A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF THE EGYPTIAN PHARAOHS
Science and Technology to Leverage Culture and Cultural Heritage

The Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide (AAFSW) in coordination with the Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt in Washington, DC cordially invite you to a unique and fascinating Cultural program, presented by the distinguished Dr. Yasser ElShayeb from the University of Cairo.

The program will take place on Tuesday October 2nd at 10:30 am. in the Burns Auditorium in the George Marshall Center of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC. Following Dr. ElShayeb’s presentation there will be a traditional Egyptian Tanoura dancer.

With the emergence of technologies in the first two decades of the 21st century, it becomes evident that the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) should be extended to the culture and cultural heritage domains.

Throughout the world, there are many examples of this and many successes have been achieved, resulting in numerous success stories. It is believed that those stories should be highlighted and disseminated in order to expand the knowledge and create new opportunities and applications.

In this presentation we will expose how ICT may contribute to better knowledge of various cultures, how ICT may be used to disseminate and exchange information about cultural heritage sites, and probably draw a potential strategy for the contribution of ICT in the domain of cultural heritage.

The second part of the presentation will be dedicated to recent applications of technologies at the Giza Plateau in Egypt, where scientists from Egypt, Japan, France, and Canada were able to successfully employ cosmic rays in order to scan the internal structure of the great Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu), and were able to determine the existence of previously unknown voids within the pyramid. This work was the subject of a recent publication in “Nature.”

Please RSVP by Friday, September 28 to office@aafsw.org or 703-820-5420 to register. All attendees without a State Department badge will need to provide their date of birth and a driver’s license or passport number to submit to the Office of Security at the State Department. The charge for the program is $10.00 per person. Please send your information and a check (made out to AAFSW) to our headquarters at 4001 North Ninth Street, Suite 214, Arlington VA, 22203.

Please come to the 21st Street NW entrance of the Department of State (between C Street and Virginia Avenue NW). As you enter, rather than reporting to the main desk, please go to the table to your left where one of our members will check you in.

We will start at 10:30 a.m. with a social time, where you can try some delicious traditional Egyptian cuisine, followed by the presentation of Dr. Yasser ElShayeb beginning at 11:00 a.m. and concluding with the Tanoura dancer.
We look forward to seeing you.

Sheila Switzer
AAFSW Program Chair