CAIRO - 31 October 2019: Sharjah International Book Fair's 39th edition displays a rare book of the first documented archaeological survey, which features numerous archaeological sites in Egypt. It is priced at £ 300,000.
The book was written by photographer Maxime du Camp, and is titled "Egypt, Nubia, Palestine and Syria." The book includes photographs collected during the years 1849, 1850 and 1851.
Du Camp earned his fame as a photographer rather than a writer as he returned from his oriental tour with over 200 photographs. He was also assigned with an archaeological mission to fulfill the Europeans' passion about ancient Egypt and the Holy Land. Du Camp embarked on a photographic trip in the Nile Basin and Palestine, returning with 125 rare pictures.
It is worth mentioning that Sharjah International Book Fair comes in participation with Nobel laureates for literature, and international Academy-Award winning filmmakers. The book fair comes under the slogan "Open books ... Open minds."
A total of 2,000 publishing houses from 81 Arab and foreign countries are taking part in the massive event, which runs from Oct. 30 to Nov. 9 in the Expo Center Sharjah. Mexico is the book fair's guest of honor. American media personality Steve Harvey was also announced to be the book fair's guest of honor.
In its 39th edition, the book fair presents a variety of events; some 350 cultural events will be organized and carried out by 90 distinguished personalities from 28 countries. In addition, 409 events focusing on children will be held by 28 guests from 13 countries, and the Culinary Corner will hold 48 events performed by 15 chefs from nine countries.
More than a thousand years before Christ, the prosperous and powerful kingdoms of Nubia lined the Nile River in southern Egypt and Sudan. About a century ago, a Boston archaeologist, George Reisner, in partnership with Harvard University, did an excavation in the area and brought back what is still the largest collection of Nubian artifacts outside of East Africa — making a lasting impression of Nubia on the American public.
Today, that full collection is being exhibited for the first time as part of a trend among museums to reexamine past archeologists' conclusions and the biases that affected their work. The Ancient Nubia Now exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston discusses some of what Reisner, one of their own archaeologists and curators, got wrong in his representation of history.
Kerma: Beads and pendants: faience, amethyst, glazed crystal, carnelian, shell, garnet, granite, August 10, 1914 Giza Camp
Credit:
Photographer: Mahmud Shadduf*Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition*Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
"He is considered the father of American Egyptology. As an archaeologist, he was really superb."
"He is considered the father of American Egyptology," said curator Denise Doxey. "As an archaeologist, he was really superb."
Ancient Nubia Now exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Oct. 13, 2019 to Jan. 20, 2020
But she says that Reisner based many of his assumptions on history that was written by Egyptians who were at war with Nubians for generations and described Nubians as barbarians. When Reisner came across a beautifully carved, Egyptian stone statue in a tomb in Sudan in 1913, he classified the whole tomb as an Egyptian outpost — even though the statue known as Lady Sennuwy was surrounded by pottery and jewelry that was distinctly Nubian.
"He just couldn't believe that the Nubians did all this themselves," Doxey said. "He was a wonderful archaeologist, but he was not a forward-thinking man on social issues at all. So, he brings his own racial biases, which happened to dovetail nicely with the Egyptians' image of the Nubians. And [it] causes them to completely misinterpret the site."
Reisner didn't believe that the Nubians had conquered southern Egypt for a time, and brought Lady Sennuwy back to Nubia as a prize. But Doxey says that's what actually happened.
"In fact, he had it completely backwards," she said.
Doxey says Reisner contributed to a portrayal of Nubia as a conquered, marginalized culture somehow less important than Egypt, and eventually mostly forgotten by scholars.
"It's a vicious cycle because people aren't familiar with Nubia. So, museums are wary about doing exhibitions and [having] nobody come because they don't know what Nubia is," Doxey said. "So, it perpetuates this idea that nobody knows what Nubia is, and it helps to keep that imbalance that Egypt is somehow much more important."
"It's a vicious cycle because people aren't familiar with Nubia. So, museums are wary about doing exhibitions and [having] nobody come because they don't know what Nubia is," Doxey said. "So, it perpetuates this idea that nobody knows what Nubia is, and it helps to keep that imbalance that Egypt is somehow much more important."
But it's been clear for some time that Reisner got it wrong. French and Swiss teams did excavations in Sudan in the 1960s and 1970s and discovered that that tomb Reisner found with the Lady Sennuwy statue was part of a thriving, Nubian metropolis at the center of a trading network that reached far into Africa.
