"A year of museums" is the Ministry of Culture's theme for 2006. Nevine El-Aref learns what is being planned.

In an attempt to preserve Egypt's priceless treasures, both stored and newly-discovered, to create the best environment to display them and to release the pressure in some overstuffed museums, the Ministry of Culture has placed Egypt's museums at the top of its priorities.

This year will witness the inauguration of up to five new regional and national museums and the re-opening of three others after restoration and development to bring them up to international standards.

"2006 is a revolutionary year for Egypt's museums and museology," Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told Al-Ahram Weekly. He added that this year would witness not only the building of new museums such as the National Museum of Egypt in Fustat and the Grand Museum of Egypt overlooking the Giza Plateau, but upgrading some recently-built ones and inaugurating new regional museums. "The ministry aims at building a museum in every city in Egypt to preserve the city's heritage and raise the cultural and archaeological awareness of its inhabitants..."

New museums for all, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 777, January 10 - 18, 2006.

One of the legendary royal ceremonies once held in the Mohamed Ali Pasha Palace overlooking the Nile at Shubra was replayed two weeks ago with a thoroughly modern twist, writes Nevine El-Aref.

"Restoring the palace was a real challenge," Hosni told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that it would have been a great pity if this magnificent palace had fallen total victim to negligence. He said the palace, once the stage of great royal festivals, would be used as the venue for official and governmental events.

Over the last five years and with a budget of LE50 million , the palace, once known as the Egyptian Versailles, has been comprehensively restored to save the exquisite early 19th-century buildings which feature a blend of rococo and baroque styles. Through the ages this magnificent palace, which was built over 13 years from 1808 to 1821 on an area of 11,000 feddans, has lost many of its features. It originally consisted of 13 buildings used by Mohamed Ali Pasha as a guest house for foreign ambassadors and members of his family. During World War I, the haramlik (main building) was demolished by Aziza, a member of the royal family, when it was rumoured that the British were thinking of using it for military purposes...

An Egyptian Versailles, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 777, January 10 - 18, 2006.

By Zahi Hawass

This column is not about the musical starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner, but about a more famous king than the mythical ruler of Siam, the golden king, Tutankhamun. I recently returned from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after attending the opening of the Pharaoh's golden exhibition there.

When I arrived, I could not believe how much Egyptomania had gripped this American city. People were wearing the golden mask of Tut on their T-shirts, and signs everywhere announced that the golden king had arrived.

The exhibition display there is even better than it was in Los Angeles. There is more space, and the design is beautiful. Omar Sharif was supposed to be with me for the grand opening, but he could not attend because he was having minor surgery in a hospital in Paris. If Sharif had come, this article would have a different title!

Even without my friend, the gala opening was incredible. There were red carpets everywhere. Everyone was in black tie, the women in elegant gowns of every colour. Fireworks exploded overhead, writing the name of Tutankhamun in the sky..."

The king and I, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 777, January 10 - 18, 2006.

by Zahi Hawass

After the announcement of the discovery, the small town of El Bawiti became famous. People from all over the world wanted to visit and see the Valley of the Golden Mummies. Friends from Egypt and America, news teams from Europe, tour companies, professors, and ambassadors came to the site.

My personal belief is that mummies should not be displayed for personal reasons, and at the end of the 1999 season, I was strongly urged to open the Bahariya to tourists. After much thought, I moved five of the most beautiful mummies from Tomb 54 to the Bahariya Museum. By moving these five the rest would remain safe.

The mummies I had moved to the museum would promote tourism and allow the tourists to view some of the mummies without tramping around the cemetery. Tourists are dangerous to archaeological sites, and having hordes of people walking all over Bahariya would do it terrible damage.

Two of the mummies I moved to the museum were a boy, aged five and a younger girl. By the way they were decorated and because they were found in the same tomb, I concluded they were probably brother and sister.

It never occurred to me that until I moved the two children to their resting place in the museum that the so-called curse of the mummies existed. This idea, of course, has been around since Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. After I moved the children I prepared myself to travel to the United States to teach archaeology at UCLA.

I went to Los Angeles and settled in to begin my course. But the golden children had followed me to California and were haunting my dreams. In the dream, the children reached out their arms to me, trying to grab me, another mummy, a woman, I had also moved, appeared looking at me with pleading eyes. Every night they visited my dreams. In my worst nightmare, the little girl reached her White arms towards me and tried to wrap them around my throat. Why were they disturbing my rest?

The curse of the mummies (Part 1), The Egyptian Gazette, Egypt, January 09, 2006.

An Egyptian report said that "The Alexandria Study Centre of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has started the building of a copycat version of the ancient Pharos lighthouse."

The government report said "The move is part of a project implemented by the centre to take part in the Strabo program to establish a Web site on the cultural heritage of the Mediterranean Basin countries."

"The project also includes the building of three-dimensional versions of the Qaitbay Citadel and Ottoman mosques in Alexandria," the report said.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina builds ancient Pharos lighthouse, Arabic News, January 10, 2006.

A King Tut exhibit in Fort Lauderdale is nothing short of enthralling.

Americans have always been fascinated with royalty, especially young royals. But none has ever gripped the public imagination with such lasting fixation as King Tutankhamun, the Egyptian boy king who died in 1323 B.C.

In the late 1970s, almost 8-million people thronged U.S. museums during a tour of artefacts from his tomb, creating a King Tut craze in popular culture and setting a standard for subsequent blockbuster exhibitions.

Twenty-five years later, Tut has returned, in a magnificent show at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale...

Golden boy, St. Petersburg Times, Florida, USA, January 08, 2006.

It was a hit in L.A. — now it's Chicago's turn to see King Tut's treasures. Tickets for The Field Museum's Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition go on sale at 9 a.m. on January 24, 2006.

In 1977, The Field Museum broke attendance records when more than 1.3 million people bought long-awaited tickets for the first King Tut exhibition. The Field Museum anticipates similar excitement surrounding the 2006 exhibition.

The new exhibition opens on May 26, 2006, and features more than 130 ancient artefacts excavated from the tomb of Tutankhamun and other royal tombs in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. The artefacts include a diadem that Tut wore both in life and death, a child-size ebony and ivory throne, and a coffin believed to be that of Tut's great-grandmother...

King Tut Tickets on Sale January 24: See 'The Boy King's' Treasures at The Field Museum, PRNewswire via WRICTV8 News, USA, January 09, 2006.

One hundred and fifty years after arriving in North America, a ruler of an ancient kingdom finally received the respect due a visiting monarch, thanks to the scientists and historians hailed on this week's episode of "Nova." An Egyptian pharaoh, whose mummified corpse was thought to be lost forever, turned up at Niagara Falls, where an attentive network of connoisseurs proved this was no ordinary bag of bones.

In an appealing if occasionally grotesque hour, "Nova: The Mummy Who Would Be King" lets viewers in on how one emaciated figure emerged as a regal relic, a trove of data, a missing piece in a richly reassembled era in Egyptian history. Though mute for millennia, the mummy speaks volumes.

The rulers of the Nile have long fascinated elites in Europe and North America, and much of the special is focused on how faddish interest in the pharaohs led to the ruinous plundering of their tombs. The mummies were much valued on the black market, and fashionable 19th-century salons once teemed with guests eager to witness an unwrapping. In that same era sufferers of headaches and impotence sometimes consumed a mummy's ground remains to seek a cure...

A Leader as Notable in Death as He Was Powerful in Life, New York Times, New York, USA, January 03, 2006.

cf. Nova gives a wrap-up on Niagara Falls mummy, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, January 07, 2006.