The American Scene; Impact of Archaeology

Good morning. This is Howard Vincent viewing the arts for the American scene for Illinois Institute of Technology. The art today, as you gather from the title, is archaeology, the impact of archaeology. And the reason for this subject, well, it's in itself, yes. But because it has been very much in the newspapers in recent months, as this picture indicates a picture of the area with one of the great monuments which is in danger of being flooded by the building of the Aswan Dam in Egypt. And the attempt on the part of world archaeologists and lovers of art and history of the world over to save some of these monuments has made us acutely conscious of archaeology. So that in discussing the impact of archaeology, I want also to discuss the impact of this special archaeological situation. And as is a habit on this program, we consult experts in the field. And being in Chicago, we're fortunate in having experts in these various fields. Today, I've asked Dr. John

Wiltson to come in and talk to us about the impact of archaeology. Dr. Wiltson is director of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, a very distinguished Egyptologist whose book, I'll give you the paperback title, The Culture of Ancient Egypt, you can get in any decent bookstore. And I hope you'll run out and get it. And he is, especially for this program, concerned. He is executive secretary for the United States National Committee for the preservation of the Nubian monuments. Now, this is an important concern that you should be alert to. And Dr. Wiltson, you can help us alert us to it. First of all, the impact of archaeology. A few nice generalizations on that. Well, the archaeologist is a digger. Basically, he digs in the earth to bring out ancient things. But he digs elsewhere. A lot of my digging is done in ancient texts. I'm supposed to be a specialist in the ancient Egyptian writing and to dig out what is old out of the text or

something. So that you have the fellow out in the field who digs up the buildings and the pottery and the tablets which have the writing on, and the papyra and so on, and you have the fellow at home who works on that and interprets it. Archaeology is study of the beginnings. Yes. And I think we need study of the beginnings when we have a little uncertainty about our present and our future. Maybe if we have a nice sense of our long past, it gives us a little more feeling of stability. Surely. And inside in the past is necessary for any intelligent society. Where did we come from? Yes. Where did we come from? We didn't come from Egypt. Some of our things came from Egypt. Oh, yes. The national government started in Egypt. A 365 -day -year start in Egypt. We ourselves didn't come from Egypt. No. But a lot of the things we heard. Surely, we were greatly in their debt. Well, you've been an Egyptologist, and

this must touch you very closely. What's happening in the Nile? Now, what exactly is happening? Let's get that clear. That historical fact. Egypt has overpopulation. Their population is increasing constantly at a much greater rate than their land will permit. Because there's no rain in Egypt. And the living depends upon the waters of the Nile. Yes. So in this predicament, the Egyptian government, we should say the United Arab Republic government, but if they'll forgive us, we'll keep on saying the Egyptian government, decided to build a big dam. Not just the little dam they have there now, but a big dam, which will back up a 300 -mile lake. I think it's going to be the biggest man -made lake in the world. 300 miles. 300 miles in an average of 15 miles wide. And this will give them 30 percent more land. It'll hold the waters back so they'll have nine months of water instead of about six. And it'll give them ten times as much electric power as they had. This is tremendous. Yes. And

everybody is in favor of it. The archaeologist says, I'm in favor of it, too, but wait a minute. All those monuments are going to go under the water. Well, where are they going to go under? Here's a map of the nice color map, this show being on color. I think it's nice to have it this way. A color map of the Nile. Well, you're on down from the Mediterranean to the first cataract down here and the dam will be built there. And then 200 miles in Egypt itself is to be flooded. And 100 miles into the Sudan, a separate country is to be flooded. In that 300 -mile area, there are 21 temples in addition to just a whole lot of unknown stuff that needs to be dug out. And we have five years to do it. In three years, the waters will begin to rise. In five years, they'll be up there. And this archaeologist operate in terms of thousands of years. So if we don't do it this year, we can do it ten years from now. And all of a sudden, emergency. You've got to do it now. You only have

