Hard Choices on National Treasures : Preserving Past Poses Monumental Problem

CAIRO — Far fewer generations will see the world’s ancient monuments than have seen them already. Fewer still will see them if nations don’t soon decide which to save and which to let die.

Changing temperatures and humidities, indoor and outdoor air pollution, artificial light, traffic, bacteria and other ills are causing monuments and antiquities everywhere to fall apart.

“The decisions are going to be difficult, but if governments and officials don’t act, there’ll be very little left,” said Luis Monreal, an international conservation specialist.

“The next decade is crucial. We have the technology. Where’s the courage?”

Experts Often Ignored

What concerns Monreal is a tendency of governments to ignore the warnings of archeologists and conservationists, who are spokesmen for the monuments and not for powerful political lobbies. The problem becomes especially acute in countries rich in artifacts but poor in finances, when antiquities officials try to take stands to save artifacts only to be overruled by politicians more interested in tourist dollars than in the monuments’ survival.

“But we must decide which monuments can and should be saved,” Monreal said. “Whatever we do, even if it’s the right thing, man is going to lose 60% to 80% of his cultural heritage in the centuries ahead.”

Monreal heads the Getty Conservation Institute of Marina del Rey, the only private institution that researches ways to carry out cultural conservation and puts up the money to do it.

Bits and pieces of the past, from minuscule to Gargantuan, from the Americas to China, are specimens for Getty’s experts: Tombs. Mummies. Paintings. Adobe. Old photographs. Oriental lacquerware. Tapestries. Primitive rock drawings. English silver.

How to save them?

Getty money and expertise are cooperating with local officials in four major projects:

* Restoration and conservation of decaying wall paintings in the 3,500-year-old tomb of Queen Nefertari, favorite wife of Pharaoh Ramses II, across the Nile River from Luxor in southern Egypt.

* A pilot project to conserve Roman-era floor mosaics at Paplos on Cyprus in the Mediterranean.

* Preservation of two major Buddhist sites in China: rock temples dating as early as A.D. 366 in the Mogao grottoes at the edge of the Gobi Desert and the Yungang grottoes, 200 miles west of Beijing.

* A preservation showcase for organic materials, including 27 royal mummies in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum and the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Monreal, who recently was in Cairo to discuss Egypt’s crumbling past with officials, said technology must be matched with specific needs. “It’s hard, but officials are going to have to decide which monuments live and which die.”

Monreal cites two examples: Spain’s medieval castles and the 4,500-year-old Sphinx near Cairo.

Too Many to Save

Spain, which is Monreal’s home country, wants to preserve its heritage but has so many troubled monuments it can’t save them all.

“There are 2,000 medieval castles built during 700 years of warfare,” Monreal said. “Even if the entire (Spanish) defense budget were turned over to save the castles, it wouldn’t be enough.”

The problem is different with the Sphinx, a stone lion with a pharaoh’s face unique for its size. Monreal said there’s no doubt it should be saved.

“But the Sphinx is terminal. It’s dying. What do you do for any terminal patient? You put him in intensive care, on a life support system.”

He suggests covering the monument while scientists debate what to do, but Egyptian officials are uneasy about isolating one of the country’s top tourist attractions.

“You can cover it and still allow people to see it as scientists decide what’s the matter. Up to three years of study lie ahead. But once they know, officials will have to make a decision. And that decision might not be popular.”

Monreal said getting the money for such work is the “easiest part if it’s a good project. Saving the Sphinx would be a gold mine for public relations. Companies would fall all over themselves to save the Sphinx.”

Fixing Priorities

But too often, he added, “wasting money, a lot of money” results from wrong-headed priorities.

“Some monuments will be saved that really don’t matter, and some that should be saved won’t be,” he said. “What are you going to choose: To save 30% of your monuments for 100 years or 10% for 1,000?

“It’s superficial to spread the batter too thin. . . . In some cases projects are taken on by corporations not because the relic is worthy of being saved but because it’s the pet of the chairman of the board.

“We see this in Italy, and in the United States the situation is terrible.”

On the other hand is Mexico, a country with many fragile monuments, which Monreal said is doing the best job of saving the artifacts that should be saved despite its economic problems.

“Years ago those who wanted to preserve the past were given the political power to make decisions,” he said. “Today Mexico’s past is doing well.”

Life’s Dream

Monreal, 46, has spent his adult life in museums seeking ways to preserve treasures. Co-workers call his life with monuments a passion, and he admits it’s a utopian dream.

“I’m perishable; they’re perishable. But I’m trying to keep what’s standing, standing,” he said.

“Even in 1,000 years some monuments will be standing because they were so well built, but when it’s finished, it’s finished. You can’t change history, but maybe you can prolong a monument’s life.”