Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Egyptian museum inventory will not be completed in under 2 years

Al Masry Al Youm

The Egyptian Museum's inventory committee will not finish its work in less than two years, said Ra’fat al-Nabarawy, a member of the committee.

It will form seven subcommittees after Eid al-Fitr, which takes place at the end of August this year, to help the main committee and ensure that none of the artifacts are fake, Nabarawy added.

Around 1700 relics in the museum have been checked by the committee so far and all have been proved originals, Nabarawy said.

The committee also found two pieces previously thought to have been stolen from the museum after 28 January, known as the Friday of Anger.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I do not understand why this is being done. Is it because of the break in and theft or because it has never been done before, or because of the building of the new museum and i presume it includes all the material in storage below the museum? Can anyone enlighten me.

Andie said...

Well I'm guessing, so a more authoritative viewpoint would be most welcome. But I would guess that it is perhaps a mixture of two of your suggestions, if not all three.

There have been accounts of things going missing from the museum over the years, as well as things appearing (like the mummy of Hatshepsut!).

The fact that it took so long to produce an inventory of what was missing following the break-in highlighted that inventories aren't perhaps their strong point.

And as you say, there must be a proper record of everything that exists so that the right things leave to the GEM and the right things stay put - and nothing goes "missing" in the process.

Whether or not the place has had a proper inventory done in the past I simply don't know. Having seen photographs of certain parts of the storage areas (which made my hair stand on end) I would have thought that doing an inventory of it would be challenging.

It would certainly be wonderful to see the full inventory.

If any other news on the subject is published I will post it.