An Egyptian tour guide was arrested last week after video circulated on social media purportedly showing the man sketching a stick figure onto a pyramid.
In the video, originally posted to X, the man is seen drawing the figure onto the wall of the Pyramid of Unas, built in the 24th century BCE and located in Saqqara, a funerary complex not far from the Pyramids of Giza. The man appeared to be speaking to tourists during the incident and is shown trying to wipe the drawing away with his hands.
After the video went viral, Egyptian police found that the Saqqara Tourism Police Station had received a report from an antiquities inspector that a tour guide “had damaged an antiquity by drawing on the outer casing of one of the pyramids for the purpose of explaining to a group of tourists who were with him,” the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior said in a post on X. The drawing has since been removed, and the tour guide confessed to the incident.
“Legal measures” were taken against the man, the ministry said, though it did not specify which ones.
Egypt’s Antiquities Law of 1983 stipulates that defacement of an antiquity is punishable by one year in jail and a fine of 500,000 Egyptian pounds, or about $10,400, according to the New York Post.
