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Tour Egypt Newsletter at July 1st, 2003 We would like to thank our sponsors in the
AETBI (our association of tour operators to Egypt) for making this newsletter,
and Tour Egypt itself possible. A list of members may be found at http://touregypt.net/aetbi/members.htm,
and readers may request best rates for tours to Egypt at http://ww3.interoz.com/tourgroups/submit.ihtml
. Welcome to the new Newsletter of Tour Egypt. Well, its not
really all that new; more of a restart, as many of our earlier readers will
know. As an explanation, we stopped the newsletter last year when problems arose
over people trying to hack the system. Then we had a system crash and, before I
could really get things restored, I had a bout with lung cancer. Ouch, but it
was apparently successfully removed and now the newsletter and I are back up and
running. In order to avoid problems with hacking, we moved our
newsletter database over to Yahoo, and I have rather enjoyed this change. I must
admit that I like taking a look at those who have filled out the profile,
allowing me to get to know a little about some of our readers. New, at Tour Egypt
Recently, we have been making some additions to Tour Egypt,
which we are prone to do from time to time. To me, one of the most interesting
new sections we have is the reader photograph upload area at http://www.touregyptphotos.com/
. This section has been very active, considering the short time that it has been
online and it offers our readers some views of Cairo that may not be found
elsewhere. Please feel free, if you have good photos of Egypt, to upload your
pics for everyone to see. In addition, we have also just installed a section that
allows our readers to create web sites at no cost, and with no annoying pop-up
adds and banners. These web sites should be limited to personal sites of our
readers, or sites directly relevant to Egypt in some way. No commercial sites
are allowed, and we hope readers will use this facility to create travel logs of
their trips to Egypt, or interesting articles about various Egyptian topics.
This section of Tour Egypt is located at http://touregypt.net/cgi-bin/easyhost.cgi? Also new, or at least about to be new as we have not placed
it online as of the writing of this newsletter, is another rebirth, that of our
Virtual Khan el-Khalili. Once upon a time, we had an online store but closed it
due to problems with suppliers. Now, after several years and considerable
investigation, we are reopening the Tour Egypt store with what we believe are
some very unique items, along with many traditional Egyptian products. We have
put a great deal of effort into making sure the products are of the highest
quality, and that our suppliers or exceptionally reliable. Look for the Khan el-Khalili
at http://www.virtualkhan.com . We also wish to point out one of our oldest sections on Tour Egypt, which we believe is still one of the most important. That is our Conference and Chat area at http://www.interoz.com:8080/~5/ . The reason we believe this section is so important is because it allows our readers to directly communicate with frequent visitors to Egypt, as well as ex-pats within Egypt and Egyptians themselves. It is a great way to find out about the goings on in Egypt; new and interesting sites to visit, and to make some friends in Egypt prior to your arrival. As a community, it is a great place to mix it up with other people with similar interests in this grand old land of Egypt. Some of Our Efforts This being the first newsletter in some time, we would like
to point out some of the more interesting efforts we have made in bringing Egypt
to your computer. Over the last year, much effort has been made to update our
antiquities section, and in this regard, we have provided several overviews,
which in turn link to specific information. Specifically, we now have overviews
of Temples (http://touregypt.net/featurestories/temples.htm),
Pyramids (http://touregypt.net/featurestories/pyramids.htm),
Historical Mosques (http://touregypt.net/featurestories/mosques.htm),
as well as Ancient Churches (http://touregypt.net/featurestories/coptchurch.htm)
and Christian Monasteries (http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/monasteries.htm).
Several other minor topics have also been explored, including Egypt’s ancient
military (http://www.touregypt.net/magazine/military.htm)
and we have expanded information considerably on the rulers of Egypt (http://www.touregypt.net/kings.htm),
as well as the ancient Egyptian gods (http://touregypt.net/godsofegypt/). We
have also added a section that includes many documents and some entire books in
our section on Documents and Text (http://touregypt.net/literature.htm). Particularly, over the previous year, we have added
considerable information on most every pyramid, just about every major Christian
monastery, and though we still have many more to investigate, a wide range of
Islamic era monuments. Notable Stories from June: I would like to share with our readers some of my favorite
stories on Tour Egypt during June. Many of these were related to Egyptian
religion in one way or another, and include:
Other stories covered a variety of fertile ground on Islamic and Christian monuments, as well as travel, the most important of which perhaps consist of: Travel
Christian
Islamic
Incidentally, we have concentrated on the Muslim Monuments within Islamic Cairo, in order to expand our virtual tour of the section of the city (http://touregypt.net/cairo/cairoislamic.htm) Finally, there is also the series on the Temple of
Karnak that we are working on. This is meant to be somewhat of a guide to those
visiting this famous monument in Luxor, and is a continuing work, thus far
covering parts of the Temple of Amun in that complex. See http://www.touregypt.net/karamun.htm Travel News
This is really a grand time to visit Egypt. Despite
information from the Ministry of Tourism, travel to Egypt, and particularly to
the ancient pharaonic sites (as opposed to the beaches of the Red Sea and Sinai)
has not made a full recovery after the Iraqi War. The results are twofold.
