Egyptian Pyramids Are Going To Be Intellectually Protected
Egypt to copyright pyramids
Cairo - In a potential blow to themed resorts from Vegas to Tokyo, Egypt is to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the sphinx, are reproduced.
Zahi Hawass, the charismatic and controversial head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told AFP on Tuesday that the move was necessary to pay for the upkeep of the country’s thousands of pharaonic sites.
“The new law will completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments which the Supreme Council of Antiquities considers 100-percent copies,” he said.
“If the law is passed then it will be applied in all countries of the world so that we can protect our interests,” Hawass said.
He said that a ministerial committee had already agreed on the law which should be passed in the next parliamentary session, while insisting the move would not hurt Egyptian artisans.
“It is Egypt’s right to be the only copyright owner for these monuments in order to benefit financially so we can restore, preserve and protect Egyptian monuments.”
However, the law “does not forbid local or international artists from profiting from drawings and other reproductions of pharaonic and Egyptian monuments from all eras - as long as they don’t make exact copies.”
“Artists have the right to be inspired by everything that surrounds them, including monuments,” he said.
Asked about the potential impact on the monumental Luxor Hotel in the US gambling capital of Las Vegas, Hawass insisted that particular resort was “not an exact copy of pharaonic monuments despite the fact it’s in the shape of a pyramid.”
On its website, the luxury hotel describes itself as “the only pyramid shaped building in the world,” but Hawass said its interior was entirely different from an ancient Egyptian setting.
Hawass’s declarations came after the opposition daily Al-Wafd published an article on Sunday called for the Las Vegas hotel to pay a slice of its lodging and gambling profits to the city of Luxor.
“Thirty-five million tourists visit Las Vegas to see the reproduction of Luxor city while only six million visit the real Egyptian city of Luxor,” the paper lamented.
Samir Farag, head of Luxor town council in southern Egypt, home to the legendary Valley of the Kings, said that it would be difficult to prohibit use of pyramid shapes.
“We can’t forbid people from using the name of Luxor and copying monuments from (Luxor) city, which is the world’s richest city for monuments,” he said, adding that “tourists going to Las Vegas doesn’t affect our city’s business.”
Reference: The Pyramids of Egypt are among the largest structures ever built and constitute one of the most potent and enduring symbols of Ancient Egyptian civilization. Most were built during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods.
By the time of the early dynastic period of Egyptian history, those with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known as mastabas.
The first historically documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djozer. Imhotep may have been the first to conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other creating an edifice comprised of a number of “steps” that decreased in size towards its apex. The result was the Step Pyramid of Djozer which was designed to serve as a gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens. Such was the importance of Imhotep’s achievement that he was deified by later Egyptians.
The most prolific pyramid-building phase coincided with the greatest degree of absolutist pharaonic rule. It was during this time that the most famous pyramids, those near Giza, were built. Over time, as authority became less centralized, the ability and willingness to harness the resources required for construction on a massive scale decreased, and later pyramids were smaller, less well-built and often hastily constructed.
Long after the end of Egypt’s own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, after much of Egypt came under the rule of the Kings of Napata. While Napatan rule was brief and ceased in 661 BCE, the Egyptian influence made an indelible impression, and during the later Sudanese Kingdom of Meroe (approximately in the period between 300 BCECE 300) this flowered into a full-blown pyramid-building revival, which saw more than two hundred indigenous, but Egyptian-inspired royal pyramid-tombs constructed in the vicinity of the kingdom’s capital city.
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