CAIRO: Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities has revealed a new archaeological discovery to the world — announced online as part of the state’s measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The discovery, posted on the ministry’s official web page and social media networks, was at the sacred animal necropolis in Saqqara where there have been two other archaeological discoveries during the past two years. The most important of these were the gorgeously decorated tomb of Wahti and a cachette of sacred birds and animals from which many animal mummies — some extremely rare — were brought to light.
According to the Ministry of Antiquities, the latest discovery was at the bottom of a 11-meter-deep shaft. Five sealed stone coffins/sarcophagi were found, and four niches in a room containing wooden coffins and late-era human burials.

A massive anthropoid wooden coffin with hieroglyphs written in yellow pigment was discovered in one niche. “We found several other artifacts around the coffin,” the ministry said. “They included 365 faience Ushabti figurines, some of which bear hieroglyphs texts; a small wooden obelisk about 40 cm tall, all four of its sides bearing painted scenes depicting the deities Isis and Nephthys, and the deity Horus; wooden statues of the god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris; and three pottery canopic jars in which the viscera removed during mummification was kept, in addition to many other artifacts.”
Archaeological expert Abdel-Rahman Rihan said the latest discovery was at a site where work had been underway for more than three months.
Rihan said that the find dated to the late Pharaonic kingdom following the third transitional era and prior to the Ptolemaic Era, dating back to 332 B.C.
Egyptian archaeologists do not all agree on the beginning of the late era. However, they do agree that it was around the late 25th Dynasty and before or during the 26th Dynasty.
The 25th Dynasty rulers were from Sudan, particularly Sudan’s northern area of Nabta, which was the capital of the kingdom of Kush in ancient times. The region is about 300 km from the capital Khartoum.

“The discovery is certainly very important as it coincides with the expected inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is at the top of the Egyptian state’s priorities after the coronavirus pandemic is over,” Rihan said. The ministry was using technology to introduce its archaeological discoveries to the world, and these would be “awaiting visitors” after the pandemic ended, he said.
During the past few years, the ministry has been focusing on improving services for visitors, especially at museums and archaeological sites.
“We have a plan to develop services in the pyramids area, which was very difficult to visit,” Rihan said. “However now the venue is being provided with all that tourists need, such as cafeterias, eco-friendly and safe transportation, bathrooms and other amenities.”
Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled El-Anany said that his department was working on developing a guideline for visitors that would be unveiled when the coronavirus crisis ended.
“There will be a high level of hygiene in restaurants and hotels, and sanitization will be carried out differently,” El-Anany said. “The entire world has learned a lot from this crisis and we will emerge stronger after we overcome it.”

AL-MUKALLA: The Iran-backed Houthi militia released Khaled Al-Ruwaishan, a former Yemeni culture minister and an outspoken writer, following a tribal mediation and public pressure, relatives and local media outlets said on Monday.

The Houthis came under huge local and international pressure after heavily armed gunmen stormed the house of the former minister and snatched him along on Sunday in the capital Sana’a. Abdul Qawi Al-Ruwaishan, a friend of Al-Ruwaishan, said that dozens of Houthis had besieged the former minister’s house before smashing down the doors.
Local media said that powerful tribal leaders from Khawlan, Al-Ruwaishan’s tribe, mediated his release without giving further information.
Yemen observers have linked the abduction to Al-Ruwaishan’s most recent Facebook posts, in which he harshly criticized the Houthi handling of damage caused by heavy rains in areas under their control, and praising their opponents in Marib.
Since taking over power in late 2014, the Houthis have abducted hundreds of their opponents including journalists, politicians and activists, and forced hundreds of others into decamping to government-controlled areas or going into exile.
Abdullah Al-Mansouri, a brother of Tawfeq Al-Mansouri, one of four Yemeni journalists who were sentenced to death by a Houthi court early this month, called upon local and international rights groups to exert more pressure on Houthis until they released his brother and other detainees. 
“The pressure that led to the release of Al-Ruwaishan and Al-Jubaihi must be maintained on the Houthis,” Al-Mansouri told Arab News, referring to Yahya Al-Jubaihi, another Yemeni journalist who was sentenced to death by the Houthis in April 2017 and was released five months later following international uproar.

