Archaeos
Member
foreverwingnut said:I'm sorrry if I caused confusion, but you are on to my meaning.
I think so, too.
foreverwingnut said:Alexandria was under the rule of the Ptolemaic Dynasty throughout the Hellenistic period. They even refused to speak Egyptian, hence the creation of the Rosetta Stone as a means to translate. Alexandria had become a marriage of Greek, Roman and Egyptian cultures, making it a kingdom unto itself. Therefore, Egypt (Zahi) should have little or no authority over Alexandrian antiquity. It would have been certainly wise to have asked for Zahi's expert advice in the recovery and care of Alexandrian relics, but giving him the free-reigns to lord over Alexandrian discovery in the name of the Egyptian government was misplaced and unnecessary in my opinion.
You seem to take a very ethnicity-based or regional/nationality-based approach to who is allowed to cater for what antiquities in what place, effectively saying that only people with some, well, effectively (imagined) "blood-line" connection should care and research for antiquities found there: because Alexandria was a cosmopolis for a few centuries, developing under Hellenistic, Roman influences in addition to be located in Egypt, one should be... well... what? Ask the Greek or Turkish or Italian or Saudi government agencies to exclusively conduct archaeological work in Alexandria?
Or do you mean that Zahi as an egyptologist/archaeologist should not be involved with Alexandria because this would be the expert realm of Classical archaeolgists?
I think one should not forget that Zahi Hawass was the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities since 2002. The Supreme Council of Antiquities is responsible for all antiquities and related research within the borders of the Arab Republic of Egypt.
This includes all Dynastic Kingdoms and Periods of Ancient Egypt. And while most popular broadcastings and interests in Ancient Egypt focus on the New Kingdom (and then mostly on the mere 3 centuries of the 18th and 19th Dynasty out of that), the SCA's responsibility includes all the other 6000 years of human activity in Egypt as well!
This includes Persian Egypt (both Achaemenid Egypt and the Sassanid/Arab Muslim Conquest), the Ptolemaic Dynasty of the Graeco-Roman Period, and also Byzantine/Coptic-Christian/Islamic eras.
Zahi as Secretary General was responsible for the administration of this organisation. While many academics levy appropriate criticism on him for expanding his responsibilities beyond what would be ethically accepted in academia or other national organisations of a similar kind, I think he being responsible for Alexandria, "...to lord over Alexandrian discovery in the name of the Egyptian government...", is exactly what his job description is all about.
In fact, many think that the millennia from Byzantine to Arab Muslim Egypt are those eras most neglected by Zahi and the SCA. And I think this might change in the next few years under a new political (Muslim) government.
Or are you referring specifically to an incident when he was still Chief Inspector or later Director of the Giza Pyramid Plateau? In that case, note: just because he presents something on TV doesn't mean that he is actually calling the shots on excavations outside of the Giza area.
foreverwingnut said:Alexandria possesses many capable and competent archeologists to oversee their own affairs.
Sure, and I can reassure you that excavation projects in Hellenic or Hellenistic sites such as Naukratis or Hierakonpolis are done by a mixed team of experts from all over the world. It's not that Alexandria is some Greek territory occupied by the hostile Egyptians... unless I missed something.
foreverwingnut said:Alexandria's discoveries belong to their own people, not Egypt.
I might have missed something... Again, it's not that Alexandria is some Greek territory occupied by the hostile Egyptians... and it has a pretty good museum landscape... for Egypt.
foreverwingnut said:And while the pylon that I mentioned will be displayed in Alexandria, there is little doubt that Zahi would have eventually demanded that it and other Cleopatra-age discoveries be sent to Cairo.
I am not a follower of Zahi, but I think one should level critique against him fairly (which does not mean mildly where it would not be inappropriate to be harsh). You will find that museums in Egypt have specific topics and also regional rooting, so it's not that everything and anything ends up in Cairo because Zahi's "ego couldn't accept anything else", as you imply.
One also has to bear in mind that some museums have better equipment, displaying technology, or more suitable capacity and technology to conduct specific research on a newly-found object. Hence why sometimes one museum makes more sense as 'resting place' than another.