Cut-price flights to Egypt from UK's Doncaster airport have been announced only days before the airport opens for business, said the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism.

According to EMOT, South Yorkshire tourists will be able to jet off to the land of the Pharaohs, with weekly direct flights leaving the €80m Robin Hood Airport, at the former RAF Finningley site, every Sunday, starting in November.

"Sun seekers will fly directly to the holiday resort of Sharm El Sheikh", EMOT said.   " Thomson will operate the service."

"We are ready and waiting to open our doors for the first flights on April 28," airport managing director David Ryall said...

[More]   TravelVideo.TV, Canada, Apr 27, 2005.

by Zahi Hawass

I was 33 years old and an Inspector of Antiquities.   After years of working at several sites throughout Egypt, I finally became the chief inspector at the Giza Pyramids.   I decided to continue my studies in Egyptology in the United States.   At first, I did not want to receive a fellowship from an American university.   However, I saw a newspaper advertisement to the effect that the Fulbright Commission in Cairo was offering a fellowship for two years to study in the field of science or humanities.   I applied, writing a proposal that stated that it was important for an Egyptian to receive good training in the US, and then to return to Egypt and help protect Egypt's heritage by improving sites and museums and training young people, as well as establishing rules and regulations to protect the monuments and modernise the facilities.   I further suggested they needed to give this fellowship to someone who would use it to benefit Egypt.

The committee was chosen to select the most deserving applicant.   The candidates were from Egypt and America.   I was awarded the Fulbright scholarship to continue my studies, and applied to a few universities in US.   After much thought I decided to attend the University of Pennsylvania for my doctorate studies, since they have an excellent archaeology programme...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Issue No. 740, 28 April - 4 May 2005.

The Coptic Museum is approaching the last stage of structural restoration prior to its official re-opening this year as a state-of-the-art museum.   Jill Kamil looks into what's going on.

It was no easy matter to gain access to a building that was being restored -- or transformed, rather -- and even more difficult to find someone able, or willing, to talk about progress, plans and deadlines.   The Coptic Museum has been off-limits to visitors for a long while now, and with rumour circulating that some galleries would re-open this year, Al-Ahram Weekly sent a team to investigate...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Issue No. 740, 28 April - 4 May 2005.

The temple of Serabit el-Khadem, 55 kilometres southeast Abu Zneima is the only surviving pharaonic temple in Sinai.   In order to place the area on the tourist chart the Supreme Council of Antiquities has launched a huge project to upgrade the area, which is associated with Safari Tourism and is surrounded by turquoise mines exploited since the Pharaonic period.   The total cost of the project is estimated at LE 10 million.

The temple, which belongs to the 12th dynasty, is situated on a sandstone plateau about 1200 metres above sea level.   The temple was established for the worship of goddess Hathor in her respect as the lady of turquoise.

The temple comprises a main chapel and several rooms, while the surrounding areas embrace rock-cut and freestanding stelae dedicated by mining expeditions to Hathor.

In the vicinity of the temple, there are turquoise mines that were exploited since the early 12th dynasty till the 20th dynasty.

Petrie was the first archaeologist to examine the site in 1905 and found an old Kingdom hill-top miners' settlement.   Archaeological missions, the most important of which was a French team, examined the temple, but the missions were most interested in the turquoise mines.

The first restoration of the temple took place in 1987.   Further restoration of the inscriptions and stelae was maintained periodically.

[Source]   The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 28, 2005.

The Russian Institute for Alexandrian Studies is currently engaged in drawing a map of old Alexandria, the city that was planned by the Greek architect Deinocrates.

According to Dr Ezzat Qadous, a professor of Greek Archaeology and dean of the Faculty of Tourism at Alexandria University, the projected chart is an attempt to revive and modernise the old chart drawn by archaeologist Mahmoud Pasha Falaki, which defined many streets and quarters.

Dr Qadous explains how the idea of establishing the city of Alexandria tantalised Alexander the Great when he noticed a piece of land separating the Mediterranean from [Mareotis](1) Lake.   He assigned Deinocrates to plan the city, which was named after the great leader.

Dr Qadous said that Al Falaki's chart showed the city to be five kilometres long with 11 main streets that crossed the city vertically and seven horizontal ones.   The apparent balance of length and crosswise streets amazed Dr Qadous.   The black and grey stones used for paving streets were all alike in dimensions about 20 cm thick, 30 cm wide and 50 cm long.   Some of the stones are still in place, especially in the Shallalat area.

