Aswan Dam Threat EFFORTS TO SAVE THE NILE TEMPLES

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29165, 28 March 1960, Page 12

Aswan Dam Threat EFFORTS TO SAVE THE NILE TEMPLES

(By

I C. B. MORTLOCK

in the “Daily Telegraph”)

(Reprinted by arrangement)

Hope of a revival of the “golden age” of Egyptology evidently inspires the generous terms which the United Arab Republic is offering to archaeological institutions in its dire need of their help. Since Lord Carnarvon and Mr Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen in the 1930’s Egyptology, so far as archaeologists were concerned, has been in a decline. The conditions were made too onerous by the Egyptian Government. It was not worth the while of museums to finance expeditions if they could not carry away a reasonable share of their finds. Sir Flinders Petrie, the father of Egyptian archaeology, was one of the first to shake the sand of the land of the Pharaohs from his feet and turn to Palestine. In the urgent need to salvage the antiquities of Nubia before they are drowned in the vast lake of 1150 square miles which will be created in the valley of the upper Nile by the new High Dam, the Government not only promises the excavators a half share of their finds but will also allow on similar terms excavation in other areas of the country. Some of the smaller temples will be given in their entirety for re-erec-tion in other countries. Already the committees advising the U.A.R. Government and U.N.E.S.C.O. have enlisted some of the world’s foremost scholars, among them Mrs Christiane Des-roches-Noblecourt, curator of the department of Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre. The international salvage operation is largely due to her foresight and initiative. Pearl of Egypt As the river steamer passed the sacred island of Philae with its temples and colonnades, I recalled her description of their iridescence amid the blue-pink reflections of the Nile. At this season, when the dammed waters are at their highest, the greater part of the temple is submerged. Only in the summer, when the sluice gates are open, can it be seen. At the turn of the century a great outcry went up all over Europe at the effect the building of the original dam would have on Philae. So powerful was it that the original plan for the dam was modified. During the uproar a young man of 25 on his way to a job in Khartoum, Winston S. Churchill by name, visited Philae. He scarified the idea that “the State must struggle and the people starve, in order that professors may exult and tourists may find some space on which to scratch their names.” More than that, he foresaw with astonishing precision where the plans of the British engineers would ultimately lead; that the Nile after flowing 3000 miles through smiling country would “perish gloriously and never reach the sea." Slightly less poetically, a U.N.E.S.CO. publication declares the purpose of the new High Dam to be the “total utilisation of the Nile’s waters.” On a note of echoing eloquence it adds: “Not a drop of the river will ever be lost in the sea." As it now turns out, Philae is the one monument of Nubia which will benefit by the High Dam because it stands between the old dam and the site of the new and in that area the level of the water is to be lowered. The expert recommendation is the

creation of an artificial lake so as to leave the Philae sanctuaries, “the pearl of Egypt," unimpaired and largely recreating their original setting. The effect of the first stage of the High Dam will be to raise the present level of the water by about 40ft and create an artificial lake nearly 300 miles long and up to 16 miles wide. The water is already very near the base of the greatest of the Nubian temples, those of Abu Simbel, and the dead-line for completing their protection is September, 1963. Of the proposals for the preservation of the vast rock-hewn temple of Rameses II that favoured by the international expert committee which examined the problem on the spot last October is the construction of an earth-and-rock-filled dam to create a low-level lake cut off from the Aswan reservoir and large enough to give the temple a spacious setting befitting its majestic dignity. The estimated cost of the work is £lsm-18m. Our steamer approached Abu Simbel, on the west bank of the Nile, in true Egyptian darkness, relieved only by the sparkling splendour of the moonless sky. Members of the staff of the antiquities department, who have their floating living quarters, workshops and laboratories at the water’s edge, had prepared for our arrival by floodlighting the facade, so that our first sight of the four immense seated figures of Pharaoh Rameses, each 67ft high, was of heroic sculpture set in the richness of deep shadows. Modern artifice had added a quality and dimension unforeseen by the ancient craftsmen who cut their noble images in the solid rock of the mountain-side. By fluorescent light we later saw every part of the interior with a clarity which set me wondering how the artists more than 3000 years ago executed their mural scenes and hieroglyphic inscriptions with such delicacy of line and colour Mystery and Majesty The temple, cut 200 ft into the solid rock, has no natural light except that from the relatively narrow portal between the flanking colossi. Yet every inch of its walls, even in the chambers which lie north and south of the great hall in almost total darkness, are covered with exquisite reliefs and inscriptions. Since it is certain that lamps were not used the mystery is profound. The only explanation, and that barely tenable, is a complicated arrangement of mirrors of some sort.

Like many of the temples of Nubia, this supreme example, though dedicated to the worship of Ra-Harmachis, stands essentially to the glory of Rameses 11, eight immense statues of whom line the main hall. He is also depicted seated among the gods to whom he is making offerings. A single statue of the god of the temple, in relatively small scale, stands in a niche above , the entrance. At dawn, when the sun’s rays fall upon it, it seems to step forward from its dim recess to greet the sunrise. Higher up, along the cornice, a row of baboons, traditionally associated with sun-worship, also greet the dawn. Then, for one hour only,, do the sun’s rays penetrate the full length of the temple and rest on the figures of four gods seated in the inner sanctuary—one, again, being Rameses himself. Remote and inaccessible except from the river, there seems to be no encouragement for tourists to visit the. temples. With the material now available for an authoritative illustrated guide to Abu Simbel, the temples which are the magnum opus of the greatest of the temple-builders of Egypt could prove an attraction to visitors rivalling anything that Egypt has to show. A vital question is: what certainty is there that the surrounding hills, which are to contain the new height and expanse of water, are impermeable? In other words, is there not a danger that the waters at their new height above the temple may seep into it through unknown faults and fissures in the natural walls of the vast reservoir? Are physicists and geologists able to provide a complete answer? Will it be necessary to install a pumping system? The many lesser monuments and the unexplored sites above the present water level on both sides of the Nile present a somewhat different aspect of the U.N.E.S.C.O. enterprise for it is not primarily money that is needed but a very considerable force of trained archaeologists and, of course, particularly Egyptologists. After a generation of discouragement can they be expected to materialise at short notice? There are probably about 100 active Egyptologists in the world today Some of them are well advanced in years and others have professional commitments in museums and other institutions which are not easily to be set aside. Younger men—and women —are few. Dr. Jaroslav Cerny, Professor of Egyptology at Oxford, who is deciphering the famous marriage stela of Rameses II at Abu Simbel, told me that there are two under-graduates only at Oxford studying ancient Egyptology.