Posted on 07/17/2011 7:03:56 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
"I am leaving because of a variety of important reasons. The first reason is that, during the Revolution of January 25th, the Egyptian Army protected our heritage sites and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. However, in the last 10 days the army has left these posts because it has other tasks to do. The group now in charge of the protection of these sites is the Tourist Police, but there are no Tourist Police to do this either. Therefore, what happens? Egyptian criminals, thieves (you know, in every revolution bad people always appear…), have begun to destroy tombs. They damaged the tomb of Hetep-ka at Saqqara, the tomb of Petah-Shepses at Abu Sir and the tomb of a person called Em-pi at Giza. They attacked a storage magazine at Saqqara and we do not yet know how many artifacts are missing; they opened two storage magazines at Giza; one tomb dated to the 19th Dynasty, the only one in the Delta in fact, was damaged at Ismaïlia; and a store at El-Qantara East has been broken into and looted for antiquities... The second reason is that there are two crooks in the Antiquities Department, who have accused me of stealing antiquities and doing other illegal things all of the time. Their files talk about this. A third person started saying similar things, a university professor who was the Antiquities Director for almost 6 years before me, who never accomplished anything in that time. As a corrupt man, he even gave his signed permission to a rich lady from another Arabic country to take manuscripts out of Egypt! These three people encouraged young Egyptians to protest against me personally, to shout outside my office that they needed jobs.
(Excerpt) Read more at drhawass.com ...
Hawass was doing a lot to stop Egyptian tourism. He is the one that planned on closing the Giza plateau (pyramids) before 9/11. He has hurt both Egyptian tourism and archeology by severely restricting firmans to non Muslim universities. He has done a lot of damage during his tenure, and he is an arrogant SOB to boot. When I studied Egyptology at UCLA and when I worked with some Egyptologists during my tenure with AIA, no one like or respected Hawass.
Perhaps his successor will do something to actually help Egyptology and tourism.
Oh come now. You don’t mean that. Really? A generation?
It will take them a month. ; )
Dr. Hawass was one of my favorite guys on the History Channel UNTIL I heard him praising Hamas and the PLO and excoriating Israel.
The “palestinians” do the exact same thing as other moslems do...destroying (or usurping with mosques)incredibly precious heritage sites such as Joseph’s Tomb, The Church of the Nativity, The Temple Mount, John The Baptist’s tomb in Damascus, The Church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Joshua’s Tomb, The Garden Tomb, Tombs of Jewish sages throughout Israel, The Giant Buddhas in Afghanistan, The Golden Temple of the Hindus, And even The Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs at Machpelah in Hebron. Not to mention the Site of Flight 93 and the World Trade Center. There is even a mosque in MY NEIGHBORHOOD close to the apartment complex where Mohammed Ata lived while he was going to flying school.
I have always loved the art of Ancient Egypt and am deeply distressed by its destruction at the hands of these fanatics. But Dr. Hawass is being a wee bit hypocritical.
Just my humble opinion.
He was controversial, but put Egyptians in charge of their heritage, got things on the right track, and was world respected.
Looks like he is a casualty of the "revolution", as is the tourist industry.
If the point of the "revolution" was to make things better, the muhammedans are going to be mighty surprised.
Oh, it’s all so depressing. The days of Lord Carnarvon are over.
Maybe we can finally find out what’s under the foot of the Sphinx now.
I am so envious of you. I wanted to study Egyptology; I used to sleep one block from Tahir Square in Cairo, near the museum.
I didn’t know anything about Hawass.
Check out anchorstone.com and tell me what you think. Was King Tut the crown prince of the pharoah that died during the Red Sea crossing? Interesting data.
“Divorce him!!!”
What he told one of his interns when her husband complained that she was away from home too long.
Apparently, he is a very difficult person to work for. No one wanted to be on his team.
My wife and I laugh and say “divorce him!” every time we see him on TV.
LOL. A bit of a character. Have to tell my wife.
All of a sudden the liberal elitists of Europe and America will howl about the revolution in Egypt. Somehow they will compartmentalize it all and forget how 0bama and Hillary supported it.
Valuable human history will be lost forever because of some nutty screwed up religion. What a bunch of uncivilized apes.
This is tragic. Dr. Hawass has been the leading voice speaking for the Paroahs and the treasures they left behind.
Dr. Hawass, if you ever find yourself on this site, thank you for your life’s work.
I believe this is old news and I believe Hawass is back.
I saw Dr. Hawass when he was in the US during an event at the Smithsonian’s, I was able to shake his hand but did not speak with him long enough to form an opinion (his lecture was very good).
I’ve heard he was a very hard task master, placed somewhat impossible conditions on archaeologists and other researchers. I’ve also heard complaints that he required huge “contributions” in order to work anywhere in Egypt and it was virtually impossible to work at any well known site.