five years to do it. And this hit us this spring. The dam was dedicated in January. In March, UNESCO put out an international appeal to the world. Save these things. But we weren't dressed up. We weren't ready to go. But we had to be because it was an emergency. And since then, it has been a scramble. I went out to Egypt in late May and came back just about a month ago on a committee with a relation to these things. A colleague of mine, Dr. Celieth, the university, went out in late April and made a survey of this area that's to be flooded to see where we could do a job in it. This committee I was on in Carol received the offers from the world to do work in there. Oh, yes. And the world is responding? 17 different countries within a stretch of about two months made up their minds and made offer to do 30 different things in there. A few of them are pretty small

and fiddling. And some of them are big. Because the proposition is a big proposition. Well, now let's take an example. One of the big ones. Would you say this Abu Simbel is one of the big ones? Abu Simbel is the biggest of all. This is a... Explain that one. This is a rock cut temple right into the cliff. That is to say, it is not built up. They cut away the cliff and cut 100 feet into the cliff here. And the front of that temple is 100 feet tall. Those big seated statues there of Ramsey's second are themselves 67 feet tall. A man comes up just about to the toes standing in front there. This is cut into the cliff. You can't move it away. 19 of these 21 temples can be moved. This one can't be moved. So the proposition is to put a damn earthen dike around it and try to hold it in place. There's a firm of French engineers there now to see whether this is really possible. Perfectly possible to build a dam. A dam within a dam. The dam within a dam helps, right? But this rock here is so

seamed and so full of cracks and fishers that nobody knows whether it would stand the water. The dam would stand the water, yes. But would the water start in half a mile away and start to seep through the rocks and finally come in here and fill this thing up. And the firm of engineers is working on that now. And in two months from now they'll render their report. It can be done. If so, what's the cost? It can't be done. And then the cost is we lose. This cost will be staggering, I would say. This is one of the great temples in the world. So surely. Someone who first saw it said, imagine the cathedral of Notre Dame built out of one single rock. And that's about the impression you get there. Yes. Oh, that's a tremendously moving piece. There are others. There is a temple on an island. The island of Phile. And this is on an island. And a dam can be thrown around this at relatively small cost. Only about five million dollars. The Abu Simbo Dam will run into

eight figures. Nobody knows quite how many million dollars it'll be. But it'll be over 25 million dollars if it is possible to build it. And this is just a little five million dollar dam. So we'll build that on some Saturday for us. Well, in other words, this will be seen by boat. Yes. Yes. The Egyptian government hopes to have a tourist service. And they will go out to this island of Phile and get out and climb over the wall of the dike around it and go down and visit the island. And when they come to Abu Simbo, the other big one, they come down a sloping ramp and go into that temple. Yes. At present time, it's almost impossible to visit it easily. There's a government steamer comes past there. Phile is flooded 12 months of the year now. Oh. When this dam is surrounded, of course, it won't be flooded. Well, this temple

here is a rather interesting one. I notice it's not purely Egyptian. Well, this is in the Greek time. And consequently, the columns no longer are those very simple Egyptian papyrus or lotus buds. They've become more elaborate. You have a combination of the Egyptian column with a floral capital at the top. And then some of the Greek ideas of the echinthus, which was much more elaborate as a flower coming in here. In fact, the Greeks brought in an awful lot of variety. I happen to like Egyptian art. Those who don't like it say it's monotonous. Of the Greeks made it less monotonous. Which emperor was responsible for this temple? Typherius? Here. I'm forgetting. This is Trajan, as I remember. Trajan, yeah. This is Trajan. The Roman Emperor Trajan here. Scaris, these Roman emperors came here and paraded themselves around Egypt as gods because the Pharaoh of Egypt was a god. If you were going to conform in the land of Egypt, you became a god. And that's

