More on Cairo Museum
The security detail kept me waiting a while at the third checkpoint as they examined the archaeologist's pass issued by my employer the SCA. I was worried that this was because it was signed by Zahi Hawass, and of course he is no longer flavour of the month (yesterday colleagues were refused entry to a site in Asswan on those grounds), but actually the problem was that the Egyptian policeman had difficulty reading arabic (not the first time I have met this problem, understandable in oh-so-provincial Esna, less so in the capital. And the camera was beginning to chafe and I could feel it sliding... (A point of interest, the picture on the document in question is the figure of Akhenaton with the offering tray that was stolen and then recovered in rather odd circumstances)
Basically the museum is in about the same state as it was a month ago, except the blood stains have gone from the floor and showcase glass. Prompted by the new list of stolen objects, I extended my search for fresh lead seals and new glass and found another five cases, possibly a sixth that had recently had their glass replaced.
And here's a mystery - well, two in fact.
1) Now I look harder, I see the galleries have a full(ish) network of security cameras (and what appear to be motion detectors) - so why did it take a month for them to decide what the looters had taken when, if the cameras are working, they have a film of them doing it from several different angles?
2) More to the point, the galleries are full of stocky guys with stoney faces who pretend to be looking at the artefacts when they are watching something else. There was a white guy roaming round and round the galleries today, acting totally suspiciously. This guy was peering into the corners of the glass to see if there is old grime there, checking all the lead seals on all the cases on the second floor. When they were folded under, unbending the wire to see if the lead is oxidised or not. Then he was wandering round looking up at those dirty old skylights and photographing some of them with a concealed camera... I would say that to anyone who did not know what I was really doing (which the Museum would not anyway appreciate), it would have looked as if I was casing the joint. Now if I was on Cairo Museum's security team, after watching on the CCTV this guy do this for even less than than five minutes (and I was doing it in full view of most of their cameras for the best part of the afternoon), I'd have sent a big guy down there to find out what the hell he was doing - and what's he got in his pocket? So why didn't they, since they'd gone to all that trouble and expense to fill the museum with security men? Did they not see me on their cameras?
The fact that they did not react rather suggests to me that like another Cairo Museum, these cameras are switched off or do not work. (If they are reading this, they can prove me wrong by publishing a film or still from their CCTV of Paul Barford in his end-of-season poofy peach shirt acting suspiciously).
What I saw today modifies my original conclusions which I summarised here earlier a month ago (based on the incomplete information available at the time), though not wholly. Sadly I was unable to meet anyone from the Directorate who could answer my outstanding questions. This is because today is a public holiday connected with the referendum about Constitutional changes. So the mystery of the Mummy Heads remains.
I'll put something more up about this when I get home and get my head above water.
Larry Rothfield might be interested to know that the army guys now camped outside the museum with no sanitary facilities to speak of for more than six weeks now are apparently not the specialist antiquities squad, just average military police squaddies. They did not know where the antiquities men might be now, but had heard of them.
[Today a paradox struck me, as I joined the tourists photographing themselves with the tanks. The whole line of military vehicles outside the museum are camouflaged sand-yellow because of course they'd mostly be fighting in the desert. But the blokes manning them are camoflaged in green - eh? And if they are military police as most of these guys are now, they have bright red berets and armbands !]
'Sting' Retrieves 12 Looted Egyptian Museum Objects
This news story is just breaking, Three men have been arrested trying to sell some of the items that were stolen from the Egyptian Museum for 50 million dollars. The interrogation of the captured men may also allow the telling of the full story of the break in. This is from the Luxor Times Magazine:
Ahmed Attia Mahmod [who] lives at Dar El-Salam district in Cairo formed a group to attack the Egyptian Museum on 28th January, during the clashes that occurred around the museum which distracted the attention.
This was revealed when he was arrested with a friend of his who owns a coffee shop in the same district and a third partner with 12 objects of the Museum’s missing objects. The perpetrators started to spread videos and pictures of the objects to mobile phones of others trying to find a buyer.
The Antiquities police in co-operation with the Armed Forces tracked them and set them a trap[,] with the help of a foreigner who works at the American Embassy in Cairo conv[inc]ing the criminals that he will buy the objects for 50 million dollars[,] when the police and military police arrested them by Simon Bolivar square (near the American Embassy and American Research Centre in Egypt-ARCE) with 12 of the stolen objects in [their] possession.
From Talking Pyramids: All of the artefacts appear to be some of those listed in the official report that came out yesterday.
The items are:
* 5 bronze statues
* 1 limestone statue
* 1 statue of undetermined material
* 1 gold necklace
* 4 necklaces of faience and coloured glass
While valuable, no doubt, certainly there is no justification for anyone to think that you could get anything remotely like 50 million dollars for those 12 items. Even a hundredth of that would be a highly exaggerated sum. Also do we really believe these guys were so unsophisticated as to send out "videos and pictures of the objects to mobile phones of others trying to find a buyer" in a country where it was well known the government (granted a previous government) was in fact keeping close tabs on their citizens' use of the internet and mobile phones? That really seems to be asking for trouble. (UPDATE: I suspect though that there is a little more to this story that we are not being told, will the seized three plus one men be given a public trial? Let's see).
