UNESCO Teams Up with TripAdvisor to Save Heritage Sites

Link to full article on Heritage Key

Submitted by Sean Williams on Fri, 10/23/2009 – 21:00

Francisco Bandarin and Steve Kaufer celebrate the partnership on Thursday. Image by UNESCO
Two giants of travel and world heritage teamed up this Thursday, as UNESCO and online community site TripAdvisor launched a partnership to help save some of the world’s greatest cultural sites. The pairing will see TripAdvisor pledge an initial $1.5million (£919,000) towards UNESCO’s ambitious World Heritage Centre, from which the UN’s culture wing will observe and preserve some 890 sites on its World Heritage List. These include some of the planet’s most celebrated ancient places, such as Stonehenge, the Theban Necropolis and Chichen Itza.

 

Statue of Alexander Found in Alexandria

From State Information Service – Link to full article

A statue of Alexander the Great has been discovered in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria, Governor Adel Labib said on Wednesday 7/10/2009.

Archeologists have suggested the statue was of Alexander the Great and it was uncovered during excavations at el-Shalalat Park in the city, he said.

The discovery was made by a Greek mission working in the city.

 

Egypt Suspends Louvre Saqqara Excavations over Stolen Artefacts

Link to original article

Egypt has decided to suspend all archaeological cooperation with the Louvre, after the French museum refused to return fragments of a Theban Tomb. The news was confirmed today by Dr. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s antiquities department. The artefacts were excavated in a tomb near Luxor, and according to Dr. Hawass were stolen by the French. This decision endangers planned conferences at the Louvre, as well as the French team’s current excavations at Saqqara, the ‘city of the dead’. A boycott of the Louvre’s Egyptological activities also ensures no archeological expeditions sponsored by the French museum could go ahead in Egypt.

The decision to cut all ties with the Louvre, as well as its archaeological teams, was taken two months ago after the Louvre had repeatedly ignored requests for the return of four reliefs. Dr. Hawass says the reliefs were illegally taken from a tomb in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings in the 1980s.

The disputed artefacts are 5 fragments from the wall of Theban Tomb 15 (TT15), the tomb of Tetiki on the West Bank at Dra Abu’l Naga.  The tomb was photographed in 1968 and shown intact.  In the 1990’s the tomb was – like so many – lost, and thought to be destroyed by modern building. A team from the Heidelberg University rediscovered this tomb during excavations at Dra Abu El-Naga in 2001, but the fragments were missing.

Update from ABC News -

…Subject to a decision by France’s national museum scientific committee, Mr Mitterrand said he was ready to order the frescoes be handed back.

Under the UNESCO convention of 1970, member countries agreed measures to prevent the illegal export of national treasures.

Mr Mitterrand [French Cultural Minister] said the five Egyptian pieces had been acquired in good faith by the Louvre and it was only in 2008, after the discovery of the tomb from which the murals apparently came, that serious doubts were raised about their provenance….

It would seem that all is set to end well, but does this set a precedent of “gunboat diplomacy” with regards to antiquities? And where is the line drawn? Dr. Zahi Hawass, has repeatedly said that it is only ilegally aquired anqituities that should be returned to Egypt, and so, one assumes, where methods like this would be used.

However, Dr. Hawass has repeatedly referred to a desire to see the Rosetta Stone and Bust of Nefertiti returned to Egypt, despite both peices being regarded as legally removed by the UNESCO Convention of 1983.  Will “gunboat diplomacy” be used to secure these peices? If it is, then the implications for both foreign archaeologial research in Egypt, and the status of all Ancient Egyptian collections in foreign museums could be far reaching.

Foreign museums will be loathed to surrender peices that they hold, in their and UNESCOs eyes, perfectly legally, and may have done so for the better part of 200 years. Yet, threatened with their ongoing work in Egypt being wiped out, they face a “Catch 22″ situation that may end up causing more harm than good.

In addition, the history of these artefacts is often entwined with the history of more than just Egypt. The Rosetta stone, for example, from the point of view of Ancient Egyptian history, is of relatively minor importance compared to it’s unique and hugely symbolic importance to modern Egyptology, which is essentially an international discipline centred as much around Paris, London, and any number of cities from Tokyo to Buenos Aires, as well as Cairo.

 

Seti I Before Hathor (B7)

This week, from the birthplace of Egyptology, the zenith of Pharaonic art…

 

Egypt warns pharaohs’ tombs could disappear

AFP – Wednesday, August 19

LUXOR, Egypt (AFP) – - The ornate pharaonic tombs in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings are doomed to disappear within 150 to 500 years if they remain open to tourists, the head of antiquities has warned.

Zahi Hawass said humidity and fungus are eating into the walls of the royal tombs in the huge necropolis on the west bank of the Nile across from Luxor, which is swamped daily by several thousand tourists.

Poor ventilation and the breath of the hordes of visitors are causing damage to the carvings and painted decorations inside the tombs, he told journalists on a tour of the royal necropolis on Monday.

“The tombs (in the Valley of the Kings and nearby Valley of the Queens) which are open to visitors are facing severe damage to both colours and the engravings,” Hawass said.

“The levels of humidity and fungus are increasing because of the breath of visitors and this means that the tombs could disappear between 150 and 500 years.”

The Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, where pharaonic royalty was mummified, is home to the tombs of legendary pharaohs such as the boy king Tutenkhamun and Queen Nefertiti.

Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities have taken a series of measures to protect the tombs, including setting up new ventilation systems, restricting the number of visitors and closing some tombs.

Hawass said the authorities have also decided “to close some tombs definitively to tourists and replace them by identical replicas,” including those of Tutenkhamun, Nefertiti and Seti I.

