As at 2011 the Griffith Institute at Oxford had prepared a 1,200 page document of the contents of the museum. It contains no photographs and no accession/unique identifier/location information. Whether the museum co-operated and what the purpose/use of it is not clear. There is little/no information on provenance or location of find which you would think basic. Maybe its another example of obsessional/aspergergery archaeologists doing their thing with little connection to the real world.
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/3cairo.pdf or maybe it was another truck of money.
A local ‘cheer squad’ body (personnel secret as is their source of funding and skills) announced ‘the first nationwide inventory of all known antiquities in Egypt’ in 2014. Can’t find any information that it was ever finished. (Hawass was quoted in a 2008 book that there had been no full inventory for 50 years and that only about 15% of the holdings of the Egyptian Museum were inventoried)
https://theantiquitiescoalition.org/pro ... tnerships/
A January 2016 iteration of this project, this time with different partners and with no mention of the possible previous two years of work from the local hearties, (if you have a good project then why not launch it several times and worry later about actually doing it)
http://camd.org.au/egyptian-antiquities-database/ Again no finish date.
As at 2014, and after nine years of work, the inventory does not seem complete:
http://www.arceoc.org/arce_accomplishme ... Registrars. No finish date either. Their work on digital images, if they did any, has been wasted because, unbelievably, the (Tahrir) Museum has no official web-site.
Given they don’t have a record of what objects they’ve got and no single record of the approved digs is it possible they don’t know other important things. Yes, It is possible that the SCA has no central inventory of its sites nor a register of the land it holds/owns. If so this means a 2000 Finish project to record this went off the rails. I think it did.
http://archive.arce.org/files/resource/ ... y_2003.pdf. This project was also managed/mismanaged by the hapless American Research Council in Egypt and was not mentioned in the recent retirement ‘tributes’ of its long-time director. There is something about systems that is very un-Egyptian.
Theft of objects isn’t just about Egypt although one screamer thinks it is and doesn’t care about others in the region. Traffiking in loot from Syria has been rampant for the past 10 years and ISIS and others use it to fund their killing. Western intermediaries/gallery owners often Lebanese with 5 star galleries in Geneva, NYC and other places are key but it also seems that some of it is trafficked through Egypt and the police/Supreme Antiques do what they do best – little. Some of these items are worth high hundreds of thousands and low millions. Ali Aboutaam is still active in this trade even though he was convicted and jailed in Egypt for 15 years. Did not the Government try to extradite him or gain international enforcement of its verdict – probably they forgot.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/prominent- ... 1496246740
Hawass failed in 2004 to take the most basic steeps to jail one of the biggest looters in the world. His fault - not the west’s and this chap has been on the streets since. Aboutam was also a looter of ancient European objects as part of the network that included a Medici and Sotheby’s.
http://www.academia.edu/8401380/Phoenix ... ater_Again
I do not accept that important tasks can’t be done because of lack of resources. Total staffing is approximately 77,000 One book gives the staff for the West Bank in Luxor in 1998-1999. 196 guards, 115 conservators/restorers, 17 inspectors, 20 administrative staff, 150 engineers, (What would they do) and others. For those who know that administration is chaotic the permanent staff were paid by the Ministry of Finance not SCA – why? Luxorites wanting a job had to go to Cairo for an interview. Guards work/worked 24 hour shifts 6 to 6. The Modern Neighbors of Tutankhamun: History, Life, and Work in the Villages ...By Kees Van der Spek p224 - incredible detail on the disordered and obsessively detailed pay structures, how some work 1 hour a day and other hard to believe slackness. Its Stalinesque.
Staff skills in the Supreme Antiques are appalling or worse. SCA excavation teams at Luxor were noted for their roughness, lack of accurate documentation and the poor quality of their excavation reports (usually written in Arabic). Western teams thought they did a poor job. De Spek p230. It seems probable that most archaeologists employed by the SCA publish little/nothing in a refereed journal. Many are assigned other work or work that does little to challenge them or use their academic training. All of the SCA excavation teams work shorter formal hours than all of the western.
In 1999 one unnamed western archaeologist said:
“There is no reporting, there are no files for reports to be put into, there are no publications. What was published proved an embarrassment such as one report on a Roman site of only two pages, but accompanied by 50 pages of photos, four of that showing cigarette wrappers as evidence that the site was robbed” (how could such be evidence of robbery?)
In this period thefts seem to have been done by SCA staff the senior Luxor ones of whom may have received fake Phd’s from Eastern European governments in return for thefts.
