News — Egypt

Sudan is one of the world's last frontiers. Once thought of as a vast desert l and was, the land was home to an advanced and mysterious civilization, an ancient kingdom of Africa known as Kush. The kingdom dealt with Pharaohs from Egypt and the emperor's from Rome. Their Nubian leaders known as Black Pharaohs left behind an array of archeological sites dotted along the Nile and the count of Egypt. The Black Pharaohs controlled the trade routes connecting central Africa with ancient Egypt; this accumulated them with immense wealth and power. Do you think Egypt's culture and influence are credited to the Black Pharaohs of Kush?

At age three, Caesarion, the alleged love child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, was already co-king of Egypt. He became his mother’s co-ruler just months after his alleged father, Julius Caesar, had been assassinated. But his rule was short-lived.

Believed to be the only biological son of the most powerful man in Rome, Caesarion was seen as a threat to Rome’s greatness, thus, his adoptive brother had him killed, shortly after the death of his mom, Cleopatra. His death at age 17 ended the Ptolemaic line of rulers that had controlled Egypt since the time of Alexander the Great.

Here’s his story.

Full name Ptolemy Philopator Philometor Caesar, also called Ptolemy XV Caesar, Caesarion’s mother, Cleopatra, was the daughter of Ptolemy XII. When Cleopatra was 18, her father Ptolemy XII named her and her 10-year-old brother Ptolemy XIII, as co-heirs. According to one account, they would serve together under the guardianship of Rome since Egypt was a Roman protectorate.

When their father died in 51 B.C., Cleopatra married her 10-year-old brother and co-ruler, Ptolemy XIII, but there was no love between the two. What’s more, Cleopatra began competing with Ptolemy XIII to rule Egypt. Ptolemy III’s advisers subsequently initiated plans to make him the sole ruler.

At the same time the two were competing for the throne, there was also a battle in Rome over who would control its mighty empire. Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great, two of Rome’s great military heroes, were engaged in a civil war  — the Battle of Pharsalus — and were in search of alliances. Pompey, who wanted Egypt to be on his side, threw his weight behind Ptolemy XIII over Cleopatra, who went into exile. She fled to Syria, set up her own base of operations and raised an army.

Julius Caesar would defeat Pompey in the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 B.C. Pompey fled to Alexandria but was executed by Ptolemy III, who presented his head to Julius Caesar while the latter was in Egypt. It was during this same period that Cleopatra sneaked into Alexandria, met with Julius Caesar, and managed to get his help in defeating her brother Ptolemy XIII.

After Ptolemy III’s death, Julius Caesar placed Cleopatra, who was then 21, on the throne. She co-ruled with a younger brother, Ptolemy XIV. At the same time, she took Julius Caesar as her lover and even invited the Roman general, who was 30 years older than she was, to stay in Egypt with her. Right after Julius Caesar left Egypt, Cleopatra was pregnant. She gave birth to Caesarion in 47 B.C. and made it known to all that Julius Caesar was the father. Sources say Julius Caesar invited Cleopatra and Caesarion over to Rome at the end of 46 B.C. There, Julius Caesar recognized Caesarion as his son, making him his only surviving child. But he didn’t acknowledge Caesarion as his heir. When he was killed in 44 B.C., his will stated that his great-nephew, Gaius Octavius (Octavian), was his heir.

Caesarion had spent the first two years of his life with his mom Cleopatra in Rome when Julius Caesar died. The two were forced to return to Egypt after his death as they feared for their lives.

Back in Alexandria, Cleopatra allegedly arranged the death of her younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, to pave the way for her son to ascend the throne. In 44 B.C., Caesarion, at just three years old, was declared Ptolemy XV, a co-king alongside his mother.

He would come to be appointed as “King of Kings” in 34 BC by Mark Antony. Antony, who was Julius Caesar’s lieutenant, had arrived in Egypt as Roman triumvir in charge of the eastern provinces. He started a love affair with Cleopatra and the two had three children. When he gave Caesarion the title “King of Kings”, he also formally recognized him as the legitimate son of Julius Caesar, incurring the wrath of the new leaders in Rome, including Octavian, who subsequently declared war on Cleopatra and Antony.

After Antony’s defeat at Actium in 31 B.C., Cleopatra sent Caesarion to Berenice, a seaport on the Red Sea coast of Upper Egypt. But while Caesarion was on his way, he learned that Roman troops had entered Alexandria and that his mother and Antony were both dead. He returned to Alexandria after his tutor suggested that he might be spared by Octavian and would be made to retake the throne. But upon his return, he was arrested and executed, following orders from Octavian.

