Today, when Egypt is busy drafting plans for a future to lead the country out of chaos, its past seems to be in peril as well, as the ongoing political turmoil and consequent violence put the country's priceless fortune of history under threat.

In one of the biggest looting incidents the world has even seen, over 1,000 artifacts were stolen from the Malawi Museum in the central Minya governorate on August 14.

A security vacuum was created after Islamist President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the military in early July. The situation even worsened when clashes erupted between troops and Morsi's loyalists on Aug. 14 after the dispersal of two pro-Morsi sit-ins in the country.

The looters, taking advantage of the hap, burnt the museum and destroyed a number of mummies and statues that were too huge to be carried away.

The great loss rang the bell for the Egyptian people about their irreplaceable antiquities, one of the main attraction for tourists from around the world and a main source of foreign exchange reserves.

"I wonder why didn't the government take some necessary measures to protect museums during the expected turmoil," said Mohamed el-Kahlawy, professor of archaeology and Islamic culture at Cairo University.

El-Kahlawy accused the government of gross negligence that left many museums and archaeological sites still vulnerable. "They have at least to evacuate valuable pieces from museums and tightened security around those sites," he told Xinhua.

During the Malawi Museum theft, one employee was killed, while other security guards ran for their lives, but no army or police forces were there.

"No one denies the humble security measures in the museum, but what had happened there was unprecedented and unexpected," said Shadia Mahmoud, head of the international cooperation department at the Ministry of Antiquities.

"We have nearly 40 local museums around the country, some of them are fully protected with modern systems, but others still depend on old protection systems that need to be improved," she said.

"But what the museum could do is limited," she said. "The biggest problem is the large number of illegal diggings around the country while unregistered pieces can easily find their way to international markets. What's more, there were frequent attacks on archaeological sites with the purposes of building houses, cemeteries or for agricultural production."

It is impossible to control those diggings. The only solution will be spreading awareness among people about the value of those artifacts, she said.

Mahmoud agreed that great efforts should be exerted both from the Egyptian government and the international organizations although they seem to be reluctant to offer practical help. UNESCO remained silent for several days after the incident.

The Malawi Museum was not the only victim of the recent unrest. A number of churches -- some centuries-old, were also burnt or looted, and the ancient Egyptian royal necropolis of Dahshur was subjected to a failed attempt at encroachment of vandalism.

Just before the 2011 unrest that eventually toppled ex- President Hosni Mubarak, looters sneaked into the Egyptian Museum in Cairo's Tahrir Square, then nearly 50 pieces of the museum's artifacts went missing. Also in 2011, valuable pieces were stolen from a museum affiliated to the faculty of antiquities of Cairo University.

"It's strange that the government didn't introduce any new security measures to museums after those accidents," said Hossam Eddin Aboud, an archaeological inspector who has worked in several archaeological sites across the country.

Aboud, also a member of archaeologists coalition that aims at improving archaeologists' working conditions, said "There were no training or lectures for workers to help them deal with such a situation."

For the time being, we could depend on local residents to form committees to protect the sites in their areas, he said. "But we have at first to increase awareness among those residents about the value and importance of those sites and antiquities."

The archaeological industry in Egypt has suffered a lot recently, not only because of assaults of thieves, but also low revenues that threatened most of the archaeological projects to stop, he said.