"It's a massive, fortified city with suburbs outside and ports and industrial areas and temples," Doxey said. "So, it was actually a very powerful and important kingdom."
A kingdom that left behind fine pottery that is eggshell thin and dipped in a distinctive translucent blue glaze; and gold jewelry, and sculptures depicting animals such as rams and lions. Items that were ahead of their time, and are possibly evidence of an advanced culture.
That reminds some people of Wakanda, the fictional, ultra-advanced African country in the movie, "Black Panther." Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes the "Black Panther" series for Marvel, has said he imagines Wakanda being pretty much where Nubia was.
In a video in the Nubia exhibit, Nicole Aljoe, director of Africana studies at Northeastern University, talks about Pauline Hopkins, an African American writer who, in 1902-1903, wrote a serialized novel, "Of One Blood; Or, The Hidden Self," in which one of the main characters discovers a secret, advanced society of superhumans in the Nubia region.
"It is fascinating — it's this weird kind of proto-science fiction, fantastic, but at the same time supernatural presentation that resonated a lot for me and my students with the film ["Black Panther"] after it came out," Aljoe said. "It'd be really cool if she was prescient in that way."
EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS, THE LOST CITY OF TROY AND MOUNT RUSHMORE AMONG ICONIC MONUMENTS FEATURED IN NEW SEASON OF "UNEARTHED" PREMIERING SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 3 AT 9PM ON SCIENCE CHANNEL
ALSO, RARE ACCESS INTO WAR-RAVAGED IRAQ FOR INVESTIGATION INTO THE TOWER OF BABEL
(New York) - Science Channel's signature archaeology series that digs up the deepest secrets of history's great civilizations, UNEARTHED, is returning with new episodes beginning Sunday, November 3 at 9 p.m. More than just scientific investigations, the series uses explosive animation to unearth the hidden stories of iconic monuments and tackles the mysteries behind them. Among the sites explored during the new season are the Tower of Babel, in which the UNEARTHED was granted unique access to rarely seen sites in Iraq.
Kicking off this season is an in-depth look at the lost ancient Egyptian city of Armana. This mysterious place buried deep in the desert was once a sprawling metropolis and home to Egypt's most famous rulers, Queen Nefertiti and King Tut. Why and how did it just vanish? Today investigators journey deep inside ancient tombs to unlock the long-lost secrets of one of the darkest chapters in Egyptian history.
Other sites getting the UNEARTHED treatment this season are Hitler's Secret Bunker, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Lost City of Troy and Mount Rushmore.
UNEARTHED is produced for Science Channel by Windfall Films. For Windfall Films, Carlo Massarella, Rob Hartel and John Fothergill are the Executive Producers, James Franklin and Charlie Smith are the Series Producers. For Science Channel, Neil Laird is executive producer.
How King Tut Exhibitions Became a Multimillion Dollar Industry
Alina Cohen
Oct 30, 2019 6:16pm
Howard Carter in King Tutankhamen's tomb, ca. 1925. Photo by Harry Burton. Image via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1922, Howard Carter made the most exciting archaeological discovery of the 20th century. Working with backing from George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, the Egyptologist uncovered a tomb just west of Luxor and the Nile River, in the Valley of the Kings. It was the most intact tomb of its kind ever found, relatively untouched by the grave robbers who'd looted nearby crypts in the intervening millennia. Because the ancient Egyptians had buried their dead with everything they'd need for the afterlife, there was plenty to steal.
The tomb, Carter discovered, belonged to pharaoh Tutankhamun (ruled 1334–25 B.C.E.) and housed more than 5,000 objects that ranged from the magnificent to the prosaic: Tut's solid gold inner-coffin, sandals, statues, jewelry, textiles, oars for navigating the underworld, and even linen loincloths. The find was exciting on its own; a canny media ploy gave the excavation additional publicity. The Times paid £5,000 for exclusive access to the tomb, one of the first paid scoops in history. The public frenzied.
"From the discovery in 1922, this vision of magnificence of pharaonic culture captured the imagination of just about every school child the world over," said Adam Lowe, the founder of digital conservation lab Factum Arte, which completed a three-dimensional recreation of the tomb in 2014. King Tut, a chronically ill child ruler who died at just 19 years old, was an overnight celebrity whose star has yet to fade.
