The Shadow King (36 page)

From that point on, Hawass’s position as Egypt’s antiquities chief, which had previously seemed so unassailable, began to unravel. Just a few days later, on February 11, Mubarak stepped down as president. Almost immediately, Hawass reported that several objects were in fact missing from the museum—including two gilded statues of Tutankhamun, one of his trumpets, statuettes of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and Yuya’s heart scarab—and that archaeological sites and storehouses in some parts of Egypt were indeed being emptied by looters. Hawass insists that at all times he accurately passed on the information he received from museum staff, but the turnaround inevitably led to claims that he initially suppressed knowledge of the losses to protect Mubarak’s fading regime.

Foreign archaeologists across the country had been ordered by the police to put down their tools and take the first flights they could out of the country for their own safety, leaving the sites—particularly those close to Cairo—open to attack. Further south, though, it was quieter. In the Valley of the Kings, Kent Weeks kept working. And while Tutankhamun’s treasures were looted in Cairo, his mummy was safe in its tomb. The only change in its circumstances was that the valley became eerily quiet, as the usual stream of tourists came to an abrupt standstill.

Hawass’s critics within Egypt seized their opportunity to attack him with a battery of wild-sounding claims, for example, that he covered up the thefts at the Egyptian museum, oversaw corruption at the antiquities service, and smuggled antiquities on behalf of the Mubarak family. He was also under fire for his Tutankhamun projects, reflecting simmering resentment in some quarters at least for allowing foreigners to become so intimately involved with the Egyptian king. Allegations reported in the Egyptian press included that he illegally signed a contract with National Geographic to exhibit artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb abroad without any guarantee of their return and even that he threatened national security by allowing foreign researchers to study the royal mummies.3 Hawass has described these allegations on his blog as “false” and “ridiculous.”4

After briefly resigning and being reinstated in March, Hawass was fired in July by the interim prime minister, Essam Sharaf, in a move apparently intended to ease pressure from protestors wanting to purge remnants of Mubarak’s regime. A few days later, Hawass’s replacement submitted a budget showing that the antiquities service was in huge debt, owing hundreds of millions of dollars to various banks.5 The money that had poured in from the Tutankhamun exhibitions was all gone.

The next few months saw a succession of heads of the antiquities service, each apparently unable to deal with the dire financial concerns and appease the thousands of employees protesting for permanent jobs and better pay. With nobody clearly in charge, all work came to a standstill, from archaeological digs and conservation work to the DNA analysis and CT scans of the royal mummies. When I visited the antiquities service headquarters in Zamalek, Cairo, in October 2011, its corridors were full of bored employees watching the clock until it was time to go home. “We’ve been sat here for months,” says one woman, a bright, young museum guide in a mauve headscarf, now installed next to the plastic flowers in the visitors’ waiting room.

With chaos at the antiquities service, I go to see Hawass. As the man who has controlled all recent studies on Tutankhamun’s mummy and effectively defined the king’s image for the past decade, I’m interested to know what he thinks about the scientific arguments over his teams’ work, and the prospects for the future research on the royal mummies.

When I first request an interview, I don’t hear anything back. Since losing his position at the antiquities service, Hawass has barely been seen in public and his usually busy blog has been silent, sparking discussions of his possible whereabouts. Is he in hiding? Plotting a comeback? Secretly running the antiquities service from a private office? Then I get an email with just one line, “Yes you can come to see me tuesday at 11am,” and an address.

After considerable searching, I find the building—an apartment block set off the main road in the bustling Mohandessin district of Cairo. Like many buildings in the city it’s big, ugly, and caked in dirt, with an air conditioning unit hanging out of every window. When I step inside, I realize that it too has fallen from greater things. Loose wires now trail from the elaborate light fittings in its huge entrance hall, while marble floors and ornate banisters are barely visible beneath decades-worth of dirt and dust.

The elevator is a clunky metal cage that looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the 1950s. But it rises somehow and I emerge on the ninth floor. Facing me at the end of the corridor is a large wooden door, behind which is Zahi Hawass.