List of missing objects from the Cairo Museum
List of missing objects from the Cairo Museum after the looting of 28th Jan, posted on the SCA website earlier today. It comes to 54 objects now, there are more Tutankhamun and Amarna objects missing than was originally admitted. Note the museum is reticent about where they were in the collections. Note also the number that are not accompanied by decent photos enabling them to be identified should they turn up on the market. Not that they are likely to of course.
The list of Objects Missing from the Egyptian Museum, as released by the SCA, March 15th 2011 is as follows:
Gilded Wooden Figure of Tutankhamun on a Skiff, Throwing a Harpoon ( much of the broken off figure is missing) - Carter no 275c?
Gilded Wood Statue of Tutankhamun Wearing the Red Crown - Carter no 296b?
Gilded Wooden Statue of Menkaret Carrying a Mummified Tutankhamun (the figurine of Tutankhamun is still missing) - Carter no 296a
Gilded Wood Fanstock - Carter no 600?
Gilded Bronze Trumpet with Painted Wooden Core - Carter no 050gg
Yuya and Thuya Galleries:
Plastered Wooden Shabti of Thuya Covered with Silver Leaf, Incised with Nine Lines of Inscription
Wooden Shabti of Yuya with Ten Lines of Inscription in Yellow
Painted and Gilded Wooden Shabti of Yuya with Seven Lines of Incised Inscription
Wooden Shabti of Yuya with Eleven Lines of Inscription in Yellow
Wooden Shabti of Yuya with Nine Lines of Incised Inscription in Yellow
Wooden Shabti of Yuya with Nine Lines of Incised Inscription in Blue
Uninscribed Calcite Shabti of Yuya
Ebony Shabti of Yuya with Seven Lines of Inscription in Yellow
Painted Wooden Shabti of Yuya with Two Vertical Columns of Incised Blue
[five shabtis left behind in the Museum]
[heart scarab recovered]
Amarna Galleries:
Unfinished Limestone Statue of Nefertiti as an Offering Bearer
Red Granite Striding Statue of an Amarna Princess
Quartzite Head of an Amarna Princess
Steatite Statue of Bes on a Calcite Base
Quartzite Statue of an Amarna Princess
Steatite Statue of a Scribe with Thoth as a Baboon on a Limestone Base
Some Other Unspecified Galleries:
Bronze Seated Statue of Anubis
Bronze Seated Statue of Bastet
Bronze Striding Statue of the God Hapi
Bronze Top of a Sceptre in the Shape of the Goddess Hat-Mehit Wearing a Fish Headdress (Lates Nilotica)
Bronze Striding Statue of Onuris
Bronze Seated Statue of Osiris
Bronze Standing Statue of Osiris
Schist Striding Statue of Neferhotep
Bronze Fish on a Stand
Bronze Standing Statue of Sobek in the form of a Crocodile-headed Man
Bronze Striding Statue of the Goddess Neith
Inscribed Bronze Seated Statue of a Cat (Bastet) Dedicated by Pediamen
Inscribed Bronze Striding Statue of Harpocrates Wearing the Andjety Diadem
Bronze Statue of an Apis Bull Wearing the Sun Disk and Uraeus
Limestone Statue of a Recumbent Bull
Terracotta Plaque in the Form of a Bed
Bronze False Beard
Bronze False Beard
Painted Limestone Statue of a Seated Man
Bronze Statue of an Apis Bull with a Sun Disk Between its Horns
Striding Bronze Figure of Nakht
Painted Limestone Shabti of an Official
Faience Round Bead Bracelet
Gold, Stone and Faience Collar
Faience Bead Collar with Pendants in the Shape of Lily
String of 28 Coral Beads
String of Gold Beads and Figurines
Part of a Lapis Lazuli Girdle of Merytamun B
Necklace Composed of 44 "Glass Beads Moulded in Metal" (eh?)
10 Faience Amulets and a Faience Bead
Painted Limestone Standing Statue of a Young Woman Wearing a Large Wig.
The descriptions are hyper-laconic to the point of vagueness, and the photos in the pdf leave a lot to be desired as a source of information about the distinguishing features of the objects missing (how many seated figures of Osiris are out there in the global market?). In fact they are crap. Given the Egyptian Museum's no-camera policy, reserving the right to take photos of the museum's objects for themselves, you would think that they would at least have some decent photos of them, but like keeping the Museum galleries clean and tidy and keeping a track of what is is which case, and keeping thieves out, even in this digital age, object photography seems not to be the forte of the Egyptian Museum curatorial and technical staff.One of the missing objects (photo by Paul Lombardo from Eloquent Peasant, via CultureGrrl)