Some wild and contradictory stories have been coming out of Egypt with respect to the status of the Pyramid of Djoser, which I wrote about at my rarely updated historical preservation blog. Since people seemed to like my recent post on Stonehenge, I thought I’d put this here as well since it’s along those same lines.
There were terrible reports a couple of weeks ago that the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, the so-called “Step Pyramid” and the oldest pyramid in Egypt, was falling apart. The twin culprits are a 1992 earthquake that left the structure in danger of collapse, and a restoration company that, according to activists, has actually destroyed part of the pyramid in the process of “restoring” it. The firm in question, Shurbagy, has apparently never undertaken a historical restoration project, nor has it ever “successfully” completed a project of any kind. They’ve been building a brick wall around the base of the pyramid that seems to be exerting pressure on the pyramid itself, which would explain the damage.
This is apparently what the pyramid looks like today
This week, however Egypt’s Antiquities Minister, Mamdouh El-Damaty, held a press conference at Saqqara to declare that these reports of the pyramid’s deterioration were incorrect:
View original post 514 more words
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 