According to Al Falaki's chart, Faros isle was detached from the land, however there was a road linking the isle and the shore.   Today, Faros (Al Manshia area) is part and parcel of modern Alexandria.

The chart also displayed a harbour known as the eastern harbour.   Royal palaces occupied a distance of 2300 metres.   The amphitheatre was an essential feature of the city built following the Greek style, and it became a cultural centre.   The chart determined the place of the apostases, storehouses containing commodities to be sold in the market.   Among the important landmarks of old Alexandria was the museum, or the house of muses, which included a park, a meeting hall and a dining hall.   The director of the place was a priest appointed by the king.   The gymnasium was also one of the most beautiful places in Alexandria, with a 200 metre-long roofed lobby with gardens and an arbitration room in the middle.

The nucleus of the old city, according to Falaki's chart, was the Rhakotis quarter inhabited by the Egyptians.   The largest quarter and the least dwelt-in was that of The Racing Square, situated in the eastern part of the city.

[Source]   The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 28, 2005.

(1)   The article originally named the lake Marriut, I have substituted the Ancient Greek name.   A quick search on the web also throws up the following spellings for the modern name - Mariot, Mariut, and Mariout.

By Hassan Saadallah

A team of archaeologists excavating the Khufu (Cheops) site in the Western Desert uncovered 26 seals belonging to King Cheops.   The seals, each 3.2 x 4.3 cm, are made of a special formula of clay, soft sand and limestone.   Among the find was a collection of pots bearing the stamp of Cheops.

Initial examination of the find revealed that the seals belonged to one of the missions sent by Cheops to collect mefat, a red metallic powder used in painting.   The powder was needed for ornamenting the pyramidal complex of the fourth dynasty and its funerary annexes.   The seals affirmed the official nature of the mission dispatched to the desert area.

According to a hieroglyphic text on one of the pots one of the dispatched missions comprised 400 men accompanied by an administrative staff to supervise the provision of food.

Members of the team unearthed a number of leather bags filled with mefat gathered from surrounding areas which were most probably hidden away from playful hands.   The site of Khufu also contained stone tools dating back to pre-historic times (6000-5000 BC) such as knives and arrowheads.

King Cheops was known to despatch several missions to copper and turquoise mines in Sinai.   He also sent vessels to Phoenicia (Lebanon) to get cedar wood and liked to make use of diorite found at Abu Simbel.

About king Cheops, Dr Zahi Hawass writes in his latest book, published this week, The Giza Plateau Through Ages, that Cheops will always be remembered as the builder of the greatest structure on earth: the Giza pyramid of that name.   Its splendour is not only attributed to its gigantic nature but also to its amazing interior planning.

Hawass' book includes a chapter on the opinion of Greek and Roman travellers from Herodotus to [Strabo] about the Giza Pyramids.   Hawass reviews important finds in Giza beginning 1821 at the hands of Mariette and Petrie up until the present time.

The last chapter of the book is dedicated to research relating to the pyramid by the Italian Maragioglio, who worked from 1963 up until the 1990s when a French team dealt with air pollution inside the king's room.   The most recent of the pollution studies was conducted in 2002 using a robot.   It revealed more secret doors within the pyramid.   The book includes a collection of photographs of the Pyramid Plateau from 1890 to 1925.

[Source]   The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, April 28, 2005.

During the 56th annual meeting of the "American Research Center in Egypt" in Cambridge Saturday, Boston University archaeology professor Kathryn Bard and project co-director Rodolfo Fattovich presented evidence of ancient Egyptian sea-faring expeditions about 4,000 years ago to the southern Red Sea.

A team of researchers - led by the two archaeologists - found pieces from several ancient Egyptian sea-faring boats off the coast of the Red Sea during a joint project with Italy's University of Naples "L'Orientale" last December, Bard said.   The facts included two cedar steering oars, the first whole pieces of a pharaonic sea-faring ship ever recovered...

[More]   The Daily Free Press, Boston University, Massachusetts, USA, April 27, 2005.

Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a number of rare Pharaonic seals of soldiers sent out on desert missions in search of red paint to decorate the pyramids, Egypt's culture minister said Thursday.

