Randolph Carter
New member
A treaty was signed between the United Kingdom and Egypt in August 1936, under the terms of which Britain agreed to withdraw troops from Egypt (apart from a contingent required to train the Egyptian Army and to protect the Suez Canal).
It's possible that the British troops were in the process of withdrawing from Egypt around the time of the Tanis dig... although it would have taken a while to do this.
The German archaeological expedition at Tanis was presumably officially a civil venture, not a military one, and must have had the permission of the Egyptian and British authorities to proceed.
(Whether the authorities were fully aware that there was a heavily armed German military contingent present is another matter.)
I think it's pretty obvious that the presence of so many German troops in 1936 Egypt was a major blunder on Lucas, Spielberg and Kasdan's part. It's a big blooper. The dig was pretty close to Cairo. And there is NO WAY the British would have said nothing about the presence of so many uniformed Germans dictating the local Egyptians in such an aggressive manner. No way.
That's why we must assume that the dig had the permission of the British and Egyptian authorities in some capacity.
Some kind of agreement must have been reached between the respective governments... the dig was probably officially authorized with the understanding that it was administered under the auspices of a civil venture, and perhaps the Germans were allowed a limited military presence to protect their personnel and aid in the logistics of the undertaking.
And maybe they slowly increased the military presence without permission until it was at the level we see in the movie.
(Historically, there are precedents of certain archaeological expeditions receiving military protection and aid.)
Ultimately though, it's all just conjecture.
There's an edition of the novelization from the '90s with a foreword by Lucas, in which he himself points out that Foster was the one who actually wrote the novelization, even though that same edition still bears Lucas' name as author.
Yeah, Alan Dean Foster was the ghost writer on the original Star Wars novelization, based on GL's screenplay.
And it's the same with Steven Spielberg who is credited as being the author of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind novelization.
That was also ghost-written by an author, based on Spielberg's script.
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