Patenting the Pyramids
A few years ago some American with dollar signs in his eyes, announced that he had taken out a patent or a copyright on Tutankhamun. Statements in the press declared that from now on anyone using pictures of Tut or his tomb or his belongings or making any reference to him would have to pay a fee to the holder of the patent. American copyright and patent law being the joke that it is, there was even talk of the Cairo Museum being charged fees for daring to display the golden death mask and the nested sarcophagii.
Fortunately the rest of the world is better equipped with common sense than our cousins in north America and the pretentions of this greedy git were given the horse-laugh they deserved. So far as I know, no one has ever paid him a single cent in fees and we continue to use the image of the boy-king on our masthead.
Nonetheless, greed dies hard and Zahi Hawass, chief clown of Egypt and official jester to the Two Lands, has just announced his intention to copyright the whole of Egypt. According to his press release, there is a law at present before the Egyptian parliament, which will oblige anyone making "an exact copy" of anything Egyptian to pay a suitably vast copyright fee, the money to be used - so Zahi claims - for restoring and preserving Egypt's monuments.
Whether there is actually such a proposal before parliament, I cannot say. Zahi is sufficiently publicity-hungry to put it forward and politicians of whatever nationality are sufficiently stupid to pass it. One thing is certain, however, and that is that it will not raise a single cent for Egypt's antiquities.
The only person who can take out a patent or a copyright is the creator of the work, which means that Imhotep might have been able to copyright the Step Pyramid, but Zahi can't. In any case, both copyright and patent expire within a couple of decades of the death of the holder - and Imhotep has been in his tomb for considerably longer than that.
Finally, there is the fatal "exact copy" of Zahi's press release. If we assume that someone is mad enough to want to build a full-size replica of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh, all they have to do is make the third stone from the right 2mm shorter than the original and the second stone 2mm longer, and the copy is no longer exact - and so they are exempt from paying copyright fees.
In short, Zahi is doing nothing more than indulging his craving for publicity and making himself and Egypt look ridiculous in the process. It is about time that Zahi was given a fool's cap and a bladder on a stick and set to capering in front of the pyramids for the entertainment of the tourists. He will get the attention he craves, tourists will have something at which to laugh and the world of Egyptology and scholarship will be able to get on with some serious work, relieved of a particularly unpleasant incubus
© Kendall K. Down 2009
