The shepherds who settled the Eastern Sahara in the fourth millennium BC developed a culture whose archaeological remains are of astounding richness.

Polish pre-historians have been engaged in intensive research in northeast Africa for more than 40 years. The greatest accomplishments in this field have been achieved by the international Combined Prehistoric Expedition (CPE), with a core comprised of Polish and American archaeologists. The expedition’s director was originally Professor Fred Wendorf from Southern Methodist University in Dallas; it is now being directed by Romuald Schild from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences.

The CPE has devoted a considerable portion of its efforts to researching areas in the eastern Sahara, namely the Western Desert in Egypt, also known as the Libyan Desert. The more than one dozen excavation seasons carried out in this region (whose climate essentially makes work only possible in wintertime) have concentrated on Homo sapiens’ earliest history, studying the people who dwelt here beginning more than a hundred thousand years ago. The greatest focus has been placed on researching the late Stone Age, i.e. the Neolithic, when humanity was partially abandoning its hunter-gatherer way of life and switching to an economy based on food production. For the ancient residents of the Western Desert, this chiefly meant raising cattle...

Prehistoric Herdsmen, Michał Kobusiewicz and Romuald Schild, ACADEMIA: The Magazine of the Polish Academy of Sciences, No. 3 (7), 2005, pp. 20 - 24

Get a good night’s sleep, drink a few fanageen of strong Turkish coffee and put on sensible shoes: A tour of the cultural capital of the Arab world, while invigorating, is exhausting...

... Since you’re here, check out the Supreme Cultural Council and neighbouring Creativity Centre, where seminars and shows are sometimes held. A stop at El-Hanager Arts Centre is a must for exhibitions and (usually experimental) plays. And there is always something to do at the Opera House’s many halls, be it taking part in a heated seminar, attending a concert, catching the ballet or an opera or watching a documentary...

... Two must-see museums are the Museum of Islamic Art in Bab El-Khoulq and the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo. Both had been closed for years and have undergone extensive renovations. The two will open to the public in early April 2006. It is likely to take the serious museumgoer several hours to give due appreciation to the unique displays, which hold thousands of artefacts. Each museum warrants a separate day of sightseeing...

Cultural Cairo, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

The Great Desert Circuit runs over 1,000 kilometres from Cairo to Assiut through the desert oases of Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla and Kharga. Located 265 kilometres south of Cairo, Bahariya is a drive-thru geological museum. Its black and orange basin is littered with fossils of the Cretaceous-era sea creatures that lived here when it was an inland sea.

If fossils are your fancy, take a 4WD to Gebel Dist at the north end of the oasis, which is chock-full of them. Even dinosaur bones have been found here, including the remains of a huge herbivore dating back 94 million years. Unfortunately, they were stored in Germany and destroyed during the Second World War by Allied bombs.

Fossils are not the only surprises to be found in the Western Desert. Cairo’s travel agencies organize tours to Qarat El-Hilwa for a peek at the much-hyped cache of “golden” mummies of the Ptolemaic era, as Zahi Hawass defined them upon their discovery in the 1990s — though despite their rich exteriors, their embalming was actually much sloppier than in previous eras. You might also be able to wrangle a permit to visit on your own. A ticket can be purchased at the local antiquities inspectorate for LE 30...

The Great Desert Circuit, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Once frequented almost exclusively by backpacking foreign tourists, Siwa Oasis has grown into a popular, if remote, destination for international tourists and intrepid Egyptians alike. Less than 75 kilometres from the Libyan border as the crow flies, Siwa is a sizable island of greenery in the Great Sand Sea...

... Though far off the path of Pharaon-ophiles, Siwa has its share of antiquities. Gebel Al-Mawta (Mountain of the Dead) is honeycombed with late-pharaonic and early Greco-Roman sites, four of which are open to tourists. All that is left of the Temple of Amun is a partly reconstructed wall and a stone floor overgrown with weeds. The Temple of the Oracle, up on a hill amid the ruins of a salt-mud village, has withstood the years much better. The temple had a powerful patron in Alexander the Great, who came seeking the oracle’s confirmation that he was the son of Zeus, a key endorsement in the conqueror’s ambitions to rule Egypt. A little deeper in the palm grove is Cleopatra’s Bath, a hot spring that historians believe owes its name more to clever marketing than documented history...

Siwa, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

How many museums (for there are many) have you been to in Egypt? Here are a few for you to consider, from wonderful to weird.

Believe it or not, Egypt is awash in museums, some of which must surely qualify as being among the weirdest in the world. They were never intended that way, but we’re nonetheless glad they are. Some of the oddest and most interesting...

Museums Across Egypt, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Once ancient Thebes, the City of a Hundred Gates has aged with impeccable grace. The recent discovery of a tomb containing seven sarcophagi at Luxor’s Valley of the Kings, the first of its kind in about 80 years, has already boosted the city’s tourism numbers — as if tourists needed another excuse to visit one of the world’s most archaeologically significant locales.

Start with a visit to the awe-inspiring Karnak temple. Once upon a Pharaonic time, everyone was allowed to stand in the first of its three courtyards, while only the nobles were granted access to the second, and the third and most sacred was solely reserved for the High Priest and the Pharaoh. Attend the daily multilingual sound and light show (LE 33 for non-Egyptians and LE 11 for Arabic shows, www.sound-light.egypt.com) and learn the story of Thebes by the Sacred Lake.

The Luxor temple, which preserves the remains of a church on its grounds, also houses the mosque of Sufi Sheikh Yusuf Abu Al-Hajjaj. Other perennial tourist favourites include the temple of Hatshepsut and the grand tombs in the Valley of the Nobles, the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens — all well worth the visit. Touring the antiquities is lots of fun, but expect to walk a lot and stand even more...

