Featured Conservation Projects
The American Research Center in Egypt is committed to helping Egypt preserve its rich cultural heritage for the benefit of future generations worldwide. In collaboration with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, and with funding from the United States Agency of International Development (USAID), ARCE works to preserve the country’s antiquities through documentation, conservation, training, and publication. The scope of our work has included more than 100 major conservation projects throughout Egypt that span the entire range of the country's rich cultural history, from prehistory to the late Ottoman period, including masterpieces of pharaonic, Graeco-Roman, Coptic, Jewish, and Islamic art and architecture. A selection of current conservation projects is featured below.
The Karnak and Luxor temple complexes on the East Bank of the Nile at Luxor are, without a doubt, iconic symbols of ancient Egypt. Yet, rising ground water has, until recently, been slowly destroying these sites. In 2006, USAID (United States Agency for International Development) funded a groundwater lowering project at the two temple complexes. Now, with a new multi-million dollar USAID grant add-on to the Egyptian Antiquities Conservation Program (EAC), ARCE has begun an essential monitoring and conservation project at the two temple complexes.
The church of Saints Bishai and Bigol, the ‘Red Monastery,’ was the heart of a large monastic community, in a region known as an important center for ascetic life in the 5th century, A.D. It is an astonishingly rare example of the coloristic intensity of late antique monuments in Egypt. In this church, late antique paintings cover about eighty percent of the walls, niches, columns, pilasters, pediments and apses. ARCE has administered the first major campaign of conservation, art historical study, and publication of the Red Monastery church sanctuary. The project is directed by Dr. Elizabeth Bolman of Temple University.
Khonsu Temple is a beautiful example of an almost complete New Kingdom temple and is well worth exploring. But, due to its location--somewhat off the beaten track at Karnak--it is rarely visited by tourists.
The Supreme Council of Antiquities has asked ARCE to prepare the Khonsu Temple for easier and safer access to tour groups, and now ARCE is leading four distinct projects in and around the area.
