Death by Drowning

Just as it has for 3,000 years, the miracle of Abu Simbel occurs at break of day. As the sun rises beyond the banks of the Nile, its rays flash like quicksilver into the narrow doorway of the Great Temple, penetrate 180 ft. through halls and passageways dug from the living rock, and burst in splendor in the innermost sanctuary upon the enthroned figures of Egypt's ancient gods. Archaeologist Arthur Weigall pointed out that the temple was cunningly designed for this effect, and he speaks reverently of the hushed moment "when the sun passes above the hills, and the dim halls are suddenly transformed into a brilliantly lighted temple."

Yet Abu Simbel, which has defied man, time and the desert sands for three millenniums, may soon be drowned by the backed-up waters of the Nile, and its sandstone glories dissolved to nothingness. With it will die the four 65-ft. guardian statues of Ramses II, who built the temple in his honor around 1250 B.C. On one of these seated colossi appears what may be the first "Kilroy was here" message in military history. About 600 B.C., two Greek mercenaries serving in the Egyptian army arrived at the temple and scratched on Ramses' leg an account of their travels upriver as "companions of Psammetichus." Like any other G.I.s, they signed their names as well: for the record, they were Archon and Pelekos.

Underwater Temples. Not only the Great and the Small Temples at Abu Simbel, but a hundred other partially excavated sites in Nubia and the Sudan--temples, forts, chapels, churches, mosques, tombs, prehistoric wall drawings--will be submerged in the 300-mile-long Nubian lake to be created by the building of the High Dam at Aswan. Rivaling Abu Simbel in historical value is the Greco-Roman temple on Philae Island, gradually built un over earlier ruins beginning in the 3rd century B.C. Philae is already flooded five months of the year by the existing dam at Aswan, and when the first stage of the new High Dam is completed upstream by Soviet engineers and Egyptian workmen in 1965, the island and its temple may vanish beneath a second lake created between the two dams.

To save the endangered monuments, Egypt's Minister of Culture, Sarwat Okasha, appealed to the world's universities and foundations. Getting little response, Minister Okasha turned to UNESCO for assistance because the cost of preserving the treasures would be "exceptionally great." How great, the world discovered this week from the report of a UNESCO investigating mission, headed by U.S. Archaeologist Dr. John Otis Brew. Abu Simbel and Philae, says the UNESCO report, can be safeguarded by a system of dikes, levees and protective dams at a cost of $64 million. If any more of the 15 major temples and historic sites located in the area to be flooded are also to be preserved, experts estimate that the cost might run as high as $100 million.

Bigger Bargains. Egypt, which needs the High Dam at Aswan to help raise the appallingly low standard of living of its people, belatedly hopes to save at least some of its treasure house of antiquities along the Nubian Nile. As a result, it is playing down its habitual nationalist antagonism toward foreign archaeologists. Instead of permitting foreign diggers to take away only a limited amount of their finds, Culture Minister Okasha offers participating governments one-half of all objects unearthed in any new excavations they make in the lands to be flooded.* Further, he promises to give other ancient monuments, not yet designated, to governments providing the most technical and financial assistance.

Can the money be found? Even a UNESCO spokesman seemed dubious because, as he put it, the only recompense would be "a few priceless treasures of history, perhaps not enough to attract the necessary funds."

* One technique for dividing archaeological spoils is fairly ingenious: the visiting digger separates his finds into two piles, and then the representative of the host government chooses whichever of the two piles he wants.

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