Online Activities: Ancient Egypt
Something Old, Something New: the Deir el-Haggar Visitor Centre
By Roberta L. Shaw, Egyptian Department
For the most part, rehabilitation followed the technology and materials of the ancient builders; all displaced stone in acceptable condition has been refitted into the temple structure, whereas unusable stone has been stored at the perimeter of the site. The ancient temple doors have been replaced with the modern equivalents. The protection of the site from the prevailing wind and drifting sand consists of a modern mud-brick capping on all ancient brickwork and a durable palm-leaf windbreak fence, in the local (and ancient) tradition.
The result is balanced in such a way that the ruined character of the temple is preserved, while at the same time the remaining and reinstated elements indicate the original appearance. Funding for the rehabilitation and preservation of the temple came from the (Egyptian) Supreme Council of Antiquities, the Canadian International Development Agency Local Initiatives Program, and the British Government.
A Visitor Centre
The finishing touch on this project was the development of a visitor centre at the site to make it the temple intelligible to the layman. Situated in a corner of the windbreak fence, the mud-brick building was transformed from the site workshop to the present centre with minimal renovation. After we cleared the rectangular room of tools and construction materials (leaving one small room to be used for storage and other purposes by the Supreme Council of Antiquities), we whitewashed it, built a traditional mastaba (solid mud-brick bench) against one wall, and spread fine sand on the floor. We then hung a series of nine framed panels on the wall opposite the bench.
One of the panels is a short, bilingual (Arabic-English) introduction with a photo of the ruin before restoration. Four panels then proceed to the right (English) and left (Arabic) of this central point, and describe the history, the plan, the gods and emperors, and the conservation programme of the site. Finally, at the exit, we have posted a (bilingual) smaller panel requesting visitors to respect the site by keeping to the pathways, not touching anything, no garbage, and so on.
