News in Brief and Alexandria Lighthouse

http://www.algomhuria.net.eg/gazette/4/1.asp

The occasional News in Brief column from the Egyptian Gazette online this week features a number of interesting pieces of information, which I have summarized from the above page:

• LE 40 million to be invested in upgrading Port Said Museum which will be able to display stored items
• Luxor Temple Avenue has had its concrete tiles replaced with more appropriate stone ones
• Remains of a well, a basin and water canals have been recently discovered at Shikhoun Mosque.
• The cave of Abi Serga church at Misr Al Qadima, visited by the Holy Family during their flight from Roman oppression has been treated for the effects of rising underground water.
• The Sunken Antiquities Administration in Alexandria is working with Southampton University to draw up a map of archaeological sites on the shores of Mariut Lake
• The International Papyrus Institute in Italy has offered a £50,000 grant for the first papyri restoration laboratory in the Middle East. The laboratory is part of the Egyptian Museum.
• France has returned a 31 kg stele dating from the reign of Pasmatic I of the 26th dynasty. which originally came from the Temple of Isis at Giza.
• The SCA has approved a plan to retrieve the Alexandria Lighthouse gate from seabedof Al Selsela Bey after which it will be used as the main gate at the entrance of the park facing the Bibliotheca. The project will be headed by teams from Marseille University and the French Alexandrian Studies Centre

See the item for the full News in Brief, more about the Alexandria lighthouse (right at the every bottom of the above page) and for more post-Pharaonic news items.