villa al diwan have its new swimming pool

Brooke Hospital for Animals - luxor

The Brooke is an international non-governmental organisation dedicated to improving the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules through direct veterinary treatment and community programmes around animal health and well-being.

The Brooke is an international non-governmental organisation dedicated to improving the lives of working horses, donkeys and mules through direct veterinary treatment and community programmes around animal health and well-being.

We work with individuals, groups and organisations to ensure working equine animals get the living and working conditions they deserve. With over 800 staff in the field we currently work in eleven countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The Brooke’s work also benefits poor people who rely on these animals for their livelihoods. The majority of working horses and donkeys are owned by individuals who use them to support their primary means of income to sustain often large and extended families. These animals are becoming ever more important in developing countries to alleviate poverty, assure food security and promote self-reliance.

Current situation - Egypt
Access to good quality, affordable vet services still remains a challenge for many working animals and their owners in these communities. This is because most established vet service providers simply do not provide the kind of specialist services that working horses, donkeys and mules need.

However, with the Brooke’s help, training and guidance, local healers, farriers, saddlers and owners are taking an active role in providing animal welfare and health services.


Making a difference
The goal of the Brooke’s programme in Egypt is to ensure measurable improvements are made in the welfare of working horses and mules.

Our programme in Egypt reaches out to 230 communities in seven regions: Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Edfu, Alexandria, Mersa Matruh and the Nile Delta


In 2009, and continuing in 2010 we will be:
•providing quality vet services through Brooke clinics and supporting and developing Local Health Providers (LHP) so they increase their responsibility for treatment and prevention
•training paravets and farriers in the communities in which we work
•improving animal welfare practices across all regions by providing pre-treatment training sessions; community meetings; and best donkey and horse competitions
•conducting regional welfare assessments to give evidence of improvements in the welfare of high-risk animals
•at a national level, we are carrying out animal-friendly research into:
◦respiratory diseases (Cairo)
◦tumours (Luxor)
◦de-worming


In 2009, we helped 115,000 working horses, donkeys and mules (across 230 communities) through our clinics and mobile teams; through training local health providers; and by carrying out community-based education work.
to read moore about the brooke please click here

Animal welfare of Luxor

Animal Welfare of Luxor is addressing a desperate need to educate the children of non-tourist Luxor in the proper care of their animals and the animals that work for their family.

AWOL is a small UK and Luxor registered Charity that works on the west bank of Luxor outside the tourist areas in the very poor farming villages of El Marise and Armant. Though we call them villages it is a very large area for AWOL to cover. It is hot, dirty and at times quite distressing but also very rewarding.

AWOL - because the children are the future.

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Animal Care In Luxor

Have you ever felt like your heart was going to break? That sensation when you see something you just can't imagine possible and you have no control over? That happened in the dusty back streets of Luxor, Egypt. Kim and her Aunt Julie, whilst on holiday, saw people struggling to feed their families and abusing their means to do so. Small underfed donkeys being beaten and suffering from neglect by owners who needed them so badly. What could be done?

Julie Wartenberg has always had a love for Egypt and strong interest in Egyptology, and kindly brought her Niece, Kim Taylor for various holidays to explore the country.

Kim Taylor was not really 'into' Egyptology, but was constantly looking at the condition of the working animals in the back streets of Luxor. So Kim and Julie devised a way to ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING about the things that they were seeing.

"In life we often see things that we would like to change, but to get the opportunity to totally change your life around and put your ideas into action is rare" ... Kim Taylor


Julie Wartenberg used her retirement package from IFAW as a set up cost for the new charity which enabled ACE to rent a small piece of land and build a washing area. As well as donating a large sum of her own money in towards the running costs in our first few years. Julie also worked tirelessly to organize all the paperwork needed to set up a charity in Egypt and the UK, along with relentlessly fundraising to ensure the future of ACE.

Why a washing area?
The one thing that stood out in Kim's mind amongst all the sad sights of Luxor was the saddle sores on the horses' and donkeys' backs. Most of the saddle sores are caused because dust, dirt and sweat accumulates under the tack, if it is washed off it will help to prevent the sores. Every day we told the owners of the horses and donkeys that their animals would be in a better condition with a little preventative care.

That was more than ten years ago and for the first few years Kim, who has been the Centre Manager, from the start, cried every day as she felt that, despite all the trying, ACE were getting nowhere.

Originally ACE was to be a preventative centre, but as we progressed we soon realised that, we needed to give a full Veterinary service also. For example, if a man came into ACE with an animal with a cut in its leg, this could and would not be sorted just by washing.

Julie and Kim wanted ACE to be more than a place where people could bring their horses and donkeys, for a roll in the sand pit, a shower and a drink of clean water. They wanted somewhere that could then offer a full check over by an out-patient vet so that problems could be identified, and proper treatment options made available by fully qualified vets.

These problems could then either be resolved in the out-patient clinic, or if necessary the animal could be admitted as an inpatient for treatment.