In the Red Sea town of Mocha, hundreds of government officials, army officers and soldiers and social dignitaries attended the funeral of Col. Mohammed Al-Sulaihi on Sunday, a government liaison officer who was shot by a Houthi sniper in Hodeidah.
Mourners carried Al-Sulaihi’s coffin, wrapped in the Yemeni flag, to his home village in Taiz for burial. Al-Sulaihi died on Friday at a local hospital in the southern port city of Aden after sustaining critical wounds from the attack last month. 
After mourning Al-Sulaihi’s death, Yemen’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Mohammed Al-Hadrami demanded UN monitors in Hodeidah move their headquarter from the Houthi controlled city to a neutral area, and to suspend their operation until the killers were brought to justice. “This is proof that the militias cannot be trusted,” Al-Hadrami said on Twitter. 
On the ground, fighting intensified between government forces and rebel fighters in the southern province of Dhale, where loyalists seized control of several villages, state media said on Monday.

KUWAIT: Kuwait will extend the suspension of work in the public sector including at government ministries until May 31 and expand a nationwide curfew to 16 hours as part of efforts to combat the coronavirus, a government spokesman said on Monday.
He said in televised remarks that the 4 pm to 8 am curfew would go into effect at the start of the holy fasting month of Ramadan, which could fall on Thursday or later this week depending on the sighting of the new crescent moon.
Elsewhere in the Gulf region, Qatar said it would on Wednesday start to gradually lift a lockdown imposed since March 17 on a large section of an industrial zone, where many low-income migrant workers live and work and which had emerged as a hot spot for the virus.
Nearly 6,500 workers were moved into quarantine between April 14-17 as a precautionary step ahead of the opening of the area although they show no clear symptoms of the COVID-19 disease, a government spokeswoman said.
The Gulf region has seen an increasing number of infections among foreign workers living in overcrowded accommodation.
The number of cases in the six Gulf Arab states has risen steadily to surpass 28,000, with more than 170 deaths, despite containment measures including halting passenger flights, imposing curfews and closing most public venues.

AMMAN: Syrian President Bashar Assad and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif wore face masks on Monday for their meeting in Damascus where they said the West was exploiting the coronavirus pandemic for political ends, state media said.
State media said Assad conveyed condolences to Iran, where more than 5,200 people have died from the disease.
Echoing comments by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Zarif, who was also wearing gloves, was quoted as saying the US administration showed its “inhumane reality” by its refusal to lift sanctions on Syria and Iran when coronavirus was spreading around the world.
Assad said the handling of the crisis showed the West’s moral failure.
USSecretary of State Mike Pompeo has held out the possibility that the United States may consider easing sanctions on Iran and other nations to help fight the epidemic but given no concrete sign it plans to do so.
Speaking last month, Pompeo said humanitarian supplies were exempt from sanctions Washington reimposed on Tehran after President Donald Trump abandoned Iran’s 2015 multilateral deal to limit its nuclear program.
The United States has also ratcheted up sanctions on Syria since the uprising against Assad began in March 2001. The State Department says it is “trying to deprive the regime of the resources it needs to continue violence against civilians.”
The Syrian government says it has 39 confirmed cases of coronavirus and three dead. Medics and witnesses say there are many more. Officials, who deny any cover-up, have imposed a lockdown and measures including a night-time curfew to stem the pandemic.
The presence of thousands of Iranian militias fighting alongside Assad’s forces in Syria and Iranian pilgrims have been cited by some medics and humanitarian workers as a main source of the contagion in Syria.

DUBAI: Few economic sectors can expect to avoid the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, whose global death toll has crossed the 150,000 mark.
Although a handful of businesses are flourishing thanks to a surge in demand for their products and services, the overwhelming majority are busy counting the cost of precautionary measures such as lockdown and social distancing.
Tourism, hospitality, air transport and entertainment are among the worst-hit industries right now across the world, but the full list of the pandemic’s economic victims is long and depressing.
Among the many entrepreneurs of the digital era who have been put in a precarious position due to the pandemic are social media influencers.
The most popular topics for sponsored posts on social media — fashion and beauty, travel and lifestyle — are also the most vulnerable in this extraordinary time.
The main reason for their sudden reversal of fortune is a rush by brands across the spectrum to tighten their budgets in a period of uncertainty.

The influencer marketing industry was predicted to grow to $9.7 billion this year by “The State of Influencer Marketing 2020: Benchmark Report by Influencer Marketing Hub.”
But now collaborations, on which the influencer industry is heavily dependent, are starting to look grim.
“Before the pandemic, I had at least three to four clients per week, which were looking to review products or shoot items,” said Mohammad Khteeb, a 39-year-old Jordanian influencer.
“But after the pandemic (hit), many of those brands stopped. I now get one client every week or every two weeks. All of them are afraid to spend.”

