Egypt's archaeological sites and museums will be getting a security upgrade

This sounds like a very good development, not just because better-armed guards, if they are properly trained, will have more deterrent effect, but also because the security plans will "be updated periodically to meet new or unexpected challenges." One hopes that Egypt will settle down and fulfill its promise of establishing a stable democratically-run government, but gaming out the possible scenarios for political breakdown and creating agreed-upon contingency plans now is very prudent. It may be touchy to raise the question of whether the Tourism and Antiquities Police might once again melt away, as they did during the January uprising, but that sort of possibility has to be put on the table, just in case, so that if security does need to be turned over there are clear directions as to how the SCA can fill the security gap at least temporarily.

Excellent overview of what the Egyptologists saw and did during the 2010 Revolution

Kate Phizackerley and Andrea Byrnes of the Egyptological blog have posted a very informative and clearheaded summary of how the Egyptological and cultural heritage communities responded to the challenge posed by the revolution in Egypt. Well worth reading.

A Few Thoughts on the Egypt-Abu Dhabi-New York-Michigan-Virginia Smuggling Network

There is sure to be a lot more to come, but there are already plenty of interesting facts surfacing about the international antiquities smuggling network based on stories like this one from CNN. Among other things:

• the ring was truly international, not just in terms of the players involved, but more important, in terms of the objects they handled, which came not just out of Egypt but from Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan as well. That is alarming, as it shows that social networks amongst this sort of criminal are not naturally restrained by national or linguistic borders. That degree of cosmopolitan flexibility also jibes with reports that a smuggling network that had been operating out of Iraq turned to smuggling Tunisian antiquities under recently-deposed Tunisian president Ben Ali. Whether that network turns out to be the same as this one remains to be seen, but in any case the implication for law enforcement is clear: there is a clear need to develop stronger means of cooperation between police in different countries. To that end, former Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri had already begun (most recently at the annual ARCA meeting in Amelia, Italy) to call for antiquities trafficking to be recognized as falling under the category of international criminal conspiracy, a change that would enable intergovernmental police coordination like that which is possible for drug, human trafficking, and other such mafia-run smuggling operations.
• The advent of metal detector usage by looters in Middle Eastern countries is alarming, but it is not clear to me what the impact of this new technology will be on archaeological sites. By making it easier for looters to find what they really want, it might even lead to less widespread destruction of context. (Much would depend on how precious metal objects are distributed around a site, which would differ of course by civilization, etc.) On the other hand, it might lead to many more sites completely unknown to archaeologists being pillaged. One might even envisage a Portable Antiquities Scheme down the road -- not that this would necessarily be an optimal outcome.
• It is not clear what the customs agent means when he says there has been an escalation in Iraq, but the context implies he is talking about more digging in the last six months. That is news to me if true, and I'd be interested to hear what the Mesopotamian archaeologists or heritage professionals who may be reading this blog have to say.
• Abu Dhabi is certain to take some steps to clean up its act, though what these might be I do not know, as I do not know what steps Switzerland took after the Medici case. Anyone out there know much about free ports?

International Smuggling Ring Operating within US Cracked

Lots of intriguing information in this story, though the outlines mesh with what we know is the modus operandi by which antiquities make their way from countries of origin (here, Egypt) to collectors in faraway exotic places (here, Virginia): move the pieces to a free port like Dubai, from there to Manhattan dealer, either directly from a Dubai dealer -- or a foreign (Jordanian) dealer operating out of the free port -- or run through some other dealership (in this case in Bloomfield, Michigan). The Manhattan dealer -- who thanks to Paul Barford we know operated in midtown, on Second Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets -- then fabricates a false provenance (part of an old family collection, in this case the dealer's own family!) which the collector accepts. What is quite interesting in this particular case is that the collector has also been indicted for allegedly knowing that the provenance story was fiction. How the authorities could prove this is a puzzler but even if it cannot be proven it really does put collectors on notice to be very very careful from hereon in if they want to avoid major legal bills at the very least.

Who Cares about Zahi's Clothing Line?

