Tourists will not go to these cities to visit these Museums. The most important artifacts are already in the Cairo Museum, and tourists will not even go to the Luxor Museum or to the one that’s being built by the pyramids, and the Museum in Alexandria doesn’t even get a fraction of what the Cairo Museum gets.

Tourists don’t go to Egypt strictly to visit Museums; their time is limited; they also like to visit the bazaars. And between the Museum and the Bazaars, they like to rest. Perhaps they would even like to go to the bazaars again since it doesn’t costs them a penny, rather than go to the Museum again. So! who is going to visit these new Museums? Who else but the farmers who live in Zagazig, Tanta and Assiut.

The only thing that will happen to these Museums is that when built and filled with antiques, the inhabitants of these cities will empty them little by little with the help of the security guards, and sell them secretly to overseas collectors. It will be Egypt’s loss. Don’t tell me that the security guards wouldn’t get tempted seeing that antiques are plentiful, and their salaries are like peanuts.

The storage space of the Cairo Museum is already full of antiquities. Hardly any new discoveries remain in this Museum. Except for a very few important objects, the rest is relegated to the Museum’s basement, or to the new Museums being built.

That’s the reason why even in the Cairo Museum there used to be a shop where lesser important antiques for which there was no space in the basement were sold to both tourists and antique dealers.

Therefore, why not take into consideration the proposition of Mr. Ahmed Ezz, the Egyptian steel magnate, that the sale of some artifacts be allowed in Egypt, following the example of Italy and France?

The only problem is that Culture Minister Faruq Hosni and Dr. Hawass have both threatened to resign if the Egyptian parliament accepted Mr.Ezz’s proposal.

Now then! what would happen if Tourists start to boycott Egypt because of the problems and the frustrations it is causing to the countries that are being harassed by Dr. Hawass? After all there are plenty of Antiques in the Louvre, Berlin and British Museums. Would DR. Hawass prefer to get back the antiquities and no tourists?

Dr. Hawass says that 5,000 artifacts have been returned to Egypt since he started his campaign. Where are these artifacts now? In storage? in the Luxor Museum?

Do all tourists go to Luxor and would they visit the Museum there, knowing that they have seen the best and the most in the Cairo Museum?

More and more antiques are discovered every week or every month, and that’s thanks to the foreign egyptologists who do excavations there. Would Dr. Hawass like to see them all gone? Can he really do by himself the gigantic job they are doing?

Dr. Hawass want back the Nefertiti bus but Germany WILL NOT return it under any circumstances for the only reason that IT IS NOT authentic, and if it returns it, Dr. Hawass will have it examined by a team of international scientists and it will be found to be a fake, and Germany will be highly criticized if not fined by the United Nations for having taken advantage of the gullible public.

Soon, in a next message, I intend to list the reasons why the bust is “one hundred and one percent” a forgery. Nevertheless, it is a very beautiful piece of “Art Nouveau” sculpture.

When King Farouk had been exiled,

If Hawass wants museums to return artefacts, given to them, as part of the dig, then he must then return the millions of pounds, dollars, marks, liras, francs, that have been spent by westerners preserving the past of Egypt.

It is an insult to the memory of the likes of Flinders Petrie to say that what they “took” , as their share of the dig, decided upon by
the Egyptian Officials of that day, was ‘stolen’.

As to the calling of an International Conference ‘of others who suffered like us”, items stolen during a world war, cannot be classed in the same way as items given in meagre return for the huge amounts of money spent by foreign missions excavating.

The rules of today, cannot be used to change the rules that were in place when the missions found tombs.

Where are all the golden treasures (like Tutankhamen’s) from the other 62 known Valley tombs? Stolen, looted, melted down by Egyptians, not foreign Egyptologists!!!

Almost all academic universities, have contributed to the knowledge of Ancient Egypt.

If it had been ‘hands off’ and left to the Egyptians, to this present day, none would have been educated enough to conduct concise digs, and that includes Hawass.

Every tomb left unplundered by Ancient Egyptians, would have been plundered by modern Egyptians, and artefacts sold off to
the highest bidder, no providence provided.

The artefacts that The Louvre recently returned after pressure by Hawass,
were taken from an already known and excavated tomb, sealed and supposedly protected by SCA officials, put on the market, then bought by the museum !

Right from the first when the outer casing to the pyramids was stripped by Egyptians and used to build a wall, ‘westerners’ could see that if anything was to be preserved of Ancient Egypt, then it was up to them to do it!

Hawass would not have an extremely well paid job bullying about everyone he considers ‘under him’ and the tourist industry would by pass the dirt and decay that would still be Cairo and Luxor.

For giving back the past to the present day Egyptians;
For giving the poor fellahin a job in the tourist industry and therefore lifting standard of living;
For deciphering the hieroglyphs and thus making them live again;
For keeping safe from thieving hands artefacts in foreign museums;
For allowing millions of people to appreciate the past by viewing artefacts in their own town museum;
then it is a poorly ignorant, and self-serving man, who deems that the Egyptologists are thieves and everything is ‘stolen’ and must be returned.