I'm sure other local Egyptologists were unhappy about his unwillingness to share the limelight. On the other hand, to the U.S. television watching public he had become a "brand," instantly recognizable in his Indiana Jones hat hiking around the temples and tombs.
The article says he claimed archeological knowledge he didn't have; I don't remember it that way. My sense was always that he was there making it clear that the antiquities belonged to Egypt, not to whatever western Egyptologist was excavating and describing them. I thought he did that well. Now it is someone else's turn.
