Bulldozers overhaul Luxor, city of pashas and pharaohs

Reuters ^ | Thursday, April 1, 2010 | Alexander Dziadosz

[SunkenCiv]

In the dusty streets behind the pasha's grand villa, bulldozers and forklifts are tearing into the city where Agatha Christie found inspiration and Howard Carter unearthed Tutankhamun.

Egypt has already cleared out Luxor's old bazaar, demolished thousands of homes and dozens of Belle Epoque buildings in a push to transform the site of the ancient capital Thebes into a huge open-air museum.

Officials say the project will preserve temples and draw more tourists, but the work has outraged archaeologists and architects who say it has gutted Luxor's more recent heritage.

...one foreigner who lives in Luxor part of the year, agreeing to speak only if his name was not used... pointed to the destruction of the 19th-century house of French archaeologist Georges Legrain, demolished to make way for a plaza outside Karnak temple, and plans to knock down the 150-year-old Pasha Andraos villa on the Nile boardwalk.

While known mostly for temples and tombs, Luxor's Victorian-era buildings and dusty alleyways have drawn Egyptologists, statesmen and writers for decades.

Samir Farag, a former Egyptian general who now heads the billion-dollar plan to reinvent Luxor, dismisses the criticism. Improvements to the city had reduced traffic and brought top-notch education and healthcare.

[SunkenCiv]

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[darkwing104]

Officials say the project will preserve temples and draw more tourists,

For a minute I thought they were putting up a Wal-Mart.

[JustPiper]

SC? You have this one?

Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new species

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-47488620100406?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=Reuters+India&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FINworldNews+%28News+%2F+IN+%2F+World+News%29&utm_content=Twitter

[colorado tanker]

They had to destroy the city in order to save it . . . .

[mad_as_he$$]

Ra will not be happy. Oh wait SG1 waxed his a$$.

[Mr Rogers]

I was expecting something about Las Vegas...

[bigheadfred]

Wal-Mart

I was shooting for a 7-11.

draw more tourists

The key to any renovation is sanitation. Pave paradise, sure, but when you have people crapping in the streets, all they are gonna draw are flies.

[martin_fierro]

Not a bad buffet at the Luxor (altho it doesn't appear to be there anymore < |:(~ ).

Even had Galumphkies.

[SunkenCiv]

The 7-11 would make the perfect replacement for the Kaaba, but I want the whole site of the “grand mosque” to be leveled and a Walmart superstore erected on the site.

[SunkenCiv]

I’m sure Zahi will claim the Jews are behind it.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

“A dragon-sized, fruit-eating lizard that lives in the trees... Hunted for its tasty flesh, the brightly coloured forest monitor lizard can grow to more than six feet (2 metres) in length but weighs only about 22 pounds...”

[bigheadfred]

That might work on people who have no experience with Arabs. I don’t know who could turn new into slum faster. Them or the Haitians.

[SunkenCiv]

The approach of the antiquities bureaucrats in Egypt is to render the whole country into a Middle Eastern Disneyland. It's atrocious. And the actual work to preserve (for example) the carved hieroglyphic inscriptions which are flaking off and vanishing because of the salts leached out of the ground by the water table pushed up by the Aswan High Dam and wicking up into the monuments is being done by foreign scholars and archaeologists, with plenty of Egyptian bureaucratic roadblocks and little funding. Despite decades of decrees, Egypt has failed to produce even its first large generation of Egyptologists, and most of those are piss poor.

• Salvage and Loss: The Aswan High Dam and the Fate of Nubia

[hal ogen]

We spent several days in Luxor and surroundings in 2009. It would be a real shame to sterilize the city like they seem to be doing. Who needs yet another disney-like experience???? It will cheapen the history.

[JoeProBono]

[Huebolt]

If archeologists ran things, farmer's couldn't plow fields for fear of destroying some old pile of rocks that some unknown hunter-gatherer clan put together 500 years ago.

The idea that something is intrinsically valuable because it is OLD is stupid... They'll actually dig into a latrine, if it's old enough. OMG!