Egypt: Update on Looting and Thefts of Antiquities

From Yahoo News/AP

18 items missing from Egyptian Museum after unrest
By JASON KEYSER, Associated Press Jason Keyser, Associated Press – 17 mins ago
February 13, 2011

CAIRO – A full inventory of the Egyptian Museum has found that looters escaped with 18 items during the anti-government unrest, including two gilded wooden statues of famed boy king, Tutankhamun, the antiquities chief said Sunday.

The 18-day uprising that forced out President Hosni Mubarak engulfed the areas around the famed museum, on the edge of Cairo's Tahrir Square. On Jan. 28, as protesters clashed with police early on in the turmoil and burned down the adjacent headquarters of Mubarak's ruling party, a handful of looters climbed a fire escape to the museum roof and lowered themselves on ropes from a glass-paneled ceiling onto the museum's top floor.

Around 70 objects — many of them small statues — were damaged, but until Sunday's announcement, it was not known whether anything was missing.

Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass said the museum's database department determined 18 objects were gone. Investigators searching for those behind the thefts were questioning dozens of people arrested over several days after last month's break-in.

The most important of the missing objects is a limestone statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the so-called heretic king that tried to introduce monotheism to Egypt, standing and holding an offering table.

"It's the most important one from an artistic point of view," said museum director Tarek el-Awady. "The position of the king is unique and it's a beautiful piece of art." During Akhenaten's so-called Amarna period, named after his capital, artists experimented with new styles.

Also gone is a gilded wooden statue of the 18th Dynasty King Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's son, being carried by a goddess. Pieces are also missing from another statue of the boy king wielding a fishing harpoon from a boat.

"We have the boat and the legs of the king, but we are missing other parts of the body," el-Awady said. "We are looking everywhere for them — around the museum, outside, on the roof, from where the thieves got into the museum."

He said none of the missing objects was from the gated room containing the gold funerary mask of King Tutankhamun and other stunning items from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings — the museum's chief attractions. The looters did not break into the room, he said.

The other missing items are a statue of Nefertiti, Akhenaten's wife, making offerings, a sandstone head of a princess and a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna, and a heart scarab and 11 wooden funerary statuettes of the nobleman Yuya.

Antiquities authorities also announced Sunday that thieves broke into a storage site at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, south of Cairo, on Feb. 11. They had no information yet on whether items were missing.

The Egyptian Museum remains closed and guarded by an army unit, but workers are cleaning the vast building and the garden around it. Efforts are being made to improve security.

Egyptian Museum Looted - How Much Damage, Really???

We don't know, and Zahi Hawass won't tell us any time soon.  I have read reports of "heads torn off mummies."  Holy Goddess!  I just do not understand how come the museum was not immediately shut down and protected by massive police and military presence when the protests first began, over a week ago? And why the most obvious targets of treasure hunters (Tut's gold, for instance) were not immediately smuggled out of the the museum and locked away in deep vaults somewhere.

I have a great deal of respect for the Egyptian people and their ancient heritage - They are very different from the Arabs who today rule in much of the Middle East - but all it takes is a few foreign instigators to urge on some young hot-heads to loot and set fire to things and, suddenly, things get out of hand.  We've already seen that happening in Cairo. 

Now, tonight on the NBC news broadcast was a report of wholesale looting of treasures from King Tut's exhibit - and much more damage to the museum and looting of its exhibits than has been reported in print that I saw!  It makes me sick to my stomach.  Oh my Goddess, please make it not be true.

Already the average Egyptian, more than half of whom depend upon tourism to make their livings, must be feeling the pinch of thousands of tourists trying to flee home and the disruption of tours. What will happen to the Egyptian people during the next few years when tourists refuse to visit Egypt - already thousands of tourists are trying to flee the country, and I hope they all make it home safely.  If I were in their shoes, I'd be trying to run away too, as fast as I could! 

I don't know what's going to happen in Egypt. I just want the violence and deaths to end - and the thiefs who are looting the ancient heritage of all the Egyptian people to be caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.