British Museum beards Egypt

Press, 2 July 1983, Page 17

British Museum beards Egypt

The British Museum, already under pressure for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece, now has Egypt snapping at its heels — for the return of the beard of the 4500-year-old Sphinx. “We believe the British Museum, in response to the necessity of restoring a great monument like the Sphinx, must take a scientific and humanitarian stand on the issue,” the Egyptian Antiquities Authority chairman, Ahmed Kadry, says. Egyptians say their cause is particularly urgent because in October, 1981, parts of the Sphinx’s head, neck, and left leg fell off, causing a flurry of conflicting studies on how to save it from disintergation. Kadry, an army officer turned Egyptologist, reports that the authority recently submitted to the British Museum a comprehensive study on what he called the “vital structural importance” of restoring the beard to the monument The Sphinx is a giant carved rock figure of a crouching lion

with the head of a pharoah (biblical Egyptian ruler) that guards the ancient pyrmiads of Giza Bkm south-west of Cairo’s city centre. The metre-high segment of the beard broke off some time before the last century and about twothirds of it was shipped to Britain. A spokesman for the British Museum, which is prevented by an Act of Parliament from returning acquired antiquities, would only confirm that it had received an Egyptian request He thought the matter was being exaggerated out of proportion. The Egyptian Culture Minister, Mohammed Abdel-hamid Radwan, declined to say what measures Egypt would take if the museum refused to return the beard, but antiquity officials suggested that three regular British archaeological expeditions in Egypt would suffer. Kadry, said that if Britain refused, Egypt would build a new beard, possibily using part of the original in the Egyptian Museum. By Hamza Hendawi, Reuters, in Cairo.