The eternal battle
Traffic planners are battling it out with conservationists once again. This time, the controversy involves a six-kilometre section of the Cairo-Aswan highway at Abydos. Nevine El-Aref reports
The Cairo-Aswan highway is one of the government's mega projects. Meant to strengthen domestic transportation routes as a way of promoting tourism and boosting trade between governorates, the project has run into controversial grounds, with three ministries -- construction and housing communities, agriculture and culture -- involved in a major debate over the highway's path. In a recent move meant to break the deadlock, President Hosni Mubarak has entrusted a ministerial committee headed by Prime Minster Atef Ebeid to reach a final solution to the problems in question as soon as possible.
The controversy was sparked when construction began on the section of the road linking Assiut to Aswan. Archaeologists from the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) argued that the road would cause irrevocable damage to the major archaeological sites at Abydos, the primary pilgrimage destination for Ancient Egyptians through which it runs. According to Sabri Abdel-Aziz, who heads the SCA's Ancient Egypt department, the Temple of Osiris, the royal cemetery of the first and second dynasties, the ramp of Senusert III's chapel and his funerary complex, as well as the ramp of Ahmos's Pyramid, and the famous Seti I Temple with its list of Egypt's ancient kings and queens, would all be in danger of destruction.
As a result, two committees -- comprising representatives from the ministries of culture, construction and agriculture, as well as Sohag Governorate and transportation authorities, inspected the section of the road in question in an attempt to revise the route, and reach a compromise.
Four suggestions were made, two of which, says SCA engineer Abdel-Hamid Qutb who participated in the second committee, are useless. The first proposes detouring the route towards the agricultural land east of the archaeological site, thereby destroying 65 feddans of Sohag's most fertile land. The second would link the road via the desert behind the Abydos mountains at an additional cost of LE150 million.
The remaining two suggestions involve paving the area parallel to Al-Qasr canal, resulting in a 25-kilometre longer route that may end up necessitating the demolition of a number of rural houses, and, finally, an alternate route which goes through an agricultural area, as well as an archaeological zone which must first be excavated prior to construction.
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said his ministry would not stand in the way of development projects meant to benefit the general public. However, he also said, the ministry was very serious about preventing the destruction of monuments. He said no new construction will be taking place until the newly-organised ministerial committee makes its final decision. For his part, SCA Secretary-General Zahi Hawass also suggested that the SCA was perfectly willing to help construct the proposed detours if that meant preserving Egypt's heritage.
