15-Year-Old Chinese Tourist Carves His Name on 3500-Year-Old Egyptian Tomb

Story here.

I guess this kid was hoping his stunt would immortalize his name. In a just world, he would be remembered for the rest of his life as “that asshole who defaced an irreplaceable part of human history.”

In return, Egypt should get to carve its name in him.

I’m glad he’s not an American.

Maybe he was giving l’hommage to his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather who was building those pyramids in the first place?

I’m not big fan of China, but I gotta say that the collective shame is kind of…admirable? I mean, on one hand it’s totally irrational and hive-mindish. But dang, I bet that kind of pressure keeps potential jackasses in line.

And dang, that boy sure went to town on that sculpture! I hope there’s some way they can repair it.

His parents say that he’s learned his lesson but that sounds like a cop-out. What did they do? Take his phone away for a month? I mean, isn’t he facing ANY sort of criminal charges in Egypt at all? I can’t imagine they’d just look the other way for something like that.

Everyone remembers Herostratus…

In Communist China…

I hope it turns the kid into a modern day Abu Hasan.

I’m kind of bewildered as to how he was left unattended for so long. Looking at the picture: he didn’t carve that grafitti in 15 seconds or so; it took a while.

Arrogant insect hive people. The sad part is that there are so many of them, they’ll probably destroy us.

Who?

What have you been smoking this week?

That’s nothing. An ancient Mayan pyramid in Belize was recently bulldozed by a construction company for road gravel.

Herostratus Fucking Malmsteen, that’s who.

(I believe the name is a stand-in for someone who commits a crime to become famous. And insane guitar shredding.)

While I deplore the defacing of a 3500 monument, I have to say he’s hardly the first tourist to carve his name on something, we’ve collectively been making marks on things since before we invented writing. I can’t support his actions but it’s a very human thing to do and 15 year olds from any culture are frequently impulsive and do stupid/bad stuff.

Which is why tourists of all ages need to be supervised around ancient monuments and art and strategically placed crowd-control devices are an asset.

Sadly, that doesn’t surprise me at all. I’m more surprised when parents actually reign in their kids on vacation.

We have a problem with graffiti and tagging in my neighbourhood; a couple of weeks ago, I tweeted that taggers have been scientifically proven to have tiny little dicks. I think we should turn that into “common knowledge.”

Indeed.

Indeed, too.

On the other hand, at least it wasn’t an American kid that did it.