Not moving yet

---

Click to view caption

THE DEADLINE for Ramses II's departure from Bab Al-Hadid to the Grand Museum of Egypt is to be postponed. Nevine El-Aref says that the lofty red granite statue will remain at the centre of Bab Al-Hadid Square for another 18 months despite two years of being smothered by a growing pile of iron scaffolding while he is packed up for departure. His new home at the Grand Museum of Egypt overlooking the Giza Plateau is not yet ready to host such an illustrious resident.

"We cannot move the statue right now, since there are a dozen trucks, loaders and pieces of heavy equipment on site to dig the foundations of the museum's several buildings," Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said this week. "It is impossible to expose the statue to another threat like the extensive vibrations caused by construction work."

Under the museum's preplanned schedule, an international tender will be launched in October to select a suitable construction company to put into action the architectural design that won the international competition held two years ago. The first phase, which houses the new home of Ramses II, will be completed at the end of next year, and then the statue will be moved to its new position within the museum's collection.

So Ramses can bid farewell to the square's frequent travelers, within the next couple of weeks the Arab Contractors Company will remove the scaffolding so it can be beheld as it has stood for so long, with the square as its backdrop.

"It is not logical to have such ugly scaffolding hiding the beauty of Ramses II," Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Secretary-General Zahi Hawass says.

The scaffolding was erected in 2002 so that archaeologists, engineers, restorers and architects could document, draw and photograph every single piece of the statue as well as restoring its damaged parts.

Ibrahim Mahlab chairman of the Arab Contractors Company said that in the next year and a half the company would come up with two vehicles capable of loading the 100- tonne statue as well as the mounted cage and foam rubber and carrying it on its 30km trip. They will also carve a replica statue of Ramses II -- formed to its exact weight and shape -- that will be used to test the stability and power of the vehicles meant to transport it. This duplicate will even take into account the deteriorating parts of the genuine statue.

According to Abdel-Hamid Qutub, the SCA engineer responsible for the removal project, a trial run will be implemented two months before the relocation. Qutub says that in the early hours on a Friday, when the Cairo traffic is at its quietest, the replica will be moved with the vehicle travelling through the city's streets at just five kilometers per hour to guarantee the statue's safe arrival.

A pedestrian bridge in Old Cairo will be the only obstacle on the planned route. However, according to Hosni, since the Arab Contractors are the ones who built the bridge it will be easy enough for them to dismantle it temporarily to make way to for Ramses II.

The statue has been deteriorating in its present position, mainly from constant exposure to traffic fumes. Moving the statue away from the pollution is the best possible decision after its 50 years of distress, much of it spent hidden under a jungle of fly-overs. The decision to move it was made after a decade of debate as to how and where to place it. The location decided as the most appropriate for this magnificent statue is within view of the new Grand Egyptian Museum.

As Hosni says, the environmental conditions combined with the vibrations of passing traffic were bound to have a negative effect on the statue. The ministry plans to give it better protection in its new home; in any event, conditions at the relatively remote plateau are much more suitable. It will also fit in well with the ancient Egyptian atmosphere of both the plateau and the new museum complex. Conversely, at the Ramses Square intersection of more than three major thoroughfares and both the main rail and underground metro lines, the Pharaoh seemed lost.