The Barnum Museum will come alive for a very dead lady on March 25. That’s when a diminutive 5-foot 4-inch, 30-something with high cheek bones and a penchant for seasoning her veggies with sand will become a living, breathing person through the findings of Quinnipiac University’s Bioanthropology Research Institute.

After her nearly 4,000-year sleep and the application of increasingly sophisticated forensic research techniques, the secrets of Bridgeport’s own mummy, Pa-Id (pronounced “pie-eeeb”), will be unveiled by institute Executive Co-Director Gerald Conlogue at “A Night at the Museum” on Thursday, March 25 at 6 p.m.

A year after P.T. Barnum’s death in 1891, his widow, Nancy Fish Barnum, had donated the mummy to the yet-unfinished museum — originally a science and history institute — in Bridgeport. Pa-Ib waited patiently in her sarcophagus — or stone funeral receptacle — until the museum’s opening in 1893.

The mummy has been on display at the Barnum Museum ever since, shrouded in mystery.

P.T. Barnum had touted the mummy as an Egyptian priest to a pagan god living some 2,500 years ago.

With recent scientific re-testing, all that has changed — including the mummy’s sex.

Excerpted from an article by Carol Banner for The Bridgeport News

Egyptian Tourism Minister, Zoheir Garranah, and Major General Adel Labib, Governor of Alexandria, declared the initiation of the ceremonial festivals for the selection of Alexandria as the Capital of Arab Tourism for the year 2010 during the press conference that was held on March 17th at that city. Twelve other Arab cities applied for the competition.

Alexandria is a city with a rich history of several civilizations, such as Greek, Roman, Coptic, and Islamic, making it a city abounded with, and characterized by many of the unique monumental, and cultural sites, such as Pompey’s Pillar (Amoud Al-Swary), the Catacombs of Kom Al Shoqqafa, the Fort of Qaitbay, the Ancient Roman Amphitheatre, the Greco-Romanian Museum, and the Royal Jewelry Museum. Alexandria is also famous for many of the religious sites, such as El-Mursi Abul Abbas Mosque, and Saint Mark’s Church.

The city is also distinguished with a mild climate both in the summer and winter seasons, in addition to its shores that extend along the Mediterranean seacoast.

Additionally, Alexandria is home to one of the most important cultural edifices in the Arab World. It is the Library of Alexandria that includes a large number of unique manuscripts and reference books in all domains and sciences.

Furthermore, it is rich in various features of tourism such as cultural and entertainment events, conferences, festivals, exhibitions, and maritime tourism, in addition to other touristic outlines that help in attracting different classes of tourists.

The Egyptian Tourism Authority is preparing a special guide for Alexandria, which will be published in March 2010, in both Arabic and English Languages. The guide will be distributed to different Arab and foreign Embassies, at the Egyptian airports, as well as to the travel agencies, tour operators in the Arab countries, aviation companies and hotels. Furthermore, the guide will be distributed to the Egyptian Embassies abroad, especially in the Arab countries. Additionally, it will also be distributed in events organized by the Ministry of Tourism and the Egyptian Tourism Authority in the Arab Countries.

In addition, a monthly leaflet will be published to include all the different artistic, cultural and touristic activities and festivals that will be implemented during the month to be distributed to the same above mentioned network of distribution of the guide.

Moreover, the Tourism Authority is preparing to launch a web site associated with the city of Alexandria through which all information on activities will be sighted.

The Egyptian Tourism Authority will also lead an advertising and public relations campaign aimed at the Arab market in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Libya, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, through various media.

Eye of Dubai

Read also: Alexandria – Egypt’s Window to the Mediterranean

VIDEO: Nothing Compares to Alexandria, Egypt

In recent years, the number of visitors to Bahariya Oasis has climbed so high that one-third of its almost 40,000 residents are now working in tourism. Over the past decade, unemployment decreased as the number of hotels in Bahariya shot up 500 percent, according to Bahariya’s tourism office.

