Eighteen virtual exhibitions have been launched, creating a showcase for Islamic Art in the Mediterranean.

Museum staff from 14 countries have worked together to complete the project, and 50 artefacts from each museum are on show in the virtual exhibition ‘rooms’.

The UK is represented by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the National Museums of Scotland and Glasgow Museums.

They are joined by representatives from countries including Egypt, Algeria, Jordon and Morocco.

Each of the virtual exhibitions was created by a team of curators from both sides of the Mediterranean. Accompanying the works of art are archaeological facts about the regions...

Discover Islamic Art website.

Virtual museum showcases shared heritage, Frances Booth, The Telegraph, UK, May 10, 2007.

There are lessons in ancient history right here on the Jersey City waterfront. A unique seagoing vessel made out of Bolivian reeds sits awaiting a July voyage across the Atlantic Ocean that is more of an experiment.

This grass boat, the Abora III, will help the Germany-based Association for Experimental Archaeology and Research attempt to prove that trade existed 14,000 years ago — long before Columbus and the Vikings sailed for the New World — between the people of America and civilizations on the other side of the Atlantic. Among those they think met the mariners from the yet-to-be named American continent were the Egyptians of about 12,000 B.C.

One of the reasons the archaeologists say they believe commercial crossings took place is the presence of the "same cultivated and intoxicating plants on this and on the other side of the Atlantic." They point out that scientists found nicotine and cocaine traces in the mummy of Rameses II. Those two drugs did not become popular until after Columbus returned to the Old World. It was also intriguing to find that the remains of tobacco beetles were discovered in Egyptian graves and the New World bugs could not fly from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mediterranean...

Did the ancients cross the Atlantic?, The Jersey Chronicle, New Jersey, USA, May 10, 2007.

cf. First identification of drugs in Egyptian mummies, S. Balabanova, F. Parsche, W. Pirsig, Naturwissenschaften, Vol. 79, No. 8, August 1992, p. 358.

A look at the Evidence for Cocaine in Mummies, Duncan Edlin, The Hall of Maat, USA.

From the moment the auditorium was plunged into darkness and Matthew Scott's horror-film-style chords crashed into our ears, Cardiff's packed out New Theatre just knew that this was going to be something special.

Awful Egyptians was Birmingham Stage Company's adaptation of Terry Deary's hugely popular book of the same name and it had a lot to live up to.

Combining quick fire wit, historical facts, gory detail and great cartoons, Deary's books have created a winning formula, selling millions throughout the world.

But how well would this translate onto stage? ...

.

Review: Horrible Histories (Awful Egyptians), Sarah Manners, Western Mail via icWales, UK, May 11, 2007.

Egypt is a land of tombs and temples in various stages of disrepair, but none is more evocative than one of the most badly ruined - the toppled statue of Rameses II in his massive temple, the Ramesseum, between Luxor and the Valley of the Kings.

This Rameses, who bestrode the 13th century BC like a colossus, was fond of big sculptures. He was responsible for the main temple at Abu Simbel, which was moved in the 1960s to escape drowning in the lake created by the damming of the Nile.

Abu Simbel remains an awesome sight: it's easy to see how its seated figures, gazing sightlessly south, struck fear into the hearts of intending invaders. But the toppled statue at the Ramesseum, by contrast, is a potent symbol of the vanity of human ambition.

This statue prompted the English poet Shelley to pen his famous sonnet Ozymandias, in which he observes "on the sand / half sunk, a shattered visage"...

Egypt: Poetic license in the land of the fallen pharaohs, The New Zealand Herald, New Zealand, May 01, 2007.

Many ancient centres lay claim to being the “cradle of civilization” — the place in which the seeds of modern society were sown.

Egypt is one such place, and its pharaohs, pyramids and hieroglyphics have long fascinated archaeologists, school children and history buffs of many stripes.

While viewing artefacts from Egypt’s past would normally require a trip to the city, a new exhibit at the Huron County Museum (HCM) allows patrons to do so without straying far from home.

Titled “Egypt, Gift of the Nile,” the exhibit is on loan from Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), and will be showing until June 30 [2007].

About 70 artefacts are on display, according to HCM assistant curator Elizabeth French, and many are thousands of years old...

Legendary civilization invades Huron County with ROM exhibit, Ben Forrest, The Goderich Signal-Star, Ontario, Canada, May 09, 2007.

Barcelona museum of Egyptian artefacts on Wednesday denied charges that one of its statues may have been stolen from Egypt, a dispute that has prompted the Cairo government to dispatch experts to examine the piece as a possible step toward claiming it.

The limestone artwork — a 43-centimeter-tall (17-inch) depiction of a princess named Nefert — is on display at the Egypt Museum of Barcelona, which says it will return the piece if it turns out to have been stolen.

The charges come from a Spanish Egyptologist who used to work at the museum but left about two years ago, Ildefonso Falcones, the museum's lawyer, said in an interview from Barcelona.

When the archaeologist stopped working at the museum, she demanded payment of damages for alleged psychological abuse on the job. When the museum refused, she went to Egyptian authorities with her suspicions that the statuette was removed from Egypt illegally...

Spanish museum said to be exhibiting stolen Egyptian antiquity, AP via International Herald Tribune, France, May 09, 2007.

Egypt’s antiquities chief told the Associated Press in an interview that if persuasion doesn’t work, he will fight for an ancient bust of Nefertiti now in a Berlin museum that Germany says is too fragile to loan to Egypt.

Zahi Hawass rattled the world’s museums last week with requests to hand over masterpieces of ancient Egypt, including the Rosetta Stone; some for loans, others permanently.

