Spring Comes to Ancient Egypt

Spring As the country struggles to refashion its government, archaeologists are looking comes to warily towards the future. n a secluded stretch of desert about 300 kilometres south of Cairo, hundreds of bodies lie buried in the sand. Wrapped in linen and rolled up in stiff mats made of sticks, they are little more than bones. But their ornate plaited hair styles and simple personal possessions ancient Ihelp to reveal details about the individuals in each grave. The bodies date from around 3,300 years ago, when the Pharaoh Akhenaten renounced T. TODRAS-WHITEHILL/AP T. Egypt’s traditional polytheistic religion and moved his capital to remote Amarna, to worship just one god: the Sun disc Aten. The cemetery offers a window on a unique episode in Egyptian history, a revolution that some see as the birth of monotheism. Barry Egypt Kemp, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and director of the Amarna Project, has been working with his colleagues to excavate the skeletons, and says that they are starting to reveal “an alarming picture of a stressful life”. Many Amarnans BY JO MARCHANT died young, with retarded growth and signs The Egyptian Museum in of multiple injuries. Some young men had Cairo had to be guarded marks where their shoulder blades had been from looters during civil pierced, perhaps as part of a brutal ritual. unrest in January. 464 | NATURE | VOL 479 | 24 NOVEMBER 2011 © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved FEATURE NEWS Kemp can’t say much more about the skeletons because he had to flee the site in January, putting his team on flights out of the country and Mediterranean Sea walling up his storehouses as a present-day revolution sent the country Demonstrators targeted into chaos (see ‘Archaeology in turmoil’). Although the situation soon the Supreme Council of Reports of illegal Antiquities headquarters. calmed — in fact, Amarna did not suffer a single episode of looting — excavations. Looters stole objects from Kemp has spent months waiting for permission to resume excavations. Alexandria the Egyptian Museum. Other teams working in the country tell a similar story. “We’ve lost a Cairo Researchers are now Saqqara Restoration work at the year,” says Frank Rühli, a palaeopathologist from the Centre for Evo- restarting work to dig up Djoser Step Pyramid was lutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who was hundreds of bodies from halted. 3,300 years ago. scheduled to start work in February on human remains at the pyramids Amarna of Saqqara, near Cairo, and in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. Nile LIBY A The block on excavations has been the latest in a series of obstacles Red Sea SAUDI for archaeologists working in Egypt — the home of perhaps one-third Site damaged by illegal Abydos excavations. Luxor ARABIA of the world’s antiquities, which reveal a vanished culture in unmatched detail (see ‘New research in an ancient land’). Egypt halted work at the Egyptian officials have said that their reluctance to allow work to Avenue of the Sphinxes. Aswân restart stems from security concerns; they are now starting to grant permits for excavations. But a broader problem is that Egypt’s Supreme EGYPT Looters attempted to Council of Antiquities (SCA), which coordinates all conservation and steal a statue of excavation activities in the country, has been mostly paralysed since the Ramesses II. departure of its charismatic but controversial leader, Zahi Hawass. An ally of Egypt’s deposed president, Hosni Mubarak, Hawass was forced to leave office in July. Since then, the agency has gained and lost three Archaeology in turmoil heads in quick succession, with the latest secretary-general, Mustafa Researchers in Egypt are trying to resume work at excavations that were shut Amin, appointed at the start of October. down during the revolution in January. Looting and illegal building have plagued The uncertainty dashed hopes of a swift return to normality for many important sites. archaeological research, and unrest this week adds new concerns. SUDAN “Everything is up in the air,” said Kim Duistermaat, director of the control and sought mainly to boost his own fame at the expense of other Netherlands–Flemish Institute in Cairo, last month. As Egypt struggles researchers and of high-quality science. Under Hawass, they complain, to determine its future without Mubarak, archaeologists are wondering archaeologists were prevented from announcing their own discover- what their field might look like without Hawass. ies. “This focus on him was something that really bothered people,” says Duistermaat. “Even for foreign missions, you had to wait, even for RISE OF THE PHARAOH weeks, until Zahi would come down and ‘excavate’ it.” The antiquities service was set up in 1858 to stem a different kind of Many archaeologists working in Egypt are reluctant to speak about chaos: the loss of artefacts. Early Egyptologists were little more than treas- Hawass