MISCELÁNEA

19/03/04

Faraones ecoltados al Más Allá
Pharaohs were escorted to the afterlife
When ancient Egypt was on the threshold of greatness, about 5,000 years ago, the rulers were already wielding fateful powers over life and death and obsessing over their own afterlife. The haunting evidence has lain buried for ages in the parched sands of Abydos, resting place of the earliest pharaohs known to history. In excavations over the past two years, archaeologists have recovered that evidence: the remains of human sacrifices. The practice of human sacrificial burials in Egypt, presumably to coincide with the pharaoh's own funeral, had long been suspected but never substantiated. Now it has been for the first time, and David O'Connor of New York University's Institute of Fine Arts said the discovery was "dramatic proof of the great increase in the prestige and power of both kings and the elite" as early as the first dynasty of the Egyptian civilization, beginning about 2950 B.C. O'Connor says this was a critical period of transition, when what had been a relatively small-scale civilization took a gigantic leap under the ruler Aha. O'Connor, director of the excavations, went on: "The idea that a king had become so important that you dispatch people to go with him into the afterlife reflected changes in royal power and in religious practice and thinking." The discovery team, organized by NYU, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, found six graves next to the ruins of a mortuary ritual site dedicated to the departed Aha, the first pharaoh of the first dynasty, and not far from his tomb. Five of the graves have been excavated, yielding skeletons of court officials, servants and artisans that appear to have been sacrificed to meet the king's needs in the afterlife. The researchers said this was the first definite archaeological evidence of such human sacrifices. Similar graves previously found closer to Aha's tomb and the more than 200 others associated with Aha's successor, Djer, are now thought to be almost certainly sacrificial burials as well, O'Connor said. The findings were described in recent interviews with O'Connor and other members of the expedition. A formal announcement was to be made last week by Farouk Hosni of Egypt's Ministry of Culture and Zahi  Hawass of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The construction of the graves, the archaeologists said, was the principal clue to the fate of their occupants. A careful study of the graves associated with Djer indicated they were all  contiguous and had been covered with uninterrupted wooden roofing. The excavators said the burials thus had to have been made at the same time. Although the graves at the Aha site were separate, their wooden roofs were covered by a  continuous mud plaster layer applied about the same time the adjacent mortuary ritual structure was erected. "This makes a strong case," O'Connor said, "that all these people died and were put in the graves at the  same time." The graves appeared to have been plundered in antiquity, but the looters were not thorough. They left jars with the royal seals of Aha, remnants of ceramics and jewelry of ivory and imported lapis lazuli. "I can't describe how exciting that was," said Laurel Bestock, an NYU archaeologist on the dig. "Some of the burials were not just servants of no account but very, very rich people whose names and titles were inscribed on some possessions." One grave held the bones of donkeys. "The king would need transportation in the afterlife," suggested Matthew Adams, a Penn archaeologist who was the expedition's associate director. Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago who had no role in the research, said the findings "really tell us a lot about the social structure and the belief systems of the early Egyptians." But the discoveries, Teeter added, "are embarrassing for Egyptologists, who like to stress how relatively humane the ancient Egyptians were." Egyptologists said the recent excavations by O'Connor's team were rewriting the history of the first dynasty, which ruled almost two centuries. They also added to the growing reputation of Abydos as a lode of archaeological riches only now being systematically explored. At Abydos, 300 miles south of Cairo, British archaeologists led by William Flinders Petrie in the 1890s were among the first to reconnoiter the ruins, including Aha's tomb. Petrie suspected that the many subsidiary graves were sacrificial burials, but found no persuasive proof, and so he turned his attention to more inviting sites. The simple tombs and mud-brick ruins lacked the grandeur of the later temples and palaces, the pyramids at Giza or the huge tombs in the Valley of the Kings. In recent years, though, German archaeologists have re-examined the royal tombs at Abydos and found, among other things, evidence of early forms of hieroglyphs from about 3200 B.C. If that date is correct, this would seem to show an earlier Egyptian writing than anything previously known, putting its origins at about the same time as that of the Mesopotamian cuneiform. Four years ago, O'Connor's group reported finding the buried remains of 14 wooden boats, 5,000-year-old vessels that were part of royal funerary practices related to a pharaoh's eternal journey in the afterlife. Nearby, the archaeologists also uncovered ruins of walled enclosures surrounding small chapels, which appeared to have been erected in the lifetime of a pharaoh and used for rituals venerating him. "No one was prepared for the surprising discovery of the enclosures," Teeter said. Of the two ritual enclosures recently uncovered, O'Connor said, one was positively identified as belonging to Aha, the successor, perhaps son, of the famous king Narmer of pre-dynastic Egypt. Aha's seal and name were found in the ruins. The six subsidiary graves were close by. O'Connor said the research so far suggested that such human sacrifices in Egypt were a rare custom. No evidence has been found of the practice before Aha, and it apparently ceased before the end of the first dynasty, even though concepts of the afterlife remained virtually unchanged. For at least that time, the prestige and rewards of serving in the royal household must have been attractive, and members of the court apparently regarded the king as divine, his command not to be denied. "Yet we are talking about real people," Teeter said, "and we find it very difficult to understand how their devotion to the king could be so absolute." The good life of the retainers must have been accompanied by anxiety over the health of their aging monarch. A regime change was not likely to earn them a long retirement, only the ultimate exile. "We may think of the ritual slaughter of a large number of retainers as a bit barbaric," Adams said, but the ancient Egyptians may have come to look upon the sacrifices as passports to eternal life, a guarantee of immortality accompanying their king into the afterlife. True or not, Adams said, the archaeologists found "no trace of any kind of trauma on any of the skeletons." The individuals appeared to have died peacefully, probably by poison. 

Fuente: L.A. Daily News 

21/03/04
Egypt Unveils Pharaoh Ramses VI's Sarcophagus
Egypton Sunday unveiled the restored sarcophagus of pharaoh Ramses VI and a statue of Queen Tiye, one of the few well-known female rulers of the ancient world.The sarcophagus was pieced together from 250 fragments likely broken and scattered in the pharaoh's tomb by ancient tomb robbers, reconstruction experts said.The tomb of Ramses VI is one of the largest in the Valley of the Kings, the ancient royal burial ground for Egypt's pharaohs. Ramses VI ruled about 3,100 years ago. The sarcophagus is carved in the shape of a mummy from a single block of green conglomerate, and is on display in the pharaoh's tomb. The restored lid shows a face with wide-set eyes and full lips, and crossed hands holding royal scepters. Much of the lid is missing and some fragments on the sides are supported with steel rods. Only the face is a replica. The original face is on display at the British Museum.

Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said he hoped it would be returned to complete the sarcophagus. Hawass also revealed the statues of Amenhotep III, who ruled around 1372 B.C., and his wife, Queen Tiye. The statues were partly buried in Nile silt and a pool of  water near the Temple of Memnon outside Luxor, about 310 miles south of Cairo.  The 10-foot statue of Queen Tiye shows her wearing a wig and a long dress and holding a floral whisk and papyrus, which were royal symbols. "I have never seen such a beautiful and magnificent statue," Hawass said. "It shows all the details of a strong and mighty woman." The find highlights the "golden age of art and prosperity" under Amenhotep, he said. Chip Vincent, director of the Egypt project at the American Research Center in Cairo, said 10 American, Canadian and Egyptian experts worked for two years on the sarcophagus reconstruction. The work was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. "In the past, visitors to the tomb would only see the broken pieces of the sarcophagus," Vincent said. "Now they have the experience to see the head and the face of the pharaoh." Also unveiled Sunday was a 4-foot-tall white, headless hippopotamus found by German archaeologists excavating the Temple of Memnon site. Previously, hippopotamus representations were restricted to wall scenes and small models. Egyptian and German archaeologists also showed newly excavated sites of a mortuary temple of Seti I in Qurna, on the west bank of the Nile.  The temple, from about 1250 B.C., was dedicated to the god Amun-Re. It was built for Seti's father, Ramses I, who ruled for only two years. The temple was completed by Seti's son, Ramses II.

Fuente: FOX News
 
15/03/04
Undergrad Contributes to Egyptian Excavation
Newswise - Kathelene Knight, a Johns Hopkins University junior from Fairfax, Va., has performed original archaeological field research, participating twice in an dig at the Precinct of the Goddess Mut in Luxor, Egypt, where she contributed to the ongoing work to determine what the temple and its surrounding area looked like long ago. As part of the Johns Hopkins Provost' s Undergraduate Research Award program, Knight spent several weeks last year delving into her topic. http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/503727/

 
15/03/04

Al rey Tut le gustaba el vino tinto
King Tut liked red wine
Ancient Egyptians believed in properly equipping a body for the afterlife, and not just through mummification. A new study reveals that King Tutankhamun eased his arduous journey with a stash of red wine. Spanish scientists have developed the first technique that can determine the color of wine used in ancient jars. They analyzed residues from a jar found in the tomb of King Tut and found that it contained wine made with red  grapes. his is the only extensive chemical analysis that has been done on a jar from King Tut's tomb, and it is the first time scientists have provided evidence of the color of wine in an archaeological sample. The report appears in the March 15 edition of Analytical Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. The earliest scientific evidence of grapes is from 60-million-year-old fossil vines, while the first written record of winemaking comes  from a much more recent source, the Bible, which says Noah planted a vineyard after exiting the ark. Scientists have detected wine in a jar from as far back as 5400 B.C., found at the site of Hajji Firuz Tepe in the northern Zagros Mountains of present-day Iran. But the earliest knowledge about wine cultivation comes from ancient Egypt, where the winemaking process was represented on tomb  walls dating to 2600 B.C. "Wine in ancient Egypt was a drink of great importance, consumed by the  upper classes and the kings," says Maria Rosa Guasch-Jané, a master in Egyptology at the University of Barcelona in Spain. She and Rosa M. Lamuela-Raventós, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition and food science, have analyzed samples of ancient Egyptian jars belonging to the Egyptian Museum  in Cairo and the British Museum in London.  One sample came from the tomb of King Tutankhamun, discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter in Western Thebes, Egypt. The inscription on the jar reads: "Year 5. Wine of the House-of-Tutankhamun Ruler-of-the-Southern-On,  l.p.h.[in] the Western River. By the chief vintner Khaa." "Wine jars were placed in tombs as funerary meals," Guasch-Jané says. "The New Kingdom wine jars were labeled with product, year, source and even the name of the vine grower, but they did not mention the color of the wines they contained." Scientists and oenophiles have long debated the type of grape that ancient Egyptians used in their wines. Using a new method for the identification of grape markers, Lamuela-Raventós and her coworkers determined that the wine in this jar was made with red grapes. Tartaric acid, which is rarely found in nature from sources other than grapes, has been used before as a marker for the presence of wine in ancient residues, but it offers no information about the type of grape. Malvidin-glucoside is the major component that gives the red color to young red wines, and no other juice used in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean region contains it. As wine ages, malvidin reacts with other compounds forming more complex structures. The researchers directed their efforts toward developing a tool for breaking down these structures to release syringic acid. Analysis of ancient samples requires a very sensitive method to minimize the amount of sample that needs to be used. To detect syringic acid, the researchers used a technique called liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry in tandem mode, which is known for its high speed, sensitivity and selectivity. This method has never before been used to identify tartaric acid or syringic acid, nor has it been used on any archaeological sample, according to the scientists. Lamuela-Raventós and Guasch-Jané plan to use the new technique in more extensive studies of wine residues from other archaeological samples. The Spanish Wine Culture Foundation and Codorniu Group provided funding for this research.
Fuente: EurekAlert
 

13/03/04
Tres pequeñas pirámides a la entrada de Nubia
Three small Pyramids at Nubia entrance
Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni during his visit to Aswan on Friday said that the project of developing Nubia entrance which includes seven temples from Philae through Klabsha till Abu Simbel would finish shortly. An Italian artist will take part in carrying out the project within the Egyptian-Italian celebrations, since he was inspired in his works by the pyramids so he will build three pyramids of granite to be as symbols of Egyptian gates to Africa.

11/03/04
La UNESCO alaba los trabajos de restauración de los lugares arqueológicos de Egipto
UNESCO hails restoration works of Egypt's archaeological sites
The UNESCO cmmittee, responsible for establishing civilization museum in Fustat, Old Cairo and developing Nubia antiquities during its meeting Wednesday under Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr.Zahi Hawas, lauded the restoration works and development of the Egyptian archaeological sites particularly Abu Simbel, Kalabsha and Philae areas. The committee asserted the necessity of launching special exhibition on Nubia antiquities and the renovation operation in the committee's premises in Paris in next November to be an example to be followed by the UNESCO member states.
 
10/03/04
Turistas reciben a Ahmosis I y Ramses I
Tourists receive Ahmos I, Ramses I
Luxor, once a capital of the ancient Pharaonic civilization under the name Thebes, yesterday received more than 5,000 Egyptian and foreign tourists to celebrate the return of the mummies of King Ahmos I, who defeated the Hyksos, and King Ramses I. The royal mummies will be displayed later at Luxor Museum, which is being expanded and revamped to be the first museum that tells the glory and great deeds of Thebes. The mummies that arrived earlier in the day, were boarded on funeral chariots that marched in a massive procession from the Luxor International Airport to the Rams Aisle which stretches from the temples of Luxor to the Temple of Karnak.  Secretary General of the Supreme Council of  Antiquities (SCA)Zahi Hawas, said the Luxor Museum will be built over an area of 5000 meters to  accommodate more than 140 historical monuments representing the golden era of the Egyptian military during the 18th Dynasty along with glimpses of the  scientific and artistic renaissance of that age. 

