What is an Egyptian antiquity and how to protect it?
At the heart of a “heated debate” in the Egyptian Parliament (People’s Assembly) was the question of what constitutes an Egyptian antiquity and whether the people are capable of identifying an object as such.
Article 8 of the proposed law, supported by Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, would ban the trade or any other form of disposal, of antiquities unless there is a written consent from the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA). It also states that the council has the right to take an antiquity from the owner and offer a reasonable compensation.
On the opposing side, senior National Democratic Party MP Ahmed Ezz proposed to permit the trading of antiquities inside Egypt. Ezz argued that the majority of Egyptians don’t know the characteristics of an antiquity and some people inherit an antiquity unknowingly, and so penalizing them would be unfair.
Source: zawya.com
In his blog Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues, British archaeologist Paul Barford reports on several incidents at shops and sites in Luxor where he, mistaken as a tourist, is confronted by locals offering him authentic ware (pot sherds and shabtiu) stolen from the excavation sites.
What is interesing about this is Malkata is littered with pottery, tonnes of it. Most of it from the Eighteenth dynasty, including some nice red wares (lovely colours), slipped ware, fine bowls, burnished ware. Yet neither of the would-be vendors had picked any of this up, they knew their market, the blue-painted pottery is coveted by western collectors and that is what they were stealing from the site to make a bit of cash. It seems to me to be utterly pointless special pleading to deny that this sort of thing is part of the case for the proposition that current modes of no-questions asked collecting are directly contributing to the creation of the market which is the motor behind the looting of archaeological sites for saleable objects.
