Word: hawass
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...badly that President Hosni Mubarak, visiting the site in February, called for a thorough restoration. Nearly a fifth of the wall paintings at the tomb of Nefertari, across the Nile from Luxor in the Valley of the Queens, have been destroyed by salt deposits. In fact, says Zahi Hawass, who supervises the Giza Plateau for the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, "all the monuments are endangered. If we don't do something soon, in 100 years the paintings will be gone, and in 200 years the architecture will be gone...
Then there are the tourists. "The pyramids," laments Hawass, "are the only monuments in the world where you can drive up and park your car. Even in Disneyland you have to park a mile away." Last year alone 1,969,493 visitors came to look at -- and touch and breathe on -- Egypt's treasures. Just six people breathing inside a tomb for an hour can raise the humidity by 5 percentage points. And higher humidity provides a hospitable environment for bacteria, algae and fungi that grow on paintings. Sighs Hassan: "Three thousand people a day visit King Tut's tomb...
Besides making intensive efforts to restore specific monuments, EAO officials want to develop general strategies for keeping sites from deteriorating further. Hawass suggests creating a zone of protection around each valuable monument. "Sites in Egypt are not protected at all," he says. "We need to take away all mechanical activity for at least two to three miles around them." Tawfik proposes eventually planting trees around all outdoor monuments to protect them from winds as well as to absorb moisture. Within monuments, he wants to install clear plastic shields to prevent tourists from touching paintings and inscriptions and air-cleaning systems...