What we can (Maybe) Learn from the Cairo Museum Recovered Items

.
There is now a list of the items recovered by the Cairo 'sting' which led to the arrest of three men with items to sell from the looting of the Egyptian Museum. Interestingly, and unlike the previous lists, we are told from which cases the items were taken, and this reveals an interesting pattern.

They come from just two areas of the Museum, the upper (first) floor Room 19, N2, vitrines H, cases 2 and 3 (seven of the objects), and Room 6 on the same floor (at the top of the stairs) Central row vitrine A, and side vitrine C (five objects). I have indicated these two areas with the green arrows on the floor plan.

If we look at the distribution of the cases apparently broken into on the first floor (others are on the ground floor) on that night (red squares on the plan - this is a provisional version based on the evidence I examined in my own poking round) we can see there are two groups. There is a smaller scatter to the north, this is clearly where Mr Ahmed Attia Mahmod and his merry men were operating, and it seems from what we now know that they were more concerned with ripping stuff off than doing the "senseless damage" that I think the whole group of men had orders to create.

Is it possible that the fourth man who was caught - on the night - at the foot of the northwest staircase was in this group too? (That would explain how the police were able to arrest Ahmed Attia Mahmod as I really do not believe the "posting pictures by mobile phone" story).

At the other end of the museum is a scatter of broken cases which were the result (I deduce) of a different process entirely, and probably done by other men in the group.

To reiterate, I do not believe these men came in through any skylight in Room 37. The patterns of breakage and scattering of the objects indicates they probably came onto the second floor via the southeast staircase (take a moment to think about that) and I think they headed straight for the Tutankhamun gallery, Room 40 and the statues which they broke (and then later nicked parts of). If we look at the plan of the trail of destruction, it seems at least likely that the marauders split into at least two groups, one group probably hurried north, raiding Room 19, 13 and 6 on the way, perhaps with the aim of making a quick get away (think about that a moment too). Were these the people who raided the Amarna gallery on the floor below in the middle of the north side? To judge from the objects still not recovered which probably originated in this part of the Museum, there were probably more thieves active here than the three that have just been caught (unless the three have the rest hidden away as security, for a possible plea bargain).

The other group spent a bit more time smashing cases wantonly and moving objects and furniture (I now know what the foreign piece of furniture is in the Al Jazeera shots, it is a wooden waste paper bin from the corridor outside several doors down) from room to room. Fewer objects were stolen in this area, the major ones being the Yuya and Thuya shabtis and heart scarab (and it was probably here that somebody decided to cart off the bits of the Tutankhamun statues that had been brought here from the other side of the museum before being smashed). Possibly this was the same person or group of people that took a handfull of disparate objects from the case under the dome (with the "faience hedgehog").

The updated list of missing items too contains for the first time the information about the original location of the remaining missing objects. It too is interesting, only one item from Room six is now missing (a collar, 16th item on the list). The three Tutankhamun sculptures are listed as missing (but surely it is a mistake that one of them is assigned in the list to a vitrine 43 in Room 30, surely this is the case in room 40), and a fan and trumpet from the empty case in Room 13 (was that all it had held? Surely not). Now we know that the wooden model of a vase and a terracotta bed were what was taken from the case in Room 32 (rather odd items to take I would have thought). We now know what a disparate group of objects had been in the case in Room 48 (under the dome, the one with the "faience hedgehog" six groups of items including one of ten amulets). Despite the seizures, there are still a number of objects (11 in fact) missing from the same cases in Room 19. More of a surprise, instead of the four items missing from the Amarna case downstairs, the final tally is 6 (Nefertiti, princess statue, seated man, bes sculpture, scribe and Thoth, quartzite princess head).

And here are the photos I promised. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that the windows above the case with the blood-stained sticks in Room 37 have been smashed and then replaced, they are as dirty as any windows can be and quite clearly have not been replaced in the last few weeks, even though it is not as clear from these photos as I would have liked.



(With standards of cleanliness like that, no wonder they do not want tourists taking photographs, eh? What is under some of the cases is not a pleasant sight either).

Salima Ikram was adamant (pers comm in a chance meeting in Luxor) that she saw a smashed window above the relevant case, but she was mistaken. There is a missing pane on the other side of the room (odd isn't it that if they replaced one pane of glass in this skylight after the break-in, having got a glazier up there, they did not replace the other one a few metres away too). Certainly I really cannot envisage the possibility of the thieves swinging in Tarzan-like from the pane that is missing to smash into the case that was broken on the other side of the room. There really is no trace whatsoever that a window was broken in (or opened) above the case shown as the point of entry. I think the "they came in through the roof on invisible ropes" story was a convenient way to explain away an inconvenient fact or two about this "break-in"...

Photos: Plan of first floor of Cairo Museum (adapted from that in the Ancient Egypt Online blog - note: smashed boat and Asyut soldiers are all in the same room, 37): Photos of the indisputably intact skylights of Room 37 taken 19th March 2011 (Author).