Rescue Archaeology: Saving our heritage

What images spring to your mind when the word ‘rescue’ is mentioned?

* Red fire engines speeding their way to save terrified people from a burning building?
* Burly lifeguards picking out panicky swimmers from the ocean?
* Maybe a helicopter locating stranded trekkers in the icy Himalayan wastes?

Rescue is usually associated with danger, excitement and saving lives. But archaeology deals with things that are already dead and have been for some time. So who or what needs rescuing?

Believe it or not, quite a lot!

In the march towards progress, construction and development projects are cutting, digging, chomping and hacking their way across our lands. Look at the effect it is having on our environment: disappearing forests, polluted lakes and rivers, destroyed natural habitat. We all want to save the environment.

But what we don’t see is what lies beneath. The construction of high-rises, mines, dams and highways are churning up and destroying archaeological sites and treasures of our ancient heritage.

In early 20th century Europe, cities were being re-modelled after war-time destruction.

Coins, pottery, jewellery, dwellings and even the odd skeleton kept surfacing under proposed shopping centres and apartment buildings. Archaeologists could do nothing to stop the destruction. They did the next best thing: they got permission to temporarily halt work so they could quickly excavate and document the threatened sites. This was the beginning of Rescue Archaeology.

Abu Simbel

Typically, rescue archaeology isn’t a lot of fun. Developers have no patience, so work is hurried and incomplete. The archaeologists are laughingly called ‘Shovel Bums’ because they rush around with spades to salvage as much as they can before the site is destroyed! Then in 1961, came an extraordinary rescue project that made the world stop dead in its track and pay attention.

The Egyptian government began to plan the Aswan High Dam project on the River Nile. This mega dam would create the world’s largest artificial lake, Lake Nasser. But in order to do so, it would submerge or flood a huge area of land along with a number of ancient monuments. The most spectacular of these were the rock-cut temples of Abu Simbel.

Between 1279 and 1217 BCE, King Ramses II built two colossal temples near Egypt’s border with Sudan. The first was dedicated to four gods: Ra-Horakhty, Amun-Ra, Ptah, and Ramses himself as a God. The temple was cut from rock cliffs 30 metres high — that’s higher than a ten-storey building! The entrance had 4 gigantic sculptures of King Ramses with his wives and children carved about his knees. The temple stretched deep into the rock. Inside the temple, at the far end of a long hallway were statues of the four deities.

The alignment of the temple was such that a remarkable event took place twice a year. On February 21 and October 22 (the day of the King’s birthday and that of his coronation), the first ray of sunlight pierced through the hallway and fell directly on the deities. The light first touched Ra-Horakhty, then moved to Ramses and finally Amun-Re. Ptah remained in the shadows because he is the God of Darkness.

The second of these temples was dedicated to Ramses’ wife, the only Egyptian temple dedicated to a queen. Naturally the Egyptian people did not want to lose such unique monuments. But the Aswan Dam was equally important for their progress.

Temples or Lego blocks?

As the bulldozers moved in to start work on the dam, so did hundreds of equally determined archaeologists, engineers, architects and labourers. They had Unesco backing and their intention was to physically remove the temples and move them to a higher ground, safe from the rising water of the new lake. Sounds crazy?! A lot of people thought so at the time. After all, these were not Lego bricks.

Here’s what those ‘crazy’ people did. They spent nearly two years carefully injecting every bit of the porous sandstone of the temples with epoxy-resin. This worked like glue to prevent the stone from crumbling when it was eventually moved. Then fine saws were used to cut the temples into huge blocks weighing 20-30 tonnes each. Each of these were carefully numbered and lifted by cranes to a ‘stone graveyard’. Sculpted pieces were doubly protected with rubber wraps.

While this carving up was taking place, architects and engineers scouted for a new location for the temple to be reconstructed. This was no easy job. Remember the sunlight striking the Gods on those special days? The alignment of the temple would have to be the same as the original.

Finally, they chose a spot far inland from the lake. First, engineers created an artificial hill to imitate the cliff that the original temple was cut out from. Then more than 16,000 numbered blocks were retrieved from the stone graveyard and put together again with reinforced concrete. Cracks were filled with a mixture of natural rock and resin to make it look as the temple had been naturally carved out of rock.The sun does strike the statues of the Gods, but a day later (February 22 and October 23).

Ten painstaking years later, the temples of Abu Simbel had finally been ‘rescued’!
Today, it is a Unesco World Heritage site. Thousands of tourists flock to see it, gazing in awe at the sheer scale of Ramses’ work.

Closer home...

Almost 1700 years ago, Vijayapuri (150km south of Hyderabad) was the capital of the Ikshvaku rulers. A large area on the banks of the River Krishna, it was a thriving centre of Buddhism where the famous monk Nagarjuna lived and taught. There were monasteries, shrines, amphitheatres, viharas and a world famous university with monks coming from as far as China and Sri Lanka.

Centuries later, progress struck! In the 1960s, the government decided to make the Nagarjunasagar Dam. The reservoir would flood all the beautiful monuments and remains of this once-thriving capital. Once again, bold  archaeologists and engineers stepped in. In record time, they excavated all the major monuments, moved them and reconstructed them on a hilltop some distance away.

Today if you happen to go there, there is a beautiful vihara-shaped museum on an island in the middle of the Nagarjunasagar reservoir.The ‘island’ is the hilltop to which the ancient Vijayapuri was moved! All the major monuments were reconstructed on this island. The rest lie under the waters of the reservoir.

Today, all over the world, valiant archaeologists are still battling the forces of progress to rescue valuable treasures from our past. Future generations will be able to marvel at them. After all, how will we know who we are if we don’t know where we came from?