A century of German excavation in Egypt

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Hawass said that celebrating the GAI's 100th anniversary was a chance to pay homage to the great Werner Kaiser, who strengthened the relationship between German and Egyptian Egyptologists. He also paid tribute to the work of Rainer Stadelmann in Dahshur and elsewhere, and especially to the restoration he carried out on the statue of Senefru and the training programme Stadelmann offered to young archaeologists. In recent years, Hawass continued, the GAI sponsored many important projects including Gunter Dreyer's excavations at Abydos, where he found the earliest royal tombs in Egypt. He also praised Daniel Polz's work on the royal and private cemeteries of the Second Intermediate Period and early New Kingdom at Dra' Abu Al-Naga on Luxor's west bank, the excavation of Uli Hrtung at Buto, and the ongoing work in Elephantine.

"I am very happy to see, as we look back on a century of progress in Egyptology, that there are many Egyptians among the coming generation of young scholars who will built on the firm foundations laid by institutions like the FAI over the last hundred years," Hawass said.

Gunter Dryer, director of the GAI in Cairo, described the celebration as not only marking 100 years of working in Egypt but 100 years of hospitality in Egypt.

If you click on the photograph on the above page, it also shows restorers at work assembling the fragments of a predynastic clay jar (as well as the three oval clay vessels from Maadi archaeological site and the 6th century vessel showing St Abu Mina).

The article also says that Hawass has said that The Louvre in Paris has said that it cannot lend the Zodiac of Dendara to Egypt as the process of dismantling it from a wooden plaque glued on the Museum's ceilingwould inevitably damage it. The Louvre has, however, offered to lend any other items instead.