And that was how the Ptolemaic rule in Egypt ended.

Garments worn thousands of years ago have survived to the present day. Those garments were merely wrapped around the body. But the “Tarkhan Dress,” named for the town in Egypt where it was found in 1913, is beautifully stitched. About five years ago, it was precisely dated using the latest radiocarbon dating technology. Researchers determined that the linen dress with fine detail dates to between 3482 and 3103 B.C., making it the world’s oldest woven garment.

Textiles recovered from archaeological sites are generally no older than 2,000 years, Alice Stevenson, the curator of London’s Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, recently said. The Tarkhan Dress, however, dates back more than 5,000 years, and when it was new, it may have been longer, researchers said.

It was once part of a “large pile of dirty linen cloth” excavated by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1913 at the site he named Tarkhan after a nearby village 30 miles south of Cairo, archaeology.org said. In 1977, researchers from the Victoria and Albert Museum were preparing to clean the large pile of dirty linen cloth when they discovered the Tarkhan Dress, finely made. Though there were creases at the elbows and armpits showing that someone once wore the dress, the V-neck linen shirt with pleated sleeves and bodice was in excellent condition despite its age.

The researchers conserved the fabric, sewed it onto Crepeline silk to stabilize it, and displayed it. Soon, it was being hailed as Egypt’s oldest garment and the oldest woven garment in the world largely due to the age of the tomb in which it was discovered. However, because the tomb in which the garment had been found had been plundered, researchers couldn’t provide a precise age to the dress.

In the 1980s when linen associated with the dress was analyzed using a new technology of accelerator mass spectrometry, it was believed to date to the late third millennium BC. But this date was too broad, according to researchers.

Finally, in 2015, a sample — weighing just 2.24mg — from the dress itself was analyzed by the University of Oxford’s radiocarbon unit. The results showed that the Tarkhan Dress is from between 3482 and 3102 B.C. and might even pre-date Egypt’s 1st Dynasty (ca. 3111–2906 B.C.).

“We’d always suspected it was old, and even if it wasn’t near the 1st Dynasty, even a 5th Dynasty dress [ca. 2500 B.C.] is still pretty old by archaeological standards for this type of object,” Stevenson said at the time, adding that the new dating has affirmed her appreciation of the garment. “…There’s nothing quite like it anywhere of that quality and of that date. It’s amazing to think it has survived some 5,000 years.”

Clearly, the fineness of the garment is a testament to the fact that ancient African civilisations were just awesome.

Mahmoud El-Koumi wanted to find a way that his mechanical engineering would bear fruits in Egypt’s management of the coronavirus pandemic. So the Cairo-based technologist thought of how to minimize the contact between healthcare providers – the frontline army against the unseen virus – on one hand, and patients.

So El-Koumi engineered a robot with the specific task of playing a doctor’s assistant. The remote-control robot was named Cira-03, and when Reuters spoke to El-Koumi in December, he reported that Cira-03 was doing exactly as expected. The automaton can test for Covid-19 and take the temperature of patients, at a private hospital in the city of Tanta. where it is being trialed.

El-Koumi explained: “Before starting its mission, the robot receives training to improve its AI. The training is done by a specialist doctor, the AI in this training acts like a human doctor.”

But Cira-03 is not only taking temperatures and carrying out COVID-19 tests. It can detect your echocardiographs as well as X-rays. All of Cira-03’s results can be seen on a small monitor it has for a chest. The robot is built with a human-like face but without arms.

“This robot is specially designed to help the medical staff during Covid-19 times. It is a medical robot capable of multi-tasks, it can deal with patients in their beds, chest scans, fever screening, and face mask detection,” El-Koumi, 27, added. He was also mindful of how humans would have to relate with his creation and that consideration went into Cira-03’s build.

“I tried to make the robot seem more human so that the patient doesn’t fear it. So they don’t feel like a box is walking in on them. There has been a positive response from patients. They saw the robot and weren’t afraid. On the contrary, there is more trust in this because the robot is more precise than humans.”

Egypt has reported nearly 200,000 cases of the COVID-19 infections but the vast number of people – over 150,000 – are well. The country was also the first to roll out a nationwide vaccination program with support from foreign partners such as China and Russia.

Marwa Elselehdar was hundreds of miles away when the giant Ever Given container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal, yet online rumors immediately spread, saying she was responsible.

