Egypt repatriates a large collection of smuggled antiquities from Italy

Dr. Mostafa Waziry, announced that the smuggled antiquities were received in Egypt late on Friday night after the legal procedures were taken by the Ministry of Antiquities in cooperation with the Italian 
authorities.  

The repatriated antiquities are 21660 coins, 151 faience ushabti, 11 pottery pots, 5 mummies masks some of which are gold plated, wooden sarcophagus, 2 small funerary wooden boats, 2 canopic jars heads and 3 Islamic coloured tiles. 

The patriots antiquities will go through restoration at the Egyptian Museum labs in Tahrir before they will be display in a temporary exhibition soon.

#Egypt #Antiquities #Repatriated #Cairo #Archaeology #Egyptology

Celebrating the museum of the museums anniversary with a 21th centurytouch

The Egyptian museum in Cairo celebrates 114th anniversary of its opening for the first time in 1902 on 15th of November.

The celebration organised by the Ministry of Antiquities will be held on Thursday 17th of November 2016 at 6pm (Cairo Local Time)

Dr. Khalid El-Anany, minister of antiquities, is expected to announce on this occasion the opening of the Egyptian museum in Cairo for visitors twice a week in the evenings every Sunday and Thursday.

The bold move was decided on a few months ago and developed from an idea into a reality after spending 2 million Egyptian pounds on the new lighting system indoors and outdoors which was funded by the ministry of tourism and executed by the projects department in the ministry of antiquities directed by Eng. Waad Abo El-Ela.

Also on the same evening, Dr. Khalid El-Anany will cut the ribbon for an exhibition of the finds of the late Egyptian archaeologists Dr. Selim Hassan. The exhibition features 9 objects as well as photographs, plans and notes documented his excavations. There will be also a hologram show of some of the objects discovered by him beside a virtual reality show of his excavations in Unas pyramid in Sakkara. 

Luxor Times will be there and will try to broadcast live stream of the event "if Internet signal permitted" Stay tuned!

#Egypt #Antiquities #Egyptology #Sakkara #EgyptianMuseum #KingTut #Heritage #History #AncientEgypt #ThisIsEgypt #LuxorTimes

Finally: photography in Luxor museum

Photography in Egyptian museums 

Good news for visitors to Egypt

After the successful trial period to allow non-flash photography in the Egyptian museum in Cairo which was announced by the former minister of antiquities, Dr. Mamdouh El-Damaty, in August for the period from 1st of December 2015 till 7th of January 2016.

The minister took the bold decision to encourage tourists to visit the museum which proved success. 

On his visit to Luxor museum in early February, Luxor Times asked Dr. Mamdouh El-Damaty, when photography will be allowed in Luxor museum and immediately the minister called Dr. Elham Salah (head of museums sector) and told her "That's a valid suggestion and we should work on it." 

Dr. Elham responded that it is planned to allow photography in Luxor Museum and soon in all museums in Egypt.

The idea became a reality a few days ago when Luxor museum allowed photography with no flash for a ticket for 50 Egyptian pounds.

As the moment, it is the same ticket used for the Egyptian museum in Cairo as you can see in the picture below till separate tickets to be printed.

On his first official visit to Luxor on Friday 1st of April, Dr. Khalid El-Anany, minister of antiquities, visited the museum and said "There will be also a penalty if someone took photos with no ticket or used flash, they will have to pay a 100 Egyptian ponds fine." The fine will be affectived very soon.

#Egypt #Luxor #Egyptology #Photohraphy #Museums #LuxorMuseum #MuseumDay #LuxorTimes 

Mud brick wall unearthed in Fatimid Cairo

During his visit to the excavation site today as a part of the general site management and development for the area, Dr. Mamdouh El Damaty announced the discovery of a southern part of mud brick historic northern wall of Cairo in Al Gamaliya. It is believed to be a part of the old Fatimid wall. 

Mohamed Abd ElAziz, minister's assistant for Islamic and Coptic antiquities department, said "The project practically started in the middle of 2015. No antiquities were found in the excavation pits number 1 and 2. The discovered part of the wall was unearthed during excavation in pit number 3."

Abd El-Aziz added "A whole series of studies will take place in order to continue excavations to unearth the rest of the wall and confirm authenticity and dating to the Fatimid period."

#Egypt #Cairo #Archaeology #History #Antiquities #Islamic 

Luxor Museum to open in the evening, Minister says

Minister of Antiquities, Dr. Mamdouh El Damaty, announced today during his visit to Luxor Museum that the museum will be back to the old opening times till 9pm instead of current times from 9am till 3pm. The museum will start from 1st of August to open in the evening from 5pm till 9pm.

#Egypt #Luxor #Egyptology #AncientEgypt #Antiquities 

For the first time in 3500 years, Royal tombs are open at night

Minister of Antiquities, Dr Mamdouh El Damaty opened the Valley of the Kings for the first time in history at night for visitors.
 

The great Pharaohs ‘ burials were sure visited at night in the past 35 centuries but mainly in ancient time by tomb robbers, this time the visit will be possible for public till 9pm.

The tombs which are equipped by the new lighting system provided by “DEFEX”, a specialised company, through a Spanish loan of 6 million Euros, are KV2 (tomb of Ramses IV), KV9 (tomb of Ramses V and Ramses VI) and KV17 (tomb of Seti I) beside the tombs will be open at night too also include tombs of Ramses III, Ramses IV and TutAnkhAmon tomb too.

