'How To' Guide to US Law on Dealing with Suspected Trafficked Egyptian Cultural Objects

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Cultural heritage lawyer Ricardo St. Hilaire has a post on his blog on 'Reclaiming Trafficked Egyptian Cultural Objects: US Seizure Laws and How to Make a Report to Customs and Border Protection' well worth a read, as it provides an insight into how US laws can be used in parallel to the US CCPIA to protect the global cultural heritage. Note though that the old cultural patrimony law 117 of 1983 was amended by Law N.3 of 2010 promulgating the Antiquities Protection Law, though presumably this does not affect what St Hilaire calls the "Schultz doctrine". I really still do not understand how the ARPA applies, but it has been used in the past and they got away with it. Odd.

This is a very useful text, not least in that it can form a basis for discussions on how the system can be made more watertight in the case of freshly excavated archaeological material.

Ramadan Hussein on the Looting

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In a text called 'State of Egypt's archaeological Heritage!' on Facebook, created on 4th Feb. 2011 by Ramadan B. Hussein we read the following

In the Supreme Council of Antiquities, we all realize with great appreciation the concerns of the entire Egyptological and archaeological communities around the world on the safety of Egypt's archaeological heritage. We also understand that these concerns are growing higher and higher with the frightening news about "ransacking", "looting", "plundering", "vandalizing"…etc. of Egypt's museums, magazines and archaeological sites. These reports on the situation of Egypt's archaeological heritage are not entirely accurate. There were indeed incidents of vandalism, but have not reached the level of looting. We would like to assure everybody that archaeological sites and museums in Egypt are in the capable hands of the Egyptian Army, the inspectors of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and most importantly the villagers living in the vicinity of these archaeological sites. Villagers have formed human shields around the sites and are assisting the army and the inspectors in guarding the magazines and sites.

The story of the local protecting the sites is one of the most important themes to emerge from the various official accounts of the events a week ago. Hussein does not give any details of the sites scattered along the Nile, but concentrates on the Cairo Museum:

The story of the vandalism of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo is very complex with multiple sides to it. The people who congregated in the garden of the museum on Friday, January 28 had different intentions. Some people were protecting the museum; others entered the garden with the intention to break into the museum. A third group was just hanging out as if they were in a picnic!

The newly opened museum gift-shop was vandalized and ransacked. Looters thought all along that the gift-shop is the Egyptian Museum and that the jewelry gifts and replicas are antiquities. The majority of the looted jewelry was returned by the Egyptian Army personnel, who rushed into the museum once the curfew was forced. They arrested a number of looters and used the help of volunteers to form a human shield around the museum. The funny part of the story is that only the books of the gift-shop remained untouched. Looters are never interested in books, I guess.

However, ca. 6 people broke into the museum through the windows in the museum ceiling using ropes. One of those people fell down on a showcase, while going down using the rope. He got injured and could not escape, and was arrested inside the museum. The army also arrested ca. 10 more people who tried relentlessly to scale the western museum surrounding wall.

The preliminary damage assessment of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo was conducted on Saturday, January 29, by a committee of Egyptologists, army personnel and policemen. This committee included Dr. Tarek El-Awady, the General Director of the Museum, Mr. Ibraheim Abd El-Mageid, a Senior Curator at the museum and myself. We found out that only 13 (thirteen) showcases were smashed and objects were taken out. Fortunately, the thieves were after "treasures". In their understanding, "treasures" are gold objects. Therefore, they left all the objects of the smashed showcases lying on the floors of the galleries. Some of these objects are found broken, while others are still intact.

A full account of the vandalism of Egypt's archaeological sites and museums can be found on Dr. Zahi Hawass's website, and on that of the SCA.

This is an interesting account, written by somebody who had actually taken part in surveying the damage (note that Hawass' name is absent here, which may account for the latter not being able to give the full account to journalists). Which showcase trapped the captured looter? Why does Mr Hussein say there were six men and not the nine earlier reported?

Headless Mummies Mystery

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A week on from the first shocking reports, we are really no nearer to understanding what happened in Cairo's Egyptian Museum on Friday night. Not even when it comes to the most iconic piece of damage:

Vandalized a week ago at Cairo's Egyptian Museum, where thieves looking for antiquities broke 70 objects, the mummies have become the symbol of the world's concern for ancient Egyptian cultural heritage. The shocking image of their heads lying on the floor of the Egyptian Museum with broken bones scattered all around have been haunting Egyptologists and mummy experts for a week. Despite close examinations of the released pictures, extensive archival research and opinion exchange on social networks, no expert has been able to identify them.

See: Rossella Lorenzi, 'Headless Egyptian Mummy Mystery Thickens', Discovery News Fri Feb 4, 2011.

Photo: two mummy heads and human bones lying on the floor in a gallery (where? Why are there scaffold poles in the shot?)

UPDATE 6/2/1:
Information is now emerging which contradicts all the earlier accounts of how these mummies got damaged. The most 'definitive' version is that in the extraordinary text "The Sphinx is Sad" of Zahi Hawass.

The two mummies that were reported as damaged at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo were in fact unidentified skulls dating to the Late Period; these two skulls are NOT royal mummies. These skulls were being temporarily housed in the storage room next to the CT scanner lab, which is in the grounds of the museum. The skulls were there to be used to test the CT scanner, and when they were retrieved from the looters, they were in the same condition that they had been in when they were originally placed in the storage room.

(Do hospitals have an odd dismembered cadaver or two lying around on which to test their equipment - what kind of "tests" was this used for in?.) Hawass reproduces on his blog a photo that has been circulating of this head. Despite the superficial similarities and the manner in which it has been placed for the photo, it is clear is that this is a different head from the one shown on the floor in the earlier shots. This must be the second head that the reports were referring to.

Well, this is odd isn't it? They were "retrieved from the looters". Which looters? The gift-shop looters, the second-floor case-smashing looters, or another previously unknown group? Another text of Hawass (undated, but apparently 5th Feb) tells us that they were not exactly "retrieved from looters" as much as left on the floor:

I would also like to clarify the situation as to the state of the royal mummies in the museum. When the crisis erupted, I took a very quick walk through the museum and thought that the two skulls thrown on the floor of one of the side rooms might belong to some of the royal mummies [...] I examined all of the royal mummies last week [...] I am happy to report that they all are safe and untouched,[...]. As for these two skulls, they were kept in a storeroom next to the CT scanner lab, and were used for testing the machine.

