Facebook: Save El Hibeh Egypt

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A few days ago I expressed caution about unconfirmed reports that appeared about looting and destruction at El Hibeh in Egypt. A Facebook page has been set up by American archaeologists which addresses some of those concerns with a whole series of shocking photographs (many of which seem to be the same as those in the news report I discussed earlier and many of which repeat) which include those which do indeed seem to show recent looting. I reproduce from its gallery two 'before' (2009) and 'after' (2011) shots - one slightly edited from the original to make it clearer what it is showing. The looting pictures on the Facebook page are primarily from December 2011 and appear to have originated from Andy Dailey and Carol Redmount. Here's the back-story from the latter:

Dear friends, former students, and concerned world citizens:
Archaeological sites throughout Egypt are currently being heavily looted, including the critical site of El Hibeh about 3 hours south of Cairo. Once these sites are gone, they are lost forever. It is a non-renewable resource. El Hibeh is of particular importance as it is one of the least disturbed city mounds of the Third Intermediate Period. It was first built probably in 1070 BCE by the High Priests of Amun at Luxor/Thebes and then more or less continually occupied for over 1,700 years so that the site also includes important remains from the Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, Roman, Coptic, and early Islamic periods. We are posting here pictures of the site, of looting, of articles regarding this issue, and hope that you will spread the word, add friends to the group, and notify the press when and where possible. We must take action to save El Hibeh and hundreds of other sites like it that have been severely damaged as a result of limited police protection since January 28, 2011.

BACKSTORY TO THE CREATION OF THIS WEBSITE:
Our last excavation season at Hibeh was 2009. For various reasons we were delayed returning until now. After the January 2011 revolution I contacted people, mostly to make sure they were okay, but also to find out about the site as I had heard stories of much looting. And in fact I was told that the site was "very bad." I didn't know what that meant until I was sent pictures taken in May by a group that had visited the site and were so appalled they took the trouble to look up who was doing fieldwork there. I was sent additional pictures of the looting in June, December and January 2012. I had heard that there was still looting going on at night, by someone from El Ogra, the village north of the tell, and that no one could catch the person. That's where things stood when I came to Egypt in February.

I arrived in Egypt in mid-February, signed my contract with the SCA, and was ready to go to work with my team. The day before we were supposed to start work I received a phone call telling me that local Beni Suef security had yanked our permission to work. The upshot was that a local "gangster", whose name is known, from El Ogra, the village north of the site, had formed a sort of mafia focused on looting the site. This "criminal" is evidently a murderer who got out of prison after the revolution. His "gang" is looting the site non-stop, on a massive scale. When I returned to Cairo from our dig house last week and our van passed the site heading for the eastern desert highway, we saw about ten men openly looting the mound and desert behind (we have pictures of some of them), with conveniently parked motorcycles nearby. One of our drivers took the same road this past Friday and reported that again numerous men were busy with wholesale looting of the site in broad daylight. This is an on-going crisis. They are destroying the site. The SCA officials have tried everything they could to get the looting to stop. Nothing seems to be having any effect. This is something police and security seem to be ignoring, turning a blind eye to, or worse. We started the Save Hibeh facebook page because we are at our wits end as to what else to do . . .

Andy Dailey says: We have posted over 100 photos of looting damage to the site in an album. Click the photos link at the top right of the page. Keep spreading the word.

Some of the captions are quite telling:

Churned ground in front of massive, ancient city wall and gate. Notice the destroyed limestone sarcophagus/coffin in foreground. Hundreds of mummified bodies have been exposed, torn apart, and left to rot and be eaten by wild dogs in this area.

Huge pit gouged into mound by looters who have exposed a limestone doorframe.

Area excavated by archaeologists in 2009 has now been totally trashed by treasure seekers.

Andy Dailey: Head of a mummy ripped from the body by looters looking for jewelry or textiles and left for wild dogs.
Emily Rusnak: Is someone at least trying to save the things that are found?
Andy Dailey: These pictures were taken by concerned people who took a quick trip to the site. There are no police present and archaeologists are not allowed to go to the site because "it is too dangerous" because of the looting. So, to answer your question, these things are lying all over the ground and being eaten by wild dogs because looters are being allowed to continue their work since the police have not returned to the site and apparently have no intention of doing so. The police have forbidden archaeologists from going to the site to survey the damage and record what has been exposed because these specialists may be attacked by these gangs of looters. Instead of catching looters and guarding the site, they have chosen to do nothing and to allow no one else to do so either.
Regis-Michel Verstegen: Sounds to me as if the police puts more effort in keeping archeologists away than in doing something about the looting.

Tomorrow the Facebook El-Hibeh-brigade are going to post up a press release and the addresses of people in the Egyptian government to email to get them to get the police to do what they are supposed to be doing. If you care, join the Facebook group.

But here's a question, if these photos were taken in December 2011, four months ago, where were they in the meantime? Never mind for the moment Beni Suef security (seems a bit of a misnomer), where the hell are Egyptian archaeologists? The SCA employs many thousands of them, are they all in hibernation and cut off from events in their own country or too busy with in-fighting that none of them have heard about this, let alone tried to communicate it to the outside world? We heard so much about how the 2011 revolution was social-media driven, so why does it have to be western archaeologists who start up a campaign like this? Or perhaps there already is an Egyptian-run Facebook page devoted to this issue which the American one is belatedly copying?

I think we also need to ask (and get some answers) whether what is happening at El-Hibeh is nastily atypical, or nastily typical of what is happening to remote sites in other parts of Egypt. We hear similar stories from Aswan, for example, but are these sites the exception, or the rule? It would be a shame to devote huge amounts of attention to one site when others are being robbed unnoticed with nobody to create a Facebook page or email ministers about them. What IS going on in Egypt one year after the 2011 revolution?
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