Carter's discovery was just the beginning of King Tut mania. Herbert died in 1923, shortly after entering the tomb—most likely from an infected mosquito bite—and a series of people connected with him and Carter suffered mysterious traumas. Rumors of King Tut's curse circulated.
Beginning in the 1960s, travelling exhibitions of antiquities from the tomb created a new global sensation. An ongoing show, which started at the California Science Center in 2018, moved on to Paris's Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris, where it broke attendance records for a French art show—the previous record-holder was also a King Tut exhibition—and sold around 1.3 million tickets. The show will open at London's Saatchi Gallery in November; the Australian Museum in Sydney will be its final stop. The general public's embrace of the Boy Pharaoh shows no signs of relenting, but issues of ownership and repatriation surrounding Tut-related objects still rage.
Auction anxieties
An Egyptian Brown Quartzite Head of The God Amen With The Features of The Pharaoh Tutankhamen, ca. 1333–23 B.C.E. Courtesy of Christie's.
In June, Egypt attempted to stop Christie's from selling a quartzite sculpture with King Tut's features. The country alleged that the antiquity had been looted from the Temple of Karnak in Luxor in 1970—the same year UNESCO instituted a treaty aimed at establishing measures for preventing cultural thefts and provisions for restitution. The auction house disagreed, claiming it had established appropriate provenance: According to them, the statue was in the private collection of Prinz Wilhelm von Thurn und Taxis by the 1960s. Christie's went ahead with the July auction and sold the disputed object for nearly $6 million. Days later, Egypt sued Christie's. The ongoing brouhaha typifies the disagreements that still pervade the market for Egyptian antiquities. (Christie's declined to comment for this article.)
Attorney Leila Amineddoleh, who's working with the Greek government on similar repatriation issues, called the "alleged provenance" of the sculpture "inaccurate or highly questionable." "It is not acceptable," she said, "for art market participants to turn a blind eye towards problematic provenance or ignore red flags." Amineddoleh also noted an increase in looted Egyptian antiquities since political uprisings began in the country in 2011. She added that "plunder is often a crime of opportunity."
Egypt, in fact, had measures in place as early as 1835, when it banned other countries from removing objects from its borders without approval. In 1983, the country instituted its most stringent cultural heritage rule to date: Law No. 117, which entirely abolished antiquities exports. Up until that point, countries excavating legally in Egypt could keep half of what they dug up—with one big exception: Cairo would keep all the contents of any unplundered royal tomb, which meant that the entirety of King Tut's burial chamber stayed in the country. Yet German Egyptologists have alleged that Carter stole objects from the tomb, which are now scattered around the world.
There's a notable preference, in the world of King Tut–related antiques, for likenesses of the pharaoh himself. In 2010, Sotheby's sold a Tut-era limestone ushabti for $290,500, leaps and bounds ahead of its high estimate of $60,000. Back in 2004, the auction house sold an Egyptian bust that may have been Tutankhamun or his successor, Horemheb. Despite the uncertainty over the subject's identity, the sculpture sold for $220,800, well above its high estimate of $150,000.
Show me the money
The golden funerary mask of King Tutankhamun on display during an unveiling ceremony at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo after its restoration process in 2015. Photo by Mostafa Elshemy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.
The first major touring exhibition of artifacts from King Tut's tomb was a product of financial necessity. In 1961, archaeological sites in Egypt were in danger of flooding and the country needed funds to protect them. Over the next 5 years, more than 30 objects from Tut's tomb toured 18 cities across the United States and Canada. A slightly enlarged show opened in Japan in 1965. Through 1981, Tut artifacts were nearly always on the road, touring from Moscow to London, from Paris to Berlin.
After the glut of shows, the artifacts returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, their permanent home. In 2004, "Tutankhamun. The Golden Beyond" opened in Basel, Switzerland, and then Bonn, Germany, with around 50 objects from Tut's tomb and additional artifacts from the Valley of the Kings, offering a new generation the opportunity to get to know the Boy Pharaoh. Subsequently rebranded as "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of Pharaohs," the show ultimately toured 17 cities, drawing upwards of 11 million visitors. A smattering of exhibitions have toured ever since, including the show opening soon in London, without losing steam.