Here though a rather puzzling question emerges. If somebody had taken them from a CT scanner lab in the grounds of the museum, why do the reports so far suggest that they were part of the loot being carried off by the group of looters that also took "two statues" (ie we have all assumed up to now the second floor skylight looters)? Why would they take two heads out of the lab before setting off on their climb onto the roof and lowering themselves down four metres into a gallery where they expected to find gold, lots of gold? Then they were both dropped in the same place? This just does not make sense. Just where was the photo of the mummy head and bones taken? There seems to be the base of a showcase, not a laboratory cupboard visible in the shot the media are using.



Also, on the internet we have seen many times seen photos of a complete mummy with what purports to be the same head as the one lying on the floor. The question is why this has been accepted so long as the same mummy - the nose is completely different.

There has been a whole series of myths and speculations around these mummies and the looting as a whole. The evidence is such that if the Egyptian Museum service is to have any credibility, it demands that when the situation is more stable, a full report should be prepared on the basis of the interrogation of the people arrested, the questioning of eyewitnesses and the material traces in the museum, and presented to international public opinion. What really happened in this internationally important museum that night?

Eyewitness Report About Saqqara Looting

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Lee Rosenbaum quotes in extenso an eyewitness account of the damage and looting at Saqqara which seems to contradict the version coming out of Cairo:

On Saturday, the taftish [on-site officer from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities] asked us to stop the work, because the police were not in the capacity of protecting us anymore. In the afternoon, we could see that the police at the police station at the entrance of the resthouses was gone and had left us alone. That is when it all began: Robbers from Saqqara and Abusir became aware of this and they began to spread in the gebel [mountainous desert].

The account goes on to stress that these were not on the whole 'professional' looters but young men out to see what they could find, though some of those involved were reported to be locals that had previously worked for the archaeologists in their projects. There is no specific mention of the tomb of Maya/Maia which I wrote about on the basis of earlier information. This was Saturday 29th January. The police had disappeared from the streets of Cairo late in the afternoon of the previous day, and this seems to be the day they also disappeared from the archaeological sites on the West Bank at Luxor (17:00 on Friday 28th). Who gave the orders and why? Were the ghaffirs ordered to go too, or would they have fled when they realised there was no police protection? These are questions about this archaeological looting to which it is very difficult to get answers at this stage (and I wonder whether an answer will be forthcoming as the situation in Egypt develops).

Cairo Museum looting: Another identification and a Puzzle

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On the Facebook page dedicated to the Museum looting, another museum case has been identified (by Ginevra Napoli on 31st January):

It was not until today however that somebody noted something odd. Jasmine Day writes:

Now, this shot puzzles me: a break in the case, but not a hole, and two(?) necklaces missing beneath. On tour? Out for study in the staff rooms? Taken earlier by someone with key access to the case? These are Middle Kingdom mummy necklaces (well the main broad collar is, at least), made specifically for the dead. Ominously, the one of the missing necklaces appears to be made from or decorated with gold.

Arden Ellen Nixon replies:

Generally (or at least at the U.S. museums I've been to), cards are left in an item's place to explain that it's on tour, being conserved, on loan, etc. Even if taken, the necklaces' normal catalog number/tag would have been left behind (as with the board collar to the left), but it isn't visible in the available pictures.

So what exactly is it we are seeing here?

What mummy heads were lying on the floor? At first we were told that somebody had tried to remove two whole mummies but the heads had come off and they tried to take just the heads. Now the story is emerging that these heads were loose ones which had been taken from some storeroom or research lab. So how far into the museum did these guys (two or nine?) get?

The staff of Cairo Museum have had a week to look at the traces left by the looters and pick up and secure the pieces and work out what happened, yet we have heard nothing much from them apart from generalisations. It was from the beginning clear which cases were smashed open, the number of objects that need to be accounted for in the first stage of the investigation may be therefore limited to the objects that are known (should be known) to have been in those cases. No mention has been made of any necklaces missing or on the floor for example. Why when there clearly were on the basis of the Al Jazeera film report (at least) three statues of Tutankhamun taken out of their cases by the looter, and the reports of a looter being caught with "two" statues, is no attempt being made to account for this discrepancy, simply a denial that anything was taken from the museum?

Web Hooks and OpenURL: the screencast

Yesterday I posted notes on Web Hooks and OpenURL. That post was written when I was already late (you know, when you say to yourself "yeah, I've got time, it'll just take 5 minutes to finish this..."). The Web Hooks + OpenURL project is still very much a work in progress, but I thought a screen cast would help explain why I think this is going to make my life a lot easier. It shows an example where I look at a bibliographic record in one database (AFD, the Australian Faunal Directory on CouchDB), click on a link that takes me to BioStor — where I can find the reference in BHL — then simply click on a button on the BioStor page to "automagically" update the AFD database. The "magic" is the Web Hook. The link I click on in the AFD database contains the identifier for that entry in the AFD, as well a a URL BioStor can call when it's found the reference (that URL is the "web hook").

Using Web Hooks and OpenURL from Roderic Page on Vimeo.

Statues of Akhenaten and Ramses II Smuggled out of Egypt?

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Kate Phizackerley [News from the Valley of the Kings] draws attention ('Statues of Akhenaten and Ramesses II Smuggled into Algeria') to a report from Le Temps d'Algerie, 30th January, 2011:

Deux statuettes de pharaons en provenance d'Egypte ont été saisies par les éléments de la Gendarmerie nationale vendredi dans la wilaya de Chlef. Il s'agit des statuettes du pharaon Akhénaton et du pharaon Ramsès II qui ont été introduites illégalement en Algérie. Selon la cellule de communication du commandement de la Gendarmerie nationale, ces deux statuettes ont été récupérées à bord d'un véhicule de marque Peugeot 406 qui a été intercepté sur un tronçon de l'autoroute Est-Ouest, de passage par le territoire de la wilaya sus-citée. Les quatre personnes à bord du véhicule ont été aussitôt interpellées par les gendarmes. La même source précise que ces individus arrêtés pour trafic d'objets d'art sont tous originaires de la wilaya de Tiaret.

Their connection with the looting of the previous days is unknown.

UPDATE Friday 4th Feb 2011:
Ms Phizackerley has a followup article to the original brief report (Picture of Recovered Statues') which rather muddies the pictuure on two counts. She refers to an article Des statues de « dieux » égyptiens récupérées à Chlef from Algerie360.com, Le Portail Algerien d'information which to some extent corroborates the first one and includes a photo. This however shows pieces of five statues, not two. Far be it for me to disagree with Egyptologist Phizackerly, these seem to me to be be modern fakes. I suspect this is a stock photograph rather than the actual items seized. The report mentions a tip-off "last Friday" and the existence of a gang:

Les investigations approfondies ont révélé que ces pièces ont été acheminées illégalement d’Égypte vers Londres avant qu’elles ne soient introduites clandestinement en Algérie par un réseau spécialisé dans le trafic des pièces archéologiques. Ce réseau est composé de trafiquants algériens et marocains notamment.

