CAIRO — His golden face, serene in its youthful majesty, has enchanted millions who sought in it a glimpse of Egypt's Pharaonic past. But ever since Egypt's King Tutankhamen treasures went on traveling exhibit at museums around the world, there has been a nagging question about the famous burial mask: Is it real? Or was it switched?
The longstanding suspicion that a fake mask was substituted in an exhibit in Japan--a rumor ridiculed by most Egyptologists but that persists nonetheless--has fed a growing tide of discontent here over the country's traveling antiquities exhibits. It now threatens the future of Pharaonic exhibitions worldwide.
In a case brought by archeologists and academicians who fear Egypt is risking its cultural heritage by sending it out on the road, a Cairo court ruled earlier this month that a major new exhibition of Egyptian antiquities in Japan is illegal and ordered its immediate return.
The decision raises doubts about Egypt's ability to send its prized antiquities to international museums, a program through which millions have discovered the treasures of the country's 5,000-year-old civilization.
The legal battle underscores growing political rifts within the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, which oversees archeologists and adventurers from around the world and some of the most priceless antiquities in the Middle East. It is an authority already rife with intrigue and ferocious back-biting.
The controversy has raised serious questions in Egypt, a poor, populous nation seeking to capitalize on its heritage to boost its revenues. Critics ask: How much is the country risking its ancient treasures in an effort to make them more accessible to the international public and more lucrative for the government?
Egyptian officials say the items are pointless if no one sees them. They say the international exhibitions of Pharaonic treasures have not only raised millions of dollars in revenues but boosted tourism and opened a window on the world to Egypt.
"We have built up in the last 20 years with these exhibits a wonderful image of Egypt in the outside world. It helped us very much in letting the world understand our point of view, to understand Egypt's role in the Middle East, especially after its peace treaty with Israel," said Mohammed Saleh, director of Cairo's Egyptian Museum.
