Until recently Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s antiquities minister, was a global symbol of Egyptian national pride. A famous archaeologist in an Indiana Jones hat, he was virtually unassailable in the old Egypt, protected by his success in boosting tourism, his efforts to reclaim lost artifacts and his closeness to the country’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak.

But the revolution changed all that.

Now demonstrators in Cairo are calling for his resignation as the interim government faces disaffected crowds in Tahrir Square.

Their primary complaint is his association with the Mubaraks, whom he defended in the early days of the revolution. But the upheaval has also drawn attention to the ways he has increased his profile over the years, often with the help of organizations and companies with which he has done business as a government official.

He receives, for example, an honorarium each year of as much as $200,000 from National Geographic to be an explorer-in-residence even as he controls access to the ancient sites it often features in its reports.

He has relationships — albeit ones he says he does not profit from — with two American companies that do business in Egypt.

One, Arts and Exhibitions International, secured Mr. Hawass’s permission several years ago to take some of the country’s most precious treasures, the artifacts of King Tut, on a world tour; its top executives recently started a separate venture to market a Zahi Hawass line of clothing.

A second company, Exhibit Merchandising, has been selling replicas of Mr. Hawass’s hat for several years. Last year that company was hired to operate a new store in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Mr. Hawass says his share of the profits from those products goes directly to Egyptian charities. But the fact that both charities, a children’s cancer hospital and a children’s museum, were overseen by Ms. Mubarak before the revolution has angered some critics…

[continues in the New York Times ]

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s minister of state for antiquities, said he will appeal a one-year jail sentence imposed on him yesterday.

The sentence is related to a lawsuit accusing him of refusing to carry out a court ruling, the state-run Middle East News Agency said today. The court had ordered a halt to bidding from companies to run a bookstore in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Hawass said today in his blog.

“Tomorrow, the head of the legal affairs department at the Ministry of Antiquities will go to the court to file our appeal,” Hawass said in the Web log. “He will present evidence that the bid for the bookstore contract was finished before the original court ruling, so therefore we could not follow the ruling to stop the bidding.”…

[continues at Bloomberg]

There was another side to Dr. Hawass, however, and his reactionary and sometimes capricious rulings on who could visit and research the sites were the stuff of legend among Egyptologists outside of his approved, establishment allies.

I’m a little skeptical that his resignation is anything more than a power play and suspect that he may very well make a well-staged, dramatic comeback — but if he really has gone for good, I’m hopeful that we may enter into a new era of breakthrough research in Egypt (perhaps from some of the great alternative researchers such as Andrew Collins, Ahmed Osman, John Anthony West and Robert Bauval).

Here’s the story on his resignation, in the New York Times:

Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s powerful and controversial antiquities chief, resigned on Thursday along with the prime minister, after posting on his Web site for the first time a list of dozens of sites that have been looted since the beginning of the uprising that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.

Reached by telephone, Mr. Hawass said he was happy that he had made the “right decision” in resigning and lashed out at colleagues who have criticized him, including one who has accused him of smuggling antiquities.

Among the places Mr. Hawass named as having been looted were the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s storerooms at its excavation site in Dahshur, south of Cairo. In a statement the Met’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, described that incident as having taken place several weeks ago…

[continues in the New York Times]

New tombs found in Giza support the view that the Great Pyramids were built by free workers and not slaves, as widely believed, Egypt’s chief archaeologist said on Sunday.

Films and media have long depicted slaves toiling away in the desert to build the mammoth pyramids only to meet a miserable death at the end of their efforts.

“These tombs were built beside the king’s pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves,” Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.

“If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king’s.”

He said the collection of workers’ tombs, some of which were found in the 1990s, were among the most significant finds in the 20th and 21st centuries. They belonged to workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.

Hawass had earlier found graffiti on the walls from workers calling themselves “friends of Khufu” — another sign that they were not slaves…

[continues at ABC News/Reuters]

CAIRO: In a shocking display of poor diplomacy, Egypt’s chief Egyptologist Zahi Hawass allegedly called American pop-star Beyonce a “stupid person” during her brief tour of the Giza pyramids earlier this week. Writing in al-Shorouk newspaper, Summer al-Gamal said that Hawass became fed up with the pop star’s attitude after she did not show the interest Hawass felt was deserved of the pyramids.

According to Gamal, during Hawass’ self-guided tour, he said “I showed her the Sphinx and I gave her a book on King Tutankhamen,” but then his anger and frustration made its way to the forefront.

“Then he stopped being diplomatic and said in anger, ’she’s a stupid person and she doesn’t understand a thing and she doesn’t want to understand’,” wrote Gamal.

Hawass is known for his outbursts. A number of foreigners have told Bikya Masr that he has employed Arabic to insult others at dinner events and gatherings, believing the non-Egyptians will not understand his Arabic. Beyonce, obviously, did not understand his jabs, Gamal said.

“She’s coming here to take pictures and that’s it,” Gamal quoted Hawass as saying.

He then assigned one of his assistants to take the American star and her entourage to a designed location nearby to shoot the photos. Similar to any high profile guest, pictures by the pyramids have become almost routine. When American President Barack Obama was in Cairo last June, Hawass personally escorted the president around the monstrous pyramids, allowing Obama to have his photo taken on the plateau.

Gamal added that Beyonce did not win over the journalists following her, however, as at least one bodyguard threatened a cameraman with violence if he did not give the pop-star her space. “One of the bodyguards threatened the cameraman, saying he would smash the camera if he continued to film,” Gamal wrote…