on the record out of fear that he could regain influence in the ure hunters, who carted off everything from jewellery to entire monu- country. But in private, several researchers say that Hawass was intolerant ments. Now, the SCA conducts its own excavations and approves and of opposition and blocked excavation permits to those who published supervises foreign archaeological missions, as well as conserving and results or theories that clashed with his own. Megan Rowland of the managing the country’s wealth of antiquities and archaeological sites. University of Cambridge, who has just completed a master’s of philoso- The service was initially led by French scholars, and did not have phy degree on the political significance of Egypt’s antiquities during the an Egyptian head until the 1950s. After becoming secretary-general revolution, says that researchers who crossed Hawass became targets of of the SCA in 2002, Hawass catapulted what had been a fairly anony- intense criticism or had their permits revoked. mous position into the limelight. He mixed with celebrities from Diana, “Egyptological research is subject to very heavy censorship,” she Princess of Wales, to US President Barack Obama; fronted big-budget argues. In media interviews over the years, Hawass has accused sev- television documentaries; and even starred in his own reality show, eral well known archaeologists of smuggling, scientific fraud or other Chasing Mummies. The image of Hawass enthusiastically unearthing improprieties. One researcher targeted by Hawass was Joann Fletcher, treasures in his Indiana Jones-style hat became a familiar sight, and it an Egyptologist from the University of York, UK. In a 2003 television gave Egyptology its first Egyptian face. documentary she suggested that a particular mummy was Queen Even as he raised his own profile, Hawass did the same for archaeol- Nefertiti, wife of Akhenaten — a finding that Hawass says he did not ogy in Egypt. His efforts attracted tourists and raised millions of dollars vet, and which was at odds with his own ideas. from international touring exhibitions of Tutankhamun’s treasures. He Hawass told the Australian television programme 60 Minutes, “It fought hard — some felt too hard — for repatriation of artefacts, and is clear [Fletcher] made all this up because she wants to be famous.” pushed for Egyptian teams to conduct high-profile science (see Nature Fletcher was temporarily blocked from excavating in Egypt. She chal- 472, 404–406; 2011). He raised money for state-of-the-art facilities in lenges Hawass’s account and maintains that she did not break any rules. Egypt, notably persuading National Geographic in Washington DC Researchers also face restrictions when they seek to analyse arte- to donate a US$3-million scanner to the SCA in return for filming a facts. Despite Hawass’s efforts, Egypt still has only limited capacity for project to scan Tutankhamun and other royal mummies; US broad- sophisticated testing, such as carbon-14 dating and DNA analysis. But caster the Discovery Channel built two ancient-DNA labs in Cairo it is illegal to remove any archaeological artefact — even mud or pol- and donated $250,000 towards testing the mummies’ DNA. Hawass len samples — from the country for analysis. Although some see this also tackled corruption and supported projects to develop archaeo- as an understandable response to the history of artefacts being illicitly logical sites, including building a suite of museums and dealing with exported, others complain that it is devastating for archaeological sci- rising groundwater that is threatening to damage ence. “This is what makes us look like fools at international conferences,” sites across the country, including Giza’s famous NATURE.COM says one researcher, based in Cairo, who does not wish to be named. pyramids. For more on Egyptian Just a year ago, it seemed impossible to imagine any change in this But critics claim that Hawass had a darker side: archaeology, visit: situation. The position of SCA secretary-general has traditionally been that as the years went on, he exerted excessive go.nature.com/jachks temporary, held for just two to three years. But Hawass had the support 24 NOVEMBER 2011 | VOL 479 | NATURE | 465 © 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved NEWS FEATURE Protesters filled Tahrir Square in Cairo, near the Egyptian Museum (left), during the revolution, and the antiquities council lost its leader, Zahi Hawass (right). of Mubarak, who extended his appointment. from foreign television companies — as a high-profile success for The revolution changed all that. Hawass’s hold on power started to slip Egyptian Egyptology. “I’m very proud of the results,” he says, describing when he denied, incorrectly, that any objects were missing after Cairo’s the paper reporting DNA analysis of Tutankhamun (Z. Hawass et al. Egyptian Museum was looted on 28 January. It was further eroded J.

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