The 26 matchbox-sized seals belonged to Cheops [Khufu], who ruled from 2551 to 2528 BC, in whose honour the greatest of the great pyramids of Giza southwest of Cairo was built, and show Pharaonic soldiers' ranks, the MENA news agency quoted Farouk Hosni as saying.

"These seals were used by a mission sent by Cheops to collect ferric oxide, which is necessary to make red paint," said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Higher Council of Antiquities...

[More]   Turkish Press, Turkey, 28/04/2005.

The Senusret [also Senwosret and Sesotris from Greek] collection of ancient Egyptian art was gathered from private collections and shown briefly in the 1970s.   It has never again been seen by the public -- until now.

At www.virtual-egyptian- museum.org, the contents of King Padibastet's tomb are once again on display...

[More]   News 14, North Carolina, USA, April 25, 2005.

The face of "Bess," an Egyptian woman who died 3,000 to 3,500 years ago, is once again visible as technology brings to life what an artist's hand used to.

"The Egyptians obviously put a huge amount of effort into preparing their bodies for eternal life," said Stephen Humphries, director of business development at Medical Modeling LLC of Golden, [Colorado], where the reconstruction took place...

[More]   Discovery Channel News, USA, April 27, 2005, via Zinken.

cf. Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

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.

A new website called Glyphdoctors has been launched with the aim of providing easy online lessons in Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs.

The Egyptologist running the online course is University of Chicago Ph.D. candidate Nicole B. Hansen who is also a staff member of Kent Weeks' Theban Mapping Project.

The site includes a glyph gallery and a discussion forum split into fourteen topics and is looking very promising.

cf. Continuity and Change of Reproductive Beliefs and Practices in Egypt from Ancient to Modern Times, Nicole B. Hansen, Ph.D. dissertation proposal, University of Chicago, 1999.

More on the Oxyrhynchus papyri first mentioned in the Independent article.

Classical Greek and Roman literature is being read for the first time in 2,000 years thanks to new technology.   The previously illegible texts are among a hoard of papyrus manuscripts. Scholars say the rediscovered writings will provide a fascinating new window into the ancient world.

Salvaged from an ancient garbage dump in Egypt, the collection is kept at Oxford University in England.   Known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the collection includes writings by great classical Greek authors such as Homer, Sophocles, and Euripides...

[More]   National Geographic, District of Columbia, USA, April 25, 2005.

Queen Cleopatra, celebrated for her love affairs with Roman rulers Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, inherited the throne of Egypt at age 17 and dodged assassination to rule for over 20 years.   But to this day, her death on Aug 12, 30 BC, at the age of 39 remains shrouded in mystery.

As the last Pharaoh to rule Egypt, her extraordinary life was filled with enigma and intrigue, as was her strange and untimely death. For two millennia, historians have recorded only one cause of death - suicide by snakebite.

Now, criminal profiler Pat Brown and a team of experts that includes an underwater archaeologist and a toxicologist are re-examining the circumstances of her alleged suicide, which marked the end of the Egyptian monarchy...

[More]   The Star Online, Malaysia, April 26, 2005.

National Geographic Channel World Premiere Special Features First-Ever Bust of the Pharaoh Created from 3-D CT Scans Exhibition of Tut's Treasures to Include Bust and CT Scans.

Begins June 2005 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

He is the most famous Egyptian king in history.   He became pharaoh at the age of nine -- and ruled for nearly a decade before his mysterious death.   Since his tomb was discovered in 1922, King Tutankhamun and the circumstances surrounding his death have been a source of intrigue worldwide.   Why did the famed "boy king" die so young? Was he murdered? Is there truth to the legendary curse set upon those who would disturb his final resting place? And what did he really look like?

On Sunday, May 15 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, the National Geographic Channel premieres "King Tut's Final Secrets," a high-tech forensic investigation unveiling new findings related to his death and the first-ever reconstruction of his face and head using revolutionary 3-D CT scan imaging -- revealing what he looked like on the day he died.   This groundbreaking research is also featured as the cover story of National Geographic magazine's June issue...

[More]   PRNewswire via Yahoo! News, USA, April 25, 2005.

TourEgypt has a good article on the US Tutankhamun exhibition written by Jimmy Dunn.

It will come as no news to most ancient Egypt enthusiasts that the treasures of the New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty pharaoh, Tutankhamun, perhaps better known to the world as King Tut, are coming to the US in June of 2005...