10/03/04
El SCA recupera tres nuevas piezas
Trois nouvelles pièces pharaoniques sorties illicitement viennent de rentrer au pays grâce aux efforts du Conseil suprême des antiquités.
Un fragment en calcaire, un collier en pierres précieuses et un vase : Zahi Hawas, secrétaire général du Conseil Suprême des Antiquités (CSA), n'est pas rentré les mains vides de New York. Un nouveau succès du CSA, qui mène une campagne sans relâche pour la récupération des trésors égyptiens se trouvant à l'étranger et sortis illégalement du pays . Le premier objet est un fragment en pierre calcaire volé de la région de Saqqara sur lequel se trouvent des inscriptions hiéroglyphiques. Il fait partie des pièces saisies lors du procès du grand trafiquant américain Fréderic Shultz, condamné à 33 mois de prison. Cet à son emplacement original, dans une des tombes de Saqqara, qu'il sera restitué. Les deux autres pièces étaient en possession d'un Américain d'origine italienne nommé Edwards. Ce dernier les avait achetées il y a quinze ans à Londres et a décidé de les restituer à l'Egypte. Il s'agit d'un collier en  pier es  précieuses et d'un vase en poterie remontant tous les deux au Nouvel  Empire. « Ces deux pièces seront exposées dans un des nouveaux musées au nom d'Edwards pour son action en faveur de notre patrimoine », a souligné Hawas  lors d'une conférence de presse tenue à l'aéroport du Caire.  L'Egypte devrait en outre récupérer à la fin de ce mois-ci un fragment volé  au temple de Behbeit Al-Hégara. En fait, cette pièce faisait partie d'une vente aux enchères dans la salle Christie's de New York en juin 2002. Le CSA  avait réussi à arrêter la vente après avoir prouvé sa sortie de façon  illégale du pays en 1990. Les efforts du CSA ne s'arrêtent pas là, puisque des milliers de pièces sont  toujours hors du pays. « Le New York Times a mentionné la présence de deux  pièces remontant à la XXVIe dynastie en possession d'un commerçant  d'antiquités d'origine libanaise qui possède une galerie d'antiquités à New  York. Le CSA est actuellement en  négociation avec l'avocat du commerçant pour reprendre ces deux pièces. Celles-ci ont été volées sur le site  d'Akhmim, à Sohag », a souligné Hawas. Il est à noter que depuis la création du nouveau département de récupération   es  antiquités au sein du CSA, l'Egypte a réussi à ramener 500 pièces de différents pays, dont 311 pièces dans le cadre du procès de Tareq  Al-Séweissi, membre influent du Parti National Démocrate (PND, au pouvoir), qui a lieu actuellement.  Ces pièces étaient sorties en contrebande en  Suisse. Plusieurs personnalités importantes y sont impliquées.

Fuente: Al-Ahram Hebdo.

10/03/04
La plaga bubónica pudo haberse originado en el antiguo Egipto
Bubonic Plague Traced to Ancient Egypt
The bubonic plague, or Black Death, may have originated in ancient Egypt, according to a new study.
"This is the first time the plague's origins in Egypt have been backed up by archaeological evidence," said Eva Panagiotakopulu, who made the discovery. Panagiotakopulu is an archaeologist and fossil-insect expert at the University of Sheffield, England. While most researchers consider central Asia as the birthplace of the deadly epidemic, the new study-published recently in the Journal of Biogeography-suggests an alternate starting point. "It's usually thought that the plague entered from the East," said B. Joseph Hinnebusch, a microbiologist at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. The new study suggests that North Africa could also be the source of the epidemic, he said. The bacteria-caused plague is more than a grim historical footnote today. The African island of Madagascar experienced outbreaks in the late 1990s, and some worry about the plague's potential use as an agent of bioterrorism. Information about past epidemics could help scientists predict where new outbreaks would occur and better understand how the disease spreads, Hinnebusch said.
Plague in Europe
The most famous plague outbreak swept through Europe in the 1300s. Dubbed the Black Death, the disease killed more than 25 million people-one-fourth of the continent's population. The nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosy" is traced to the plague's rose-colored lesions and deadly spread. Earlier outbreaks also decimated Europe. The Justinian Plague claimed as many as a hundred million lives in the Byzantine Empire during the sixth century A.D. The bacterium that causes bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, lives inside the gut of its main carrier, the flea. The plague likely spread to Europe on the backs of shipboard black rats that carried plague-infested fleas. "It's the plague's unholy trinity," said Michael Antolin, a biologist at  Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who studies bubonic plague in black-tailed prairie dogs. Inside the flea, bacteria multiply and block off the flea's throat-like  area. The flea gets increasingly hungry. When it  bites-whether rat or human-it spits some bacteria out into the bite wound. People can contract several forms of the plague. The main form, bubonic, often starts out with fever, chills, and enlarged lymph nodes. But if the bacteria make their way into the lungs, a deadlier form, called pneumonic plague, can be spread from person to person. Pneumonic plague occurs in about 5 percent of those infected with bubonic plague. Several researchers have suggested that Europe's Black Death spread too fast and killed too many to be attributed to bubonic plague. But plague experts Hinnebusch and Antolin said that the pneumonic plague form could have been responsible for the quick-spreading epidemic. "If you inhale it, you're pretty much dead," Antolin said. 

Pharaohs' Plague
Panagiotakopulu came upon clues to the plague's presence in ancient Egypt by accident. She had been looking at fossil insect remains to learn about daily life more than 3,000 years ago. "People lived close to their domestic animals and to the pests that infected their household," Panagiotakopulu said. "I just started looking at what diseases people might have, what diseases their pigs might have, and what diseases might have been passed from other animals to humans." The researcher used a fine sieve to strain out remains of insects and small mammals from several sites. Panagiotakopulu, who is conducting similar work on Viking ruins in Greenland, said that looking at insects is a key way to reconstruct the past. "I can learn about how people lived by looking in their homes and at what was living with and on them," she said. In Egypt Panagiotakopulu combed the workers'-village site in Amarna, where the builders of the tombs of Egyptian kings Tutankhamun and Akhenaton lived. There, the researcher unearthed cat and human fleas-known to be plague carriers in some cases-in and around the workers' homes. That find spurred Panagiotakopulu to believe that the bubonic plague's fleaborne bacteria could also have been lurking in the area, so she went in search of other clues. Previous excavations along the Nile Delta had turned up Nile rats, an endemic species, dating to the 16th and 17th century B.C. The plague's main carrier flea is thought to be native to the Nile Valley and is known to be a Nile rat parasite. According to Panagiotakopulu, the Nile provided an ideal spot for rats to carry the plague into urban communities. Around 3500 B.C.,people began to build cities next to the Nile. During floods, the habitat of the Nile rat was disturbed, sending the rodent-and its flea and bacterial hitchhikers-into the human domain. Egyptian writings from a similar time period point to an epidemic disease with symptoms similar to the plague. A 1500 B.C. medical text known as the Ebers Papyrus identifies a disease that "has produced a bubo, and the pus has petrified, the disease has hit." It's possible that trade spread the disease to black rats, which then carried the bacteria to other sites of plague epidemics. Panagiotakopulu suspects that black rats, endemic to India, arrived in Egypt with sea trade. In Egypt the rats picked up plague-carrying fleas and were later born on ships that sailed across the Mediterranean to southern Europe.

