Effort to save Egypt's Abu Simbel temples in 1960s recalled

Egyptologists and other experts gathered in Italy this week to celebrate a successful campaign to save ancient Egyptian temples from being submerged by a dam project 50 years ago and heard of cultural sites facing similar threats now.

The international campaign that saved the temples of Abu Simbel during construction of Aswan High Dam was remembered in Turin as an unprecedented engineering achievement and a turning point that made the preservation of cultural treasures a responsibility that cut across borders.

But experts at the Monday event said that with major dam projects underway in Sudan and Ethiopia, the job of protecting Nubian culture is not finished.

The director of Turin's Egyptian Museum, Christian Greco, noted that the focus in a modernising Egypt half a century ago was on saving major monuments, largely due to time pressure.

Recording and salvaging settlements and domestic artifacts received less emphasis, and many were lost underwater when the dam across the Nile River and its lake reservoir went in, he said.

"Unfortunately, we know that the traces, above all of pre-history before mummies, were lost under the waters of Nasser Lake," Greco said.

"It also needs to be a lesson for the future because there are still great challenges."