Riana:
However, the law "does not forbid local or international artists from profiting from drawings and other reproductions of pharaonic and Egyptian monuments from all eras - as long as they don't make exact copies."
"Artists have the right to be inspired by everything that surrounds them, including monuments," he said.
Potential fine print argument - if you make lighting, camera angles, perspective etc unique enough, you can claim copyright? I'm not so great with derivative works, perhaps someone could clarify that. I wonder if we'll have a lot of photos looking up the Sphinx's nose at twilight, now :-s
If they make explicit reference to drawings as an exception to this law it's well because they are targeting pictures. Imho, this law can be compare with new picture prohibition rule at Louvre Museum while they will not applied it strictly (Egyptian government or Louvre have no benefit to prohibit all pictures), but they will use this law at handle some particular situations. Any way, it's really a scandal to try to steal a world heritage! I can understand they increase the fees for visiting monument, but try to get copyright on 5000 yo monuments it's really unacceptable.
Aoineko
PS: Sorry for my poor English.