 Photo was taking during the new lighting system was being tested (August 2013)

The last person who had enjoyed this magical atmosphere at night in the Valley of the Kings could be Sgt. Richard Adamson, as he claimed that he was guarding KV62, the tomb of King Tutankhamon since the discovery in 1922 and for several years afterwards playing opera records of an old gramophone at night but this is another story.

Now, visitors to Luxor have an amazing chance to enjoy those masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art at night even during the summer, no more hot days if you can visit at night.

The sites which will be open till 9pm in Luxor include Luxor Temple, Ramesseum temple and Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut temple. Later Habu temple and Seti I temple will be added to the list soon when the new lighting system is completely installed and tested.

#Egypt #Luxor #AncientEgypt #Egyptology #Antiquities #Archaeology

863 genuine artefacts were seized on Cairo-Suez road

According to Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, Minister State of Antiquities, after forming a committee headed by Dr. Yousif Khalifa, Director of the Central Stolen Antiquities Administration, to examine the seized  number of artifacts seized by the Police in a private car after an attempt of escape by the driver when he was stopped at a check point on Cairo-Suez road. The examination resulted in 863 genuine objects.

Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, said that the recovered pieces dated back to different eras including Old Kingdom, New Kingdom, Graeco-Roman and Islamic. The Minister believes that they are probably were obtained during illegal digs in various parts of the country. He also referred that there were a number of fake objects which the committee found unauthenticated.

Dr. Yousef Khalifa, said that of the most important objects are; a limestone basin dated to the Old Kingdom of 38.5 cm length, 24cm width and 11cm height with inscriptions in hieroglyphics contains the name of the Priest of King Senefru, a limestone tablet of the Old Kingdom as well with a depiction of the head and chest of Goddess Hathor holding a mace beside a black granite statue of Hathor dated to the New Kingdom of a 45cm height.

 The recovered objects contain 10 scarabs, 180 amulets, 120 Ptolemaic coins, 407 Roman coins of bronze, 3 Osirion wooden statues, limestone statue of 24cm height dated back to the First Intermediate Period, 22cm sand stone statue of a man wearing a long kilt dated to the First Intermediate Period and missing few parts by the head and right arm and shoulder which appears that it was recently restored, in addition to a false door on limestone dated to the Old Kingdom which has a depiction of the deceased sitting in front of offerings and inscriptions listing offerings for the deceased are carved along the side panels.

The so-called “Camel Race” and “Promote Tourism event” coverage

A political party’s office in Luxor which is headed by a tour guide/businessman decided to make the best of the fact that Luxor is depending mainly on tourism and thousands of the voters in the next elections, in few months, in the governorate are working in the industry to promote for their party and win people by showing that they are on their side even though what they do is only for show.
Anyway, we are not talking politics here, Luxor Times magazine covered the event and you can enjoy the video and photos of the “Camel Race”.
Below the pictures, there is the full story of how the day was like.

The Start point at 9:30am

Above: The Camel kissing one of the colossus. Below: Ramses II on his chariot printed on a hat in a shop nearby overlooking the camels getting ready for the "Race"

First Stop by Habu Temple

The race was so long and lasted for days even cars couldn't make it

Passing by Ramses II mortuary temple, The Ramessum

Below: Children riding some of the camels and one of them even smoking

The Winner with his trophy and chanting "We are the Champions"

The winner Camel's Jockey interviewed on the local radio channel live

Below: A camel sulks because he lost

Below: All the camels lined up after the race had finished

Below: The Party Higher Committee members including the Party's vice President with the children who performed the dance on the Cornish

The race which was supposed to start at 9:30am but of course no one was there on that time beside few party members who didn’t know when the camels are supposed to be there or the race starting time.
At 10:15 the party vice president and officials arrived and wanted to take pictures with the few foreigners who were there to show that they support tourism and don’t have any concerns against dress code or so.
Yet, the race couldn’t start because they were waiting for the local media to arrive, after all this “Tourism Festival” (or Fastival as it was spelled on the camels banners) was organised for the media mainly).

The camels are not raised for races as they are the same camels usually rented for tourists on west bank, some of them looked sick and were handled by children of around 10 years old.
The fact which we noticed during following the “race” that it was not race, it was like picnic started by the colossus of Memnon to Habu temple where they stopped waiting for the rest to come along and rest. Camel number 14 was leading the race and camel number 1 that kept sitting was in the rare but when the race was resumed from Habu, camel number 1 took the lead most of the way to the finish line which camel number 19 reached first at noon.
The winner received a trophy from the party’s vice president and the governor who were waiting under the tent that was erected for the guests in the far northern part of the parking space in front of Hatshepsut’s temple.
At 4pm boats and caleches parade was planned followed by 5pm conference for the party officials at the conference centre.
The conference was aimed at the local people; still a written question in English was passed to the podium but was not answered until no foreigners were around and was not an answer at all. Just another fun day to watch and take pictures but still another sort of “talking amongst ourselves” event to promote tourism to the ex-pats or the tourists in Luxor already.
The publicity was professionally handled as the party called for volunteers for the event 12 days before the event and managed to get permission from Ministry State of Antiquities on 2pm the day before the event in addition to the excellent media coverage by all the foreign media representatives of the different newspapers reporters in Luxor for their publications in the Capital of Egypt – Cairo.
Luxor’s next tourism promoting event will be on the 4th of November, the former Luxor day for many years until it was changed few years ago.