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| The vandalized and looted exhibition hall at Egypt's Mallawi Museum, seen on August 26, 2013 (AFP, Gianluigi Guercia) |
The state-run MENA news agency relayed Ibrahim’s appreciation to the residents of Minya for responding to his pledge that they would not be prosecuted if they returned the stolen artifacts. [...] Ibrahim said he is confident the residents will return the stolen artifacts because their understanding of the artifacts' historical and cultural value. He also added that the pieces are registered and cannot be sold.It looks like my original suggestion that systematic looting was carried out by an organized gang before the mob got in and smashed the place up should be abandoned. It seems that these objects are coming back in dribs and drabs from a whole load of people that took them piecemeal and are now realising all they have is trouble on their hands.
Another article [Mohamad Ali Harissi (AFP) 'History goes up in smoke at sacked Egyptian museum', The Daily Star - 3rd September 2013] paints an evocative picture and adds some new information:
Magdy Tahami looks in disbelief at what remains of Egypt's tiny Mallawi museum. The ground is littered with glass from the display cabinets, which once housed its precious collection, after a mob attacked and looted the building, during a nationwide crackdown on Islamist protesters. Before, hundreds of antiquities, statuettes, gold and jewels told the history of Egypt, from pharaonic times to the Muslim caliphs, from the Omayyad dynasty in the 7th century to the Fatimids in the 12th, and touching on Greek and Roman antiquities. For 20 years, these historic treasures were assistant-director Tahami's whole life.The Mallawi museum was attacked on August 14, shortly after the police and army launched an operation on pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo that killed hundreds in few hours:
"I like this museum more than my own house, I have spent more time there than at home. It is as if it were my house that has been destroyed, burgled and pillaged," he says.
several hundred armed men attacked the museum. While nobody is certain who the attackers and looters were, the walls of the museum are still daubed with pro-Morsi slogans. "Yes to Islam, yes to the Muslim Brotherhood," says one slogan, in a nod to the group from which Morsi hails. Another warns: "Sisi, we are coming," [...] the museum, with its antiquities and statues, which a minority of radical Islamists had called to be destroyed, was not the only building to be targeted. In the region, which is home to a sizeable Christian minority, several churches and Coptic institutions have been also attacked. Warned in advance of the bloody events in the capital, the employees closed the museum and barricaded themselves inside with a dozen policemen, but they could not stop the damage, Tahami says. He describes the scene as a "battlefield," with automatic fire echoing from all sides so that "we did not know where they were coming from or who was firing." After several hours, nearly all of the 1,089 museum pieces had been stolen or destroyed, says Tahami. [...].
The floor of the museum's main display room is still covered with broken glass and wrecked display cases, and a similar scene of devastation can be seen in two adjoining rooms and the one upstairs. In front of the entrance to the museum, still pocked with bullet holes and surrounded by burned-out cars, Khalil Hussein, the head of security, looks on in silence. "The day after the attack, an official delegation came to see the damage. When they came, a sniper shot our colleague Sameh Ahmed Abdel Hafiz, who worked at the ticket desk, as he was standing in the courtyard," he says.
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