As we leave the airport, weary with jet lag, Egypt begins to weave its magic. Elaborate mosques and sprawling government buildings compete for space alongside housing block ruins. Laundry, surprisingly bright in colour despite the heavy pollution, billows in the wind. It hangs outside many a run-down apartment window to dry in the warm Cairo breeze.

Egypt's beauty lies in its startling contradictions. The bustling cities and the desert lands. It's there on the streets — donkeys trot down the main roads pulling heavy carts weighed down with people and produce.

They share the lanes with mini buses which transport the locals around town, battered cars which splutter along the road sending a spray of pollution into the already tainted air. In the city, high-rise apartments and expensive compounds share space with temples, there's a massive cemetery called "the city of the dead", and of course, the ever present pyramids...

Sands of time, Jessica Hurt, The Adelaide Advertiser, Australia, March 21, 2007.

Egyptologists Join Together At Penn Museum the University of Pennsylvania Museum to Share Insight into Newest Research and Understandings about the Amarna Period at Public Symposium Saturday, March 31, 2007.

Of all the times in ancient Egypt's long history, the Amarna Period (circa 1353 to 1336 BCE) is one of the most intriguing. In little more than a generation, the religious, artistic, and political order of Egyptian civilization was radically altered — and then restored. Egyptologists continue to make important discoveries about this time — and to debate their meaning.

On Saturday, March 31, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology hosts a gathering of prominent Egyptologists from two continents, offering a variety of perspectives on this revolutionary period. “Amarna: New Research and Discoveries in the Age of Akhenaten and Tutankhamun,” a full day public symposium, is co-sponsored by Archaeology Magazine and the Centre for Ancient Studies at the University of Pennsylvania...

Egyptologists Join Together At Penn Museum, HULIQ Media, North Carolina, USA, March 22, 2007.

Deities, votive offerings and stelae illustrating the religious convictions and social life of the ancient Egyptians in the early part of the 19th Dynasty are the Egyptian Museum's latest attractions. Nevine El-Aref reports that for the next six months visitors to the museum will have a first glimpse of these treasures, long-buried not beneath the sand but in the museum's basement.

The exhibition on the museum's ground floor falls within a series organised by the Egyptian Museum to highlight some of the treasures of its collection which has been hidden for decades in its overflowing vaults. The display changes every six months.

The current exhibition, "Anubis, Upwawet and other Deities", displays 1,000 year's worth of offerings to the ancient Egyptian jackal deity Anubis, god of mummification, and Upwawet, who opened the passage allowing the soul of the deceased to cross to the afterlife. These two were the principle protective deities of the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut from the 18th to the 21st dynasties...

Here to eternity, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 837, March 22 - 28, 2007.

On 7 July this year — 7/7/7 — the new Seven Wonders of the World will be announced in Lisbon, Portugal, the result of an international poll to compile the latest version of the list. The final seven will be chosen from a shortlist of 21 nominated sites across the planet. Yet, even though the Giza Pyramids have maintained their place through the ages, the idea of a new list has fallen flat here in Egypt where the Antiquities Authorities are bent on opposing the concept of a popular vote.

When the poll was launched in 2001, 77 candidates were nominated, all of them meeting the criteria that they were built before 2000, and were still standing. Telephone and Internet votes have so far whittled this number down to 21. These are, in no particular order, the Taj Mahal; Stonehenge; the Athens Acropolis; the Great Wall of China; the Giza Pyramids; the Statue of Liberty; the Eiffel Tower; Peru's Machu Picchu; Istanbul's Haghia Sophia; the Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow; the Colosseum; Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle; Spain's Alhambra; Japan's Kiyomizu Temple; the Sydney Opera House; Cambodia's Angkor; Timbuktu; Petra; Brazil's Statue of Christ Redeemer; Easter Island; and Chichen Itza, Mexico...

The Egyptian Antiquities Authority has made public its opposition to the project. Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the Weekly that the Giza Pyramids did not need to be put to the vote as they were the only one surviving of the seven ancient wonders. He suggested that Weber's organisation had no right to run such a project, being a private organisation without affiliation to any international scientific society or archaeological institute. Hawass claimed that it was not approved either by UNESCO or the Word Heritage Organisation...

One out of seven ain't bad, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 837, March 22 - 28, 2007.

cf. Seven wonders ballots pour in, John Ward Anderson, The Washington Post via The Indianapolis Star, Indiana, USA, March 18, 2007.

"An Egyptian-Spanish archaeological mission discovered, on Wednesday, instruments used in the funeral of Queen Hatshepsut's chief of works in Thebes, Djehuty, in Djehuty's tomb in the Dar-Abul-Naga area in Luxor's West Bank," Al-Ahram reported.

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Dr. Zahi Hawass said the new discovery includes 42 clay pots and 42 flower bouquets, which had been thrown into the deceased's tomb at the end of the funeral ceremony. This ritual is featured on a wall at Djehuty's burial chamber showing the family of the deceased, along with priests holding clay pot and flower bouquets. According to Dr. Hawass, during the cleaning of the area in front of the tomb, archaeologists hit upon the remains of a six meter long wall that once made the tomb's façade.

José Galán, head of the Spanish team said that during excavation works at the tomb's open court, a moderate wooden sarcophagus was found inside a small pit. It includes the bones of an unidentified woman that can be dated to the New Kingdom era...

Egyptian-Spanish mission discovers flowers funerary items in Djehuty tomb, Egypt State Information Service, Egypt, March 22, 2007.

Previously:

Scientists discover Egyptians' 'backgammon', April 07, 2006.

Parlour of Hatshepsut time unearthed, April 04, 2006.

[A] group of NASA and university scientists has found a convincing link between long-term solar and climate variability in a unique and unexpected source: directly measured ancient water level records of the Nile, Earth's longest river.

Alexander Ruzmaikin and Joan Feynman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., together with Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif., have analyzed Egyptian records of annual Nile water levels collected between 622 and 1470 A.D. at Rawdah Island in Cairo. These records were then compared to another well-documented human record from the same time period: observations of the number of auroras reported per decade in the Northern Hemisphere. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky that happen when mass is rapidly ejected from the sun's corona, or following solar flares. They are an excellent means of tracking variations in the sun's activity.

Feynman said that while ancient Nile and auroral records are generally "spotty," that was not the case for the particular 850-year period they studied...

NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, California, USA, March 19, 2007, via Tony Cagle at ArchaeoBlog..

PDF: Does the Nile reflect solar variability?, Alexander Ruzmaikin, Joan Feynman and Yuk Yung, Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 233, 2006.

Abstract: Is solar variability reflected in the Nile River?, Alexander Ruzmaikin, Joan Feynman and Yuk Yung, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 111, D21114, doi:10.1029/2006JD007462, November 11, 2006.