Egyptian Regime Arrest Coin Collector

The Egyptian military dictatorship have arrested another collector in their efforts to seize control of artifact collecting. The Cairo Post is smugly reporting: "Antique coins smuggling attempt foiled at Luxor airport. Antique is the correct word, these are not archeological artifacts, far from it.

An attempt to smuggle 148 antique coins was foiled by the authorities at Luxor International Airport, Youm7 reported Saturday. The coins, dating back to the Mohamed Ali Dynasty (1805-1952), were seized with a 33-year-old Egyptian passenger heading to Qatar, source at Luxor airport told Youm7. Officials at the archaeological unit at the airport inspected the objects and approved their authenticity, said the source. The passenger has been arrested while the antique coins have been confiscated to be delivered to the Ministry of Antiquities, in accordance with the provisions of 1973 Antiquities Protection Law 117, he added. Since the outbreak of January 25 Revolution in 2011 and its consequent security lapse across Egypt, the Tourism and Antiquities Police, in coordination with Cairo airport’s authorities, thwarted several attempts to smuggle ancient Egyptian antiquities.

Except they are not, each time they boast of another antiquity found in a foreign auction, they are boasting of their own failure to prevent their own citizens stealing them from under their noses.American collectors are being penalised for their own failure to protect the bits of the global heritage which currently lie in territory under their disfunctional rule.

Not to mention incompetence, the archeologists employed by the airport clearly have the same knowledge of and interest in coins as archeologists elsewhere, they inspected the coins at the airport   and "approved their authenticity" and the newspaper adds them to their list of "thwarted attempts to smuggle ancient Egyptian antiquities". The coins shown are modern coins of the Republic of India.