The New York Times, apparently. While there are real stories that need investigating -- i.e., how it could possibly be that a museum employee could just happen to be in a Cairo train station and notice a bag that turns out to contain pieces stolen from the museum, or why it is that the museum was not more fully locked down in the days before it was looted, or why the guards on Egypt's sites and at their storerooms were either not armed or inadequately armed to prevent gangs of looters from overrunning them -- the Times lazily trolls blogs for a tempest in a teapot regarding Hawass'  deal with a clothing line manufacturer. The lede of the story exhibits a very distressing blindness about what really matters:

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s longtime chief antiquities official, has been criticized in recent months for many things: his closeness to former President Hosni Mubarak, some inconsistent reports on the safety of archaeological sites during the uprising and for his role in a dispute over an Egyptian museum bookstore, for which he now possibly faces jail time.

At the very least, "inconsistent reports on the safety of archaeological sites during the uprising" should read "his failure to secure the Egypt Museum and archaeological sites during and after the uprising". But one would have hoped that someone at the Times had a better sense of stories worth spending journalistic energy on.

A Matter of Priorities

Ahram reports that five days after meeting with the prime minister, Zahi Hawass has been officially reappointed, and more important, has held a half-hour meeting with the general who heads Egypt's armed forces 

to discuss security measures necessary to safeguard Egypt’s antiquities and efforts to be exerted to restore Egypt’s looted artefacts in collaboration with the world community and UNESCO.

Hawass told Ahram Online that the first order of the day is to repel the 500 encroachments on archaeological sites that have been found within the past two weeks, as well as the resumption of projects that were on halt due to the revolution.

The term "encroachments" normally does not refer to the storming of warehouses by armed gangs and to the digging of sites by armed looters, but to local squatters building cemeteries, houses, and farms on top of sites. The latter is a longstanding ongoing problem that Hawass has held conferences on in the past, and no doubt it is a problem that has worsened over the past two months. But to argue that it is "the first order of the day" at a time when sites and storerooms are under siege reflects a very odd sense of priorities. One would have thought that after all this time Hawass would have gone into  the meeting with the general with an action plan in hand to beef up site and storeroom security, and that he would have emerged announcing it was being put into effect. The lack of any such announcement is very disappointing.

More Information on How Underarmed Egypt's Site Guards Are

Another report of inadequately armed and inadequate numbers of Egyptian watchmen being driven off of archaeological sites by gangs armed with automatic weapons:

The watchmen complained that the small number of watchmen and their inadequate weapons facilitates made it difficult to protect such archeological sites.

Watchman Ruby Mohamed Abdel Salam said he worked with nine other watchmen to guard the 600 acre site in shifts. He said that he and his fellow watchmen were only armed with 9 mm pistols, which are no match for the automatic weapons used by the armed groups, especially considering the large area of land they are guarding. Abdel Salam also complained that their bullet supplies are running low.

If Zahi Hawass is really back in control of an organization 30,000 strong, backed by the interim government, how can it be that there aren't even enough bullets for the handguns, not to mention better weaponry and more guards?

We're Gonna Need More Guns, continued

Reports from Luxor Times and Al Ahram to the effect that ten armed masked men broke into a storehouse in Tel El daba', Facous, Sharkia governate, which was guarded by a policeman and three "Ghafir" guards working for the SCA; it is not completely clear from the reports if all four were armed but the Luxor Times describes the gang as having taken away "their weapons", so it appears that more than one was armed, though no information is provided as to whether these arms were handguns or automatic weapons. The gang apparently caught these four by surprise, or perhaps they were unwilling to engage in a firefight they would probably have lost, or perhaps they feared having their families targeted if they fought back (this was a common problem in Iraq where both site guards and looters often were locals who knew each other).

This is by no means the first time since the revolution that an armed gang has attacked a storeroom, but by now one would have hoped that the SCA and the Egyptian government would have responded by providing their own guards and police with the arms and additional security needed to fend off such attempts. But with the country still in transitional turmoil, and Zahi Hawass first in then out then in, that has proved difficult.

