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from the the-cult-of-the-mouse-may-be-older-than-we-realized dept.
A tomb unveiled Friday near the Egyptian town of Sohag by the Antiquities Ministry of Egypt, held more than 50 mummified cats, falcons, and mice.
The well preserved and finely painted tomb...is thought to be from the early Ptolemaic period, dating back nearly 2,000 years ago.
The tomb was built for a man named Tutu and his wife, and is one of the seven discovered in the area last October, when authorities found smugglers digging illegally for artefacts, officials said.
Its painted walls depict funeral processions and images of the owner working in the fields, as well as his family genealogy written in hieroglyphics.
The tomb also contained a boy aged 12-14 years and a woman aged 35-50 years. Ptolemaic rule lasted about 300 years, and ended around 30BC after the Roman conquest.
Egypt's tourism industry has been struggling due to internal strife in recent years:
and the antiquities ministry said Friday's presentation was intended to "draw the world's attention to the civilisation and antiquities of Egypt".
The country's plethora of heritage sites is a major draw for tourists and the ministry described Sohag as "one of the most historically rich cities in Egypt", where a museum opened last year.
Tourism revenues employs 12% of the workforce in Egypt and accounts for 11% of its GDP.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:13AM (3 children)
For as long as females are being attacked in the streets by hordes of men [laweekly.com] tourism will continue to decline. Even with a bodyguards women are not safe in Egypt.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday April 07 2019, @10:22AM (2 children)
>females being attacked
look up Giulio Regeni [wikipedia.org], then. Even if he was probably unwittingly set up as a spy, or, he was intentionally hideously tortured and made to be found as a way to damage Egypt. So Egypt is in my list of the baddies until deeeep excuses are issued from the authorities.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Sunday April 07 2019, @12:42PM (1 child)
As an ordinary tourist, just there to gawk at the pyramids, one is probably okay. Stay far away from politics, don't look and act like you're really smart, help out their economy by blowing money on tourist schlock, and they're happy to have you. But, you say, you are refusing to visit, as a way of making a political protest? All the more reason to stay out. Or is it quite realistic fear? That's why I would not visit. Seeing the pyramids would be mildly interesting, but not enough that I'm motivated to take the expense and small risks inherent in a visit.
Nothing is without risks, and occasionally, tourists are made into hapless pawns. Leon Klinghoffer comes to mind. I recall reading of an incident in which one of the radical Islamic groups seized a tourist site in Egypt and murdered some tourists. They were of course trying to blackmail the entire nation by threatening the tourist industry. The infuriated merchants promptly pulled their own weapons out, chased down the terrorists, and shot them all.
Giulio was a left-winger and a PhD student, and he was studying Egypt's trade unions. That's perfect bait for overzealous authorities of any nation. Authorities everywhere have self inflicted problems brought on by their low intelligence and their penchant for total thought control. In the West, they're kept on a fairly tight leash-- laws and customs keep them from doing the sort of stupidly inflammatory stuff that they are wont to think is effective no matter how many times they are shown that it's not. Unfortunately, they still exist in the West, and sometimes they do get loose.
I wish I could say that the US is more enlightened and smarter than that, but Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib show otherwise. Even if you dismiss those, there are plenty of other troubling incidents. Like how about what happened to Dmitry Sklyarov? The charges were dropped, but he should never have been charged and jailed at all. Computer security experts should hesitate to hold conferences in the US. The War on Piracy continues to produce these embarrassments to the West's pretensions of enlightened justice, such as DVD Jon's arrest and criminal accusations of which he was eventually acquitted, and the trials of Napster and later the Pirate Bay founders and operators in which they should have been acquitted but weren't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @08:29PM
I was just in Cairo area at beginning of February, and another visit to Cairo and Luxor at the end of February. My previous visit to Egypt was in the late 90's.
Compared to 30 years ago, the touristy areas were crowded (and both Cairo and Luxor had grown like crazy!). But, everyone said there were not many tourists.
Egypt has scammers etc. esp. in larger cities, but most of the people are generous, beautiful and kind.
There were some signs of a more conservative Islam than what I had seen prior, but also far more secularism. 30 years ago, no woman I saw anywhere in the middle east or north Africa wore a full face covering, unless they were Saudi (I hitch hiked across most of the region). On this trip, I saw quite a few women dressed this way, both in Egypt and in Kenya (E. Africa). I'm guessing this is a result of the Saudi funded Wahhabi schools that have been opening across the region. But, far more people, in general, were wearing western dress than during my previous visit.
I encourage you to visit any middle eastern / north African country, if you want to effect change. But, I predict that the biggest change it will bring about is to your opinions about the region.