First, visitors will not at this time experience the overcrowding at monuments
found during normal times. Secondly, there are a number of good travel deals
floating around, making it one of the least expensive periods to arrange a tour.
Of course, one of the best ways to find these deals is to email our AETBI
members with a tour request at http://ww3.interoz.com/tourgroups/submit.ihtml
. Of course, the reason that travel continues to be slow is,
for many people, safety concerns. Sometimes, when I talk about safety to Egypt,
I feel like my words are falling on deaf ears. Those who know Egypt don’t have
to be told, and those who do not know Egypt fail to understand just how safe it
is. I have written any number of articles about safety in
Egypt, but it comes down to several facts. First, there is very little crime in
Egypt of the sort that effects tourists as it does in other parts of the world.
Violent robberies are extremely rare and we know of only one, which resulted in
minor injuries, within the past five years or so. Also, the country of Egypt has taken extreme precautions
against acts of terrorism, and there have been no problems with this sort of
activity since new security efforts were effected in the mid 1990s. Hence, since 1997, we know of not a single tourist death
related to either crime or other forms of violence, actually making Egypt one of
the safest tourist destinations in the world. At no time during the recent Iraq war did the USA State Department
nor the British Foreign office advise that travel to Egypt was not safe.
For up to date travel advice refer to these web sites: http://travel.state.gov/warnings_list.html
for the USA and www.fco.gov.uk for Britain. So, this is an excellent time to visit, with fewer crowds
and better pricing on everything from complete tours to fine, hotel
accommodations, and everyone going out of their way to please the relatively
limited number of antiquity tourists. Antiquity News
The Exodus A
Pair of Keynsham brothers believe they have finally solved the 3,000-year-old
mystery of Moses' exact route from Egypt, after viewing chariot parts dating
from Egypt’s New Kingdom in the Red Sea. Oh my gosh! Chariot parts found in the Red Sea, and dating
from about the period of the Israeli Exodus! Proof at last when no other
evidence has ever surfaced of the Exodus. Well, OK, I am a Christian it is true, and would like
nothing better than to find archaeological evidence of Moses and the Israelites
Exodus from Egypt, but come on now. In a recent article it was mentioned that
some American Bible printers were considering the inclusion of this evidence. Unfortunately, most scholars believe that the Exodus took
place during the 18th Dynasty or thereabout, and this happened to be
a period when considerable activity was taking place between Egypt and Southern
Syria. In fact, we have a number of rulers taking huge armies into the area, and
the find of some chariot parts could have just any number of explanations other
than the Exodus. The Nefertiti Affair For the second time
in a week, the 18th-dynasty queen, Nefertiti, has been making headlines, and has
again been the subject of much discussion. After the incident in the Berlin
Museum, in which the famous painted limestone bust of the queen was placed on
top of a modern bronze female statue, Joanne Fletcher, a mummification expert
from the University of York in England, announced that she and her team may have
identified the actual mummy of the queen. Egyptian
authorities were furious over the mounting of Nefertiti’s famous bust onto a
modern statue of a female body created by Hungarian artists in the Egyptian
National Museum in Berlin. Basically, it
would seem that they felt that it was a highly inappropriate methods of
displaying the bust, but mention was also made of its vulnerability both to
accidents and erosion. Then, perhaps
surprisingly considering the timing, it was announced that Nefertiti’s mummy
has been identified. We use the word identified because the mummy was actually
unearthed, together with others, from a cache in the Thebean necropolis by Victor
Loret in 1898. Of several unidentified mummies from that cache, one, known
previously as "Younger Lady", is believed by Joanne Fletcher, to be
none other than that of Nefertiti. Apart from the
similarity in physiognomy, and the swan-like neck of the mummy that bears a
resemblance to Nefertiti's beautiful face as immortalised in the limestone bust
in Berlin, Fletcher pointed to other clues to support her hypothesis: a doubled-
pierced ear lobe, which she claims was a rare fashion statement in Ancient
Egypt; a shaven head; and the clear impression of the tight-fitting brow-band
worn by royalty. "Think of the tight-fitting, tall blue crown worn by
Nefertiti, something that would have required a shaven head to fit
properly," said Fletcher. Fletcher’s
assertion, released on the Discovery Channel's Web site, placed considerable
stress on these particular characteristics of the mummy -- the brow-band over
the foreheads of Egyptian rulers, and a double-pierced ear of the mummy, which
she stressed can also be seen on busts of the queen and one of her daughters. But for his part, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council
of Antiquities (SCA) Zahi Hawass totally refutes the idea, and describes it as
"pure fiction". He accuses Fletcher of lacking in experience, as
"a new PhD recipient", and told Al-Ahram Weekly that Fletcher's
theory was not based on facts or solid evidence, "only on facial
resemblance between the mummy and Nefertiti's bust, and on artistic
representations of the Amarna period in which the queen lived”. Hawass asserted,
moreover, that the physical resemblance is not significant, "because all
the statues of the Amarna era have the same characteristics. Amarna art was
idealistic and not realistic," he said, and pointed out that in the
Egyptian Museum, there were five of six mummies with the same characteristics.
