The old city of Madi in a conference on Thursday

A scientific conference on the old City of Madi will be held in co-operation between Egypt and Italy on Thursday. It is a one day conference to discuss the scientific results of the Egyptian-Italian project of Madi town in Fayoum. The project aims at preserve the environmental structure in the archaeological site with a budget of 3.5 million Euros.
The project includes working on the first archaeological garden to connect the sites of Madi city with Wadi ElRayan with an unpaved 27 kilometres road that was laid in a suitable way to match the nature of the area and make it accessible for visitors.
At the last session of the conference Dr. Ali Radwan (The project manager from the Egyptian side) will give a lecture on the Ancient Egyptian deities in Madi. Madi was known at the time of the Middle Kingdom where Amenemhat III built a temple for Sobek that was completed by his successor Amenemhat IV . The town flourished at the Greek and Roman times where the remains of 10 churches were found dated back to 4th and 5th century A.D.
The Italian archaeologist Foliano had worked on the sites in 1936 for 3 years then the work stopped because of the war till 1969 when a mission from Pisa university started working there again till nowadays headed by Prof. Edda Bresciani
The visitor centre will be open and it has a gallery with photographs to show the history of the site.


More about the archaeological work by Pisa University
http://www.egittologia.unipi.it/pisaegypt/MMscavi03-04.htm
http://www.egittologia.unipi.it/pisaegypt/MMscavi06-07.htm
http://www.eiecop.org/
http://www.egittologia.unipi.it/
http://www.eiecop.org/ambiente2/projects_2/cultheritage_2.htm
http://www.egittologia.unipi.it/pisaegypt/Medinet_Madi_1984-2005.htm

Egypt will receive Pharaonic sarcophagi back from US soon

Dr. Zahi Hawass said that Egypt will have a number of sarcophagi back from the US that was taken out of Egypt about 50 years ago and the American security authorities confiscated them and will return them to Egypt within the next couple of weeks.
Zahi also added that United States is considered the country that co-operate with Egypt the most when it comes to returning the illegally taken from Egypt antiquities although there is no agreement concerning this between the two countries, he also expressed his hope to sign such an agreement between Egypt and USA.
He also mentioned that the 2nd international conference on stolen antiquities will be held in Cairo next year (April 2011). There are 100 countries are expected to participate plus UNESCO after expressing their interest in participation.

As a part of his effort that resulted returning about 6000 objects in the last 8 years, Dr. Hawass said that he will start from next week to send letters to some countries across the world to have a mutual agreements to stop smuggling antiquities and return the stolen objects to the country of origin. Egypt has signed 16 agreement with different countries so far.