As I walk up to it, I have to admit I’m nervous. Hawass might be the darling of National Geographic, loved by TV audiences across the world for discovering ancient treasures and jumping around in his Indiana Jones hat. But Egyptologists seem actually quite scared of him. He has been described as “the Mubarak of antiquities,”6 with critics painting a picture of a bully who is quick to punish anyone who crosses him—accusing respected scholars of smuggling antiquities for example, or banning them (and sometimes their colleagues) from excavating in Egypt. It’s tough to get anyone to discuss their concerns on the record, but in a rare published comment, the independent Egyptologist Marianne Eaton-Krauss said of Pusch and Zink’s DNA study, “The team members have my sympathy. Anyone who contradicts [Hawass] risks losing not only their opportunity of working in Egypt but also that of the institution with whom the person is affiliated.”*,7

In my own experience, plenty of respected Egyptologists are keen to praise Hawass—his efforts to stamp out corruption in the antiquities service, for example, or his tireless energy and enthusiasm in promoting the cause of antiquities. But he does seem to make some Egyptologists jumpy. One researcher who promised to meet me to discuss work on the royal mummies abruptly cut off contact, while another phoned me repeatedly in London late one night, begging me to change a quote in a story I’d written that could be construed as not being completely favorable to the antiquities chief. Several researchers declined to talk to me on the record about research on the royal mummies or Hawass himself—even after he stepped down—saying that they feared damage to their careers. Justified or not, their perceived fears seem to be damaging a proper scientific discussion about the studies of Tutankhamun and his family.

In Egypt, of course, career damage is not all that critics of those in authority have to fear. Despite the revolution, this is still a police state, run by the same military regime that has been in charge for decades, with its reputation for corruption and human rights abuses. Antiquities, as a key part of Egypt’s economy and image, are intertwined with that regime. And while there is nothing to connect this with Hawass himself, I recall that in March 2011, several weeks after Mubarak stepped down, the army is alleged to have used the Egyptian Museum—from its manicured gardens to its grand entrance hall—as a convenient base to interrogate and torture protestors.9

As I reach Hawass’s office, I text my boyfriend back in London to let him know where I am, and knock at the door.

It’s opened by a slim Egyptian woman who smiles and shyly beckons me into a cozy, carpeted set of rooms, its shelves lined with books. Then Hawass himself, beaming, smaller than I imagined, bounces up from behind his desk to shake my hand.

Suddenly, my fears and imaginings seem rather ridiculous. Whatever sides there are to Hawass, today I’m meeting the loveable, media-friendly ambassador for Egyptology. Despite his recent low profile, he is keen to talk and to impress upon me his considerable achievements. His office supports him in this endeavor—we’re surrounded by a dizzying array of trophies, medals, and photos of Hawass with celebrities such as Barack Obama and Celine Dion.

The archaeologist is charming and full of energy despite his situation. He talks nonstop and jumps up every few minutes to locate objects that will better illustrate his latest point: his sweat-stained hat, his handwritten manuscripts (he’s writing a book about the revolution, and another one about Tutankhamun10)—“Look at this! Look! Look how many I wrote!”—and a tall pile of stuffed-full A4 envelopes that he says will soon prove his innocence in the investigations against him.

He rejects the idea that he was close to Mubarak or that he supported the dictator’s regime. “I have never been a politician,” he says. “I was wearing my jeans and my hat, working.” He points out that he became a minister only after the revolution and says he regularly fought with members of the government over causes related to antiquities. As for torture in the museum, it’s simply not true, he insists.

