AMERICANWAY

Hawass beside the Step Pyramid in Saqqara outside of Cairo witch on your TV, and there’s Zahi Hawass. The beefy Egyptian descends by rope into a musty underground tomb as a decaying mummy pops out from the darkness. Go to another channel, and now he’s racing through a 4,000-year-old temple, its stone walls depicting entire armies crushed beneath a pharaoh’s mighty chariot. Turn on a diff erent show, and there he is again, crawling around spooky tunnels leading to the king’s cham- ber inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. The aff able archaeologist is here, there and everywhere — on CNN, the BBC, the History Channel, the Learning Channel, the National Geographic Channel and your lo- cal PBS outlet, to name a few. If any televi- sion show or news segment uses the words ancient Egypt in its title, odds are strong that he’ll be prominently featured in the narra- tive. In fact, Hawass is so linked with his country’s historic legacy that, after leaving his government job in the wake of political turmoil earlier this year (citing what he felt was a lack of protection for Egypt’s historic sites and monuments), he returned and was reinstated less than a month later — once, he says, he was sure the new government was keen to protect the country’s heritage. So just who is this guy, and how did he rise so far? You might not be familiar with 50 JUNE 15, 2011 his unusual name —zahi means “splendid, clear and bright” in Arabic — but you prob- ably recognize the craggy face, the shock of wavy white hair and, of course, his fa- miliar Indiana Jones fedora. For nearly a decade, Hawass has controlled Egypt’s trea- sures, running popular museums and well- traveled tourism sites with an iron fi st. As the head of antiquities and the former vice minister of culture in the revolution-torn country, this charismatic tomb raider has changed modern archaeology — in many ways for the better, and in others, some would argue, for worse — in ways that will likely last forever. Indeed, many agree that Hawass’ greatest accomplishment has been the train- ing of Egyptian archae- ologists and emphasizing AA.COM/AMERICANWAY local excavation projects instead of merely letting American, European and Asian ex- plorers dig away freely, as in the past. “I’ve led many battles, but I’m most proud of Egyptianizing the study of Egyptian antiq- uities,” he tells American Way. “In the past, foreigners and Western scholars did all the work while Egyptians had very little involve- ment. All that changed under my leadership.” If you shovel up muck and mud for a liv- ing, however, you’re bound to wind up with a few black marks on your face. Ego-driven, sharp-tongued and a savvy media manipula- tor, Hawass is the Simon Cowell of the dirt- digging world, both respected and reviled by his many critics. “Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids,” goes the old Egyptian prov- erb — and when it comes “WE ADORE HIM, EVEN IF HE CALLS US ‘ PY PYRAMIDIOTS.’”

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