Receiving Honorary Doctorate in Bulgaria
This week I travelled to Bulgaria to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Veliko Tarnovo.
This is the fourth honorary doctorate I have received. The first was from the American University in Cairo in 2005, the second was from the Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhatin University Thailand in 2009, and the third was from the University of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic in 2009.
The ceremony began on Tuesday, May 11, which is a very important day for the country of Bulgaria. On this day, they celebrate the creation of the Bulgarian alphabet by Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 850s CE. In recognition of this important day, the University awards an honorary doctorate every year to a person from Bulgaria, as well as someone from outside Bulgaria.
The ceremony began with traditional Bulgarian music, which played as we entered the hall. After that, Professor Habil Plamen Legkostup, the President of the University, began the ceremony, and gave a speech about why they were giving me an honorary doctorate degree. He stated that I had placed the love of Egyptology in the hearts of people all over the world, and had contributed greatly to the field with my numerous publications. Following President Legkostup, the Minister of Education and Science of Bulgaria, Sergey Ignatov, addressed the crowd.After these speeches, I was presented with the official robes to wear, which I was able to keep, as well as a certificate, a medal, and a statue of the saints Cyril and Methodius. After the presentation, I gave a speech. Then they presented an honorary doctorate to the other candidate, who is a famous artist from Bulgaria. Last year, the nominee from outside Bulgaria was Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister of Russia.
A very meaningful addition to the ceremony was the involvement of the Egyptian Student Association at the University. Forty Egyptian students came to the ceremony and presented me with a copy of the last archaeological piece found in Bulgaria. They performed a song that was very good, which was about science, and how it is like the sun; the world cannot live without science.
Following the ceremony, the Minister of Education and Science, Sergey Ignatov, held a lunch for me, and I gave a lecture at the University. I was also very pleased that the Egyptian Ambassador to Bulgaria, Heba Salah El Din El Marassy, gave a speech.I would like to include the text of the speech that I gave:
Dear Professor Dr. Habil Plamen Legkostup, esteemed faculty, and students.
It is truly an privilege for me to receive this honorary degree from Bulgaria’s Veliko Tarnovo University. I have been given many important honors in my live, but receiving a doctoral degree means the most to me. For a university to offer me a doctoral degree means that my colleagues in the academic community recognize the work that we are doing here in Egypt to protect and preserve our antiquities. We have so many priceless monuments -- amazing pyramids, huge temples of stone and mudbrick, secret tombs dug deep under the ground, and of course, hundreds of thousands of statues and reliefs and jewels that we find hidden beneath the sand. We have monuments from thousands of years of our civilizations here in Egypt -- from the days of the pharaohs, from Greco-Roman times, and from the Jewish, Coptic, and Islamic periods.
We are the ones who take care of this heritage. We are the ones who are responsible for caring for these treasures. But they belong to the whole world. So it means a lot to me that you are recognizing me for the work that we are doing. And we are doing many many things. For example, we are carrying out many site management programs, to protect our sites and develop them for tourists. We are also building 19 new museums to protect and display objects now hidden away in magazines.
In addition to our site management programs and new museums, we are continuing to make many great discoveries. Here are some of the most exciting. In the Valley of the Kings, we are exploring the tunnel that goes from the tomb of the great pharaoh Seti I deep into the rock. We have explored this tunnel now for more than 200 meters, and soon we will be able to reveal its mysteries to the world.In the Great Pyramid of Khufu, we are using robots to explore the mysterious shafts that lead from the Queen’s Chamber into the pyramid. They are blocked by stone slabs, and soon we will know what lies beyond. Are there still hidden treasures inside Egypt’s most famous monument? We look forward to finding out.
Near Alexandria, we are exploring the temple of Osiris at Taposiris Magna, searching for the tomb of the world’s most famous lovers, Cleopatra and Mark Antony. We have recently found a beautiful statue, probably of Ptolemy IV. Only a few days ago, I descended into a 40 meter deep shaft, holding on to an iron bar. This shaft is still a great mystery -- the bottom is hidden beneath the water table. We are just beginning to reveal its secrets.
The other project I am very excited about is using DNA and CT-scans to reveal the secrets of the New Kingdom royal mummies. We used CT scans to identify the mummy of the great female pharaoh Hatshepsut. We used DNA analysis successfully on mummies for the very first time in our project to learn about the family of King Tut. We identified his father, who is almost certainly Akhenaten, and his mother, who was Akhenaten’s full sister. We think we have found the mummy of his wife, Ankhesenamun. And we know more about his poor health -- he was lame, and had severe malaria that might have helped to kill him. Now we are investigating the mummies of the 19th and 20th Dynasties -- the family of Ramesses the Great.
I am also very proud to tell you about the work we are doing to return stolen artifacts. Since I became Secretary General, we have brought back thousands of treasures. Most recently, I brought back a beautiful Third Intermediate Period coffin from the US, which our partners at the US Homeland Security seized and helped us bring back. We are working on a number of other important cases -- last week, our team spotted a stolen relief from the site of Behbeit el-Hagar at Bonhams Auction house in London, and we hope to bring that back soon. We have made a wish list of iconic objects we would like to have returned to Egypt: the bust of Nefertiti, the Rosetta Stone, the bust of Ankhhaf, the statue of Hemiunu, the Dendera Zodiac, and the Turin statue of Ramesses II. Last month, we held the First Conference on International Cooperation for the Protection and Repatriation of Culture Heritage. It was a great success, and we hope to continue this important initiative in the future.I would like to end with a word of advice for the students here. This advice comes from my work as an archaeologist for the last 40 years. When I was young, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I went to university to study law. But after only a few days of reading law books, I changed my mind, and switched to the new faculty of archaeology, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. I did well, and graduated, but my heart was not in it. I interviewed to join the diplomatic corps, but was turned down. This turned out to be a very good thing! So I joined the antiquities service, and was sent to the remote site of Tuna el-Gebel, in the middle of nowhere. I had nothing else to do, so I explored the site, which is mostly Greco-Roman, and read a lot, and began to really learn. Then I began to excavate, and began to fall in love. I remember the first major artifact I discovered. This was a statue of Isis-Aphrodite of blue faience. It was hidden in a niche inside a tomb, and I remember the excitement of brushing away the sand to reveal her beauty. When I began to clean away the sand, I said to myself: I found my love. I found my love, archaeology. My passion is what has made me succeed, and to do great things for my country, and for the world. So I want to tell you that you have to find what you truly love, and then you have to give it all your passion. Then my advice is: If you like something, this is not enough. If you give your passion to something, to anything, you will make it great.
Further information:
Hawass to Receive Honorary Doctorate from Thailand’s Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University
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Film Festival and Doctorate Degree in the Dominican Republic Location
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