What a silly question. Unless you know all the high level staff in that department, you can't answer the question. I do know from experience that there are very few jobs that only one individual is capable of succeeding at. If Abdul Abulbul Amir works as an assistant to that idiot and he can step in and do as good or better a job without grating on the nerves documentary viewers around the globe, then so be it. Frankly you don't need the director for a job like that anyway, just an articulate and informed spokesperson.
I do find Hawass horrendously annoying, and he’s also a massive Jew-hater.
Oh, wait, here I’m supposed to have something else, beginning with “however”.
;’)
He’s the Egyptian gov’ts face in the area of Egyptian antiquities, and he brooks no equals. When Gantenbrink built a robot to explore these very shafts, and did it with proper permission etc, he announced the findings. ZAHI has an exclusive on that privilege — so Gantenbrink, his associates, and his robot were kicked out. G even offered the robot to them so they could continue the exploration, NOPE forget it.
Nick Reeves used non-invasive techniques to look for unknown tombs in the Valley of the Kings, then got accused of smuggling artifacts or some BS, spent the next three years getting completely exonerated, but can’t work in Egypt now. And a year or two ago Hawass was denying that Reeves had “discovered” anything with the non-invasive techniques, even though he basically showed them where to dig (the so-called KV-64 site) — and in a genius-level non-sequitur, Hawass then claimed that HE was going to discover this tomb “now”. Huh? Relying on psychic powers are we, Zowie?
Hawass himself was in hot water years ago, suspended from his position of the time (which was a subordinate position to what he has now), over the same type of thing, accusations that he was involved with smuggling artifacts out of Egypt for money. He fought back and won, got his job back, and eventually got a promotion.
I think his legacy will be a mixed bag of good things, really bad things, and exceedingly stupid things. His heavy-handed “restorations” using concrete, strong-armed coffin openings (and not in clean-room conditions), rejection of scientific dating, rapid-fire non-specialist clearing of tombs and other sites, and just generally trying to turn every site in Egypt into Disneyland in a drive to boost tourism, while shooting off his mouth about gambling, false accusations of looting, about the Jews, etc etc all combine to make him look like an antisocial buffoon.
The good things include trying to keep some popular sites from further deterioration, and trying to boost education about Egypt’s ancient (non-Arab, pre-Muzzie) past among Egypt’s youth.
And, as was pointed out, he’s better than any probable replacement when the Islamofascists take over. Y’know, assuming they do. That’s a good thing.