In 2020, King Tut's treasures will find a new resting place in Giza's forthcoming Grand Egyptian Museum—according to CNN, "the largest museum dedicated to a single civilization." Architect Patricio Pouchulu has designed a structure that resembles a glass eye emerging from the desert, looking out over the pyramids.
The touring exhibitions have been such a hit that a market has even developed for shows of replicas. In 2014, the German company Premier Exhibitions, in conjunction with Semmel Concerts Gmbh, toured copies of over 1,000 objects found in Tut's tomb.
Lowe, from Factum Arte, expressed support for only those exhibitions directly benefiting the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. "If you're in a position where the local community can gain financial advantage from preserving cultural heritage, it will make a significant difference," he said. Lowe's own work has generated further fascination for the pharaoh. Using Lowe's scans,Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves hasargued that Tut's tomb may hold a secret, as-yet-uncovered chamber in which Queen Nefertiti could be buried.
Outside the tomb
Coffinette of Tutankhamen dedicated to Imseti and Isis is displayed during the "Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh" exhibition held at the Grande Halle of La Villette. Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images.
King Tut–related antiquities can be divided into two categories: those found inside or outside the tomb. The latter group includes the sculpture sold at Christie's, as well as a number of objects in public and private collections worldwide. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for example, owns a sandstone head of Tutankhamun, made between 1336 and 1327 B.C.E. The museum said it acquired the sculpture in 1904, before Carter discovered King Tut's tomb.
Rita Freed, chair of the MFA Boston's Art of Ancient Egypt, Nubia, and the Near East Department, noted that the museum determined its object to be a sculpture of King Tut on the basis of style. "When art historians look at the three-dimensional eyes; the very sensuous mouth; the fact that he has pierced ears; the round, almost child-like face, there are not a lot of kings that could represent other than Tutankhamun," she said.
Freed noted that objects from King Tut's time are also appealing on purely aesthetic terms. The pharaoh ruled Egypt during a period of great wealth and superb craftsmanship. Gold, glass, and semi-precious stones were prevalent materials. The most enduring image of King Tut may be his fabulous gold funerary mask, embellishedwith quartz, carnelian, turquoise, and lapis lazuli.
For Freed, the reasons for persistent King Tut craze are obvious. "The stuff is drop-dead gorgeous," she said. "There's romance, intrigue, mysterious deaths, scandalous rumors. It's everything you'd want in a good novel." High-stakes sales, persistent concerns over looting, record-breaking exhibition attendance, and evermore sophisticated research keep the legend of King Tut alive.
ARCE's Northern California Chapter is pleased to present the following lectures by renowned Egyptologists. All lectures take place on the University of California Berkeley campus.
Digging Ancient Egyptian Jewelry Mines
November 10, 2019 - 3:00 PM - Room 20 Barrows Hall
Dr. Kate Liszka, California State University, San Bernardino
A Tale of Two Crocodiles: Object Lessons from the Fayyum
December 8, 2019 - 3:00 PM - Room 20 Barrows Hall
Dr. Emily Cole, University of California, Berkeley Annual Holiday Souk before and after the lecture.
Man vs. Wild? Rethinking the Interpretation of Human and Animal Representation in Egyptian Art
January 12, 2020 - 3:00 PM - Room 20 Barrows Hall
Dr. Jennifer Babcock, Pratt Institute
Topic to be Determined
February 9, 2020 - 3:00 PM - Room 20 Barrows Hall
Dr. Peter Piccione, University of Charleston
Topic to be Determined
March 29, 2020 - 3:00 PM - Room 20 Barrows Hall
Dr. Francesco Tiradritti, Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor
Time may have eroded the memory of a civilization but not the mystery of what was. Long ago, two bustling cities in ancient Egypt were known throughout the world as cultural centers of power, of wealth, of trade, and novel artistry. One day as the Mediterranean sun beat down on the bay of Aboukir, the cities slipped into the sea without a whisper of wind, buried for centuries.
Who wouldn't dream of unearthing lost antiquities from a forgotten civilization, sunken into obscurity? Determined to recover the cities that vanished, Franck Goddio, a mathematician by trade and underwater archeologist at heart, delivered the discovery of a millennium for he located not a shipwreck but an entire civilization.
Statue of the Bull God Apis (SCA 351) Graeco-Roman Museum, Alexandria – IEASM excavations
This story will be told in Egypt's Lost Cities at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, where more than 200 of these authentic artifacts, including three colossal 16-foot sculptures of a pharaoh, a queen, and a god will be on view.
