Archaeologists outraged by 'derogatory' statue at College de France
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Archaeologists outraged by 'derogatory' statue at College de France
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Thu, 10/01/2013 - 21:30
Archaeologists issued a statement slamming a statue in the courtyard of the College de France showing the French Egyptologist Jean Francois Champollion standing with his foot on the head of a Pharaoh, saying it is derogatory toward Egyptian civilization.
“The Foreign Ministry did nothing about it,” said Omar al-Hadary, chairman of the Tourism and Antiquities Committee of the Revolutionary Youth Federation on Thursday. “The West will repeat such things if there is no firm reply.”
“This will make us hate the West more,” he continued. “The French learned a hard lesson during their campaign that Egypt gained independence with the blood and lives of its sons.”
“The French government must remove this shameful statue or we will make thousands of insulting statues to put in all squares of Egypt and outside the French Embassy,” Hadary added.
The chairman asked the Ministry of Antiquities to stop all French archaeological missions working in Egypt until a formal apology is issued and the statue is removed. He also requested that all streets named after the Frenchman be renamed.
Champollion famously deciphered the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone that was discovered by the French colonial campaign in the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
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Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
You're the infidel of them all. Now get out!
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The statue of Champollion was placed at the courtyard in 1875.
As archeologists are required to know, any artefact reflects the thinking of it's time. So does the statue of Champollion.
Suddenly 137 years later out of the blue some egyptian archeologist make it an urgent problem.
Evidently they are lacking problems which are more urgent??
the petition is a wonderful list of morons. the statue has been there since 1875, and there are many more. should all historical statues, paintings be destroyed?! shall we hack off the derogatory images of africans, syrians, lybians etc from the walls of ancient egyptian tombs too?. idiots. this sort of petition is embarassing to egypt, not the statue.