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Egypt's Leader Meets US Treasury Chief Ahead Of Sudan Visit ByThe Associated Press January 5, 2021, 7:57 PM • 2 min read CAIRO -- Egypt’s president met Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin in Cairo, ahead of Mnuchin’s first visit to Sudan since the end of Khartoum’s pariah status. The office of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said in a statement the president and Mnuchin discussed mutual and regional issues, including the latest developments in talks with Sudan and Ethiopia over a disputed dam that Ethiopia is building over the Blue Nile River. The statement said el-Sissi appreciated U.S. Efforts in the dam talks last year that resulted in a U.S.-crafted draft deal to resolve the yearslong dispute over the massive project. The three Nile Valley countries met Sunday in the latest push by South Africa, the current chairman of the African Union, which is mediating a deal between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. Experts from the three nations and the AU were to meet Monday, but Sudan boycotted the meeting and insisted on a greater role for AU experts in the negotiations. Egypt initialed the draft deal, crafted by the United States in February, but Ethiopia did not attend the signing ceremony and accused President Donald Trump’s administration of siding with Egypt. Sudan attended the meeting but did not sign. The U.S. Has suspended some aid to Ethiopia over the “lack of progress” in the talks and U.S. “concern about Ethiopia’s unilateral decision to begin to fill the dam before an agreement and all necessary dam safety measures were in place.” Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam has caused severe tensions between the three nations. Mnuchin was scheduled to travel to Sudan's capital Khartoum on Wednesday to meet with the country’s leaders, according to Sudan’s state-run SUNA news agency. It would be the first visit by a senior U.S. Official since Washington last month approved the removal of Sudan from the U.S. List of state sponsors of terrorism. SUNA’s report said Mnuchin would discuss with Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, head of the ruling sovereign council, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok possible U.S. Economic aid debt relief. It did not give further details. Mnuchin said last month he would work with Congress and the transitional government in Khartoum to advance Sudan’s efforts to secure debt relief in 2021. Sudan is on a fragile path to democracy after a popular uprising led the military to overthrow longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. Is This Baboon Skull A Clue To Egypt's Lost Kingdom Of Punt © Provided by The Daily Beast Photo Courtesy The Trustees of the British Museum When we think of the ancient world we usually think of Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia, and China. But when the ancient Egyptians thought of mysterious and wealthy kingdoms they spoke of “God’s Land” or the Land of Punt. Expeditions to this kingdom—which was rich in gold, ebony, ivory, and frankincense—were memorialized by the Egyptians on the walls of temples and alluded to in ancient folklore. But despite the fact that the Land of Punt was a real place and a major trading partner of Egypt’s, its precise location had been lost. Now new evidence, based on a mummified baboon skull, may help unlock the secrets of this lost civilization. The Red Sea and ancient Egypt were part of a trade network that drove maritime technology for thousands of years. Punt also formed part of this ancient spice route and was well known for exporting luxury goods, in particular high-quality incense and prized sacred monkeys. Ancient sources suggest that travelers could reach Punt by journeying south and east of Egypt, leading some to identify the kingdom with Ethiopia or the horn of Africa, but the exact location of this country is a mystery. One clue to unlocking this mystery is the prevalence of the sacred baboon (Papio hamadryas) in ancient Egyptian art and religion. Baboons can be found on statues, jewelry, amulets, and in temple artwork. Some baboons may have been pets, others are shown in art working as police animals and fruit harvesters, and many are associated with royal tombs. They even achieved quasi-divine status, being particularly associated with the baboon-headed god Thoth (who is also regularly depicted with an Ibis head), who was associated with the moon and wisdom. The image of the male baboon seated with hands on knees and surrounded by a lunar crescent is an archetypal image that was used in Egyptian artwork for a millennium. Figures of the seated baboon spread throughout the Mediterranean in the Middle Bronze Age, but the further you travel away from Egypt the less realistic the image of the baboon gets. In the bowels of the British Museum, primatologist Professor Nathaniel Dominy of Dartmouth College discovered the remains of two hamadryas baboons. The baboons were mummified in the same seated pose that was so popular in ancient artwork and one has since been dismantled. The remains had been discovered at the Temple of Khons in ancient Thebes and were donated to the museum by the estate of Henry Salt, the British consul-general in Egypt between 1816 and 1827. Salt was one of a cluster of ethically questionable European diplomats-turned-amateur antiquities collectors