Statue of a priest holding an Osiris-Canopus in his veiled hands surrounded by two sphinxes found together in the harbour Alexandria
(SCA 451, 449, 450) National Museum of Alexandria – IEASM excavations
Other objects on display include precious gold coins and jewelry, bronze vessels, objects inscribed in the ancient Egyptian or Greek languages, and statues from the sunken and forgotten ancient cities of Thonis-Heracleion and Canopus. The artifacts will be seen alongside ancient Egyptian artifacts from museums in Cairo and Alexandria.
Although this exhibition is appropriate for people of all ages – and includes great history lessons for children – it's important to remember that these statues and sculptures were created over 1,200 years ago in Egypt. As such, a few of the sculptures feature era-specific depictions of men and women without clothing, or with very limited clothing.
Organised with the Institut Européen d'Archéologie Sous-Marine with the generous support of the Hilti Foundation and in collaboration with the Ministry of Antiquities of the Arab Republic of Egypt
Thank you to our sponsors:
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Three years ago, Artist and Curator Nadine Abdel Ghaffar founded the Art D'Éypte platform in an effort to juxtapose modern art to that of our ancestors. With the aim of promoting new blood and preserving Egyptian heritage, the platform set out to be a patron of both contemporary and antique artworks.
Art D'Égypte organized several exhibitions and initiatives over the years, from their highly-celebrated "Eternal Light: Something Old, Something New", in which contemporary artists got the chance to showcase their work at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and the awe-inspiring "Nothing Vanishes, Everything Changes" exhibition; here, the platform cooperated with the Ministry of Antiquities to bring modern art from 28 aspiring visionaries to the corners of the Alawite-era Manial Palace Museum.
This year, when Art D'Égypte decided to take to the streets of Old Cairo's Al-Mui'zz Street, they did something out-worldly, to say the least. The exhibition captured the beauty of ancient Islamic architecture juxtaposed the works of a number of prominent Egyptian contemporaries.
"The exhibition aims to promote Egypt's central role in contemporary art. The activities include art talks and training workshops", Art D'Égypte's curator, Nadine Abdel Ghaffar, said in a press release
At Al-Mui'zz Street, Art D'Égypte, along with the Ministry of Antiquities, showcased the best of what Egypt's well-established contemporary art movements had to offer while simultaneously linking it to a glorious past.
In the last two weeks of October, Old Cairo turned into an open museum for modern art, embracing new art forms in a heritage-rich setting.
"This year, we have chosen Al Mu'izz Street, which is an open museum of a magnificent range of mosques, schools, and sebil (fountain) structures of impressive architectural designs. The event will feature an interesting mix of activities including art talks and training workshops for emerging talents, students, and art lovers," Abdel Ghaffar explained.
In their exhibitions, Art D'Égypte hopes to bring attention to a number of rising local artists through cooperations with organizations and institutions looking to promote art in Egypt. At the same time, the curators find themselves responsible for linking modern arts with Egypt's diverse cultural and historical heritage.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTT BUCKING/BENI HASSAN SOUTH PRESERVATION PROJECT
Professor Scott Bucking is pictured surveying the Beni Hassan preservation site in 2018.
DePaul does not harbor an especially large history department, let alone a department specifically dedicated to archaeology. As a result, a DePaul student might be surprised to hear that one of their own professors received a $75,000 grant for an archaeological preservation project. However, those who know Professor Scott Bucking were anything but surprised.
"He is irrepressible," said longtime colleague and Associate Dean Margaret Storey. "He is deeply committed to his field, creative, determined, and he has a passion for what he does," she continued.
Bucking applied for the grant to preserve a group of archaeological remains in Beni Hassan, a mountainous region of Egypt that sits along the Nile River Valley. He has been working on the site for a decade now and has already experienced historical sites like the Tomb of Hatshepsut, a famous female Pharaoh of ancient Egypt. With this grant, Bucking and his team will be able to perform the first comprehensive recordings of ancient hermitages carved directly into the mountains.
"Grant writing is a pretty regular thing in my profession, since you always have to be looking to the next field season and figuring out how it's going to be supported," Bucking said.
He said that there are times where much larger grants are awarded, but that the norm is a yearly cycle of smaller grants that consists ofa field season and a grant application season. The passion for his field that Storey mentioned has paid off for Bucking over the years, as he has been awarded upwards of 25 grants supporting his work.
