Rock face drawings and etchings recently rediscovered in southern Egypt are similar in age and style to the iconic Stone Age cave paintings in Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain, archaeologists say.

"It is not at all an exaggeration to call it 'Lascaux on the Nile,'" said expedition leader Dirk Huyge, curator of the Egyptian Collection at the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels, Belgium.

"The style is riveting," added Salima Ikram of the American University in Cairo, who was part of Huyge's team.

The art is "unlike anything seen elsewhere in Egypt," he said.

The engravings — estimated to be about 15,000 years old — were chiselled into several sandstone cliff faces at the village of Qurta, about 400 miles (640 kilometres) south of Cairo...

Egypt's Oldest Known Art Identified, Is 15,000 Years Old, Dan Morrison, National Geographic News, District of Columbia, USA, July 11, 2007.

Previously:

Lascaux on the Nile, June 15, 2007.

On 7/7/7, at 7pm, the New Seven Wonders of the World were announced, the culmination of an 18-month international poll during which members of the public could cast an Internet vote for one of the 77 nominated sites. The only criteria governing the nominations being that they were constructed before 2000 and remain standing.

The final list was eventually whittled down to 21 nominated sites, out of which Rio de Janeiro's Statue of Christ the Redeemer, the Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, the Colosseum in Rome, India's Taj Mahal, Peru's Machu Picchu and Mexico's Chichen Itza pyramid emerged the winners...

Bothered and bewildered, Nevine El-Aref, Al-Ahram, Egypt, Issue No. 853, July 12 - 18, 2007.