Preserving and protecting Egypt’s great cultural heritage of manuscripts was the theme of a recent training course held at the Supreme Council for Antiquities (SCA) and organised by the Egyptian General Authority for Books in cooperation with the Levantine Foundation.
The Levantine Foundation, a charity chaired by the former British ambassador in Egypt, Sir Derek Plumbly, aims to record and preserve the written heritage of the Middle East that has come down to us on papyrus, vellum and related materials.
Such manuscripts bear witness to human history, and Egypt has been one of the first countries in the region to vale the importance of restoration. The Egyptian manuscripts in the scheme begin with the Greek period and go through the Roman and Coptic eras to the Islamic.
Some 120 trainee restorers who attended the course were from the SCA’s museums sector, while several were nuns and monks from a number of Egyptian convents and monasteries including al-Surian in Wadi al-Natroun in the Western Desert and al-Muharraq in Assiut, Upper Egypt.
The lectures were presented by specialist professors from Leiden University in the Netherlands, while the practical training was given by experts in the field of museums from England, and supervised by the executive administrator of Levantine Foundation Elizabeth Sobczynski
The training course was funded by a number of foundations and societies including the Sawiris Association for Social Development.
WATANI International
20 June 2010