Egypt: "Mit Rahina Fire" "هذا الفيلم يوضح ألسنة اللهب في المعبد"

I really find it hard to understand why people cannot utilise their critical facilities a bit. In the runup to the military coup, there was a lot of media attention paid to "how bad it is in Morsi's Egypt", preparing the ground for a takeover. One of the areas this involved was antiquities. So on the eve of the coup we receive the following information:

"Shock- Horror: A huge fire in the temple of Memphis in Mit Rahina has been going for three hours and encroaches the museum. #Egypt #June30 

Note that last hashtag. "The Muslim Brotherhood is evil", they have decided and are capable of anything, so it must be true. No matter that a man-on-the-ground from the Ministry of Antiquities says otherwise (Monday 1 Jul 2013):

Ministry of State for Antiquities archaeology consultant Mohamed Hamada confirmed to Ahram Online that nothing happened to Hathor Temple at Mit Rahina archaeological site, located about 24 kilometres south of Cairo. He also denied rumours that it had been set on fire during [lacuna]. The temple is very far of the burned grass and plants, Hamada said. 

People still want to believe the shock-horror version. Monika Hana here repeats the story (1st June at 02:43 Polish time).

Sure enough, two days later a video surfaced in the evening purporting to show this huge three hour fire in the temple... One look at it, one would have thought, would be enough to incur doubts, and I was dismissive of it when I initially wrote. I see now that this was the wrong approach. It seems those who've made up their mind aren't even going to look at it properly. Let's do that then.

First thing to note, the clip we have is isolated and anonymous, focuses on a bit of fence. Frankly if I wanted to video "damage to the temple" (instead of getting out there and trying to extinguish the fire - that raises another question), I'd have just panned round a bit to show where I was and how close the fire is to the temple.

That said, we see a metal fence. Elements of the complex at Mit Rahina (I've not been there) including the Hathor temple have an identical one on photos findable on Google. Let us say for the sake of argument that this really is the fence of the Temple of Hathor at Mit Rahina.

The film lasts a minute and nine seconds and the film maker pans along the fence a couple of times. Behind the fence can be seen a lot of smoke, illuminated by the flames below. The film maker is standing on the left side of the fire, opposite a young palm tree whose bark is on fire. In the fence there are four upright elements visible. If they are 2.5 apart (let us say - I suspect they are closer-spaced), then the length of the burning is just under ten metres. How far back it goes is not clear. Let us note that the film only pans back and forth along this line, the camera does not swing round to show flames extending beyond the area filmed.

Are these flames inside the temple, or outside? There is a lamp post on the cameraman's side of the fence just to his or her right, also some small bushes, but also a much bigger one (part of a hedge?) to the right and a little behind the position of the camera. I cannot work out where this lamp post would be. Is it on the edge of a street outside the fence, or is this part of the infrastructure of the site itself? In the lack of any information from within the film itself whether this is a fire inside the temple complex or outside its fence-line and where it actually is and its extent, I think the question really should remain open until we see more photos.

What kind of fire is it? Is it extremist Moslem arsonist fire, or the sort of fire you'd get by burning dry grass along a fence line, perhaps dry grass containing lots of plastic waste as you see dumped or blown around many ancient sites in Egypt? To my mind the latter is exactly what this looks like. So is it a fire started by the "evil" Moslem Brotherhood, or is it a fire started by stupid kids or discarded cigarette?

Is it actually damaging the temple? How much more of the grass around was burnt than the ten metres we see along a fence line?

Interestingly, this video comes from the so-called "Heritage Task Force" and was simultaneously posted by them to a number of egyptology-oriented forums (3 lipca 2013 00:46). I'd like to see them now post a shot made in the day time of both sides of this fence, showing exactly where it is and the actual extent of the burning vis a vis the temple remains. I am sure they'll be glad to do that to keep us all informed about the threat to the heritage which has been averted by the army deposing the President and abolishing the Constitution. Can we see how the site looks today please? I see though that professional colleagues are also reposting this as evidence against the Moslems (or whatever).

UPDATE 6th July 2013.
Quelle surprise that nobody within driving distance of the site (24 km south of the outskirts of Cairo) has  bothered to go out there with their cellphones and shoot off a few pictures of the scorched, charred, heat shattered remains of the temple allegedly "destroyed by Morsi's thugs". Is that because the damage is so upsetting they cannot bring themselves to look at it, or because there is actually nothing much to show but an area of burnt grass  and rubbish away from the site and a few metres of heat-scarred fence?  Either way, we'd like to know. In the light of the alarming (alarmist reports) can somebody go out there and show us what the site actually looks like today? Like a member of the "Heritage Task Force" for example. After all, I am sure they'd like us to think of them as providing objective facts and not merely as hate-mongering black-propagandists.