The Land Rover is stuck, and the Manoosir tribesmen aren't lending a hand. In Sudan, where African generosity meets Arab politeness, this means trouble. Even our easygoing Sudanese driver tenses. A few miles downstream from this dusty mud-brick town on a remote bend of the Nile River, Chinese engineers are building the massive Meroe Dam that as early as next year may flood the villagers' homes, fields, and more than 100 miles of fertile valley. And archaeologists working to save what they can of this largely unexplored region before the waters rise are not welcomed by the locals. With our car and our equipment and our pale skin, we are harbingers of the end of their way of life...

The Meroe Dam already poses a humanitarian crisis. It will displace more than 50,000 people who live along this isolated region of the Nile, growing dates and herding sheep and goats. But the project is also creating a cultural heritage disaster largely ignored by the international media, UNESCO, and private preservation groups. Thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of ancient sites are likely to vanish underwater as early as next year without even cursory examination.

That impending destruction comes just as a half-dozen Sudanese and foreign teams discover that the obscure region was not the backwater archaeologists long imagined. During the past few seasons of hurried salvage work, the teams pinpointed hundreds of settlements and cemeteries spanning four millennia, rock art depicting everything from Neolithic giraffes, to Greek crosses, to an ancient pyramid. "We thought it was inhospitable and poor," concedes , a British Museum archaeologist who has spent five seasons digging in the region and hopes to return this winter if the violence subsides. "But what we're finding causes us to rethink that. This area is so incredibly rich in archaeology..."

Damming Sudan, Andrew Lawler, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, USA, Volume 59, Number 6, November / December 2006.

Nearly half a million people flocked to "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" in Berlin to see the ancient statues, inscriptions, and other artefacts recovered over the past decade from Alexandria's harbour and the submerged cities of Herakleion and Canopus in expeditions led by Franck Goddio, a French businessman turned archaeologist. Those who missed the show there and can't catch it in Paris, in January 2007, or in London later next year, may want to peruse the oversize companion volume of the same name.

(Prestel, $49.95) tries to be a scholarly work, a coffee-table book, and an exhibition catalogue all at once. There's no denying the expertise of the contributors, such as historian Manfred Clauss and Egyptologist Jean Yoyotte, but the text is far too detailed for the average reader. There are lengthy academic essays on ancient religion that present a mass of details, but the book does not provide enough of an overview for readers to understand the big picture. On the coffee-table side, there are pages upon pages of photos showing sculptures being hoisted out of the sea and divers looking into the eyes of ancient stone sphinxes, priests, and queens. Many of the underwater scenes seem staged; divers awkwardly point to hieroglyphs on inscriptions, but there's no indication in the caption or text that the glyphs being indicated are of particular significance.

Goddio's work as an underwater archaeologist has been criticized for yielding more exhibitions and coffee-table books than serious research...

Review: Egypt's Sunken Treasures, Mark Rose, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, USA, Volume 59, Number 6, November / December 2006.

Only one of the ancient wonders of the world still survives — now history lovers are being invited to choose a new list of seven.

Among 21 locations shortlisted for the worldwide vote is Stonehenge, the only British landmark selected.

The 5,000-year-old stones on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, will be up against sites including the Acropolis in Athens; the Statue of Liberty in New York; and the last remaining original wonder, the Pyramids of Giza in Cairo...

Stonehenge makes list in new seven wonders vote, Reuters via Yahoo! News, USA, October 17, 2006.

The website of Michel van Rijn, the self-styled inkslinger investigating and reporting on the global illicit art trade, has closed up shop.

Regular readers may remember our report about van Rijn's site back in 2004, when he was embroiled in a legal battle with James E Ferrell, founder of propane distributor FerrellGas, and Bruce Ferrini, an art dealer.

He resurfaced this summer in connection with the recovery of a long-lost Peruvian head-dress...

And readers of this blog may remember Rijn being involved in outing the St. Louis Art Museum over the Ka Nefer Nefer mummy-mask's provenance.

Death threats force art website to close, Lucy Sherriff, The Register, UK, October 19, 2006.

cf. Earlier on this blog: Art Museum dismisses claim, January 23, 2006.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Anthropology will present a lecture by renowned Egyptologist Barry Kemp, “The Ancient Egyptian City of Tell el-Amarna: Its Religion and Its Life,” 5:30-7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14 [2006], at the UAB Bell Auditorium, 700 13th St. S. Admission is free to the public.

is a professor of Egyptology at Cambridge University and a fellow of the British Academy. His books include “ ,” “ ,” [cq] and his forthcoming manuscript, “ ”

Kemp is field director of the Amarna Project, which incorporates the archaeological expedition of the Egypt Exploration Society, working in association with the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt. He has directed fieldwork at the Amarna since 1977...

Nov. 14, Renowned Egyptologist Barry Kemp To Speak At UAB, Gail Short, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama, USA, October 16, 2006.

The elevation of any cultural or natural wonder to the status of World Heritage Site is understandably a source of national pride. Being awarded the status of a World Heritage Site, however, might prove to be a poisoned chalice.

“What better way than tourism to promote understanding between peoples by inspiring admiration for the shared natural and cultural heritage?” asked Federico Mayor, director-general of World Heritage: Ours Forever.

He goes on to hint at the potential problems: “But uncontrolled tourism and ill-planned development can cause irreversible physical and social damage, not only to the sites but to the communities surrounding them...”

Automobile traffic is becoming a major threat to many other World Heritage sites. The road close to Stonehenge in the United Kingdom has threatened the integrity of the site. The proposal to build a highway close to the site of the Great Pyramids in Egypt from Giza to Dahshur was stopped by the Egyptian authorities at the request of UNESCO. The World Heritage Convention, referring to the List of World Heritage in Danger, mentions the serious threat of “rapid urban or tourist development projects...”

World Heritage Sites: Threat or Promise?, Roger Harrison, Arab News, ???, October 16, 2006.