President Hosni Mubarak and his German counterpart Hoerst Koehler opened in Berlin on Thursday Egypt's Sunken Treasures exhibition.

The opening was attended by various top officials, public I figures and personalities interested in Egyptology.

Mrs. Mubarak, Mrs. Koehler and Higher Council of Antiquities Chairman Zahi Hawass were present at the inauguration ceremony.

Some 489 breathtaking artefacts retrieved from the Mediterranean Sea in Alexandria are being exhibited in 18 halls and more than 100 display cases...

Yay! I have finally got around to updating my scraper to the new format State Information Services site. What is it? Six months perhaps?

Mubarak, Koehler open Egypt's sunken treasures exhibit, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, May 12, 2006.

The Bodrum Underwater Research Institute's Conservation Centre launched an initiative on Monday to display the region's underwater archaeological wealth, which has so far been stored in warehouses.

The discoveries were unearthed from sunken ships located off the Aegean and Mediterranean costs and will be displayed following cleaning, conservation and restoration.

Speaking at the event Bodrum Underwater Research Institute Chairman Tufan Turanli said work on several artefacts from a 3,300-year-old Uluburun Late Bronze Age shipwreck — considered to be one of the 20th century's most significant archaeological finds — is still continuing...

He also said a 3,300-year-old seal believed to have belonged to Egyptian Queen Nefertiti will be on display...

If you are visiting Bodrum do not forget to visit the Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus (i.e. ancient Bodrum), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Turkey's underwater archaeological wealth to be unveiled in Bodrum, Turkish Daily News, Turkey, may 10, 2006.

A large section of Yarmouth's beach is to be transformed this summer into giant sand sculptures on the theme of Ancient Greece.

Sixty leading sand sculptors will be jetting in to work on the £1m project, which will take nearly three weeks to complete.

Five thousand tons of special river sand are being brought through the port of Yarmouth from Holland to build sculptures up to 9m high.

Dutch company Sculpture Events Factory International is budgeting on at least 200,000 visitors paying to see the sculptures on a football pitch-sized area behind the Marina Centre.

It is only the second time the Eindhoven-based firm has worked in the UK, the first occasion being last year's successful sand festival in Brighton which had an Ancient Egypt theme...

Sand sculpture coup for town 'brilliant', EDP 24, UK, May 10, 2006.

cf. Last year's post about the Brighton event: Wonders of Egypt created in sand.

Belgian Egyptologist Jacques Kinnaer created this Web site with pictures and clickable maps of the treasures of ancient Egypt.

His updates detail the continued uncovering of archaeological artefacts, such as the recent discovery of a pre-dynastic brewery in the Nile Delta.

www.ancient-egypt.org.

A look at an ancient civilization, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, USA, May 06, 2006.

Do we have to wait for overseas protests so that we get our act together? Asks Samir Raafat.

To date, laws and regulations defining a historic building or landmark remain equivocal, which makes it all the easier for developers to pursue their mission to fill up the city with concrete structures. Moreover, the absence of a Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) is translated into the accelerated disappearance of historic neighbourhoods and sites across the nation. Which is why many are demanding that our government-appointed city mayors actively intervene to preserve our historic neighbourhoods.

Take the neighbourhood of Garden City, for example, or what's left of it. Here's a story that can be told elsewhere in Cairo. It is the story of an upper middle-class elite who sought to balance their middle-class sensitivities with their patriotic political convictions. The last Ottomans in Egypt nicknamed it Beyoglou (sons of beys) a reminder of a comparable Istanbul district on the shores of the Bosporus, where the privileged dreamt of a modern independent Turkey. While Beyoglou's landmarks are still around, Garden City's are disappearing.

The story of Garden City was also the story of a state in the making. Architects, musicians, politicians, educators, ideologues, judges and many of the most prominent figures of the pre-republican era lived there, leaving their ephemeral mark on Egyptian society as they walked along its shady winding streets admiring the district's eclectic architecture...

Preserving our Historic Neighbourhoods, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 794, May 11 - 17, 2006.

President Hosni Mubarak joins German President Horst Köhler today to inaugurate the exhibition Egypt's Sunken Treasures. Nevine El-Aref reports from Berlin.

The streets of Berlin, its shops, airport, train stations, buses and hotels are plastered with posters of granite colossi of the goddess Isis, the Nile god Hapi, Ptolemaic royal figures and the head of Caesarion, Cleopatra's son by Julius Caesar, half buried in the seabed. Magazine covers show divers face to face with monuments beneath the waves, while photographs of objects from Napoleon's sunken fleet dominate the front pages of newspapers. Berlin, it sometimes feels, has been cast beneath the spell of sunken treasure.

At the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum, where an exhibition of 489 objects excavated from beneath the Mediterranean is today inaugurated by the Egyptian and German presidents, enormous care has been taken in recreating the Alexandrian theme. The central courtyard connecting the 16 rooms of the exhibition is designed to resemble the sunken cities of Heracleion and Canopus in Abu Qir Bay, while in the galleries the echoing sound of waves accompanies visitors to the exhibition. Giant plasma screens show films documenting the progress of marine archaeologists as they uncover the mysteries of Alexandria's ancient Eastern Harbour.

A prologue and an epilogue provide information about the underwater missions of the Institut Européan d'Archéologie Sous-Marine (IEASM) and the natural disasters that led to the submergence of the area more than 1,000 years ago...

Mysteries of the deep, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 794, May 11 - 17, 2006.

St. Louis Art Museum officials strategised with their attorney into the night Thursday about how to respond to the Egyptian government's demands that the museum return an ancient mummy mask by Monday.

The museum has called a press conference at 9:30 a.m. today to announce its response.

Earlier this month, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the Post-Dispatch and other media that he sent a letter demanding the 3,200-year-old mask's return by Monday. He did not reply to a Post-Dispatch request for comment late Thursday.

The museum said Thursday that it had not received any communication from Hawass setting a date...

Art Museum weighs Egypt's demand for mask, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Missouri, USA, May 11, 2006.

A $9 million facelift has Pharaoh’s Lost Kingdom Adventure Park roaring again.

Backed by a pair of new partners, Aryana Group and Braswells, the amusement park in Redlands off Interstate 10 has banked that its new make-over can attract the interest of youth and adults through its Egyptian-oriented gates.

“We’re in the process of a renovation and improving the park overall,” said Ken Kowalski, vice president of advertising and marketing management for Pharaoh’s Lost Kingdom...

Pharaoh’s resuscitated, Highland Community News, California, USA, May 11, 2006.