Last month the United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, announced its technical support for a new museum in Alexandria where some of the antiquities lying offshore in the harbour can be seen in situ. A site has been proposed for the museum near to the new Library of Alexandria. Among its artefacts the proposed museum will house pieces believed to be from the Pharos, the famous lighthouse of Alexandria, and remains of the palace of Cleopatra VII. Among the exhibits will be masonry and architectural elements from the palace, which once stood on an island in the Eastern Harbour but was submerged by gradual geomorphological shifts that took place from the fourth century onwards.
Logistical concerns
The proposed museum will be underwater not only for aesthetic value but also because it follows the 2001 UNESCO convention for the preservation of underwater heritage. The convention decided that submerged artefacts should ideally remain on the seabed out of respect for their historical context and, in some cases, because water actually preserves them.
However building directly over submerged artefacts could damage them—just one of a number of logistical issues that a feasibility team of archaeologists, architects, engineers, economists, and bureaucrats will need to examine. If the feasibility study concludes that the museum can be built safely, planners are optimistic it could be constructed in three years. The cost of the museum has not been determined and as yet no funding has yet been secured.
In addition to cost concerns, the logistics of visitor safety are also under investigation. The structural integrity of the building is being seen as a relatively minor problem because the harbour is only five to six metres deep, so there will be no heavy water pressure on the walls of the museum.
Once complete, Egyptian authorities hope, the museum will transform both Alexandria’s tourism industry and the city’s landscape.
Primary plans suggest that the museum will be in two sections. The first will be on land and will exhibit objects raised from the seabed at Alexandria, Abu Qir Bay, where Napoleon’s sunken fleet lies, and the nearby submerged cities of Canopus and Herakleion. The larger, inland museum will have underwater fibreglass tunnels to structures where visitors can view antiquities still lying on the seabed. The dual nature is intended to create an experience similar to a traditional museum while also allowing visitors to witness historical artefacts in their submerged state.
UNESCO’s general manager Koitchiro Matsuura said the project will increase awareness of the submerged cultural treasures and will protect them from theft, since currently there is no international law to protect sunken monuments from treasure hunters. He added that UNESCO had produced a documentary to highlight the danger facing sunken monuments and draw attention to the modern techniques used to plunder the seas.
Analysing rocks
Working in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), the EU has prepared a bilateral project to map rock samples taken from the depths of the sea. Ahmed Shoeib, professor of restoration at Cairo University and head of the Egyptian team of the Maidstone EU project for studying and restoring submerged antiquities, said the map would present scientific and analytical studies of granite, sandstone and limestone blocks, the quarries from which they came and the best method of restoring and preserving the objects. The report will be published in the coming months and will be in the possession of SCA as a reference for submerged and sunken treasures.
Dr Shoeib said numerous earthquakes had rocked Alexandria’s fragile coastline over the centuries, wiping out entire ancient communities. The ruins of several towns were left to sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean. According to Dr Shoeib, murky water could obscure the views of submerged monuments and the first requirement is to put a stop to drainage operations in the sea, get eliminate pollutants and to free the monuments from sand so they can be clearly displayed. The museum constructors will either have to clean the water or replace it entirely with an artificial lagoon. Underwater construction will be costly because of the technical problems, so some of the treasures that are in bad shape, such as the sphinx head which will be removed from the sea and added to the rest of the statue now in Kom al-Dikka.
History of the sunken treasure
In 1961 the late diver Kamel Abul-Saedat discovered masonry on the seabed in the Eastern Harbour near the Qaitbay fortress. When he collected some pottery fragments and delivered them to the Graeco-Roman museum, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) formed a team which raised a granite statue wearing a garment. A year later, an Isis statue made of red granite was brought ashore and was set up in the garden of the Alexandria aquarium. In 1968 the government asked UNESCO to help it map the treasures submerged in the Eastern Harbour, and in 1975 this mission was accomplished and a map produced that included various objects. In 1995, the French National Centre for studies in Alexandria conducted feasibility underwater studies at the site and discovered the presence of thousands of antiquities, mainly architectural elements that dated back to the Graeco-Roman period. An administration for submerged treasures in Alexandria affiliated to the SCA was established in 1996 under the direction of Ibrahim Darwish, a pioneer of underwater archaeology.
In 2002 scientists were able to detect the 2,500-year-old city of Herakleion, an ancient port named after Hercules, which was located to the west of modern Alexandria and four miles offshore within Abu Qir Bay. Herakleion is said to have sunk to the bottom of the bay when a violent earthquake struck about 1,300 years ago.