Starting today [01/01/2007] in Edfu, Upper Egypt, Horus Temple receives for the first time its visitors at night.

This came in the context of the integrated project by the Ministry of Culture to develop the temple according to the modern world systems of lighting.

Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni said that the project extended 3 years and in a cost of L.E 12 million to adjust the temple surrounding area, electronic security system, setting up a Nile special anchorage to receive the tourist ships...

Horus Temple in Edfu receives visitors at night, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, January 01, 2007.

Night visits to Temple of Horus allowed as of New Year

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that most sophisticated lightening systems have been installed to allow night visits to the temple.

Hawass added that allowing night visits to the temple would help solve the problem of crowded tourists at the temple...

Night visits to Temple of Horus allowed as of New Year, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, December 31, 2006.

Despite a biting cold, the Grand Palais in the heart of Paris was bustling with visitors during this holiday season who came to see Egypt's Sunken Treasure Exhibition that was opened here on December 9 [2006] by Egyptian and French Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Jacques Chirac, respectively.

People of all ages lined up in queues to explore the amazing treasures depicting artefacts coming from the lost city of Herakleion and parts of the city of Canopus.

The artifacts would help shed new light on the extent to which the Egyptian people, who were long ruled by foreign conquerors, were in contact with people and ideas from Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome.

The approximately 500 exhibits are from 1,200 to 2,700 years old and most of them have never been on public display before.

The exhibit is to last to the end of May [2007]. The Grand Palais set up a boutique on the sidelines of the exhibit to sell posters and photographs of displayed artifacts.

Unprecedented number of visitors flocks to Egypt's sunken treasures exhibition, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, December 30, 2006.

With millions of dollars in treasure and revenue, no one can dispute that King Tut's touch would put King Midas' to shame. Fort Lauderdale's Museum of Art tallied 650,000 visitors who viewed the ancient and bejewelled artefacts from "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs." General admission started at $30, and the show pumped about $150 million into Broward County during its four-month stay. While the museum did not report net profits from Tut (after the Egyptians' $5million take), it did acknowledge that ducats drawn from Tut would curate exhibitions for years to come.

Sharks, mummies and a whole lot of U.S. dollars, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Florida, USA, December 31, 2006.

"Sunken Treasures of Egypt", a touring exhibition of some 500 artefacts salvaged from the Eastern Harbour of Alexandria and Abu Qir Bay, drew thousands of visitors in Berlin where it opened in May before moving to Paris in early December (see Nevine El-Aref " Taking a plunge", Al-Ahram Weekly, 18-24 May 2006 and "Paris plunges into Egyptology", Weekly, 14-20 December 2006). The fruit of excavations led by the Institut Européen d'Archeologie Sous-Marine (IEASM), directed by Franck Goddio with funding from the Hilti Foundation, with the cooperation of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the exhibition highlighted vestiges of two ancient sunken cities, Herakleion and Canopus, as well as a host of later artefacts.

Reviewing the exhibition in Le Monde (see "Une Egypte sortie des eaux" , 10 December 2006), Pierre Barthélémy suggested that Goddio's success had brought with it strong enmity, "notably in the community of Egyptologists", before conceding that detractors — primarily another archaeologist working in Alexandria, Jean-Yves Empereur, who directs the Centre d'Etudes Alexandrines (CEA) — have discredited the man's work on the basis of his lacking qualifications in archaeology. Barthélémy goes on to demonstrate that Goddio works collaboratively with scholars in the field, such as Jean Yoyotte, an honorary professor at the College de France, whom he quotes as comparing their professional association as that between a blind man and a paralytic, in this case the one providing funding and technology, the other offering scholarly input and hypotheses about the findings...

A veil on the past, Hala Halim, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 826, December 28, 2006 - January 03, 2007.

When dentist Ng Tze-chuen is not picking at cavities at his Causeway Bay clinic, he may be dreaming about his forceps and the craters in a distant moon, wrecked titanic boats in the deep ocean and pharaohs' chambers hidden in the Egyptian pyramids.

It was back in the early 1970s when Ng tried to pick up an inlay with his surgical forceps to fill cavities, but dropped it on the floor. An idea flashed across when the apple, or the inlay in this case, dropped.

How nice it would be, he thought, to have surgical forceps — as flexible and gentle as the human fingers — to feel the object and adapt its grip according to the shapes of inlays...

... Ng cold-called on Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, to present his idea of sending a small robotic insect on a tether with a pinhole camera to explore the hidden shafts in the Great Pyramid of Giza.

He said the micro-gripper, drills and corer developed for the Mir Space Station and Beagle 2 could help retrieve samples from secret chambers.

Ng said it may help unlock the secret about the Pharaoh [Khufu], who built the Great Pyramid.

Ng's robotic insect is still being tested, and the results will be announced early next year...

Giant step for SAR in tiny inventions, Carol Chung, The Standard, Hong Kong, December 11, 2006.