Khteeb, whose Instagram account @its_mohd_khateeb has 946,000 followers, said brands were beginning to approach the situation by using a revenue-sharing model rather than a fixed cost.
“This means the risk of the campaign will be in two parts,” he told Arab News. “So I’m trying to help and support some brands, and I moved with some of them to the revenue-sharing model.”
According to Khteeb, the crisis has the potential to filter influencers’ marketing and “clean up” social media platforms in the foreseeable future.
“Influencers who have personal content will remain,” he said. “And the others will (fizzle out) by that time because they can’t think of other ways to create good content from nothing.”
Until the coronavirus pandemic hit, influencers had been playing an important part in brand sales.
The findings of the 2019 edition of the Social Media Influencers survey, commissioned by the Dubai-based BPG Group and the research agency YouGov, were an eye-opener.
The study found that 73 percent of respondents aged 18-35 across the UAE and Saudi Arabia had purchased a brand or tried a service based on a trusted social media influencers’ recommendation.
Their areas of coverage ranged from entertainment, food and travel to tech, lifestyle, arts and culture, fashion and beauty.

Now, as more people are encouraged to stay home to prevent the spread of COVID-19 infection, their online usage of social media is sharply increasing.
Some influencers have found a way to limit the pandemic’s damage by moving their work online and ensuring that their dependency on brands remains small enough.
“What I’ve seen is more home-grown brands reaching out to their community of influencers for support more than ever,” said Dina Ghandour, a 34-year-old Canadian-Palestinian e-commerce business owner.
“And in the same way, I’ve felt much more inclined — in heart, space and time — to offer whatever support I can to small local brands.”
The yoga teacher and manager of Yapparel, which has 17,400 followers, said she always made sure that a brand or “influenced collaboration” held a small percentage of her work.

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In other words, the core of YApparel’s business remained with her range of offered services. Such an arrangement has allowed her some leeway in an unstable and uncertain period, Ghandour said.
“So my online yoga classes and offerings have done really well in this time as people are home,” she told Arab News.
“I believe these circumstances will help influencers change and upgrade their model of work. That could mean diversifying income or learning a new chargeable skill to share with one’s community.
“Influencers should be flexible enough to support brands for less or no money, should they feel inclined to.”
However, with retailers shutting their doors and countless employees being made redundant due to a lack of sales, many influencers are slowly but surely starting to pay the price as brands tighten their belts.
Gaenaelle Perrot, CEO of NEMOZENA, said the Emirati-owned brand designed and produced in Italy is stepping back from any new agreements with influencers and content creators for now, in view of the crisis impacting both businesses and individuals worldwide.
“As soon as the markets return to stability and the public are able to go back to their day-to-day routines, we as a brand will then look to resuming our digital and social activity, including our influencer program,” Perrot said.
“The current global climate highlights our selection process when it comes to choosing influencers and, now more than ever, it amplifies our commitment to (our stated) criteria.”

Perrot was unable to share specific figures, but said the need to balance her budget applies to all her partnerships, particularly as the brand evolves.
“As this is our most direct way to communicate with both women as well as our clients, we remain positive and continue to have a clear vision of the influencers and women we want to work with,” she told Arab News.
“We’re therefore adapting our strategies and allocating budget to enact this. We always take great care with selecting influencers we wish to partner with, and our reasons have invariably gone beyond just the number of followers.”
As a brand, NEMOZENA considers a range of key factors, including the affinity of the influencer toward the brand identity, their personality, style of content creation and, most importantly, shared values.
“In comparison with other brands, we’re a lot more particular and gradual with our selection process,” Perrot said.

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READ MORE: COVID-19 and the power of social media influencers: Are they more important than ever?

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“This practice is incredibly important to us. We always strive to partner with influencers who empower women and demonstrate professional, cultural and creative leadership, which are strong components of our brand DNA.”
Perrot sees the unfolding crisis as an opportunity to adapt her brand’s strategy to the new market realities.
Her plan is to maintain — or even increase — her budget allocation for digital and social media activity once the pandemic abates.
“For the brand, this is an essential element that’s needed now more than ever, whereas other marketing activities we had planned throughout the year, such as events, are currently no longer required,” Perrot said.
“In these challenging times, we remain dedicated to keeping connected with our team, our agencies and the influencers we work with, even if we need to take a step back for a short while.”
With digital platforms and social media networks attracting record audiences and poised to maintain their dominance going forward, Perrot expects to see brands make more active use of influencers and digital strategies.
“Brands will need to refocus their marketing activities to work alongside real influencers with a purpose, a voice and a genuine influence, as opposed to just looking at their number of followers,” she said.
“Above all, in order to get back to business as quickly as possible, we encourage everyone to do whatever they can to stay safe and adhere to all precautions put in place following advice from governments and health officials around the world.”