Present-day Plague

"Most people think of the plague as a historical disease," said Hinnebusch, who conducts plague research for the U.S. National Institute of Allergy andInfectious Diseases. "But it's still out there, and it's still an international public health issue." During the last ten years bubonic plague reappeared in Madagascar, which nowhas between 500 and 2,000 new cases each year. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization tallies as many as 3,000 plague cases each year aroundthe world. Research interest in bubonic plague has been growing as, like anthrax, it could be used as a deadly bioterrorism agent (especially in pneumonic form).While antibodies can be extremely effective against early stages of the plague, scientists are trying to learn more about how it works to be able topredict outbreaks and counteract the bacterium's scrambling of the immune system. "There are so many unanswered questions about the plague," Hinnebusch said. The plague will sleep for decades, even centuries, reemerge, and then seemto vanish again. Panagiotakopulu said she wants to continue to track the evidence for the plague in Egypt and elsewhere to expand understanding of the still-mysterious epidemic.

Fuente: National Geographic News
 

09/03/04
Nueva excavación submarina en el puerto occidental de Alejandría, Abu Qir
Underwater dig in AIex. E. Harbour, Abu Qir
The Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) has approved a plan by an European archaeological mission for exploration in Alexandria's East Harbour and off the coast at Abu Qir.Head of the Underwater Exploration Unit in Alexandria, Alaa Eddin Mahrous said that the European team would begin work on the sites on April 1 under SCA supervision. SCA Chief Dr. Zahi Hawas also gave the go-ahead to a Russian mission toexplore the Mahsoura area between El-Anfoushi and Agami on the north coast. The Russian team is to work in mid-April. 

09/03/04
Luxor recibe las momias de Ahmosis y Ramses el Martes
Luxor receives Ahmose, Ramses mummies Tuesday
The south Egyptian city of Luxor will Tuesday receive the mummies of King Ahmose, who defeated the Hyksos, and King Ramses I. The mummies will arrive from Cairo with Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Dr. Zahi Hawas to put them on display inside the Luxor Museum annex, which is being prepared to be the first museum to tell the military history and glory of Thebes, the ancient name of Luxor. The museum is scheduled to be inaugurated in a world gala next month. Hawas said the annex stands over an area of 500 meters and hosts 140 pieces of antiquities revolving around the golden era of the Egyptian military, particularly during the 18th Pharaonic Dynasty. Hawas said  the museum also houses pieces on display for the first time, including the statues of King Thutmose III and Ramses III, the last of the  great warrior kings, in addition to a statue of a person named Yasser, who was chief archer and commander of Egypt's eastern gate in Sinai. Mahmoud Mabrouk, Head of the Museums Sector, said work in the annex took nine months after a 12-year hiatus at a cost of L.E. 17 million and was provided with systems of museum show modern lights and electronic security devices.
  

26/02/04
Egypt beats off international contender to win heritage project prize
Egypt has won the prize for the best heritage authentication project out of the 803 submitted by 36 countries which participated in the Data Summit Conference. Dr. Fathi Saleh, Director of the Cultural and Natural Heritage Registration Center at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, which submitted the winning project, said that the competition rules depended on the use of the latest data technology for registration purpose. The outstanding success of the center's project means that the computerized program for registering local cultural heritage is on the right track. Egypt with its archaeological as well as natural wealth is considered one of the richest countries in the world. The folk heritage is similarly diverse and can be traced in everyday life. As for music, it is prolific, but regrettably a large portion of the musical heritage has been lost. The center, originally annexed to the Cabinet, started its activities with a plan to register the local heritage in all its forms including antiquities, architecture and manuscripts, as well as music, customs, handicrafts, photography and the natural heritage, like nature reserves, natural resources and wildlife. The center was taken over by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2003 and it has already produced a series of five maps covering archaeological sites in the Delta and half of the Upper Egyptian governorates. Dr. Saleh added that several books on local musical heritage have been released. A number of papers have also been written on the Arab contributions to medicine, mostly in the 15th and 17th centuries. "We are working on astronomy at present," said Dr. Saleh. Architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries has not been neglected and a CD of down town Cairo buildings which are a mixture of European, Pharaonic and Islamic architecture has been released. At present, experts are producing another CD on the architecture of the Cairene districts of Zamalek and Abbassia. Dr. Saleh said that on the center's first floor, there is a "panorama of culture" display, which comprises circular screens on which different aspects of Egyptian civilization are shown. For instance, the four walls of a hall at the Luxor Temple include depictions of plants and birds together as well as an inscription recording the name of Thmosis III of the 18th Dynasty. Pictures of these plants and birds are followed by photos of the modern day equivalents. Dr. Saleh said regarding folk culture, the Al-Sira Al-Hilalia (Hilalia Biography) was submitted to UNESCO, as one of the masterpieces of oral heritage. The Sira is a folk epic that takes 500 hours relay. It tells the story of the conflict between Al-Zanati Khalifa, a Tunisian Prince and Abu Zeid Al-Hilali, an Egyptian of Saudi origin. Dr. Fathi added that the center has four halls, one for the culture  panorama, the second for the Hilalia Biography, the third for the Arab accomplishments in astronomy and the forth covers computer projects  undertaken by the center, in all fields.

Le nouveau mystère Toutankhamon
- Una estatua que probablemente es de Tutanjamon, ha sido recuperada la pasada semana en Algeria, en posesión de unos traficantes de antigüedades -

Une statue qui est probablement celle du jeune pharaon Toutankhamon a été retrouvée la semaine dernière en Algérie en possession d'une bande de trafiquants d'antiquités. Les autorités algériennes ont informé leurs homologues égyptiennes de cette affaire qui à leur tour ont mis l'Interpol sur la piste. « Le Conseil Suprême des Antiquités (CSA) a déjà demandé à l'Interpol de prendre les mesures nécessaires et de suivre de près l'enquête », a souligné Zahi Hawas, secrétaire général du CSA. La provenance de la pièce reste encore ambiguë. Les autorités algériennes ont annoncé que les trafiquants avaient obtenu cette statue d'un des musées égyptiens, alors que les responsables du CSA assurent qu'aucun musée n'a annoncé la disparition d'une de ses pièces. Pour ce, selon Hawas, l'Egypte ne peut prendre aucun pas concret avant la fin de l'enquête. « Une fois l'enquête terminée, on va sûrement demander la restitution de cette pièce », reprend Hawas.
La bande des trafiquants avait été arrêtée essayant de vendre la statue à neuf millions de dinars algériens (l'équivalant de 100 000 US$) dans une région proche de la frontière avec la Tunisie. Pour les Egyptiens, aucun détail de la pièce ne leur est connu, ni la forme ni les dimensions ; ils ne possèdent même pas une photo de la statue. « Une fois assuré que cette pièce est une statue pharaonique authentique, Toutankhamon ou autre, le CSA va demander aux Algériens sa restitution. Mais jusqu'à présent on ne sait pas si cette statue est celle de Toutankhamon ou pas », reprend Hawas. Il est à noter qu'il existe un accord de sécurité entre les deux pays qui prévoit la restitution des chefs-d'ouvre d'art découverts volés ou sortis illégalement d'un des deux pays.

