Tralliance Corporation, the .travel Registry, working with the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) today announced the establishment of the Africa Virtual Heritage Management Project (VHMP) before an audience of travel industry leadership at the Tourism Africa 2006 Conference. The inaugural conference is taking place under the patronage of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) and its president Jean-Claude Baumgarten, which also was the first travel trade association to support the global .travel initiative.

The progressive initiative will ensure that the registration of each country's place names, including cities, towns, heritage and sacred sites, national parks and reserves for all African nations, are rightfully secured within the growing .travel Internet space. In line with the UNWTO's ongoing commitment to develop tourism in Africa, the project will ensure that each African country will be able to market its tourism assets through the .travel brand equally with the rest of the world, now and in the future.

The project is designed to ensure that once registered through the VHMP, approximately 4,000 primary Africa place names, from all 55 African nations, will be held in trust by the UNWTO for an initial period of up to five years. At any time, each African nation will be able to request the transfer of respective place names to the rightful authorities within their country in accordance with .travel policies.

The VHMP comes as the .travel Place Name Priority Right deadline is drawing near. The December 31, 2006 deadline is looming large for all nations in the world. After this time, all place names left unclaimed by any country will be open to commercial travel entities. Any businesses that may share a place name will have the legal right to register the name...

Tralliance and UNWTO Unveil Africa Virtual Heritage Management Project, Yahoo! Finance, USA, September 11, 2006.

cf. Previously on this blog: Egyptian Tourist Authority Launches New Website.

For the last two weeks, Prator and his classmates have been studying ancient Egypt, specifically the practice of mummification, using Cornish hens purchased from a grocery store.

Students preserved the hens using a mixture of salt and cinnamon meant to replicate natron, the naturally occurring mineral the Egyptians used to dry the bodies that is unique to Egypt. The salt and cinnamon were changed every other day.

Social studies teacher Jo Ann Hopper bought gizzards, which students also had to preserve. Once dried, those were wrapped in white cloth strips and placed in hand-painted canopic jars, just like it was done to the organs of royalty centuries ago...

Students get all wrapped up in how Egypt made mummies, Georgann Yara, The Arizona Republic, Arizona, USA, September 13, 2006.

Walking down the pristine hallways of the Museum of Fine Arts, most visitors focus on the aesthetics of legendary works of art, thinking little about the logistics and processes that bring pieces from faraway countries to Boston. But some of those artefacts may have had a much seedier beginning, looted under the cover of darkness from sites across the ocean, according to Boston University professor archaeologist Ricardo Elia.

Italian authorities said last October they had evidence proving the MFA had received looted works of art, according to a July 28 The Boston Globe article. In July, the MFA announced it would return an unspecified number of artefacts to the Italian government. MFA officials declined to comment for this article.

Elia said the vague wording of the MFA's acquisitions and provenance policy allows the museum to acquire undocumented antiquities that are possibly looted, as long as the museum's directors think the piece is significant enough.

"It's a huge problem across the board," he said. "This [has been] a major problem with antiquities collections by museums ... for 50 years."

Elia said antiquities-rich countries, including Egypt, Italy and Greece, have strict laws prohibiting the removal of antiquities from the country without government permission.

However, he said, "tons and tons" of material continues to come from these countries each year...

Museums then purchase or receive these "looted" objects, considered to be undocumented because they do not come with a long history of ownership or origination. Elia said about 85 to 90 percent of materials found in Sotheby's auctions or in museum catalogs is undocumented. He said the MFA's current acquisitions policy allows its directors to receive these undocumented artefacts without investigating the possibility that the works were looted...

Prof. demands MFA return 'looted' artefacts, Jenny Paul, The Daily Free Press, Boston University, Massachusetts, USA, September 12, 2006.

Early this week the conflict between businessmen Adel Iskandar, owner of a number of bazaars in Old Cairo, the priests of Old Cairo's churches and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) reached a deadlock.

Bishop Selwanss, general bishop of the Old Cairo, Manial and Fum Al-Khalig churches, has appealed to President Hosni Mubarak asking his direct intervention to prevent any harm to the Coptic churches at the Mugamaa Al-Adian (religious compound) in Old Cairo by a so-called violation of the backyard of St George's (Mar Girguis) Church by a "powerful" Coptic businessman named Adel Iskandar who is planning to build a tourist complex including a bazaar, a restaurant and a pub.

In an appeal published in Al-Masry Al-Yom newspaper, Bishop Selwanss accused Iskandar of insulting, beating and even trying to kill the priests who opposed his will, as well as violating patriarchal land and carrying out massive construction work on the holy archaeological site in the face of Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) inspectors. He says the building activities have forced the discontinuance of church rituals.

Gabriel Girguis, priest and head of St Sergius's church council, asks why the minister of culture and the SCA's secretary- general do not stop the aggression against the Coptic shrine? "Why don't they apply the antiquities law which stipulates the removal and demolition of any encroachment on archaeological sites?" he asks...

Squabbles in Old Cairo, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 812, September 14 - 20, 2006.

Like other countries of the Middle East, Lebanon has a heritage almost as old as the earliest evidence of mankind. Its geographic position as a crossroads linking the Mediterranean Basin with the great Asian hinterland has conferred on it a cosmopolitan character and a multicultural legacy.

At different periods of its history Lebanon has come under the domination of foreign rulers, including Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans and French. Moreover, its mountainous terrain has provided it with a certain protective isolation, enabling it to survive with an identity all of its own.

Lebanon first appeared in recorded history in about 3000 BC as a group of coastal cities and a heavily forested hinterland. It was inhabited by the Canaanites, a Semitic people whom the Greeks called "Phoenicians" because of the purple dye they sold. These early inhabitants referred to themselves as "men of Sidon", referring to their city of origin, and called their country "Lebanon".

Because of the nature of the country and its location the Phoenicians turned to the sea, where they engaged in trade and navigation.

Each of the coastal cities was an independent kingdom noted for the special activities of its inhabitants. Tyre and Sidon were important maritime and trade centres; Gubla (later known as Byblos and now as Jubayl) and Berytus (Beirut) were trade and religious centres. Gubla was the first Phoenician city to trade actively with Egypt and the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom (2686- 2181 BC), exporting cedar, olive oil and wine, while importing gold and other products from the Nile Valley...

Ancient Phoenicia under threat, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 812, September 14 - 20, 2006.

You must have passed it driving down Cairo's Autostrade. Not more than a kilometre or two from the Citadel in the direction of Maadi, it is on your left, a mosque in ruins that still hangs by a thread on the steep cliffs of Moqattam Hills. Mohamed El-Hebeishy tries to decipher the mysterious Al-Khalawati Mosque.

His name is Sheikh Al-Salih Al-Abid Shahin Al-Khalawati, a pious man who was born in Tabriz (present- day Iran). At an early stage of his life he joined the army of Sultan Qaitbey. Military life did not entice Al-Khalawati and so he requested that he be granted his release from the army for a more spiritual life, devoting himself to religion. He returned to his hometown Tabriz joining Sidi Omar Rawshani, who initiated him into the Khalawatiya order. Later, Shahin went again to Cairo joining another great scholar, Mohamed Al-Demerdashi. After Al-Demerdashi's death, Shahin Al-Khalawati took refuge in the hills of Moqattam, building himself a place of worship that later contained his grave as well. It is said that he stayed in the hills for 30 years; not once did he descend to Cairo.

Built in 1533 AD, Al-Khalawati Mosque is nicknamed the Castle of Mamelukes...

SNAP SHOTS, Mohamed El-Hebeishy, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 811, September 07 - 13, 2006.