Radicals in our Midst

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I too was shocked by the three questions in the SAFE poll, the reaction was predictable. To reiterate: Question: “Should market countries stop buying antiquities from Egypt until order is restored?” there are three possible answers: No/ Yes/ Yes. Antiquities trade should stop, period. I voted for the second. Interestingly the 106 responses so far are fairly evenly spread. New York coin dealer Alfredo De La Fe sees something sinister in the third question ('Need proof that the radical archaeology movement wants to end the antiquities market?')

Quite often you hear from apologists and members [of] the radical archaeology movement that they do not want to bring an end to the antiquities trade, they just want a “licit” market that is properly regulated. My argument has been that this is nothing but a lie so that they do not appear to be taking an extreme position. Want proof?

I do not know whether the creator of the poll really had in mind when formulating this question. Whether it means the whole trade in Egyptian antiquities or other ones too. Whether they had in mind the whole antiquities market, or just the no-questions-asked bit where freshly looted stuff snuggles down among the decontextualised stuff the origins of which nobody cares to enquire about. Or did they really did mean every single documentable Grand Tour and turn of the twentieth century tourist trophy antiquity still in private hands. Neither do I know who are the forty-odd members of the public who so far have voted for this option, or what they think the question means. What I think it does show is that there is a certain degree of public disquiet about the way the antiquities market handles the issues of the sales of archaeological material, and the damaging lack of transparency.

I would say the collectors are caught up in their own rhetoric. I personally would say that those who voted "yes, stop the entire antiquities trade, period" (if they mean it as such) are indeed somewhat radical in their outlook. The problem is that in antiquity-collector-speak a "radical" is anyone at all who looks askance at the current form of the global antiquities trade and would like to see it clean up its act. That is not (should not be) tantamount to saying it should be stopped. As should be clear from this blog, I am among the group that want to see it being done in a more open (less secretive) manner and with full transparency about where the individual items involved have actually come from (as full as possible documented provenance and collecting history). I want to see caring collectors acting responsibly and with full awareness of the consequences of handling material in the manner in which is currently the case. That may be idealistic, but it certainly is not "radical". That's the way we trade meat and used cars. By using the umbrella term "radical" however dealers like De La Fe wish to persuade the onlooker that any calls for restraint and transparency within the antiquities market are in some way tainted by radicalism, and he has his "proof" that among the group he labels as a whole "radicals" there are indeed some that express a radical view. But there are also those with more moderate views, I'd draw his attention to the fact that twice as many voters so far express support for a more limited approach.

But what is the problem? A group of people have expressed the opinion on a web-based forum that the "antiquities trade as a whole should be stopped, period". That's free speech for you, people have alternative views. These people however are entitled to have these views, express them, and the rest of us have the right to agree or disagree with them and debate the issues. There are two ways to deal with the problem, Mr De La Fe can call on all his collector mates to vote "no" in their thousands as if it was a CPAC "public consultation" to try and drown out the voice of those they disagree with (which is just another way of ignoring the problem and pretending it has gone away - a common antiquitist tactic). OR they can address the issue, find out why some people think this and address their issues with the current form of the trade in dugup antiquities. That of course they do not want to do, and in fact appear - for one reason or another - wholly incapable of doing.

Web Hooks and OpenURL: making databases editable

For me one of the most frustrating things about online databases is that they often can't be edited. For example, I've recently created a version of the Australian Faunal Directory on CouchDB, which contains a list of all animals in Australia, and a fairly comprehensive bibliography of taxonomic publication on those animals. What I'd like to do is locate those publications online. Using various scripts I've found DOIs for some 2,500 articles, and located nearly 4,900 article in BHL, and added these to the database, but browsing the database (using, say, the quantum treemap interface) makes it clear there are lots of publications that I've missed.

It would be great if I could go to the Australian Faunal Directory on CouchDB and edit these on that site, but that would require making the data editable, and that means adding a user interface. And that's potentially a lot of work. Then, if I go to another database (say, my CouchDB version of the Catalogue of Life) and want to make that editable then I have to add an interface to that database as well. I could switch to using a wiki, which I've done for some projects (such as the NCBI to Wikipedia mapping), but wikis have their own issues (in particular, they don't easily support the kinds of queries I want to do).

There is, as they say, a third way: web hooks. I first came across web hooks when I discovered that Post-Commit Web Hooks in Google Code. The idea is you can create a web service that gets called every time you commit code to the Google Code repository. For example, each time you commit code you can call a web hook that uses the Twitter API to tweet details of what you just committed (I tried this for a while, until some of my Twitter followers got seriously pissed off by the volume of tweets this was generating).

What has this to do with making databases editable? Well, imagine the following scenario. A web page displays a publication, but no DOI. However, the web page embeds an OpenURL in the form of a COinS (in other words, a URL with key-value pairs describing the publication). If you use a tool such as the OpenURL Referrer in Firefox you can use an OpenURL resolver to find that publication. Examples of OpenURL resolvers include bioGUID and BioStor. Let's say you find the publication, and it has a DOI. How do you tell the database about this? Well, you can try and find an email address of someone running the database so you can send them the information, but this is a hassle. What if the OpenURL resolver that you used to find the DOI could automatically tell the source database that it's found the DOI? That's the idea behind web hooks.

I've started to experiment with this, and have most of the pieces working. Publication pages in Australian Faunal Directory on CouchDB have COinS that include two additional pieces of information: (1) the database identifier for the publication (in this case a UUID, in the hideously complex jargon of OpenURL this the "Referring Entity Identifier"), and (2) the URL of the web hook. The idea is that an OpenURL resolver can take the OpenURL and try and locate the article. If it succeeds it will call the web hook URL supplied by the database, tell it "hey, I've found this DOI for the publication with this database identifier". The database can then update its data, so the next time a user visits the page for that publication in the database, the user will see the DOI. This has the huge advantage over tools that just modify the web page on the fly, such as David Shorthouse's reference parser of persistence: the database itself is updated, not just the web page.

In order to make this work, all the database needs to do is have a web hook, namely a URL that accepts POST requests. The heavy lifting of searching for the publication, or enabling users to correct and edit the data can be devolved to a single place, namely the OpenURL resolver. As a first step I'm building an OpenURL resolver that displays a fnrm the in which the user can edit bibliographic details, and launch searches in CrossRef (and soon BioStor). When the user is done they can close the form, which is when it calls the web hook with the edited data. The database can then choose to accept or reject the update.