“A team of experts is currently using laser technology to examine these tombs in order to build the replicas… which would then open to visitors in a place near the Valley of the Kings,” Hawass said.

Link to full article

The idea of building exact replicas of the most visited tombs has long been suggested, though this is perhaps one of the most concrete statements I have come across so far that the SCA is seriously looking into giving this idea the go ahead.

 

Sarcopgagus of Nectanebo II – Last Native Egyptian Pharaoh

This weeks video, examining the sarcophagus of Nectanebo II (Cat. No. EA10) in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery at the British Museum. I have wanted to make a piece on the sarcophagus for this blog for a long time now, as I feel it’s historical importance is often overlooked, as marking the end of an era, and in some ways an entire culture. I’ve always found this piece to be profoundly moving.

To practicalities, I do apologise in advance for the rather poor delivery on this video, as I had about 10 minutes to mentally go through the presentation before plunging in.  C’est la vie!

Next week, the video shall not feature an object from the British Museum collection, but somewhere else, whose collection is completely and utterly new for me, having never visited the institution in question before in my life.  It’s a very exciting time for me!

 

Lintel of Ahmose I From Armant – British Museum Cat. EA 1708

First video in the aforementioned series, focusing on the lintel of Ahmose I from the temple of Montu at Armant, Upper Egypt. Now in the British Museum, displayed in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. Cat.  No.: EA 1708

PS: For more light-hearted amongst you, look carefully at the pyramid in the intro logo

 

Objects in the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery – British Museum

Recently my partner has been active on producing videos for Youtube, so I have decided to produce a series of videos, each focusing on an individual object from the Ancient Egyptian collection of the British Museum, starting with it’s sculpture gallery.  Hopefully this will help lift this blog out of it’s neglect, for which I truly am sorry!

 

Revering The Ancestors : A Duty To The Past

I’ve written on here before concerning the exceedingly black image that most of contemporary society has of Ancient Egypt. A lot of these views are based on old stereotypes from Hollywood, the press hysteria over the “Mummy’s Curse” surrounding the tomb of Tutankhamun (a.k.a. “King Tut”) and views based on the myths and folktales of an entirely different culture (I.e. Exodus).

Archaeology and study of Egyptian literature and administrative documents long ago dispelled these black myths, but the public perception lingers. This may be because that much of work done in translation and excavation is published in journals and books that are largely inaccessible and undesirable to the general public because of it’s highly academic nature, and many of the specialist publications are also not available in more general bookstores. Meanwhile increasing amounts of information come from TV, whose study of Egyptian culture is limited to Hollywood blockbusters or embarrassingly bad “edutainment” documentaries that focus on the sensational.

However, what good is research if it’s huge advances in understanding utterly pass by the general population, whom still cling the notions of the sneering Pharaoh keeping his slaves in line with the lash?

I am interested in getting some views and comments on this, so please debate!

 

Dig Days – Hallucinations

From El Ahram Weekly -Link to complete article

By Zahi Hawass

These days it would seem that most of my time is spent denying rumours about the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and Egypt’s Pharaonic, Coptic, and Islamic monuments. I do not know why some people create this misinformation and give it to newspaper reporters to publish without them even trying to find out the veracity of the statement. Most of the things published in a small number of newspapers are not true at all. It is quite amazing to my mind how they make up these stories. I once gave a talk at the Smithsonian Institute about the Sphinx. There was a reporter there from The Washington Post listening to the lecture. After the lecture, he came to me saying that he was very interested in what I had said about the Sphinx but that he would first like to read all the written information about the monument and then he could come and talk to me. I respected this man very much. This is how news reporters should do their jobs.

A few weeks ago, we decided to move the pillar of Merenptah, the son of Ramses II, who ruled Egypt during his father’s old age. He was a very important king because we found a stela in his mortuary temple on the West Bank, reused in the Temple of Amenhotep III, of which only the Colossi of Memnon remains standing today. The stela of Merenptah has an inscription about the people of Israel. Many scholars tried to describe and translate this inscription. We must stress the fact that a poet wrote this inscription concerning the reign of Merenptah, his king. The most important passage of this inscription emphasises the greatness of the Pharaoh making peace with the Hittites, and states that the people of Israel were no longer in Egypt. Some translations even go as far as to say that they were destroyed. Since its discovery, the stela has been stored in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The pillar of Merenptah at Heliopolis was part of a temple built by this Pharaoh dedicated to the local sun god. While performing an inspection at Heliopolis, I saw this pillar between some houses. It was surrounded by water and garbage was everywhere. The inscription written on the pillar only tells us the nsw-bity (Pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt) name of the Pharaoh…

For clarification the stela article is referring tois the Poetical Stela of Merenptah (a.k.a. the “Isreal Stela”). The Stela is carved on both sides, the reverse originally being used by Amunhotep III (18th Dyn) and was installed in his mortuary temple. It was later re-used by Merenptah (19th Dyn) when it was carved on the opposite side with a poem celebrating his victories over various peoples in Libya and Asia. The people of Israel are mentioned towards the end of the inscription, the last part of which is given below:

“…The princes are prostrate saying: ‘Shalom!’
Not one of the Nine Bows lifts his head:
Tjehenu is vanquished, Khatti at peace,
Canaan is captive with all woe.
Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized,
Yanoam made nonexistent;
Israel is wasted, bare of seed,
Khor is become a widow for Egypt.
All who roamed have been subdued
By the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Banera-Meramun
Son of Ra, Merenptah, Content-with-ma’at
Given life, like Ra, every day.”

Excerpt from Cairo Museum 34025. Translation from Ancient Egyptian Literature Vol II, M. Lichtheim, University of California press.