Expansion of Supreme Council of Antiquities

Heritage Key (Ann Wuyts)

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities is to expand, with the addition of a new department for archaeological collections. Among its duties will be the registration of privately owned artefacts, as well as supervising the transfers of ownership on these items. The Archaeological Collections Administration is established to facilitate the execution of the newly amended Antiquities Protection Law. The announcement comes only days after Egypt held its first conference on the repatriation of artefacts, showing that Egypt's focus is not just on retrieving looting antiquities from foreign collections, but mapping and saveguarding those 'at home' as well.

Farouk Hosni, Egypt's Minister of Culture, announced the establishment of the first department for archaeological collections, the Archaeological Collections Administration (ACA), as a part of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). The new division will be responsible for determining the archaeological status of transferred individual or institutional collections in accordance with the recently amended Antiquities Protection Law.

Those amendments lead to tougher punishments for theft and smuggling of ancient treasures, as well as cancelling the percentage of movable antiquities that were previously granted to 'outstanding' foreign excavation missions who discovered then.