Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 February 1999 Issue No. 417
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Obituary
Hagg Youssef

The man with the golden hand

By Jill Kamil

Hagg Ahmed Youssef

I had been invited by Abdel-Moneim Abu Bakr, dean of the Faculty of Egyptology of Cairo University, to accompany him to the make-shift shelter erected at the base of Khufu's Great Pyramid. It was a warm winter's day when I first had the opportunity to watch Hagg Youssef at work. His hand was neither gold, nor unusual, but it handled objects, large and small, with finesse. He became almost legendary for his skill during his lifetime.

Hagg Youssef started his career as a restorer under the tutelage of George Reisner, who directed a Harvard-Boston expedition to Egypt and discovered the funerary equipment of Hetep-Heres, the mother of Khufu, on the Giza Plateau.

Youssef was no more than 20 years old at the time but he was soon handling gold. He quickly learned the technique of repairing wood and worked on the gilded wooden furniture of the queen (who lived between 2589 and 2566 BC), replacing gold fragments that had flaked off a carrying chair, and restoring a bed and an elaborate canopy erected over it.

Later, in Tanis, he reconstructed a completely squashed gold mask. It was one of the treasures discovered by Pierre Montet in the royal necropolis of the Libyan dynasty (1969-747 BC). It collapsed when its wooden core decayed. I only saw photographs of the discovery and the restored features of the long-dead monarch in the Cairo Museum. But Hagg Youssef was already known for his painstaking and accurate work.

When I met him at Giza, he was not working with gold. I was led into a huge make-shift brick shelter and found myself surrounded by the vast timbers of a dismantled ship. The thick floor beams in the centre of the room had been temporarily pegged together and Hagg Youssef was explaining that this was a logical first step.

He had grouped the other planks together -- the starboard timbers to the left, port timbers on the right. Then he leaned down and picked up a large piece of wood with broad yet sensitive fingers -- it was rotting at one end. He led us to the rear of the chamber where a similar piece was being restored. The old wood was being encased and strengthened with new wood, enabling it to withstand the stress of its use in the reconstructed ship.

Hagg Youssef's enthusiasm was infectious. It was clearly a labour of love and in the following years I was often to have the pleasure of seeing him hard at work.

The huge timbers were treated with the care and attention he had no doubt given the furniture of Hetep-Heres and the golden mask from Tanis.

Abu Bakr was director of the Giza Plateau and we spent most Fridays in the government guest-house. I came to learn a great deal about the boat, the ancient Egyptians and about the virtual obsession of Hagg Youssef for his work.

The 4,600-year-old boat was lifted from its grave on the Giza Plateau in 1957. It had been dismantled with care in ancient times. No fewer than 651 separate parts were carefully arranged in 13 layers. Dozens of metres of rope lay in coiled confusion at the bottom of the pit and there were steering oars and narrow columns with papyrus-bud finials like those on Queen Hetep-Heres' funerary bed.

Hagg Youssef was given the task of reconstruction and his first step was to preserve the wood in a special solution. The Antiquities Department was anxious to have the boat reassembled as quickly as possible, but Hagg Youssef took his time. He refused to be hurried. For a full year he and his assistants were occupied making 1:10 scale drawings and models of every single piece of wood that came out of the pit. This was to help him experiment freely without subjecting the old timbers to stress.

Meanwhile, he studied modern boat-building whenever and wherever he could.

He predicted that the task of reconstruction would take 10 years, but it took more. I watched Hagg Youssef deal with his assistants, explain to them why and how the ancient wood had to be protected with blankets and rolls of heavy industrial felt beneath the vast ropes needed to move them; and saw his joy as the hull, the deck and the deck cabin were assembled.

He was diligent and meticulous in his work and his reputation for perspicacity and skill were well earned. He took photographs at every stage of the work, assembling huge personal archives.

The boat was 43 metres long and eight metres high. The thick planks of cedar wood, imported from Lebanon, had literally been "sewn" together with a system of ropes looped through holes that met on the inside. It was a flat-bottomed vessel with a massive curving hull.

I will never forget the day when the elegant prow and stern posts were raised. They fitted like sleeves over the fore and aft sections of the hull. "Ah, see, look, it is perfect," Hagg Youssef said as we admired the magnificent papyrus-form shape of the completed ship.

Nor shall I forget his response when he learned, after having laboured on it for so many years, that he would have to dismantle it and have it rebuilt in a museum that was being specially constructed to house it. His first reaction was one of horror, then disbelief, and suddenly a broad smile spread across his face and it was clear that the idea actually appealed to him.

Almost single-handedly he had put together 1,224 pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. It took him 14 years. If it was to be dismantled and built again, he was the only man to do it. In fact the funerary barge of Khufu was destined to be dismantled and rebuilt five times before taking its place in the glass museum that unfortunately failed to live up to its promise; another will be built in the coming years. But Hagg Youssef will not be here to tackle the task this time. He died last week in his home in Old Cairo. He is remembered with respect.

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