World Heritage site
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World Heritage site, any of various areas or objects inscribed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List. The sites are designated as having “outstanding universal value” under the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. This document was adopted by UNESCO in 1972 and formally took effect in 1975 after having been ratified by 20 countries. It provides a framework for international cooperation in preserving and protecting cultural treasures and natural areas throughout the world.
Designating World Heritage sites
There are three types of sites: cultural, natural, and mixed. Cultural heritage sites include hundreds of historic buildings and town sites, important archaeological sites, and works of monumental sculpture or painting. Natural heritage sites are restricted to those natural areas that (1) furnish outstanding examples of Earth’s record of life or its geologic processes, (2) provide excellent examples of ongoing ecological and biological evolutionary processes, (3) contain natural phenomena that are rare, unique, superlative, or of outstanding beauty, or (4) furnish habitats for rare or endangered animals or plants or are sites of exceptional biodiversity. Mixed heritage sites contain elements of both natural and cultural significance. The ratio of cultural to natural sites on the World Heritage List is roughly 3 to 1. Several new sites are added to the list at the middle of each year (until 2002, sites were added in December).
Origins of the World Heritage Convention
The primary impetus for the adoption of the World Heritage Convention was the construction of the Aswan High Dam. In 1959 the governments of the United Arab Republic (U.A.R.; now Egypt and Syria) and Sudan turned to UNESCO for help in salvaging the ancient sites and monuments of Egyptian Nubia. The sites were threatened with destruction by the great lake which would build up behind the new dam at Aswān. UNESCO responded with an appeal to the international community for assistance, and the result was the largest archaeological rescue operation in history.
The Nubian preservation campaign
Aerial archaeological surveys were carried out by UNESCO in collaboration with the governments of the U.A.R. and Sudan in 1960. The UNESCO mission in Sudan, while assisting the national expeditions in providing survey data and a photographic laboratory at Wādī Ḥalfā, made ground surveys of the many islands of the Second Cataract and of sections of the east and west banks of the Nile River. In addition, the mission recorded and excavated a considerable number of sites. An Old Kingdom town was discovered at Buhen, providing evidence of a much earlier Egyptian penetration of Kush than was previously believed. The town was preserved and relocated. A chain of Middle Kingdom mud brick fortresses near the Second Cataract received well-merited attention but could not be salvaged, because of the nature of their construction. Expeditions uncovered rich remains of Nubian A Group and C Group people, in the shape of cemeteries and even houses, and much was added to the knowledge of these historically significant cultures. Explorations at Qaṣr Ibrīm yielded a splendid array of bronze vessels, glassware, ornaments, and iron weapons, as well as large numbers of early manuscripts in Old Nubian, Coptic, and Arabic. A spectacular find was made in the great basilica hidden beneath the mound at Faras West (Pachoras) where excavators removed and restored over 100 remarkable frescoes.
While these efforts represented a remarkable international undertaking, the preservation and relocation of the temples of Nubia posed a challenge of a much greater magnitude. UNESCO’s Executive Committee of the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia undertook a massive fund-raising effort, and so generous was the world’s response that virtually all the significant temples and shrines of Nubia were preserved. The salvaging of the two rock-cut temples, of Ramses II and Queen Nefertari, at Abu Simbel, posed unprecedented problems. The plan—to remove the overlying sandstone, dissect the temples in the interior of the cliff, and reassemble them on a prepared site on the plateau above—was successfully carried out by late 1967. Covering the temples were concrete domes which in turn would be buried under artificial hills that would reproduce as far as possible the landscape of the original setting.
Fifteen other temples were salvaged in Egyptian Nubia, including the large Egypto-Roman temple of Kalabsha, which now stands some 30 miles (50 km) from the place of its foundation. All three 18th-dynasty temples of Sudanese Nubia—Semna East, Semna West, and Buhen—were re-erected on the grounds of the new archaeological museum in Khartoum. The removal of Hatshepsut’s temple at Buhen exposed, for the first time in 3,500 years, the foundations of the original Middle Kingdom temple beneath. A group of Ptolemaic-Roman temples on the island of Philae, downstream of the high dam, were relocated to the nearby island of Agilkia in the 1970s.