Abstract
The UNESCO campaign for the salvaging of the Nubia Temples and the role of the Nubia Museum.
Rageh Mohamed
Director of the Nubia Museum
One of UNESCO’s best-known international safeguarding campaigns began on 8 March 1960, when an appeal was made to the international community to help save the 3,000-year-old monuments and temples of ancient Nubia from flooding by the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam. The campaign, supported by more than 60 of the Organization’s Member States and numerous international scientific teams, aimed to carry out excavations in areas that would be submerged by the building of the High Dam and to dismantle and then reconstruct various major monuments.
Many of the artifacts now conserved in the Nubian Museum were found on sites that have since been submerged by the waters of the High Dam. Together, they bear witness to the long history of Nubia, which for millennia has acted as a bridge between different regions, most notably between Africa, the Middle East and Europe. They highlight the myriad interconnections and exchanges that have taken place in the region in work that bears witness to remarkable scientific and aesthetic developments.
