Egypt antiquities chief faces jail time

Zahi Hawass sentenced over land dispute, while former prime minister set to stand trial on corruption charges.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's ebullient minister for antiquities, has been sentenced to a year in jail after he refused to implement a court decision in a land dispute.

The court on Sunday also fined him 10,000 Egyptian pounds (more than $1,600) in damages.

Hawass, who has reached international acclaim as an Egyptologist, said he would appeal the ruling and told journalists had the court's decision had not targeted him "personally".

The sentence will be suspended until the appeal ruling.

Hawass was named antiquities minister last month, but had held the position as head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's ousted former president.

Sunday's court ruling concerned a complaint brought against Hawass when he was Egypt's antiquities chief under Mubarak. Hawass was ordered to return the land to the plaintiff, but had allegedly refused to do so.

The ruling comes as other ministers who served under Mubarak found themselves the target of separate investigations.

Read the rest here

UPDATE!  The Zahi Hawass saga continues!  It turns out our favorite controversial figure also produces "a line of rugged khakis, denim shirts and carefully worn leather jackets that are meant, according to the catalog copy, to hark 'back to Egypt’s golden age of discovery in the early 20th century.'”

Read about the whole thing here (via NYTimes)

Egyptian Museum of Cairo

Museum Syndicate is a independently owned and operated website that showcases over 75 museum's collections from around the world.  You can search the Brooklyn Museum to the National Portrait Gallery in London.  Naturally, I checked out the Cairo Museum.

There are 122 objects images from the Cairo Museum on Museum Sybdicate. They are photographed and thumb-nailed in a simple but clear catalog format.  While this catalog is nowhere near a definitive collection of the thousands of objects in the Cairo Museum, it can give a person a taste of what is housed inside.  

Here is a sample:

	Funerary Mask of Yuya		Unknown Artist
	Geese		Unknown Artist
	Giant Statue of Akhenaten	1350 BC	Unknown Artist
	Gold Cobra		Unknown Artist
	Gold Funerary Mask of Tutankhamun		Unknown Artist

If you are particularly interested in the "Giant Statue of Akhenaten" , for example, click on the name of the object, and  it brings you to a page with that looks like this:

TITLE:	Giant Statue of Akhenaten
OWNER:	Egyptian Museum of Cairo
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:	Egypt
DATE OF CREATION:	1350 BC
TAGGED WITH:	Ancient Egypt Sculptures and Carvings
JIGSAW PUZZLE	Click Here to Play

Happy hunting!

The Big Picture: A harrowing, historic week in Egypt

The Boston Globe's Big Picture series is amazing. 

In February of this year the Big Picture a ran a piece on the Egyptian Protests titled, A harrowing, historic week in Egypt .  The pictures are all high resolution and each has a clear caption describing what we are viewing. 

As a collection the pictures can give a person a taste of what it was like "on the ground" in Tahrir square and throughout Egypt.

Here is a sample:

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Once again here is the link to the Big Picture web page.  Enjoy!

"Black-Market Trinkets From Space"

The New York Times ran an interesting article today regarding the illegal sale of meteorite fragments on the black market.  Apparently, The Gebel Kamil Crater in Southern Egypt is popular site for plundering these meteor fragments.

A 6-gram fragment of meteroite found in the Gebel Kamil Crater

“'It’s a black market,' said Ralph P. Harvey, a geologist at Case Western Reserve University who directs the federal search for meteorites in Antarctica. 'It’s as organized as any drug trade and just as illegal.'

The discovery of a rich and historically significant meteorite crater in southern Egypt, just north of the Sudanese border, has shown the voracious appetite for new fragments. Just as scientists appeared to be on the cusp of decrypting the evidence to solve an ancient puzzle, looters plundered the desolate site, and the political chaos in Egypt seems to ensure that the scientists will not be going back anytime soon"

It seems that anything that can be moved, dug up, pryed off, or chipped away, has a price on the black market.

Read the entire article here.

The Muslim Brotherhood in a Post-Mubarak Egypt

"The Muslim Brotherhood (known in Arabic as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) is Egypt's oldest and largest Islamist organization. Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, it is widely considered the world's most influential Islamist organization, with numerous branches and affiliates". -Jayshree Bajoria, Senior Staff Writer for The Council of Foreign Relations


Now that Mubarak is out of power, what does the future hold for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?  How will this affect Egypt's relationship with the United States and Europe?  Now that democratic elections are underway in Egypt, how will the relatively moderate Muslim Organization fair?

Below is a video of Ed Husain, senior fellow at The Council on Foreign Relations, discussing the Muslim Brotherhood's role in the "new Egypt".

Here is a link to The Council on Foreign Relations' website providing a comprehensive overview of the history of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In addition here is an informative piece on the Brotherhood's role in the revolution from PBS Frontline

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Dr Zahi Hawass

Dr. Zahi Hawass is the current Secretary General of The Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt.  He stepped down from this position because of his close ties to the Mubarak regime; however, he returned to the position less than a month later.

As a larger than life personality, he is never far from controversy.

Here he is in 2009 discussing his role in managing the tourist crowds, his relationship to the pyramids, and copy-righting the pyramids.



In 2007 he appeared on Al Jazeera to discuss Egypt's policy on stolen artifacts.


More recently, he was interviewed by CNN on the telephone describing what was looted and destroyed in the Cairo Museum during the protests.


As it turns out, Dr. Hawass now admits that looting and thievery is more widespread and more of a serious problem than he originally stated.

Dr. Hawass has posted on his blog a list of sites and antiquities that are in danger of being damaged.

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