Egypt’s new Antiquities Law seems to be working
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Under the new Antiquities Law 3/2010, passed in mid-February, the SCA set up the Archaeological Collection Administration (ACA) as part of its professional echelon. The new body aims at inspecting the authenticity of all unregistered antiquities that are in the possession of members of the Egyptian public, and ensuring that they are properly documented.
The law appears to be working. Over the last two months the SCA had received 100 requests from people possessing historical articles and asking for their collections to be examined. Following inspection, 80 per cent of the artefacts were found to be genuine while the rest were replicas. Most of the objects were coins dating from the Greek, Roman and Islamic periods; prehistoric objects; Ottoman and Mamluk weapons; and pistols and revolvers from the collection of the Mohamed Ali family dynasty.
Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, Sameh Shokri, is among those who applied for the ACA examination. The ambassador has 60 authentic objects in his possession dating from different dynasties of the ancient Egyptian periods as well as the Graeco-Roman and Islamic periods. Among them are: a collection of alabaster pots dating from the reign of King Djoser and found inside his Step Pyramid at Saqqara; a mummy; a statue of Thoth; terracotta statues of Roman deities; and Islamic coins and lamps. These objects, Bassir said, were taken out of Egypt in the early 1950s in order to be displayed as a small museum in the ambassador’s residence, a 19th-century building constructed especially to host Khedive Tawfik on a planned visit to the United States. For unknown reasons, however, Tawfik’s trip was cancelled and he offered the house to Egypt’s US ambassador.
Excerpted from an article by Nevine El-Aref for Al-Ahram Weekly
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