7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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Grand new home
PRESIDENT Hosni Mubarak laid the cornerstone for the largest antiquities museum in the world on Monday. The new Grand Egyptian Museum will be spread over 117 feddans on the Cairo-Alexandria-Fayoum desert road -- only three kilometres from the pyramids plateau.
The project will cost $350 million to build over four years. The high-tech museum will house 150,000 artifacts, currently being kept at the Egyptian museum and in storage across the country. It is hoped the new museum will attract 3 million visitors every year.
Making terrorists
INTERIOR Minister Habib El-Adli warned Saturday that future terror attacks against the United States, "worse" than those of 11 September, were possible in the absence of a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
"It is possible that similar crimes and even worse could take place. A man who has lost his legitimate rights can turn into a terrorist if he does not recover them," El-Adli told reporters following a two-day Arab Interior Ministers Conference in Beirut that ended 30 January.
El-Adli alluded to repression and attacks by the Israeli occupation forces in the Palestinian territories. He also called on the international community to work towards finding a solution to the Palestinian problem "in order to avoid negative and dangerous repercussions." El-Adli urged governments to increase security cooperation to combat terrorism "quickly and more powerfully."
El-Adli also replied to reports by international human rights groups which have criticised Egypt's long-time use of emergency laws. "There should be a clear distinction between human rights and crimes. I have no mercy for criminals who give themselves the right to threaten the nation's well-being," he said.
Regarding Egyptian detainees in the US following the 11 September attacks, El-Adli said, "We were informed about all Egyptians who were detained, and many of them were later released. We were assured that they were well-treated and not subjected to any form of persecution."
Akhmim's treasure
AKHMIM, a fertile archaeological area in the upper Egyptian province of Sohag, has yielded a hidden treasure of Pharaonic and Ptolemaic ruins, reports Nevine El-Aref. Earlier this week, an Egyptian excavation mission working in the Al-Khazendareya area in Akhmim came across an important temple dedicated to Ptolemy II (323-300 BC). The temple was found five metres beneath ground level and includes two pillar halls. The southern hall contains four cylindrical limestone columns while the northern one has three columns of different shapes.
Two limestone statues and a black basalt one, each 30 centimetres high, have been unearthed inside the temple. The best preserved is a headless statue of Venus, the Roman goddess of beauty.
The two other statues are partly deteriorated and depict two naked persons.
The excavation also unearthed the foundation stone of the temple, which bore 31 lines in hieroglyphics and 17 lines in the Hieratic script.
"It is the most complete monarchical script dating to the Ptolemaic period ever found," said Gaballa Ali Gaballa, general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. He explained that the upper part of the stone is decorated with the winged sun-disk while the lower part features small figurines of gods: Osiris, Isis, Horus and Min, the official god of Sohag.
As well as the temple, a complete residential city was found. The city included mud-brick houses separated by a long street, six metres in length and 1.5 metres wide. Each house has a number of rooms with domed and plain ceilings. Archaeologists believe that this residential area may have been built to house the temple's builders, or miners.
At the western side of the temple a rock-hewn tomb dating back to the Old Kingdom era has been also discovered. Its entrance is decorated with two limestone statues depicting an unknown man. The tomb has two passageways, each of which leads to a small chamber with an empty burial shaft.
Baked-up story
THE JURY in a New York federal district court has heard how Frederick Schultz, former president of the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art, conspired to sell stolen antiquities by baking fake labels in an oven so he could pass them off as belonging to a collection brought from Egypt by a mysterious Englishman in the 1920s.
Schultz is charged with conspiring, in the early 1990s, to sell ancient objects that had been taken out of Egypt in violation of the 1983 Egyptian Antiquities Law. The law stipulates that all newly-discovered antiquities, as well as those still in the ground, are deemed to be the property of the Egyptian state.
The US government's case rests on expert testimony, bank transfers and correspondence between Schultz and convicted British antiquities smuggler Tokeley-Parry. Much of the evidence was collected by the UK's Scotland Yard. The prosecution claims the evidence will show that the two conspired to come up with a cover story to sell objects that both knew had been illegally taken from Egypt.
District attorney Peter Nieman said the two concocted a tale about a fictional Englishman, Thomas Alcock, who collected Egyptian antiquities in the 1920s. To bolster the claim, the two made up labels that were baked in an oven to make them appear old.
One piece, a limestone figure described as a sixth-dynasty nobleman, was offered to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1993. James Romano, curator of the museum's Egyptian collection, told the court: "We would not knowingly acquire anything unless we knew that it had been out of Egypt since 1983."
The trial continues.
Compiled by Shaden Shehab
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