Hotels in Egypt are available modern facilities

The Byzantine Empire lasted for more than 11 centuries, from AD330-1453. At various times, it incorporated most of Europe, including the Balkans, and Turkey, parts of North Africa, and the Middle East. Predominantly Greek-speaking and Christian, its power superseded that of the Roman Empire. The imperial capital was Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, today Istanbul, a city that wielded considerable power until it was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Turks.

Some 300 of the greatest treasures of the Byzantine Empire are currently on display at the Royal Academy of Arts in London (Burlington House, Piccadilly; 020-7300 8000; royalacademy.org.uk), in an exhibition put together in collaboration with the Benaki Museum in Athens. Among the treasures are the "Antioch Chalice", on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, once thought to be the Holy Grail; and nine icons from St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, which have left Egypt for the first time.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia places, talked about how as early as the late 1940s, Hassan al-Banna and some of his closest associates used to travel to Saudi Arabia, which was not the Saudi Arabia of today. At that time, it was still coming out of the shadows of the early Saudi sort of Wahhabi non-modernist beginnings. And yet, Eilts claims that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in particular had ties with the Saudis, and the Saudi deputy finance minister at the time who happened to be from Sudan, was responsible for providing money for the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the influence that coincided with the American agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood. Australia Hotels