From the Weekly Telegraph, No. 414, June 30-July 6, 1999:
Classic Hymn takes on an air of the outback
The much-loved hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful has been rewritten for Australian congregations to include billabongs, bushland and gum trees, writes Barbie Dutter in Sydney.
The 19th-century celebration of creation and natural wonder was considered "too English" for the new version of the Australian Hymn Book, called Together in Song, launched last week.
Many of the words written by the Irish hymnist Cecil Frances Alexander have been replaced. "The purple-headed mountains" of the third verse become "coloured walls of gorges", while palm trees,coral reefs and deserts have replaced the meadows, rivers and "pleasant summer sun" of the original.
While the refrain is unchanged, the first verse becomes: "The wildflowers in their beauty, the mountain ranges tall, the billabongs and rivers, and friendly birds that call."
The fourth verse reads: "The many-coloured corals, the creatures of the sea, of bushland, field or desert, on farms, or roaming free."

Canon Lawrence Bartlett, chairman of the editorial committee that developed the hymnal, said that "All Things bright and Beautiful had survived only because of the substantial changes.
"Without them it would have been nudged out of the repertoire."

Dr. Bartlett conceded that the re-worded version might offend traditionalists, particularly in Britain, but he said he believed Alexander would not have been annoyed. He said: "If you want Australian children to sing that song - and it's a lovely song - it needs to refer to the world in which we live."

From the Toronto Globe and Mail, July 3, 1999:
Gilded pyramids will hail new millennium
After extensive restorations, Egypt plans glittery ceremony for New Year's Eve.
MAHMOUD KASSEM, Reuters, Gaza, Egypt
Egypt plans to herald the millennium with a giant party at the pyramids, the biggest of which is to be capped in gold as it may have been long ago. "Most countries are building monuments for the millennium , but in Egypt we can boast existing monuments older than two millenniums," said Culture Minister Farouk Hosni. "All they need are some cosmetic retouches."

The Great Pyramid of Cheops, largest of the three main pyramids, was reopened this month, along with three tombs and the temple of the Sphinx, as part of efforts to speed recovery of the tourist industry after the November, 1997, Luxor massacre when 58 people were killed by Muslim militants.

Egypt has spent two years restoring monuments at the Giza plateau amid preparations for millennium festivities that will cost the equivalent of $14-million and include a New Year's Eve concert at the pyramids by French musician Jean-Michel Jarre. On New Year's Eve, a helicopter will place a sheaf of gold on top of the Great Pyramid in what Zahi Hawass, director of the Giza plateau, calls a "re-enactment of history," with the help of modern technology. "We have evidence to show that these gold caps called pyramidions existed and were placed on pyramid tips," said Kent Weeks, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo. Hawass said the Great Pyramid, the interior of which was reopened to the public June 3 after 14 months, had needed time to recover from damage caused by the breathing of tourists. "We were forced to shut down the pyramid . . . to let it breathe. Now a new ventilation system has increased the flow of fresh air."

Inside the pyramid, workers scraped off a crust of salt more than two centimetres thick that had accumulated on the walls of the grand gallery. they also prepared two previously closed chambers for public view. Hawass said only 300 tourists a day would be allowed inside the pyramid to limit damage.

Nearby, the three restored tombs of high-ranking officials and the temple in front of the 4,500-year-old Sphinx have been rebuilt acording to their original design. "The temple of the Sphinx has one of the only chapels in the area for the ritual of the rising sun and the ritual of the setting sun," said Hawass. "This will be very symbolic when we come to celebrate the millennium."

From the Weekly Telegraph, No. 415, July 7-13, 1999:
Ancient treaty is key to Etruscan riddle
THE DISCOVERY of an inscribed 2,300-year-old bronze tablet is being hailed by experts as the key to understanding ancient Etruscan.
The language of Etruria, whose civilisation dominated Italy before the rise of Rome, has remained a mystery to academics, since most inscriptions are funerary and thus limited in nature. "It has been like trying to understand Italian by looking at gravestones," said Professor Giuseppe Della Fina, director of the Archaeological Museum in Orvieto.
But the Tabula Cortonensis, which records a contract, possibly a land transaction, has added 30 words to the vocabulary of 500 words.

