It has come to my attention that an organization called Nature Conservation Egypt is circulating a petition about Lake Qarun in the Fayum, implicating me in a real estate project that threatens this site: www.petitiononline.com/nce2/. 

 Please be aware that much of what I have seen written about this issue is not true. The Amer Group did not take the site and did not build anything there.

Three years ago the Minister of Tourism decided to sell the site of Lake Qarun, which is government property, to the Amer Group to use for touristic purposes. I strongly objected to the project from the beginning because I know that this is an archaeologically rich area.

After a long discussion, my Ministry, the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA, then known as the Supreme Council of Antiquities [SCA]), the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Culture all agreed that an archaeological impact assessment of the site should be undertaken first to judge whether this tourism project should be allowed or not. I appointed a team of several members of SCA staff, led by archaeologist Khaled Saad. The team’s mission was under my direction and it excavated the site at the same time as living in a camp there. This team found many important archaeological finds, but the excavation came to an end just before the Revolution began. 

I have asked Khaled Saad to write a report about the importance of the excavations and the site. I will appoint a committee next week to go there again and make further examinations of the area before we decide how to proceed. At present, the site is completely under the MSA's responsibility and no one else has touched it. 

As for whether we should give it to the Ministry of Tourism for touristic projects or keep it for the Ministry of State for Antiquities, I can say that the MSA would never support giving Lake Qarun to the Amer Group to build tourist sites because it is such an unspoiled and archaeologically rich site, and I have told the Ministry of Tourism and other bodies as much. At the same time, however, I will have to wait and see what the opinion of the appointed committee is. This is a decision that is not completely within the jurisdiction of the MSA.

An MSA photographer is going to shoot the site this weekend, and his images will be uploaded here and on the MSA’s website on Sunday to illustrate the Lake’s current state.

For regular updates please follow my official Facebook page http://tinyurl.com/3mm7acq and Twitter feed https://twitter.com/#!/ZahiHawass.Posted on Friday, May 20, 2011