School of Museology to be established in Egypt: online article

Egypt's museums have been in the news following the looting that took place in major institutions and at archaeological sites during the country's recent political upheavals.

"The lack of trained museum personnel is indeed the overarching problem in Egypt's path towards the creation of a new effective museum system" says Ramadan Badri Hussein, supervisor of the office of the MSA's Minister for Archaeological Affairs.

As part of an ongoing programme of initiatives, a School of Museology is shortly to be established at the Casdagli Palace in Cairo.

Read more in Nevine El-Aref's report for the al-Ahram Weekly Online

Suez ceasefire: 6th November 1956

6th November 1956 saw British and French forces seize control of major ports in Egypt's Canal Zone and declare a ceasefire to bring the Suez Crisis to a close.  Israel also announced a ceasefire in Sinai . The conflict had broken out after President Abdel Nasser angered British and French companies by nationalising the Suez Canal. He also blockaded the Straits of Tiran - Israel's main outlet into the Red Sea.
Read more on the BBC History's "On this day" website

Egypt: ancient and modern (digital archive)

The Virtual Library on Ancient and Modern Egypt is a collection of digitized documents and rare books from museums, archives and other collections in Southern France (Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur) collated by the E-corpus Virtual Collections project
Enter a simple keyword search, or use "advanced search" to construct a more detailed query to search across the content of documents in the collection. The documents also contain material on other countries of the Middle East and Africa.
The documents are primarily in French.
E-Corpus is worth a browse for other documents relating to French interests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

History tourism

Article from Time Magazine on how plans to develop the ancient Egyptian sites at Luxor and expand its tourist infrastructure are uprooting local residents and are possibly damaging to the archaeological remains themselves. Will the reconstructed "Avenue of the Sphinxes" be anything more than "Vegas on the Nile"?