Fuente Hebdo. Al Ahram.
 

24/02/04
Los Escolares egipcios hallan señales del árabe dentro de los jeroglíficos.
An Egyptian scholar based in London has been delighting Arab audiences with his inquiries into the recondite world of medieval Muslims who wrote about ancient Egypt and had some insights into hieroglyphic writing. Among Western scholars, who have led the field in Egyptology since Napoleon' s campaign of 1798 and Jean-Francois Champollion's groundbreaking work on hieroglyphics in the 1820s, the conventional wisdom has been that Arabs and Muslims dismissed ancient Egypt as an irrelevant pagan civilisation. But Okasha El Daly, who lectures at University College London and holds an outreach post at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, says that a thousand years earlier, when Arab civilisation was close to its height, Muslim scholars not only took an interest in ancient Egypt but could also correctly interpret at least a few characters in the hieroglyphic script. From libraries in Paris and Istanbul, he has dug up  manuscripts, which contain tables showing the phonetic value of hieroglyphs. Three Arab scholars between them correctly identified about 10 of the several dozen hieroglyphs, which they thought made up a phonetic alphabet, he told Reuters. 

But more importantly, at a time when medieval Europeans thought that hieroglyphs were just magical symbols, the Arab scholars grasped two of the basic principles - that some signs represented sounds while others were determinatives, signs that conveyed the concept of the word pictorially. That breakthrough was the work of Ahmad bin Abu Bakr ibn Wahshiyah, a ninth and 10th century polymath who lived in Iraq and wrote about everything from chemistry to the environment to agriculture and pre-Islamic cultures.  Ibn Wahshiyah's work on ancient writing systems, entitled the Devotee's Yearning to Understand the Symbols of Pens, was translated into English and published in London in 1806, before Champollion began his work on the  Rosetta Stone, the parallel text which enabled him to break the hieroglyphic code.
"The important thing is they realised that these hieroglyphs were not pictures, which was the prevailing view among classical writers," El Daly said in an interview. "Ibn Wahshiya was the first scholar ever to talk about determinatives, describing them in a paragraph which any modern scholar would be proud of," he added.
Another of the scholars was the Muslim mystic Dhu al-Nun al-Misri, who grew up in the Upper Egyptian town of Akhmim in the early ninth century when most of the local inhabitants still spoke Coptic, the direct descendant of ancient Egyptian. Champollion would not have been able to decipher hieroglyphics without his own knowledge of Coptic, which died out in daily life in Egypt in medieval times but survives in some of the liturgy of the Egyptian Church. "The manuscript I have shows him (al-Misri) getting the Coptic all correct. The demotic is some of it correct and the hieroglyphic is some of it correct too," El Daly said. Demotic was a late shorthand form of hieroglyphs, used by scribes who did not have time to write letters in full. While hieroglyphics are thought to have died out after the Roman invasion of 30 BC, demotic lingered on longer. On the island of Philae in the far south of Egypt, a piece of demotic graffiti has been dated to about AD 450. El Daly says the Muslim scholars give no indication of where they obtained  their knowledge but he does not rule out the possibility that some residual knowledge of the old writing systems survived in remote parts of Upper Egypt. "What is wrong in Egyptology is that we assume that knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language completely died with the arrival of Islam," he added. "I give two specific examples to show that the knowledge... was still alive  when Muslims came to Egypt. The Muslims assumed that Egypt was a land of science and magic and wisdom and as such they wanted to learn hieroglyphics  to have access to such vast knowledge," he added. El Daly agreed with the widespread view that in early modern times most Arabs and Muslims took little interest in ancient cultures but noted that  scholars continued to copy the early Muslim manuscripts on ancient Egypt well into the 18th century.

Fuente: Reuters
 
24/02/04
IBM lleva el antiguo Egipto al ciberespacio
(La dirección de la web está más abajo: www.eternalegypt.org)
Pairing the ancient with the cutting edge, the Egyptian government and IBM have created a Web site that makes available 7,000 years of Egyptian history to Internet users around the world. ''Egypt's cultural heritage has just taken an important step into cyberspace,'' Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian minister of culture, said in a statement prepared for a press conference today in Cairo. ''This project will enable us to treat the entire country of Egypt as a single museum that can be toured by individual visitors or a global audience.'' Called Eternal Egypt (www.eternalegypt.org), the Web site is the product of IBM Research and Services teams in the United States and Egyptian experts, and took three years to create. It features multimedia animation, 360-degree image sequences, panoramas of historical locations, three-dimensional scans, real-time photos from Web cameras and thousands of high-resolution images of ancient artifacts. Together, they present a picture of Egyptian culture and civilization spanning seven millenia.

'New appreciation'
''The challenge was to use the technology we have to solve the problem: How can you experience and internalize this without going to Egypt?'' said Stan Litow, vice president of IBM corporate community relations. ''This will give people a whole new appreciation for the art and culture there.'' Visitors to the site will be able to tour a virtual Tutankhamun's tomb as it looked the day Howard Carter discovered the chamber in 1922, view the Lighthouse of Alexandria as it appeared before it was destroyed in the 14th century and examine the Sphinx as it is believed to have appeared 2,000 years ago, to name a few of the opportunities for ''sightseeing'' at Eternal Egypt. In addition to the Web site, IBM also worked with Egyptian scholars to create hand-held digital guides for use in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo that go beyond traditional audio-only devices to offer text, images and animation, information that visitors can later e-mail to themselves for a record of their tour.  

Fuente: Poughkeepsie Journal
 

23/02/04

An Illicit Journey Out of Egypt, Only a Few Questions Asked
The past is everywhere in the Upper Egypt city of Akhmim, and mining it is a constant occupation.

At a government archaeological site, workers haul bucketfuls of soil and sand from a vast crease in the earth, gradually revealing a mammoth temple from the reign of Ramses II. But unsanctioned digging goes on all over Akhmim — at an ancient cemetery riddled with holes left by looters; at farms and construction sites; inside homes where residents, sometimes inspired by the divinations of fortune tellers, hunt for treasure beneath dirt floors. A decade ago, laborers excavating a building site in Akhmim hit a four-foot-high, tombstone-shaped slab of limestone incised with hieroglyphics and the image of Osiris, god of the lower world. The ancient Egyptians offered this kind of monument, known as a stele, as a tribute to a god or a dead relative. Under Egyptian law, the stele should have been turned over to the government, a recovered shard of the national patrimony. Instead, something considerably more commonplace happened. It became an outlaw. Quietly, it passed into the global antiquities market. Five years later, cleansed of its illicit origins, it emerged in New York as a rich man's prize, in the foyer of a Fifth Avenue apartment.

Journeys like this one are traced by countless artifacts from Akhmims all over the world. Typically they begin in silence and end in silence, few questions asked.

