The Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT), which is affiliated to Bibliotheca Alexandrina, celebrated its tenth anniversary last month with the completion of many ambitious projects that have recorded the splendour of Ancient Egyptian civilisation. For many years, CULTNAT's director Fathi Saleh (pictured left), who studied in France and worked for UNESCO, has been looking at the long saga of Egypt's past with admiration. Despite the fact that CULTNAT is a relatively new centre, established in January 2000, it already has a variety of ongoing programmes, in addition to a vast network of cooperation with national and international organisations that are concerned with heritage, Saleh explains. These programmes, which cover many different aspects of Egypt's cultural and natural heritage, seek to document the tangible and the intangible, such as archaeology, architecture, manuscripts, music, folklore, caricature, plastic arts, natural resources and other things, he adds. "CULTNAT has not only developed action plans to electronically document Egypt's heritage, but also contributes to safeguarding Egypt's treasures through their digitisation," Saleh said in an interview. "I always wanted to find a way to document and preserve Egypt's rich heritage through the implementation of electronic projects," Saleh told the Egyptian Mail. The first project, he recalls, started in 2000 with the conservation and management of Egypt's archaeological sites. The overwhelming number of sites, monuments and artefacts scattered all over the country and the ever-increasing pace of urbanisation around archaeological sites as well as environmental hazards add another dimension to the problem, he stresses. "Therefore, CULTNAT has begun implementing the ‘Archaeological Map of Egypt', aiming to document, protect and restore these sites for future generations through the creation of an extended archaeological Geographical Information System [GIS]," Saleh continues. He says that a team of experts implemented the project, which combined the most important historic locations, artefacts, people and stories from Egypt's history into an interactive multimedia experience. The project has proved to be a success because it offers a rich experience to those who are interested in finding out more about Egyptian civilisation. During the past decade, CULTNAT has launched a series of projects, the most important being the photographic heritage programme that documents Egypt's intangible cultural heritage through photography. "The programme's primary objective is to digitise the archives of foreign and Egyptian photographers from the nineteenth and early twentieth century," Saleh explains. He said that programme aims to make about 10,000 rare photos available for researchers, curators and photographers via multiple means of publication, including paper publications and articles on the Internet. In the meantime, CULTNAT has launched another project for documenting Cairo's historic buildings including the royal and presidential palaces, Saleh adds. This project uses a GIS with an easy-to-browse database that includes extensive photographic documentation of Cairo buildings. "A series of thematic photographs have been extracted from this database to serve a variety of users ranging from decision-makers to architects and historians," he comments. He says that the documentation and preservation of Egypt's cultural heritage has been a key task for CULTNAT over the past ten years. "Because of the importance and the richness of Egyptian folklore, CULTNAT has also begun a project for documenting Al-Sirah al-Hilaliya [the famous epic Egyptian ballad]," he says. Over the years, CULTNAT has won several international awards for the best use of advanced technology in the field of documenting heritage. "It won the World Summit Award during the World Summit on Information Society in Geneva for the best application of e-culture, along with the Stockholm Challenge Award in applying IT in the cultural field," he says proudly.