Having met him twice, aside from a troll which does not really tell us much, what did he say/do that made you have such a poor opinion of him? Would you agree that he has been one of the best directors when it came to protecting Egypt’s artifacts and was relentless in getting artifacts back that were taken over the decades? Or, would you fall into the group who believes his work was to enrich his name and bank account more so than a desire to protect his countries history?
“Mubarak must go!” Happy now, Hillary and Obama?
I’ve also heard complaints that he required huge “contributions” in order to work anywhere in Egypt and it was virtually impossible to work at any well known site.
Having met him twice, aside from a troll which does not really tell us much, what did he say/do that made you have such a poor opinion of him? Would you agree that he has been one of the best directors when it came to protecting Egypt’s artifacts and was relentless in getting artifacts back that were taken over the decades? Or, would you fall into the group who believes his work was to enrich his name and bank account more so than a desire to protect his countries history?
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The complaints about contributions and getting firmans to work at any well known site are true. Very much so.
And he was definitely out for the money and fame rather than the best interest of Archeology, Egyptology or his country.
I am used to dealing with Professors and academics and they tend to be an arrogant lot but he was even moreso. He didn’t want to be here, he hated America but he enjoyed the fawning that particularly the lay (armchair) archeologists gave him. He would shun women (which was actually a pretty high number of the professionals), and gravitate to the men, particularly if he thought he could get money from them, making promises that he would never deliver (access to digs and such). He also was disdainful of any students (I was a grad student at the time and the only grad student who was president of a chapter of AIA).
His desire, IMO, to have antiquities returned to Egypt was more to get his hands on them, and I have heard rumors from reliable sources that many of those items disappeared under his watch (similar to Carter and Canavoron with Tut’s tomb). His lectures were good, but rehearsed and he had difficulty with the one question and answer session I saw. One of my professors used to refer to him “Budge” which is a huge smackdown if you are familiar with the history of Egyptology. There are also a couple of accounts of him making false accusations of black market antiquities dealings in order to get items back to Egypt.
His decision in 2000/2001 to stop all tourist activity at the pyramids was officially to slow degradation of the sites but unofficially he was planning on selling access to the highest bidders (under the table of course - one of my professors was approached by him about this). The sharp decline of tourism after 9/11 led to a change of mind, possibly because of pressure from the Egyptian government.
I have also heard he was very harsh, particularly to non-muslim and non-Egyptian archeologists. His goal, IMO, was to prevent outsiders from working there, but financially that wasn’t feasible.
I only met him here stateside, and I never worked with him, but I can’t think of any professional in the field who liked him.
I am really hoping that the next director will be better.
I actually got into it as a fluke. I started taking some courses in Hieroglyphs (to prove Mormonism was true of all things) and then got really interested. When I was doing my MA in Ancient History I focused on Roman Egypt and a professor of mine recommended doing an informal joint program with UCLA and gave me the recommendation. I loved it but UCLA was having problems in the department so several courses were cut and some of the older professors were retiring and not being replaced. In many ways it was frustrating.
Regarding the site, I have seen similar things, but the evidence for their claims just isn’t there. The hardest thing about Egyptology is it is always changing, new finds are so common that I joke by the time you finish reading a book, half of it is out of date. As for Tut, it has been a long standing view that he (or Akhenaten)is the pharaoh of Exodus, mostly because they were monotheists (or as close as Egyptians got), but the biggest problem I have with it, is it really requires a major modification of timelines and dynasties. “Pharaohs and Kings” by Rhol, IIRC covers this in depth.
For me, as a Christian, it doesn’t matter. The purpose of Biblical archeology isn’t to prove the Garden of Eden, the Exodus or Noah’s ark. It is to establish a material culture and what we have discovered matches the Biblical account. Things like the David Stele are just gravy, but to focus on trying to prove dates/locations and artifacts for things in Genesis/Exodus is contrary to purpose of Biblical Archeology and leads to a misreading of sources and artifacts. For example, they are using a chariot as proof of the location crossing, not considering that there could be other possibilities for how it got there (fell off a ship, drought, pulled out because of a wave created by an earthquake) they are reading something into a discovery (a very cool one) that may not be there.
The other thing that bothers me is companies making money off of the faith of others. IMO, Biblical Archeology Review (even though I disagree with some of their analysis) takes a balanced stance for the layman and I still keep a subscription to keep up on current topics, knowing that I can go more in depth if I choose to (KMT magazine for Egyptology).
I hope this answers your question and feel free to freepmail me if you are interested in some more resources.
About time, IMHO.
By the time the Muslim Brotherhood is finished, it'll be similar, though on a much larger & important scale, to what the Palis did to the greenhouses the Israelis left behind in their last pull out.
Too bad it is way too late to take King Tut into protective custody...not that Obozo would have allowed it.
Kinda bizarre that these socalled criminals, thieves in the ME or Moslem countries, always only destroy pre-Islamic treasures! Why don't they destroy Islamic ones? Why is that?!
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