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Suspended
Ahmed Saleh, the director of Abu Simbel monuments. Saleh had spoken to Egypt Today last month, explaining why he had opposed Dr. Zahi Hawass’ idea of moving King Tut’s mummy to Cairo. Hawass has since carried out a CT scan on the mummy of the boy king, creating a stir because the mummy was not handled properly. In fact, the operation was so terrible that the director of the committee of doctors supervising it, Dr. Saleh Bedeir, simply walked out.

Egypt Today (magazine)
Feb 2005 Milestones

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Ahmed Saleh, the director of SCA’s Abu Simbel
antiquities department watched with the rest
of the world as Hawass made his discoveries in
Bahareya on December 13th, 2004. “That was a
real joke. How can a scientist hold an axe and
just hack at a tomb on air? All scientists know
that a lot of processes should precede the
opening of a tomb. If you just hack away at it
you lose important historical evidence. I am sad
that this is what Egyptology has come to,” Saleh says.

With a masters degree in biomedical and forensic
studies in Egyptology from Manchester, Saleh is
one of the first Egyptians to specialize in the field.
Over the years, Saleh has initiated a number of
media campaigns, not afraid to question Hawass’
decisions and ideas. His last but one skirmish
with Hawass took place over the remains of the
Atlanta mummy, which came back from the United
States about a year ago. At the time, Hawass had
announced that the mummy belonged to King Ramses I,
and was preparing a royal welcome for the returning
king. “I sent him my official opinion. This could not
have been the mummy of Ramses I, because it
had been lost in ancient times. He just ignored
me, so I wrote to Akhbar al-Adab,” Saleh remembers.
The result, he says, was two days’ deduction from
his salary.

Nowadays, Saleh is awaiting his new penalty. It
is because of the stir he started that the mummy
of King Tut didn’t come to the Egyptian Museum.
“When journalists called to ask my opinion I said
the mummy should not be moved. The SCA had
no clear plan of how it was going to move the mummy,
which is in an already dilapidated state. In the past,
the mummy was treated roughly and unscientifically,
and any more handling may lead to more damage,”
Saleh says.

. . . .

In 1925, a year after its discovery, a team of
professors including Howard Carter tried to
examine the mummy. On finding it stuck to the
sarcophagus, they put it out in the sun to melt
the materials keeping it together. They later
used hot knifes to pry the golden mask off the
face, the golden bracelets off the arms and toes.
As a result, the head was separated from the
body, the pelvis from the midriff and so were
the arms, hands, legs and feet.

. . . .

Saleh points out that the government paid thousands
of dollars to provide him with a degree in
mummification that no one has asked him to use
so far,
...
Ahmed Youssef, Egypt’s most well-known expert on
mummies, who is called upon all over England to
help in the preservation of human remains. “Why
not call on our internationally famed expert, have
him look at the mummy and tell us where to go from
there?”

Saleh fears that any handling of information by
foreigners may lead to a twisting of history. He
refers to the findings of Scott Woodward, an
American microbiologist, who tried to find
resemblance between Egyptian kings and prophets
from the Talmud. “They are trying to say that our
Egyptian history belongs to them,” Saleh accuses.
Hawass is quick to refute this idea. “There is no
Jewish conspiracy, and we will not be carrying out
DNA tests.



Drop the Mummy, and Nobody Gets Hurt
Recent controversy over moving King Tut puts
Egyptologists in the spotlight
By Manal el-Jesri

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Posts: 8014 | From: the Tekrur in the Western Sahel | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Within Egypt, Hawass has been brawling lately with critics who question the methodology of the CT scan of Tut's mummy, and the forensic re-creation of his face. Hawass curbed the authority and docked the pay of one persistent foe, Ahmed Saleh, an archeological inspector for the Supreme Council who complained, among other things, that the procedures used in the facial re-creation made Tut look Caucasian, disrespecting the nation's African roots.

Hawass insists he is not angry, vindictive or power mad; firm enforcement of the rules is essential to prevent chaos, he says, given the hundreds of ongoing archeological projects in Egypt and the continued threat of antiquities theft.

"Yes, it's inflammatory," Willeke Wendrich, a UCLA professor of Egyptian archeology, says of Hawass' willingness to attack perceived rule breakers in the press and ban them from excavating. "Maybe cooperation would be better served if he formulated things slightly differently. But it's counterbalancing what has been going on too long, a colonialist attitude that hasn't disappeared even now. I think the way he acts is partly his personality, but it's partly a reaction to a very arrogant treatment of Egyptians and Egyptian officials."

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Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by alTakruri:

quote:

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Ahmed Saleh, the director of SCA’s Abu Simbel
antiquities department watched with the rest
of the world as Hawass made his discoveries in
Bahareya on December 13th, 2004. “That was a
real joke. How can a scientist hold an axe and
just hack at a tomb on air? All scientists know
that a lot of processes should precede the
opening of a tomb. If you just hack away at it
you lose important historical evidence. I am sad
that this is what Egyptology has come to,” Saleh says.

With a masters degree in biomedical and forensic
studies in Egyptology from Manchester, Saleh is
one of the first Egyptians to specialize in the field.
Over the years, Saleh has initiated a number of
media campaigns, not afraid to question Hawass’
decisions and ideas. His last but one skirmish
with Hawass took place over the remains of the
Atlanta mummy, which came back from the United
States about a year ago. At the time, Hawass had
announced that the mummy belonged to King Ramses I,
and was preparing a royal welcome for the returning
king. “I sent him my official opinion. This could not
have been the mummy of Ramses I, because it
had been lost in ancient times. He just ignored
me, so I wrote to Akhbar al-Adab,” Saleh remembers.
The result, he says, was two days’ deduction from
his salary.

Nowadays, Saleh is awaiting his new penalty. It
is because of the stir he started that the mummy
of King Tut didn’t come to the Egyptian Museum.
“When journalists called to ask my opinion I said
the mummy should not be moved. The SCA had
no clear plan of how it was going to move the mummy,
which is in an already dilapidated state. In the past,
the mummy was treated roughly and unscientifically,
and any more handling may lead to more damage,”
Saleh says.

. . . .

In 1925, a year after its discovery, a team of
professors including Howard Carter tried to
examine the mummy. On finding it stuck to the
sarcophagus, they put it out in the sun to melt
the materials keeping it together. They later
used hot knifes to pry the golden mask off the
face, the golden bracelets off the arms and toes.
As a result, the head was separated from the
body, the pelvis from the midriff and so were
the arms, hands, legs and feet.

. . . .

Saleh points out that the government paid thousands
of dollars to provide him with a degree in
mummification that no one has asked him to use
so far,
...
Ahmed Youssef, Egypt’s most well-known expert on
mummies, who is called upon all over England to
help in the preservation of human remains. “Why
not call on our internationally famed expert, have
him look at the mummy and tell us where to go from
there?”

Saleh fears that any handling of information by
foreigners may lead to a twisting of history. He
refers to the findings of Scott Woodward, an
American microbiologist, who tried to find
resemblance between Egyptian kings and prophets
from the Talmud. “They are trying to say that our
Egyptian history belongs to them,” Saleh accuses.
Hawass is quick to refute this idea. “There is no
Jewish conspiracy, and we will not be carrying out
DNA tests.



Drop the Mummy, and Nobody Gets Hurt
Recent controversy over moving King Tut puts
Egyptologists in the spotlight
By Manal el-Jesri

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Mmmmmmm. Seems like Prof Ahmed Saleh wanted
to prevent a further theft of the Egyptian legacy

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Posts: 1296 | From: the planet | Registered: May 2011  |  IP: Logged |