Given that it's easy to create the web hook, and trivial to get a database to output an OpenURL with its internal identifier and the URL of the web hook, this seems like a light-weight way of making databases editable.

SAFE Campaign: Say YES to Egypt's heritage, our heritage.

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Whatever the truth about the scale and reasons for the looting of museum storerooms, archaeological sites and monuments in Egypt, it is clear that we need to be aware of the possibilities of looted objects appearing on foreign markets. SAFE has initiated a campaign: Should market countries stop buying antiquities from Egypt? SAFE (Saving Antiquities for Everyone) was created to raise awareness and gauge public opinion. Please join these efforts and invite your friends and colleagues to join and tell everyone. Responding to our campaign is a concrete act to help protect the archaeological heritage.

Say YES to Egypt's heritage, our heritage

vote on the SAFE blog too before the collectors get there.

Vignette: step pyramid at Saqqara

Egypt Looting: Responsibility

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The alarming reports of the attempted looting of museums and storerooms and of clandestine artefact-seeking diggings on archaeological sites in Egypt is worrying and upsetting for those who care about the past and our ability to study it. Collectors however are having a field day, using it to attack the tenets of the preservationist lobby.
Antiquity dealers' lobbyist Peter Tompa asked:

whether concerns about jeopardizing excavation permits has quieted archaeologists from raising the question who really should be held responsible for putting Egypt's unparallelled cultural treasures in jeopardy.

I do not think anyone who has been watching this is not considering who is responsible and what is behind this (besides - unlike the 'social media' of the collectors and dealers who are tellingly silent on the issue - what we can do to reduce the damage already done).

The looting began on 'Angry Friday', 28th January, with the two break-ins at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (gift shop and the upper floor event) and reports started coming in the next day that at the same time all over the country (as it seemed at first) the looting of museum storerooms and sites started. This coincided with the withdrawal of security forces from not only the streets, but also the surroundings of archaeological monuments (as seems to have happened at Luxor). The initial reports concerned Friday and Saturday 29th were appearing early on Sunday 31st January.

In an effort to deal with the growing crisis, in a cabinet reshuffle, a new government was established on January 31, 2011. As part of this a new Ministry of Antiquities was formed and at its head was then placed Zahi Hawass, former head of the SCA (formerly dependent on the Ministry of Culture). The new Minister of the Interior is Mahmoud Wagdy. He replaces General Habib Ibrahim El Adly (Eladly), (b. 1938) who had himself replaced General Hassan al-Alfi as interior minister after the November 1997 Luxor massacre.

An interesting and significant development today is that, as was announced in Cairo this morning by the new Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafiq, there is now the intention to investigate the events of the past few days which has led to scenes of such violence and destruction and bring those responsible for justice. Simultaneously with that announcement, it has just been reported that Eladly's assets have been frozen and he has been prevented from leaving the country.

Although looting has undoubtedly taken place, a number of the initial reports seem to have been false (or panic-induced exaggeration). The suspicion is emerging that some of this might have been deliberate misinformation which drew on the lessons of the looting of the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad and was an attempt to undermine the sympathy for the protesters both within Egypt and abroad.

Vignette: on the way out, (General) Habib Ibrahim El Adly

Egypt Looting: Confusion over the Situation at Saqqara

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The Leiden Expedition's webpage contains some information reflecting the conflicting accounts coming out (or not) of Saqqara.

The most recent news is that various parts of the site of Saqqara have been plundered. Whether this involves the Dutch concession is at the moment not yet clear, and we await further news from the authorities.

Looting Matters also has a brief post referring to this. There still seems to be doubt about whether the tomb of Maya (or is it the tomb of Maia?) has been looted as reported earlier. There is an enigmatic comment from Sarah Parcak "Maia seems to be fine(?)", but does that mean the Tomb of Maya is or is not?


Vignette: The central part of the massive Saqqara site from the air.

Who Looted the Egyptian Museum?

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Vincent Brown of Talkingpyramids has taken a look at the various stories circulating about the break-ins to the Museum attempting to understand exactly who was responsible ('Who Looted the Egyptian Museum?")

Photo: inside the museum in more stable times

Hawass Assures: Egypt's Antiquities are Protected

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Zahi Hawass, Egypt's new antiquities minister, assures us that ancient sites and artefacts are protected. The Mummies Are Safe in Egypt

Everything is safe, because the police have come. But, in the case of the antiquities/tourist police, where were they earlier? Who sent them away and why? Will any of them be punished for dereliction of duty?

So let's get this right, these criminals as soon as they just happened to have simultaneously "escaped" from jail hitched a lift to the nearest archaeological site and started looting artefacts. To my mind the first place I'd go to loot while on the run would be a food shop. I think looting whopping great fragments of statues and reliefs from the Memphis museum for example while on the run would be pretty far down on my list of priorities. I could not guarantee that I'd run into anybody to buy them from me later. Its pretty difficult running with a knapsack full of stones [oh, you'd have to loot a sports goods shop first to get the knapsack].

The events surrounding this looting certainly seem to beg a lot of questions. Let us hope somebody in the new government gets to the bottom of it to ensure the further protection of the monuments.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/video/mummies-safe-egypt-12812079


Photo: Dr Zahi Hawass.

Violence breaks out in Midan Tahrir

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Disorderly violence breaks out in Tahrir Square, molotov coctails and stones being thrown about, shots being fired; how many security guards are patrolling the Cairo Museum tonight? More than three this time I hope.


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Blue Shield Statement on Egyptian Looting

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Blue Shield Statement on Egypt, 31 January 2001
"Following the recent events in Egypt, the Blue Shield expresses its great concern about the safeguarding of the country's invaluable cultural heritage amid the existing turmoil.[...]The member organisations of the Blue Shield are currently liaising with Egyptian colleagues to obtain further information on both the situation and on the possible needs and types of help required so as to mobilise their networks accordingly. A more complete report on damages, needs and actions will be published subsequently, in order to facilitate coordination".

Jane Akshar back online

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With a post: 'Why spoil a good story with the truth!', Jane Akshar bursts back online with the news from Luxor. I guess I can stop fretting now, among other things how to get imported cat food to her for her three felines.







My plane ticket was for tonight at ten, but the flight has been cancelled and I have not thought yet about rebooking it. I am told that the Polish-Egyptian Mission is still working in the Hatshepsut Temple, Poland was one of the last teams to leave Iraq in 2003 and it seems that after their own national experience with forcing regime change, a little bit of martial law in the air was not going to put them off.

Photos: Jane's lovely cat "Whisky", formerly 'Otta'.

