Virtual Panoramas of Herculaneum

The Herculaneum Conservation Project has a great gallery of panoramas and walkthroughs of the ancient city. Ever wanted to walk around inside the city's sewers? Or maybe Insula Orientalis I? Here's an app for that.

A bit of the Herculaneum sewer system, walk on through

Insula Orientalis I

I like this project a lot and the site works beautifully. But I'm struck by how much this QTVR technology (which has been in use by archaeologists for over 10 years now) seems old-fashioned compared to Google street view. The Quicktime and flash images are nice, but they take a while to load and the distortion as you move around in an image makes my eyes hurt. Street view has a more intuitive, less static interface. (Compare, for instance, the Street View of Pompeii.) I have no idea how much that technology costs compared to QTVR, which can be implemented with just a camera, tripod, and laptop. But it does make me think about the dilemmas of choosing a technology for a project like this, knowing that it will probably be superseded in just a few years by something new.

Tut Week: Batman vs. King Tut

I've got lots of Tut for you this week, starting off with Batman!

The original Tut was, shall we say, somewhat more svelte.

The Adam West Batman series of the late 1960s featured a recurring villain named "King Tut", a batty archaeology professor who turned into an Egyptological supervillain whenever he got bonked on the head. Deliciously campy. Here's "King Tut's Coup", which aired March 8, 1967 on ABC.
Part One:



Parts two and three after the jump.

Thailand and Cambodia War over World Heritage Site

For two weeks this month Thai and Cambodian troops repeatedly clashed with tanks, infantry and aircraft over a disputed border territory that includes the UNESCO-listed Preah Vihear temple complex.

Preah Vihear (Wikimedia)

The spectacular temple complex is one of the architectural masterworks of the medieval Khmer Empire, but was awarded to Cambodia in 1962 by the International Court of Justice. Thailand never accepted the judgment, and considered 2008 Cambodia's nomination of Preah Vihear to the World Heritage List as a provocation. The temple complex was inscribed by UNESCO in July 2008 in a dizzying climate of mass demonstrations, rival Buddhist prayer marches, and military build-ups along the border. High tension ahd sporadic fighting has followed, including firefights in October 2008, January and April 2010, and again this month. The video, from February 7, is terrifying. Apparently some temple buildings have been hit by artillery.



Unpacking this story is a headache for the non-expert (me): the wikipedia article has much more detail on the conflict. The temple itself was constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries and was the spiritual heart of the Khmer Empire, which had its capital at the much more famous city of Angkor, which was the world's largest preindustrial city. The empire was majority Hindu in this period, though neither Cambodia or Thailand has a large Hindu population today. The temple complex has had a gory recent history: it was the site of the last stand of the Republican forces resisting the Khmer Rouge in 1975, and a massacre of up to 10,000 Cambodian refugees by the Thai army in 1979 after their forcible repatriation from camps in Thailand. Thai troops forced over 40,000 refugees over the steep cliffs of the temple onto the minefields below.

Preah Vihear certainly has 'outstanding universal value' in the sense of the World Heritage List. But I find it strange that the World Heritage Committee was so tone deaf to the modern tragedies and current nationalist tension when they chose to inscribe the site. So far from serving as a tool for increasing international understanding, inscription provided a flashpoint for nationalist feelings. Bazookas and high-caliber bullets are bad for ancient architecture.

This raises an important questions for UNESCO: surely there are sites whose preservation and appreciation would be advanced by being kept off of official lists of cultural heritage? And now that the fighting has started, why is the site not on the list of heritage in danger? Situations like this are ones which the UN system has few tools with which to cope.

Bert and Ernie Explore a Pyramid

Classic Sesame Street.

All these years later, I still totally relate to Ernie.

Tunisian dictator looted Carthage, too

Nice pool deco

 The family of ousted Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was apparently using Tunisia's museums and archaeological sites as their private collection, reports Marisa Katz in The Art Newspaper:

Many of the artefacts and antiquities confiscated by the Ben Alis originally came from the Bardo Museum, which has the world's largest collection of Roman mosaics. According to Samir Aounallah, the Tunisian museums committee president, Leila Ben Ali used museum artefacts, including mosaics and frescoes, to decorate the family's villas.

Archaeological sites have also been affected. “I have accredited sources that have said sites in Cap Bon had objects taken from them by the Ben Ali clan,” said Aounallah. Although the director was not sure whether these pieces had been returned to their rightful owners, he did point out that a significant amount of “objects found in the villas of the Ben Ali clan have now been put back in their rightful collections.”

According to Julien Anfruns, the director general of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), several international archaeologists and curators are currently in Tunisia surveying potential damage to objects as well as drawing up revised inventories for the country's museums. Despite the violence, which according to a United Nations mission saw 219 people killed and 510 injured, museums have for the most part remained well protected. “People there are very understanding of the importance of the preservation of these museums,” said Anfruns.