what these inscriptions on the walls and scenes on the walls say about the Roman emperors. This is the Pharaoh of the great god of Egypt. And actually, I think only one Roman Pharaoh visited there, but the fiction was that they all came there and dedicated these temples. Oh, and at the end, so I went there, they became gods. That's right. The ruler of Egypt was in order to rule a god. So Anthony and their god Caesar, of course, came in. He was a god and had a lot of temples dedicated to him. Well, about this one. I recall you said that this one is one of those. Is this be destroyed or is it going to be picked up and carried away? 19 of them are small enough so they can be picked up and carried away. They will be moved to higher ground. At the dam itself, the water level is going to rise 200 feet. As you go farther inland, this, of course, shades off. But they can be moved up to 220 feet, let's say, and be safe. The Egyptian

government has offered five of these 19 to those foreign agencies which will finance their removal. I was called up one day and asked how about one in Grant Park here in Chicago. And I made a mistake. I should have said, yes, that'll be wonderful. And of course, we'll put it under a building to protect it. I said, no, you can't have it in Grant Park because of the snow in the rain. It's in a rainless country. Yes, it is. Perfectly safe year after year, except for a little sandblasting it, but place to the column. And we're not going to get it? Well, let's start all over again and work on it. Yes, certainly. Right now. It needs a protected cover because if it were plastered with snow for a few days, in four or five years it'd begin to lose its surface. Yes, sure. What dry eats into that kind of sandstorm? If we have a fake tower of pizza out here on Tui, why not have a genuine Egyptian temple? A genuine Egyptian temple, isn't it? Well, I think there is part of an Egyptian temple in Rome, but outside of Rome, there isn't a genuine Egyptian

temple anywhere in the world, except Egypt. And this would be one of the things which we could get out of it. So I hope that a lot of American museums will go in on this and get Egyptian collections. At present, we have good collections in Boston, in New York, in Brooklyn, in Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Chicago. Yes. Very good ones in Chicago. But there aren't any other places in the States. And here is a chance because the Egyptian government in its offer says, we will let you have those surplus things we have in our storehouses if you come in on this with work and money. Well, yes, that's right. And that's another news item, isn't it? That storehouse have been opening up. What was that? Well, they have throughout Egypt dozens of storehouses because the Egyptian Museum is the same museum. It has been now for about 60 years, and it has no more armor. The result is good things are found,

and they have to go into storehouses. Three or four of them will go to the Egyptian Museum. And the other five or six hundred will be put in storehouses, and they have perfectly superb things in storehouses. There's the greatest collection of five thousand -year -old copper in the world, it concealed. It's in nobody's season. It was of a first dynasty king, 3000 BC, found as a unity several hundred pieces, perfectly superb stuff. And there was no room for it. It's in the storehouse. Here before last, our Chicago joint Chicago Egyptian expedition found some superb mummy cases, where the colour just as beautiful as it was 2800 years ago, they're in storehouses. And the Egyptian government has recognised this, that this isn't good economy, and they have said those who come in with work and money may ask us for materials from our storehouses. Now the United States is going to do some of this. Well,

we're going to work on it. This national committee of which is executive secretary is trying to organise this. We're starting from scratch. We're starting late in the game, perhaps. But to make it known that this is a possibility, and to get the American Museum's interested in it, so that it places away from that line, chiefly the Atlantic coast, I've mentioned, plus the coast. Yes. There will be nice little collections of Egyptian things. Excellent idea. Maybe one side of one museum room having some Egyptian things. There's a pyramid, there are 70 pyramids in ancient Egypt. There's a pyramid, not far from Cairo, in which they must have found about 20 ,000 alabaster vases. Maybe only 2 ,000 of these are perfect and complete, the rest are broken, but they are superb. It

