Mediterranean Nations Face Dilemma in Protecting Monuments

Prehistoric caves in France and Spain. Rome’s Colosseum or Athens’ Acropolis. Egypt’s mystic Pyramids. It’s hard to imagine the Mediterranean world without its most famous landmarks.

But the area’s monuments face an uncertain future as they become caught up in a push toward lucrative mass tourism that could endanger them.

Indicative of the dilemma facing the region’s planners is the view of Sayed Moussa, Egypt’s head of tourism promotion, who acknowledged that history and the tourist dollar can be at odds.

“Antiquities officials are so jealous of their rocks,” he said. “We have commercial interests to consider.”

Difficult Decisions

From another point of view, antiquities officials throughout the area decry the uproar caused when saving monuments requires difficult decisions affecting tourists.

“We in Egypt are constantly reminded that our monuments belong not only to Egypt but to the world,” said Mutawie Balboush, head of antiquities for Upper Egypt, where 23 restoration teams are working to save failing structures.

As a region, the Mediterranean Basin is the world’s biggest tourist attraction. Host to more than one-third of all international travelers, the region’s 18 countries this year alone welcomed well over 110 million visitors, 80% of them in Spain, Italy and France. If experts are correct, 450 million to 700 million annual visitors will head to the Mediterranean by 2025.

Tourism is not new to the Mediterranean. Egypt and the rest of the Middle East already were ancient when history buffs Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte took time out from conquest to go sightseeing.

In most countries, at least part of the revenue from tourism is set aside for saving antiquities.

Tourists Cause Damage

But vehicles that transport tourists pour exhaust fumes into the air. Tourists stir up dust with their footsteps, touch fragile wall paintings with sweaty hands or mar them with graffiti. Many ascend shaky monuments like mountain goats for just the right photo.

Throughout the region, a staggering growth in tourism has prompted self-defense decisions by antiquities officials.

- In Spain, visited by 50 million tourists in 1988, officials a decade ago closed the Altamira Caves with their 12,000-year-old wall paintings of bison and horses. The images had been damaged seriously by a sharp rise in humidity and temperature generated by 1,000 visitors a day. In 1982, the main cave was reopened but access was limited to no more than 30 tourists a day. A replica will be opened to all visitors in 1990.

- In France, officials faced the same dilemma and closed the Lascaux Caves near Montignac in 1963, a year after 100,000 visitors surged into the cave network. A facsimile, opened in 1983, draws 350,000 visitors annually, and officials have developed tourist-control techniques for other caves in the Dordogne region, trying to preserve paintings while allowing visits.

- In Greece, tourism authorities say that visitors have caused no major damage, but archeologists counter that 30,000 feet trampling on the Acropolis’ floor each summer’s day can be doing no good. In 1978, the Parthenon, the 5th-Century architectural glory of Athens’ Golden Age, was roped off to the public after years of being worn and chipped away by visitors’ heels.

- In Italy, support scaffolding and a ban on traffic in Rome’s historic center have been tried to reduce monument deterioration from acid rain, car exhausts and traffic vibrations. At least 10% of Italy’s more than 50 million annual tourists go to Rome, crowding such monuments as the Forum and the Colosseum. Trevi Fountain soon is going behind a clear plastic screen during a yearlong restoration. Restorer Giorgio Toracca said the only way to stop deterioration of Rome’s monuments would be to put them under glass, “but glass cages would change the entire view.”

- In Egypt, a glass tunnel has been inserted into a 3,300-year-old noble’s tomb that tourists and time had damaged. The World Bank financed the Swedish experiment as a possible solution to the emergency facing many of the tombs of the West Bank cemetery of Pharaohs, queens, royal children and courtiers. The pilot project has remained closed to tourists, however, as antiquities officials debate its pros and cons, including whether the fragile tomb’s allure remains the same to people peering through glass.

Egypt Has Suffered Most

Of the Mediterranean countries, Egypt, said to house more than half of the world’s standing monuments, has suffered the most with the crunch of time: burgeoning population, subterranean water, pollution and salt attacking historic remains.

Lanny Bell, director of Chicago House, a special arm of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, has wrestled for 11 years with how to save decaying monuments in southern Egypt’s Luxor area, the greatest concentration of monuments on Earth.

Using photography and hand drawings, Chicago House is recording some of Egypt’s best-known monuments before they disappear.

“In many respects, the modern Egyptians live in a huge outdoor museum, and museums are to be visited,” Bell said. “The question remains one of finding the best way to display an artifact, even an artifact as large as a temple, to best advantage.”

Most Egyptian monuments were built as places of worship with restricted entry. Bell said the dilemma for antiquities officials is keeping monuments in their natural settings while insulating them against hordes of tourists.

Could Be Ruined

“Tourism is both necessary and desirable,” he said. “But if the present rate of decay continues, as it has for 100 years, there will be no need for tourists 200 years from now to visit Luxor for its monuments.”

Zahi Hawass, who controls Giza Plateau, Egypt’s best-known tourist area, is trying to make it safer both for tourists and its monuments, the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx. He hopes television monitors being installed inside the pyramids can stop tourist antics that began 1,100 years ago when treasure hunters forced their way into Cheops Pyramid.

“For the past 100 years this place has been a zoo, and for the past 50 years antiquities authorities have had no plans to protect the monuments from tourists,” Hawass said. “Our biggest problem in Egypt is we have no concept that a monument should be a national park, where people come to enjoy but behave.”

Tourism has become Egypt’s second largest earner of foreign currency, with almost 2 million visitors in 1988 spending more than $2 billion. Moussa of the Tourism Promotion Board wants to double that number within a few years.

He said officials recognize the appeal of Egypt’s monuments but must look beyond history to encourage mass tourism.

“If you’re thinking of coming to Egypt only for its monuments, you can always put it off, because the monuments will still be here,” he said.

Alternative Sites

“Our best bet to help both tourism and monuments is to provide a number of alternative sites throughout the country, drawing tourists away from congested monuments. We also can help find ways to stem the tourist flow into popular sites.”

Tourism officials and the World Bank have devised a plan that they say will ease congestion in the temples and tombs on Luxor’s west bank. It includes new roads and a visitors’ center that will use a computer to control visits to the main attractions.

Two of the most famous tombs in the Valley of the Kings--Seti I and Tutankhamen--are endangered but remain open to the public.

A year ago the frail tomb of Seti I was reopened after restoration. A few weeks later, a zodiac design painted on its ceiling, unique among Egyptian monuments, came crashing to the floor.

Workers are restoring the zodiac behind a rope barrier, because “every time we close Seti, we get objections from tourist agencies,” said Upper Egyptian antiquities director Balboush.

Bacteria May Paintings

In King Tut’s tomb, visited every day of the tourist season by 2,500 and more people, scientists found in November that bacteria were eating away the colorful wall paintings.

To accommodate tourist traffic, plans were made for restorers to apply an antidote to the infested walls before and after hours. Once they saw how serious the infestation was, however, experts decided to work nonstop for three days.

Tourists did not hamper the work: the antidote smelled so foul that once visitors took a whiff, they rushed out, leaving restorers to their work.