Clearly, more needs to be done to protect all storerooms (not to mention sites!). This particular storeroom contained artifacts excavated by Dutch and German archaeologists over the last thirty years; other storerooms that have been looted also have contained the fruits of foreign-led excavations (including one by the ultra-wealthy Metropolitan Museum). One wonders what steps, if any, those archaeological organizations and their governments might be taking now to beef up security at least for the artifacts that their archaeologists helped bring out of the ground. Obviously it would be difficult if not impossible for a foreign group to arm Egyptian guards, but surely there must be other steps that could be taken to help, including paying locals to set up a monitoring system to warn guards of impending attacks, providing remote sensing devices to detect intruders, hardening the sites themselves, etc. Does anyone out there know if any such plans are afoot?

Resistance to UNESCO Visit: Interference in Protecting Egypt's Heritage is "Antiquities Colonisation", Says Hawass

This is a painful article to read. One admires the patriotic spirit and sense of pride that leads Noureddin to assert that Egyptians "are totally able to protect our monuments" and that lead Hawass to reject offers by international organizations to help protect Egypt's heritage, and under normal circumstances these assertions and rejections would be warranted. But these aren't normal circumstances. Normally gangs of armed looters do not attack guarded sites or storehouses.

Something the AAMD and AIA Could Do to Help Egyptian Archaeologists

A report in Nature on the risks to Egypt's heritage notes that

some break-ins, particularly those at storage warehouses, do seem to be targeting antiquities to be smuggled out of the country for sale on the international black market. "Some of this material has huge market value," says Malek. The warehouses hold material from archaeological digs, for example fragments of loose wall reliefs from tombs. Much of it has never been properly described or published, meaning that it will be impossible ever to know for sure what has been lost.

This last sentence is key, and points to a major failing on the part not just of Egypt but of the international community of archaeologists, museum directors, and others devoted to preserving the ancient past. Instead of merely providing "professional support to.. identify and reclaim missing objects", as the AIA/AAMD joint statement urges its members to do, these organizations should also be focusing on protecting what has not yet been stolen but is at risk. One step that could and should be taken immediately is to organize a crash program to at least create an archive of photos, if not full descriptions and publication (though they are trained to be fastidious, archaeologists should not let the best should be the enemy of the good here), for the huge number of artifacts that are piled up in Egypt's storerooms, warehouses and museums. Such a program might prove to be a useful pilot leading to similar efforts in other countries.

If cost is an issue, here's a suggestion. Collectors and dealers have long complained about the archaeological community's failure to publish finds, though these complaints have seldom if ever been accompanied by offers to underwrite the costs. Perhaps it is time for Kaywin Feldman and Elizabeth Bartman to sit down with Shelby White and Arthur Houghton. 

We're Going to Need More Guns

This report from Zahi Hawass (via Derek Fincham) is extremely disturbing. Even "well guarded" storage depots, in which guards have been armed with handguns, are vulnerable to attacks by gangs of automatic-weapon-wielding looters. The depot raided in this case contained finds from both Egyptian and British and French teams.

This is the first indication I have seen that guards have been armed at all; as noted in my post yesterday, Hawass has complained that his security is not armed. So this may be a step forward. But if so, it is clearly still inadequate, in ways that should easily have been anticipated. The basic modus operandi of Egyptian looters -- large gangs armed with automatic weapons -- mirrors the tactics employed in Iraq out on archaeological sites in the 2003-2007 period, when the antiquities board was not permitted to rebuild its site police and the US military ignored the problem, as the Egyptian military seems unfortunately to be doing here. In many cases in Iraq, as now in Egypt, site guards were driven off, or if not, were threatened with harm to themselves and to their families (the looters tended to be locals who knew the guards).

Some sites were protected in Iraq, however, by tribal groups that had longstanding relations with university-based archaeologists who paid the tribes to provide site security. One has to wonder whether the British or French made any effort to enlist some of the Egyptian locals they must have ties with, to try to beef up security at the depot. One also has to wonder what other foreign archaeologists are doing right now to help Egyptians protect the digs they may have worked on and the fruits of that work.

Those would just be stopgap measures. In the absence of police, only the Egyptian military can provide the kind of force needed to deter looting on a wide scale by large groups of determined looters armed with automatic weapons.