is beautiful alabaster. It is beautifully done, hand work all. I had no machines to turn it out. And they have in a small museum nearby about 300 of Mon exhibition, which means hundreds of them and thousands of them are in storerooms. And these would be wonderful in an American museum. This would be very intelligent in the part of Egypt to distribute like this, because it would be publicity for them, big tourists paid, just thinking of a pure gross material sense. Well, here's a picture, as it's a museum, sitting here looking at it, I think you want to explain this picture to me. This is what's going to happen in Egypt. This is what's going to happen. There's already a small dam at Aswan. And beginning in late July, this begins to back up the flood waters, so that it's finks, that's a sphinx there, and that picture, it's finks by September, have their legs in water. You get along to October when

it's at height, they may be completely underwater. This is called the Browning Sphinx, and that's the situation there at this one particular temple. Well, it's painful to look at, because of a person's drowning almost. It shouldn't be there, and that's perfectly true, and this is what's going to happen to all these temples online. We have Chicago, we're going to put an expedition into the field, this coming autumn winter, I hope. Can you be going over with it? Well, my colleague, Dr. Sealy, will lead it. I have to stay home here and raise the money, and also to direct the Oriental Institute. But we're going to have a stretch of about 12 miles on each side of the Nile. First thing, exploration, what's there? It's going to be covered up by water. Look at it before it goes. Describe it. This thing is a very small cemetery, it isn't worth digging. This thing is an old village, it is worth digging. Then dig. We're going to have excavations in

that area, where we, in the first year, may not be able to have more than one, as time goes on more. And the third thing, copy a temple before it is moved. It's perfectly all right to knock these temples down, number the blocks, and build them up again 20 miles away. But they're never quite the same as they've been moved. And this is a temple which has color on its surface, and the color is certain to suffer when the thing is moved. So we're going in there with color photography, we're going in there with grassman, and copy the temple of Betel -Walley, the house of the saint, copy the temple of Betel -Walley before it's moved. Because in the summer of 62, two summers from now, that will be moved. And so we have two years to get that all copied and in a book, I hope, we haven't even looked that far, we haven't had time to look that far. What are the communication people in this country doing about all this? For instance, why doesn't NBC,

since we're talking on NBC, why don't they go out with their cameras, and do a 60 -minute documentary on this? This would be a wonderful documentary. It's a perfectly fantastic country because there are no communications in terms of transportation there. There's a government steamer twice a week, goes through. There's a government mail boat, which goes through. And for the rest of it, almost all the boats are already tied up by archaeologists. Oh, yes. Because nobody lives in there. Here's 200 miles of territory with 70 ,000 people. Just scattered around women and children, all able -bodied men have gone elsewhere to get jobs and send their money home. You go into the largest town in the area and ask for a dozen eggs. They scurry around. They say, we have four. This is the largest town in this area. It is therefore difficult to get in a team, a camera team. UNESCO sent in a camera

team, and they did selected things as their particular boat would let them do. But if you had a really, the boat has to be the right size to go through the locks for the present dam, and it can't be more than 55 feet long or what is nine and a half meters, 31 feet wide, that kind of thing. Very limited. So you are really limited in the area. But this is a real need for a camera crew to go in and take the two things of these monuments which are going to be moved and it's very pictorial. The coloring of the rock is beautiful. And of the archaeologists doing this desperate job fighting against time before things are used up. This problem of living in that area is really acute. My colleague, Dr. Seely, had this trip through there. He

had six others in his party, seven in all. They were to be in there 10 days. They had to take with them 210 meals. Seven people, three meals a day, 21, 10 days, 210 meals. They couldn't be sure of getting an egg or some milk or some cheese anywhere. They had to make sure by having all their food in. Like an army moving into a completely desolate country? It's a desolate country. The people who live there are a few in number. They don't need great agriculture to raise their food. The result is they have no surplus. To put a dam around Abu Simbo, they're going to have to move in several hundred people and maintain their food supplies. My ideal is a helicopter service through the area. I'm probably talking about 10 years ahead of the time in terms of supply on this. Can you imagine that there are a number of people watching the show saying, why bother with all this anyhow? Why not just let it be covered? It's a past, it's a past. A number of people have said that