who competed with one another to acquire as many antiquities as they could. Salt’s mummified baboons, however, are a curious discovery because baboons are not native to Egypt. There are no monkey species among the fossil records and ecological modeling suggests that baboon distribution has remained unchanged over the past 20,000 years. Where did these baboons come from? Dominy and his colleagues wanted to find out. Gallery: Beautiful flags and their secrets (Love Exploring) In an effort to identify their baboon’s birthplace, Dominy and his collaborators analyzed the chemical isotopes in the tooth enamel of one of the baboon skulls. The ratio of strontium isotopes in soil and water varies from region to region and is locked into a primate’s tooth enamel when they are young. By identifying the baboon tooth’s isotopic signature, the team hoped to pinpoint the place where the baboon had been born. The results of the analysis confirmed what the team had suspected: the baboon had been brought to Egypt from somewhere else. Further comparative analysis of the remains of other baboons found in ancient Egyptian tombs revealed that while some were raised in captivity in Egypt, others had been born outside of the region. A large comparative study of over 150 baboons from 77 locations in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula suggests that the British Museum baboon was born in a region that overlaps with modern-day Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and parts of Somalia and Yemen. Given that many archeologists believe that Punt was roughly equivalent with this region, Dominy et al. Argue that the baboon skull is the earliest known Puntite treasure. The discovery is a significant contribution that helps cement the theory that the wealthy Land of the Gods was located in the same area as Ethiopia and Eritreia. Not every archaeologist agrees that these mummies are the earliest Puntite artifacts, however. Kathryn Bard, an archaeologist at Boston University who excavated a site on Egypt’s Red Sea coastline, told Science that ebony and obsidian fragments she discovered at Wadi Gawasis are older. During her excavations there she also uncovered Sudanese/Ethiopic style pottery fragments. For his part Dominy says that while the ebony artifacts from Wadi Gawasis are important, the widespread distribution of ebony throughout Africa means that they cannot be definitively identified as originating in Punt. Regardless of which ancient remnant is the oldest, Dominy’s findings are significant. They help demonstrate the influence that ancient Ethiopia and Eritrea had on the cultural and religious thought of Egypt and, through Egypt, on the rest of the ancient Mediterranean. This recognition is important because Ethiopia and Eritrea rarely figure in popular histories of the ancient world. Instead, popular imagination focuses on ancient empires that have been traditionally—and, often, inaccurately—conceived of as white. Moreover, this research proves quite definitely that the baboon god is the lone non-native interloper in the pantheon of Egyptian deities. The baboon’s ascent from luxury import good, to immigrant worker, sacred guard dog, royal pet and, finally, deity is one of history’s great success stories. Read more at The Daily Beast. Did Oxygen Outage Kill Covid Patients In Egypt? Government Says No. The statement added that there were at least a dozen other patients in the hospital, including newborns in incubators, who were linked to the same oxygen network and that none were affected, “confirming the lack of a connection between the deaths and allegations made about a shortage of oxygen.” The video clip, less than a minute long, spread quickly and widely on social media and was broadcast on state-owned television talk shows, where officials are invited to comment. Asked why relatives were allowed into the isolation ward, the governor of Al Sharqiya, a region northeast of Cairo where the hospital is, said that “there was no visitation” and that the man who filmed inside had “stormed the ward” after learning about the death of his relative. Updated  Jan. 6, 2021, 7:09 p.M. ET The New York Times could not independently confirm if an interruption or shortage of oxygen had occurred, but two witnesses reached by phone objected to the official narrative and described a moment of panic among hospital staff members that was followed by the sudden death of a number of patients. They also said that they had been allowed to visit for an hour every day between 3 p.M. And 4 p.M., a time they used to help feed and change their sick relatives. “The doctor reassured us that he was in a stable condition, his oxygen level was at 95, he was walking and talking, no complaints,” said Barakat Abdel Aziz, 50, speaking about his younger brother who died in the hospital that day. Mr. Abdel Aziz said he returned in the evening to drop off some food. “Shortly after, there was commotion all around; people were saying the gas had finished and security forces surrounded the hospital.” Ahmed Mamdouh, the man who filmed the video, was at the hospital visiting his aunt, who also died. “Yes, we’re not supposed to be around Covid patients, but we go in wearing a mask, and that’s what we do to take care of our relatives,” said Mr. Mamdouh, 33. “That day she was eating yogurt with apples and oranges, and beef kofta with rice.”

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