But the stele from Akhmim has given up its secrets. Two years ago, it was seized by federal agents in New York as part of a court case. The records from that case, together with dozens of interviews and documents gathered on three continents, provide that rarest of commodities in the antiquities trade: a detailed account of the smuggling, marketing and selling of a piece of loot.

That narrative reveals the inner motivations and mechanics of the flourishing worldwide market for high-end antiquities. And while much of the material flowing through that market is unassailably clean, the stele's progress shows how seamlessly looted objects can blend in, whether dealers are aware of it or not.

"People think that there is an illicit market and a legitimate market," said Ricardo J. Elia, associate professor of archaeology at Boston University and a frequent critic of the antiquities industry. "In fact, it is the same."The trade in looted antiquities is, of course, as old as antiquity. Its precise dimensions are necessarily unknown, though Interpol, the international police organization, says looting is probably vastly underreported, since so many countries lack the resources to safeguard historical sites.

Even so, what is clear is that the decade of the stele's passage was one of enormous changes in the antiquities world, all accompanied by heightened legal scrutiny and the racheting up of a long and bitter debate about the ethics of the trade. Political upheaval opened up new sources of loot all over the globe. Economic globalization and the rise of the Internet helped speed those goods to market. To critics of the industry — largely archaeologists and some foreign governments — the market's voracious demand for fresh objects is responsible for the continuing destruction of sites. But dealers say they have become increasingly vigilant in recent years, far more conscientious about operating within the antiquities laws of countries like Egypt. They say they make every effort to sell only legitimate artifacts. "I think 15 years ago, people took a more relaxed view of things," said James Ede, a London-based dealer and head of the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art. "The feeling was that these were stupid laws, they were laws in other countries, they didn't apply to us." Today, he said, that feeling has completely changed.

MULTIMEDIA.- Vídeo: Stolen Treasures

19/02/04

Proyecto italo-egipcio para registrar las antigüedades de Saqqara y Abusir

El Ministro de Cultura Farouk Hosni, aprobó la puesta en marcha de un proyecto egipcio-italiano cuyo objetivo será poner en ordenadores todos los templos, tumbas y pirámides de Saqqara y Abusir.

El Secretario General del Consejo Supremo de Antigüedades Egipcias, Zahi Hawass, dijo que el proyecto será lanzado el próximo marzo para documentar y hacer una lista de las inscripciones y grabados de tan importantes lugares arqueológicos y para preparar y desarrollar los lugares para las visitas turísticas.

18/02/04

High Museum Turnout Forces Tombs' Closure
Unexpectedly high visitor interest has forced the Metropolitan Museum of Art to close two Egyptian tombs that were opened for unrestricted viewing last month. The museum had removed protective glass screens from the tombs of Raemkai and Perneb Jan. 29, allowing visitors full views of interior limestone carvings for the first time in 90 years. But a crush of some 24,000 visitors since the unveiling "has put the humidity at unacceptable limits," said Harold Holzer, the Met's vice president for marketing and communications. They had been scheduled to remain open to the public until mid-March, but will instead close Thursday, he said."We never anticipated that the response would be so huge," Holzer said. The museum decided to allow open-air viewing of the tombs' carvings while it waited to install new glass panels on order from Germany. The tombs are now scheduled to reopen in May, after the new panels are in place.

Fuente: Yahoo

15/02/04
Arqueólogos egipcios visitan museos de París y Londres
El Ministro de Cultura, Farouk Hosni, recibió ayer un informe sobre el resultado de la visita de la delegación egipcia a los museos de antigüedades de Londres y Paris, consecuencia de una invitación de la UNESCO para llevar a cabo la actualización de las técnicas de establecimiento en los almacenes de los museos y los laboratorios de restauración de antigüedades en el Museo de la Civilización de Fustat. Hussein Ahmed, Director de la Fundación de Antigüedades de Nuba, dijo que la delegación tomó nota de las modernas técnicas utilizadas en los museos  y el mantenimiento de antigüedades, así como los métodos de exposición. El Arqueólogo Ayman Abdul Moneim, Director  del Museo de la Civilización, dijo que el Museo de Fustat se pondrá en marcha el próximo mes en cooperación con la UNESCO.
  
12/02/04
Inédita fototeca on-line con 30 mil imágenes del antiguo Egipto.
Una inédita fototeca on-line con 30 mil imágenes de los sitios arqueológicos del Antiguo Egipto, a menudo inhallables, se podrá consultar en el sitio web del Museo Cívico de Rovereto Trento, noreste de Italia. Así lo prevé un acuerdo que firmarán el museo italiano y el Consejo Supremo de las Antigüedades Egipcias. El contrato se convertirá en el primer protocolo de este tipo que rubrican las autoridades egipcias con un museo extranjero. Zahi Hawas, secretario general del Consejo Supremo de las Antigüedades Egipcias, llegó a Rovereto junto a Sabri Abdel Aziz, director del Departamento de las Antigüedades. En un encuentro con el director del Museo de Rovereto, Hawas anunció que a la sombra de la Pirámide de Kefrén en la llanura de Gizeh se descubrió la tumba intacta y jamás profanada de un noble de la Cuarta Dinastía (alrededor del 2.500 a.C.), que fue la que realizó las Pirámides y la Esfinge. El arqueólogo egipcio dijo además que 2005 será el año en que se revelarán los misterios de la Gran Pirámide de Keops y el secreto que aún permanece escondido bajo el complejo de las Pirámides y de la Esfinge, en Gizeh.

Fuente: ANSA. 

13/02/04

La Spedizione Aretusea par i Papiri del Nilo
Antichi papiri egiziani saranno restaurati da tecnici dell' istituto del papiro a Siracusa. E' quanto emerso dalla relazione del presidente dell' Istituto Internazionale del Papiro, e docente di egittologia dell' Universita' di Vienna, Gunther Holbl, intervenuto al sesto convegno europeo della Federazione europea guide turistiche nel Museo Paolo Orsi di Siracusa. ''Il nostro Istituto - dice Holbl - svolge ormai da diversi anni missioni di restauro conservativo dei papiri del Museo Egizio del Cairo e del Museo Greco-Romano di Alessandria, sotto la direzione di Corrado Basile e in collaborazione con Anna Di Natale. Considerata la necessita' di intervenire sul maggior numero di papiri, il segretario generale del supreme council of antiquities ha autorizzato l' Istituto ad allestire un laboratorio di restauro conservativo dei papiri nel museo Egizio del Cairo e un altro in Alessandria. I laboratori sono in fase di realizzazione e dovrebbero essere attivati entro il mese di giugno. Si sta infatti provvedendo ad attrezzarli opportunamente e alla formazione di una equipe di conservatori specializzata, che lavorera' sotto la direzione dell' esperto Corrado Basile''. Quest' ultimo ha anche avuto affidato l' incarico dall' Universita' del Cairo di estrarre e restaurare i papiri che formano il cartonnage delle mummie conservate a Ihnassya, nel medio Egitto.

