Smoke-free Alex
Alexandria is set to become Egypt’s first smoke-free city, with Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali and Alexandria governor Adel Labib signing a recent declaration to this effect. The target is to make all public places in Alexandria smoke free within the coming two years; the smoking ban will be first applied in hospitals and public buildings. Dr Gabali said the initiative aims “to make Alexandria a model to be applied in other Egyptian towns.” There is already a law banning smoking in Egypt, but it is frequently flouted. According to a World Health Organisation report published last January, Egyptians spend about six percent of their monthly income on tobacco, nearly 40 per cent of Egyptian men smoke, and at least 70 per cent of those questioned said they were subjected to passive smoking at home or in the workplace.
Golden dinar
A golden ‘dinar’ which dates back to the Umayyad era in the eighth century was discovered by an expedition of Yale University and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), at a site close to the cemetery of Deir Yehnis al-Qasseer, the monastery of St John the Short, at Wadi al-Natroun in the Western Desert.
The dinar is in a good condition and is ornamented with Kufi script. On one side there is the ‘Basmala’ (the Islamic phrase ++Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim++, (In the Name of Allah the Most Merciful and Compassionate) and on the other side is the phrase ++La illah illa-allah++ (There is no god but Allah). Another such dinar is among the private collection of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, SCA secretary-general Zahi Hawass said.
Egyptian Papyrus in Vienna
Last week Egypt’s ambassador to Vienna Ihab Fawzy joined Beatrix Karl, the Austrian Federal Minister of Science and Research, to open an exhibition of Egyptian papyri at the Papyrus Museum of the Austrian National Library at the Hofburg in Vienna. The exhibits form a unique collection of letters and correspondence on papyri directly related to day-to-day dealings and events during the Greco-Roman era, a time which extended from the 3rd century BC to the 8th AD. The collection is interesting in that it includes commercial or health-related texts, besides some texts which are rather odd and others that are movingly sentimental. Besides Greek and Latin, some of the later texts are in Coptic and Arabic, highlighting the multilingualism that characterised Egypt at the time.
The grand museum
Last Monday, Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak opened the first two stages of the Grand Egyptian Museum. These include an international centre for renovation of historical artefacts, a fire fighting unit, a power plant and two power transmitters. Culture Minister Farouq Hosni said the third stage, which is expected to take some 26 months to complete, would start immediately now that the first two stages have been finished.
The Grand Egyptian Museum is being constructed on the plateau behind the Giza pyramids, to house a comprehensive collection of some 100,000 ancient Egyptian pieces, among which will be the funeral collection of Tut Ankh Amun, at present with the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, Cairo. A model of King Tut’s tomb will be built in the museum. The Egyptian Museum in Tahrir, which was built at the turn of the 20th century, has for years been incapable of accommodating the ever-increasing collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts discovered.
WATANI International
20 June 2010