Ben Ali shared the goodies with friends, too. As Richard Miles notes in the Guardian, the dictator's developer buddies were given sweet real estate deals on top of archaeological areas:

I started excavating in Carthage in the mid-1990s and it was clear that [Tunisian archaeologist Abdelmajid] Ennabli and those who had strived for decades to protect Carthage were fighting a losing battle against a cabal of influential businessmen and politicians who all enjoyed presidential patronage. For these people Carthage was nothing more than a piece of prestigious real estate ripe for "economic development". The legislation that protected the ancient city was a mere inconvenience that could be ignored and brushed aside.

As an archaeologist one understands that the needs of the present have to be balanced against the preservation of the past, but the regular flouting of the planning laws by members of Ben Ali's family had little to do with solving Tunisia's severe housing shortage. One only has to look at the brochure for the "Residences of Carthage", a luxury housing development illegally built on protected land to see that. One can marvel at the chutzpah of the developers' boast of its proximity to Roman ruins when there is little doubt that they were probably built on top of Roman ruins.

The Residences de Carthage are indeed super swanky. Take a look here, then go and sign the petition to restore protections to the site of Sidi bou Said/Carthage.

UPDATE: PhDiva has raked up articles from the French press, suggesting that the Ben Ali/Trabelsi clan may have been involved in antiquities smuggling as well. Read it here.   

Egypt: Young Archaeologists Protest Hawass [UPDATED]

 

Ben Curtis - Associated Press

The January 25 movement is having all kinds of ripples, including inside Egypt's archaeology establishment. Yesterday 150 archaeologists, many young graduates, protested at the Supreme Council of Antiquities, demanding that Zahi Hawass resign. (Hawass was elevated to Minister of Heritage about 10 days ago, during the height of the protests.) Christopher Torchia of the Associated Press reports:

The archaeologists' protest was also deeply personal, with protesters saying Hawass was a "showman" and publicity hound with little regard for thousands of archaeology students who have been unable to find work in their field.

"He doesn't care about us," said 22-year-old Gamal el-Hanafy, who graduated from Cairo University in 2009 and carried his school certificates in a folder. "He just cares about propaganda."
...
The graduates said the antiquities ministry had offered them three-month contracts at 450 Egyptian pounds ($75) a month, hardly enough to survive. They noted that Egypt's tourism industry is a major foreign currency earner, and yet it was unclear how exactly the government was spending the income.

A foreign tourist spends up to 160 Egyptian pounds ($27) to visit the pyramids of Giza and descend into a tomb there, said 25-year-old Said Hamid. Multiply that, he said, by the thousands who used to visit daily until upheaval drove away foreign visitors and plunged the lucrative industry into crisis. "Where is the money?" said Hamid, a 2007 graduate who works in a travel agency but specialized in restoration of artifacts as a student.

Unlike lawyers or doctors, who have private options, archaeologists in Egypt mostly rely on the government for jobs. Protesters also complained that less-qualified people secured posts in the antiquities office through "wasta," which translates roughly as connections or influence.

$75 a month! That's an insult even in Egypt. The kids are right to be  galled, given the ticket revenues the country receives from its archaeology. In many monument-rich countries the money sucked out of tourists at heritage sites disappears into the government somewhere, with no relationship between visitor numbers and funding for research or conservation. 

Khalil Hamra - Associated Press

Even more of a problem is the number of university graduates in relation to available jobs. Egypt has a 25% rate of university attendance, the highest in the nation's history, and comparable to Europe and the United States. Although the country has a 9.4% unemployment rate, it's 25% for people under 30, who are 87% of the unemployed. The gap between expectation and reality for university grads is bad all over, but there is a special starkness in poor countries where the safety net is thinner. The social explosion spreading across the Arab world is fueled by this mass of young, educated and frustrated  people.

It's great to hear these young archaeologists speaking out (Hawass' reputation as a totalitarian media whore seems well-deserved) but never form within Egypt. Let's hope the new order makes room for better funding and career opportunities for the next generation of archaeologists and conservators.

UPDATE (February 23): Nevine Al-Aref at Al-Ahram Online reports that Hawass has met with the protesters and outlined hisplan to create more jobs in the heritage sector:

During the meeting, which Ahram Online attended, the students made it clear that their protests were only held because there had been a lack of information about how the ministry, formerly known as the Supreme Council of Antiquities, was trying to address the lack of jobs available for newly-qualified archaeologists and restorers.
Achraf El-Achmawi, a legal consultant at the ministry, said that the new appointments would be made according to a schedule starting in March.
The first phase of this plan will provide jobs for 900 archaeologists and restorers, who will be given paid training within the ministry for a period of five months. The second phase, he continued, will follow the completion of the first one and will provide the same paid training for 500 people followed by an identical third phase.

The promises sound a bit vague to me given the unstable situation, but let's hope Hawass can make it happen.

Richard Pryor: Egypt, 1909

In an ancient tomb, Richard Pryor discovers humanity's secrets... and his colleagues can't take it.

First aired on the Richard Pryor Show on September 20, 1977