Egypt Battles a Sleeping Devil

By Anastasia Toufexis.

The striking images are among the finest surviving examples of ancient Egyptian art. They depict the passage into the next life of a slim young woman clad in a diaphanous gown, her toenails polished white, her eyes outlined with kohl, her every need seen to by the servants and deities surrounding her. The accompanying inscriptions leave no doubt about her identity: Queen Nefertari, the favorite wife of Ramses II, Egypt's greatest pharaoh.

Covering the ceilings and walls of the queen's tomb in the royal necropolis -- a honeycomb of chambers carved into the limestone mountains at Thebes -- the paintings have been sheltered from the fierce winds and scorching heat of the middle Nile Valley. Indeed, some of the bright-hued images are as vivid today as when they were first daubed onto the plastered interior of the tomb more than 3,000 years ago. But though the colors are still brilliant, the plaster underneath is deteriorating. Nearly a third of the paintings have already flaked off. The plaster behind others is loosening from the walls, and only strips of gauze hold some of the slabs in place.

The sorry state of Nefertari's tomb is typical of the condition of many of the most important monuments of Egyptian antiquity. Some of the pillars and stones of Memphis, a capital of ancient Egypt, are standing in pools of water. Reliefs carved in the sandstone walls of the temples of Luxor and Karnak are eroding, and some of the stones are stained. Chunks of plaster are falling off the walls of the temple at Abydos, an ancient religious center.

Egyptologists the world over are alarmed at the pace of the decay. Says Lanny Bell, director of Chicago House, the field project at Luxor established by the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute: "In 200 years, many of the reliefs, which are really the significant part of these temples, will be gone. There will be only blank walls and columns left."

Egyptian authorities are only too aware of the perils facing their greatest treasures, but they have been hamstrung by lack of resources. As recently as four years ago, the Egyptian Antiquities Organization's annual budget was a mere $2 million. But since the EAO's energetic director, Ahmed Qadry, a 54- year-old Egyptologist, took over in December 1981, the budget, swelled in part by increases in museum entrance fees and from tours of antiquities, has grown dramatically; this year it is $16 million. Says Qadry: "The quantity of restoration done in the past three years has been hundreds of times the work that took place in the past."

Most of the crumbling monuments are victims of a troublesome combination: salt in the building stone and moisture from the ground and air. Says Salah Ahmed Salah, an expert on the preservation of stone at Cairo University: "Salt crystals are like a sleeping devil. Only when you add moisture do they start to act." The water penetrates the stone, dissolves the salt and in the form of a saline solution migrates back toward the surface. There the moisture evaporates, leaving behind the salts, which recrystallize, forcing apart the grains of stone. The result is a flaking and crumbling surface. In Nefertari's tomb, says Bell, "salt has just bubbled up and pushed the plaster off the walls."

In most instances, this process did not begin until the late 19th or 20th century, when many of the monuments were excavated from the sand. But Nefertari's tomb, subject to underground moisture, had probably been deteriorating slowly even before its discovery in 1904. The process accelerated, however, after the tomb was opened and tourists were allowed to trek through. As one foreign expert explains, "A group of people visiting the tomb for an hour can raise the humidity significantly." These fluctuations in humidity encourage even more crystallization of salt on the stone's surface. By 1950 the tomb was in such bad shape that only touring dignitaries were allowed to enter. In 1983 the chamber was finally closed to all visitors.

Monuments in the open air, like those at Karnak and Luxor, have been faring no better. In the climate extremes of the Nile Valley, dew condenses on the stone during the cold nights, dissolving the salts near the surface, then evaporates during the dry, hot days. As in Nefertari's tomb, the re-forming salt crystals cause crumbling and flaking.

Another factor is the Aswan High Dam, which was completed in 1970. Though the dam halted the annual flooding of the Nile that temporarily inundated some temples, it has also had a detrimental effect. The year-round availability of water has allowed increased irrigation and thus more intensive farming; crops can now be grown twice a year. But the increase in irrigation, coupled with poor drainage, has raised the water table in the area. Irrigation has also resulted in more salts accumulating in the soil. Instead of being washed out, as they were in the past, by receding flood waters, they now remain trapped in the groundwater. Moreover, water piped in and cesspools dug underground to support the expanding population of towns along the Nile have further raised , the water level. As a result, there is now a constant supply of moisture, bearing its own destructive impurities, that can seep into nearby temples and travel by capillary action up into the stone walls and pillars.

Even if unlimited funds were available, the task of saving Egypt's numerous and spectacular antiquities would be, well, monumental. Although the EAO under Qadry has already overseen the repairing and reopening of a dozen tombs in the necropolis at Thebes, Nefertari's is in far worse shape. Reason: it is situated lower than many other tombs, making it even more vulnerable to underground moisture. The organization is considering a number of possible solutions, including air-conditioning the tomb (to control the humidity and temperature) and isolating the paintings by placing a plastic barrier between the walls and the remaining plaster, which could also be encased in glass.

For the aboveground monuments threatened by high water tables, SWECO, a Swedish engineering and consulting firm, has proposed installing pumps, perhaps solar powered, to lower the underground water level and digging trenches, filled with gravel, around the bases of temple walls to prevent water from seeping into the stone. But experts say the scheme is impractical and costly.

In fact, all of the suggested solutions seem to be flawed. At Karnak, workmen tried to remove organic salt stains from the artwork and inscriptions on one wall by covering them with wet paper dressed with heeb, a finely ground absorptive desert clay. The salt-soaked paper was peeled off and replaced every two days, and after 20 applications to each area, the stains were gone. But apparently the salt deep in the walls was not; stains began reappearing on cleaned surfaces one month after the final application.

Another expensive possibility involves applying silanes, which are silicon compounds, to stone. The silanes penetrate deep into the stone and bond together its molecules, in effect forming a new type of stone.

Faced with the accelerating decay and limited funds, and stymied by their formidable enemy -- salt -- Egyptologists fear they are running out of time in their battle to save the antiquities. "There are just too many factors working against their preservation," says Lanny Bell. "You have to be pessimistic about the monuments."

With reporting by Philip Finnegan/Cairo and Robert C. Wurmstedt/Luxor