Egypt’s first ever academic institute for Museology will be established in Cairo by the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA). The institute will be set up in Casdagli Palace in the Down Town area with an initial intake of 60 students. 

It has come to my attention that an organization called Nature Conservation Egypt is circulating a petition about Lake Qarun in the Fayum, implicating me in a real estate project that threatens this site: www.petitiononline.com/nce2/. 

Yesterday, I had a meeting with a good friend of mine, Deborah Lehr, the Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute (CAI) at George Washington University in the United States. Deborah came to see me as the head of an important delegation from the States called the International Coalition to Support Protection of Egyptian Antiquities. The Coalition was made up of notable representatives of the CAI, the Archaeological Institute of America, the American Schools of Oriental Research at Boston University, and the National Geographic Society.

Since I became the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (now the Ministry of State for Antiquities [MSA]) in 2002, I have been at the forefront of a national project to restore dilapidated Coptic, Jewish and Islamic buildings, along with Egypt’s ancient monuments. I went to Alexandria yesterday with the Minister of Justice, Chancellor Mohamed Abdel Aziz el-Gendy, the head of the Alexandrian courts, Chancellor Kamel el Khole, the Heads of the MSA’s Project and Islamic-Coptic Sectors, General Mohamed el-Sheikha and Dr Mostafa Amin, and Dr Hafez Abdel Azim, from the Engineering Research Center at Cairo University.