Archeologists Leery of Mideast Digs

As researcher Ann Macy Roth excavates a burial site just behind the Great Pyramid in the wind-swept desert near Cairo, her time is spent peering into her work, not over her shoulder.

Some American and other Western archeologists are concerned that anti-American sentiment since the Sept. 11 attacks might put them at risk in the Middle East. But Roth, who over the last 14 years has excavated, studied and mapped out Pharaonic tombs, is mostly concerned with the heat and the dust.

“I know how people feel about being here at such a time, but I do not feel it’s different from before,” she said. “For me it’s business as usual, like it has ever been.”

Well, perhaps a bit less crowded than normal. In the months immediately after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, only a few hundred tourists visited the Great Pyramids each day, down from thousands daily in better times. Numbers improved slightly in more recent months.

Roth, a researcher at Howard University, has worked in Egypt during some of its most turbulent times--including in the late 1990s, when Muslim radicals opposed to the Egyptian government sometimes targeted Western visitors. But the country has witnessed no serious political unrest since Sept. 11.

In Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes in southern Egypt, the number of tourists is drastically down, as in Cairo. But French archeologist Francois Larche said foreign excavators continue to come to study the many Pharaonic sites, though at lesser numbers than in the past.

“Those who know Egypt and have been here before know they will be safe whatever people feel about it outside,” said Larche, who started work in the city’s Karnak Temple in 1987.

Since the attacks, security has been tightened around archeological sites and at institutions and hotels used by excavators. In addition, researchers were cautioned to limit their movements in town.

“It’s a bit of a nuisance, but it makes me feel more secure,” Larche said.

Gaballah Ali Gaballah, an advisor to the Egyptian government’s Supreme Council of Antiquities and former head of the council, said nearly 300 foreign expeditions are licensed to work in Egypt, and many are here this season. “No foreign expedition has asked us to provide them with more security, and if there is need to do so, our police will do it on their own,” he said.

In Yemen and Syria, two other Middle Eastern nations where Western archeologists regularly come to excavate, foreign scholars seem to be paying attention to the local mood when deciding whether to continue their projects.

Christopher Edens, an archeologist who heads the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, said several American expeditions called off their work for this season in the Gulf nation.

“Clearly, they don’t want to take risks,” he said.

Yemen has been considered a breeding ground for Islamic militants. The U.S. destroyer Cole was bombed by attackers believed linked to Osama bin Laden as it visited a Yemeni harbor for refueling in October 2000.

In mid-February, the FBI issued an alert that warned of a potential attack linked to Al Qaeda against the United States or U.S. interests in Yemen. It was the third such warning in less than a year in Yemen.

The country, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, also is known for the kidnapping of foreigners--usually by tribe members seeking release of jailed comrades or some other action by the government. Edens noted that the four American expeditions that did come to Yemen have traveled to rural sites only in convoys under military escort.

In Syria, Michael Meqdisi, head of foreign expeditions at the Ministry of Culture, said researchers were pushing back their arrivals to April. The digging season usually starts in Syria in March.

Western archeologists used to regularly work in Iraq, site of the great ancient civilization of Mesopotamia, but foreign expeditions stopped coming after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait set off the 1991 Gulf War.