The Al Moudira hotel appears to have been transported to the West Bank of Luxor, Egypt, by some aesthetically minded genie.  Far from the tourist hordes invading the nearby Valley of the Kings, this oasis of luxury and serenity is about as far away from the package travel experience as you can get, yet is a mere half-hour from its very epicentre.

Twenty kilometres from the East Bank, where chain hotels stand shoulder to shoulder and tour buses spew exhaust, Al Moudira has brought the boutique-chic concept to a place that was crying out for it.  And if you get up early enough, you can even beat the tourist rush to some of the pharaonic sites, thanks to a 30-minute head start.

[More], The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, December 18, 2004.

cf. A Dream of a Thousand and One Nights: The Al Moudira, a New 5 Star Hotel in Luxor, TourEgypt, undated.

Below is a travel article that I had missed from September in The Telegraph.

Keen to show his children that there is life beyond Hampshire, Jonathan Young took them to Egypt for an inspirational break.

The mosque's PA system hollered out the early-morning call to the faithful.  Still disorientated after our late arrival the previous night, I struggled to the window, drew back the curtains - and there was the Great Pyramid, literally at the bottom of the garden...

[More], The Telegraph, UK, September 27, 2004.

Another review of Channel Five's recent documentary Secrets of the Sphinx: Revealed.

Archaeologists, who are able to tell us who built the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, have puzzled over the riddle of the Sphinx for generations.

The identity of the ruler who ordered the building of the 65ft high, 260ft long limestone half-human statue that has guarded the Giza Plateau for 4,500 years has been lost in the sands of time.

[More], The Telegraph, UK, December 14, 2004, via ArchNews.

...[L]ast week's announcement from Google, the Internet search engine, that it will scan and digitize the vast collections of five major libraries. The plan would make good on Google's mission to make "the world's information" universally accessible and searchable by making 15 million books - centuries of learning — available instantly and free.

It echoed "Alexander" because the conqueror's story is told by one of his generals, Ptolemy, in the Great Library of Alexandria — a legendary lost treasure and one of the wonders of the ancient world...

[More], The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, December 19, 2004, via Explorator.

cf. Google to scan famous libraries, BBC News, UK, December 14, 2004.

cf. New front in search war as Google brings libraries online, Media Bulletin, UK, December 14, 2004.

"Making the wealth of knowledge accumulated in the Bodleian Library's historic collections accessible to as many people as possible is at the heart of Oxford University's commitment to lifelong learning."

The New Library of Alexandia can be found here.