From the Toronto Globe and Mail, July 8, 1999:
Ancient coins found in Israel
Reuters News Agency, Jerusalem
Israeli archeologists announced yesterday that 1,000-year-old coins found near the Sea of Galilee bear the likeness of Jesus and have Greek inscriptions praising Him.
The coins were unearthed in October in archeological excavations at the site of ancient Tiberias in northern Israel, but only in cleaning them last month did archeologists discover the image of Jesus on 58 of the 82 coins.
Some coins also bore Greek inscriptions such as "Jesus the Messiah, the King of Kings," and "Jesus, the Messiah, the Victor."
"This is the largest collection of these types of coins. They are very rare," said Yizhar Hirschfeld, who co-directed the excavations.
Archeologists also found many types of bronze utensils dating from the 10th and 11th centuries, when the Islamic Fatimids ruled the region.
Mr. Hirschfeld said the coins were probably brought from Constantinople to Tiberias by Christian pilgrims.

From Aramco World (Aramco Services Company, Box 2106, Houston, Texas, 77252-2106) May/June, 1999:
The caption to a coloured photograph, page 20, states: "Thought by some to be among south Sinai's more than two dozen endemic plant species, the oriental blackberry (Rubus Sanctus: 'ullayq in Arabic) is believed by the monks of St. Katherine's monastery to be the bush that burst into flame before the prophet Moses."

Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 25 No. 4, July/August, 1999
Along with some other interesting articles, this issue contains a colourful, well-illustrated 15-page article by Mendel Nun, headed "Ports of Galilee. Modern Drought Reveals Harbors from Jesus' Time."

From the Weekly Telegraph, No. 417, July 21-27, 1999:
Millennium exhibition on images of Christ
THE National Gallery is to go where the Greenwich Dome hardly dares tread - with a large Millennium exhibition devoted to Christ and how artists have seen his image, writes Nigel Reynolds.
The free exhibition, starting in February, will bring together 100 paintings and artefacts from around the world tracing history's attempts to portray a man of whom there was no contemporary portrait.

Many of the gallery's paintings will be based on the story of the veil ofr St. Veronica - widely disseminated in the 13th century with the backing of Pope Innocent III - upon which Christ is said to have wiped the sweat off his face, leaving an impression of his features.

"We are very keen that the Millennium should be marked by an investigation of what the birth of Christ meant in art," said Neil MacGregor, the director of the gallery.

To celebrate the Millennium itself, the gallery is planning to project a giant image of one of its greatest masterpieces, Botticelli's The Mystic Nativity, on to the blank wall of the Sainsbury wing overlooking Trafalgar Square.

Painted in 1500, the picture has been interpreted as a vision of the Second Coming with angels driving away the Devil.

The main exhibition, to be called Seeing Salvation: The Image of Christ, will bring together works from the 4th century to Stanley Spencer's Christ Carrying the Cross, painted in the Fifties. The earliest objects - some borrowed from the Roman Museum of Antiquities and the Vatican Museum - predate images of Christ. They include Roman coins simply bearing the Christian cross and an oil lamp showing the Chi Rho, the Greek letters of the monogram of Christ.

The earliest known images of Christ are in relief carvings of the Passion and the Resurrection on a small ivory box dated AD 420 to 430, which is being loaned for the exhibition by the Tate.

A related article in the same issue of The Weekly Telegraph explains plans for expansion and re-design of the facilities on the ground floor and entrance way to the gallery. This is seen as needed because the original design was meant to cater to one million visitors per year, while presently the figure has risen to five million.

From the Toronto Globe and Mail, July 21, 1999:
Under the heading "The Making of a Martyr - Slain girl's mother to hit media circuit
- A bestseller, an inspirational video, maybe a Hollywood deal - all are planned for the story of Cassie Bernall, killed at Columbine High school after saying she believed in God." an article prepared by LISA MILLER, The Wall Street Journal, explains preparations of a Christian publisher to release a book on this focal point during the Columbine (High School) massacre. The book, titled "She Said Yes - the Unlikely martyrdom of Cassie Bernall," Littleton, Colorado, was written by her mother and is being printed by Plough Publishing House, Farmington Pa.. According to the article, the book tells of the student's earlier rather troubled life hanging out with a bad crowd and experimenting with Satanism and the occult, her conversion to God through the work of a Christian youth minister, and her testimony, for which she was shot and killed. The book is due for release September 10.

From the Weekly Telegraph, No. 417, July 21-27, 1999:
Protest over Rosetta Stone
EGYPT'S most senior antiquities official, Dr. Gaballah Ali Gaballah, boycotted celebrations at the British Museum last week to mark 200 years since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone, described as "the most famous piece of rock in the world", was the key to deciphering the language of the Pharaohs.

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