Online version: PDF - DTIE

UNIT 4: ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
157
who analyse, catalogue and restore artefacts. “The last thing we need is more
mummies,” groans one archaeologist, faced with the recent discovery of a desert
cemetery that Egyptian experts believe holds as many as 10,000 graves from the
Greco-Roman period. Only a few choice pieces, some with gilded facemasks, will
be displayed near the site in the oasis of Bahariya, a little over 300km southwest
of Cairo. The rest will have to be reburied.
Rainer Stadelman, who is retiring as director of Cairo’s German Archaeological
Institute after four decades in Egypt, explains that you can dig practically anywhere
and find something. “More than 3,000 years of high civilisation – and I’m only
talking about Ancient Egypt — gives an enormous wealth of antiquities,” he says.
E
X
E
R
C
I
S
E
S
Although nothing quite so flush with loot as Tutankhamun’s tomb has been
unearthed in the past ten years, recent discoveries have greatly enriched the
science of Egyptology. At Abydos, 400km south of Cairo, a German team excavating
a royal cemetery from the middle of the fourth millennium BC believes it has found
the world’s oldest readable writing. Inscriptions on ivory labels attached to oil
jars show that officials of the First Dynasty used primitive hieroglyphs to record
where the jars came from. Overturning the theory that Egypt adapted the art from
Mesopotamia, the phonetic symbols put back the ‘invention’ of writing by two or
three centuries, to around 3,300 BC.
Across the Nile at Akhmim, Egyptian archaeologists are beginning to uncover a
temple precinct that may prove as large as the temple of Karnak at Luxor. This
would make the site rank next to Angkor Wat and the Vatican as one of the
world’s biggest religious complexes — only many centuries older. The Akhmim
site has already produced an exquisite 14-metre-high limestone statue of Ramses
II’s daughter, Merit-Amun.
In Luxor’s Valley of the Kings, Kent Weeks, an American archaeologist, continues
to explore a vast underground funerary complex dating from the reign of Ramses
II (1304-1237 BC). With more than 200 rooms uncovered since excavation started
in 1995, the purpose of this mysterious warren of chambers remains unknown.
Theories range widely: perhaps it was a tomb for all of Ramses’ 52 sons, perhaps
a model representing stages of the afterworld.
Other recent finds include an intact pyramid capstone (at Dahshur), a tomb
belonging to Tutankhamun’s nurse that is decorated with beautiful relief carvings
(at Sakkara), a cemetery devoted to the workers who built the pyramids (at Giza),
fortresses in the Sinai Peninsula dating from 1500 BC, and a palace in the Delta
decorated with Minoan paintings that prove there was a close trading relationship
between Egypt and the ancient Cretan civilisation.
Leaving aside Ancient Egypt, finds from later periods are just as alluring. Divers
off Alexandria have uncovered sculptures from the famous Ptolemaic lighthouse
as well as Greco-Roman ports and palaces. The site where Napoleon’s flagship,
L’Orient, was sunk by Lord Nelson in 1798, with an estimated 10m gold francs of
treasure aboard, has also been found. Far out in the desert, meanwhile, an Italian
team has just finished restoring a chapel in the Coptic monastery of St Anthony.
The stunning 13th-century frescoes on its walls, completely obscured by soot until
three years ago, now rank among the most brilliant examples of Eastern Christian
art.
All this work costs money. With Egypt’s own resources severely strained, and
with 20-odd foreign missions facing cutbacks, archaeologists must increasingly
scout for their own backing. Rival French teams in Alexandria have each sought
corporate sponsorship. Both have signed away exclusive rights for television
coverage of their finds. To support his work in the Valley of the Kings, Mr. Weeks is