The Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, has said in a press release that media reports of this " are unfounded and misleading " and that " The Castiglioni brothers have not been granted permission by the SCA to excavate in Egypt, so anything they claim to find is not to be believed.

Recent DNA analysis sponsored by the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass published in February 2010, identified The Elder Lady in a side chamber of Amenhotep II's tomb ( KV35 ) as Queen Tiye .< ref name =" autogenerated640 "> Hawass, Zahi et al.

Dr. Zahi Hawass, the former Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, believes that Nefertiti belongs to Egypt and that the bust was taken out of Egypt illegally and should therefore be returned.

* Zahi Hawass, Secretary General, The Supreme Council of Antiquities ; Egypt

Some contemporary prominent Egyptians who oppose Arab nationalism or the idea that Egyptians are Arabs include Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass, popular writer Osama Anwar Okasha, Egyptian-born Harvard University Professor Leila Ahmed, Member of Parliament Suzie Greiss, in addition to different local groups and intellectuals.

Zahi Hawass, the former Secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities declared the discovery to be one of the most important finds of 2006 because " it adjusts the history of the 20th dynasty and reveals more about the life of Bakenkhunsu.

The discovery was announced by Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, on 11 November 2008.

Zahi Hawass, the former chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, asked that the stele be repatriated to Egypt, urging in comments to reporters: " If the British want to be remembered, if they want to restore their reputation, they should volunteer to return the Rosetta Stone because it is the icon of our Egyptian identity ".

The study of Egyptology, however, has in recent decades been taken up by Egyptian archæologists such as Zahi Hawass and the Supreme Council of Antiquities he leads.

On June 12, 2003, Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, also dismissed the claim, citing insufficient evidence.

Egypt's chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced, on November 11, 2008, that she was entombed, in a 4, 300-year-old headless 5 metre ( 16-foot-tall ) Saqqara most complete subsidiary pyramid.

He served first as the junior coregent of Amenemhat III and completed the latter's temple at Medinet Maadi, which is " the only intact temple still existing from the Middle Kingdom " according to Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities ( SCA ).

On 27 June 2007, Supreme Council of Antiquities director Zahi Hawass offered what he considered to be definitive proof that this " corpulent, elderly " body was indeed Hatshepsut.

Zahi Hawass (; born May 28, 1947 ) is an Egyptian archaeologist, an Egyptologist, and former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs.

* website of the American University in Cairo Press retrieved ( in situ ) 12: 21 20 / 10 / 2011 ( shows: Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists, Cairo, 2000 ( Edited by Zahi Hawass & Lyla Pinch Brock )

After 1988 Hawass taught Egyptian archaeology, history and culture, mostly at the American University in Cairo and the University of California, Los Angeles.

When U. S. President Barack Obama was in Cairo in June 2009 Hawass gave him personal tours of the sites of ancient Egypt.

In March 2010 Hawass canceled the official re-opening of the restored Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo.

* Hawass, Zahi, " The Head of Userkaf " in " The Splendour of the Old Kingdom " in The Treasures of the Egyptian Museum, Francesco Tiradritti ( editor ), The American University in Cairo Press, 1999, p. 72-73.

" Hawass later told the New York Times that thieves looking for gold broke 70 objects, including two sculptures of Tutankhamen, and took two skulls from a research lab before being stopped as they were leaving the museum.

By November 2005, Hawass was suggesting a three-month loan of the Rosetta Stone, while reiterating the eventual goal of a permanent return ; in December 2009, he proposed to drop his claim for the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum loaned the stone to Egypt for three months, for the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza in 2013.

" Referring to antiquities at the British Museum, Hawass said “ These are Egyptian monuments.

* The Younger Lady who, in June 2003, was controversially claimed to be Nefertiti by British Egyptologist Joann Fletcher, whereas Egypologist Zahi Hawass believed it to be Kiya, another wife of Akhenaten who is believed by some to be the birth mother of Tutankhamun.

On August 30, 2003, Reuters further quoted Hawass: " I'm sure that this mummy is not a female ", and " Dr Fletcher has broken the rules and therefore, at least until we have reviewed the situation with her university, she must be banned from working in Egypt.

" However, Hawass said Egypt didn't consider the Nefertiti bust to be a looted antiquity.

Hawass also worked alongside Egyptologist Otto Schaden during the opening of Tomb KV63 in February 2006 – the first intact tomb to be found in the Valley of the Kings since 1922.

Hawass has been skeptical of DNA testing of Egyptian mummies: " From what I understand, it is not always accurate and it cannot always be done with complete success when dealing with mummies.

However, in 2007, Dr. Zahi Hawass announced that the mummy which was previously thought to be Thutmose I that of a thirty year old man who had died as a result of an arrow wound to the chest.

In 2007, Hawass threatened to ban exhibitions of Egyptian artifacts in Germany if Nefertiti was not lent to Egypt, but to no avail.

Hawass later said “ They should give us the opportunity to change things, and if nothing happens they can march again.

In February 2010, Hawass and his team announced that they had analyzed the mummies of Tutankhamun and ten other mummies and said that the king could have died from a malaria infection that followed a leg fracture.

In January 2009 Hawass wrote in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that " The concept of killing women, children and elderly people ... seems to run in the blood of the Jews of Palestine " and that " the only thing that the Jews have learned from history is methods of tyranny and torment — so much so that they have become artists in this field.

In an interview on Egyptian television in April 2009 Hawass stated that " although Jews are few in number, they control the entire world " and commented on the " control they have " of the American economy and the media.

Hawass has been widely accused of domineering behaviour, forbidding archaeologists to announce their own findings, and courting the media for his own gain after they were denied access to archaeological sites because, according to Hawass, they were too amateurish.

Hawass helped to institute a systematic program for the preservation and restoration of historical monuments, while training Egyptians to improve their expertise on methods of excavation, retrieval and preservation.

He has debated Zahi Hawass over the interpretation and appropriation of artifacts and texts associated with this period and their relevance to modern Egyptian identity and pride.

In 2005, Hawass requested UNESCO to intervene to return the bust.

Hawass ' statement quoted the director of the museum as saying the authority to approve the return of the bust to Egypt lies with the Prussian Cultural Heritage and the German culture minister.

Zahi Hawass displays a Ptolemaic statue discovered at Taposiris Magna on May 8, 2010Hawass spearheaded a movement to return many prominent unique and / or irregularly taken Ancient Egyptian artifacts, such as the Rosetta Stone, the bust of Nefertiti, the Dendera zodiac ceiling painting from the Dendera Temple, the bust of Ankhhaf ( the architect of the Khafra Pyramid ), the faces of Amenhotep III's tomb at the Louvre Museum, the Luxor Temple's obelisk at the Place de la Concorde and the statue of Hemiunu, nephew of the Pharaoh Khufu, builder of the largest pyramid, to Egypt from collections in various other countries.

The Wall Street Journal commented that the looting of antiquities during the 2011 civil unrest in Egypt made Hawass ' quest to return Egyptian antiquities to Egypt " misguided or at least poorly timed.

Others claim, however, that he was fired because a valuable ancient " statue " under the custody of Hawass was stolen from Giza.

Hawass added that DNA analysis was out of the question because it would not lead to anything.