MEMPHIS, Egypt (Reuters) – Egypt is building two roads on the pyramid plateau outside Cairo gates, reviving and preparing a task that was suspended in the 1990s after a foreign protest.
The Great Pyramids, Egypt’s number one tourist destination, are the survivor of the seven wonders of the ancient world and the plateau is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The roads are part of an infrastructure initiative led by Egypt’s tough army and subsidized by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is building a new capital to alleviate the population tension in Cairo, which has 20 million inhabitants.
The north road will cross the desert 2. 5 km south of the Great Pyramids, and the south will pass between the oldest stepped pyramid of Saqqarah and the Dahchour region, which houses the folded pyramid and pyramid.
Each road appears to be about 8 lanes wide.
Critics say they can cause irrevocable damage to one of the world’s most important life heritage sites. The government says they will be built thoroughly and send links, linking new urban advances and avoiding congestion in central Cairo.
“The roads are very, very much for development, for the Egyptians, for the interior of Egypt,” said Mostafa al-Waziri, general secretary of Egypt’s Supreme Antiquities Council. “Know that we take care of our antique sites throughout Egypt. “
Some Egyptologists and environmentalists say the roads will alter the integrity of the pyramid plateau, pave unexplored archaeological sites, generate contaminants that can corrode monuments, produce debris and disseminate enclosed spaces filled with hidden archaeological treasures for looting.
Al-Waziri said existing roads were much closer to the pyramids and carried many tourist buses. “That’s why we do a lot of development,” he said, pointing out plans to use electric tour buses on the pollution plateau.
Memphis
The roads, which will divide the plateau into three, will cross a segment of ancient Memphis, one of the largest and most influential cities in the world for nearly 3,000 years.
“I was surprised by what I saw,” said former SENIOR UNESCO official Said Zulficar, who visited the south road component two months ago. “All the paintings I made almost 25 years ago are now being questioned. “
Zulficar effectively led a crusade in the mid-1990s to suspend the structure of the northern road, a branch of Cairo’s first ring road. UNESCO said it had requested detailed data on the new plan and requested to send a follow-up mission.
The state press center forwarded a Reuters request for additional comments on the plans to a communications advisor from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, who could be contacted.
Construction began more than a year ago in desert spaces largely out of the public eye and has become more visual around March, Egyptologists and Google Earth images say.
During a recent visit, Reuters journalists saw heavy machinery cleaning fields and building bridges and junctions along the two roads. Hundreds of ripped date palms lay piled up.
The south road is a component of Cairo’s momentary ring road that will link the western satellite city of October 6 with the new capital east of Cairo, 16 km of desert on the pyramid plateau, farmland and a corner of Memphis.
In 2014, the World Bank estimated that congestion in the Greater Cairo region had reduced Egyptian production by about 3. 6 points.
‘The road crosses archaeologically unexplored cemeteries of the little-known XIII dynasty, a few steps from the pyramids of Pepi II and Khendjer and Mastabat el-Fara’un,’ said a local Egyptologist.
The user was one of six Egyptologists interviewed through Reuters, most of whom refused to be identified for fear of wasting permission to care for antiques.
One of them said that the hiding places of statues and blocks with hieroglyphics had been discovered since the road structure began; The Antiquities Authority said on his Facebook page that they were discovered on nearby personal property.
Menfis, which would have been founded around 3000 BC. when Egypt joined in a single country, it was eclipsed but not deserted when Alexander the Great moved the capital to Alexandria in 331. C.
It stretched along 6 kilometers, the largest ancient agreement in the Nile Valley.
The new road approaches the advertising districts of the ancient city, its walls and the old nilometer, used to measure the height of the annual flood, said David Jeffreys, a British Egyptologist who worked in Memphis for Egypt. Corporate exploration since 1981.
It also jeopardizes a Roman wall that once bordered the Nile and that few people knew, according to Jeffreys.
“Memphis has long been neglected, even through Egyptologists, because it’s a confusing search,” said some other Egyptologist, “but it’s incredibly rich, full of temples, archives, administrative buildings and commercial areas. “
(Edited through Aidan Lewis and Philippa Fletcher)
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