Without ever having given it any detailed thought, I assumed
that the process of finding and exploring – or should that be ransacking? – the
tombs of the Pharaohs and their entourages in Egypt had all but been exhausted,
and that the unearthing and subsequent display of the magnificent Tutenkhamun
artifacts had been the pinnacle of well over a century of formal digging.
Not so, it would seem. I had the honour of being invited last
week to a regular dinner of well-retired members of various branches of the
seafaring fraternity at the naval shore base, HMS Eaglet in Liverpool.
Having served for some years in the Naval Reserves, an
opportunity to share lunch with like-minded people and all the traditions that
go with such an event was a rare treat.
It’s nearly always the case at such events that you meet real
characters, members of the ‘old school’ of living and doing things the like of
which I doubt we’ll see again.
I had the privilege of sitting next to one such character, the
spritely Michael, a quiet, unassuming ex-Naval man now well into his retirement
who is a keen and very experienced Egyptologist living in Cairo and with his
finger firmly on the pulse of all things do to with exploration of the tombs of
the grand and not-so-grand!
During a fascinating discussion he explained that only a tenth
of the tombs that actually exist have so far been unearthed, despite an
unrelenting process of intense exploration that has continued uninterrupted for
well over a century and a half!
It was shocking to hear his revelations of how many of the tombs
that have taken decades to locate as part of ‘official’ explorations are often
found to have been ransacked years before, their treasures systematically
removed and even entire sections of walls bearing ancient graphics and art cut
away and disposed off by unscrupulous people, perhaps forced by poverty, and
sold to even more unscrupulous collectors.
It seems that these tombs often appear at first inspection to be
sealed and undisturbed and yet once entered they reveal a depressing scene of
theft and wanton vandalism.
Egypt has been robbed of so much of its heritage. The grim fact
that mummies
were dug up and made into medicine until the 18th century (the medieval doctors
of Alexandria in Egypt prescribed powdered mummy as a kind of wonder drug)
can’t account the full extent of what is a real cultural tragedy.
Michael explained that the pillage continues to this day. Tombs
are discovered on a regular basis but it appears that their priceless contents
are removed and find their way on to the black market, sold and exported for a
fraction of their monetary and historical value without ever being officially
catalogued.
Those in overall charge appear unable to address this. How immensely
heartbreaking and frustrating it must be for the proud people of Egypt to know
that their heritage is being plundered on a daily basis and lost to future
generations, thanks to the unscrupulous few.
