[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.