GOLDEN MUMMIES
Police were looting the museum.
“Where is Zahi Hawass?” came
close to becoming a Twitter meme
before he resurfaced from his home
in Giza the next afternoon. Hawass
was so synonymous with the museum and so possessive of its image
that his absence from the spotlight
— if not the building itself — during
a harrowing moment in the institution’s history marked a complete deviation from the blusterous norm.
Hawass claimed curfews had confined
him to his home and thanked protesters for protecting the museum,
Hawass, speaking in perfunctory
verbal jabs, downplayed the damage
— “They destroyed two mummies and
opened one case,” he told Al Jazeera
— even as TV came