Egypt will not permit any new foreign expeditions to begin excavations in southern Egypt for the coming decade in an attempt to preserve the monuments, the antiquities chief said on Wednesday.
Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said concentration is instead needed at sites in the Nile Delta and in the desert.
"We say this for the sake of the monuments," Hawass told reporters. ``We are not going to please you [foreigners] and destroy the monuments.''
He said there are 300 foreign expeditions in the country.
"Those are scholars and re-spected ones, working in the field and who know the value of Egyptian monuments," he said. "But we also have amateurs, who can damage the monuments."
Most of the expeditions concentrate their work in the south of the country, where rich archaeological sites include the temples of Luxor and Karnak and the Valley of the Kings.
The ban on new expeditions is part of a series of measures taken by the council after a British expedition made headlines over the summer by claiming -- in a program aired on the US Discovery Channel -- to have identified the mummy of Queen Nefertiti.
Egyptian council officials were angry at the report, which they felt sidelined the council, and rejected the claims, saying the mummy was a man.
Hawass also said the British team violated a contract that obligates archaeologists to announce any discoveries through the council and not independently.
Amid his furious attack on Joan Fletcher, the head of the British team, Hawass said the archaeologist sent him a letter denying that she had said the mummy belongs to Nefertiti.
"Joan said she never said this is Nefertiti. She said that she just thought she was Nefertiti," he said. "I wonder how someone deceived the whole world, and now she is telling us she didn't."
Egypt has long lamented antiquities that have been taken out of Egypt, including the Nefertiti bust and the Rosetta Stone, which is on display in the British Museum. But Hawass said he could only ask for the return of antiquities taken after 1970, according to a UNESCO treaty of that year that does not apply retroactively.
"We have a catalog of all artifacts that were taken out illegally from Egypt after 1970," said Hawass, who leads a campaign for the return of stolen Egyptian artifacts. "We will not cooperate with the museum that doesn't return Egypt's antiquities."
Among the new rules adopted by the council, Hawass announced that all the excavation missions will receive training before starting working on the sites and that archaeologists must publish their discoveries in English and Arabic in the council's journal.
Archaeologists at the press conference also announced the discovery of part of a 3,200-year-old cuneiform tablet of diplomatic correspondence between the ancient Egyptian and Hittite kingdoms. The 5cm-by-5cm tablet, found by a German team working in Qantir, about 100km northeast of Cairo, is believed to be one of the few Hittite letters discovered in Egypt.
Edgar Pusch, head of the German team, said the text, sent from King Hattusili III to Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II, is related to a peace treaty between the rival kingdoms, which fought a war from 1300 to 1200BC before agreeing to the first known peace treaty.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS