One of the greatest resources the Middle East has to offer is its cultural heritage. For millennia, this heritage has been the face of the region to the world, inspiring artists and informing historians and generations of students of all ages. With the rise of illicit trafficking and looting, a transatlantic team is working on solutions to protect this legacy. Cairo-based Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation and the U.S. non-governmental Antiquities Coalition are successfully collaborating to bring digital access, conservation and human solutions to a global audience.
EniGma’s Denise Terenzio sat down with Abdelhamid Salah, the Chairman of the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation (EHRF), conservationist and world-renowned educator, with experience ranging from the latest advances in digital heritage preservation to leadership in the United Nations’ work on cultural preservation, and Peter Herdrich, Co-founder of the Antiquities Coalition (AC) and a former television producer, magazine publisher, and an expert in preservation in areas of conflict and war, to learn how their organisations are making culture-defining art widely accessible and how the wisdom of the past helps inform the future.
How did you two leaders from different parts of the world come to be partners and what projects are you working on?
Salah: We work throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and of course, specifically in Egypt. The primary focus of our work is disaster risk management and emergency response for cultural heritage in critical times.
Herdrich: Our local partners in the region include minority communities in Iraq, the Ministry of Culture in Algeria and Yemen’s National Museum in the city of Aden in Yemen. We are motivated to work where the need is the greatest. The Yemeni Embassy in Washington DC put us in touch with their national museum during one of the worst periods of Yemen’s civil war and we brought in the US-based Council on Library and Information Resources for technical support, and the ALIPH Foundation of Switzerland funded us.
Where do you feel you’re making an important impact?
Salah: The conflict in Yemen caused a lot of loss of Yemeni heritage. Our decision to develop a tailored documentation system, which is aimed to inventory, digitise and document their collection, was impactful since this ensured records, proved ownership and discouraged looting. We trained our Yemeni colleagues at our headquarters in Cairo and when they returned to Yemen, they followed our plan. First, we make an inventory and shoot digital photos, then we make digital records and combine all this information into a database. The next step is to make these records accessible on the internet, which is very important since this ensures the preservation of the cultural heritage as well as access to the documentation.
How is this applicable to everyday people, not just historians or Ph.D. students writing a thesis? How is it relevant to people who are traveling to the region or who are trying to understand the culture?
Herdrich: Accessibility is very important. We want to ensure that all kinds of people such as tourists, scholars, students, the interested public, can learn about and enjoy this cultural heritage. Anyone can retrieve information, and anyone searching for the information will know it is verified. We eliminate fraudulent and fake information online, which in a way makes travel more relevant to people all over the world. What better way is there to learn about a culture than to see what has been recorded. Literally, a 12-year-old from anywhere in the world learning about the Pharaohs could call up this data. This information is available to anyone.
Is this applicable to all art forms, or is it only for antiquities?
Salah: Oh, yes, it applies to all art. While we were implementing our flagship project ‘Rescuing the Mamluk Minbars of Egypt’ we discovered that there is a gap in understanding Islamic Art, especially Islamic geometry, among the young generation. So, we developed a set of training courses targeting different audiences like school students, craftsmen, designers and local communities to provide a better understanding of the Islamic Arts. This connects people with their heritage and leads architects, designers, and craftsmen to create contemporary art inspired by Islamic Art.
Are there other benefits to your digitisation/documentation/accessibility approach?
Herdrich: By creating records we also prove ownership. So, if anything is stolen, the collection can be repatriated when law enforcement intervenes.
What makes the partnership between EHRF and AC successful?
Salah: We complement each other. EHRF does training and other content development, while AC organises, fundraises and produces. Since we have the same mission goals, we are always on the same page.
What is the need if a country is not embroiled in a war?
Salah: Cultural heritage is most at risk by active conflict and political instability, but there are other risks: climate change, rising temperatures and flooding. Also, as historical cities are developed, they are exposed to urbanisation and expansion which threatens the sites in the region.
Are there any other apparent issues threatening the situation?
Herdrich: The threats are real, and when objects are lost, there’s no way to get them back. You can’t just create cultural heritage anew… It’s impossible. If there is a verified record, there is a way to remember what came before us.
What do you see as the way forward for heritage preservation in Egypt/Middle East at large?
Salah: Without a doubt, I think we would both like to work faster and with larger groups of preservationists around the world. We would like to scale up our responses and training. With each project we aim to create a network of heritage professionals who can respond to any emergency.
Herdrich: Abdelhamid just developed an online program that we recently did. It was open to all, free, over three days and in Arabic. Over 1,120 people registered for that. It was unprecedented! And an indication of the thirst for this type of training.
In a way, your work is a way for people to connect, feel rooted and find an extension of belonging. In a way you are digital documentarians preserving the stories of both historical communities and individual perspectives.
Salah: People want to belong. When you can say “that artifact is from my heritage” … it gives people a sense that they fit in somewhere. They identify with something larger, older and bigger than themselves.
It’s literally a time–stamp of sorts on how our ancestors influenced all of us. Am I overstating that?
Herdrich: There are not that many things in the world that unite people. Cultural heritage preservation is one of them though. In a time where so many people are divided by politics, by borders, by ideology and even by agreement on what’s factual and true, we still all marvel at, and are united by, the inspiring cultural achievements of humanity. …And think about this. For visitors and foreigners who travel to Egypt, what do they want to see? The pyramids at Giza, the Valley of the Kings, King Tut’s chariot. People want to see the architecture, landscapes and cultural objects that make us all shake our heads in wonder and say, WOW!
Since the above interview, the Antiquities Coalition led an international team of experts from Algeria, Egypt and the United States to introduce a new digitisation lab to document the Bardo Museum’s collection, and to build a database. This is a first in Algeria, and the data should be accessible online to the public soon.
Together, the teams from the Antiques Coalition and the Egyptian Heritage Rescue Foundation, trained museum professionals from five additional Algerian museums. The Algerian Ministry of Culture and the Arts and the US Embassy in Algiers, provided funding for the project. US Ambassador Elizabeth Moore Aubin cut the ribbon on the new lab in the Bardo’s facility in their 18th century palace. “This was truly an international effort,” Ambassador Aubin explained. “Supporting cultural heritage in Algeria is a top priority of the United States and one that we are proud to work on with such a diverse group of experts.”
Her Excellency, Soraya Mouloudji, Algeria’s Minister of Culture and Arts, commented, “The preservation of culture is especially important in Algeria. We have a very long human history and outstanding collections that we want to share. We are pleased to work with our international partners to reveal so much about Algeria’s past.”
In addition to the Bardo museum, representatives from five other Algerian museums joined the training. “We scaled up the project to include these five other museums that will be able to build their own digital infrastructure. We have been working with the Ministry of Culture and Arts on heritage projects for the last two years and this is a great example of working as a coalition on a larger project supporting Algerian heritage,” explained project director and Antiquities Coalition Co-founder Peter Herdrich.
