Science Quote by Zahi Hawass

National pride doubles here as a gatekeeping device, and that is exactly why Hawass's line lands with such force. He draws a bright border between "we" and "Foreigners", then assigns each side a moral orientation: locals protect; outsiders extract. It's a classic rhetorical move in cultural heritage politics because it turns a technical dispute (who should run digs, who sets standards, who gets credit) into an ethical one. Preservation becomes care. Discovery becomes appetite.

The intent is partly defensive, partly strategic. Hawass isn't just arguing for better site management; he's claiming custodianship as a right earned through proximity and historical inheritance. In a field long shaped by European and American institutions, that "only ones who really can care" is a provocation aimed at the old colonial default: that expertise travels in from elsewhere, scoops up the past, and leaves locals to deal with the erosion, looting, tourism pressure, and the politics of display.

The subtext is also a rebuke to archaeology's celebrity economy. "Discoveries" means headlines, museum acquisitions, career-making finds, and the subtle incentives that reward spectacle over stewardship. Even when foreign teams follow conservation rules, Hawass implies the gravitational pull is toward the new and nameable, not the slow, unglamorous labor of keeping a site intact.

Context matters: modern Egypt's struggle to control its antiquities has been shaped by decades of repatriation fights, unequal funding, and the lingering myth that the ancient world is a global commons administered by Western experts. Hawass is pushing back by reframing preservation as sovereignty, not just science.