LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - None of the mummies in Cairo's
main archaeological museum were damaged during a break-in last
week but 70 other exhibits will need restoration, top Egyptian
archaeologist Zahi Hawass said on Sunday.
Media reports during Egypt's political unrest had quoted
Hawass as saying that looters damaged two mummies, but in a BBC
interview on Sunday he said that this was not the case.
"They were not mummies, there were two skulls taken outside
from the CT scan machine. Everything will go back to normal at
Cairo Museum today," said Hawass, head of Egypt's antiquities
authority since 2002. He was made a cabinet minister last week.
On his own website, Hawass said the 70 broken antiquities
included a statue of the boy pharaoh King Tutankhamun on a
panther and some later objects, all of which can be restored.
Egypt's pharaonic remains are a key part of its tourism
industry, and the unrest in Cairo had raised fears that the
country could suffer the same loss of cultural heritage as
occurred in Iraq in 2003 after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Egypt's cultural treasures are now secure, Hawass said. "The
Valley of the Kings is safe, the pyramids are safe, 24 museums
are safe, the synagogues and the monasteries and the Muslim
monuments are completely safe," he said.
(Reporting by David Milliken; editing by Mark Heinrich)
© 2013 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.