Dubai: Dr. Zahi Hawass, the world’s most famous (non-fictional) archaeologist, has long been called the “real-life Indiana Jones.” But in the summer of 2023, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

After all, in his new movie, “The Dial of Destiny,” Indy is shown ready to retire at the age of 70, with his adventures finally behind him. Meanwhile, 76-year-old Hawass is on the brink of perhaps his greatest discovery, with his legendary passion on full display in a new Netflix documentary that once again makes him a worldwide phenomenon.

The movie “Uncharted: The Lost Pyramid” and its title is not just a tease. After a lifelong search, Hawass found what appears to be a forgotten pyramid that was built 1,000 years before King Tutankhamen was buried in the Egyptian desert. Viewers are intrigued, and just days after its release, the film became the #1 hit on Netflix worldwide, an unprecedented feat for a regional film.

“I’m amazed, honestly. I never thought this movie would be number one in the world, but I knew it was something special. People told me they cried after watching it because, unlike ‘Indiana Jones’, this is a real adventure,” Hawass told Arab News.

While the main mystery is clearly stimulating enough to draw viewers in, part of what makes the movie so captivating is Dr. Hawass himself. In one unforgettable sight, Hawass lifts the lid on an ancient sarcophagus to discover a mummy unlike anything he’s seen before, and the sparkle in his eye feels powerful enough to single-handedly inspire a whole new generation of archaeologists. It was a moment like the one that inspired Hawass’ career in the first place.

I never wanted to be an archaeologist. I wanted to be a lawyer, but the moment I got to the dorms and looked at all the boring law books, I realized I hated them,” says Hawass. “I moved to the Faculty of Arts, and there they told me about a new department called Archeology. I said, “What do you do when you graduate?” They said: Be an interpreter. There was nothing else the Egyptians aspired to at that time.”

Hawass did not immediately turn to archeology. He got mediocre marks in his classes, graduated with no honors, and took a job in the Department of State Antiquities upon completion—a position that was then guaranteed to all graduates of the fledgling field.

“None of my co-workers liked me. I didn’t like any of it. I said, ‘No, I don’t want to be an archaeologist, that’s a bad job. I tried to become a diplomat. I failed to become a diplomat. I crawled back into the antiquities department, and the boss ordered me to go work on excavations, and threatened me with 15 days’ salary if I refused,'” Hawass says.

“One day, the workers found a grave and called me. I sat down, and they gave me a brush to clean up the detritus, and there I found a statue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. At that moment I found my love. I found my passion. And from that passion everything came.”

In the decades that followed, Hawass became a prominent figure not only in the field of archeology, but in Egyptian culture in general. Fueled by the same larger-than-life personality and indefatigable desire to understand the roots of Middle Eastern civilization that fuels him today, Hawass has grown into a folk hero—at times a controversial one. In a decades-long battle, he successfully wrestled the keys to Egypt’s history away from an international community that was notorious for stealing some of his country’s greatest treasures.

“I don’t fight, though. I defend myself. And I defend Egypt — beautifully,” says Hawass.

As he is careful to remind us, his work has inspired generations across Egypt to pursue a field that was once a dead end, building a thriving community that now follows him into the desert in search of the next discovery. He transformed Egyptology from a Western-dominated field into an entirely Arab-led field. While he remained resilient, that didn’t mean, of course, that there weren’t moments when things got tough on a personal level.

In 2011, at the height of the revolution, there were many people attacking me. The New Yorker wrote 17 pages about me, half of which are bad. I was traveling with Omar Sharif in the Dominican Republic when I got out. He said: Why are you upset? I said: Why are these people attacking me? Omar read the article, came back and said, “I’d like The New Yorker to write 100 bad pages about me, because if they do that means you’re excellent,” Hawass recalled.

Omar told me, I’ve written more than 50 books. Stack your books and you will be taller than the person attacking you. So I didn’t get upset. This was the key to my continued success – I kept producing, lecturing and working, until everyone had to admit that I was the making of archeology for my country. I walk the streets, and people want to take pictures with me because I have made archeology an adventure in their hearts,” he continues.

Hawass isn’t afraid of controversy — which is part of the reason he wanted to bring this film to Netflix in the first place, as it emerged shortly after Egypt was embroiled in a global firestorm over the Netflix documentary “Queen Cleopatra,” which posited that the legendary Egyptian queen was a black woman — an assertion Hawass publicly dismissed in an Arab News guest column in April.

“Through it all, I stood up for Netflix in my country. Netflix is ​​a platform, and platforms can show both good and bad things. The best thing to do with the platform is to make something better than the thing you’re against. That’s what we did. Very few people watched Cleopatra, but now this movie is being watched by millions and millions all over the world. Now all we need to do is convince Netflix to do the sequel,” says Hawass.

Even at the age of 76, and having just returned from a 23-city speaking tour across the US, the only thing Hawass can think of is what’s next: the next project, the next discovery. While they pause their excavation during the hot summer months, he eagerly awaits September 1, when he can once again put on his Indiana Jones hat and continue what they started in the “Lost Pyramid”, because he knows how close he is to the greatest treasures, and the many mysteries they can solve regarding the civilizations of ancient Egypt.

“I don’t feel good about what I do. Every year, I want to do more than I did in the past. And it’s funny, because I’m not a ‘living for today’ person. I live in the past. That’s where my mind always is. The only scene I liked in the new Indiana Jones movie was when he traveled (in time) to old Syracuse, because it happens to me all the time. My mind always goes back to ancient times.”