And I'm off, July 1 to the end of the year, on book leave. Most exciting, I head for a month to the Middle East to investigate what is real and what is lip service in the debate over where antiquities most properly belong. I will be sharing some of my findings on this blog, and look forward to hearing back from you all, my readers. I hope to visit sites in Luxor, in Egypt, and Istanbul in Turkey, along with the Acropolis and elsewhere Greece. If time (and money) holds out, I will head to Italy to talk to the prosecutors of Marion True, the martyred ex-curator of the Getty. (Also, if the Italians are not gone on vacation.) If this sounds like a boondoggle posing as book research, all I can say is: write your own damn proposal.

a bientot to all from the road. sw.

I'm sitting in the office of Zahi Hawass, chief of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in Cairo. His office, in the SCA headquarters on the island of Zamalek, is a garden variety Egyptian bureaucrat's bland mix of tan walls and oversized stuffed furniture. (Happily, the wireless Internet works.) But there's a curious thing in the lobby. In a large vitrine, the famed bust of Nefertiti -- see it at left -- sits in a place of honor. Strange because this is a copy, and Egypt has no end of authentic artifacts to show off in the lobby of its antiquities service. The bust has not been in Egypt since its discovery in the first part of the 20th century. It now lives in Berlin, and is prime on Hawass's list of requests for loan in 2012. Berlin has responded that the statue is too fragile to travel. Hawass does not accept this argument, and continues to push. It's Sunday, and he has been entertaining a steady stream of work-related visitors, all the while writing the introduction to a new Tut catalogue on yellow legal pads on his desk. In between, one of a handful of industrious female American interns/assistants/students traipse into his office and take requests, procure signatures or advice on a letter . Throughout, a godawful banging comes from below, where renovation -- or perhaps excavation -- is ongoing.

Here we are in Zahi's office. (My new camera! Nice, right?) I sat for no fewer than six hours watching him work, an unbroken stream of letters, calls, signatures, meetings, convocations. No lunch break. One bathroom break. He called it the calmest day he knew in his office yet. I wanted a medal by the end of the day. Unfortunately, it was Zahi who got the medal, which was the Officer of Commander of Arts and Letters at the French embassy, followed by a cocktail party. The medal was green grosgrain with a bright enamel green star, bestowed by the ambassador. Zahi said the medal was nice, but he still would not drop his demand that the Louvre loan him the Zodiac ceiling of the Temple of Denderah. Then off he went to dinner somewhere, before leaving to the States tomorrow. I, on the other hand, will go to Luxor. (Also a useful evening, because I snagged an invite to the gala Bastille Day extravaganza on July 14 at the stunning French Embassy, a reconstructed Islamic-era palace.)

Wow, a tsunami of support and encouragement from out there across the world. I sent the blog link out to most of my address book (half of it, anyway), and many of you shouted back. Fantastic! You are all readers, writers, otherwise sophisticates to whom I don't need to show Cairo on the map. Excellent. To those sending in their own damn book proposals -- yes, this means you, the mother of four pitching the international art thief at a Connecticut Dunkin' Donuts -- I can only wish the best of luck. Binky Urban is a great agent, they say.

A word about a languid dinner on a Cairo rooftop with a group of journalists last night, badly in need of a beer and a break. Most of them are denizens of the Iraq war -- Jill Carroll, the kidnapped journalist, now in Cairo for the Christian Science Monitor, Ellen Knickmeyer of the Washington Post, Alexandra Zavis of the Los Angeles Times -- and several others. Most correspondents in Iraq need to leave the country from time to time to take a respite from the stress and violence. Cairo is hardly a calm and quiet place, except by comparison. All told stories of their various close calls, which frequently involved the heartache of comforting Iraqi staff in their offices as they have lost loved ones and neighbors. I told Carroll I was present at a recent Courage in Journalism award luncheon where she was an honoree (she declined to come and sent her mother); instead the presenter, Sharon Stone, shed copious tears over Carroll's travails for about 20 minutes, a grand and wildly out of place performance. Jill, slight-framed and about as uncynical a person as you might meet, said she felt adamant that she didn't deserve the award.  I was reminded of the rare and instant camaraderie journalists create in faraway places, especially in war zones. 

