Libya: Ruination of the ruins
By Iason Athanasiadis | Correspondent 06.23.09
• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
AL KHUMS, LIBYA – Libya has some of the world’s most extraordinary Roman antiquities, yet negligence and understaffed antiquities boards have resulted in ancient cities choked with rubbish and plagued by looting.
“The museums are in wretched shape,” said Donald White, an archaeologist who has excavated in Libya’s Cyrenaica region since the 1960s. “The sites need lots of remedial work to get them up and running.”
When Mr. White last visited a site, he came across a local man smoking a cigarette with one hand and hacking a marble head off with the other. Bystanders were unruffled by White’s outrage. They informed him that the man was a regular who maintained parallel amateur excavations on several holes around the site.
“All the statues we had excavated from the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone were on the field unguarded, being looted regularly, or in poorly secured storerooms,” another archaeologist added.
Deep in the Sahara, the prehistoric rock carvings of Wadi Metkhandoush are under threat by the vibrations pulsing out from nearby oil drilling. That is when entrepreneurial locals are not removing them haphazardly to sell them to tourists.
Stolen treasures are spirited across the Egyptian border to Cairo or across the Mediterranean in small boats used to ferry Africans illegally to Italy.
Once in Europe, they find their way to the secretive chain of luxury dealers and high-end auction houses stretching from Basel to London and New York. Dealers forge source documents and sell them to museums and private collectors.
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2. Pete Myers | 06.23.09
As a fine arts photographer, photographing the American West, I can comment that Libya is not the only country that is neglecting their historical ruins—a vital story of its history. We are not doing such a good job ourselves. Historic barns are taken down for the vintage lumber. Brick buildings taken apart for the bricks. Historic adobe structures left to melt away into the ground for lack of upkeep.
Here in New Mexico, we have 23 indian tribes within the state. Most do not allow photography on their sovereign territories. A great number of amazing structures are simply crumbling into ruins without so much as a photo document of their passage.
And there are numerous private land holders out west that hold great acreage, with ruins galore upon them. They too are unwilling to have “their” ruins photographed to preserve the history of these lands. Many of these properties having “No Trespassing for Any Reason Whatsoever” signs prominently displayed.
I remember trying to gain access to a historical hotel in Hawaii to photograph it before its demolition. Elvis had made one of his films there. The owners wrote me and told me that “there would be no more discussion of it” and the hotel would be demolished without any documentation.
There are states that have required property owners to destroy any historical buildings on farm lands, else the owners would be taxed for a “dwelling”, instead of as dedicated farm land. These states simply have all their old historical farm buildings gone, destroyed—all because of some bean counter in the state tax office.
Our ruins may be only fifty to a hundred and fifty years old, but we don’t seem to care much about them either.
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1. Julie Orser Odermatt | 06.23.09
What an outrage! I was blessed enough to grow up in Libya
and visit these incredible ruins… What a shame the Libyan’s can not secure these wonderful ruins of Leptis
and Sabratha…