5 - 11 June 1997 Issue No.328 Supplement	Current issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Moshe's unfortunate obsession

The June war was not only about politics, writes Omayma Abdel-Latif. It was also an opportunity for the Israeli defence minister to add to his personal collection of Egyptian antiquities, looted from Sinai on a massive scale

---

Click to view caption

Not only did former Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan mastermind many of the Israeli army's most savage military operations, he also organised the theft of hundreds of Egyptian antiquities from Sinai. This priceless collection was never returned.

In December 1995, Israel returned the fourth and last consignment of Sinai antiquities looted between 1967 and 1982.

Packed in 500 crates, the antiquities returned by Israel did not include some of the most important items stolen during and after the June war by Moshe Dayan, an avid collector of Egyptian antiquities whose passion was not hampered by such minor details as legality and ownership.

"We were told by Israeli antiquities officials that some of the pieces which Dayan looted during the years of the war are to be included in the final batch of the returned antiquities," said Abdel-Halim Nureddin, former head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), who was at the time chairman of the Council. To his surprise, however, the crates contained none of the items Dayan is known to have taken.

"Some of the pieces he took are unique. The collection contains, among other items, the priceless Ramesside set of 40 bronze statues. He also took many pieces of jewellery from the area of Deir El-Balah," Nureddin added.

While the exact number of antiquities taken by Israel from Sinai remains unknown, many archaeological reports have estimated it at tens of thousands of pieces removed in massive excavation works.

According to an Israeli archaeologist, during and after the years of the war, Moshe Dayan's obsession with the acquisition of Egyptian antiquities was such that he used to pay for private excavation missions to dig in the Sinai Desert. Dayan then claimed all the antiquities found by these missions. In his memoir, he admits being "obsessed with digging and excavating the remains of ancient places and putting life into the kings and the wonders buried underneath.

I confess that I did use certain ways to acquire these antiquities from the sands of Egypt," Dayan wrote.

Egyptian archaeologists interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly insist that the government work actively towards retrieving this collection. "If the Israelis have no problem killing POWs, then why not plunder the history of a nation which they considered an enemy?" protested one archaeologist.

Israeli archaeologist Avis Guron, who was in charge of excavation works in Sinai from 1978 until 1982, disclosed that, after removing antiquities from various sites in Sinai during the occupation, Dayan would give orders to demolish the site completely, leaving no evidence of its historic importance.

"I made several attempts to convince Dayan not to use the historic sites that we were excavating as military fortifications but he always refused. Many historic sites in Sinai were demolished as a consequence of this policy," Guron told the Weekly.

When asked why the Israelis did not return the "Moshe Dayan collection", Amir Dory, head of the Israeli Antiquities Department, claimed that the collection "did not belong" to Egypt.

"As far as the antiquities in Sinai are concerned, they were all returned to Egypt," he insisted.

Most of Dayan's collection, he added, was taken from the area of Deir Al-Balah in Gaza and therefore, the issue should be "raised with the Palestinians."

Dory dismissed the idea that any of the Egyptian collections in Israeli museums were removed from Sinai. But Nureddin explained that many of Dayan's excavation works took place in Sinai. He also removed parts of the Temple of Sarabeit El-Khadem in Sinai, including entire columns -- which were never returned to Egypt, even after an agreement was reached with Israel in January 1992 for the return of the antiquities taken by the Israelis from Sinai. Presumably, Dayan had the temple hacked to pieces because the entire structure was too large to ship to his home in Tel Aviv.

In his will, Dayan ordered that his wife inherit the antiquities with which his house is stuffed. After his death, however, some of the items found their way onto the international antiquities market, turning up in London, Paris, and even Sidney. There is also a "Dayan collection" in the Israeli Museum, but the rest remains in Dayan's house.

While there seems to be scant hope, for the time being, of ever retrieving Egypt's plundered heritage, one Egyptian archaeologist summed up a common sentiment: "If Israel, as it claims, is a civilised nation, it should prove this by returning the heritage stolen by one of its leaders to the place where it really belongs."

Send a letter to the Editor Recommend this page

ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise!

WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

Al-Ahram Organisation