Friday, September 30, 2011

Thousands of unregistered antiquities found in museum

Al Masry Al Youm (Marwa Yassine)

Azza Farouq, dean of Cairo University’s Faculty of Archaeology, has revealed that 3000 unregistered antiquities were found recently in the rest rooms of the faculty’s museum on campus.

“Some pieces were destroyed by the humidity,” she said.

Museum curators use the rest rooms as storage places.

“Not registering antiquities is a crime,” Farouq said, adding that she has formed a special committee to register the items.

Preliminary reports said that the pieces are rarer than others displayed in major Egyptian or foreign museums, and that they have a high value.

3 comments:

Stuart Tyler said...

Hi Andie,

The findings are unacceptable in 2011.

From 1950-70 (somewhere within there) museums realised their poor management of artifacts meant items being re-found (and sometimes thrown into a skip if they were seen to have little financial value - i kid you not!). This was certainly the case in the UK and no doubt elsewhere.

In 2011 this is not a slip, but a real lack of care and attention to detail and historical artifacts in need of preservation.

Especially in the country of origin, ALL museums need to record, preserve, photograph and make public EVERY artifact found in the past, present and future of Egyptology.

There simply is no excuse anymore for stockpiling artifacts and forgetting they are there.

Thats my 2 cents on the subject, which i feel passionate about.

Stuart

AliceG said...

Good input, Stuart. This, the closing of sites and the families in Luxor are doing some serious harm to the country. Not just the antiquities, but the economy. What the heck are they thinking? And so much for Zahi taking care of things. Very upsetting. Very unprofessional and totally unforgivable.

rymerster said...

I would hope that moving forward the world's universities could work together with Egypt to catalogue and arrange appropriate storage for the majority of items and suitable display for the most interesting pieces in museums and art galleries.

I'm positive that having displays of Egyptian art outside Egypt plays a major role in promoting the tourist industry. Surely some of these "found" pieces could be utilised to help build tourism again.