Saving history for posterity
While many of the artefacts believed looted from the Egyptian Museum three weeks ago have been recovered, sites and storehouses in other parts of the country have not escaped so lightly.
Nevine El-Aref reports on the theft that never was and a sudden chance for tomb robbers
In the first few days of protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square at the end of last month, disturbing news emerged that looters had broken in through a skylight of the Egyptian Museum, the striking saffron-coloured building that borders the northern end of the square. There followed conflicting reports of valuable objects gone missing, then recovered, and later of further items unaccounted for.
Early this week, however, came some good news: a 37-centimetre-tall painted limestone statue of the monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten was retrieved 15 days after it vanished from a showcase in the Amarna Gallery on the second floor of the museum. It depicts Pharaoh Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamun, wearing a faience crown, standing on an alabaster base and holding an offering table in his hands.
The story of how the statue was retrieved began on the night of 28 January when a 16- year-old boy named Mahmoud, one of the crowd of protesters in Tahrir Square, found the statue in a pile of ashes beside a trash can at the south wall of the museum. He took the statue home, where his mother soon realised that it could be one of the objects reported missing from the museum. She duly called her brother, Sabri Abdel-Rahman, an Arabic Language teacher at the Centre for Arabic Study Abroad at the American University in Cairo. Abdel-Rahman telephoned the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs.
At the Antiquities and Tourism Police Unit at the Cairo Opera House, an archaeological committee headed by Youssef Khalifa, director of the Stolen Antiquities Department at the ministry, inspected the statue and approved its authenticity. Surprisingly, it was in very good condition apart from the fact that the offering table had been broken off, but by a stroke of fortune the missing segment was found inside the Egyptian Museum in the corridor linking the Amarna and Tutankhamun galleries.
Tarek El-Awadi, the director-general of the Egyptian Museum, said that the statue was now in the conservation laboratory for repair and would soon be returned to its permanent showcase in the Amarna Gallery. Of the eight objects identified as missing so far, this brings the total recovered to five. The others are the heart scarab belonging to Pharaoh Tutankhamun's grand grandfather Yuya; his wooden ushabti (votive) figurine; the gilded wooden figure of the New Kingdom goddess Menkaret carrying Tutankhamun; and a part of an unidentified wooden New Kingdom anthropoid sarcophagus. The museum's Registration, Collections Management, and Documentation Department will continue to make a careful inventory of the collection.
On Sunday, following almost three weeks of closure, all archaeological sites in Egypt reopened to the public. These sites include all the pharaonic, Coptic and Islamic sites in Cairo, Luxor and other parts of Upper Egypt. Within four hours of the reopening of the Memphis necropolis -- which includes the Giza plateau, Saqqara, Mit Rahina and Abu Rawash -- Zahi Hawass, minister of state for antiquities affairs, announced that a few groups of foreign tourists, each numbering from 20 to 50, had already visited these sites, as well as Egyptians.
Ali El-Asfar, head of the Giza plateau monuments, said that over the past week the number of daily visitors to the plateau had increased to 800. Last Sunday a group of young people held a peaceful rally on the plateau calling for international tourism to return to normal.
In Luxor, local supervisor of antiquities Mansour Borak said 93 tourists visited Karnak Temples on the first day of reopening. In the coming days two British groups totalling 200 people are scheduled to visit, as well as Italians and Germans. Borak told Al-Ahram Weekly that one British tourist told him he had created a blog called "Back to Luxor" in an attempt to encourage tourists to visit Egypt, especially Luxor which he adored. So far, the tourist said, the blog had attracted 10,000 hits from Europe.
However, Mohamed Abdel-Fattah, head of the Museums Department at the ministry, reported that only six museums had reopened and others would not do so until after security measures had been addressed. Those that have reopened are the Egyptian, Islamic and Coptic museums in Cairo; Luxor Museum; the Mummification Museum in Luxor and the Nubia Museum in Aswan.
Awadi said the first tour group to visit the Egyptian Museum when it reopened was from the Netherlands, while others came from Germany, Italy and Japan. Islamic and Coptic monuments in Cairo, which are all open, received several visitors, with 15 tourists visiting the Salaheddin Citadel.
Hawass said antiquities and tourism police and ministry guards were now all back at their posts and ensuring tightened security measures to safeguard archaeological sites in all parts of the country.
Despite the recovery of the Akhenaten statue, other news from the Ministry of State for Antiquities Affairs (MSAA) was less encouraging. Several important antiquities sites were vandalised during the nationwide disturbances. After a preliminary inventory had been drawn up, Sabri Abdel-Aziz, director of the Ancient Egyptian Department at the MSAA, reported that a tomb on the Saqqara necropolis, that of an Old Kingdom hairdresser named Hetepka, had been broken into and that a false door may have been stolen along with objects that had been stored in the tomb. So as to compare the alleged damage with earlier expedition photographs of the tomb, Hawass has assigned an archaeological committee to inspect every inch of the structure. A similar event took place at Abu Sir, where a portion of a false door was stolen from the tomb of the Fourth-Dynasty high priest Rahotep.
Hawass said forced entries had been confirmed at a number of storage magazines, including one near the pyramid of the Sixth- Dynasty king Teti and a storeroom belonging to Cairo University, both at Saqqara. "I have created a committee to prepare reports to determine what, if anything, is missing from these magazines," Hawass said. He added that military authorities had caught thieves attempting to loot the site of Tel Al-Basta in the Nile Delta as well as other criminals who were trying to loot a tomb in Lisht. There have also been reports of houses being built over archaeological sites and of illegal digging.
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