Fuente: Ansa. Sicilia

13/02/04
La tercera fase de actualización de las Pirámides estará completada para finales de año.
(Phase 3 of Pyramids upgrade complete by year-end)
The third and final phase of the upgrade project in the Pyramids Plateau in Giza will be completed by the end of this year. The project is part of plans to turn the Pyramids Plateau into an international tourist site, Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni said yesterday. Footpaths are to be paved, the area is to be levelled out, and entrance and exit gates with electronic security systems will be built, Hosni said. "New lighting for the monuments will be installed and visitors will be able to use an environment-friendly shuttle bus service to and from the site," Hosni added.

Fuente: The Egyptian Gazette
 
10/02/04
Nombrado el nuevo Director del Museo Egipcio de El Cairo.
(New Director of Egyptian Museum appointed)
Dr. Wafaa Al-Seddeek has been appointed new Director General of the Egyptian Museum, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Dr. Zahi Hawas said on Monday. Seddeek will follow up the new venture to be carried out at the museum this year which includes the construction of an administration building, a library and a visitors' center. She will also be responsible for developing display and lighting systems at the museum's various halls and promoting the museum school for children in addition to establishing the first audio library for the blind, he said.
  
A home of their own
(Nueva casa para los componentes del Dakhla Oasis Project)
After 27 years the Dakhla Oasis Project finally has its own abode. Jenny Jobbins attended the official opening Encircling the top of a sandy mound known locally as the hill of Al-Gondi (the soldier) is a mud-brick wall, or rather the outer wall of a complex of buildings, much like a smaller version of the centuries-old citadels that form the core of most oasis settlements in the Western Desert. At the foot of the hill, palm groves stretch away into the distance. The only item to put a date on the timeless setting is the main road that runs past into Mut, the largest town in Dakhla Oasis.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/677/he1.htm
  
11/02/04
Arqueólogo alemán arroja más luz sobre el origen de la Pirámide
(Habla también sobre el gobernante-rey Hor)
- German Archaeologist Throws Light on Pyramid Origin -
 Egypt's ancient pyramids are probably a byproduct of a decision to build walls around the tombs of kings, a leading expert on early Egyptian royal burials said Wednesday. Guenter Dreyer, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, said he based his theory on similarities between Egypt's first pyramid, built at Saqqara south of Cairo for the Pharaoh Zozer in about 2650 BC, and the structure of the tomb of one of his immediate predecessors. The Saqqara pyramid, known as the Step Pyramid because of its unique shape, began as a flat mound about eight meters (25 feet) high built over the burial chamber of the pharaoh. At the slightly earlier tomb of the Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, at the old royal cemetery at Abydos in southern Egypt, German excavators found evidence of a similar flat mound covering the central part of the underground burial complex. The walls in the central part of the tomb were compacted to about twice the thickness and half the height of the walls to the sides, suggesting a heavy weight had once stood on top, Dreyer told Reuters in an interview. Khasekhemwy's complex also had one of the niched enclosure walls which later became a distinctive feature of the dozens of pyramids built along thewestern edge of the Nile Valley for hundreds of years to come, he said.

MOUND OF CREATION

But in the Abydos example, the enclosure wall was much further from the tomb than in the case of Saqqara. "My theory is that...these two elements (the mound and the wall) were united at Saqqara by his successor Zozer and then something happened. The mound on top of the tomb was hidden by the large surroundin  wall -- it was not visible. "This was a problem, because this mound I think represented the primeval
mound of creation and guaranteed the resurrection of the king," said Dreyer.
The architects of the Saqqara complex solved the problem by building another smaller flat mound on top of the first and then decided to extend it upwards by adding more mounds. The Sakkara pyramid is an intermediate stage between theflat mounds, known as mastabas, of the earlier period and the smooth-sided classical pyramids of the type found at Giza, just outside the modern city of Cairo. Archaeologists have long speculated that the pyramids are an extension of the mastaba concept but Dreyer's theory adds the enclosure wall as an explanation for the transition. Dreyer, who has spent the last decade studying the kings who ruled in southern Egypt in what was called the pre-dynastic period, before about 3100 BC, said he now believed he had identified another king from the period, known by the name of Horus or Hor, the same as that as the falcon god. He is basing his theory on a close analysis of two ancient palettes, flat ceremonial stone plates on which early Egyptians appear to have recorded historical and mythological events. Two palettes show a Horus falcon in a context which Dreyer interprets as the place where the name of a king should appear. Several palettes have been interpreted as commemorating the conquest of Nile Delta towns by the kings from the south, a process which later led to the political unification of Egypt.
The conquest has traditionally been attributed to either King Narmer or King Aha, who lived about 200 years later. "He (King Horus) started the whole thing, conquering the Delta, several generations before Narmer. Why? He wanted to safeguard trade routes to Palestine which ran along the Delta, where the Egyptians brought all the wine in," Dreyer said.

Fuente: Reuter  

03/02/04
El Templo de Edfú recibe visitantes a través de su entrada faraónica por primera vez.
(Edfu Temple receives visitors through pharaonic entrance for the first time)
Minister of Culture, Dr. Farouk Hosni is to inaugurate over the few next days the project of developing and renovating Edfu temple in Aswan for receiving the visitors through its ancient entrance that dates back to 2500 B.C and had been built by the Ancient Egyptians. Edfu temple is considered one of the best and most fantastic Egyptian temples that had been constructed during the Ptolemaic era, said Dr. Zahi Hawas Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, noting that the temple is a comprehensive record of the images of offering the corbans to the Kings and gods as well as the tableaus of traditional wars. The temple also includes Nilometer and a gallery for the goddess Nout. On his part, archaeologist Ayman Abdul Mouniem, director of the project, said a center for the visitors which is provided with information and illustrative images of the temple, had been established, noting that the project cost about LE 25 million and implemented in 24 months.
  
31/01/04
Exposición de Antigüedades Egipcias en París el próximo mes de octubre.
(Egyptian Antiquities Exhibition In Paris Next October)
The Paris-based World Arab Institute will organize next October an Egyptian antiquities exhibition that comprises 150 newly discovered pieces, said the institute's director following his meeting with Tourism MinisterMamdouh el-Beltagui.  The exhibition is expected to receive 4000 visitors daily. Meanwhile the Belgian "Lalibre Belgipae" newspaper issued a supplement on the tourist attracting factors of the Egyptian nature. The paper noted that the tourists seeking suspension are enjoying their visits to these areas.
http://www.uk.sis.gov.eg/online/html11/o310124m.htm
 

29/01/04

El Gobierno Central tiene como objetivo en Hamburgo condenar al cierre a la mayor parte de los planes de estudio y departamentos de investigación en Arqueología. Por el momento, el plan de la Presidencia de la Universidad eliminará los departamentos de Arqueología Prehistórica y Temprana, el de Egiptología y el de Estudios Mesoamericanos, casi dos años después de acabar con los orientalistas.
http://www.archaeologie-online.de/magazin/news/detail.php?n=431
Nota: Parece que sólo permanece el Departamento de Arqueología clásica. Por supuesto, tanto estudiantes como profesores están protestando por ello.