When it comes to archaeology, Hawass issues a blanket denial of pretty much everything negative that has ever been said about him. He denounces his critics as “corrupt” and “crooks who came out of their holes to hurt me”—all directed at me in a shout so loud that I fear I’ve made him angry, until I realize it’s his normal speaking voice. His high profile in the media was necessary “to Egyptianize Egyptian antiquities,” he says. “Everything I did was for Egypt.” And he denies stifling debate or taking credit for others’ discoveries, arguing that by law he had to scrutinize all results before they were announced to the media to prevent unscrupulous archaeologists from making false claims for personal gain. The strict rules were imposed by the antiquities service to protect everyone involved, he adds, explaining that as long as archaeologists obeyed the rules, they had no cause for concern. “But if anyone made a mistake, I punished him.”

Hawass insists that his tenure was good for science, and says he’s proud of how he extracted millions of dollars from U.S. media companies to ensure that research on the royal mummies was carried out for the first time in Egypt, by Egyptian teams. Taking control of such research after decades of studies carried out by foreigners is surely a major achievement by anyone’s standards. But the criticisms of the work seem to have washed over him. “I’m very proud of the results,” he says. “All of our results have been approved by archaeology.” I get the impression that Hawass doesn’t spend too much time worrying about what anyone else thinks. At this point in our interview, he walks out abruptly. I’m left sitting mystified, until I hear a toilet flush in the next room and he returns to continue exactly where he left off.

He seems honestly baffled at the suggestion that his research teams might share any further data or that it might be helpful to hold an international symposium—as some scholars have called for—at which experts from different backgrounds could come together to discuss the results. “What would a symposium achieve?” he asks. “I find it hard to imagine what other questions people might have.”* For example, he seems incredulous that any scientist might wish to check the details of the CT scans that caused Selim to revise the age of the KV55 mummy—a controversial conclusion that was crucial to identifying this individual as Akhenaten: “Ashraf Selim is the best archaeologist in the world!” Similarly, he describes the finding that Tutankhamun was ill, disabled, and killed by a broken leg as “the final word on the subject.”

Research on the royal mummies is “taking a rest,” he tells me, but says he hopes to stay involved with the project in the future. With further analysis of the DNA results, he predicts, “the two fetuses now can lead us to the mummies of Ankhesenamun and Nefertiti.” The team’s published data (if correct) already suggest that one of the two female mummies found in tomb KV21 could be the fetuses’ mother, presumably Tutankhamun’s wife, Ankhesenamun. Hawass has a hunch that her companion is Ankhesenamun’s mother, Nefertiti. “We can prove it later,” he says breezily.

I think that’s when I get it. Whether Hawass’s motivation is money or glory or power (for him or for Egypt), he seems to care passionately about ancient Egypt and its antiquities and sharing that with the world. Though some critics scoff that he’s not an intellectual, he understands people, and knows that the new results and discoveries created by science projects are key to getting them excited. But I’m not convinced that finding the dry, objective “truth” about the mummies has a great deal of meaning for him. Despite his research credentials, he is at heart a storyteller; the science is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It creates a story that others want to buy—something he is a genius at. Whatever the real facts are about these mummies, his narratives are what become true, in his own mind and in the minds of millions, through sheer force of belief and repetition.

Hawass’s approach reminds me of the senior adviser* to President George W. Bush who scoffed at the “reality-based community” in 2004. U.S. journalist Ron Suskind wrote in the New York Times magazine that the aide defined this community to him as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”11 Suskind took this as a compliment until the aide continued: “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

Suskind argued that Bush and his closest circle acted according to a “faith-based” reality, based on gut instinct and moral or religious positions, in which factual data or evidence are all but irrelevant. “Open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value,” he said. “It may in fact create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker.”

Similarly, when Hawass pronounces on camera that a particular mummy is Queen Hatshepsut, or Tiye, or Akhenaten, or that Tutankhamun was a cripple who died of a broken leg, he is creating that most precious commodity: certainty. The actual truth—generally the doubt—that underlies the headlines is seen as irrelevant, even counterproductive. The royal mummy studies have fulfilled their purpose—created the dramatic narrative needed to sell the TV documentaries and museum exhibitions. Where would be the point in undermining that? At least until the next study, which will create a new story and a new wave of interest.