Nowhere is the potential for damage more evident than the White Desert, a short drive south of Bahariya. The lunar-like landscape of the White Desert is popular with campers, who set up along the tall outcroppings of cream-colored chalky rock.

The White Desert may be the crown jewel of Egypt’s safari destinations, but protected by weak regulations, it is now littered with the remnants of old campfires and garbage.

Egypt’s government took notice in 2002, declaring the White Desert a protected national park and introducing heavy fines for litterers.

Last year the government went further, setting up ticket fees and delineating paths for safari guides to drive on to protect the desert’s brittle white rocks.

Guides often bring tourists into the park off-road through the back, driving over the rocks, avoiding both the ticket booth and watchful eyes of park rangers.

Although 120,000 entrance tickets to the White Desert were sold last year, the actual number of tourists entering the park is estimated to be triple that figure.

Excerpted from an article by Jon Jensen for Global Post

Read also: Desert Travel in Egypt

VIDEO: The Egyptian Desert

Progressive thinker, controversial figure and award-winning Egyptian writer Sayyed al-Qimni suggested in an interview with an Egyptian television listings magazine that a religious shrine on Mount Sinai would provide an affordable alternative destination for poor pilgrims as well as generating an income of more than £3bn for his country.

He also said it could improve relations between the three Abrahamic faiths because Mount Sinai is significant in Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

Qimni is a divisive figure in his home country, attracting opprobrium and sometimes death threats for his views. But it is his comments about the Ka’bah, said to have been built by Abraham and his son Ishmael, that have inflamed opinion outside Egypt.

Qimni sought to defuse the anger by insisting he was talking about a place of worship and spirituality that all three religions could benefit from, rather than a substitute for the Islamic site, and that he had used the word Ka’bah because of its immediate religious connotations.

He said: “What I thought about was religious tourism”.

guardian.co.uk

In her first solo exhibition in Egypt in several years,artist Huda Lutfi presents masculinity as a continuous and changing performance of power versus vulnerability. The work is multi-layered, playing, as Lutfi is known to do, with an array of collected objects and images from around the city, which meticulously give new meaning through carefully constructed compositions. In a work that introduces new technique and conceptual departures, Lutfi cleverly underpins socio-cultural forces defining masculine identity and exposes notions of restriction previously explored in her works on the feminine body.

Huda Lutfi is an Egyptian visual artist and cultural historian, who lives and works in Cairo. She received her Ph.D. in Arab Muslim Cultural History in l983 from McGill University, Montreal, and has been a practicing artist since the nineties.

artdaily.org

At the end of March, the Louvre will host its first exhibition on the Meroe dynasty, the last in a line of ‘black pharaohs’ that ruled Kush for more than 1,000 years until the kingdom’s demise in 350 AD.

Meroe lies around 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Sudan’s capital Khartoum and was the last capital of Kush, also called Nubia, an ancient kingdom centered on the confluence of the Blue Nile, the White Nile and the River Atbara.

Kush was one of the earliest civilizations in the Nile valley and, at first, was dominated by Egypt. The Nubians eventually gained their independence and, at the height of their power, they turned the table on Egypt and conquered it in the 8th century BC.

They occupied the entire Nile valley for a century before being forced back into what is now Sudan.

Meroe had three cemeteries containing more than 100 pyramids that are smaller than their Egyptian counterparts. The largest are 30 metres (98 feet) high and the angles are steep, some close to 70 degrees.

Although the pyramids have been thoroughly excavated, yielding a treasure trove of knowledge about Kushite culture, many aspects of Kushite civilization remain shrouded in mystery for archaeologists.

Archaeologists have also discovered numerous stelae, or inscribed stone pillars. However, they cannot read the inscriptions. While the hieroglyphics have been deciphered, the language of the ancient Nubians remains a mystery.

