Egyptologist clarifies his country's request for antiquities to be returned and praises Czech colleagues
The Czech Republic has a rich tradition of archaeology both at home and abroad. Over the years Czechs have made numerous discoveries in Egypt, and there is currently a Czech team working in the important archeological area of the Pyramid Necropolis in Abusir, south-west of Cairo. So it is no surprise that last week Prague was host to a major international conference that brought together more than 80 Egyptologists from around the world. They addressed important questions of preserving Egypt's extraordinary archaeological and artistic legacy. Our colleague Martin Mikule was there, and caught up with one of the foremost Egyptologists from land of the Pharaohs itself, Mr. Ali Radwan. He began by asking which European countries currently have teams working in Egypt.
"We have France, we have England, we have the United States, Germany, and we have the other nations all around in Europe, Italy, Spain, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. All those nations of Europe are participating in discovering and uncovering the history and the background of Egyptian civilization."
Are you in touch with the Czech archaeologists who are working in Abusir? Have you cooperated together?
"I myself am heading the expedition of the Cairo University, digging at the site of Abusir. But Abusir has two different sectors. South Abusir is the Royal Cemetery of the First Dynasty. The Czech group has the concession for the south of Abusir, and I myself am digging in the site of North Abusir, and I have excavated one of the ancient cemeteries of Egypt from the First Dynasty, three thousand years BC. This belongs to some of the elites of the society of Ancient Egypt at the beginning of its history, with the kings of the First Dynasty. And it was our luck that we excavated this site of North Abusir together with our Czech colleagues who are digging in the south of Abusir."
"First of all we consider that the heritage of Egypt, although distributed all over the world, is an Egyptian property, an Egyptian heritage and a piece of Egyptian history. Of course you can't say we must have all our objects in the Metropolitan, in the Louvre, in the British Museum, coming back to Egypt. But Mr Hawass didn't say that. He politely asked them to give us, for example, the head of Nefertiti for only three months, to be exhibited in Egypt and come back again to Berlin; to allow us to have the Rosetta Stone to be exhibited in Egypt for two or three months in a great celebration, and then return it to the British Museum; to have the statue of Queen Hatshepsut for one or three months in Egypt from the Metropolitan, and then have it returned to its place in the Metropolitan. This was our only demand from our colleagues abroad. And you know, the field of Egyptology is an international field of science and work. I myself studied at Cairo University, I did my thesis at the University of Munich in Germany. We are all colleagues and we are all friends. We don't see any difference between an Egyptian colleague or a foreign colleague in the field of Egyptology. We are all deeply in love with the history and civilization of Egypt."
