Top 17 Quotes & Sayings by Zahi Hawass

Two hundred and fifty mummies covered in gold. Something like this cannot be explained - mummy after mummy covered in shining gold.

It makes the heart to tremble when you open an undiscovered tomb.

Many parts of the granite statues were found, the most important of which had features close to Ramses II. The statue needs some restoration and weighs between four and five tons.

When we find something new at Giza, we announce it to the world. The Sphinx and the Pyramids are world treasures. We are the guardian's of these treasures, but they belong to the world.

I will reveal the secrets behind these doors.

I am damn good. I am doing all this for Egypt and nothing else. I reject 70 per cent of media interviews while these people who accuse me are running after them.

I found in one of the tombs an inscription saying, 'If you touch my tomb, you will be eaten by a crocodile and hippopotamus.' It doesn't mean the hippo will eat you, it means the person really wanted his tomb to be protected.

Not a single piece of material culture - not a single object - has been found at Giza that can be interpreted to come from a lost civilization.

We are the only ones who really can care about the preservation Foreigners who come to excavate, maybe some of them care about preservation, but the majority care about discoveries.

It's very important to reveal the mystery of the pyramid. Science in archaeology is very important. People all over the world are waiting to solve this mystery.

Anyone can like their job... To love your job is not enough, you must give your passion to your job.

As scientists, we keep an open mind, but we have to base our ideas about the past on archaeological evidence.

The sphinx will always have to be looked after.

I will announce some of the tombs I found next to the great pyramid of Khufu. One is an intact tomb that I have not opened yet.

Egypt has managed to reclaim the 13-page papyrus manuscript.

I have found a shaft, going 29 meters [95 feet, approximately] vertically down into the ground, exactly halfway between the Chefren Pyramid and the Sphinx. At the bottom, which was filled with water, we have found a burial chamber with four pillars. In the middle is a large granite sarcophagus which I expect to be the grave of Osiris, the god.

Tutankhamun was not black, and the portrayal of ancient Egyptian civilization as black has no element of truth to it.