The Sun Temple at Abu Simbel is a popular tourist attraction which has featured in well-known films like Death on the Nile and The Mummy Returns but had it been left where Ramses II built it 35 centuries ago, it would now be under water. Fifty years ago this year Egypt and Sudan asked for international help to save ancient sites threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam."It was going to submerge all the area of Nubia - monuments, people, the landscape, everything," says Costanza de Simone from the United Nations' culture agency, Unesco."So the two governments launched an appeal to Unesco."The work brought people from all over the world into Nubia, people with different backgrounds: archaeologists, engineers and geologists.
They had to invent new methods and techniques. "It changed the vision of how to preserve cultural heritage."
Over two
decades the race to carry out large-scale excavations uncovered
thousands of artefacts and huge monuments were carefully cut into
blocks and dismantled before being rebuilt in new locations.
The most famous are the temples of Abu Simbel and Philae.
"The Nubia campaign was very important," says the head of the Egyptian supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass.
"It was the first time you saw such internationalcooperation.
"Egypt sent the message
that our monuments don't just belong to Egypt - they belong to everyone
- and that is why so many different countries participated."
Uprooted people
Experts who worked on the
salvage projects are celebrating the anniversary of the campaign with
events at the Nubia Museum in Aswan this week.
It was built after they finished work to display their finds and explain the distinct history of the Nubian people.
Tens of thousands of
Nubians were moved from their ancestral homeland along the Nile - in
southern Egypt and northern Sudan - because of the dam.
Many were resettled in the
desert where they were unable to practise agriculture and young people
left in search of work. Uprooted, they began......
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The Mysteries of the Dogan People
Humans, Reptilians and The Origins of the Gods
The Memories of a Distant Star (Sirius)
Stone age mass graves reveal green Sahara
Witchcraft legalised in Zimbabwe
Ancient tombs found near obelisk
The African foundations of New York
Early humans 'followed coast'
Comparison of Four African Creation Myths
Secrets of Great Zimbabwe
