As crowds surge through Egypt’s streets in defiance of the authoritarian government of Hosni Mubarack, a few reports have surfaced of looting and attempted looting of the National Museum in Cairo and several other museums and in some cases, historic sites.

The Tracker over recent years has sent a few barbs flying toward Egypt’s autocratic and egoistic minister of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, shown in an AP photo in the nearly-looted museum with one of the army soldiers who arrived to help. First reports suggest he worked reacted fast, and may have put himself in some danger too, in preventing things from going much worse for the nation’s archeological treasures. Moreover Hawass on his own blog (with posting of his missives faxed out of the country to friends who put them up for him while Egypt’s web service is down, overloaded, or both) seems to be acting as a solid source of information. “My heart is broken and my blood is boiling,” he writes of the looters. He also salutes the many Egyptians, demonstrators included, who flocked to defend the museum.

At Time Magazine, Cairo correspondent Rania Abouzeid got hold of Hawass and wrote up his account with some flourishes that is not in his own blog. For instance, while he reports directly  that one huge wave of looters mistook the new gift shop, full of jewelry for sale and copied from ancient relics, for the museum itself, Abouzeid’s account adds one line from Hawass he leaves out of his own writeup. “I’m glad those people were idiots.”

As both accounts report, however, a handful of mayhem-minded and probably gold-maddened looters did find their way into the museum itself. Al Jazeera‘s Will Jordan filed a video report showing shattered cases and scattered relics. However, the intruders reportedly were all caught, the Army showed up to protect the main museum, and the jewelry rooms left undefiled.

The Washington Post‘s Brian Vastag similarly, from the US, was able to stitch together a report on the army’s deployment to historic sites and museums, and gets through to Hawass for assurance that nothing was stolen from the National Museum. But, he also reports, it is not yet clear what is happening as the many other museums around the shaken nation. One site, Vastag tells us, is rumored to have been sacked but that cannot be confirmed.

Other stories:

• AP: Egypt: military detains 50 at museum ;
• CNN – Ashley Hayes: Egyptologists fear for relics amid unrest ;
• Telegraph – Harriet Alexander: Egypt crisis: Looters destroy mummies in Cairo museum ; “Destroy” is such an uncompromised word. Hawass, in other accounts, says all the damaged objects, including heads of mummies some looters attempted to take away, can be repaired.

*UPDATES:

• AAAS ScienceInsider – Andrew Lawler: Archaeologists Hold Their Breaths on Status of Egyptian Antiquities ; Some new, including that Hawass now has a new and better job title; good sense of inability to find out what’s going on at remoter sites and of the dire rumors filling the void.

- Charlie Petit

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