Egypt's most important sites are experiencing major trouble, a new report suggests. All the three reviewed Egyptian World Heritage sites were in danger of losing the values that originally brought them into the prestigious Unesco list, and they were worst rated in the Middle East and North Africa region. The threatened sites include the Pyramids of Giza, the Islamic district of Cairo and the historic cities of Thebes and Luxor.

In a review of 94 major World Heritage sites made by the George Washington University in cooperation with the 'National Geographic' journal, the major historic and tourist attractions of Egypt are all among the bottom-25 of the list, receiving from 50 to 58 out of 100 possible points. In the Middle East and North Africa region, no heritage sites are equally poorly maintained, and on the African continent, only Ethiopia's rock-hewn churches at Lalibela get a poorer score.

And the review — which is published for its third time — spells trouble for both some of the world's major cultural heritage sites and for the backbone of Egypt's tourism industry. The world-famous pyramids are worst off, having degenerated into a tourist trap of vendors and its surroundings being flooded by Cairo's encroaching suburbs. Travellers are advised to see the worst-off sites on the list before it is too late...

Egypt's historic sites seriously threatened, Afrol News, Norway, December 11, 2006.

Roman and Anglo-Saxon jewellery and other artefacts are still being sold illegally on eBay, despite the website’s promise to clamp down on the trade.

The British Museum has told The Times that it is alarmed at the number of sellers offering gold and silver that has apparently been found on British soil but has not been reported...

Two years ago The Times reported that the number of potential treasure finds being offered for sale on eBay was so high that it was undermining the credibility of the Act...

In October eBay addressed the problem, signing a memorandum of understanding with the British Museum and The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the Government’s advisory body. The website promised to discourage the illegal trade in antiquities and agreed to allow the British Museum to contact sellers “to ascertain whether there is a reasonable cause for concern”...

Illicit artefacts sold as eBay turns blind eye, Dalya Alberge, The Times, UK, December 18, 2006.

The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum will open the exhibit Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, University College, London on February 17 and run through July 22, 2007. It's an exhibition with all the trappings of an historical novel. The dogged archaeologist. The lady adventurer. A dazzling collection of clues to a lost age.

Excavating Egypt: Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology traces the development of Egyptian archaeology from its beginnings in the 1880s to the present day through spectacular artwork and rare archival materials amassed by the Petrie Museum and its namesake. On view are over 220 of the Petrie's most important objects from sites in the Nile River valley, including one of the world's earliest surviving dresses (circa 2400 BCE), royal art from the palace-city of the "heretic pharaoh" Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti, a gold mummy mask, jewellery, stone sculpture, and objects of daily life ranging from copper tweezers to a ceramic rat trap.

The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum will be the only New England venue for Excavating Egypt, which was organized by the Carlos Museum. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with contributions by Dr. Lacovara, Carlos Museum curator of Egyptian art, Betsy Teasley Trope, former Carlos Museum associate curator of ancient art, and Stephen Quirke, Petrie Museum curator...

Great Discoveries from the Petrie Museum , Art Daily, Mexico, January 01, 2007.

Marion True, former J. Paul Getty Museum curator, says the institution is letting her take the fall in a looted art case that has resulted in agreements to return 30 contested antiquities to both Greece and Italy, according to a published report.

True wrote in a letter to the J. Paul Getty Trust that her superiors were aware of the risks of buying antiquities and had approved the acquisitions. The Dec. 18 letter was obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

True and art dealer Robert Hecht are on trial in Rome for allegedly receiving archaeological treasures stolen from private collections or dug up illicitly. They deny wrongdoing.

True said in the letter that the museum has left her to "carry the burden" for the purchases and complained that the Getty has not publicly defended her innocence or explained her role at the museum.

The Getty's "calculated silence ... has been acknowledged universally, especially in the archaeological countries, as a tacit acceptance of my guilt," True said in the two-page letter...

Ex-Getty curator says she's taking fall, AP via Yahoo! News, USA, December 29, 2006.

The Getty Museum, one of the world's leading repositories of antiquities, refused on Wednesday to hand over to Italy a 2,500-year-old Greek statue of a boy to end a bitter dispute over looted works of art.

Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli made the demand in Rome, saying Italy would break off ties with the wealthy Los Angeles museum, which funds several restoration projects in Italy, unless it quickly returned art works, including the bronze statue, that Rome says were looted.

"Either there is an agreement or there is a breakdown," Rutelli told reporters in Rome. "The time has passed when people could turn a blind eye to looting."

But the Getty said that extensive research had shown that the statue — known as the Getty Bronze — was found in international waters more than 40 years ago and was not part of the cultural heritage of Italy...

Getty museum says no to Italian demand for statue, Arthur Spiegelman, Reuters via Yahoo! News, USA, December 20, 2006.

TravelVideo's monthly roundup of the Egypt travel news contains.

• Cairo - Aswan to be re-operated [for] Nile cruise[s]
• British tourists increased by 40%
• UNDP: Egypt provides 100% pure drinking water, makes impressive development strides

Travel News from Egypt, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, December 07, 2006.