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Egypt scraps plan to restore cladding on one of three great pyramids of Giza
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2024
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Need to leave sites as close to as they were as possible, else clues about the past could be accidentally destroyed, especially clues that we do not have the technology to analyze yet
historical conservation isn't really this cut and dry
sometimes it's better to restore things, or to do work to prevent them degrading further
True, but that still revolves around leaving it aa close as possible to how they were - preservation sometimes requiring active work to keep clues around
For the pyramids, the rate of exterior decay is probably deemed far less destructive than the need to use cement to restore the granite
but when is the exact point of "how they were" when 4000 years of erosion has already taken place?
I guess people want them to be fashionably ruined.
Frankly, I think re-cladding the pyramids would be great for keeping clues around, provided they don't touch the existing stones while putting new ones on. That'll stop erosion from digging deeper into the existing structure.
Ye, I'd say the cement is the real issue there. If they could just place the granite blocks and not use cement, then that would work
They could mold each block, cast concrete into the mold, and use that as the base for the stones.
It makes me wonder where the cutoff is for maintaining old things. Obviously pyramids fall on the "leave it alone" side because they're about the oldest buildings in existence, but I wonder about, say, Renaissance-era buildings.
I've seen the occasional controversy about restoring medieval castles. This one comes to mind as a particularly unusual and controversial case - the remains of the original castle were so badly degraded that there wasn't really much left, so the restorers built obviously modern-looking walls that had the original castle's fragments embedded in them held up in the correct places and shapes. Sort of like a reconstructed dinosaur skeleton where a bunch of the bones were missing.
Putting the original limestone cladding back on the pyramids would be interesting, it would probably "look fake" because the original pyramid cladding was extremely smooth and clean much like a modern concrete structure would appear. People don't expect it to look that way. Sort of like how a lot of the old marble statues and architecture from ancient Greece and Rome used to be brightly painted, but those wore off and now everyone thinks of pure white stone when they imagine what an ancient sculpture from there is supposed to look like.
Edit: In violation of the norms of social media, I read the article. The plan with the pyramid wasn't even as drastic as I thought, apparently for the pyramid that they were considering doing this to the original cladding is still available. It's just fallen off and is lying around the pyramid's base.
I would love to visit a museum that has original ancient sculptures side by side with reproductions of how they looked originally.
If you're in Europe, there's the exhibition on this topic at the Gallo-Roman Museum in Tongeren, Belgium for a few more months, after previous stops at, among other places, the Met:
https://galloromeinsmuseum.be/en/see-and-do/antiquity-in-colour/
At least in some cases, they have the side-by-side comparisons you're looking for (although they obviously don't have originals of the most famous statues).
Video with more info:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULQvS-iKNcQ
A beautiful page on a prior exhibition, with images that allow you to switch between the reconstruction and the "white" look the statues have now after millennia or decay:
https://buntegoetter.liebieghaus.de/en/
In case you need an overview of future exhibitions:
https://www.polychromyroundtable.com/exhibitions.php
Not that the above page got the dates for the exhibition in Belgium wrong, stating that it's until July, whereas it's actually until June this year.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=ULQvS-iKNcQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.