Unit 23 Rescuing the temple

扩展资料

THE HIGH DAM

　　The High Dam is one of the sites of Aswan to which tour visitors are inevitably taken, though apart from the elegant monument shaped like a symbolic lotus blossom erected to mark its completion, an impression of the physical size of the project, and a view of Lake Nasser, there is little to see. Yet the High Dam is of great interest. No other dam in the world has received such international coverage, nor been the subject of such debate since its completion. Political events the project set in motion resulted in the nationalization of the Suez Canal and the “tripartite aggression” against Egypt that followed. Later it became a subject of controversy in both the foreign and the Egyptian press when its advantages and disadvantages, both anticipated and unforeseen, were laid out.

　　Both directly and indirectly, the High Dam affects the Jives of millions of people. It necessitated the uprooting of 100, 000 Nubians from their ancestral land. It resulted in the largest archaeological salvage operation ever known: the UNESCO campaign to save the monuments of Nubia. It has caused unforeseen problems to thousands of historic buildings, Pharaonic, Coptic, and Islamic throughout the length of Egypt. And it has noticeably changed the environment in many ways. Building the High Dam, however, was but one effort to regulate the river's flow. To harness the Nile has ix-en a major preoccupation of the country's leaders since ancient times.

The High Dam Monument

　　An elegant monument, symbol of friendship between Egypt and the Soviet Union, was built to mark the completion of the flam. Its stylized shape represents a blossom rising from an artificial pond, symbolizing the primordial ocean from which life began.

　　Within the stein of the lotus is a visitor s pavilion, its concrete wails (the petals of the lotus) decorated in mosaic with themes that illustrate the benefits of the dam. It is a legend of progress and hope. To the west. facing the entrance, the first “petal” shows the palms of two hands outlined in muted color. This is a symbol of cooperation between the two countries. Above them, a fountain is depicted with the sprays of water flowing toward a verse of the Quran. Moving anti-clock wise to the second petal, there is a scene showing plants, reflecting the anticipated increase in agricultural land resulting from the stored water. This is followed, on the third petal, by a scene that shows the flow of water into a hydroelectric plant and toward an industrial area. The scenes include an Egyptian family, and illustrate sufficiency and progress. The fourth and fifth petals relate a legend of hope for the Nubian people, dispossessed of their homeland and resettled in Kom Ombo: the sun emerges from the horizon; it casts light on the rising generation; there are books and crafts, representing learning and Nubian identity.

THE TEMPLES OF ABU SIMBEL

　　The great temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel and the neighboring temple built to his beloved wife Nefertari are among the most imposing structures in the world. There are few monuments that have attained such renown. Yet ironically they remained relatively unknown to the world until threatened by inundation from the waters of the High Dam in the 1960s. The Great Temple was first discovered by Burck-hard in 1813. He found it by accident when, journeying along the high western bank of the Nile, he had reason to retrace his steps for a short distance and found himself looking down at a stone figure previously hidden by a fold in the sandstone cliff. Three years later Giovanni Belzoni went to Abu Simbel. All that was then visible was the single head of one of the four colossi. It projected above a drift of sand that filled the ravine separating the two temples. He took measurements of the face. On his second journey, in 1817, he excavated the temple sufficiently to gain access to the inner chambers. He was awed by what he saw, and described it in detail in his Narrative in 1820. But the continued build-up of sand could not be stopped, and soon the dune had obscured the monument again. Patient clearance was carried out by successive scholars such as Lepsius in 1842—1845, Mariette in 1869, and Barsanti in 1910. However, the sand continued to pile up. Even when Barsanti tried to divert it by building walls on the upper plateau the problem was solved only temporarily. Scholars and lay travelers to Abu Simbel who made the long and tedious journey to see the monuments never knew how much would be visible when they arrived.

　　Four colossal seated statues of the youthful Ramses II form the entrance to the temple. Each statue measures some twenty one meters from the soles of the feet to the tip of the double crown, and the pharaoh's legs rival in girth the great columns of the hypostyle hall at Karnak. Despite their magnitude, however, details of Ramses’ hand some face are finely chiseled: slightly aquiline nose, sensitive nostrils, and well-marked lips with indentations at each side. The inner chambers of the temple, hewn out of the living rock, penetrated sixty-one meters into the mountain. There, a small statue of Ramses II was seated in the company of the great gods, Amun-Re, Re-Harakhte, and Ptah.

　　When it was learned that Abu Simbel would be totally submerged once the new lake started to fill behind the dam in 1964, there was an outcry from scholars around the world. Egypt appealed for international help, and many rescue schemes were proposed. Eventually a bold plan was adopted to cut the two temples out of the solid rock and rebuild them directly above their original positions, but clear of the future high water level. This salvage and reconstruction sixty meters above the original site was a story that captured the world's imagination. Domestic flights, road links, and soon a Lake Nasser cruise, have brought it within easy reach of all and it now ranks with the pyramids of Giza and the temple of Karnak as one of the great sites of Egypt.

　　Yet a traveler would be ill-equipped to appreciate the monuments without first knowing something about the pharaoh who built them.

SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

古代世界的七大奇迹

　　Two hundred years before Christ, a man named Antipater wrote a travel guide. He wanted to make sure travelers didn’t miss some great attractions. He listed seven man-made “wonders” he felt were well worth seeing. Since he lived near Greece, his wonders were mostly in that region.

　　The first was the Haanging Gardens of Babylon. Here, King Nebuchadnezzar II had built huge terrace gardens of rare trees and flowers to please one of his wives. The next was a 100-foot-high bronze statue of the god Apollo. It was called the Colossus of Rhodes. The third wonder of the world was the huge tomb of Mausolus. It was topped by a life-size stone chariot and horses. Next was a gigantic marble statue of Zeus, covered with ivory and gold. The temple to the goddess Diana was the fifth wonder. The pyramids of Egypt, and the lighthouse at Alexandria were the last two.

　　Today, of these seven wondrous achievements, only the pyramids are left. War, earthquakes and vandalism have destroyed the rest.