Countering

Monica Hanna
Indeed, children have been used primarily to reach small burial shafts and tunnels.
Unfortunately, many children have lost their lives in the process (Custodian 2015).
People have become obsessed with finding a treasure that would make them rich quickly.
Many people, particularly in Middle Egypt and the oases, started defrauding schemes as
fake artefacts were buried for rich buyers to come and find – many of whom (from Egypt
and abroad) were victims of these frauds.
Another type of criminal looting activity has emerged. With the chaotic situation
in Libya and the infiltration of state-of-the-art weapons through the western border of
Egypt, many organized looting gangs were able to buy weapons at cheap prices. They
immediately formed systematic groups to raid archaeological sites with four wheel cars
and geo-sonars. Helpless site guards stood with their empty .9 mm pistols, watching
gangs fight and kill each other over a discovered tomb. These gangs have archaeological
knowledge, and many foreign experts were rumoured to have helped them with maps or
with expertise. They also are thought to have worked for particular dealers or collectors
who went in search of specific artefacts (Abdelzaher in Hanna 2004).
With the Arab Spring and subsequent unrest in the Middle East, the trade in illicit
antiquities has escalated. International crime organizations managed to smuggle
antiquities along with arms and drugs in the region. Countries such as Israel, where the
antiquities trade is legal, have served as a collection point for many objects in the region
before travelling to Europe or the United States. Antiquities, from Ancient, Coptic,
Islamic and Modern Egypt, started appearing on the antiquities market. In fact, the
market suddenly flourished with thousands of objects coming in from illicit digging. The
online market prospered in particular, as online websites have been used to sell Egyptian
objects. In addition, a growing interest for collecting in the Gulf countries has emerged.
The illegal markets in Abu Dhabi, Doha and Kuwait City had antiquities shops which
collected objects that originated from the entire region. The famous Barakat Gallery
has been selling illegally acquired objects in Abu Dhabi despite efforts by the Egyptian
government to halt them.
Illicit digging has destroyed most of the Egyptian heritage, as looters used bulldozers
to tear off remains in their search for objects to be sold easily. Many of the sites have lost
their historic value, insofar as the looters and local communities alike knew many of the
spots where no excavations had taken place before and targeted them immediately. Illicit
digging strips the object from any related contextual knowledge and as such, it becomes
an artefact instead of a historical piece (Brodie 2006; Kanawati, El-Raziq and McFarlane
1998). The looters not only sell de-contextualized objects, but also destroy the context of
the site in the process. In most looted sites, many of the standing structures have been
destroyed, such as at Antinoupolis (Shaykh Ibada) in Mallawi, Minya in Middle Egypt
(Fig. 1).
The looting, thefts, vandalism and land-grabbing map
It is important to bear in mind the clear difference between looting and thefts. Looting
targets unspoilt sites to extract objects and selling them. are usually armed and target
magazines, storehouses and museums. Vandalism is usually carried out either to wipe
out the aura of a site as ‘heritage’ by setting it on fire, destroying inscriptions, or turning
the site into farmland, fish farms or a solid waste dump. This step usually is taken to
change the ‘identity’ of the site in communal memory, so that its initial nature as an
archaeological site is forgotten and its overtaking easier. Land-grabbing is usually the
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