Posted on 01/30/2011 10:42:21 PM PST by pillut48
Archaeologist Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, reports that several of the country's museums have been attacked by looters taking advantage of the political turmoil in the country.
In the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, looters stole jewelry from the museum shop and smashed a statue of Tutankhamun and other artifacts. In a Sinai store containing antiquities from the Port Said Museum, "a large group, armed with guns and a truck, entered the store, opened the boxes in the magazine and took the precious objects. Other groups attempted to enter the Coptic Museum, Royal Jewellery Museum, National Museum of Alexandria, and El Manial Museum," Hawass, who is also a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, posted on his website.
"My heart is broken and my blood is boiling. I feel that everything I have done in the last nine years has been destroyed in one day," Hawass wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.nationalgeographic.com ...
Is that the Sphinxter?
I've always thought that Hawass was a pompous jackwagon who felt that he .. and only he .. had personal ownership over all artifacts in Egypt and that only his interpretation of Egyptian history was valid. I made a special effort to avoid watching any history program which featured him as a primary narrator or interpreter.
For too many years, he had his way with antiquities interpretation, defending his interpretations and talking about how only Egypt .. and, by extension, he .. could safeguard those antiquities, and demanding return to Egypt of all "stolen" artifacts. I hope the rabble burns down all of the museums in Egypt so they can sit around and groove on the rubble of Islam after it's all destroyed.
Um, just a memory from an art class I took long ago BUT didn’t the British used to import mummies for ‘mummy unwrapping parties’, and use them ground up for paint pigments? I also seem to remember mummies being used for firewood...
I remember mummy wrappings being used for something but can’t remember what it was.
They were ground up into powder also used for quack health cures, IIRC.
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