During the Egyptian uprising, people around the world were scandalized to hear about damage done to the famed Egyptian Museum. The heads of two mummies were ripped off and a number of ancient and invaluable artifacts, including two statues of Tutankhamun, were damaged. Egypt’s antiquities chief, Zawi Hawass, was scrutinized then and has come under fire in recent months for a number of reasons, the New York Times says: “his closeness to former President Hosni Mubarak, some inconsistent reports on the safety of archaeological sites during the uprising and for his role in a dispute over an Egyptian museum bookstore, for which he now possibly faces jail time.”

The reasons for the last offense against Hawass are not about any damaged or unaccounted for artifacts, but from what seems to be a legal technicality.

Hawass stepped down from his position as antiquities minister and then was reinstated after a few weeks. He then got into a dispute about the management of the Egyptian Museum bookstore and a “judge on Sunday sentenced him to a year in jail and ordered him removed from his job.” 

On Monday, an administrative court degree reportedly issued a decree to keep Hawass out of jail and allow him to keep his position. CNN details the dispute about the book store, which appears to be due to a technicality:

The Interior Ministry source told CNN on Monday that the sentence was not a post-revolutionary political act, but was imposed strictly for his failure to carry out the court order.

The sentence was related to a charge that Hawass, acting as secretary general of the SCA, refused to carry out an order to stop the bidding process last year for companies to run a bookstore in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Hawass, however, claimed he could not have enforced the ruling because it came “when it was too late to do anything.”

The court order was issued in early June 2010 on behalf of the museum bookstore’s tenant at the time, who felt he should keep his contract, Hawass said. However, the new company had been chosen in late May, before the trial in the lawsuit began, and representatives of the Supreme Council of Antiquities “did not have time to present evidence that the bidding had finished.”

Hawass has also been embroiled in another controversy regarding a clothing line that he has loaned his name to. 

The Hawass line is to sell men’s clothing as part of a “novel fashion line [that is] not just for the traveling man, but [for] the man who values self-discovery, historicism and adventure.” A perusal of the clothes suggests that the “distressed khakis” and vintage-look leather jackets are meant to evoke an Indiana Jones-esque era (or rather fantasy) of the archaeologist, with a look that “hearkens back to Egypt’s golden age of discovery in the early 20th century.” Critics have accused Hawass of over-commercializing and marketing Egypt’s past and, I would also say, his role in promoting that past.

Says the New York Times:

Some detractors have said that the Hawass clothing, which was first sold at Harrods in London this month, commercializes Egyptian history, and some object to the catalog because they thought — incorrectly, according to the makers of the clothing — that models had sat on or scuffed priceless ancient artifacts during the photo shoot.

“You might be thinking that there is an ethical question surrounding a minister using 5,000 years’ worth of a country’s heritage as a backdrop for private enterprise in a crass fashion,” wrote the journalist Sarah Carr on her blog Inanities.

The furor over the photographs was large enough that Mr. Hawass responded to it on his own blog this week, defending himself against the accusations that antiquities were endangered in the making of the catalog, and also against the suggestion that he is profiting from the marketing of his persona and Egypt’s past.

Hawass has said that all proceeds from the sale of the clothing are going to the Children’s Cancer Hospital in Cairo, though Dr. Sharif Abul Naga, the hospital’s director, said that there is no written agreement yet.

It is likely, though, that all eyes will be watching to make sure that all proceeds from the sale of Hawass’ clothing do go to children’s cancer hospital. As both the Hawass clothing line and the dispute about the museum book store suggest, the marketing of “ancient Egypt”  can be a controversial business indeed.

Previous Care2 Coverage

Egyptian Museum Damaged, Statues of Tutankhamun Stolen & Recovered [VIDEO]