Luxor and Aswan, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Unlike tourists with their crammed itineraries — who will undoubtedly emerge from the Egyptian Museum stunned, overwhelmed and unable to process the incomprehensibly vast collection of treasures on display within the enormous building — we Cairenes can take our time to savour the treats squirreled away within the museum’s walls.

A plan is essential: The Egyptian Museum houses a staggering collection of over 100,000 objects, too many to absorb in a lifetime, let alone in a single trip. While some displays are well-marked (generally in Arabic and English, occasionally in French), the signage is erratic and you often won’t know what you’re looking at unless you’ve educated yourself beforehand. Decide in advance what you want out of your visit — a broad introduction to Egyptology or a focused look at a particular feature.

Either way, if you aren’t already familiar with the museum’s layout, it is probably wise to invest in a map or a professional guide. The former sells for LE 35 in the gift shop to your left as you enter the building; it is colour-coded and numbered so you can sort out which gallery contains displays from which kingdom or ruler. There is also a wall map of the ground floor, though it isn’t terribly detailed and you can’t refer to it as you wander about. Look for it just to your left after you’ve gone through the final security check within the museum building...

The Egyptian Museum, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

Who better to ask for a personally guided tour of the greatest wonders of Egypt than the world’s foremost Egyptologist, Dr Zahi Hawass? In his position as the Secretary-General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, a post he has held since 2002, Hawass has been a tireless warrior in the fight to regain Egypt’s lost and stolen treasures while preserving those endangered by the environment and mass tourism.

Last month, Hawass took et on an exclusive tour of what he considered the nation’s must-see sites...

Zahi Hawass’ Egypt, Egypt Today, Volume 27, Issue 04, April 2006.

... It is seriously cool stuff most people will never get a chance to see in real life, but for the next several months, it is all on display at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum.

Bancroft Library officials have selected more than 350 of the library's rarest and most historic holdings for an exhibit celebrating the library's 100th year.

Running through Dec. 3 [2006], the exhibit combines pieces of California history with first editions of Copernicus and Galileo; ancient Egyptian papyri with images of the Beat poets; and mementos of the Black Panther movement with an extremely rare and fragile 16th century scroll illustrating the life, loves, wars and rituals of Cuicatec rulers who lived in what is now Oaxaca, Mexico. The scroll, called the Codex Fernandez Leal, is probably the most valuable item in the library's collection...

Historical gems on display at UC Berkeley Art Museum, Inside Bay Area, California, USA, April 05, 2006.

Dating back to the 14th century B.C., the Luxor temple complex on the west bank of the Nile River — which includes the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, more than 40 temples and the tombs of thousands of nobles — is threatened not only by the ravages of tourism and theft, but by the Nile itself. The construction of the Aswan Dam 40 years ago has caused salt to build up in the newly fertile soil around the temples, eroding their ancient foundations and filling many tombs with water. The World Monuments Fund is currently devising a management plan for the site, and hopes to give the complex its biggest renovation since Alexander the Great...

7 Most Endangered Wonders of the World, Newsweek International via MSNBC, USA, April 10 - 17, 2006.

... Officially, UNESCO bestows the honour on places that exemplify an area's ancestry, with the purpose of ensuring they are preserved. Unofficially, designation is a kind of fairy dust that often turns little-known cultural gems into overnight tourist sensations, fostering intense competition among places to get listed. That is not always a good thing. "Sometimes a site becomes so attractive it becomes impossible to visit or appreciate," says Francesco Bandarin, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre. "This is the big problem in generating tourist traffic..."

World Heritage Sites: More Harm Than Good?, Newsweek International via MSNBC, USA, April 10 - 17, 2006.

... No matter how exotic the destination, until recently a traveller's biggest concern was how to get there, not where the journey would ultimately lead. Now thanks to rising incomes and falling airfares, getting there is the easy part; last year a record 806 million tourists hit the road. But those hordes — combined with forces ranging from climate change to civil war, industrial toxins to runaway development — are laying siege to some of the world's most treasured and irreplaceable sites. Whether the millennial gates of Machu Picchu or the moonlit waterways of Venice, we are in danger of losing places we thought would always be around, sure as Stonehenge. New Orleans nearly drowned. The Coral Triangle, a diver's paradise, is as fragile as an eggshell. Visitors ride go-karts along the Great Wall of China and steal artefacts from the crumbling temples of Luxor. Even Stonehenge has been cordoned off. The only certainty for today's travellers is that the wonders of the world are perishable, whether they're made of stone or ice, by man or nature...

The World's Most Endangered Destinations, Newsweek International via MSNBC, USA, April 10 - 17, 2006.

The world's only known copy of the Gospel of Judas, arrived in Egypt on Wednesday for public display.

The head of the Egyptian supreme council of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, said: "Egypt has managed to reclaim the 13-page papyrus manuscript."

The manuscript dates to the third or fourth centuries and portrays the apostle Judas as Jesus' faithful servant, not his betrayer.

The document had been undergoing restoration and translation in Switzerland, where it had been acquired by the privately owned Maecenas Foundation...

Gospel of Judas put on display, News 24, South Africa, April 12, 2006.

The latest issue of current world archaeology is out now and contains two article of interest to Egyptophiles.

• KV-63: tomb or room?
  The recently discovered KV-63: tomb or room? (3 pages)
• View from the Field: Egypt
  This issue our View from the Field comes from Nigel Hetherington in Cairo, a Cultural Heritage Consultant who is currently working for the Theban Mapping Project in the Valley of the Kings. (2 pages)

Current World Archaeology, Think Publishing, London, UK, Volume 2, No. 4, Issue 16, April / May 2006.

Subscribe to Current World Archaeology Magazine via Amazon.com.