A difficult choice

After several tiring days of conducting young house guests through the Egyptian and Coptic museums in Cairo, Jill Kamil took to her favourite corner of the Yacht Club in Maadi to spend a delightful few hours identifying the unrecoverable
In the glow and afterglow of the setting sun, I watched a "boat family" -- father, mother and two small children -- hauling in a line void of any Nile fish of a size worth mentioning. As they rowed against the stream, I found my thoughts travelling to loftier realms: through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, the British Museum and the Louvre. I pondered what -- given the choice of any Pharaonic monument of those which now adorn the collections of the world -- I would choose for our own Museum of National Heritage at Giza.
Greece has battled for the return from London of the Parthenon's Elgin marbles; India would probably claim the 108-carat Koh-I-Noor diamond which sits on the crown of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother; and Nigeria would undoubtedly settle for even a fraction of its Benin bronzes.
I played an elimination game. First out were obelisks. As far as I am concerned, those in Rome, Istanbul, Paris, London and New York can stay where they are. We have enough here!
Next I dismissed the return of any mummies. They were exhumed and transported abroad in their thousands by tourists in antiquity because mumia, the flesh of mummies, was thought to have healing qualities, and mummy flesh was big-time business. No going back there!
Would I call for the return of the famous statue of the Seated Scribe in the Louvre? No. Again, we have a fair quota in the Egyptian Museum. As for the beard of the Sphinx in the British Museum, we could have had that back during restoration of the Sphinx in the 1980s, when it was suggested that its re-installation might help strengthen the neck of the monument, its weakest part. But it came to nothing. So -- no beard!
How about an unquestionably valuable and unique work of art? Say, the bust of Queen Nefertari, wife of Akhenaten, taken out of Egypt by the German team excavating at Tel Al-Amarna in 1912 and now in Berlin? Or the beautifully- sculpted statue of Ramses II as a young man in Turin? In regard to the former, let me admit that I believe the famous bust of the one-eyed queen is outranked by the head of Nefertari in Room 3 of the Egyptian museum. The refined sensibility of this masterpiece emphasises the elegance and dignity of a woman of power, and the simplicity of the features in dark quartzite with features outlined in black is more beautiful by far than the one taken abroad. As for the latter, Ramses II as a youth is truly an exceptional piece -- but is it worth making an issue over?
I had set myself to select a masterpiece from among the greatest collections in the world, but I was dismissing objects one by one. Clearly my search had to be refined.
I recalled the era of Mohamed Ali, the extraordinary figure who dominated Egypt in the first half of the 19th century. When he embarked on a vast programme of reform to turn Egypt into a modern nation, he granted foreign consuls, in return for aid, permission to collect antiquities on behalf of their governments. It was a "no holds barred" battle for the best. Treasures were dispersed in museums in London, Paris, Stockholm and the Netherlands. Not to be outdone, and once the Civil War was over, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts filled their galleries with Old Masters, Greek statues, Chinese vases and Nile Valley treasures.
I thought of the painted wooden models of female offering bearers in the Met, clad in long, decorative shifts and carrying baskets on their heads. Are they worth fighting for? No. For one thing, in Cairo Museum's Room 27 we have offering bearers from the tomb of Meket-Re which radiate the same sophistication and elegance. What about the small alabaster statue of King Pepi II seated on the lap of his mother Queen Anknes-mery-re, part of the Wilbour Fund collection now in the Brooklyn Museum? This is unquestionably a delightful piece. It is the earliest piece of sculpture of the "mother and child" theme, dating from circa 2,200 BC. But was this the best I could do?
The long-drawn battle to recover the Elgin Marbles was highlighted when Melina Mercuri became Greece's minister of culture and claimed they were "part of our cultural heritage; they are our soul!" What single Pharaonic monument taken abroad can claim that distinction? When Nigeria launched negotiations to recover 2,000 bronzes looted as trophies of a colonial past, they were left with nothing; the royal palace in Nigeria is void of a single relic of a great religious and artistic heritage. Chief Inneh of Nigeria declared: "Our sacred altars were raided. We need our records of the past. Without them, part of our life is missing." But the British Museum has no plans to re-adorn the Parthenon with its marbles, nor will it send back to Nigeria statues which represent an article of faith forgotten by most people. Are there any Egyptian monuments abroad that fall into such a category?
