Replies

How awful. Hawass is a good man who loves his country and its history.

Thanks arderkrag. He really drives me nuts, and his negatives outweigh any of his positives (and purported positives), but the situation in Egypt will go from bad to worse. At least all my idiot lib relatives won't continue to claim that GWB singlehandedly smashed the entire museum in Baghdad, then laughed as he pissed on the ashes.

Fanatical Muslims hate non-Islamic religions. In Afghanistan, many people first heard of the Taliban when they dynamited the giant Buddha statues early in 2001...

Thanks ClearCase_guy. And there aren't any real Muzzies who aren't fanatical, so, the Egyptian antiquities will probably wind up in private collections throughout the world.

The Islamists will destroy 4000 years of history in a generation.

Thanks Straight Vermonter. Zahi's big thing was to create a Disneyland of antiquities, and to that end ordered a lot of "repair" using concrete. This is going to be a disaster. The Chicago House has been drawing exact copies of all the inscriptions and reliefs and other art for nearly 100 years, in an effort to preserve what still exists today so that they can still be studied after the originals are long gone. And the Aswan High Dam has pushed up the water table, dissolving subsoil salts, and the inscriptions (already damaged by the ravages of time) have been flaking right off the major lowlying monuments for forty years. And that's gov't work. :')

Hawass was as crooked as the rest of them. If you (a university) wanted to conduct a dig, you had better spend half your budget on taking him out for a good time, or you are screwed. He was a backward man in a backward culture in a backward country. When I think of all the things that were returned to egypt, uh! They'll all be destroyed by the muzzies now.

Thanks Born to Conserve. He makes some accusations against his major detractors, but the real reason he's quitting may be to avoid serving a jail term for some eminent-domain style stuff he did, moving hundreds of squatters out of some ancient sites in order to study and conserve the sites.

sad.

Thanks ken21.

These are the dreams of our leader for the US. Destroy our heritage and history and form a new socialistic era.

Thanks vetvetdoug.

Seems like just yesterday Hawass was screaming at the western world to return Egyptian antiques to Egypt. Thank goodness not all listened and in the future to see the real deal may only be outside of Egypt.

Thanks ladyvet, yeah, good luck with that now. He'll be grateful that pieces like the bust of Nefertiti and the Rosetta Stone (which the British stole from the French, who stole it in Egypt) are safely locked up in European museums.

Although I do not have the knowledge you indicated my impression was that he was a bureaucrat appointed because of connections and not ability. It was as if he had to appear in every documentary and he would behave as if he were the discoverer or resident expert. My personal opinion is that you would not acquire access to anything without his permission, based on whatever and his personal aggrandizement. I guess he may be a "bloviator".

That's the best summary of the situation I've ever seen, thanks Tuketu

I always heard the Nazis shot the nose off that critter.

I think it was originally blamed on the Turks; my wild guess is, it fell off in antiquity, or possibly early medieval times. Thanks West Texas Chuck

Don't really care about Dr Hawass, but it's sad to read about the looting. I hope someone steps in to protect these sites.

Thanks nuconvert, and well put.

Dr. Hawass was one of my favorite guys on the History Channel UNTIL I heard him praising Hamas and the PLO and excoriating Israel... I have always loved the art of Ancient Egypt and am deeply distressed by its destruction at the hands of these fanatics. But Dr. Hawass is being a wee bit hypocritical.

Thanks left that other site. Yeah, there are some topics about Zowie's misconduct regarding the "restoration" of an old synagogue or two -- no Egyptian Jews left -- about which he stated there would be no Jews allowed until the "crimes" (which are entirely imaginary) against the Muzzie eyesore on Mt Zion stopped.

Looks like he is a casualty of the "revolution", as is the tourist industry.

Thanks Rome2000. Whatever Hawass may have been or done, whatever follows is going to be much, much worse.

Oh, it's all so depressing. The days of Lord Carnarvon are over.