Ancient Egypt Online Map of Archaeological Looting

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There is a really useful map on Ancient Egypt Online of the sites of the looting that has been reported Egypt's Past at Risk - Theft of antiquities so far (map) which well shows an epicentre in the north concentrating around the centres of unrest in Cairo and the Delta:

That "so far" is a worrying reminder that what we've seen might be just the beginning, depending on how quickly stability can be restored.

UPDATE at about midday today (Wednesday) the Egyptian Internet was working, so hopefully we may be able to find out more about what has been happening.

(map by Ancient Egypt Online)

National Geographic Antiquity Preservation Pep-talk Video

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There is a nicely put together National Geographic video "Egypt Antiquities Damaged, at Risk During Unrest" worth looking at.

Terry Garcia, Exec. VP National Geographic Mission Programs - “All of these sites had been well guarded. The Egyptian government had tourism police, as well as guards at all of these sites. And they were well secured. This is something, unfortunately, that you see when you have great instability and political upheaval as we’re witnessing in Egypt now. This happened in Iraq, following the invasion. It also happened in Afghanistan. We saw certain individuals take advantage of the instability to enrich themselves.” Much of the Egyptian population itself lives on top of the remains of ancient history. Egyptologists and other scholars are cautiously optimistic that Egyptians intent on protecting the history will prevail over the few who want to profit from looting it" [...] Garcia says there’s worldwide support for Egypt’s retention of its history.[...] “If there has been looting if some objects have been stolen, that those objects might find their way into the illegal antiquities market, and many archaeologists have called on other countries, such as the United States the United Kingdom and their customs authorities to be on the lookout for Old Kingdom objects … frankly any objects that might be coming out of Egypt".

The question is, how effective are the measures taken to scrutinise the legitimacy of origin of the many thousands of antiquities passing over international borders every year?

Alex Joffe on (Not) Repatriation and Washington Post Soothes

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An extraordinary article by Alex Joffe in the Feb 1st number of the Wall Street Journal: Egypt's Antiquities Fall Victim to the Mob, A definitive answer to the question: Should the Elgin Marbles be returned to Greece? (sic)

Unfree and unstable countries, regardless of their tourist numbers, have a long way to go before they will treat antiquities in the manner of most European countries or the U.S. Attempts to undo the recent past to assuage postcolonial guilt or appease renewed nationalist sentiments by emptying museums of legitimately acquired items is unlikely to be in the best interest of the artifacts, scholarship or the global public.

that is of course European and US scholarship and the public of Europe and the US. As long as they get over their post-colonial guilt of course. (Including any they might feel towards Egypt, under Ottoman, French and British control for so long and a regime upheld with US funding in recent years.)

Is the "welfare of the artefacts' however the sole factor that should be taken into account? That which Joffe negatively labels (following others) "nationalism" is called "identity" elsewhere. Identity is seen elsewhere as having a positive role in society and the quality of lives of individuals. At this time, building a new national identity, seeking something that binds disparate elements of Egyptian society together in a shared heritage, something that can enhance quality of life of the new citizens of the global world, potentially will be an important element of the future political development of the country.

Perhaps that is something they do not really understand in the United States, not having an indigenous ancient culture they recognise as their own (somewhat surprisingly not infrequently displaying pre-colonial remains from US soil in museums as some kind of "natural history" along with the beetles and shellfish).

Then we have a rather superficial text from the Washington Post soothing the problem is not perhaps all that great because as Brian Vastag suggests, 'Reputable auction houses try to get all (arti)facts before selling antiquities' (Washington Post, February 1, 2011). Yeah, right, but the problem is that the bulk of the antiquities trade these days does not go on anywhere near "Reputable auction houses". As Vastag himself admits:

The global system of tracking antiquities is simply too porous, the demand for ancient baubles too high. "The commercial antiquities market worldwide is big, and open, and even though it's received a lot of criticism, it continues to be very active," said Ricardo Elia, a Boston University archaeologist who studies the long, sordid history of antiquities looting. [...] the chain of custody is often kinked. Forged documents are not uncommon, said Elizabeth Bartman, president of the Archaeological Institute of America. "There's an awful lot of stuff that comes on the market that's said to be from old European collections that somehow nobody ever knew about," she said. "I mean, how many East German collections were behind the Iron Curtain that we didn't know about? Come on. It's not very convincing."[...] museums have, even in the not-so-distant past, made some very poor judgments.

"Egypt declares treasures safe"

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Well, we can all sleep soundly tonight, the new Minister for Antiquities has declared there is nothing to worry about after all. (Christopher Torchia, "Associated Press Interview: Egypt declares treasures safe" Washington Post February 1, 2011)

"Hawass declared, so ebullient that he was almost shouting. "I am so happy to announce that today everything is safe".

To be honest, I feel rather confused about the various claims and counter-claims, and not a bit sceptical about some of the earlier ones at least. Are not some of the stories that were circulating a few days ago (including some details of the Cairo Museum raid) deliberate misinformation intended to turn western supporters against the anti-government protests? Is it not odd that all over Egypt at the same time scattered populations - unable to communicate with each other suddenly and simultaneously had the idea to spend the evening out with crowbars, pickaxes and spades? And it just so (conveniently) happened that the guards and policemen who'd been put there and sat there decades to stop this happen apparently mysteriously melted away precisely on that night (as my colleagues report happened on the West Bank at Luxor but comments by Hawass on his blog suggest this might have happened in other regions of the country too) but were back the next day? I am really not sure what happened at Cairo Museum on Friday and who was behind it.

But are "all the treasures safe"? I sincerely doubt it, and in the political vacuum that will inevitably follow the weakening or demise of the current administration, I think that threat will be even greater. This is no time for complacency, but as Larry Rothfield and Rick St Hilaire suggest, a time which should see the existence of contingency plans to deal with such crises.

It is unthinkable to me that on Friday, the Cairo Museum was only guarded by three guys, and Hawass says the only reason they were there was that they'd not had time to get home before the curfew started. If they had, the museum would have been empty that night? When Hawass arrived the next morning, the keys to the museum "had been stolen" (from whom and by whom?). I'd like to know why the newly-appointed Director of the Museum is still in his post after those unbelievable security lapses with a crowd of angry anti-establishment demonstrators just outside the museum garden fence.


Meanwhile ARTINFO asks: "As the Revolution Grows, How Safe Are Egypt's Cultural Treasures?".

AIA Statement on Looting of Artefacts in Egypt

Statement from the Archaeological Institute of America Concerning the Looting of Artifacts in Egypt, January 31, 2011

For supporters of archaeology, the most resonant images emerging from Egypt were those showing citizens, arms linked, encircling the Egyptian Museum to protect it from the looters who would steal and destroy the nation’s archaeological heritage. Those resolute citizens showed a desire to protect some of the world’s most important cultural resources, even in the face of obvious danger. Those images are in a word—moving. Their courage once again shows the importance of archaeology and cultural heritage in the lives of people in Egypt, and indeed, for so many around the world.

all very nice, speak of "solidarity" and all that, but then there are limits to that declared solidarity...