Mamdouh El-Damati, director of the Egyptian Museum, mentioned that this theory
was not new, this being the second time that a claim to have discovered
Nefertiti's mummy within this group of mummies has been made. Archeological
Missions to Salvage Sunken Antiquities from Egyptian Shores There are many sunken antiquities and cities beneath the Egyptian coasts, which were lost hundreds of years ago. The permanent committee approved work of several foreign archeological missions to salvage sunken artifacts and cities along Egyptian coasts.
The decision came within a plan
to carry out an integrated project to register the archeological heritage sunken
in Egyptian waters.
The
mission had previously restored several sunken antiquities in 6 sites on the
coasts of Safaga and Ras Mohammed reserve. The mission had discovered the
site of a sunken ship near the island of Saadana, 40km away from Hurghad
, which dates back to the 17th
century AD, where 30 rare large earthenware and copper vessels and porcelain
tools were found. A New
Corner Established at Greco-Roman Museum at Alexandria The
Greco-Roman museum in Alexandria witnessed recently the inauguration of an
important archeological section that dates back to the 4th century BC, which
includes artifacts excavated in the governorate of Menya.
An ancient plaque representing Byzantine and Christian era, some of them
in gypsum highlighting part of the Parable of Jonah with the leviathan as well
as a statue of Osiris. New
Necropolis Discovered in Al Qurna - Luxor Minister of culture declared that new archaeological
discoveries were found in AL Qurna, on the west bank at Luxor. These
discoveries include a wooden sarcophagus in human form belonging to "GAHAUTY",
head of the storehouses in Queen Hatshepsut's era. Another mummy was also
unearthed in good condition for an unknown lady wrapped with linen.
This discovery
was achieved within a process of "clean up" conducted by the joint
archeological Spanish Egyptian mission functioning in the open courtyard of
Gahouti's tomb. Another tomb for HARI, the supervisor of warehouses of
Queen Efahetp, mother
of the great king
Ahmos I, was unearthed under the rubble.
He also stated that the mission found the base of the
miniature pyramids that was placed on Hari's tomb, which is estimated to be 25
square meters and built of mud brick. Moreover, pieces of linen texture
containing a cartouche belonging to king Amenhotep II was also found.
Gahouti's tomb is considered one
of the most magnificent cemeteries for an official. It also comprises
several splendid sceneries of celebrations, sinning and the holy pilgrimage to
the residence of God Osiris and some relief's of religious nature. It is
most likely that this cemetery was built in the times of Queen Hatshepsut and
when Gahouty died in the era of king Tohutmous III. Furthermore the
mission discovered some funerary sealing and eight mummified falcons.
This
tomb is regarded as one of the most significant recently discovered cemeteries
from a historic and artistic point of view. High
Dam Museum Under Construction
Minister of water resources and
irrigation currently follows up the setup of High Dam and Aswan Dam museum,
which reflects the stages of building the dam and the difficulties that it
faced. This would be shown through pictures and marquee's.
The
minister highlighted that the irrigation museum at the barrages is currently
developed. These developments come in the context of a comprehensive plan
to establish a group of museums that portray the irrigation and drainage complexes
and efforts carried by the Ministry of Irrigation.
More
Secrets Revealed at Rock Carved Tombs of Sakkara An archaeological French team has found several rock carved
tombs in Sakkara dating
back to the
Old Kingdom. It is believed that the tombs had been made for senior
officials. The burial complex is in the area known as Tabat Al Geish to
the southwest of Sakkara. The SCA said that the tomb has not been documented, and the
first tomb that was discovered belonged to the priest Haw Nefer, who performed
official duties at the funerary temple of king Pepi I of the VI Dynasty.
The priest, his wife and thirteen children are
depicted
in bas-relief carvings, of which the colors are as bright as on the day they
were applied on the temple walls. Sharm
El-Sheikh Museum Opens its Doors to Tourists in 18 Months
The supreme
council for antiquities has just finished studies and architectural drawings of
the SSH museum. The museum would not be a window for displaying Egyptian
antiquities and its treasures only, but also an educational and cultural
institution for Egyptians, Arabs and foreign tourists.
A committee chose the museum's selections to be identical and
comparable to those exhibited at Cairo Museum Tahrir square, which will include mummies,
relics related to the pyramids, and selected pieces of Tut Ankh Amun's
collection. The museum will be opened at night besides designating it a
center for displaying films, rare documentation, cultural events and artistic
festivals. The opening of the museum will be in 18 months. We hope that you
have enjoyed this new inauguration of our newsletter. However, we look forward
to your comments and suggestions, and we will listen closely to any ideas or
suggestions you might have to make it better. Please email me at commentary@touregypt.net
and let me know. |
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