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Ancient Egypt Magazine

Volume Three Issue Two  -- September/October  2002

Netfishing by Hapy  

A recent conference held in London brought to attention a new project intended to provide an answer to that most pressing of problems: how to pro­vide public access to the most threatened of Egypt’s monuments while conserving them at the same time.

Bob Partridge’s report of the event, held at the Hunterian Institute, is carried in the news pages of this issue. The focus of attention is the magnificent tomb of eighteenth dynasty monarch Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. Magnificent still, but badly damaged as our report outlines, by the actions of visitors, whether accidentally or intentionally, and by natural forces. Here we look at the web site associated with the project, provided by Mallinson Architects to be found at www.mallarch.abel.co.uk

An international team is working on a proposal to create a replica of Seti’s tomb, at Giza. The details of the proposal are clearly laid out on the web site, and it is an extremely ambitious and complex one. The recreation of the tomb will be lit by sunlight carried down special lighting tubes and reflected back from the floor. A heat transfer sys­tem will ensure a comfortable temperature for visitors. The principles behind these are both illustrated on the site. The site also includes full details of the project team along with images from the original tomb and pictures of scale models of the replica. The implication is that there will be more to follow and indeed one replica is already on display in the USA. Visitors will also find a walk-through version of the enormous tomb of Seti on the web site, showing its unique aspects clearly.

To recreate the tomb, images (now housed in Bristol) dating from the time of its discovery by Belzoni will be used. Modern scanning developments are final­ly making it possible to produce a creation that is not inferior to the original. As well as providing a solution to problems such as visitor- numbers, projects such as this also raise interesting questions about the whole nature of our fascination with ancient monuments. To the serious student of ancient Egypt, it is the symbolism and stricture of Egyptian funerary art and architecture that is important. Does this absolutely require a visit to the original? Can virtual visits and reconstructions provide the information that’s needed for the majority, although specialists in technique may need to visit the original? For those for whom a visit to Egypt is more in the nature of a personal ‘pilgrimage’ – is this really necessary if the inevitable outcome is the destruction of the monu­ment itself?.

The project was devised by the former head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr Gaballah Ali Gaballah, and is now continuing under his successor, Dr Zahi Hawass. It shows the determination of Egypt’s cultural authorities and the international Egyptological community to tack­le the issue of providing alternative visitor attrac­tions to Egypt’s ever-growing tourist numbers.

It also shows that an international approach has to be taken. Projects such as this can only succeed if the whole archive of material relat­ing to a particular site or tomb is drawn together, and of course ‘virtual reality’ now provides the best way to do this.

Pioneering work on this approach to monuments and sites of world cultural significance was provided by work at Altamira, the site of Spain’s wonderful Palaeolithic cave paintings. Here a visitor attraction produced by recreating the caves has proved enormously successful, thus maintaining the necessary income to local people while saving the originals. The offi­cial site for those who would like to view the approach there is www.mcu.es/nmuseos/altamira but the a number of other sites describing remarkable location.

It was not unusual, particularly in early dynastic times, for the kings of Egypt to have more than one funerary monument at different locations in Egypt. The proposal to recreate the tomb of Seti I is therefore perhaps not out of step with ancient Egyptian thought.

Hapy

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