Bio
Dr Zahi Hawass
Zahi Hawass was born in a small village called Abeedya near Damietta in Egypt in 1947. As a child he never dreamed of being an archaeologist, but rather a lawyer. He went to school to study law at 15, but decided this was too boring and chose to try a new department that had just opened in the Faculty of Arts: archaeology. Still, he hated studying and only ever just passed his classes. At 20 he graduated with his BA in Greek and Roman Archaeology from Alexandria University and was given a job as an Inspector of Antiquities by the government. Back then, the government gave everyone who graduated college a job.
When he joined the Antiquities Department he found out that everyone hated one another and he thought to himself “I cannot live with these people” because he always strives to keep the peace. So instead he went to study to try to be a diplomat. He passed the written exam but failed the oral exam. From there he wanted to try a career in the Ministry of Tourism but could not be accepted. He also tried and failed to work in the Department of Cinema that is a part of the Ministry of Culture. With sadness, he returned to the Antiquities Department in Cairo. He met with the head of the department, Dr. Gamal Mokhtar, who informed him he was too absent from work. Dr. Mokhtar told Hawass he had signed a decree for him to join the excavation site in the desert. Hawass told him “I cannot go and live in the desert!” At that time, he was in love with a girl in Cairo and could not bear to leave her. But Dr. Mokhtar said if he did not go he would cut 15 days of his salary. So Hawass traveled to the site. It was a huge project with more than 300 workmen.
Sitting in a tent on a Thursday, Hawass was waiting to go home for the weekend to Cairo. Then, one of the workmen came to him. His name was Faraq. He and the other workmen were from Qift and were experts in excavation and restoration, taught by all the foreign excavations that happened in the area. Hawass went with Faraq to the site and met Reis (overseer) Doctor. That was his name, “Doctor.” His father named him Doctor because he was working on a German expedition and the head of the excavation was called “doctor.” Doctor gave Hawass a brush and told him to sit down next to him and start cleaning in the middle of the tomb. After cleaning for about half an hour a statue begn to appear through the sand. Hawass continued cleaning more and more and a voice inside of him said “I found my love. I found my love: archaeology.” Then he realized he was in love with something he didn’t know anything about. So he went to Cairo University in the Faculty of Archaeology and earned his diploma in Egyptology.
From 1969 to 1974 he was the Inspector of Antiquities for a number of sites throughout Egypt. By the time he was accepted into a PhD program with a Fulbright scholarship in 1980 he was working as the Chief Inspector of the Great Pyramids. The Fulbright paid for two years of his education and the Egyptian government paid for the other five. He graduated from the American Ivy League University, the University of Pennsylvania, in 1987 with a dissertation on The Funerary Establishments of Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura During the Old Kingdom, supervised by the late David O’Conner. The seven years he lived in America and studied at Penn changed his life.
He returned to Egypt as the Director General of the Giza Monuments, Saqqara, and Bahariya Oasis. In 1998 he was made the Undersecretary of the State for the Giza Monuments, a position he held for only four years until he was made the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. While Secretary General, Hawass focused on monument restoration and preservation, as well as on training Egyptian Egyptologists.
After the 2011 revolution, Hawass retired from public office to work independently as an archaeologist. He currently oversees excavations in Saqqara and Luxor, the Scan Pyramids project, and is about to begin work in the never-before-excavated Valley of the Marks. Recently, he has published a novel in French dramatizing the life of Khufu and finished an opera about the life of Tutankhamun that will premiere in 2024. In the rare moments when he is not working, Hawass enjoys smoking a cigar and watching old cowboy movies.
One of the great privileges of my life are the people I have gotten to meet and share my love of Egypt with.
Princess Diana stood out to me as one of the few people who come to Egypt and do research before. She told me she had visited the British Museum in anticipation of her visit. We had great fun during our visit. I was in Los Angeles when I heard the news of her death and I cried when I heard it.
President Obama has a wonderful sense of humor. We laughed over his resemblance to a hieroglyphic sign and he tried on a replica of my famous hat. When we were at Giza, I saw them preparing a camel for him to ride. I asked him to not do it because the photos would be shown all over the world and people would think we only ride camels in Egypt, and he obliged.
Will Smith and I met in 2006 because we were both on Time Magazines “100 Most Influential People of the Year” list. He promised to come visit me in Egypt, and 11 years later he did. I was so happy to see him again, I met him at the Sphinx at 6am even with the broken leg I had at the time.
Omar Sharif was one of my best friends and I miss him every day. When he was in Cairo, we had dinner together every night. Those dinners were the best dinners and favorite memories. In his last few years when he had Alzheimer’s I was never apart from him for more than one day. I was with him until he died.