9 - 15 August 2001
Issue No.546
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 August 2001 Issue No.546 |
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Waiting for care
Banished to an untended hospital courtyard, an ancient Pharaonic statue could benefit from a little attention. Nevine El-Aref wonders if the SCA will save the day
It's hard to miss, yet people working outside the Arab Contractors Hospital in Nasr City don't seem to pay it any mind. A four-metre-high statue of the famous New Kingdom Pharaoh, Ramses II, is the kind of artefact museums fuss over, but this forgotten antiquity has suffered so deeply from neglect that no one is even sure if it is actually the famous ruler, or some other figure altogether.
photo: Mohamed Wassim
A friend, who has worked at the hospital for almost 12 years, remarked that he has been passing by a large Pharaonic statue languishing on hospital grounds every day and always wondered why it was brought there and whether antiquities officials would ever come and collect it, or at least endeavour to protect it. Tipped off to its whereabouts, I bustled over to check out the scene. There, I found a sight I will never forget: in a corner of the hospital's backyard, the statue lay in shambles, buried by piles of sand, garbage, bags of cement and wooden scaffolding. Workmen crowded the place, laying down the foundations of a new extension for the hospital. Sand was dumped at the foot of the statue, while some workers cleaned their paint brushes by wiping them on the statue's head.
Horrified by such thoughtless treatment of a valuable piece of art, I wondered whether the statue was doomed to destruction. Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly that he hadn't known anything about the statue before being alerted to its plight, but someone must have at some point in the past, as a small iron plaque -- inexplicably declaring the stone figure to be "Ramses II, the statue of the desert" -- was allegedly affixed to the spot for years. The plaque has since vanished -- and with it went any confidence about who the statue actually depicts.
The statue was first unearthed 15 years ago, at an archaeological site in the Cairo suburb of Matariya. For unknown reasons, it was brought to the backyard of the hospital. At the time, the statue was apparently wrapped in a large sackcloth and mounted on four small wooden stands. A year ago, the scene underwent a complete change, becoming a hive of construction activities.
Following a tour of the hospital's backyard, an archaeological committee was immediately established with the purpose of saving the statue. The committee ordered its quick removal to an open-air museum in Matariya and slapped an administrative penalty on the Matariya inspectorate for negligence.
"We cannot take action against the hospital's administrative board, because the area where the statue was stored is not officially an archaeological site; it's the hospital's property," said Gaballa. He added that the statue is now under the supervision of an archaeological inspector who will follow up on its removal. But on a visit to the site after Gaballa's announcement, the statue was still lying on the ground, waiting for a crane capable of removing it.
Ramses, who ruled over 3,000 years ago, was the longest reigning Pharaoh in antiquity and a prolific builder. The famous statue of Ramses situated in Cairo's Ramses square is only one of multitudes of statues distributed throughout the country and abroad. This week, however, Gaballa toned down earlier statements indicating the statue was of Ramses, saying that the SCA was still uncertain. Instead, he simply referred to the work as an "enigmatic colossus."
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