Egypt .. Selling History

"Every day you dig under us, the houses will fall on us, and we are sitting, where do we go, all the people are digging, the magician comes and tells them: under this house are traces, people rush to dig, you see the houses how they are going to fall, What is the job? "

One of the victims of the excavation of the Egyptian ruins in the area of ​​Fuwah has reported the tragedy of the lives of the citizens in more than one town and village along the map of Egypt, where the treasures buried underground without protection from the state and where the hopes of brokers and some officials and citizens hung rich could change their lives.

Exploration outside the law
The island's camera was able to infiltrate points of archeology without subject to any law. In the areas of Fawa, Taifah, Mahalla and Red Tal, people dig under their homes for the purpose of obtaining an artifact that removes poverty from their homes.

Underwater drilling leads to the discovery of artifacts that may solve the problem of poverty for a citizen who risks the possibility of collapsing his home. "If our Lord honored us, you would have secured poverty for you, your children and your grandchildren, but if you did not come together, you would be a double loss; some people would lose their eyes, some would fall on the spot. Destroy ".

But there are those who do not care about ruin, they are fortune-tellers hired by prospectors and brokers, their task is to convince the people that a superpower told them that something was under construction. One of them explains in his speech to the island: "I am not prepared for the house of the house, knowing that the house or the area has traces of it." De gift from the Lord, I know and they are the Bejibune, as I negotiate with the people of the house, and I say that under the house there are traces and they agree otherwise. They agree, they are free, and we go down digging what we dig, we can dig a simple need and we can dig a lot of needs. "

Legal restrictions on the extraction of antiquities from the Egyptian land were laid down in 1912 under Law No. 14, the law on the prevention of the extraction of antiquities. Followed by Law 215 of 1951, which allowed the excavation and extraction of monuments, and the establishment of institutions to protect what goes out of the land, and was one of the basic items to share what is being extracted between the Egyptian state and foreign extraction missions.

Egyptian laws give the state alone the right to extract and preserve the antiquities.

Date is not clear
Earlier this year, the National Museum of Scotland announced the presentation of an Egyptian antiquities collection, including a stone that was covering the Great Pyramid. The Egyptian authorities hastened to demand the collection be returned without any documents proving the ownership of the artifacts. The museum refused, although it did not provide any evidence of possession of antiquities that are not disputed in that they came at some time in Egyptian territory.

The appointment of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as chairman of the board of trustees of the Egyptian museum coincided with an increase in the smuggling of Egyptian antiquities.

In March 2018, the Kuwaiti authorities stopped the cover of a smuggled pharaoh's coffin. Five years ago, in 2014, the most expensive piece sold by the British auction house Christie's was the statue of Sochimka, worth more than $ 53 million. With his return without providing proof that his mule belongs to the management of Egyptian museums.

In 2006, Egypt fought a losing legal dispute with the St. Louis American Museum to restore the Kanfer mask that the museum had offered for sale.

Egypt has lost many issues because of the lack of proof of ownership of the antiquities that it has fought to recover. Not all the effects that have emerged from the Egyptian land are registered in the name of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority.

The owners of antiquities belonging to Egypt claim that the pieces reached their property before 1983, when the Egyptian ownership of the antiquities had been canceled and prior to the signing of the 1970 UNESCO Convention banning the illegal possession of monuments.

During the preparation of this investigation, the Egyptian authorities received a ship laden with antiquities seized by the Italian authorities at the port of Salerno, in a case whose circumstances have not yet been revealed.

"This is an investigation that resulted from the daily procedures of our police to inspect goods arriving in Italy. We confiscated 23,000 coins of great historic and cultural value," the commander of the Italian cultural heritage protection unit said in an interview with Al Jazeera. , And about 200 other artifacts of great historical significance, all imported from Egypt, and all these magnificent artifacts were returned to the Egyptian government. "

The restitution and investigation procedures usually take several years of research and scrutiny. However, the ship, which was recovered by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities on the order of the Egyptian Attorney General, was removed from the base and was in the hands of the Egyptian authorities within weeks of being stopped by the Naples authorities.

This is what makes Egyptian archeologist and academic Dr. Hussein Dakeel believe that the decision of the Attorney General was not in its natural course: "The Ministry of Antiquities had to do this, whether it was a decision of the Attorney General or not, and the decision of the Attorney-General had to be As follows: to investigate the matter, such as how the arrival and exit of these pieces and who is responsible for bringing and responsible for the removal, this is the decision of the Attorney General, but this was not talked about at all.

The ship's incident means that Egypt is no longer only a source of contraband, it has become a transit point for contraband from around the world, and a work base for the archaeological mafia in the region: "It means that we get to a stage where Egypt receives traces stolen from other places, To Italy, this has never happened before. "

Free accused
In 2014, the former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass was referred to the Egyptian Public Prosecution, in what is known as the "King Khufu cartouche". Hawass denied any connection to the case and accused the Germans of stealing the missing piece of cartouche.

After the Egyptian revolution, the military council appointed Zahi Hawass as minister of antiquities. The Egyptians protested against the appointment. Hawass resigned soon after his appointment, but the military council reappointed him a month after his resignation despite protests from Egyptian archaeologists.

