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Comment by tastyfreeze | Hacker News Reader

Look no further than the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Nothing is allowed to proceed or be published without their sign off.

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For anyone doubting this, take a look at Zahi Hawass’s (former Minister of Tourism and Antiquities) response to the ScanPyramids project. From wikipedia,

> On November 2, 2017, the Egyptologist Zahi Hawass told the New York Times: "They found nothing...This paper offers nothing to Egyptology. Zero." Later, once the North Face Corridor was inspected with an Endoscope, Hawass conversely commented that ScanPyramids's work had provided a "major discovery" that would "enter houses and homes of people all over the world for the first time".

Yeah they have no interest in fast revealing everything at once. Egypt's GDP largely depends on these Antiquities so you want to mine them as slow as possible.

Do you blame them for trying to protect and control things? It might be a little extreme, but we also need to remember that rich folks used to uncover mummies in their parties for fun.

> we also need to remember that rich folks used to uncover mummies in their parties for fun

And eat them, which... that's just like, really fucking weird.

Didn't they also crushed parts of them and snorted the powder at parties for fun?

And they made them into paint called "mummy brown." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown

Both uses were immortalised in music by the Dave Brubeck Quartet in the mid(?) 1950s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qs1J612nZs

Controlling physical artefacts is fine.

Stopping any science results that may be contrary to the Egyptian government's official view of history is awful!

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