A reporter from Al-Masry Al-Youm’s Arabic edition saw the damage this morning and Al-Arabeya news channel has been showing the first footage shot within the museum Saturday afternoon.
Glass display cases were broken, although the ancient Egyptian jewels inside were not taken. Statues were broken into pieces and sarcophagi were displaced.
Zahi Hawass, the Head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, made a statement this morning that all the artifacts were still in the museum, although many had been broken.
According to Hawass, about 1,000 people looted the museum's gift shop and grounds. Later nine people carrying mummy skulls were arrested as they tried to leave through emergency exits.
Read more: Al-Masry Al-Youm
Our current lives are the antiquities of our kids and grand grand children.. it holds no less of importance, one day the broken pieces and because of protests like the one taking place nowadays, will be decently restored, preserved, beautifully displayed in a secured museum where security system does not shut off because of a sudden malfunction in the power flow from city main.. one day the museum will receive hundreds maybe thousands of visitors from schools and colleges every day because their minister of education wants to plant respect for history & art in the Egyptian child.. that very broken piece will stand with its crack to tell a story bigger than art, a story of the patience of 80 million Egyptians pushed to the edge of what they can endure by their regime under the eyes of their own ruler.. one day that very piece will cause goose bumps to every person that watches it from behind a glass screen and entice him into a nirvana of pride and love to those who have said NO…
ReplyDeleteDon’t be sad for the broken pieces Egypt.. the broken wills are back to life again..