Over in Alexandria, another venue has also been closed down, this time the Graeco-Roman Museum.

Does that remind anyone of what happened to Royal Jewellery Museum in the seaside capital recently? Officials maintain the closures are temporary and cite the reason as “improvements” to the historical buildings, including adding on an extra floor.

Architecture activists are in an uproar over the proposed modifications, claiming that the historical structures should be protected in their own right and not tampered with.

So is it Graeco-Roman or Greco-Roman?

Culture 101: We’re closed, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume #26, Issue 11, November 2005.

Egyptian reliefs dating back thousands of years could disappear within a decade because the demands of the living undermine the pharaohs’ bid for immortality, archaeologists said on Thursday.

As Egypt’s population grows, agricultural plots encroach ever closer to land reserved for ancient temples and funeral monuments, the archaeologists said. Water for irrigation is weakening temple foundations and eroding the carvings.

“We’ve seen it. We have photographic evidence of something we took a picture of 10 years ago and we go and take a picture of the reliefs now and they are simply not there,” said Nigel Hetherington, an archaeological conservation manager.

“What’s happened is that farming land, as the population increases dramatically, now stretches out into the desert and into (the Nile’s west bank at) Luxor, which was once considered the realm of the dead in the pharaonic period,” he said in a recent interview...

This appears to be a rehash of an article from September Farming threatens ancient Egyptian sites.

Farmers threaten pharaohs, Globe and Mail, Ontario, Canada, November 02, 2005.

Test your King Tut knowledge with About.com's Tutankhamun quiz. Now boys and girls, I expect no less that 9/10! The last one is quite hard and you either know it or you don't. I would also dispute the answer on one and say that another of the questions is ambiguous and yet another has opposing arguments from different corners of the Egyptology world. But it's just for fun.

Tutankhamun's Tomb, About.com, undated.

About.com have a short article on Nabta Playa.

Nabta Playa is an archaeological site in the western deserts of southern Egypt, where some of the earliest known evidence of domesticated cattle have been identified. The site has three periods of occupation dated to the Early Neolithic (9,800-7,500 BP), Middle Neolithic (7,100-6,700 BP), and Late Neolithic (6,500-4,800 BP)...

Nabta Playa (Egypt), About.com, November 02, 2005.

In a bid to boost turnout for boy king's return, LACMA extends run by five days. The 1978 exhibition was seen by more than 1.25 million.

King Tut's L.A. empire will probably number more than 900,000 subjects by the time his reign ends at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where his treasures have been on display since mid-June. That figure for an L.A. art exhibition would be topped only by Tut himself: More than 1.25 million people turned out for his 1978 LACMA show.

In a down-to-the-wire bid to maximize the boy king's draw, LACMA is extending the run five days, through Nov. 20, the head of Arts and Exhibitions International, a tour co-producer, said Wednesday. Longer visiting hours also may be announced. Museum officials declined to comment; a news conference on the exhibition's economic impact is scheduled for this afternoon at LACMA.

Zahi Hawass, the Egyptian government's antiquities chief and prime mover in sending artefacts from Tut's tomb on tour, said Wednesday that he would be disappointed if Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs didn't command a million viewers in L.A., its first stop on a four-city U.S. tour...

Tut Show Likely to Draw 900,000, Los Angeles Times, California, November 03, 2005.