Egyptians argue over reported damage to Pharaonic statue

CAIRO -- Egyptian culture minister Farouk Hosni ordered a probe on Tuesday into reports about mysterious damage to a Pharaonic statue during restoration work at the Egyptian Museum.
Middle East Times

He asked Attorney General Maher Abdel Wahid to investigate the matter, the official MENA news agency reported, only hours after the country's top antiquities official dismissed the reports as being unfounded.

The Egyptian press, quoting museum officials, had reported that a statue of Khafre (2576-2551 BC), the fourth dynasty king and builder of the second pyramid at Giza, had been found damaged in the basement.

Secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass refuted the reports in a statement received by AFP, saying that they were "untrue".

He said that the statue that the press described was small and bore no inscriptions to suggest that it was of Khafre.

"This statue is in good condition and was never damaged since its discovery in 1988 west of the pyramid of King Khafre and transferred to the Egyptian Museum," the statement said

But Hosni insisted that he was determined to find the officials responsible for wrecking the treasure, ignoring his subordinate's denials.

A few weeks ago officials announced the disappearance of three artifacts from the museum basement, which houses thousands of pieces of priceless treasures from different periods.

Many other artifacts have similarly vanished from high-security sites around the country, some of them eventually traced to international antiquities dealers.

In early August a Cairo court sentenced seven Egyptians to jail terms of up to 55 years in the biggest antiquities smuggling case in the country's history.

The prosecutions followed the seizure of a cache of more than 600 artifacts from the time of the Pharaohs at London's Heathrow airport.

Egypt's ancient treasures are a main tourist attraction in the multibillion-dollar industry, one of the country's main foreign currency earners.
Story can be found at: Middle East Times