Cape Town - Howard Carter may have held the title of world’s best-known archaeologist for the better part of the 20th century, but it’s an altogether different kind of mummy hunter who has captured the global imagination since then.
Better known to avid TV documentary audiences as the fellow with the perennial Indiana Jones hat, Dr Zahi Hawass, who was at the opening of the Tutankhamun exhibition in Gauteng, is a divisive figure who has courted praise and controversy. This is from the time he took up the mantle of secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2002.
While characterising himself as “an ordinary man with a passion for archaeology that helped me capture the hearts of people all over the globe”, his detractors describe him as a self-serving megalomaniac.
Some even declare him The Mubarak of Antiquities. This, in reference to his close relationship with the former Egyptian president who was ousted during the 2011 uprising and under whom Hawass’s career flourished – not least when Hosni Mubarak appointed him as the first-ever Minister of Antiquities.
But four years since Hawass, too, was unceremoniously deposed from his shortlived ministerial position and subsequently became the subject of 22 corruption allegations, the ever imperious Dr Zahi remains defiant: “First of all, the people who attacked me after the revolution were thieves and crooks… people I had punished for stealing antiquities.”
Nevertheless, the pervasive query as to whether it is really the interests of Egypt which he’s serving, or his own, is one which must be asked: “This is something that people have always been saying – that I only want to promote myself. But I have never stopped anyone from being on TV, I always encourage people – talk, have your own project, be better than me…
“That is my real legacy,” he declares, like a Pharaoh addressing his adoring people, before comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, the link apparently being their shared sentiment of forgiveness towards those who seek to destroy them.
This, Hawass follows with a list of his various achievements, including the retrieval of over 6 000 lost or stolen Egyptian artefacts. All admirable accomplishments, but it’s what’s not said that is most telling. For example, there were those persistent loud whispers that he only granted foreign archaeologists access to ancient sites on condition that he be the one to make the announcement should their excavations bear fruit.
Or, similarly, the 2011 The New York Times front-page report which revealed Hawass “receives an honorarium each year of as much as $200 000 from National Geographic to be an explorer-in-residence, even as he controls access to the ancient sites it often features in its reports”.
Or Hawass’s clothing line, as promoted by the same American company that first funded a world tour of precious King Tut artefacts (the genuine pieces). Or a second, separate American company that has been selling replicas of Hawass’s hat, with a kickback for the doc himself.
Even so, he pleads humility, impressing the point that “it’s not enough to like something… not enough to love something. You have to give something your passion to make it a success. This is what I do”.
Perhaps, then, it is good friend and fellow Egyptian celebrity Omar Sharif who best encapsulates the true secret of Hawass’s success: “I think his best quality is that he’s a great actor.”
Cape Argus