New museum for Dakhleh Oasis announced

http://tinyurl.com/ys8gtx (sis.gov.eg)
"The Supreme Council for Antiquities started construction works on the first ever museum on Egyptian deserts sciences and prehistoric monuments in Al-Dakhlah oasis of the New Valley. Farouk Hosni Culture Minister said the museum is to be built with the aid of the German government. Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Antiquities Zahi Hawas said the museum will be named after late archaeologist Ahmed Fakhri. The museum will contain guidelines for monuments in the western desert such locations are situated in the Al-Golf Al-Kabir area and that they lacked protection as it is difficult to reach them. One of the tourist expeditions in the area destroyed rare wall paintings of King Cheops, that is why we have to issue guidelines in the new museum for tourists to avoid destruction of such antiquities, he added."

This is the complete item on the State Information Service website. It is a nice touch that the museum will be named after Ahmed Fakhri, one of the first Egyptians to study Egyptology, a professor of ancient Egyptian history and ancient Near Eastern history at Cairo University until his retirement in 1965 and a pioneer of archaeological investigation in the Western Desert. He died in 1973.

For anyone interested in the archaeology of Dakhleh Oasis, a good source of online information is the Dakhleh Oasis Project website, complete with annual survey and excavation reports at:
http://arts.monash.edu.au/archaeology/excavations/dakhleh/index.html