Over the weekend, Egyptian Twitter was rocked by the news of a fake pharaonic tomb built by a group of fugitive suspects in Beni Sueif, supposedly with the aim of defrauding antiquities dealers. Twitter users’ responses ranged from incredulity, to laughter, and even praise for the scammers. On 15 February, Egyptian police personnel discovered what looked like ancient Egyptian artifacts near a two-meter deep hole in the ground, in a desert area outside of the town of El-Hayba, Beni Sueif. Beneath the ground were three chambers decorated with murals of hieroglyphics and other ancient Egyptian symbols, and containing many more artifacts. A committee formed by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities examined the site and determined that the murals, along with the artifacts found in the chambers, were in fact not at all antiquities, but reproductions no more than a year or two old. Egyptian television network DMC shared a video where Secretary-General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, visited the site himself to assert the inauthenticity of the tomb. The video showed sarcophagi made of fiber; artifacts made of plaster, spray-painted golden; and paraphernalia seemingly purchased from…
Twitter Users React to Ancient Egyptian Tomb Fraud in Beni Suef
February 21, 2023