Of late, Zowie has been backing off his bipolar ragging on Howard Carter and Lord C. I got the BluRay called "Egypt" which is all History Channel shows starring Hawass, but having an English-speaking host and narrators. The captions and menus have some ESL-type mistakes, and Zowie was obviously unscripted, because his intros frequently wander off into incoherence as he seeks over-the-top hyperbolies. Thanks Beowulf9.

Maybe we can finally find out what's under the foot of the Sphinx now.

Thanks AlmaKing. Yeah, I'd like to see that. John Anthony West may have something to say about Hawass' fall -- a couple of years ago he thought that he and Robert Schoch was going to be able to get some tests done that they'd wanted in order to find out how old the Sphinx is and whatnot. They also want to drill down into the cavity to see what's down there. The Dream Stele (which is New Kingdom in date, and still stands between the paws) notes that the Sphinx guards a door.

Thanks JoeProBono.

My wife and I laugh and say "divorce him!" every time we see him on TV.

Thanks dhs12345. Hey, if you say it three times...

All of a sudden the liberal elitists of Europe and America will howl about the revolution in Egypt. Somehow they will compartmentalize it all and forget how 0bama and Hillary supported it.

In a few years Chrissy Matthews will be recounting how all the damage to the Egyptian antiquities happened during the Bush administration. Luckily he'll be telling it to those around him who have already passed out, as he drinks 5 O'Clock out of an old Palmolive bottle. Thanks TigersEye.

Dr. Hawass, if you ever find yourself on this site, thank you for your life's work.

Thanks DustyMoment.

I believe this is old news and I believe Hawass is back.

If so I've spent a lot of time on a topic that's obsolete... but thanks decimon.

I've also heard complaints that he required huge "contributions" in order to work anywhere in Egypt and it was virtually impossible to work at any well known site.

Thanks Brytani. Anyone making any kind of discovery without letting him announce it would (at minimum) get kicked off the site and often right on out of Egypt. That happened to Gantenbrink, and to the French team which (with permission) drilled a peekhole in the Great Pyramid and verified a (sand-filled as it turned out) corridor discerned using microgravimetrics. They may have found a burial chamber, if not though, what is it?

There are also a couple of accounts of him making false accusations of black market antiquities dealings in order to get items back to Egypt.

I kinda assumed that the false accusations against Nick Reeves were made in order to get him out of the way. Zahi made disparaging remarks (without naming Reeves) about the non-invasive survey Reeves used to discover the site of KV-63 and the eventual KV-64 -- and yet the KV-64 site was exactly where Hawass was having his crews dig. 'Nothing is discovered until I find it.' Thanks reaganaut.

About time, IMHO.

Thanks Dryman. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Hawass' projects have resembled the return of the pharaohs to some people, but then, in a patronage-style society, people don't want to work, they just want to be on the payroll.

...it'll be similar, though on a much larger & important scale, to what the Palis did to the greenhouses the Israelis left behind in their last pull out.

We're lucky that anything remains from ancient Egypt (or ancient anywhere); in the Middle Kingdom there were already appropriations from Old Kingdom monuments, and it got worse in the New Kingdom, particularly under Ramses II "the Great". That gold scarab with Nefertiti's cartouche on it that was found on the ancient wreck (Ulu Burun) didn't get there because Bush was president back then. ;') But anyway, yeah, it's going to be bad. Thanks ApplegateRanch.

Kinda bizarre that these socalled criminals, thieves in the ME or Moslem countries, always only destroy pre-Islamic treasures! Why don't they destroy Islamic ones? Why is that?!

' The Saudis destroyed the actual house of Mohammed a few years back; no one had lived there, or even been allowed inside it, for centuries. Some Wahhab wacko concluded that it was some form of idolatry (unlike the Zamzam spring or the Kaaba, or the black stone in the kaaba, eh?) and it was ordered demolished. Thanks odds.