Try and keep up…
First Zahi was good buddies with ousted Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarek, even calling for Susan Mubarek to get a Nobel Prize, and now suddenly this week he says he hardly knew them. Apparently now he’s “not from the old regime“, and the revolution was definitely “a good thing”, although apparently that opinion depends on which language he’s speaking at the time.
Not to mention, back when the revolution was underway, the Big H reassured everyone that Egypt’s treasures were safe. Except apparently Zahi now says around 1000 relics disappeared during the uprising. But at least some of the stolen treasures were returned when one of the burglars apparently got a conscience and left a bag of artefacts at a Metro station, where an anonymous person found it and “accidentally” looked in the bag, and then took it directly to Zahi. Which just goes to show that those allegations that it was an inside job were obviously false, and so all you noise-makers should just shut-up now…
Then Dr Hawass brought out his own menswear clothing range, but was attacked for using Egyptian heritage for props in promoting his personal label. He responded that no genuine artefacts were directly used in the photo shoot, and that all the profits from the clothing line were being given to a children’s cancer hospital anyhow. But then the NYT dug deeper and found that Hawass had contacted the hospital about the arrangement only recently, and that only half the profits would go to charity.
And to top it all off he was sentenced to a year in prison for ignoring a 2010 court order regarding the Cairo Museum gift shop. But then the court overturned that decision the next day.
What more could go wrong, apart from his beloved museum being now seen by many Egyptians as a torture chamber. Things just don’t seem quite so easy for Zahi in post-revolution Egypt.
