The egotistical Hawass is baaaack! Less than a month after leaving his post as Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities due to revolution fallout, Zahi Hawass has returned to the job.
Egypt
Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities has released the final list of the historic objects that have gone missing from the Egyptian Museum since the January 25th revolution began … while in Spain, a museum finds a van Dyck in its basement.
The New York Times is reporting on its ArtsBeat blog that the Egyptian Antiquities head, Zahi Hawass, may resign after a month of defending his work as the head of antiquities and, in more troubling news, he has revealed some facts that suggest Egypt’s ancient heritage isn’t exactly safe … [NYTimes' Artsbeat blog]
On February 2nd, a post published on now-Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass’s blog categorically stated: “I would like the people of the world to know that today all of the Egyptian monuments are safe.” The post assures us that no major Egyptian archaeological sites have been seriously damaged besides the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, at the epicenter of the protests that recently overthrew Mubarak’s government (of which Zahi Hawass was a prominent part). Oh, but there was also the “looting of the storage magazine in Qantara,” during which an unknown amount of antiquities were stolen, though 288 were reportedly returned. Hawass’s blog gives a uniquely skewed perspective on Egyptian lootings over the past weeks, not to be trusted, but certainly not to be discounted either.
If Twitter has been dominating the discussion of social media and the current protests in Egypt, they aren’t the only social network filling the intertubes with oodles of information created by everyday people, media professionals, and governmental forces.
Sure the other social media channels have suffered because of the internet clampdown that made their use near impossible but now that the country of Egypt is (kinda) connected again to the World Wide Web, we can go beyond Twitter’s textual minimalism to explore more vivid realities, notably Flickr.
![Post image for Unverified Tweets: Egyptian Museum In the Middle of Turmoil [UPDATING…]](http://hyperallergic.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/egyptianmuseumfire_HOME.jpg)
The information is coming fast and furious via regarding the Egyptian Museum and the attack of protesters by pro-government authorities in Tahrir Square. So we are compiling a list of tweets to keep you up-to-date on what’s happening on the ground. Many of these tweets are from Tahrir Square, and others, like @SultanAlQassemi, are from elsewhere but from people monitoring the situation very closely. We have also added some Twitter commentary from others. Here they are unverified and unedited, and (mostly) in chronological order.
[UPDATE]: Museum has been attacked with molotov cocktails, no verified reports of the museum actually on fire, though rumors fly.
There have been many reports about damage to Egypt’s art treasures, but reports are conflicting at best, which may be because the facts are being caught up in the spin of the Egyptian government’s propaganda campaign to represent themselves as the group capable of maintaining the safety of the public … and the treasures of Egypt.
Amman, Jordan — The decision to leave Egypt wasn’t easy on me, but I was out of options. Feeling alone, broke, beaten up, and lonely in a country I can’t predict anymore made me feel uncertain about the future. This revolution has been a life-altering event to each one of the people witnessing it, and I’m no exception.
Cairo — I won’t lie to you. I was scared yesterday. I got in a fight with a group of passersby in one of the poorest neighborhood in Cairo. The people thought I was reporting for Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based news channel that has been the target of major government propaganda over the last few days. People were pulling me from my clothes, hitting me on my back and dragging me to the floor until I was saved by a reasonable police officer who pretended to arrest me and my friends to calm the crowds.
Unreported Heritage News is quoting Dr. Gerry Scott, director of the American Research Center in Egypt, who provides an assessment of the damage sustained by a few major archeological sites in the protest-racked country. He says there is apparently damage at the Giza Pyramids and an attempt to loot the Temple at Karnak.