Employment is not based on merit but blood, loyalty, marriage, bribery, debt, the suggestion of a powerful person, Qurna resident or a client. It is generally/invariably the case that western teams do not get to select their staff – the SCA do it. If western teams object the Chief Inspector may threaten to cancel their concession. The SCA usually gives Western teams more than they asked for.
The whole organization is so badly managed and staffed that a mere 10 year reform/change program would achieve little because all the players would want it to stay as it is.
Finally some new dirt on Hawass to add to the Himalaya already deposited.
Surprised to read the following from the Australian Government TV/Radio which has a very high reputation for integrity – unlike the person they write about.
The quote:
“Egyptian authorities have also been accused of having a hand in the smuggling process, including Dr Hawass. He was taken to court in relation to smuggling and corruption in 2013, but cleared of the charges.
"This is what weak people say, that officials were involved. There is no official involved in smuggling," he says.
A foreign archaeologist, who spoke to the ABC on condition of anonymity, said they suspected inspectors were involved.
"Sometimes I'm sure that inspectors are complicit, and the police are frequently complicit and in some cases the military is complicit because they fly things out in military planes," the archaeologist says.’
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-21/ ... m/10388394 October 2018. Walt Curnow is a Cairo-based journalist and former editor at Ahram Online who writes about Egyptian politics and culture.
Another story, or a small part of it, which dewy ‘happy days’ tourists should avoid reading to maintain their fixed grin.
It gets worse with poor kids and callous regard for human life.
"Children have been used primarily to reach small burial shafts and tunnels. Unfortunately, many children have lost their lives in the process," wrote Monica Hanna, an Egyptologist working with Egypt's Heritage Task Force, in a paper she published in the book "Countering Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods" (ICOM, 2015).
In fact, more than 25 children, employed by professional antiquities gangs, died last year (2014 or 15 under current law and order presidency) in shafts in Abusir el-Malek, Hanna told Live Science. Little of the money from the sale of artefacts goes to the children's families, Hanna said. Instead, most of it ends up in the pockets of antiquities dealers and middlemen, who smuggle it out of Egypt and into other countries, such as the United States. "Many of them [the middlemen] are part of the international mafia that smuggles drugs and arms in the region," Hanna said, according to her research and that of her colleagues.’
https://www.livescience.com/55687-child ... =hootsuite
If true, and Hanna has some credibility, its shocking and never talked about. It’s a long way away from the priority given to screaming about the return of Nefertiti and using morality as a justification for such. Related articles from a credible source on the hopeless mismanagement and corruption of the Supreme Antiques.
https://culturalpropertynews.org/neglec ... han-theft/
If true, there should be criminal negligence charges brought against some powerful people to stop it now. All you need to do is find a policeman, public prosecutor and Egyptian court that believes in justice for the powerful – impossible.
Accessory to manslaughter might be a useful approach in a US court with a warrant to sieze the travelling Tut exhibition items as guarantee and their lodgment in a police cell. Embassy vehicles aren’t covered by the Geneva convention not are clothes at the dry cleaners or laundry. There are lots of options all with fabulous TV images. Schools could be pressured to expel the children of diplomats. Sounds just like the high risk case a young ambitious and publicity addicted lawyer might use to launch his/her career. Reggie Smith of Houston and many other lawyers would like to help if only because winning against the Government of Egypt in an international court/arbitration is easy and remunerative.
https://www.kslaw.com/people/reginald-s ... ?locale=en. Pity jail sentences are hard to achieve.
And a finale on the creatures running the system:
Foreign archaeologists complain they sometimes can’t import the equipment they need, or export rock samples for analysis. Taking such samples to foreign laboratories is banned and, as a result, local digs are overlooked by international donors, who prioritise projects with access to the latest research techniques. “Bureaucracy is such a monster in Egypt,” said Giulio Lucarini, an archaeology professor whose digs are among those affected by the ban based in Cambridge.”
Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/t ... Y352QtD.99 This is the greatest museum in the world publishing this.
‘Egypt’s cultural system is not only notoriously corrupt, but also strikingly neglectful of the millions of antiquities in the nation. The former head of the DHS ICE (US Immigration and Customs) HSI Art and Antiquity Investigations program, James McAndrew, has described how on a mission to return antiquities seized in the US to Egypt, he insisted on bringing the pieces to their actual final destination. There, he found not even the most basic of museum storage facilities, but a filthy shed (one of over 140) with a broken, unlocked door and floor cluttered with debris. Such disregard for the antiquities that Egypt invariably describes as “treasures,” is unfortunately all too common.
https://culturalpropertynews.org/neglec ... han-theft/