Well, I've definitely got that I-should-be-blogging feeling, it must be bred by this form of media. I am in Luxor, the modern-day city that was once Thebes, capital of pharaohs, and a stone's throw from their tombs in Valley of the Kings. I am technologically not able to share from here the amazing images I saw today, and was able to photograph with special permission (the tombs are absolutely banned to photography). Suffice it to say it involved 19th century graffiti and other colonial-era outrages; nonetheless, the tombs I saw of Seti I and Amenophis III were stunningly beautiful. Tune in tomorrow, when I go up-river to Denderah, for details.

This is a rare photograph, taken inside the tomb of Amenophis III in Luxor's Valley of the Kings this week. The tomb is not excavated and as such is closed to the public; and photos are not permitted in any tombs at all. (Also, the tomb is pitch black, so I am amazed it came out this clearly.) But the director of the site, Mostafa Wazery, opened it and allowed me to take pictures to illustrate the mutilations that have happened in the past two centuries by European adventurers. The cut-out is one of five heads of the pharaoh that were taken some time after the tomb was identified in 1829, a particular sacrilege because this tomb is otherwise in exquisite condition, with bright colors and beautifully preserved scenes of the pharaoh as he goes to the afterlife. (Click on the photo to see it more fully.) This tomb is a stunning 3,400 years old. The Louvre, apparently, has the five cut-outs of Amenophis. Zahi Hawass has asked for them back. The tomb will eventually be excavated and opened, and he feels they should be restored. This is one case where I would have to agree. This second photo is from the facing wall. (photos copyright: sharon waxman)

Apparently, cross-cultural love has become quite the thing in this tourist town on the Nile. The latest trend is retired English ladies taking up residence, and finding love with young Egyptian men. (I saw one such couple around midnight in the lobby of my hotel. She looked relaxed.) This is resulting in marriages and some complicated situations, when the English lady finds out her young lover, or husband, already has a wife and children elsewhere. Scandal ensues. But it's not always a tragedy. In one case I'm told about, the lady died and the young Egyptian man ended up inheriting her Luxor home, and her 5 million English pounds.

Here it is, the famous ceiling of the zodiac at the Temple of Denderah, north of Luxor (in black). Except it isn't. The real ceiling was hacked out of this space in the early part of the 19th century because of its extreme rarity: there are few (I'm told none, but I'd want to check) examples of the zodiac sky in Egyptian antiquity, and this is a dense and beautiful one. How it was taken from here is another ugly story from the Age of Explorers, and it is one of five objects that Hawass has asked to borrow from Western museums for the opening of a new museum in Cairo in 2012. The Louvre is considering the request, but everyone knows that Hawass really wants it back permanently. The original, in the Louvre, is not black; it has been cleaned (the replica here is badly done, and mimics the smoke that once covered the walls), and makes no mention of how it got there. Which is true for most of its Egyptian collection. Denderah Temple, by the way, is immense. This is a tiny room on its rooftop dedicated to Osiris. But the temple is massive and a work of great majesty. The ceiling in its main, pillared hippostyle hall is 54 feet high. (photo copyright: sharon waxman)

Hot news from Sofia, that's in Bulgaria,  where officials are demanding that Greece return nine silver plates, dating back to the 12th century, illegally dug up and smuggled out of the country.(Here's the story, from Sofia News Service, no kidding.) This entire enterprise begins to make the mind spin. Greece wants things back from England; Italy wants Greek items back from California; Bulgaria wants things from Greece, Italy offers to return things to Libya (I'm not even sure if they asked). and Egypt wants things from throughout the Western world. Without diminishing the concerns over looting in Bulgaria, a new and rather virgin hot spot for thieves, at some point one does begin to wonder: where does all this end?