Hawass: No Tourist Police, No Army on Sites

In a very illuminating interview, Zahi Hawass at long last makes clear how little power he wielded, despite his high public profile as head of an agency employing 30,000 responsible for one of Egypt's most important sources of revenue. The military, which had been protecting sites until 10 days ago, has withdrawn, but the tourist police have not filled the security gap, and Hawass now explains that the site guards under his control are unarmed and therefore incapable of protecting sites from gangs of looters:

people come with guns. They stand in front of my security people, who run away, because they are not armed. In the past, Police refused to give them weapons.

Assuming things are as bad as he claims (and there is no reason to think otherwise, since many of the sad facts he adduces here have been independently confirmed already by archaeologists), Hawass is to be commended for resigning under these conditions, and for using his resignation to call attention to the failure of the transitional military government to continue military security on sites. 


What can be done now by those outside Egypt who wish to help that country secure its heritage during this unstable phase in the democratic revolution? The answer can't just be to issue public statements deploring what is happening and calling on the Egyptian authorities to protect sites, as the AIA/AAMD press release does. While necessary, that is unlikely to have much effect on its own. And while these organizations rightly call on their own members to provide expertise supporting Egyptian efforts to identify and reclaim missing objects, curators and archaeologists are not trained in site security. One thing that the AAMD's member museums could do, however, would be to pull together resources -- money and their own best security people -- to at the very least try to hire locals to secure the storehouses and sites connected to archaeological digs that they have been jointly engaged in with the Egyptians. This need not, and probably cannot, involve buying AK-47s for site guards, as was done by some institutions and individuals for a few dig sites in Iraq; but many other steps short of that are doable.


But only the Egyptian military can really handle the security demands. We know that the Egyptian military has longstanding and strong professional connections with the US military, and that archaeologists have participated in joint military trainings in Egypt such as the Bright Star exercise. We also know that the Smithsonian has been developing new and potentially extremely valuable interagency links to the US military, largely as a result of the initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian's Richard Kurin to bring disaster relief assistance for Haiti's cultural sector after the earthquake. It is these networks of relationships that the archaeological and museum community needs to somehow tap into. 


That means, for starters, a focus on:

1. identifying and work contacts with the Egyptian military to urge them to deploy troops to secure sites.
2. identifying and working contacts within the US military to urge them to contact their Egyptian counterparts to express concern about the security vacuum on archaeological sites.
3. offering material support, not just in the form of archaeological expertise to put humpty dumpty together again, but also in ways that would make it easier for the Egyptians to secure and guard their sites. (Just to be clear: there is almost nothing the US military could do directly to help -- we have no deployable equivalent to the Italian carabinieri, and even if we did have such capability the Egyptian military would never countenance American troops being in a position where they might have to fire on Egyptian citizens. The support here would have to be in the form of financial and logistical support for whatever the Egyptian military says it needs.)

More on the Looting of the Cairo Museum: It Appears to Have Been Left Unguarded

Zahi Hawass has posted on his blog a report on the looting of the museum (see below). It is a self-damning account: Hawass admits that the museum was not well guarded, "unfortunately", but his account strongly implies that the museum was hardly guarded at all. Only three tourist officers were in the museum, and they were there only because they were not able to get out before the curfew. The museum thus was massively vulnerable, and was saved from a far worse fate only because the mob of 1,000 that scaled the wall pillaged the newly built gift shop in the mistaken belief, Hawass tells us, that they were in the museum itself.

So, to sum up, in the wake of a revolution in Tunisia that made it very likely there would be unrest in Egypt, the national museum had no contingency plan in place. Nor have other museums or the archaeological sites been secured: Hawass tells us that "I could not find anyone to protect the antiquities at the site" of Abusir, for instance, and looters armed with guns and a truck have emptied a storehouse of the Port Said Museum, while, unmentioned by Hawass, the Memphis Museum has been reported looted.

That security was so lax is astonishing, especially after the object lesson one would have thought the looting of Iraq's Museum and archaeological sites taught us all. Hawass should be held responsible for this failure, along with whatever museum security experts the museum and the antiquities council have been using. Beyond that, the international community of heritage protection organizations needs to stop pretending that security against looting is something they can leave to others so they can focus on the nicer tasks of conservation, excavation, and tourism-related development. The need to make securing and policing sites and museums job one should have been learned from Iraq. Maybe it will be now.