[More]   TourEgypt, Egypt, 23 April, 2005.

More on the Oxyrhynchus papyri.

A vast array of previously unintelligible manuscripts from ancient Greece and Rome are being read for the first time thanks to infra-red light, in a breakthrough hailed as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail.

The technique could see the number of accounted-for ancient manuscripts increase by one fifth, and may even lead to the unveiling of some lost Christian gospels.

A team at Oxford University is using the technology to bring back into view faded ink on thousands of papyrus scrolls salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the 19th century...

[More]   Sci-Tech Today, April 19, 2005.

There has been lots of discussion about these 'discoveries' first announced in the Independent.   See David Meadows' rogueclassicism and Jim Davila's Paleaojudaica weblogs for more information.

The largest and most comprehensive collection of mummies and funerary material outside of Cairo is permanently housed at the British Museum in London. A portion of these world famous antiquities will soon go on display at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, just 35 miles south of Los Angeles.

The extensive exhibition features ancient 140 objects, including six mummies and 14 coffins. The exhibits will also include examples of embalming tools, sarcophagi, amulets, papyri and the process of mummification, to illustrate the story of the Egyptian ritual of preparing and sending the dead to the afterlife.

When the six mummies arrived in Southern California in early April, a team of radiologists and curators conducted a computed tomography or CT scan of each one...

[More]   China View, China, April 21 2005.

On the occasion of Holy Week and forthcoming Easter Sunday, Jill Kamil talks to Egypt's famous iconographer and pays homage to his work.

...

He noted that in ancient Egyptian art, depictions of important people were always accompanied by their names, and this continued with Coptic icons where these were sometimes in Coptic, sometimes in Arabic, and at other times in both languages.   The main figure was also invariably shown larger than the others, whether in Pharaonic paintings and reliefs or in Coptic art.   "When I was still a student studying the artefacts in the Egyptian Museum and the Coptic Museum, I recognised strong elements of continuity in Egyptian culture," Fanous said, noting especially that the techniques employed in the painting of icons on wooden panels had changed little over the millennia.   These included encaustic on gesso -- which is to say molten beeswax made into an emulsion soluble in water -- developed to a high standard during the early Roman period; this is clear in the beautiful Fayoum portraits, the immediate predecessors of the Christian icon...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 739, 21 - 27 April 2005.

It all began with an indescribably beautiful woman falling for a chivalrous and powerfully-built beau.   But everything went so horribly wrong so soon. She was to be betrothed to another -- a poet, the proverbial philosopher- king. (He was unique among the Pharaohs of Egypt -- the man credited with introducing the very notion of monotheism to the world.   A pathetically forlorn figure, he set out to destroy all traces of the religion of his ancestors.   He moved the country's capital, made his favourite queen his equal and systematically razed the temples of the fearful gods -- to the consternation of the hitherto powerful priesthood).

An almost impossible task lay ahead for Nefertiti, for her dashing paramour was none other than the Pharaoh's own commander-in-chief.   The king, not quite as physically appealing as the head of his army, may have had big ideas of his own.   But, so much to Nefertiti's distaste, perhaps, he was not the least interested in military matters...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 739, 21 - 27 April 2005.

cf. Nefertiti's 'love affair' with Moses to hit the silver screen, AFP via The Daily Star, Lebanon, April 12, 2005.

Second chance

Controversial plans to renovate Bab Al-Azab have been revived: Nevine El-Aref attends the launching of a new phase in the history of Islamic Cairo.

A meeting of the ministers of culture and tourism concluded a decade-long saga last week, with plans to realise Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni's vision for Bab Al-Azab, a historical neighbourhood in the vicinity of the citadel, finally made.

It was in the early 1990s that Hosni first thought of developing this largely neglected setting -- the site of Mohamed Ali Pasha's massacre of the Mamelukes -- by, among other measures, exploiting its tourism potential: a luxury hotel modelled on local 18th-century architecture and interior design, a shopping complex, a conference hall and an Islamic art museum as well as a restoration school were all on the cards.   So was an Italian grant, offered to the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) in 1988...

[More]   Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 739, 21 - 27 April 2005.

"Giza at the turn of the century" was the theme of this year's Egyptian World Heritage Day celebration.   Nevine El-Aref took part.

As one of the seven ancient wonders of the w