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