"When the police disappeared from the streets, ordinary Egyptians defended themselves and the archaeology."

Yes, they did, and how proud are we to be able say that some of those who did so in Cairo, Giza and Karnak are our dear friends (I note you link to our report on the latter).

Fayza, know that the courage of the Egyptian people is not forgotten, and will be publicly celebrated in a lecture here (in far away) Tasmanian, Australia:
http://www.maat.com.au/tanks.html

Illicit antiquities from Egypt – a market oriented perspective.
As an MPhil/PhD student in The Department of Cultural Policy and Management and the Law Department at City University, I wholeheartedly support the call for the protection of Egyptian archaeology during this time of civil unrest and welcome the clarification given by the Egyptologists in this article regarding the importance of Egyptian national heritage to the Egyptian people. I would however like to make a personal comment on the question regarding the illicit trade in antiquities as I feel better placed to address this issue given my expertise in Egyptian antiquities law, UK legislation and international conventions governing the illicit appropriation of cultural heritage goods.
Under UK law a free-market economy approach to the antiquities trade, like any goods, is legal and desirable. There is no will to change the law to make the collecting of antiquities illegal. Since 1993 legitimate antiquities dealers based in the UK and abroad have self-regulated via two trade organisations which monitor the behaviour of their members. The Antiquities Dealers Association (ADA) represents the interests of UK based dealers and currently has nineteen members. For dealers of ‘ancient art’ representing high status and high value goods, the trade is represented internationally by the International Association of Dealers in Ancient Art (IADAA) and the Association of International Antiquities Dealers (AIAD). All three organisations and their members work closely with the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Squad, Interpol and private organisations such as Trace and Invaluable to monitor stolen and illicit antiquities as a matter of course, not just in a time of crisis.
It is not a ‘radical proposal’ to suggest there should be an end to the illicit trade in antiquities as this has been an on-going debate since the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Goods, 1970. Thanks to the efforts of Dr Zahi Hawass the Swiss Government has recently signed an agreement with the Egyptian government for the seizure and return of illicit antiquities from the Swiss free-ports and consequently tens of thousands of illicit antiquities have already been returned.
While the Egyptian claims for return of such illicit collections are being honoured, what is routinely ignored by Western museums are the claims for high status objects already in museums, the Berlin Bust of Nefertiti, the Rosetta Stone and the Dendera Zodiac to name but a few. To suggest that antiquities smuggling is a problem caused by the West and does not rely on Egyptian involvement is to ignore the basic fact that smuggling would not be possible without the complicity of the Egyptians themselves as clearly shown by the case of Jonathan Tokeley-Parry. The Egyptologists who put their names to this article, while commendable in their sentiments are not clear in differentiating between the licit and illicit antiquities trades and therefore the argument will only cause to inflame hostility between archaeology and the trade and cause a closing of ranks. A ‘radical solution’ would be if academic Egyptologists were again to publish documented and well provenance antiquities in private collections so it was easier to identify illicit antiquities when they do come onto the market. This is unlikely to happen however given how the last time this happened, it ended in UCL having to pay an out of court settlement of an undisclosed sum to the Schoyen collection over the publication of Aramaic incantation bowls believed to have been smuggled out of Iraq during that countries’ conflict.
The UK is doing what it can to monitor the trade in illicit antiquities. In 2003 the UK Parliament adopted the Dealing in Cultural Goods (offences) Act 2003 to fulfil its obligations under the 1970 UNESCO Convention, which incidentally we did not adopt until 2002. To date the UK has not adopted the UNIDROIT Convention of 1995 and is unlikely to do so, so UNESCO is all we have. Although Egypt signed the UNESCO Convention in 1973, the failure of the UK to adopt the Convention until 2002 means antiquities smuggled out of Egypt before 2002, although technically illegal can still be imported into the UK. This is because UNESCO is a bi-lateral agreement and therefore cannot be enforced until both parties are signatories (i.e. 2002). There is also the problem of Egypt’s own antiquities law 117 of 1983 (revised 1999, 2010). There are around 200 museums in the UK that actively collect antiquities through the UK market, so a ban on the trade would be as undesirable for museums as it is for dealers and private collectors. Both the Museums Association and the antiquities trade organisations accept UNESCO (1970) as a cut-off date for determining the licit or illicit nature of antiquities going beyond what is already absolutely necessary in terms of due diligence. This is not the case however. Egypt did not adopt her own nationalist retentionist law until 1983. As national law takes precedence over international conventions, Egypt continued to sell antiquities obtained through the system of ‘partage’ until 1983. We simply do not know how many antiquities were licitly exported before 1970 and between 1970 and 1983 and for which the export licences are no longer retained therefore a blanket ban on unprovenanced antiquities is unworkable. The antiquities trade is without a doubt the most heavily regulated part of the art market and will do all it can to ensure suspicious antiquities are reported to the appropriate authorities. However one major sticking problem remains. Whereas the Italian caribiniere has around 200 full-time art police to monitor its sites and monuments, the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Squad has just four full-time officers and around the same number of part-time support staff. Their purview is not only to look out for illicit antiquities, but primarily to stop theft from museums, stately homes and private individuals throughout the UK and beyond as well as dealing with forgery. A major concern for both professional Egyptology and the art market is the amount of fakes and forgeries in circulation corrupting the research into genuine antiquities. If there was a will to share expertise with the market as there is in other areas of the art trade perhaps we could tackle both the illicit trade and fake antiquities together.
These are of course my own musings and do not in any way reflect a policy stance on behalf of the Department of Cultural Policy and Management, the Law Department or City University in general.
Keith R. Amery

I agree with Keith and think some of the above comments made towards western Egyptologists are probably a step too far and very unfair. Without a unified collective progress cannot be made......in either direction!