“I was shocked. I felt that I might be targeted maybe because I’m a successful female in this field or because I’m Egyptian, but I’m not sure,” Elselehdar, who is Egypt’s first female ship’s captain, told news.

The 29-year-old said she was at sea as the first mate in command of the Aida IV in Alexandria when the massive container ship became wedged in the Suez Canal last month. When she checked her phone, fake news headlines and online rumors said she was to be blamed for the incident which caused massive traffic for almost a week with hundreds of vessels waiting to pass through the Canal.

It is yet to be known who the captain of the Ever Given was, though Egyptian officials believe that human error may have caused the disaster. Elselehdar said the rumors about her involvement stemmed from a doctored image of a news headline that said she was involved in the Suez accident. The fake image appears to be from an actual story by Arab News about Elselehdar from March 22 that was not in any way related to Suez, BBC reported. “This fake article was in English, so it spread in other countries,” Elselehdar said.

“I tried so hard to negate what was in the article because it was affecting my reputation and all the efforts I exerted to be where I am now.”

Elselehdar said she did not know who started the rumors or why they did that. She did receive some harsh comments, though many were supportive. “The comments on the article were very negative and harsh but there were so many other supportive comments from ordinary people and people I work with,” she said. “I decided to focus on all the support and love I’m getting, and my anger turned to gratefulness.”

“Also, it is worth mentioning that I became even more famous than before,” she added.

Elselehdar was moved to join the merchant navy after her brother enrolled at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT). The academy did not accept women at the time but she applied and gained admission following a legal review by Egypt’s then-President Hosni Mubarak.

She overcame sexism during her studies and graduated. She rose to the rank of first mate and captained the Aida IV when it became the “first vessel to navigate the newly-expanded Suez Canal in 2015”, according to BBC. She was at the time the youngest and first female Egyptian captain to cross the waterway. Elselehdar was also honored by President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi during Egypt’s Women’s Day celebrations in 2017.

As part of moves to boost the country’s tourism and provide the foreign currency needed to revive the economy, Egypt has opened its first-ever restaurant and lounge in Giza’s pyramid plateau.

Named the 9 Pyramids Lounge, the restaurant’s unique location will enable visitors to have a special view of the plateau’s nine royal tombs. Unveiled on October 20, the restaurant is built on a total area of 1,341 square meters and comes with indoor and outdoor seating, as well as a private parking lot, according to authorities.

The inauguration ceremony last week saw in attendance the Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Anany, CEO of Orascom Pyramids Entertainment Ashraf Halim, chairman and CEO of Orascom Naguib Sawiris, and others who were also thrilled to have observed the launching of a fleet of 30 electric buses that will shuttle tourists around the area.

At the moment, the buses will be the only means of transportation at the site, amid other restrictions have been made to preserve the monuments at the site, said Tourism and Antiquities Minister el-Anany.

“The completion of this development project, the increase in the capacity of Sphinx International Airport, and the inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) next year will change the tourism map of Cairo,” the minister said.

The Grand Egyptian Museum has been under construction for over a decade and is expected to attract tourists when opened to help fund developmental projects in the country.

Tourists have already started visiting the 9 Pyramids Lounge where they can either be seated at tables or on cushions on the floor while enjoying the views of the Great Pyramids of Giza.

Two “fine dining restaurants” and a cafe are expected to be opened in early 2021 in the area as other services will also be upgraded to match up to the “greatness of Egyptian civilization and the magnificence of this historical site,” said Sawiris, chairman and CEO of Orascom Naguib.

Ancient Egypt has often been the main reference point when interpreting the past and experience of Africa. Egyptian civilization has been identified as the cradle of all human civilization celebrated for its languages, governance structure and a long history of wealth, education and powerful Pharaohs.

All these have helped boost the country’s tourism sector, which was hit hard recently by the pandemic. In 2019, 13.6 million people visited Egypt and numbers were expected to exceed 15 million this year.

“It was a disaster for us, like the whole world,” el-Anani said this July when the country resumed regular international flights after over three months of closure. “We lost around $1bn per month and we’re estimating that we’ll still lose a lot of money during the coming weeks and months,” he was quoted by the BBC.

In July, museums were reopened and some foreign flights resumed to the provinces of South Sinai, Red Sea and Matrouh — the three coastal Egyptian governorates. “For the time being, you will see the beaches, the sun, the desert, water activities – it’s the open air and the sea,” the minister said at the time.

“Later on, we’ll open the Nile Valley, with Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor and Aswan,” he said.