Science Quote by Zahi Hawass

Hawass is doing two things at once: performing transparency and asserting sovereignty. The opening clause, "When we find something new at Giza, we announce it to the world", is calibrated for an audience that has long suspected gatekeeping in Egyptian archaeology. It frames discovery as a public good, not a private stash of prestige, and it pre-empts the criticism that data, access, or credit are being managed for political ends. The phrasing is almost bureaucratically simple, which is the point: trust us, we report out.

Then he pivots to the moral high ground. By naming "the Sphinx and the Pyramids" as "world treasures", Hawass borrows the language of UNESCO-style universal heritage, the global consensus that some places exceed national ownership. But he immediately welds that universalism to a very local claim: "We are the guardians". Guardian is a loaded word in postcolonial cultural politics. It implies stewardship, competence, and rightful authority without sounding like outright possession. It also answers a century of foreign expeditions, museum extractions, and Western institutions that behaved less like visitors and more like proprietors.

The final twist, "but they belong to the world", is not an act of surrender; its subtext is leverage. If the monuments belong to everyone, then everyone has obligations: to fund preservation, respect regulations, curb looting, and accept Egyptian control over research permissions and narratives. Hawass is selling Egypt as both custodian and spokesperson for an inheritance that outsiders have historically tried to narrate for themselves.