Three
mudbrick houses and the remains of a villa in the Dakhla Oasis have been opened
to the public after restoration. Written By/ Nevine El-Aref.
In
the northwest of the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert is the mediaeval
village of Al-Qasr with its mudbrick buildings, alleys, mosques, Pharaonic
temple and seed mill. Its serenity was disturbed earlier this week when
Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany along with Al-Wadi Al-Gadid Governor
Mohamed Suleiman Al-Zamalout and Netherlands Ambassador Laurens Westhoff and
other officials opened three houses and a villa in Al-Qasr to visitors after
the completion of conservation work.
El-Enany
described the work as “wonderful” and “one of the ministry’s most important
achievements”. He said that the Al-Qasr village was one of the most important
Islamic settlements in Egypt, not only because of its distinguished
architecture but also because it was the meeting point of several trade routes
as well as being on a main route for pilgrimage.
The
newly inaugurated buildings are in the Rabaa Al-Shihabiya area of the village
and include the Beit Al-Qadi, the Beit Al-Qurashi and the Beit Othman. The
remains of the fourth-century Villa of Serenus, once a council member in Amheida
(ancient Trimithis), were also restored and reopened.
Ahmed
Al-Nemr, a member of the Ministry of Antiquities’ Scientific Office for Islamic
and Coptic Monuments, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the Serenus Villa had been
uncovered in 1979. While surveying the late antique city of Amheida, a team
from the Dakhla Oasis Project had discovered the upper part of the Villa’s
lavishly decorated walls, he said.
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El-Enany during the opening of Al-Qasr’s restored houses
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The
main building, including decorated rooms, was subsequently excavated in 2004
and 2007 by a team from Columbia University in New York directed by Roger S
Bagnall. Well-preserved decoration was found in four rooms depicting
geometrical patterns as well as figurative scenes. “At the time of their
discovery, both the paintings in situ and the collected fragments posed
considerable conservation problems,” said Fred Leemhuis of the University of
Groningen in the Netherlands.
He
explained that the layer of plaster was very thin and extremely fragile. The
best way of conserving this precious building for future generations was by
refilling it with sand after extensive documentation, Leemhuis commented. “Because
this unique villa would be destroyed by being exposed to the public, a plan was
made to build a full-size reconstruction of the main house,” Leemhuis said.
Al-Nemr
said that in order to recreate the full splendour of the building a decision
had been taken to reconstruct the painted decoration. The project has been
financed by a grant from the Embassy of the Netherlands in Cairo and
administered by the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo. Soon
after archaeologist Nicholas Warner had finished work on the building, a decoration
team led by Dorothea Schulz moved in and started reconstructing and recreating
the decoration.
In
a report in the newsletter of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo,
Schulz wrote that the decoration of the two smaller rooms consisted of an intricate
geometrical pattern. The biggest room, the Domed Room, was completely decorated
from the floor to the highest point in the dome. There are geometrical
“wallpapers” all around the room, the report said, composed of many different
patterns.
While
the wallpapers are still in situ and could be copied without problems, the dome
had collapsed in antiquity and had taken a lot of work to reconstruct from
thousands of fragments, the report said. The Serenus Villa replica was
inaugurated during the minister of antiquities’ visit as a visitor centre.
El-Enany described the reconstruction work as “spectacular and well worth a
visit”. “The replica villa is a complete example of how top officials or a
family of high social status built and decorated their homes in antiquity,” he
said. Photographs and banners showing the detailed work are also on display, as
well as photographs of the villa’s original conditiond.... READ MORE.
Three
of the mummies reveal deliberate desecration. Written By/ Nevine El-Aref.
According
to Sonbol, the second phase of the project will begin shortly and will involve
the restoration of several more mummies. He
explained that during the recently completed work, the team noted that two
mummies have "screaming" faces, a term used to describe mummies with
open mouths. The hands of a third mummy were bound with rope.
