Friday 14 July 2017

Egypt, Site Guards Murdered


In Egypt, masked gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a security checkpoint in Giza province on Friday killing five policemen (AP, 'Gunmen kill 5 policemen near Egypt's oldest pyramid in Giza',  14.07.17)
The drive-by shooting in the early hours of the morning took place in the village of Abusir in Badrashin, part of Greater Cairo [...] The attack took place near the famous Step Pyramid of King Djoser, [...] The attackers stole the weapons and radios of the victims and tried to set fire to the bodies but fled upon seeing people gathering nearby, witnesses said.
The slain policemen were part of the force tasked to guard Saqqara, with its concentration of funerary complexes, temples and tombs. This event should be borne in mind by those dealers and their lobbyists who insist that, instead of buyers lifting a finger and eliminating the possibility of financing the looters and thieves by buying unselectively, no-questions-asked,  foreign governments should  provide better site security by placing guards 24/7 on all archaeological sites, everywhere. A team of five armed guards however was not in a position to fend off this attack. What human cost does the dealers' insistence involve? Why can they just not clean up the portable antiquities business?


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