https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poor-egyptians-dig-up-homes-in-search-of-antiquities-vmcv8mzdn
Poor Egyptians dig up homes in search of antiquities
The Times
A giant statue of Ramses II was found in a Cairo slum earlier this yearAmr Nabil/Associated Press
The authorities are struggling to stop the digs and have raised the maximum sentence for illegally selling antiquities from seven years in prison to life, but the collapse of the economy and the currency has encouraged the trade.
"In our business we deal in dollars most of the time so if you sell something for $10 which was worth seven Egyptian pounds, it's now worth 18," one antiquities trader said. "That's more than double. The business has become more profitable for many people."
He has worked as a broker for 17 years, acquiring antiquities from looters and selling them to buyers in Europe and the US. He said that a new wave of opportunists had started digging under their homes. The busiest areas are two poor districts of Cairo that sit on top of the ancient city of Heliopolis, which was populated from the pre-dynastic period to the Middle Kingdom, up until 1800BC. "The devaluation could be the reason why many more people who live in areas like Matariya and Ain Shams districts have begun digging only recently," he said.
Between 2011 and 2014 the country lost $3 billion in artefacts taken from sites and museums, according to the International Coalition to Protect Egyptian Antiquities. Whole sites, including the 4,000-year-old Dahshur necropolis and Abusir cemetery, have been gutted.
Poor Egyptians are using desperate means to make money as inflation soars and energy and fuel subsidies are cut. Now that the value of the dollar has doubled many are trying to find ancient objects to sell internationally.
In Matariya residents said that some people had knocked down their buildings to cover up the illicit digging. Ahmed, 68, dug 8m under his home looking for gold and was jailed for three months last year when his apartment block began to collapse. He said that you either enlisted specialist diggers and agreed to share the expenses and the profits or called in a specialist who paid all the digging costs and gave the homeowner a lump sum.
"I started digging because everyone else was," he said. "So I sold everything I had to pay the diggers. The apartment is no use to me, what I want is what is underneath." He was hoping to make more than £90,000.
The antiques trader said that his broker's office, which deals only with tombs or larger items, took a 2 per cent cut of most sales, which were "usually in the range of millions of dollars if the tomb is good". His said his team worked mostly with Italian dealers but that pieces were often trafficked through Israel and the UAE where provenances were forged and the item "laundered".
He and residents of Matariya all said that the security forces were involved in trade. They claimed that army conscripts and officers helped to move pieces and were paid as much as $10,000 per item. "Diplomats are also often involved in getting the objects out of the country. The larger objects are concealed in container vessels," the trader said.
The repatriation department of the antiquities ministry denied the involvement of the security forces. A spokesman said: "We are a small team and we have to cover Egyptian antiquities all over the world. It's tough: often you are looking for things you did not know existed."
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