Sunday 18 August 2013

Another Oxyrhynchus letter: Egypt's antiquities minister receives threats



Additional security forces are reportedly heading to Minya "after the antiquities minister receives a  letter threatening to loot and burn Al-Bahnasa (Oxyrhynchus) archaeological galleries and to loot its treasured artefacts". Presumably we are to believe the letter looked like this:
Hello, Minister Ibrahim, how are you? Look, I hope you don't mind but a few mates and I thought we'd pay one of your sites a visit and, well you know, boy's stuff, smash it up a bit, take some stuff you know. OK? Have a nice day, your friend Balta Geya
'Bizarre' is how one commentator noted it, going on to add: "anonymous written threat to loot and burn "random" cultural heritage site really does sound like fabricated evidence to excuse security regime". I'm not sure its so "random", there may well be assumed to be a lot of interest in the West in the site, it being the source of so many early Christian documents. Who knows what is going on?

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