We call on Egyptian authorities to do what they can to protect the irreplaceable archaeological and cultural material in their country. [...] We also call on local and international law enforcement and customs officials to be alert to antiquities dealers who may try to export illegally obtained artifacts from Egypt.

But not those "importing" them? Since this is an AIA statement, should not there be a call here to US law enforcement and customs officials to pay attention? Should there not be a call for the CCPIA to be enacted to block the movement of such freshly looted material into what has been claimed to be the largest single antiquity market on the globe? Why the coyness AIA?

Egypt Looting: Tomb of Maya Stripped?

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From the Egyptologists for Egypt. Supporting the people's demands facebook page:

From our Senior Guide. A Sakkara inspector told him that in the last few days Sakkara has been ransacked. Maia is destroyed and even the reliefs in the burial chamber have been hacked out. There is mass digging around the Unas area in particular. The inspector could not get as far as the Teti area as he was threatened with guns but the mastabas will have suffered the same fate. A black day (via P.Allingham).

This seems to refer to the tomb of Maya. He was an important official in the period after the Amarna heresy, among his titles was 'treasurer'. He was probably responsible for Tutankhamun's burial (he left his name on a number of objects in the latter’s tomb).

Maya's tomb was visited by Richard Lepsius in 1843, then was forgotten. In the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities) in Leiden there is a superb life-size statue of Maya accompanied by his wife Merit which had probably come from this tomb. The structure was among those rediscovered by an Anglo-Dutch archaeological team in 1986, and the interior decoration conserved after the excavation.


Vignette: Maya and Merit, now without a home (Leiden, after Wikisources), photo of interior of tomb before destruction. Some saleable limestone panelling here that may soon be appearing on an antiquities market near you.

UPDATE: There are suggestions that the report of damage actually refers to the tomb of Maia, wetnurse to Tutankhamun, excavated by the French directed by Alain Zivie away from this group of tombs but still in the Saqqara necropolis (and also with reliefs). I took this to be the Maya because I saw reports coming in from the Dutch teams, but there may be some confusion - apologies if I have unwittingly contributed. No doubt with internet access restored, we may find out more about this in the next few days.

UPDATE 9/2/11. It turns out that both the tombs of Maia and Maya at Saqqara are undamaged, just one of the many pieces of temporarily unverifiable misinformation that were flying around in the wake of the political developments. That's a relief.

Perhaps as the initial concern-fuelled hysteria gives way to a more rational assessment, we might consider what lay behind the misinformation (and I suspect there are grounds for assessing at least part of it as misinformation, rather than mistaken information), and who and what purposes it served.

Egypt Looting: Interview with Dr. Salima Ikram

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Posted by Archaeorama on YouTube:

"Sadly Warped and Grossly Ignorant Perspective"

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Californian coin dealer Dave Welsh just does not know when to stop. After his "Barford the ignoramus" post we now find another, It's all the fault of collectors

In the sadly warped and grossly ignorant perspective of anticollecting extremists such as Paul Barford, events such as those now unfolding in Egypt can be ascribed to an insatiable hunger on the part of Western collectors for antiquities, in this case Egyptian in origin. In reality there is indeed an insatiable hunger, in Egypt and elsewhere, however it is not any such imaginary ravenous collector appetite for antiquities, but instead an intense desire to participate in the modern world and its economy on terms which the outlook of Barford and his ilk view as inappropriate for "third world" nations and their downtrodden, oppressed and impoverished citizens.

There is no textual authority cited for what "Barford and his ilk" are alleged to think. I rather think it is the exploitive collectors and dealers who throughout their rhetoric reveal the basest of colonial views and western paternalism. The theme that (US) collectors and dealers can "look after the culture better" than the natives of the source countries runs right through everything they write to justify the no-questions-asked trade in artefacts from foreign lands. It lies at the basis of the "Witschonke Argument". It is Welsh and his clients who espouse the White-Man's-Burden point of view, not those of us who think the material should stay in the "source countries" for future generations of the citizens of those countries to use (or not) free of the interference of rapacious foreigners who want to make a profit by selling it off, shielding their motives behind false arguments invoking "freedom" and "intercultural understanding".

Frankly, I see very little actual deep understanding of the problems currently facing the Egyptian people and state in what use collectors and dealers are making of these events to advance their cause.

Still, perhaps many of them watch FoxNews which informs their views on the place of Egypt in the modern world.


Of course I did not say that the civil unrest in Egypt broke out because of western collectors. If he believes I wrote that, Welsh must have a lot more problems in 'joining the dots' than I thought.

Vignette: The American people has an oppression issue skeleton in its own cupboard. Get the Native American stuff out of "Natural History Museums"; the ancient cultures of America are not shellfish!

Egypt Looting: How Will We Respond?

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SAFE raises the question this morning, 'Threats to Egypt’s cultural heritage: How will we respond?':

As with the Iraq situation, we will probably not know all the facts for some time. But while information about the exact scope of the destruction - and who did what - is still being assessed, what we do know for certain is that one of the world’s richest and oldest cultural heritages is at risk. One artifact looted or destroyed is one too many. We also know this: Egyptian antiquities can fetch huge sums. In December, 2010 alone, 13 artifacts reportedly sold at Sotheby’s for a total of $9,789,500. So how will we respond?

Dealers and collectors have already decided that the problem is not one of the loss of another part of the global cultural heritage, but the fact that drawing attention to it still further weakens the case for (if any exists) a no-questions-asked market in dugup antiquities. So collector Candice Jarman says the market is not to blame, as does antiquity dealer Alfredo De La Fe. Jarman suggests that the Cairo Museum break-in was an act of protest - placing the blame on PhDiva. Cultural Property Observer suggests its all an 'inside job' and drags out the spectre of nationalism. Welsh (going against the evidence) says that "citizens of "source nations" such as Egypt for the most part" actually have very little interest in preserving their culture. I wonder what is going on over on Tim Haines' "Yahoo Ancient Artifacts" collectors discussion list? I think we can all guess.

