Word: hawass
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...Zahi Hawass never thought he'd be working anywhere but at the pyramids and thereabouts, where he has worked for more than 20 years and where plenty remains to be discovered. Then, three years ago, the eminent archaeologist, who also serves as Egypt's Undersecretary of State for the Giza Monuments, got wind of a new, unsuspected burial site at the Bahariya Oasis, some 230 miles southwest of Cairo. When he arrived, recalls Hawass, "one of the tomb ceilings had fallen in and the sun shone through it. I went in and looked at the mummies in the rays...
Astonished by that first glimpse, Hawass returned last spring to lead what he calls the largest expedition ever undertaken in Egypt--and deservedly so. The richness of the find and the tombs' unprecedented state of preservation have astounded archaeologists, some of whom have compared it to the discovery of King Tut's tomb in 1922. Even Tut's burial chamber had been partly looted, however. These tombs appear to have remained undisturbed since they were sealed some 2,000 years ago--more than 1,300 years after Tut, at a time when Egypt and much of the Middle East...
...Hawass's team has explored four tombs, with a total of 105 mummies laid on top of one another in neat stacks. All told, the remains were interred in four distinct ways. One type was covered with a thin layer of gold. Another lay under lifelike masks made of plaster-coated linen, or cartonnage, that was painted with scenes of ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses, including Isis, Osiris, Horus and Anubis. Still others were placed in so-called anthropoid coffins--pottery sarcophagi with human faces--and a few were only wrapped in linen. Bracelets, amulets, statues of mourning ladies, pottery...
...that will change this week, when Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities opens Dahshur's long-hidden monuments to the public, adding a stunning new attraction to the nation's 86 previously accessible pyramids. Eventually, says Zahi Hawass, director of antiquities at Giza, Dahshur could rival Giza as a place of historical interest. "It's time the father became as famous as the son," he maintains. "The father was more important...
Besides making intensive efforts to restore specific monuments, EAO officials want to develop general strategies for keeping sites from deteriorating further. Hawass suggests creating a zone of protection around each valuable monument. "Sites in Egypt are not protected at all," he says. "We need to take away all mechanical activity for at least two to three miles around them." Tawfik proposes eventually planting trees around all outdoor monuments to protect them from winds as well as to absorb moisture. Within monuments, he wants to install clear plastic shields to prevent tourists from touching paintings and inscriptions and air-cleaning systems...