-
When Ancient Artifacts Become Political
Pawns
[1] As thousands lined up to a
glimpse of Nefertiti at the newly reopened Neues
Museum
here, another skirmish erupted
in the culture wars.
[2]
Egypt
’
s chief archaeologist,
Zahi Hawwass, announced that his country wanted
its queen
handed back forthwith, unless
Germany could prove that the 3,500-year-old bust
of Akhenaten
’
s
wife wasn
’
t
spirited illegally out of Egypt nearly a century
ago.
[3]
“
We
’
re
not treasure hunters,
”
Mr.
Hawass told Spiegel Online.
“
If
it
’
s proven clearly that
the work was not
stolen,
”
he said,
“
there
shouldn
’
t be any
problem.
”
[4]
Then he said he was sure the work had been stolen.
[5]
Globalization,
it
turns
out,
has
only
intensified,
not
diminished,
cultural
differences
among
nations.
The
force
of
nationalism
love
to
exploit
culture
because
it
’
s
symbolic,
economically
potent and couches identity politics in a legal
context that tends to pit David against
Goliath.
[6] Mr. Hawass also
recently fired a shot at France, demanding the
Louvre return five fresco
fragments
it
purchased
in
2000
and
2003
from
a
gallery
and
at
auction.
They
belong
to
a
3,200-year-old tomb near
Luxor and had been in storage at the museum. Egypt
had made the
demand
before,
but
this
time
suspended
the
Louvre
’
s
long-term
excavation
at
Saqqara,
near
Cairo, and said it would stop
collaborating on Loure exhibitions.
[7]
France got the message. It promised to send the
fragments back tout de suite.
[8] It didn
’
t go
unnoticed in Paris, Berlin or Cairo that Mr.
Hawass pressed his case about
Nerfertiti and suspended the
excavations by the Louvre just after his
country
’
s culture minister,
Farouk Hosny, bitterly lost a bid to
become director general of the United
Nation
’
s cultural agency,
Unesco. The post went late month to a
Bulgarian diplomat instead. Mr. Hosny would have
been
the
first
Arab
to
land
the
job,
and
Egypt
’
s
President,
Hosni
Mubarak,
had
banked
a
not
insignificant amount of his own
prestige on the minister
’
s
getting it.
[9]
But
Jewish
groups
and
prominent
French
and
German
intellectuals
(not
the
Israeli
government, though) campaigned against
Mr. Hosny. When asked in
Egypt
’
s Parliament last year
about the presence of Israeli books in
Alexandria
’
s library, Mr.
Hosny said,
“
Let
’
s
burn these books.
If
there
are
any,
I
will
burn
them
myself
before
you.
”
That
prompted
Elie
Wiesel,
Claude
Lanzmann and Bernard-
Henri Levy in Le Monde to urge that he not be
selected, also quoting Mr.
Hosny as
saying in 2001,
“
Israeli
culture is an inhuman
culture
”
based on theft.
[10]
After
that
Mr.
Hosny
told
the
same
French
newspaper
that
he
was
sorry
for
those
remarks and
“
nothing is more distant to
me than racism, the negation of others and the
desire to
hurt Jewish culture or any
other culture.
”
[11] Then he failed to get the job and
blamed the failure on Jewish conspiracy.
[12]
“
The
conspiracy was bigger than you can
imagine,
”
he told an
Egyptian weekly.
[13] In fact, what may
have ultimately done Mr. Hosny in, aside from his
closeness to an old,
tired, dictatorial
regime, was his suspected role, as an Egyptian
diplomat in 1985, in protecting
the
perpetrators of a terrorist attack on a cruise
ship, the Achille Lauro, during which a Jewish
American tourist in a wheelchair was
shot and pushed into the sea.
[14] In
any case, days after the Unesco decision, Mr.
Hawass went after France and Germany.
When questioned about the timing, he
insisted there was no connection, saying he had
asked the
French to return the
artifacts two months earlier. But that was when
Mr. Hosny
’
s campaign had
already started to fall apart.
Likewise, Mr. Hawass has also said that his sudden
announcement, in