Preserving Egypt's monuments

Egypt's hoary past is represented by numerous monuments. But modern lifestyles and natural wear and tear are taking their toll on these ancient structures. Noted writer DARRYL D' MONTE takes a look at Egyptian efforts to involve the community in saving the relics of their ancient past.

EVEN for people who are accustomed to being described as belonging to an ancient civilisation, Indian visitors to Egypt cannot but be enthralled by its magnificent archaeological heritage. It probably dwarfs every other country in the world in terms of the sheer magnitude and scale of its monuments. It encompasses a panoply of empires - beginning with the Pharaohs in 3000 BC, followed by Alexander and the Ptolemies, the Romans till 638 AD and Arab rule till the 16th Century. Few countries can boast of civilisations which date back to 30 centuries and have innumerable temples and tombs still standing to show for it.

But present-day practices and natural wear and tear are posing a threat to Egypt's monuments. At a conference in Cairo last November, Dr. Gaballa Ali Gaballa, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities - the equivalent of our venerable Archaeological Survey of India - said that it was difficult to keep an eye on them because they are spread all over the country, roughly divided between Cairo and the desert. He criticises "the pressure of everyday life and the misbehaviour of the public" as contributing to the deterioration of the country's ancient sites.

Specifically, he cites the threat to the Temple of Karnak in Luxor, which lies along the upper reaches of the Nile. "The lower levels are protruding. Waterlogging is damaging the foundations of the temple, since it is a stone's throw from the Nile. Earlier, when the river flooded both the banks, it also removed the salts in the soil. Dr. Gaballa cited how after the Aswan dam was built, the natural drainage of the Nile valley had been blocked and buildings on both banks of the river had been affected.

The University of Chicago's Centre for Conservation had helped preserve structures at Luxor since the 1930s. On some monuments, the level in the disastrous 1887 flood is marked with a blue line. The Centre also rebuilt structures damaged by the Greeks aeons ago. At the Luxor temple, excavations as late as in 1989 discovered 24 standing sculptures under the water table.

Asked by this correspondent whether the Aswan high dam had proved a blessing for flood control and agriculture, but a problem as far as monuments were concerned, Dr. Gaballa replied that this remained a question mark. "We need high dams," he said. Thanks to it, Egypt was saved from the ravages of the droughts of the 1980s which affected Ethiopia. "The high dam permitted Egyptians to grow three crops a year and stabilise the level of the Nile. It permits 450 tourist cruises along the river every year," he asserted.

The Council was undertaking a study with the assistance of the Swedish government, USAID and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to take measures to prevent waterlogging. The UNDP is also helping prepare an archaeological map of Egypt, encouraged by President Hosni Mubarak's call for a "cultural renaissance" in the country. USAID is concerned about the rising levels of humidity in the tombs of the Valley of Kings, where the archaeologist Howard Carter stumbled upon the spectacular tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. USAID is funding 46 conservation and restoration projects, including the preservation of the Graeco- Roman ruins in Alexandria and the restoration of the mosaics at a church in the old Coptic Christian area of Cairo.

The rampant urbanisation around archaeological sites is a big problem. The Council has launched a pilot project to upgrade facades of old houses in Cairo's heritage precincts and provide drainage. Certain areas are being pedestrianised and repaved with cobblestones. The project cost LE (Egyptian pounds) 12 million ($3.3 million) but is only "a token of what can be done", according to Dr. Gaballa. He was critical of the failure of Egyptian industrialists to sponsor heritage conservation projects. "You can't clap with one hand and work in isolation," he said, referring to the Council's endeavours. A Kuwait bank had also provided $3 million to prepare detailed maps of Egypt's ancient sites. Several other multilateral and foreign agencies had also provided assistance.

A recent exhibit at the century-old Cairo Museum, which has over 100,000 exhibits and has run short of space, is the monumental dyad (pair) of the gods Amun and Mut from Karnak. The Council carried out the conservation of these statutes in 1998-1999 with the American Research Centre for Egypt and USAID. In the Middle Ages, robbers had quarried away blocks from statues. French archaeologist Auguste Mariette had found the remains in 1873 after his excavations at Luxor (it was his labour that eventually led to the display of countless exhibits under one roof in the museum).

Conservationists later rediscovered parts in different storerooms in the Cairo museum and Karnak. The traditional method of re- profiling missing areas and fully restoring the statues was not possible since many pieces were missing. As the Council stated, "such intervention would be highly subjective". They instead supported the fragments with armature and this was the first time in Egypt that such methods had been introduced on such a colossal scale. The pieces ranged from a two-centimetres - wide fragment of a Mut bracelet to a one-metre-wide piece of the torso of Amun.

In the Coptic precinct of Cairo, the Church of the Holy Family is being restored; the icons have been removed for this purpose. The Ben Ezra Jewish synagogue next to it, where the baby Moses was supposed to have been rescued by a pharaoh's daughter from the reeds, was recently restored too. According to Dr. Mona Zakaria, an architect who is supervising the conservation and improvement of the entire precinct, the concern was not only the preservation of the monuments but "also what is around them: People themselves formed part of the urban pattern. After four months of consultations with the residents who live cheek by jowl with the seven churches and synagogue, Dr. Zakaria and her team helped renovate people's homes, keeping the area's heritage in mind.

"The community wasn't used to working with each other," Dr. Zakaria recalled. Eventually, more than 1,000 people were covered by the project which cost around $2.5 million. A modern police station was refurbished and made to look like a traditional structure; the bust station was similarly redesigned and will eventually be shifted out altogether. As many as 60 tourists buses converge on the area every day. The local potters and shopkeepers will remain and their places of work will be improved. The major work was underground, to provide sewerage, with USAID help.

One of the problems faced in the Valley of Kings was the theft of treasures and artifacts from the tombs, which lay scattered all around. The famous architect, Hasan Fathy, was asked to relocate residents from the adjoining village of Gurna. People were moved from their homes and altogether, nearly 100 houses were built for 400 people. However, the experiment proved a failure because the villagers rejected the new site although it provided a modern community centre, mosque and other amenities. Egyptian architects now point to the need for involving communities in conservation process as the only fail-safe method for ensuring that monuments are protected for many more years to come.

Some of Egypt's most exciting archaeological discoveries are yet to be unveiled. The "Lost Cities" under the sea off Alexandria have been located by French experts. These may have vanished off the face of the earth after a great earthquake in 7 AD, and were mentioned by Herodotus, who visited Egypt in 5 BC, and other scholars subsequently. Two of these cities are Herakleion and Menouthis, but their discoveries may lead to other underwear ruins. Such is the scale of this ambitious investigation that it may take another 50 years to unravel these mysteries of the deep.

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