EXPATICA

After a two-year international investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) returned a 3,000-year-old ornately painted sarcophagus to the Arab Republic of Egypt and its Embassy.

CBP officers intercepted the empty Egyptian sarcophagus at Miami International Airport in 2008 and examined it for agricultural concerns.

The two-piece wooden and plastered sarcophagus from Egypt’s 21st Dynasty (ca. 1070-945 B.C.) was created for an elite male named Imesy.

Upon its return home, the coffin will be the centerpiece of a new special exhibition at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo opening April 7, 2010. The installation features artifacts and other treasures that were repatriated to Egypt in the last eight years. It will later become part of the permanent collection of a museum in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Excerpted from an article by Stan Parchin for Art Museum Journal

Egypt recently announced its plan to become completely carbon neutral by 2020.  The $238 million project hopes to accomplish this through the introduction of renewable energy, reduction of water use, improvement of waste management, and, in the future, the use of electric boats and hybrid buses.

The green initiatives are planned to start this month and be completed by the end of 2010.  These early initiatives include new diving restrictions to help preserve already damaged reefs at Sharm el-Sheikh, and the powering of street lights with solar energy.

Green Prophet

One in every four Egyptians is illiterate. Despite free education and long- running literacy programs, the number of illiterates has changed little in over two decades. Nearly 17 million adult Egyptians can neither read nor write, according to recent government data.

Egypt’s population of 80 million is growing at 1.76 percent a year. The strongest growth is among the rural poor.

Despite free, mandatory education for children ages 6 to 15, parents in poor communities often remove their kids from the education system to help work at home or in the fields.

The dropout rate is highest among girls.

Women account for 69 percent of illiterates in Egypt.

Excerpted from an article by Cam McGrath for IPS

Jean Pierre-Houdin has emailed a group of people to make us aware that Mark Rose, online editorial director of the Archaeology Magazine blog “Beyond Stones & Bones”, published an article on March 6th in support of putting to the test the internal ramp theory. This is “the first public support for a mission”, says Houdin.

How the great pyramid of Khufu in Giza was built remains an engineering enigma. Jean Pierre Houdin has invested time and considerable resources in his quest to elaborate a comprehensive theory that explains how the ancient Egyptians were able to built this perfect geometric shape at such a massive scale. So far, Houdin’s internal ramp theory is backed up by high end computer modeling and examination of construction details preserved in the pyramid, but it has not been tested in situ due to permit problems.

Why is it important to attempt to finally solve this engineering riddle is perhaps best summarized in Houdin’s own words:

…the Egyptians of that time had an extraordinary mastery of the techniques used, advanced knowledge in geometry, mathematics, geology, topography, astronomy and a remarkable organization system for the construction operation.

The corpus of knowledge of one of the most advanced ancient civilizations is thus hidden at this moment within the four walls of this iconic monument, a true wonder of the ancient world.

Building the Great Pyramid of Khufu is not as easy as amassing stone blocks in the shape of a mountain. The manmade structure is neither solid nor exactly hollow. Its internal passages and chambers require careful planning before embarking in such a colossal project.

Besides the use of internal ramps, Houdin presents a very plausible hypothesis on the construction and purpose of the Grand Gallery as a gigantic pulley system to carry the immense granite blocks located on top of the King’s Chamber, designed by ancient architect Hemienu to divert the enormous weight on top of the chamber and prevent the collapse of the entire structure.

Mark Rose’s article “Time for the Great Pyramid?” mentions that Houdin himself has indicated how his internal ramp theory could be tested with infrared thermography. This non destructive research can be done in about 18 hours on site, at a distance of some 50 meters from the pyramid. Rose concludes that “if we are comfortable with sampling the royal mummies for DNA, it should be possible to structure this research in a way that meets the permit criteria.”

The Great Pyramid of Giza: An Engineering Enigma

VIDEO: How the Egyptians built the Great Pyramid: Bob Brier and Jean-Pierre Houdin