ALEXANDRIA:Take
me over Cleopatra’s palace,” I asked the tour-boat operator on a
recent visit to Alexandria, Egypt’s Mediterranean metropolis. “No
problem,” the young Egyptian guide said. “You’ll see it all,
even the great lighthouse.”
It was a trip through
Alexandria’s old harbour. Supposedly, we would be able to gaze into the
deep and view sunken remains — Cleopatra’s royal residence as well
as a palace she built for liaisons with her lover, Marc Antony, along with
remnants of the Pharos lighthouse, and assorted sphinxes, columns and an
obelisk. The half- hour cruise, however, revealed nothing but murky water.
“Well, here’s the
new lighthouse,” the tour guide said chirpily, pointing to a lantern set
atop a slender rod on a jetty. It’s not one of the Seven Wonders. After
15 years of hauling priceless relics from in and around its harbour, Alexandria
municipal officials and Egyptian antiquity authorities are trying to figure out
how to make thousands of artefacts still at the bottom accessible for viewing by
the public. Municipal officials want to create an underwater archaeological
park. Proposals under consideration include construction of an underwater bubble
auditorium, conversion of the harbour into a giant pool with filters to remove
silt and pollution and a submarine on rails to ferry visitors around.
The goal is to push the city
into the major league of antique tourist attractions, a club in Egypt long
dominated by Cairo, Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel. Alexandria has a Roman
amphitheatre, a Greco-Roman museum, a combination Pharaonic-Greek-Roman National
Museum and assorted columns scattered around town, yet it has never made the
splash that, say, Luxor makes with its temples and tombs, much less Cairo, with
the pyramids.
Alexandria’s potential
surfaced, literally, in the early 1990s when European underwater archaeologists
began to pull up stones, statues, pottery and jewelry. Egyptians knew the jumble
of relics lay there —the first explorations took place in 1868 — but
they thought of the colossal items as part of the environment, like reefs.
“I used to swim around
them as a kid,” said Ashraf Sabri, owner of an underwater diving centre
that guides scuba enthusiasts to the ruins. “The statues were good places
to hunt fish. Women used to make wishes over Cleopatra and Antony’s love
palace in hopes of finding a mate.”
Last year, Alexandria’s
underwater glories burst into international view with a touring exhibition
called Egypt’s Sunken Treasures, which opened in Berlin, showed in Paris
and is currently on display at Bonn’s Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland museum. In 2008, it goes to Madrid.
Alexandria is now part of
Egypt’s effort to attract more visitors — tourism is the
country’s biggest foreign-exchange earner, says the American Chamber of
Commerce in Egypt. The problem is, Alexandria’s 19th century, French-style
waterfront, beaches and cafes are not considered enough of a lure. “The
harbour is important for us,” said Adel Labib, Alexandria’s
governor. “We have something unique in our hands and we must exploit
it.”
The obstacles are
daunting, and Sabri, the dive-tour operator, is skeptical of the plans. Scum
forms quickly on glass in the harbour, he said, so an underwater auditorium is
impractical. Any construction, either rails or barriers face the dangers of
harsh winter storms that have been known to roll even giant stones along the
bottom of the harbour, Sabri added.
Nonetheless, Alexandria is at
least paying attention to the possible wealth beneath the waves. Until three
ye-ars ago, the city dumped on its antiquities — sewerage flowed directly
into the old harbour.
