With too much text to be called a pictorial guide, too much history to be a guide book and too much of the modern to be an illustrated history, ’s is in a category of its own.

The book begins with an outline of the events and people that have shaped Cairo since around 3000 BC. By the end of the book, just over 90 pages later, the reader has been whisked through more than 5,000 years of the city’s history. The author leapfrogs around the city and its history, starting his first chapter in Coptic Cairo and winding a circuitous route to the Great Pyramids of Giza. Each chapter is filled with the history of a specific area of Cairo and its place in the modern megalopolis. Haag also wanders off the tourist track and offers a glimpse of life in Fustat, as well as that of the squatters in the City of the Dead. The photographic illustrations are beautifully shot and richly complement Haag’s prose.

He describes the chaos and the allure of the city: “as the sun sets over the Nile, the present slips away into timelessness. The call of the muezzins floating across the darkening city and the Pyramids of Giza, magnificently silhouetted against the shimmering horizon, are reminders that the monuments of the pharaohs and sultans lie within the compass of the city Egyptians call ‘Mother of the World.’”

Writing about the heart of medieval Cairo, along the western edge of Khan El-Khalili, Haag muses, “There is still enough mystery and beauty to remind you that this was the original city of A Thousand and One Nights.”

Cairo Illustrated serves as an excellent first-time tour of Cairo, but the author’s reasonably fresh point of view will also show long time residents a new way to look at the old city.

Book Reviews, Cache Seel, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 10, October 2006.

The Ministry of Culture’s, working through the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA)’s Cairo beautification project, has been working to restore Beit El-Qadi since 2001. Dilapidated, its walls and floors decaying, the building had been annexed by neighbouring residents who used it as a mosque and rented out its hawasel (granaries) as storerooms to local shopkeepers. Work on the complex included restoring faded engravings on the walls and ceilings, righting the crooked façade and replacing rotting doors and windows.

The ministry is set to wrap up by the end of Ramadan, at which time it will once again open Beit El-Qadi’s doors to the public.

Swallowed up by nearby attractions including the magnificent Islamic architectural collection of Sultan Qalawun’s edifices, Beit El-Qadi, which lies in the maze between Mash’had Al-Hussein, Khan Ga’far and El-Muizz Li Din Allah streets, is often overlooked by tourists scouring the district’s avenues and alleys for belly dancing outfits, souvenir tarbouches, sibah (prayer beads), galabeyyas and blue knickknacks to ward off the evil eye...

House in Order, Zeinab Abul-Gheit, Egypt Today, Egypt, Volume 27, Issue 10, October 2006.

Hunters stalked giant camels as tall as some modern-day elephants in the Syrian desert tens of thousands of years ago and archaeologists behind the find are wondering where the camels came from and what caused them to die off.

The enormous beasts existed about 100,000 years ago and more of the bones, first discovered last year, have been found this year in the sands about 150 miles north of the capital, Damascus.

The animal, branded the "Syrian Camel" by its Swiss and Syrian discoverers, stood between three and four yards high — about twice the size of latter-day camels and the height at the shoulder of many African elephants...

Ordinary camels appeared in the (Middle East) region some 6,000-7,000 years ago and, for the first time, we have a wild form and very, very old," he said.

Scientists find more bones of big camels, Albert Aji, AP via Yahoo! News, USA, October 10, 2006.

cf. Previously on this blog: Ancient Giant Camel Found in Syrian Desert Pushes Back History.

"King Tutankhamun: Wonderful Things' from the Pharaoh's Tomb" opens Friday and will run through Jan. 31 [2007] at the Branigan Cultural Centre, 500 N. Water St. on the Downtown Mall. Courts said arrangements have already been made to allow thousands of regional school children to view the exhibit.

Tamara Gillis of Las Cruces said she is excited about the show.

"I think it's going to be awesome, I'll be taking all my nieces and nephews. They're 6 to 13 and I wish I could have seen something like this when I was their age," said Gillis, who is also eager to shop in the gift shop accompanying the exhibit.

"That'll be great," she said...

Wonderful' replicas on display in Las Cruces, S. Derrickson Moore, Las Cruces Sun-News, New Mexico, USA, October 07, 2006.

Fifteen minutes of 3D animation, compositing and graphics by Match Frame San Antonio illustrating the amazing architectural feats of the ancient Egyptians appear in “Egypt: Engineering an Empire,” premiering October 9 [2006] on The History Channel. Match Frame created full 3D animations, blueprint and map animations plus the title sequence and legacy graphics for the two-hour program, which launches Kralyevich Productions, Inc.’s (KPI) 13-episode “Engineering an Empire” series. Last year Match Frame teamed with KPI on the special, “Rome: Engineering an Empire,” a double primetime Emmy Award winner.

“The team at Match Frame did a superb job of bringing ancient Egypt’s most stunning structures back to life,” says Christopher Cassel who produced, wrote and directed the show for KPI. “Their 3D modelling capability is unmatched — I’ve never seen anything else that comes close in terms of being photoreal, crisp, detailed and believable. And their blueprint-style animations were integral to making complex engineering principles digestible for the average viewer.”

“Since we worked on ‘Rome’ we had a good idea of the direction the Egypt show would take and how to push our work further creatively and technically,” says Match Frame vice president/director of computer animation Stephanie Schneider who executive produced the project. “The chance to travel back in time to witness the building of the pyramids and experience this extraordinary civilization along the Nile was something we couldn’t resist...”

Match Frame San Antonio helps KPI depict the wonders of ancient Egypt, DMN Newswire via Digital Video Editing, USA, October 11, 2006.

The mystery surrounding Pa-Ib, a 2,500-year-old Egyptian mummy owned by the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, has begun to unravel.

Little was known about Pa-Ib before Wednesday, but a CT scan done at Advanced Radiology Consultants revealed the mummy most likely was a woman and at least 30 years old.

"We're leaning toward female," Dr. Ruben Kier, chairman of the board of Advanced Radiology Consultants, said to a flock of media about 5:20 p.m. "That's preliminary — probable girl."

Kier said CT scans showed evidence of arthritis in the pelvic area, which is common with women who have given birth...

CT scan reveals mummy likely mommy, Andrew Brophy, The Connecticut Post, Connecticut, USA, October 12, 2006.

cf. Pa-Ib a real person, but royalty?, Meg Barone, The Connecticut Post via Barnum Museum, Connecticut, USA, September 15, 2006.

cf. Previously on this blog: P.T. Barnum was right about his mummy.

Not much about Egypt in this article about the De Young museum except this snippet at the end.

Other exhibitions to look forward to over the next year, Buchanan remarked, include a retrospective of punk and new wave fashion icon Vivienne Westwood and — “several generations of school children later” — an exhibition of King Tut artefacts, marking the 30th anniversary of the King Tut exhibition first visit to San Francisco.

De Young ages well, Jennifer Liss, The San Francisco Examiner, California, USA, October 12, 2006.