25/01/04
Egipto recupera los últimos objetos robados.
La Corte Suprema de EEUU rechazó una petición del tratante de antigüedades Frederick Shultz, quien está acusado de robar antigüedades egipcias, que significa que podría ser condenado finalmente por un asunto que salió a la luz por primera vez en 1996, según un arqueólogo egipcio. En declaraciones del sábado, el Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretario General del SCA, dijo que fue informado de que la Corte suprema de EEUU había emitido un veredicto contra Shultz la pasada semana. Hawass comentó el reflejo que han tenido en este suceso memorable los intentos de cooperación con las autoridades norteamericanas, y que se evidencian en esta sentencia. Los cuerpos judiciales de EEUU solicitaron ayuda de la leyes egipcias sobre protección de antigüedades por primera vez en toda la historia judicial americana. Numerosas piezas fueron devueltas a Egipto desde los EEUU en este caso. Egipto podría recuperar la próxima semana la última pieza que Shultz robójunto con otras. Hawass dijo que el objeto es una pieza de caliza que data del Imperio Antiguo y que fue sustraída de Saqqara.

18/01/04
El diseño del nuevo Museo Egipcio listo para el próximo mes de abril
Las corecciones en los trabajos de diseño del nuevo mega Museo Egipcio, se espera que estén a punto para el próximo abril. El museo, a construir en la autovía del Fayum, está siendo diseñado por un equipo de siete firmas internacionales. El Ministro de Cultura, Farouk Hosni, dijo que los re-diseños siguen adelante con exactitud la línea marcada por el libro de estipulación referencial internacional, siendo costeado como una subvención por Italia. Será seguido por por la fase de detalle de los diseños que se espera realizar en los últimos 9 meses.
Se ha convocado un concurso para compañías nacionales e internacionales especializadas en la gestión de museos para llevar a cabo el proyecto. Será seleccionada tan sólo una compañía de entre quince que se presenten. El contrato de diseño está compartido entre compañías de Irlanda, Inglaterra, Austria y Holanda. Esas reputadas firmas son expertos en arquitectura, diseño museístico y datos de sistemas. 
 

16/01/04
El diseño del nuevo Museo Egipcio cerca se encuentra casi completo.
El Ministro de Cultura, Farouk Hosni, dijo ayer que el diseño del nuevo Museo Egipcio en la carretera de Fayum, está próximo a completarse. El nuevo Museo Egipcio  que cubrirá un área de 117 feddans, será el museo más grande del mundo destinado a albergar antigüedades egipcias, dijo Hosni, añadiendo que el diseño ganador se encuentra todavía bajo supervisión por el equipo que lo preparó. La construcción se espera que comience en septiembre de 2004, dijo el ministro. 

12/01/04
Luxor se convertirá en un museo mundial
El Dr. Mohammed Ibrahim Soliman, Ministro de la Vivienda y Comunidades Urbanas, dio ayer el visto bueno al plan general de Luxor en el marco del proyecto de desarrollo total de la ciudad hasta el 2022.

El proyecto trata de convertir a Luxor en un museo abierto mundial así como a asimilar el incremento esperado de población. A esto se suma el mantenimiento y desarrollo de los lugares momumentales y la mejora de las tierras cultivables.

Durante la revisión del plan maestro para Luxor con al asistencia de Al-Sayed Al-Desouqi Al-Banna, Jefe del Consejo supremo de Antigüedades de Luxor, Soliman dijo que el proyecto de desarrollo total de Luxor se realiza en cooperación con el Programa de Desarrollo de las Naciones Unidas (UNDP) y el Consejo Supremo de Luxor. Soliman también confirmó la importancia de la participación popular a la hora de llevar a cabo el proyecto.

El objetivo es desarrollar Luxor, elevar el nivel de vida de los ciudadanos, proveer de servicios básicos e infraestructuras, determinar nuevas áreas de desarrollo y mejorar las condiciones d elos suburbios.

El Ministro también indicó que esta tarea incluye un número de proyectos principales como la restauración de la Avenida de Esfinges y convertir a Luxor en un museo abierto y vivo del patrimonio. Además, el plan incluye construir un complejo turístico con 4.500 habitaciones que ocupará 25.000 feddan.
Soliman añadió que la estrategia del desarrollo urbano de Luxor depende de la rehabilitación de las áreas turísticas. También, se centra en el Paseo Marírimo de Luxor, el mantenimiento de los monumentos, detener el crecimiento de suburbios, hacer uso de las tierras cultivadas y la promoción de la estructura urbana.

Junto a todo ello, todo lo que ocupe la Avenida de Esfinges será derribado. En los laterales de la Avenida de Esfinges se habilitarán servicios turísticos y la entrada de Karnak será reconstruida.
También dijo que el plan incluye dividir Luxor en tres áreas residenciales: el norte de Al-Karnak, el este del ferrocarril y el sur de la ciudad de Luxor. Además la reestructuración y el desarrollo de esas áreas 100.000 nuevas oportunidades de trabajo.
 

11/01/04
Competición mundial para replantear la antigua ciudad arqueológica de Tebas.

El Ministro de Cultura, Farouk Hosny, está conforme en realizar un nuevo plan arquitectónico arqueológico para la antigua ciudad de Tebas (Luxor) en cooperación con a Unión Internacional de Arquitectos.

El Secretario General del Consejo Supremo de Antigüedades Egipcias, Dr. Zahi Hawass, declaró que el nuevo planeamiento de la ciudad incluye el templo de Luxor y el de Karnak, así como la carretera de Al-Kebash que enlaza con el templo de Keops. El nuevo planeamiento podría considerar el destacar muchas de las importantes imágenes arqueológicas, como el jardín botánico de Tutmosis III o el primer tratado de paz de la Historia.

El Director de la administración de ingeniería arquitectónica del SCA, el Dr Khaled Abdul Hady, dijo que antes de comenzar con la implantación del nuevo plan, los ocupantes ilegales de las áreas situadas frente al Templo de Al-Karnak, serán desalojados para los trabajos de restauración de su fachada.

 
02/01/04
La Exposición del Museo de Arte de Nápoles atrae visitantes con el "Gran Tour en Miniatura" ('The Grand Tour in Miniature')
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/neapolitan/article/0,2071,NPDN_14939_2546228,00.html
 

 

* Noticias anteriores:

 

Enero - Mayo 2006
Octubre - Diciembre 2005
Agosto - Septiembre 2005
Junio - Julio 2005
Marzo - Mayo 2005
Enero-Febrero 2005
Junio-Diciembre 2004
Marzo-Mayo 2004
Enero-Marzo 2004
Septiembre-Diciembre 2003
Julio-Agosto 2003
Enero-Junio 2003
Septiembre-Diciembre 2002
Agosto 2002
Julio 2002

Nota: Las noticias sin origen referenciado en las mismas, provienen siempre de http://www.uk.sis.gov.eg/online/html1/