There is a nicely put together National Geographic video "Egypt Antiquities Damaged, at Risk During Unrest" worth looking at.
Terry Garcia, Exec. VP National Geographic Mission Programs - “All of these sites had been well guarded. The Egyptian government had tourism police, as well as guards at all of these sites. And they were well secured. This is something, unfortunately, that you see when you have great instability and political upheaval as we’re witnessing in Egypt now. This happened in Iraq, following the invasion. It also happened in Afghanistan. We saw certain individuals take advantage of the instability to enrich themselves.” Much of the Egyptian population itself lives on top of the remains of ancient history. Egyptologists and other scholars are cautiously optimistic that Egyptians intent on protecting the history will prevail over the few who want to profit from looting it" [...] Garcia says there’s worldwide support for Egypt’s retention of its history.[...] “If there has been looting if some objects have been stolen, that those objects might find their way into the illegal antiquities market, and many archaeologists have called on other countries, such as the United States the United Kingdom and their customs authorities to be on the lookout for Old Kingdom objects … frankly any objects that might be coming out of Egypt".The question is, how effective are the measures taken to scrutinise the legitimacy of origin of the many thousands of antiquities passing over international borders every year?
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