Egypt Looting: Calls for Emergency Action by US

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Cultural property lawyer Rick St Hilaire has a thought-provoking post 'Thinking Ahead: An Emergency Protection for Egyptian Cultural Antiquities Act'. he is concerned about the recent reports of large scale archaeological looting rapidly sweeping Egypt in the wake of political unrest

One effort might be to stop stolen and looted Egyptian cultural material from crossing the American border. [...] The Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA), 19 U.S.C. 2601 et seq., implements the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

This draws upon Article 9 of the Convention which is refers to just such a situation. Unfortunately the US sees this as the excuse for limiting their efforts to curb the illicit flow of antiquities ONLY to such measures (which is why I say it should do the decent and honest thing and withdraw from the Convention itself if it has no intention of respecting the rest of it). But in doing so has encumbered it with a hugely laborious and overblown process of debate. Either a country's archaeological heritage is in danger, or it is not. Seems pretty simple to me. Anyway the Act itself recognises that it is (deliberately?) cumbersome and as St Hilaire points out:

Section 2603 of the CPIA permits the President to enact import restrictions on cultural materials illegally removed from a country during an emergency situation without requiring that country’s government to make a formal legal request.

Hooray for the President, eh? Congressmen in the US can openly support the import of illegally exported artefacts, but the President can decide by himself to act to stop it in certain cases without it having to go past the noses of any cultural-property-greedy Philistines. This seems like one of them.

Senator Charles Grassley introduced emergency legislation in 2003, pursuant to the CPIA, in response to the looting of the National Museum of Iraq. The time is ripe to consider similar legislation in response to the reported looting currently occurring in Egypt.

St Hilaire suggests that temporary import controls should be established by enacting an Emergency Protection for Egyptian Cultural Antiquities Act, which could supplement authority already existing under the federal criminal code (and some would argue the Archaeological Resources Protection Act).

But then, why do the Americans need a CCPIA which implements just Article nine? This whole "system" reeks of inconsistency and senseless duplication while leaving a huge (arguably the most important) area not covered by any enforcing legislation. Time to re-debate the 1980s US approach to "cultural property protection" and its ability to take the moral lead in the light of the current form of the antiquities market and the global situation and not that of several decades ago.
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Egypt Looting: Follow the Stories

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The following web-sources are among those where readers can find information and updates about the news emerging about the ongoing looting of sites and museum storerooms and other damage to sites and monuments in Egypt in this period of the breakdown of law and order:

Egyptology News
News from the Valley of the Kings
Facebook: Restore + Save the Egyptian Museum! -run by Sarah Parcak
Facebook: Egyptologists for Egypt. Supporting the people's demands
Talking Pyramids
The Eloquent Peasant
Ancient Egypt Online

It is difficult trying to follow the often conflicting news that is coming out of a country with media which have been shut down and restricted and government-run media being a major source.

UPDATE:
[the Internet began to work again Wednesday 2nd Feb]
Egyptological Looting Database 2011: A Site by Site Database of the Damage to Antiquites in Egypt on http://egyptopaedia.com/2011/, run by Kate Phitzackerley "The site was established to respond to the fast-moving situation in Egypt. It is a working site, so please don’t expect lots of refinement. Information is provided on a best endeavours basis, but until the situation normalises little can be guaranteed".

Luxor News (News, events and Egyptology from Luxor) - Jane Akshar

Zahi Hawass' blog

Al-Masry Al-Youm

Ahram Online

Bikya Masr

Vignette: not a looted head.

Egypt Looting: the Callousness of Collectors on Show

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On hearing the news of the looting of museums and archaeological sites in Egypt, antiquity collector Candice Jarman writes:

Returning to the present troubles - sadly, some of the 'radical archaeologists' must be rubbing their hands with glee.

I consider that to be highly insulting to all those who care about the preservation of archaeological sites and monuments (and not just because I am named in that post). Many of us are wringing our hands in utter despair to imagine the wanton destruction and dismantling of monuments and collections to serve an ever-greedy and undiscriminating market.

Zahi Hawass this evening put his feelings like this:

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, but all the inspectors, young archaeologists, and administrators, are calling me from sites and museums all over Egypt to tell me that they will give their life to protect our antiquities.

The people who may well be "rubbing their hands with glee" would be unscrupulous no-questions-asked dealers and collectors anticipating another windfall of looted material to come onto the market, like after the looting of archaeological sites in Bulgaria and then Afghanistan and Iraq. I cant see anyone like that dedicating their lives to protecting anything, except their own interests.

Egypt: Archaeological Looting Already Under Way

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With regard to my last post, I am hearing unconfirmed reports from Polish colleagues this evening that suggest there has already been some attempted archaeological looting in the Luxor region, so far I've only got this at second hand, but tomorrow hope to contact the Polish Mission and will try to find out more.

Meanwhile there are alarming accounts appearing in the press about looting of sites as civil disorder in Egypt becomes increasingly serious in the wake of the political crisis caused by the recent massive protests. One example is this one from Discovery News which at the beginning however gives some reassuring news which contrasts with what I had heard elsewhere:

The West Bank, where the mortuary temples and the Valley of the Kings are located, is without any security, with only villagers trying to protect the sites. “All the antiquities in the area have been protected by the locals all night, and nothing has been touched,” Mostafa Wazery, director of the Valley of Kings at Luxor, said.

leaving aside that this is not, I think, his actual title (he is in charge of a broader area), there is now no village in the necropolis, the locals have been resettled in the past two years. There are still houses down the south end, towards the Valley of Queens and Medinet Habu - so where the tourist police post is (UPDATE: I later learnt that the latter and the 'gaffirs' just packed up their things and deserted their posts for one night, but came back in the morning). Note the same theme as the human chain around the museum story, locals coming together to defend their past. It may however be more complex than that, only isolated scraps of information are getting through.

The Discovery News text continues however less optimistically:

According to Monica Hanna, an Egyptian Egyptologist, many other cultural sites have been abandoned by the police. “The Coptic Museum is left without security, as well as the areas of Memphite Necropolis south of the Pyramids. One can only imagine what is happening at the sites in more remote areas in Lower Egypt,” Hanna told Discovery News. Reports also are circulating about looters at the Supreme Council of Antiquities’ storage magazine in Qantara Sharq, as well as some other magazines in South Saqqara. Indeed, Abusir and Saqqara are reported to have suffered great damage. “All the sealed tombs were entered last night. Only the Imhotep Museum and the adjacent central magazines are currently protected by the military. Large gangs are digging day and night everywhere,” Hanna said.

Zahi Hawass picks up the story. He relates how he was receiving messages all night from the inspectors at Saqqara, Dahsur, and Mit Rahina. The magazines and stores of Abusir were opened, and there was nobody to be found to protect the antiquities at the site.

At this time I still do not know what has happened at Saqqara, but I expect to hear from the inspectors there soon. East of Qantara in the Sinai, we have a large store containing antiquities from the Port Said Museum. Sadly, 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. Luckily, the foresighted employees of the Royal Jewelery Museum moved all of the objects into the basement, and sealed it before leaving.