Hawass was the subject of an investigation by the US Congress with National Geographic, accused of bribing the senses to facilitate illegal portrayal of the pyramids when he was a government official under deposed President Hosni Mubarak.

The channel's financial director did not deny money to Hawass, but refused to disclose its size or nature in connection with Al Jazeera.

Hawass licensed the days of his responsibility for the Egyptian effects concerts inside the pyramid, the island has received videos showing tourists of Western nationalities are practicing strange rituals inside the pyramid.

The passages show men and women lying in the coffin of King Khufu, in violation of the laws of preservation and preservation of monuments.

Hawass's relationship with the Mubarak family was one of the reasons why Egyptian archaeologists objected to his appointment as minister of antiquities. Many testimonies point to the involvement of my son, Mubarak Alaa and Gamal, in the theft and smuggling of Egyptian antiquities. "As I hear, The biggest traders of the Egyptian antiquities were the sons of Mubarak, go and interview them, I'm not sure they will talk to you about this. "

"Mubarak's children cut off electricity from a whole area to get some antiquities out of the house," explains one of the mediators interviewed by the island.

"There were officers in the Interior Ministry, there was a famous brigade, I think he is still alive, he was in charge of Giza, and he was running away from almost all areas of Egypt ... commissions reach millions ..."

As the academic Hussein Dakil says, "Antiquities are not taken out of Egypt by any ordinary person. The average person can dig his stealth in his house. He can get a piece of stealth and sell it, but he can not show it or take it out of Egypt at all."

Before and after the revolution
The revolution of 25 January 2011 did not change anything about the theft and trade of Egyptian antiquities, except for the chaos of the looting of Egyptian antiquities, according to an archaeologist who responded to Al Jazeera's question on the status of antiquities trade before and after the revolution: There was stability in the relations and the power holder was the best. After the revolution, all the people who worked in this field left the country, "he adds." During the days of the revolution they stole it in broad daylight, and no one intervened under the pretext of security chaos. "

With the security chaos that accompanied the revolution, the theft of Egyptian antiquities expanded, and government agencies defended the protection of the buried Egyptian wealth.

The Egyptian academic, Hussein Dikil, doubts that it is just chaos caused by the security chaos that accompanied the events of the revolution. He sees this as an act of plundering an organization that took the security chaos associated with the revolution. "There are many workers in the Ministry of Antiquities who saw this as artificial, , Meaning that in the day and night the staff of the Archaeological Police are weak and respond to the letters and signals of the archaeologists that they can not move because of security reasons.If we go back to the records of the Ministry of Antiquities, which was edited at this time, So this phrase. "

Absence of officer
The correspondence received by the island reveals that the responsibility for the destruction of the Egyptian archaeological wealth is still distributed among the organs of the state concerned, theoretically, by protecting the monuments and the public security of the Egyptians. In a reporter received by the island back to 2015, the head of the police unit of the effects of the intervention to remove some of the abuses on an archaeological area.

This is the message of the director of an archaeological area that called for the intervention of the Antiquities Protection Police: "We ask you to expedite the implementation of the removal orders issued to those who were deported to the archaeological areas issued by the ministerial decision No. 178, as these violations represent the destruction, destruction and destruction of tombs, archaeological excavations and archeological sites."

But the director of the police station of tourism and antiquities said that the removal of infringements from the authority of the Directorate of Security of the region, and the latter sheds the whole issue and refuses to decide on the request.

"In the years 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2018, there are a number of very famous issues in the theft of antiquities. Unfortunately, in most of these thefts, we did not reach the real actor," he said.

"The coffin found the cover of the coffin in Kuwait and it was not discovered in Egypt. It came out in a strange way, and only a woman was charged with it and she was released because of her health, and a police officer was released after six months. ? "

Looting of billions
The head of the Italian cultural heritage protection unit believes that it may not be possible "to make an accurate economic assessment of the size of the business world that revolves around illicit art, but what we can say is that after the arms and illicit drugs trade, we believe that trafficking is the most widespread Economically".

Egypt is at the heart of the losses caused by this trade, because of the size of its wealth, which is among the largest treasures of the world.

In the midst of this stampede among the organs of the state concerned, and in light of indications of the existence of "big players" in the systematic looting of Egyptian wealth, it is not known exactly how much Egypt loses annually of its national wealth.

It is estimated that the known stolen from the Egyptian monuments is estimated at several billion dollars. There are more than 32 thousand and 600 artifacts lost by Egypt in half a century, and the percentage of missing monuments since 2011 by more than 32%.

But these numbers and figures are attributed to what is recorded in the Egyptian museums, or at the stores of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, but the effects that loot away from the eyes of censorship and before registration and annexation to the known Egyptian antiquities, figures may increase the size of leeches.

Where to escape the effects?
For decades, the Egyptian antiquities have been scattered in the museums of Europe, the United States and other countries of the world, and many Egyptian artifacts have made their way into the homes of wealthy Europeans, America and the Gulf.

In recent years, archaeologists point out that most buyers come from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. "We do not know where they are going," the broker said.

Israeli archaeologist Lenny Wolf believes Dubai is an "archeological transfer station, but today there is a reorganization and I think it stopped." When Al Jazeera asked: Is there a tightening in the UAE? "Look, it's just that countries have tightened and that the transfer of effects has decreased, what does that mean?"