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This is an article I am sure we will be hearing more on from the anti-preservationists, if it is not on Peter Tompa's blog already. In his "High Weirdness on the Giza Plateau" (30 May 2010), Clifton Bertram purports to tell us what Red Bull, Dr Zahi Hawass and Edgar Cayce "have in common" and asks "What’s Going on Beneath the Sphinx?". Irrespective of the mumbo-jumboish aspects of this strange article, I was wondering about the video it showcases..
Lots of elite tombs and information about the search for information on newsworthy individuals, but what about ancient Everyman, what new evidence is there for the development of urban life not just in pharaonic times, farming practices, the landscape archaeology, coin circulation and local markets? Where are the graves of the average person in the Eighteenth dynasty (you know the guys that made King Tut possible)? What new discoveries can Dr Hawasss show us about things other than the tombs of glittering personalities full of nice "things" to put in museums. They too are archaeology..
and that right there is what turned me off Egyptology as an undergrad, despite the chance to study mummies. In SE Asia, rich and poor were buried together, and are studied together, as part of the same populations. A much more nuanced approach!
ReplyDeleteAs a furniture historian who shunned stately home glitz in favour of researching the vernacular tradition, I couldn't agree with you more. Hawass seems to be all about courting shallow glamour and sensational news.
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