Controversial security walls help protect Egypts antiquities
Archaeological sites saved from rampant looting and encroachment.
As looting continues at archaeological sites across Egypt, controversial security walls built in Cairo before the 2011 revolution have helped to protect vulnerable sites.
In recent months, the archaeological site of Deir el-Ballas, about 40km north of Luxor, has been damaged by looters and encroachment, reports Peter Lacovara, a senior curator at the
The Art Newspaper
April 30, 2014
© Omar Shawki
Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta who excavated the site in the 1980s and recently revisited the area.
Before the 2011 revolution, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) initiated a programme of constructing concrete security walls around archaeological sites in an effort to define the areas and to protect them from unauthorised visitation, looting and development.
The first of these was completed at Giza in 2008, to prevent a the neighbouring village and the cemeteries of Nazlet el-Samman from encroaching any further on the pyramid site, as well as to block illegal entry to vendors. Walls were also built at Abydos in Middle Egypt and around the palace site of Malkata in Luxor.
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