to me. You're talking about a fantastic proposition. You say Abu Simbo alone will be $25 million. Is it worth it? Furthermore, the past is past. And this thing has been here now for 150 years of archaeology and they haven't done this job. Why bother to do it now? Well, professionally I am an archaeologist and professionally I cannot say that. The second thing is that these things are part of the world's heritage. We wouldn't want to let Mesa Verda grow. Good point. Mesa Verda doesn't really belong to us. It has been described by the archaeologists are probably thousands of pictures of Mesa Verda. But if they were to, Mesa Verda isn't in dam area, but if it were, if they were to build a dam and Mesa Verda would be good. So the conservationists and the archaeologists and the art lovers in this country would stand up on their legs and say, no,

it must not happen. Because they're Indian grandfather. Yes. Because it has come to belong to us. Even if it's Indian, we think of Mesa Verda as being American. One of the great American things. And the same thing is true here. This Temple of Remacy seconded Abu Simbo. It's one of the great things in the world. And like the person on which doesn't belong to us. Like the Taj Maharsal, it doesn't belong to us. Like Machu Picchu in Peru, or Ankhar Wat in Cambodia. Never, never places. But perfectly superb and unique. It belongs to us. See all of the belongings. The Thoros had one time. Nobody has a copyright on the landscape. It belongs to Mr. Baker's farm. It belongs to Thoros. It's as much as it belongs to Baker. And this is part of our past. There's a slightly different question. And that is whether the cost is too high. And to that I'd have to agree the cost is fantastic. We must make the effort to raise the money to try to do it. But if it is completely out of line, if

Abu Simbo instead of costing 25 million, should turn out to cost 100 million, we make our try. And if we don't make it, we do the other thing. This preserve will last how long. How long does it cost to build an aircraft? Yes. A carrier. An aircraft carrier is also a aircraft carrier. See $120 million. And it's out of date in the two years. This has lasted 3 ,300 years, and it can last a... Toenbe somewhere says about the Great Pyramid, it can say before Abraham was I, the Great Pyramid Am, and when there is no longer any man in the world to see my majesty, I will still be. Yes. But even that, remember Azamandius? Yes. My name is Azamandius. Azamandius was the same Ramsey second. He was a proud boaster, but his things didn't always last. And one of these four statues is broken down. Oh, let's see. Has fallen to the ground. The second in

the line here. Oh, yeah. Let's see. Right there. This one has lost its head and body here, and you just see its knees. I'm told that it's all there, lying on the ground in front. And so it can be put together again. And if this be preserved, maybe it should. Although I have some feeling that having three of them intact, one of them broken down is kind of poetic justice in here. It shows the wear of time better than if you had them all freshened up with every craft. Of course. Of course. It gives a sense of, it gives a temporal sense, as well as the spatial. Yes. That must be a beautiful sight, the color of the stone. Is it? Is this a good... This is a good color picture, and this stone changes color all day long. You've got the morning sun striking into the temple at March 21st and September 21st at the Solstice. It strikes

right in a hundred feet and lights up statues, a hundred feet at the rear. Then the rest of the time it colors it with the morning glow or you have the afternoon after glow on it so that it changes color all the time. It really is fascinating to watch it throughout the day. Well, now you say that you're getting things organized rapidly. You have hopes of doing some of this retrieving. We've got a full program hoping to try to do all of it. And people are responding to that. People are... There was an article in Readers Digest in the July issue and in nine days mailing since that time we've had a hundred and ninety responses from people. Good. Sending in their contributions. Seven school kids on one street reached into their pockets and got together 65 cents for this. Well, I hope that the 50 million people watching you have a little bit then. And where would they

send it to? The United Nations? If they are checks they are made out to the University of Chicago and sent to me at the University of Chicago they all go into this common fund. Dr. John Wilson, University of Chicago. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Wilson, for coming in and talking to us about the treasures of Nubian, the impact of archaeology. Fascinating. We could have another meeting on archaeology. I hope, thank you very much.