The Situation in Egyptian Antiquities Today

On Friday, January 28, 2011, when the protest marches began in Cairo, I heard that a curfew had been issued that started at 6.00pm on Friday evening until 7.00am on Saturday morning.  Unfortunately, on that day the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, was not well guarded.  About a thousand people began to jump over the wall on the eastern side of the museum into the courtyard.  On the western side of the museum, we recently finished something I was very proud of, a beautiful gift shop, restaurant and cafeteria. The people entered the gift shop and stole all the jewellery and escaped; they thought the shop was the museum, thank God!  However, ten people entered the museum when they found the fire exit stairs located at the back of it.

 As every one knows, the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, is naturally lit and due to the architectural style of it, there are glass windows on its roof.  The criminals broke the glass windows and used ropes to get inside, there is a distance of four metres from the ceiling to the ground of the museum.  The ten people broke in when I was at home and, although I desperately wanted to go to the museum, I could not leave my house due to the curfew.  In the morning, as soon as I woke up, I went directly there.  When I arrived, I found out that, the night before, three tourist police officers had stayed there overnight because they were not able to get out before the curfew was put in place.  These officers, and many young Egyptians who were also there, helped to stop more people from entering the museum.  Thankfully, at 10.00pm on Friday night, the army arrived at the museum and gave additional security assistance.

I found out that one criminal was still at the museum, too.  When he had asked the people guarding the museum for water, they took his hands and tied him to the door that lead to the gift shop so that he could not escape!  Luckily, the criminals who stole the jewellery from the gift shop did not know where the jewellery inside the museum is kept.  They went into the Late Period gallery but, when they found no gold, they broke thirteen vitrines and threw the antiquities on the floor.  Then the criminals went to the King Tutankhamun galleries.  Thank God they opened only one case!  The criminals found a statue of the king on a panther, broke it, and threw it on the floor.  I am very thankful that all of the antiquities that were damaged in the museum can be restored, and the tourist police caught all of the criminals that broke into it.  On Saturday, the army secured the museum again and guarded it from all sides.  I left the museum at 3.00pm on Saturday, 29, 2011.

What is really beautiful is that not all Egyptians were involved in the looting of the museum.  A very small number of people tried to break, steal and rob.  Sadly, one criminal voice is louder than one hundred voices of peace.  The Egyptian people are calling for freedom, not destruction.  When I left the museum on Saturday, I was met outside by many Egyptians, who asked if the museum was safe and what they could do to help.  The people were happy to see an Egyptian official leave his home and come to Tahrir Square without fear; they loved that I came to the museum.

The curfew started again on Saturday afternoon at 4.00pm, and I was receiving messages all night from my inspectors at Saqqara, Dahsur, and Mit Rahina. The magazines and stores of Abusir were opened, and I could not find anyone to protect the antiquities at the site. At this time I still do not know what has happened at Saqqara, but I expect to hear from the inspectors there soon. East of Qantara in the Sinai, we have a large store containing antiquities from the Port Said Museum. Sadly, a large group, armed with guns and a truck, entered the store, opened the boxes in the magazine and took the precious objects. Other groups attempted to enter the Coptic Museum, Royal Jewellery Museum, National Museum of Alexandria, and El Manial Museum. Luckily, the foresighted employees of the Royal Jewellery Museum moved all of the objects into the basement, and sealed it before leaving.

My heart is broken and my blood is boiling. I feel that everything I have done in the last nine years has been destroyed in one day, but all the inspectors, young archaeologists, and administrators, are calling me from sites and museums all over Egypt to tell me that they will give their life to protect our antiquities. Many young Egyptians are in the streets trying to stop the criminals. Due to the circumstances, this behaviour is not surprising; criminals and people without a conscience will rob their own country. If the lights went off in New York City, or London, even if only for an hour, criminal behaviour will occur. I am very proud that Egyptians want to stop these criminals to protect Egypt and its heritage.

At this time, the Internet has not been restored in Egypt. I had to fax this statement to my colleagues in Italy for it to be uploaded in London on my website.