Rick St. Hilaire's blog is reporting similar news and suggests that there is a crisis brewing at major archaeological sites in Egypt. "The United States government and others must keep a careful watch at their borders for any ancient Egyptian artifacts". His source is an email from Sarah H. Parcak (Assistant Professor at the Department of History and Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham). She reports

"immense damage to Abusir and Saqqara, all magazines and tombs which were sealed were entered last night. Only Imhotep Museum and adjacent central magazines protected by the military. In Abusir all tombs opened. large gangs digging day and night everywhere. The damage is *vast*"

Professor Parcak's email continues:

It seems that some of the storage magazines at South Saqqara and Abusir have been looted - hard to say how much was taken and the extent of the robbing. SCA representatives are only today able to check on the museums/storage magazines, but early reports suggest major looting. If you all could please contact anyone who can help and put them on "high alert" for Old Kingdom remains and Egyptian antiquities in general, and please spread the word to law enforcement officials worldwide. Egyptian looters (who may be encouraged by outside Egypt entities) may try to use the general confusion to get things out of the country.

Other bad news: prisons in Qena and Armant (next to Luxor) have been emptied, so people fear major looting will occur in that region. Reports still abound for major looting in the Alexandria Museum---but those reports are hard to confirm. The violence has been worse in Alexandria, and there have been few police reports there."

The Memphis museum (opposite Saqqara) was also looted. Here is former cairo Museum director Wafaa El-Saddik speaking from Germany:

The Museum in Memphis and its storerooms were completely robbed on Saturday morning. The leaders there called me in desperation and prayed: “Save us, do something.” I first called the police, but did not respond. I alerted an Army General, I know. But it was too late.

The museum at Memphis most displayed sculpture, so it is not clear at this stage what "completely robbed' actually means, though the storerooms would presumably have contained smaller "portable antiquities".

I bet that collectors and dealers will presumably react that this is "what happens when we leave stuff in their source countries" or some such nonsense. Already there are two examples:

- Candice Jarman 'A foretaste of what is to come? The folly of repatriation' (sic),
- Alfredo De La Fe: ' Uprising in Egypt Underscores Need for Debate on Pro-Nationalism, Antiquities and Museums


[Of course Mr Jarman should note that the Tutankhamun and the Deir Cache mummies (if that is indeed what was involved here) were not "repatriated", but I bet the looters were jolly well intent on sending them outside the country to could-not-care-less collectors and dealers. People who use arguments like those of Jarman and de La Fe do not seem to be adverse to helping scatter them - for "safety" we are to understand].

These individuals with their colonialist attitudes forget the reason for looters taking old bits of coloured stone and wood is to sell them to those who will pay largish sums of money for them no-questions-asked. Could the three wooden statues from Tutankamun's tomb have been sold to an ethical dealer or collector? Or the mummy heads? Without a market for these things, the looters would stick to looking for computers, office chairs and canned food.
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Egypt: Protecting Sites From Looting

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Reports are coming in that attempts are being made to protect monuments all over Egypt in case antiquity looting breaks out. Many news media are mentioning that access to the pyramids is being prevented. I suspect this is not so much to protect the pyramids (and associated mastaba cemetery) as to keep adventurous tourists stuck in Cairo from wandering too far. To get to the pyramids they would have to cross an area where there has been a lot of unrest these past few days, and obviously the more scattered they are, the more difficult they are to protect (and protecting its visitors is one of the things the Egyptians are very serious about). In addition, the mastaba tombs and their reliefs are particularly vulnerable to looting (a la TT 15 Tomb of Tetiki style). Let us not forget also that Zahi Hawass has a personal interest in the Giza cemeteries.

Unfortunately there are huge numbers of sites which are vulnerable to the same kind of antiquity robbing as civil order breaks down. Sites which have elements that can be broken out and turned into saleable "portable antiquities". I'd suggest reliefs on blocks are the most suitable for this. A mob can break into a temple or tomb with crowbars and in a matter of half an hour or so get some pieces of "ancient art" off the walls and into knapsacks. Museum and excavation stores are full of bits already loose, ready for looters to take their pick. I'd predict that Saqqara is one site which needs to be guarded especially well in coming days, weeks (and who knows, as the national stability carefully built by Mubarak founders, much longer).

I am worried about what might happen in Luxor, where I was due to go next week. On Saturday (apparently before rioting actually broke out there) it was being reported in multiple sources:

Archaeologist Kent Weeks, who is in the southern temple town of Luxor, said that rumors that attacks were planned against monuments prompted authorities to erect barriers and guard Karnak Temple while tanks were positioned around Luxor's museum.

These of course are full of lootable and saleable objects (as is the Luxor temple and lesser-known Medamut complex nearby). There has been no mention of the West Bank - apparently some foreign missions were at work there yesterday (especially as the area around the necropolis is depopulated due to the removal of the village here in the last two years). If civil order breaks down here, these sites are especially vulnerable. I'm not only worried about the monuments, but the people looking after them who I got to know during my wanderings around the necropolis. All of them charming and friendly people, living in shifts in huts scattered around between the tombs and temples.

Here's one of the three or four gentlemen recently guarding the Seti I temple (photo: PMB Dec 2009).

If a mob of 90 blokes with crowbars decided they were going to break into a storeroom (and there are many scattered over the necropolis of varying degrees of sophistication and security) or a tomb or two to see what they could get their hands on, there is no way a few dozen guards could offer any resistance. How long would it take for the police or army to respond to their call for help (I did not see any radios in their guardposts when I drank tea with them - neither do they seem to be armed). There is a small group of armed tourist police guarding the Hatshepsut Temple and there is a police station by the Antiquities Services offices at Medinet Habu. Most of the police stationed actually in the necropolis itself are in outposts which are distant from the areas more approachable from the east (like half-way up the mountain). The Antiquity service is in the process of building a boundary wall around the eastern side of the central part of the necropolis, but its easy to hop over, it serves a demarcation purpose rather than intended to keep armed mobs out. There is now much better floodlighting (the cables put in last year without any kind of archaeological supervision I could see), but its no use being able to see tomb robbers and looters if you can't stop them.

If these sites are looted and stores are broken into in the next few weeks, we will have to be very alert to the appearance of the items on the market. The effects of the appearance of fresh unprovenanced material on the market will mean we will have to look very critically at all the unprovenanced material of Egyptian origin and type on the market, scarabs and shabtis included. And coins of course - maybe the new Egyptian government can ask the US for a bilateral cultural property agreement for all those years of mutual support and friendship.

UPDATE: How little did I suspect how rapidly these predictions would, sadly, become reality.
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