Time & Perspective Quote by Zahi Hawass

There is a polite scolding baked into Hawass's formulation: yes, science is open-minded, but not so open that it falls out of its skull. The line is engineered to sound like a civics lesson while drawing a bright border around who gets to speak with authority about ancient history. In an era when pyramids get drafted into every imaginable narrative - aliens, lost super-civilizations, conspiracies about hidden chambers - Hawass is defending the unglamorous idea that the past belongs to what can be dug up, dated, cataloged, and argued over in public.

The phrase "as scientists" is doing credential work. Hawass isn't just stating a method; he's asserting a professional identity against a crowded marketplace of pseudo-experts. The second half of the sentence, "have to base our ideas... on archaeological evidence", frames evidence as obligation, not preference. It casts speculation as not merely wrong but irresponsible, a breach of duty. That moral tone matters because debates about Egyptology often arrive loaded with politics: nationalism, heritage claims, tourism economies, even the optics of foreign versus local stewardship.

Subtextually, it's also a defense of institutional gatekeeping. Archaeology doesn't just produce facts; it produces protocols, permits, peer review, and hierarchies. Hawass, long a public face of Egyptian antiquities, uses the language of openness to preempt accusations of dogmatism while still shutting the door on narratives that can't pay the entry fee of material proof. It's a calm sentence with a hard edge: wonder is welcome, but only if it can survive the trench and the lab.