The "boat family" had by this time moored on the bank of the Nile; they were out of sight. My mind shifted to the sites in the Nile valley from which the stolen treasures came. Was there anything that would serve as a highlight in the new museum of Egypt's national heritage? How about the diorite statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet from Karnak? Or the alabaster coffin of Seti I, with its exquisite hieroglyphics inset with blue paint? How about a relief from the tombs of the noblemen depicting scenes of everyday life? Or, better still, the return of one of the magnificent seated statues of queen Hatshepsut from the Met?
As the last of the light faded, I leaned back in my chair and looked at the sky. It was a deep, grey dome. No moon, nor a single star. Just as uninspiring as the plaster replacement of the dome stolen from the temple of Hathor at Dendera.
Yes, of course -- that was it! Given the opportunity to reclaim a single treasure taken from Egypt for a place of honour in the Museum of National Heritage, I would chose the domed ceiling of Dendera, the spectacular Zodiac. I had recently seen it in Alberto Siliotti's excellent book The Discovery of Ancient Egypt: four standing figures of the sky-goddess Nut, and eight of the kneeling earth-god Geb, hold aloft the dome of heaven in their upraised arms. Within the blue, star-spangled sky are various astrological adornments, including the 12 signs of the Egyptian zodiac: Lion, Serpent, Balance, Scorpion, Archer, Goat, Crab, Twins, Bull, Ram, Fish and the Water- bearer; and a host of heavenly bodies represented as anthropomorphic figures. As the stars slowly emerged in Maadi's night sky, I visualised the clusters surrounding the images on the spectacular dome at Dendera.
It was one of the most famous cases of looting in Egypt. When General Desaix, a member of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in the late 18th century, set eyes on it, he was so enchanted that he commissioned the artist Denon to draw it for the Déscription de l'Egypte. Denon's compatriot Segato redrew it in 1820. When French collector Sebastien Saulnier saw the Zodiac, he decided that such a remarkable piece should belong to France. But he did not want others to hear of his plan. So he said he was excavating at Thebes, where he bought some mummies and antiquities to cover his tracks. At that time some English visitors were sketching at Dendera, and only after they left did Saulnier return, and with his agent, French engineer Jean Lelorrain, set about removing the ceiling of the temple.
It was a formidable task. It was carved on two huge blocks of stone nearly a metre thick, and gunpowder was used to blow holes in the temple roof. Even though the blasts were controlled, it was a miracle they did not bring down the entire roof. After 20 days of cutting by a force of local workmen, the masterpiece was dragged on special wooden rollers towards a waiting boat. At least, that was the intention. But so heavy was it that the rollers wore out, and Lelorrain had to resort to levers and brute force. When it reached the river, there was a further drama when it slipped off the sloping planks and fell into the soft mud. Were it not for timely action and concerted effort, it could not have been reloaded.
The British had by this time got wind of the activity in Dendera, and when the consul, Henry Salt saw the Zodiac he interceded to claim it for the British Museum. The Rosetta Stone, also found by the French, had been similarly appropriated, and Salt thought it would not be difficult to take possession of the ready-for- shipment Zodiac. He failed. The monument arrived in Paris and was sold to King Louis XVIII for 150,000 francs. It is now in the Louvre.
I would claim the Zodiac not just for its artistic value, but because it demonstrates what the science of astrology owed to the Egyptians. In the third century BC, Hipparchus, the greatest astronomer in ancient Alexandria, made accurate determinations of the months and year and, using 150 years of Alexandrian observations plus earlier observatiobns from Egypt and Babylon, mapped positions of 850 stars. I raised my eyes to the star-spangled night sky over Maadi, and willed a magic Persian carpet to bear the Zodiac of Dendera back to Egypt.
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