Brussels museum is to return a stolen 5th dynasty relief

A Brussels museum will hand over to Egypt a limestone relief that had been smuggled out of the country more than 30 years ago, an Egyptian antiquities official said Monday.

The Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels, Belgium, agreed to return the relief, which was stolen from the Giza tomb of a 5th dynasty priest, Senenu, said Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.   In return, an archaeological mission belonging to the museum will be allowed to continue its work in Egypt, he said.

"Exerting scientific pressure is the most important way of getting back our stolen antiquities," Hawass said.   "We will start a fierce battle with the museums and the private collectors who have these antiquities.   We won't scientifically deal with those who don't return them..."

[More]   AFP via The Daily Star, Lebanon, April 27, 2005.

... "We discovered huge quantities of books in the synagogues," says the founder of the [Israel Academic Center in Cairo], and its director during those years, Prof. Shimon Shamir. "We discovered that a large percentage of the books came from private collections that Egyptian Jews had thrown out for fear that 'propaganda material' in Hebrew would be seized in their homes."

In the early 1990s, the books, about 15,000 of them, were stored in three libraries belonging to the Jewish community, which are located adjacent to the Sha'ar Hashamayim synagogue on Adli Street, the Ezra synagogue in the Fostat quarter and the Karaite synagogue. Most of the books are from recent centuries, but among them are also three rare religious books from the early 16th century...>/p>

The Ezra synagogue in Fostat, the quarter from which Cairo began to develop in the seventh century CE, is the only synagogue in Cairo that has been fortunate. Originally, the synagogue was a Coptic church, which was sold to the Jews in 882 CE. The synagogue was rebuilt a number of times, the last time in 1890. During that construction work, the Cairo Geniza was discovered in the attic, containing hundreds of thousands of documents written by the Jews of Cairo over a period of almost 1,000 years...

[More]   Haaretz via Egypt Election Daily News, Egypt, April 23 2005, via PaleoJudaica.

Police said they found what appear to be ancient Egyptian artifacts in the home of a man accused of molesting several boys over a 25-year period.

Charles Weinberg, 58, was arrested on child abuse charges in Hermosa Beach, California, over the weekend.   Officers said they searched Weinberg's home and found several items, which the suspect admitted to looting while on Egyptian archaeological digs with the University of Chicago...

[More]   NBC News, USA, April 26, 2005.

A review of the Discovery Channel producation "Rameses: Wrath Of God Or Man?" on DVD.

This is the story of Rameses, one of the most powerful men the Earth has ever seen.   His kingdom in Egypt grew so vast that temples the sizes of cities were built in his honor.   As he grew older, he declared himself to be a god, leaving the day-to-day leadership of the kingdom to his eldest son.   But along came Moses, demanding freedom for his people.   Moses brought with him plagues, debilitating Rameses' land with frogs, locusts, blight and darkness. But it was the final plague that did Rameses in, killing all the first born children in Egypt, including Rameses' own beloved son.

This is also the story of Dr. Kent Weeks, famous Egyptologist who has made the study of Rameses his life's work.   Described as a real-life Indiana Jones, Weeks lives in a houseboat on the Nile River and spends his days digging through ancient tombs.   A recent discovery of a mammoth burial site has turned up an artifact so significant, it has the potential to change how the world looks both at history and religion.   Weeks has unearthed a human skull which may or may not be Rameses' son.   What follows is an autopsy thousands of years in the making.   Will the cause of death be revealed as God's plague or something else entirely?

[More]   DVD Verdict, USA, April 27th, 2005.

Buy the DVD from Amazon.co. uk, Amazon.com or Amazon.ca.

By Zahi Hawass

People have often said that tourism is the enemy of archaeology.   The problem in the past has been that the tourist authorities seldom talked to the antiquities authorities.   Scholars from all over the world have begun saying that the great monuments of the world could be gone within 200 years, and the damage caused by mass tourism to man-made and natural sites is now well documented...

[More]   The Rising Nepal, Nepal, April 27, 2005.