Alexandre Bozio with AFP / Credits: Gerard SIOEN / ONLY WORLD / Only France via AFP
Absurdity or project of the century? In Egypt, an astonishing renovation program has begun and has not failed to provoke a reaction, whether from Internet users or certain Egyptologists. The idea is to restore the pyramid of Mykerinos, located on the Giza plateau, near Cairo. When it was built several thousand years ago, the pyramid was indeed covered in granite, but over time, some of this covering has disappeared. The current project therefore aims to restore this layer of granite in order to restore the pyramid to its original appearance.
“A gift from Egypt to the world”
In a video published Friday, the head of Egyptian Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, showed workers aligning blocks of this rock on the base of the Mykerinos pyramid, the lowest of the three pyramids on the plateau.
This “renovation” will last “three years” and will be “a gift from Egypt to the world in the 21st century”, welcomed Mostafa Waziri, head of the Egyptian-Japanese mission in charge of the project, assuring that it -this “will allow us to see, for the first time, the pyramid of Mykerinos as it was built by the ancient Egyptians”.
Reactions more than shared
But, under the video, dozens of horrified commentators lost their temper. “Not possible!” replies, visibly outraged, Egyptologist Monica Hanna on Facebook. “All that was missing was to tile the pyramid of Mykerinos! When are we going to stop the absurdity in the management of Egyptian heritage?”, she writes again. “All international principles on renovations prohibit such interventions, all archaeologists must mobilize immediately,” she says.
Online, Internet users are all going with their sharp barbs: “When will the project to straighten the Tower of Pisa?” writes one, in reference to the famous Italian monument. “Rather than tiles, why not wallpaper on the pyramids?”, suggests ironically, another Internet user.
Some specialists on the subject were nevertheless a little more nuanced. Hussein Abdel-Basir, director of the Museum of Antiquities of the Library of Alexandria, told our British colleagues to The Independent that such renovation must be done “with great caution, taking into account several questions, including whether it will change the nature of the area, whether it is an urgent necessity or a priority , and what is the degree of danger”.