Mohammed Nosseir a liberal politician from Egypt, is a strong advocate of political participation and economic freedom. He has written an important article acknowledging the truth about the capabilities of the Egyptians to look after the heritage of their land ('Egypt will pay a steep price for shunning its ancient history', Arab News June 29, 2018)
Egypt possesses millions of highly valuable and universally admired artifacts, and has always had a smuggling problem. The current tendency to favor government megaprojects while overlooking the importance of ancient Egyptian antiquities to the development of our country has encouraged many to engage in the illicit trafficking of antiquities, a practice that has been increasing substantially, especially in the last few years. [...] Meanwhile, as it focuses on projects that might help to feed citizens in the future, the government is paying less attention to protecting and promoting our antiquities [...]. Our government has still not provided proper professional management for the astonishing monuments and artifacts built by the pharaohs thousands of years ago — this kind of shunning of our history has prompted several nations to claim that the ancient civilization of the pharaohs does not belong to us. Minimal effort is needed to better protect and promote our ancient history, which could potentially generate billions in revenues. Instead, we have entrusted the management of our most valuable antiquities to a handful of bureaucrats, some of whom are engaged in smuggling. The Egyptian government needs to be extremely firm with antiquities smugglers. This is more a matter of enforcing existing laws than promulgating new ones. Many nations whose antiquities are certainly less valuable than ours are significantly more knowledgeable about the protection and promotion of antiquities than we are. Egypt needs to assign these nations as the caretakers of our antiquities to better display them to international visitors.
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