CAIRO — The Egyptian Museum houses some of the world’s prized antiquities, including the gold mask of King Tut that draws millions of tourists each year. But it also has an outdated video-surveillance system that doesn’t work around the clock and guards who snooze, read the Koran or who are seemingly too bored to pay attention.
Security for Egypt’s treasures is under scrutiny after the Aug. 21 theft of a van Gogh painting from another museum in Cairo revealed some alarming gaps, and the minister of culture told a newspaper he lies awake at night, fearing for the safety of the country’s relics.
Shortly after van Gogh’s 1887 “Poppy Flowers” was stolen from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, officials discovered that no alarms were working and only seven of 43 cameras were operating.
That made it easy for whoever took the painting, said Ton Cremers, director of the Netherlands-based Museum Security Network, which keeps tabs on the protection of art around the world.
“The value of the van Gogh is $40 (million) to $50 million,” Cremers said. “A complete security system of that museum would be $50,000, and to keep it running would cost $3,000 a year. . . . Need I say more?”
The independent newspaper Al-Shorouk reported that the Tourism and Antiquities Police had warned Culture Minister Farouk Hosni of lax security at the Mahmoud Khalil Museum and that 16 of the country’s nearly 50 museums have no alarms, cameras or appropriate fire-safety systems.
Each year, nearly 9 million people visit Cairo’s museums and the haunting tombs of the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, and these tourists are a vital source of revenue.
An Egyptian Museum guard who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared for his job said much of the security relied not on computers but on humans, who have to constantly pay attention.
“A controller may be very alert for two or three hours of the shift, but then he’ll slip,” he said.
Asked what would happen if a worker missed something or thought that a room wasn’t worth monitoring, the security guard shrugged and said, “It doesn’t get recorded.” He also said the equipment wasn’t able to record 24 hours a day.
“In Egypt, we say, ‘It’s OK; God will take care of it,’ ” he said. “Then we do nothing.”
