It’s hard to tell when developments in Cairo are happening so fast and are so volatile, but it seems that the damage to the Cairo Museum is worse than has been reported in some newspapers. It goes beyond damage to two mummies.
Al Jazeera has two videos (here and a long one here) calling it “tragic damage” with the best footage inside the museum that I have seen.
MSNBC, meanwhile, consulted Margaret Maitland, an Egyptologist at Oxford, who matched up the damage pictures with artifacts from King Tut’s tomb. The report said that “three gilded wooden statuettes of the boy-king may have been broken off their pedestals.”
Here are before and after shots of one of them:
Maitland’s own blog post has the best descriptions I’ve seen, with details on what was destroyed
And where is Zahi Hawass? I would have expected him to run to the museum on Friday — or even Thursday — to help defend it. But reports say he got there after the damage was done, and that he minimized the vandals’ impact, saying nothing was stolen, according to CNN.
UPDATE, 1/30 evening: Several reports have come in citing looting at various Egyptian archaeological sites and other museums, including the National Museum in Alexandria, the Royal Jewelry Museum and the Coptic Museum.
Hawass now apparently says that many objects have been stolen. A report by the Canadian Broadcasting Company quotes him as fearing for the Cairo Museum because of attacks on party headquarters next door.
Internet service is down in Egypt, but Hawass has faxed a report to colleagues in Italy, who posted on his blog.