CAIRO - With a primitive gun and a street dog, Ahmed Mohamed continues to guard the Tuna el-Gabal archaeological site, that extends for some eight square kilometres in the desert of Minya in Upper Egypt. “This region, though devoid of antiquities is still witnessing attacks by armed thieves, who think that these closed buildings include some antique treasures while all their items have been moved to the big Egyptian Museum,” said the old guard. He moves with difficulty in the desert, with his hand on the gun's trigger in anticipation of a fresh assault. Though the storehouses of Tuna el-Gabal do not contain any items, Mohamed, together with some 10 other guards continues to protect the area around the clock against potential attempts at searching for antiquities, as the public started to carry out their own excavations at different archaeological sites in the country. Following the January 25 revolution, the important site of Tel el-Amarna in Minya, which contains some of the most famous Pharaonic tomb paintings from the Middle Kingdom, has also been the target of encroachments by people intending to exploit the security vacuum. This alarming situation has caused officials in the nearby town of Malawi to seek protection from the Army, who rushed to protect the area. What happened in Tel el-Amarna and Tuna el-Gabal were repeated at many other archaeological sites nationwide and in their storehouses, a matter that has exposed the dysfunction of their respective security systems. The Selim Hassan storehouse in Giza is one of the many locations raided by looters during and after the days of the revolution. “The problem is that this storehouse used to include some rare antiquities, that have not been registered or inventoried since 1968, Ali el-Asfar, the director of the Pyramids Zone recently told Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. “It lies also in the paucity of guards protecting places and storehouses of antiquities and the poor weapons some possess.” He added that on noticing such attempts at looting the treasures in store, he moved all the pieces to the main storehouse, which is well equipped for protecting these important items. Meanwhile, the guards affiliated to the Tourism Police, who disappeared from most of the historic sites during the days of the revolution, were in fact protecting the tourist visitors and not the antiquities. The museum of Kom Oshim in Fayyoum in southern Egypt exemplifies the poor guarding of archaeological sites in Egypt. Although the museum is located at the centre of a 500-feddan (acre) area, three guards, who carry only pistols, are on guard there. “Despite the historical significance of the museum that houses antiquities of the Greco-Roman era, it had been closed since 2006,” said Yehya Mohamadain, the Museum's curator. “We continued to ask for a wall to be built and for electronic cameras to protect the museum from repeated break-in attempts but never received a response from the authorities.” Meanwhile, Ashraf Sobhi, an archaeological inspector in Fayyoum said that the Governorate boasted around 35 archaeological sites without appropriate protection, attributing the problem to a meagre budget allocated to the security of antiquities and archaeological sites in Egypt. Abdel-Halim Nur-Eddin, the former Secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, concurred. “The total budget of the council, which has become a new ministry earlier this year, just five to 10 per cent is being allocated to security ,” he said. He added that since 1996, making an inventory and registering excavated antiquities had come to a complete halt despite the huge revenues estimated at some $2 billion, the biggest portion of which is being allocated for the building of the new Grand Egyptian Museum at the Pyramids Plateau. The former official claims that foreigners are involved in the recent plundering of the Egyptian antiquities. “There is a unique storehouse in Tal el-Dabaa in Sharkeya that has been completely looted. This area was the capital of the Hyksos, who occupied the eastern part of the Delta during the 11th dynasty. Ironically, Israel is claim being descendants of the Hyksos and no one knows to where these antiquities have been smuggled,” he said.
