Museum lovers are like time travellers, transported into another dimension the minute they get their first whiff of museum air — dry and musty, mixed with the smell of old wood. But my trip last month began before I even came within sight of the newly re-opened Coptic Museum.

Leaving behind the taxis lying in wait at the corner by Amr Ibn Al-Aas Mosque, I walked down a narrow street fronted with tourist shops peddling postcards and trinkets. As I progressed, the noise of the vendors faded and I soon found myself alone, walking in long shadows cast by ancient houses of worship glimpsed above the tops of imposing stone walls. Each step forward was a step back in time until I reached the precipice: Babylon Fortress.

Built by the Romans in the second century AD, the walls of the stronghold have now been subsumed by urban build-up and the site now houses six historic churches, a ninth-century synagogue and an active convent. It is in the district aptly known as Masr El-’Adima (Old Cairo) or Coptic Cairo, the traditionally Coptic Christian centre of Cairo...

Travel Back in Time, Nicolè A. Staab, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 09, September 2006.

At the moment, the endeavour closest to Hawass’ heart is a massive mummy-cataloguing project, which will hopefully have its first phase completed by the end of this year. The entire world of archaeology is watching to see how Egypt pulls off this feat — and is waiting to find out if one of the mummies in the Egyptian Museum is actually the famous Queen Hatshepsut.

Hawass: We are going to accomplish a lot before the end of this year, but the most important thing that we are starting is actually going to be called the Egyptian Mummy Project. As you know, non-royal mummies are scattered everywhere. No one has ever tried to make a database or tried to document all of these mummies, and, for the first time, we will do this. This will cover the mummies held in the [Egyptian, Greco-Roman], National, Luxor and Mummification museums as well as in all other sites around Egypt.

There are many sites in Egypt with mummies that no one knows anything about. This project will also take a sample of the mummies and do CT scans on each one. The largest part of the project, which will come later, will be that we will open a museum for all non-royal mummies in Fustat...

The second mummy project we will complete is the study on royal mummies. We will start with two mummies in particular that have never had CT scans done on them. In 1906, Howard Carter found two mummies inside KV60. One was on the ground, and the second one was in a coffin. The coffin had an inscription with the last three letters of the name of the wet nurse to Queen Hatshepsut, and so naturally they believed that this mummy was that of Queen Hatshepsut’s wet nurse...

We are thinking about DNA, but the problem with [ancient] DNA is that there are mistakes about 40 percent of the time. Maybe we will try an experiment with an Egyptian team, an experiment with the mummy of Tuthmosis II and with the mummy of Hatshepsut. If they are related, maybe this will prove it.

We will also do CT scans of famous mummies like “[unknown] man E” that no one knows anything about. We will do CT scanning of the mummies of Tuthmosis III and Ramses II...

The third project on Hawass’ list to launch by the end of the year is another series of tomb excavations at Saqqara. With the worldwide media frenzy unleashed by last year’s discovery of KV63, the first unopened tomb discovered in the Valley of the Kings in over 80 years, you can count on Hawass’ latest unveiling to be an international sensation.

We actually discovered two tombs at Saqqara. The first one was in the shadow of the second pyramid and near the causeway of the third pyramid. At the end of the causeway, we discovered that the Egyptians of Dynasty 4 found that the causeway was broken. They began to repair the north side of it, and they made that restoration with stone rubble. So we asked, “Why did they do that?” Because there was a tomb and they sealed the end of the tomb with the stone rubble..!

But is She Royalty?, David Lee Wilson, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 09, September 2006.

In February 1996, a UNESCO-organized conference projected that many of Egypt’s archaeological sites will have completely deteriorated within 200 years. Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), disagrees: “I believe that the situation in Egypt is even more critical.”

With the host of problems threatening the remnants of Pharaonic civilization, he estimates that much of Egypt’s cultural history could be gone in half that time.

Easily the most publicized of his efforts to preserve Egypt’s past was last month’s move of the 11-meter-tall statue of Ramses II from Downtown to the site of the new Grand Egyptian Museum being built near the Pyramids.

Hawass wishes people had protested when the statue was first placed Downtown, but can understand why many didn’t. “If you look at a picture of the square at that time, it was beautiful: clean, not much traffic. Now, it’s filthy and crowded, you have bridges above it, busy train stations, popular mosques and worst — the Metro underneath it”...

Stone Man Walking, Cache Seel, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 09, September 2006.

Minister of Tourism Zoheir Garranah announced that 91 hotels offering new 16,267 rooms were constructed from July 2005 to June 30, 2006.

The Minister said that these new tourist projects were part of projects promised during the presidential campaign of President Hosni Mubarak.

Minister Garranah added that according to the presidential pledge the Ministry of Tourism was committed to increasing hotel capacity in the country by 15,000 every year.

The Minister disclosed that more than 129,621 hotel rooms were under construction...

How many? He exclaimed.

16,267 new hotel rooms built within a year, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, September 04, 2006.

Archaeologists have uncovered five complete Pharaonic statues and four statue heads in the Avenue of the Ram-Headed Sphinxes during excavation works in Karnak.

The statues were in an astonishingly very good shape and had hieroglyphic inscriptions on them.

Monday's al-Akhbar daily quoted the chief of Luxor Higher Council, Samir Farag, as saying that the new find proved the importance of excavations at the site...

New historical find unearthed in Karnak, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, September 04, 2006.

The Theban Mapping Project announces the publication of the Valley of the Kings Site Management Masterplan on the TMP’s website @ www.thebanmappingproject.com.

The Valley of the Kings (Wadi Biban el Mouluk) on the West Bank of the Nile in Luxor, in the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a World Heritage site whose archaeological fame and economic importance as a tourist destination are internationally recognized. The result of its popularity has been a massive increase in visitor numbers over the last decade, now often exceeding 7,000 visitors every day. This number is guaranteed to increase in future years. Without carefully prepared site management plans, the very existence of this fragile resource could be seriously threatened.

In the spring of 2004, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) commissioned the Theban Mapping Project to prepare a site management masterplan for the Valley. This project was generously supported by the World Monuments Fund (WMF), and the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), and several private donors.

This “final draft for public consulation” is now available for you to download and we would very much like to have your feedback regarding our proposal for the future of this very important site.

Nigel J. Hetherington
Conservation Manager
Theban Mapping Project
www.thebanmappingproject.com

Many thanks to Nigel for alerting me to this.

Valley of the Kings Site Management Masterplan, Dr Kent R. Weeks, Nigel J. Hetherington, Edited by Lucy T. Jones, Theban Mapping Project, Cairo, Egypt, 2006.