Egypt

Quick! Hide your pyramids

Guardian Unlimited

Entertaining piece about the reports that Egypt is planning to copyright its ancient heritage, written by Guardian staff news writer Maev Kennedy.

Egypt wants to copyright its ancient monuments and artefacts. Museum shops, garden centres and trinket stalls beware...

I'm very worried about our sarcophagus. It's basalt and brass, remarkably heavy for its diminutive size, clearly displayed on our bookshelf, and I anticipate the arrival of Zahi Hawass into our living room at any moment.

Acquired for 15p at a parish jumble sale, I believe it to be a 1920s souvenir manufactured in Egypt rather than a western colonialist rip-off of Dr Hawass's ancestral heritage, but that may not save us. The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities is a large man with a short temper, and things may get nasty.

When not leading excavations, opening exhibitions, or belabouring the British Museum for not sending him the Rosetta Stone to display in one of the clutch of new museums he's building in Cairo, he has now pledged to go after anyone, anywhere in the world, in search of copyright payments for replicas of Egypt's ancient monuments or museum pieces.

Although such a provision is apparently likely to become law, as so often with Dr Hawass's pronouncements it's not clear how much any of this is serious, and how much a display of public huffing and puffing.

See the above page for the full story.

- Egypt Forum On Looted Antiquities Calls For Unity
France24 With photos of the Nefertiti bust, Hawass in his familiar speech-with-mics mode and the Rosetta Stone. Egyptian antiquities supremo Zahi Hawass on Wednesday opened an international conference on recovering ancient artefacts from abroad, saying...

- More Responses To Covering Of Mummies In The Uk
Inquirer.net It is interesting that Hawass takes this line because Egypt's own Royal Mummy room at the Cairo museum in Tahrir Square lines up the royal mummies like sardines in glass boxes. Their bodies are covered but their faces and occasionally...

- Egyptian Plans To Copyright Antiquities
BBC Egypt's MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids. Zahi Hawass, who chairs Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the BBC the law would...

- Bad Feeling Over The Potential Of The Rosetta Stone Loan
Guardian Unlimited (Charlotte Higgins) A good summary of the current grouches between Britain and Egypt. Dr Zahi Hawass, the sometimes explosive and always colourful secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, today criticised the...

- Zahi Hawass And Stolen Treasures
http://www.cairomagazine.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=1238&format=html A Cairo Magazine article about Zahi Hawass on "stolen"artefacts, and in particular the Rosetta Stone which is on display at the British Musem: "Egypt is once again calling...

Egypt