“I will bring the Rosetta Stone back to Egypt”

Zahi Hawass is 77 years old, but he doesn’t lack energy. It is no coincidence that he is known throughout the world as a true Indiana Jones, also thanks to his usual wide-brimmed hat and denim shirt with an adventurer flavour. The face of world Egyptology for at least 30 years, he has entered the homes of millions of people with his appearances in documentaries on Ancient Egypt. But in life, before being a popularizer, he was Minister of Antiquities and above all an archaeologist. And it still is today. “I am editing a petition – he underlines to ‘La Ragione – which has already collected 300 thousand signatures. Once I reach one million I will make the life of the British Museum, the Louvre and the Neues Museum in Berlin miserable. They must return the three large finds illegally stolen to us. : the Rosetta Stone, the Dendera Zodiac and the bust of Nefertiti”.

“We have announced a great discovery in Luxor – he tells ‘La Ragione’ from his studio in Cairo – The first royal monument found in the area after the opening of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922”. His team, after three years of excavation, has in fact found 1,500 intact blocks from the valley temple of Queen Hatshepsut, one of the few female pharaohs in the history of Egypt. Until now it was unknown. “They are decorated with magnificent scenes and bear the names of Hatshepsut and her stepson and successor, Thutmose III, and help us rewrite history.”

For decades, in fact, it was thought that Thutmose had erased his stepmother from history, furious at having been overtaken by a woman on the throne when he was just a child. Some even claimed he killed her. But the new temple tells another story: “From the hieroglyphs we can deduce that, once he ascended the throne, the boy restored and looked after the building, continuing to venerate the queen”. According to Hawass, it was the Egyptians themselves who erased his memory: it was unacceptable for them that the pharaoh was not a man. Telling it today makes you think: we haven’t changed that much.

But Hawass doesn’t stop. Among the many discoveries there is one that lights him up: “We have found a stele of a certain Djehuty-mes, director of the palace of Queen Tetisheri. I tell you first that it is dedicated to his friend Nakhtmin, commander of the army chariots of Pharaoh.” Why is this so important? Because it indicates that members of the courts of the last sovereigns of the 17th Dynasty are buried in the area, leveled at the time of Hatshepsut to build her temple. Those who, around 1550 BC, drove the Asian Hyksos invaders out of Egypt and gave birth to the golden age, the New Kingdom. “In the next few months I will look for the tombs of those three kings, whose location is unknown even if the mummies have already been found: Seqenenra Tao, Kamose and Ahmose”, he confides in an absolute preview.

He speaks with the confidence of someone used to being in front of a camera. And his presence in the media, over the years, has attracted quite a bit of criticism. “I’m not interested – he says smiling – my colleagues are always chasing television, but I have never asked for a single interview: only the others look for me. But I move forward like a train: I run and work, I don’t look back. And if I piled up the books I have published I would have the highest pile of all those who attack me.” Now he wants to concentrate on work, on the presentation tour of his autobiography ‘The Man with the Hat’, which will also take him to Italy in September. And his work, he specifies, is not just the rediscovery of forgotten artefacts: “I am editing a petition which has already collected 300 thousand signatures. Once I reach one million I will make the life of the British Museum, the Louvre and the Neues Museum in Berlin miserable. They must return to us the three large illegally stolen finds: the Rosetta Stone, the Dendera Zodiac and the bust of Nefertiti.” Don’t worry, he is keen to underline, for our Egyptian Museum in Turin: he is interested in the stolen works, not all the objects taken abroad.

“You can’t imagine how many secrets lie beneath the sands of Egypt,” he confides. He estimates that to date only 30% of the monuments that have survived the millennia have been discovered. And he, who says he is very lucky, wants to find more. “I will find the tombs of the three kings, I’m sure of it,” he says. When will he tell us if he has discovered something new? “Soon, very soon. And it will be big news.” But he won’t tell us which ones. This too lies the eternal charm of Egyptology: the mysterious actions of its protagonists.