Applying for grants is essential to funding his work, but his passion lies out in the field and in sharing his findings with others.
"The most fulfilling part is working with my team in the field and seeing the impact of our work on the community in Middle Egypt," said Bucking. That commitment to the local community demonstratedthrough addressing a range of issues in the area, such as undocumented digging, where non-professionals attempt to excavate the ancient sites for valuables. This badly damages the artifacts and hinders the preservation process, if not completely deterring it.
Another prominent issue Bucking is trying to address in tandem with the local community is agricultural encroachment. Due to increasing food needs, farmers are expanding their fields up the slope of some of the mountains, compromising the tombs in the area.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SCOTT BUCKING/BENI HASSAN SOUTH PRESERVATION PROJECT From left to right: Alla Fathy, Hamdy Rushdy Hamdy and Scott Bucking were members of the project's team. They are photographed in front of Cave Hermitage, a part of their project site.
"This is addressing an economic need that that community has," he said, "but we as archaeologists want to preserve the stuff too." Bucking's commitment to balancing the community's needs with the preservation of the region's history demonstrates a social awareness that is not typical in archaeology.This is especially true in an area like Beni Hassan, which harbors over 3,000 years of history in its landscape.
Bucking acknowledged that there is a long history of historians going into communities and taking what they wanted because they believed they knew better. This results in decontextualized history, which is where artifacts are shown without any real understanding of the people who created them. This is a significantreason why Bucking strongly emphasizes training the next generation of historians, specifically archaeologists, by pulling from communities local to the sites being worked on.
"I have a largely Egyptian team and that is largely by design," he said. "I think that our commitment should be there." Bucking does not want his work to be about going to these sites and bringing artifacts and exotic stories back to the U.S. Instead, his focus lies on building up Egyptian communities and better preparing them to preserve the history of the area.
Bucking's passion reaches areas far away from the field, including to the students he has taught at DePaul. Chandler Whitney, a former student of his Honors 102 course on ancient Egypt, said that her interest in Egypt and archaeology grew significantlythanks to his teaching.
"I always looked forward to going to Professor Bucking's class," she said. "His stories are absolutely fantastic, and it was so neat being able to see pictures from the archaeological sites he's worked on." Whitney added that she often recommends his courses to fellow students as well.
It is often said that passion is infectious, and Bucking inspires many of those around him. Through his drive for both discovery and dispersing knowledge, obtaining grants is just a means to perform much more meaningful work: connecting the people of today.
"Our goal is to get at those past people, but we also want to connect that heritage to the living communities that are there," he said.
Numerous Luxor residents have launched a campaign on social media protesting the Antiquities Ministry's decision to transfer important artifacts recently discovered in Luxor to the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.
Thirty wooden colored coffins dating back to the 22nd Dynasty were recently discovered in the Assassif area of Luxor, with experts calling it one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 21st Century.
During a press conference on the finding, the Antiquities Ministry announced plans to transfer the coffins to the Grand Egyptian Museum. This angered people in Luxor, who had hoped that the coffins would be displayed at the Luxor Museum which had been emptied of most of its important monuments, the majority of its pieces having been transferred to Cairo over the past few months.
Mohamed Kenawy, a member of the Chamber of Tourism in Luxor, said that this decision will negatively impact tourist visits to Luxor, and perhaps on the tourism sector in general, especially as the ministry reportedly plans to transfer even more statues, and rare and important archaeological paintings to the Grand Egyptian Museum.
This means that the Luxor Museum will be void of any pieces of historical value, he stressed.
Former Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass criticized the campaign, calling it "illogical". He said that placing important Luxor artifacts in the Grand Egyptian Museum would only highlight the greatness of the discovery and Luxor.
"Everybody would have agreed with this campaign if there had been a place for these coffins in the Luxor Museum. But in fact the museum cannot accommodate 30 coffins," he added.
Exhibiting the coffins at the Grand Egyptian Museum is better than placing them in Luxor Museum storage rooms, he told Al-Masry Al-Youm.
The Grand Egyptian Museum is located nearby the Giza Pyramids. Constructed on approximately 500,000 square meters, it is scheduled to be inaugurated in 2020. The upcoming museum is expected to be one of the largest museums in the world dedicated to the heritage of a single civilization housing around 100,000 artifacts from various periods of Egypt's history.
