Over the last seven days, top officials from UNESCO, the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the Arab Regional Centre for World Heritage (ARC-WH) embarked on an inspection tour at the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) overlooking the Giza Plateau and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation at Al-Fustat. They were there to investigate the work completed and provide solutions to problems that for three years now have stood in the way of its completion. During their visit, delegation members praised the work as “distinguished”, stressing Egypt's efforts to preserve its cultural heritage whether inside or outside the country and its willingness to complete all unfinished archaeological projects. Tarek Tawfik, supervisor of GEM, says the delegation was enthusiastic about GEM's lab and its state-of-the-art equipment, despite the budget issues the Ministry of Antiquities has been facing. Tawfik adds that the visitors promised to exert all possible efforts to help GEM, activating various forms of collaboration including training Egyptian curators and providing expertise. In collaboration with the ICOM, Tawfik announced, Egypt is to host an international symposium on the display of human remains. The delegation also toured the alleyways of historic Cairo and discussed ways to help Egypt restore the site of the Abu Mina Monastery in Alexandria, in order to remove it from the World Heritage Endangered List and put it on UNESCO's World Heritage List. As per the delegation's recommendations, Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty has formed an independent committee to administer the Historic Cairo Rehabilitation Project, including the ministries of antiquities, tourism, endowments, construction and Cairo governorate. This committee, Eldamaty said, is to follow up restoration works carried out on different monuments there, removing all the encroachment that has accumulated since the 2011 revolution. It will also develop streets and alleys around different Islamic sites to promote tourism. The director general of ICOM, Mechtild Rossler, enthusiastically announced that a special delegation from ICOMOS is to visit Egypt within days to offer support for preserving monuments and share techniques used to solve problems relating to encroachment on archaeological sites. UNESCO has a long and successful record of joint cooperation with Egypt in the field of cultural heritage, among which was the very successful Nubian Salvage Campaign in the 1960s and a series of important cultural projects in Egypt, including the International Campaign for the Establishment of the Nubia Museum in Aswan and the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation (NMEC) in Cairo. At the request of the Ministry of Antiquities, the ongoing NMEC project was designed to build the capacity of the museum staff. The project will improve international knowledge of Egyptian culture and attract visitors from around the world. More recently, UNESCO assisted the Egyptian government after the Mallawi Museum was looted in August 2013. When a car bomb ripped through the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo earlier this year, UNESCO and the government of Italy contributed funding and technical assistance to restore the museum. The current phase of cooperation on the Urban Regeneration of Historic Cairo (URCH), designed to enhance the management of the complex World Heritage property of historic Cairo, is reaching completion. Discussions are also under way with several countries and institutions to help Egypt restore this unique heritage, an important part of its cultural identity. The director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, renewed her commitment to the preservation of heritage: “Egyptian heritage is part of the universal story of humanity and I will spare no efforts to mobilise the expertise of UNESCO and its partners for its preservation. This is as essential for Egyptians as it is for people across the world.”
