 14 per cent increase on the $7.2 billion yield of the previous year, thus preserving tourism’s status as a major contributor to Egypt’s economy, along with oil and gas exports, Suez Canal transit fees and remittances from Egyptians working abroad.
Sixty per cent of the coming tourists were European. Tourists from Mideast countries came in the second place.
At present, Egypt has 183,000 hotel rooms, and another 130,000 are already under construction.
The government hopes to receive 14 million visitors a year by 2011. According to earlier statements form Garanah, the country has a target of 140 million tourist nights, while hotel room capacity is expected to rise to 240,000 rooms by 2011 through various upgrading plans.
http://www.ttnworldwide.com/Articles.asp?Article=7003
Archaeologists go in the Nile
An Egyptian archaeological team will track down the locations of the Nile river’s ancient sunken treasures.
“The survey will cover the area between the quarries in Aswan and Abydos. Over the centuries this was a significant area - either for the ancient Egyptians or the many rulers of the country who followed. The granite quarries were located in Aswan. The statues and obelisks used to be cut and shaped in the mountains before they were shipped to Luxor and Abydos,” said Alaa Mahrous, director of the underwater antiquities department in Alexandria.
Mahrous said the team was hoping to find any such pieces that might have sunk while being loaded on unloaded from ships.
He said a state-of-the-art technology would be used in the survey, which will include a sizeable rubber boat that has been provided with special facilities for accommodating and protecting the survey tools.
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=288397
Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Palestine launch new web site
The Tourism4Peace Forum (T4PF) website had its origins years ago in the Israel-Palestinian Tourism Forum. Their mission is to advance peace in the Middle East through tourism, since its members believe that tourism means hospitality, - welcoming strangers, getting to know people and developing friendships. The Forum’s aims include developing incoming tourism in the area; facilitating border crossings and obtaining freedom of movement of tourists and tourism professionals in the region and encouraging governmental agencies to assist in this effort. Future plans call for – educational trips of travel staff from the United States and Europe to visit the region, joint road shows consisting of Egyptian, Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian tourism executives and joint workshops and seminars.
Further information is available at: http://www.Tourism4Peace.org; .com
Egypt to Germany - "No can do"
Egypt Supreme Council of Antiques rejected a compromise offer made by the director of the Berlin-based Egyptian Museum to hand Egypt some ninety mummies kept by the museum in exchange for dropping claims over the Bust of Nefertiti.
Secretary General of the SCA Zahi Hawass said that these mummies, smuggled from Egypt during the 19th century, are not royal and of no importance.
The Bust of Nefertiti was taken out of Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century under dubious circumstances. In a clash reminiscent of the Iliad, Egypt has demanded the return of the royal lady, whose name means “The Most Beautiful One has Come”. Germany has refused to return the valuable statue, an icon of Egyptian culture, citing, among other reasons, that the piece is too fragile for transportation.
Egypt wants the Bust of Nefertiti for the inauguration of the new Grand Egyptian Museum, scheduled to open in 2011, and is willing to settle for a temporary loan.
So far, Germany has agreed to return the 4500-year-old ancient Egyptian statue of Hemiunu, a vizier during the reign of his uncle, Khufu, regarded as the architect of that pharaoh’s pyramid at Giza.
Egypt State Information Service
Wireless service in Luxor and Sharm-el-Sheikh
The Emerging Markets Group has announced the selection of the Internet Service Provider partners who will design, implement, and operate broadband wireless outdoor metropolitan area networks in Luxor and Sharm El Sheikh’s Naama Bay in order to improve and expand internet connectivity within the Egyptian tourism sector.
The managers of the “While in Egypt Stay Connected Project”, funded by USAID, identified significant connectivity gaps in the high visibility tourist areas of Luxor and Naama Bay in Sharm El Sheikh. Filling these gaps can provide economic growth through a broadband wireless outdoor metropolitan area network.
The While in Egypt Stay Connected project is sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), and financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Emerging Markets Group (EMG) is the Prime Contractor for this project.
http://www.connected-egypt.org/home_etourism.aspx?siteId=ab1fbe66-c00f-4b93-b538-27322b76c346
Egypt to start gold production
The Arab world’s most populous country, which once considered gold the skin of the gods, is revisiting ancient deposits of the metal, some of which have not been worked for 2000 years.
Egypt will begin commercial gold production before the end of 2007 at a mine in the country’s eastern desert this year, Oil Minister Sameh Fahmy said. The country produced a sample gold bullion bar in April but has not produced gold commercially in 50 years. Output is expected to reach 14,000 ounces this year.
http://www.tradearabia.com/news/newsdetails.asp?Sn=IND&artid=131255
Tutankhamen mummy to be displayed in tomb
Egypt will put the mummy of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamen on display next month inside his tomb in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings, allowing visitors to see his face for the first time, Egypt’s chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass said on Tuesday.
The mummy will be placed in a climate-controlled glass showcase. Currently, the body of Tutankhamen lies in a sarcophagus inside the tomb, covered by a gilded coffin.
Don’t expect, however, a pretty sight. The mummy is badly damaged due to excess of resins during the embalming process, the skin is blackened and severely cracked. Besides, Hawass described Tutankhamun as having “buck teeth”.
http://africa.reuters.com/country/EG/news/usnL02392190.html
An American (woman) in Cairo
A woman who had just recently (she doesn’t say when) moved to Egypt gives us an interesting account of her experiences in the Cairo Metro, where she avoids eye contact with men and always takes one of the two front car reserved for women. Even among Egyptian women, she feels different. Her height and hair color marks her as non-local. But at least, she doesn’t feel threatened among them, just different.
Her attitude towards men is much more cautious, no looking, no talking and of course no touching. She admits, or as least that’s how I interpret it, that American movies, seen by everyone in Cairo, portray an image of American women that Egyptians might regard as “whoredom”.
In contrast to her presence at public places, at work she can communicate with both men and women, Christian or Muslim, in what she calls a “western dominated environment, where western norms prevail”.
Buses and trains have always been venues where we can muse about society’s inequalities and prejudices. Think of the American South during the Civil Rights. Blacks had to sit in the back, so they don’t touch the Whites. Men in Cairo must do the same, so they don’t touch the women. Yet, Egypt is a male dominated society and, ironically, that brings women some privileges.
I hope some Egyptian has a dream that someday, men and women can share the same train car in peace and mutual respect. I hope men prejudices toward American women will be a thing of the past. In the meantime, this American lady is only responding to an environment where she is just “too conspicuous”. Hopefully, she’ll learn to deal with her own prejudices and better adapt to her new way of life.
http://egypt4.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/im-the-tall-aloof-blond/
King Tut neither black nor white
The debate between acclaimed egyptologist Zahi Hawass and protestors claiming that King Tutankhamen was black appears to have been cleverly settled by none other than Stephen Colbert, who insisted that a look at the boy pharaoh’s image reveals the obvious answer.
