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Fight over artifact ends happily
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSCHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- A utility executive will give an Egyptian sarcophagus to the Field Museum after a sudden concern over the artifact briefly threatened to derail the long-standing relationship between the museum and Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. Under an agreement announced late Thursday, the museum will acquire the sarcophagus for its permanent collection. The spat arose because of a 2,600-year-old sarcophagus owned by Exelon Corp. CEO John Rowe was kept in his corporate office. The ancient coffin is said to date from Egypt's 26th Dynasty (664-525 B.C.). In a letter to the museum Thursday, Council secretary-general Zahi Hawass said the agency would never deal with the Field again unless the museum removed Rowe as a named sponsor of the new King Tut exhibition. The Chicago Tribune first reported about the letter on its Web site. The threat came only a day before the scheduled opening of "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," which is expected to draw an estimated one million visitors to the lakefront museum before it closes January 1, 2007. Hawass said he wouldn't interfere with the exhibition's run. He did say, though, that the Field, which has an extensive Egyptian collection of its own, might no longer have the council's cooperation. The council is part of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture and is responsible for the conservation, protection and regulation of all antiquities and archaeological excavations in Egypt, including King Tut. "This doesn't belong to a person, it belongs to a museum and to the public," Hawass said. "He should give it to the Field Museum." Hawass withdrew his threat a short time later when he learned that Rowe had indeed offered the museum the sarcophagus as an indefinite long-term loan, said Field spokeswoman Pat Kremer. "It's going into our permanent Egyptian hall," Kremer said. Exelon spokeswoman Jennifer Medley said she hadn't seen Hawass' letter, and she called the dispute a simple misunderstanding. "Mr. Rowe has several times offered to loan the sarcophagus for an indefinite period," Medley said. Medley said she wasn't sure just when and where Rowe, an avid amateur student of history, acquired the piece, or whose tomb it was from. "About all I can tell you is that it isn't made of stone," she said. "It seems to be of wood and some sort of plaster, and you can see that it's been touched up a lot over the centuries." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. 
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