Mr. Hawass said in the interview Wednesday that the goal is to display the pieces in two new museums, particularly the Grand Museum, which is opening in 2012 next to the Great Pyramids of Giza, and for it to be Egypt’s main antiquities showcase.

But the bombastic archaeologist ... has met resistance from museums reluctant to part with their most prized artefacts.

“Some people say, ‘If we give this bust to Egypt for three months, they will not return it,’” Mr. Hawass said, regarding the bust of Nefertiti. “I say: We are not the pirates of the Caribbean. We are in the 21st century, we have co-operation with all the countries and who respect our work...”

Egypt Antiquities Chief Says He'll Fight for Nefertiti Bust, Setarreh Massihzadegan, AP via The New York Sun, New York, USA, May 11, 2007.

cf. Egypt will fight for ancient artefacts , Setarreh Massihzadegan, AP via South Carolina Enquirer-Herald, South Carolina, USA, May 10, 2007.

The mathematical system in ancient Egypt was application-oriented, devised — complete with fractions — to manage practical matters. Assem Deif sums up the old methods.

If an ancient Egyptian wanted to divide a loaf of bread among a group of workers or figure out the manpower needed to achieve a certain task, he used addition and doubling instead of the four operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division we use today. It was their script that compelled them to use these operations, since they could double any given number by simply drawing the same symbol next to it. For a similar reason they are only used with unit fractions — those whose numerator is 1 — when solving problems about ratios.

The interesting arithmetical aspect was multiplication and its inverse, division. For the multiplication they used the method of duplication, reducing it to a problem of addition. This was done by creating two columns in which the numeral 1 always began in the left column. Both columns were doubled to the point where any combination of numbers in the left column could be reckoned to the chosen multiplier. Once checked, the corresponding numbers in the right column were summed up to become the product...

The Egyptians needed fractions to divide food and supplies according to specific ratios. Fractions were so important that of the 87 problems in the Ahmes Papyrus only six did not involve them. Likewise, of the 25 problems in the Moscow Papyrus 22 involved calculations with fractions. Because the Egyptians performed multiplications and divisions by doubling and halving, it was necessary to double fractions too. Scribes created tables of calculations of fractions along with integers. These tables would be used as references, so that the chief of personnel could carry out the fractional divisions on site. With the exception of the frequently-used fraction 2/3, and the less frequent 3/4, a scribe, being asked to divide an object into a certain number of pieces, would express his fractions as a sum of unit fractions, i.e. limiting them mainly to fractions of the form 1/n where n is a positive integer. Mathematicians call these types of fractions Egyptian Fractions and request, as Ahmes did, that the unit fractions be distinct. A unit fraction is represented in hieroglyphic numerals by placing a mouth, which meant "part", above the number...

The Ahmes code, Assem Deif, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 844, May 10 - 16, 2007.

Previously:

A Question of Ancient Mathematics, March 21, 2007.

Reply: Mathematics in Ancient Egypt, February 07, 2007.

Mathematics in Ancient Egypt, January 26, 2007.

We always liked the idea of taking road trips through Egypt. We would stop at various cities, towns and villages and get to see new things in our beloved country. Our travelling style was mainly based on budget accommodation and the occasional stay at a luxury hotel was only a pampering break.

Even with our baby boy on board, we were simply not ready to completely give up our common hobby and passion: travelling. We knew we had to continue doing what we loved to do in order to be able to be good parents. We just needed to think of how to alter our travelling style to match our new status: a family with a very young baby...

Around 45km before you reach Edfu, look carefully at the mountains to your left. Walking distance from the asphalt is a small Pharaonic temple engraved in the mountain rocks. Dating back to the New Kingdom, the Temple of Kanais, as it is widely known, was built to the orders of Pharaoh Seti I commemorating a visit he paid to the ancient Egyptian quarries in the vicinity.

Aswan is an enchanting place to visit, one of our old-time favourites. Its people, island temples and exquisite aura are all reasons why we fell in love with the city... From the Nubian Museum to the Fatimid necropolis, from the rescued Temple of Philae to the symbol of eternal love — the Mausoleum of Aga Khan — we went on an intensive sightseeing mission for two days...

Still hungry for history, we headed northward towards the largest open museum on this planet — Luxor...

Baby's day out, Ghada Kabesh and Mohamed El-Hebeishy, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 844, May 10 - 16, 2007.

The Giza Pyramid has escaped, unscathed, an online poll scam.

The poll, conducted by an organisation calling itself the New Seven Wonders Foundation, had claimed that the Giza Pyramid could not be included as part of the New Seven Wonders because it was already a candidate.

In a letter sent to Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, Bernard Weber, the poll's creator, wrote: "After careful consideration, the New Seven Wonders Foundation designates the Pyramids of Giza — the only original wonder of the world remaining — an honorary New Seven Wonders candidate. Therefore, you cannot vote for the Pyramids of Giza as part of the New Seven Wonders campaign...

Newsreel: We wonder, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 844, May 10 - 16, 2007.

The May 2007 issue of the Royal Geographical Societies (UK) magazine Geographical has an eight-page photo spread entitled “Egypt's Sunken Treasures” relating to 's work in Alexandria.

Photographer Christoph Gerigk captures underwater archaeologists at work, unearthing the remains of ancient submerged settlements off the coast of Egypt.

Sunken Treasures, Christoph Gerigk, Geographical Magazine, The Royal Geographical Society, Richmond, UK, Volume 79, No. 05, May 2007.

cf. Submerged Cities off the Coast of Egypt, Angela M.H. Schuster, Archaeology Magazine, Archaeological Institute of America, New York, USA, June 21, 2000.

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