So now, ACE has a Veterinary Hospital which gives free veterinary care and treatment to all kinds of neglected and abused animals. ACE also runs an educational programme where up to 300 children a week come from local schools to learn that animals feel pain and should be treated with respect as they serve their human masters. ACE is doing all that we can to ensure better animal welfare standards in the future for all animals. But we need your help to continue …

ACE is an ever-growing, great team of professionals and volunteers all working towards the same goal - To relieve and prevent the suffering of the animals in Egypt.
To know more about animal care in Egypt click here

King Tut suffered 'massive' chest injury, new research reveals

Tut's head, new research suggests that he sustained a "massive" chest injury, possibly caused by a hippo. Photo by Sandro VanniniA new study shows that Tutankhamun, Egypt’s famous “boy-king” who died around the age of 18, suffered a “massive crushing tearing injury to his chest” that likely would have killed him.
X-rays and CT scans have previously shown that the pharaoh’s heart, chest wall, the front part of his sternum and adjacent ribs, are missing. In Ancient Egypt the heart was like the brain and removing it was something that was not done.
“The heart, considered the seat of reason, emotion, memory and personality, was the only major organ intentionally left in the body,” writes Dr. Robert Ritner in the book Ancient Egypt.
The new research was done by Dr. Benson Harer, a medical doctor with an Egyptology background, who was given access to nearly 1700 CT scan images of Tut that were taken by a team of Egyptian scientists in 2005. Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, gave permission for the work.
“Zahi was very kind he let me get access to the entire database of all the CT scans,” said Dr. Harer.
It has been suggested that tomb robbers, operating sometime between 1925 and 1968, may have stolen the heart and chest bones. The new research shows that while robbers stole some of Tut’s jewellery they didn’t take the body parts. Instead they were lost due to a massive chest injury Tut sustained while he was still alive.
This isn’t the only medical problem Tut had. In 2005 a team of researchers reported that he had a broken leg and earlier this year an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that Tut suffered from malaria, something that may have contributed to his death.
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New Statue found on west bank,Luxor

The SCA mission working on the site known as Kom Hetan on west bank,Luxor has found the upper part of a double statue of red granite for Amenhotep III (1410-1372 B.C) in the north west of Amenhotep III temple site.

The statue represents Amenhotep III next to Re Hor Akheti in a shape of a falcon or hawk. Amehotep III left behind many statues with different Ancient Egyptian gods like Amon Re,Mut,Bastet,Sobek and Sekhmet.The German mission who is working on Amenhotep III temple behind the statues of Memnons has found nearly 80 statues of Sekhmet as she was the goddess of healing and the King was sick for a while at the end of his reign. When Dr. Zahi Hawass was checking the south east area of the temple he found a number of statues underground in an area was infringed by farmers nearby since a long time ago and Dr. Samir Farag the governor is negotiating with the farmers in the surrounded area to take the land for a compensation in order to convert it into an open display area for the found artefacts

New Discovery at Giza

An Egyptian archaeological mission directed by Dr. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), has discovered a large mud brick wall dating to the reign of King Thuthmose IV (1400-1390 BCE). The wall was uncovered in the area located in front of King Khafre’s valley temple on the Giza plateau.Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosny added that the discovery was made during routine excavation work carried out by the SCA.

Dr. Hawass stated that the newly discovered wall consists of two parts: the first section is 75cm tall and stretches for 86m from north to south along the eastern side of Khafre’s valley temple and the Sphinx; the second part is 90cm tall and is located in the area north of Khafre’s valley temple. This section is 46m long and runs from east to west along the perimeter of the valley temple area. The two parts of the wall converge at the south-east corner of the excavation area.Hawass explained that according to initial studies carried out at the site, the newly discovered wall is a part of a larger wall found to the north of the Sphinx. This wall was constructed by King Thuthmose IV as an enclosure to protect the Sphinx from winds. According to ancient Egyptian texts the construction of this wall was the result of a dream which Thuthmose had after a long hunting trip in Wadi El-Ghezlan (Deer Valley), an area next to the Sphinx. In the king’s dream, the Sphinx asked the king to move the sand away from his body because it choked him. For this favor, the Sphinx promised to make Thutmose IV King of Egypt. To accomplish this task, Thuthmose IV removed the sand that had partially buried the Sphinx and built an enclosure wall to preserve it.

Hawass pointed out that archaeologists previously believed that the enclosure wall only existed on the Sphinx’s northern side because a 3m tall by 12 m long section had been found there. This theory has now been disproven thanks to the discovery of the two new wall sections along the eastern and southern sides of the Sphinx.In addition to the two sections of the enclosure wall, the SCA team found a mudbrick wall on the eastern side of Khafre’s valley temple. Hawass believes that this wall could be the remains of Khafre’s pyramid settlement, which was inhabited by priests and officials who oversaw the activities of the mortuary cult of Khafre. This cult began at the king’s death and continued until the eighth dynasty (ca. 2143-2134 BCE), which was the end of the Old Kingdom.Essam Shehab, supervisor of Khafre’s valley temple excavation, said that the mission also dug a 6m deep assessment trench in the area located in front of Khafre’s valley temple to search for any activity dating to the Middle Kingdom (2030 – ca. 1660 BCE). Initial inspection did not reveal any Middle Kingdom activity in the trench as it was filled with almost 5m of sand. Such amount of sand, said Shehab, suggested that the area was abandoned during the Middle Kingdom.Excavations continue in order to reveal the rest of the Thuthmose IV enclosure wall and any other secrets still hidden within the sand.