On Thursday, the competent Egyptian authorities implemented the decision of the Public Prosecution Office in Beni Suef Governorate, south of Cairo, to execute a “fake pharaonic tomb”, which was set up by fugitive suspects with the aim of defrauding those aspiring to trade antiquities, while the security services intensified their efforts to arrest them and bring them to justice.
Omar Mahmoud, Director General of Beni Suef Antiquities, revealed to “Sky News Arabia” that the story began when the Public Prosecution addressed the Beni Suef antiquities area and demanded that it form a committee to examine a cemetery in the Al-Haiba area in Al-Fashn Center, east of the governorate.
He explained that by inquiry, it was found that the Public Prosecution had received a notification that some of the accused had traded in antiquities from inside a cemetery that was discovered in the aforementioned area without notifying the concerned authorities, so the Public Prosecution ordered the place to be raided, seized and notified to the Ministry of Antiquities.
And he explained that he decided to form a committee headed by him, on Wednesday, and moved to examine the aforementioned cemetery, and it was found that it was fake, and inside it was a sarcophagus made of gypsum, imitation statues, drawings and inscriptions on the walls matching ancient Egyptian drawings, cartouches and ingots coated with gold water, but all of them are fake.
And he added that for more confirmation, the Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mustafa Waziri, personally attended and examined the tomb, which is a room at the bottom of a mountain and leads to 3 fake catacombs as well, and he also confirmed that the tomb and everything it contains is fake, and a report was prepared for the Public Prosecution with a recommendation The need to destroy the cemetery and everything it contains.
And the director of the antiquities of Beni Suef added that the security services concluded, through their investigations, that the fugitive convicts established that cemetery a year ago from now with the aim of defrauding those who aspired to legally criminal antiquities trade, and indeed they sold imitated statues as real to some deceived people, and the police are currently intensifying their efforts to seize them and seize all of them. Deal with them in that case.
And he stressed that the reason for executing this cemetery is so that it will not be used again in new monuments, in addition to that everything in it is imitated and has no value, and that the charge that will be directed against the perpetrators of that incident is fraud and fraud, not trafficking in antiquities because there are no antiquities in the cemetery.
For his part, Ahmed Badran, a professor of Egyptian antiquities at Cairo University, told Sky News Arabia that this cemetery should have been executed because it is fake and a bad imitation and has nothing to do with the ancient Egyptian civilization, which has precedence in arts, inscriptions and writing, and also not to distort the Egyptian civilization. Ancient imitation models reduce the creativity of the ancient Egyptian.