The Monumental Museum of Egypt Is Taking Shape

September 06, 2008

World Architecture News has an interesting update on the Grand Egyptian Museum:

"The Grand Museum of Egypt’s design team, consisting of international multi disciplinary engineering consultancy Buro Happold, architects Hparc and Arup, has completed the submission of 5,000 drawings to form the construction documentation for this major Egyptian artefact conservation project... The Museum will house 50,000 exhibits including the whole of Carter’s Tutankhamen collection, with the total number of exhibits rising to 100,000 in the future. To house the collection, the gallery floor area will take up 25,000 sq m out of a total of 100,000 sq m built area..."

Most interesting are the rendering images provided by the architects:

Museum from the outside

Another view

Giza Pyramids Getting Fenced In

August 12, 2008

Good news for tourists to Egypt. From now on, a trip to the Giza’s Pyramids will be a more relaxed experience: no more hawkers relentlessly offering camel rides, T-shirts and pharaonic trinkets.

A 12-mile (20 km) fence, complete with infra-red sensors, security cameras and alarms, has been erected to create an exclusion zone around the three Giza pyramids and the Sphinx.

"It was a zoo. Now we are protecting both the tourists and the ancient monuments," Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

Under the new scheme, tourists enter through a new brick entrance building and pass through several gates equipped with metal detectors and X-ray machines .

The fence, which reaches a height of 13ft (4 metres) at some points, is the first step in a project that begun seven years ago to modernise the 5,000-year-old site. A new lighting system, a cafeteria, and a visitors centre and bookshop will also be installed.

Picture: courtesy of Dr. Sabry Abd El Aziz /SCA

Archaeorama Podcast Debuts

July 29, 2008

Let's start the week with another ambitious project --  let's call it Archaeorama Podcast. 

We begin with "On The Phone", an interview podcast series in which some of the world's top archaeologists discuss their latest findings and projects. 

Archaeorama's friend Dan Kirsch joined me in this new challenge as I interviewed maritime archaeologist  Cheryl Ward and Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

In this first podcast, we talk about a glorious heap of beams and planks buried beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu 4,500 years ago.  The ancient wood fragments will soon be excavated and reassembled, Ikea style, into a unique pharaonic boat . 

The vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954. Painstakingly reconstructed, this ship now  stands resurrected in a museum built above the place where it was discovered.

Beautifully engineered, the boats reveal a level of skill that rivals the pyramids themselves. And like the pyramids, they raise many questions: What was their purpose? Was the embalmed Khufu taken to his pyramid in one of these ships? And why were there two boats?

But most of all, why did the ancient Egyptians first build and then disassemble and buried two expensive, full-sized royal ships at the base of the Great Pyramid?

Zahi Hawass and Cheryl Ward answer these questions in "On the Phone", Archaeorama's interview podcast series.

So here we go:

PUZZLE OF THE PYRAMID BOATS -- Length: 00:07:03 --  Dr. Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Dr. Cheryl Ward, associate professor of anthropology at Florida State University, talk to Rossella Lorenzi about two pharaonic boats buried beside the Great Pyramid  of Khufu (Cheops) at Giza.

Written and produced by Rossella Lorenzi. Narrated by Dan Kirsch.

Listen:

 

 

 

Download audio file (just right click on this link)

 

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Why I Don't Like Pompeii

July 09, 2008

The Italian government has declared a year-long state-of-emergency at Pompeii: the archaeological site is quite literally falling apart.

“To call the situation intolerable doesn't go far enough," said culture Minister Sandro Bondi.

Personally, I try to avoid going anywhere near Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

For someone in my position, this is hard to admit. Sites like Pompeii should be my bread and butter.

Indeed, as an archaeology correspondent, I do enjoy some privileges. 

I do not have to go through bogus tour guides, I can skip illegal parking attendants, and I can visit ancient houses normally shut for never ending restoration projects. 

Nevertheless, I do not like going there. I  do not like the sight of tyres, fridges and mattresses scattered here and there among the ruins. 

I hate to think that every year more than 150 square metres of frescoes are lost because of poor maintenance and looting by visitors.

And I hate to think that there are only three toilet facilities over a  440,000 square metre site which is visited by some 2.5 million tourists each year.

But the one thing that really keeps me away from Pompeii is the sight of stray dogs.  There is a multitude of them in the volcano stricken Roman town.

Sick, starving, exhausted, they wander through the ruins, marking the territory by urinating on the ancient walls.

Especially in summer, when the heat in Pompeii is almost intolerable, the dogs are really an unbearable sight.

The poor animals are left  at the mercy of compassionate tourists for food and water. No veterinary care, of course.  

When I was there last June, an attendant told me: "the more they die, the better."

If this is the way to go in Pompeii, no wonder it is in a state of emergency.