Antiquities authority drops proposal for Menkaure pyramid after review prompted by international outcry
  • @PhlubbaDubba@lemm.eeEnglish
    10•5 months ago

    I’m not sure I understand what the issue was, it’s not like they were planning to demolish the thing

    • Icalasari
      22•5 months ago

      Need to leave sites as close to as they were as possible, else clues about the past could be accidentally destroyed, especially clues that we do not have the technology to analyze yet

      • Primarily0617
        32•5 months ago

        historical conservation isn’t really this cut and dry

        sometimes it’s better to restore things, or to do work to prevent them degrading further

        • Icalasari
          11•5 months ago

          True, but that still revolves around leaving it aa close as possible to how they were - preservation sometimes requiring active work to keep clues around

          For the pyramids, the rate of exterior decay is probably deemed far less destructive than the need to use cement to restore the granite

          • Primarily0617
            9•5 months ago

            but when is the exact point of “how they were” when 4000 years of erosion has already taken place?

            • FaceDeer
              13•5 months ago

              I guess people want them to be fashionably ruined.

              Frankly, I think re-cladding the pyramids would be great for keeping clues around, provided they don’t touch the existing stones while putting new ones on. That’ll stop erosion from digging deeper into the existing structure.

              • Icalasari
                3•5 months ago

                Ye, I’d say the cement is the real issue there. If they could just place the granite blocks and not use cement, then that would work

                • @ButtDrugs@lemm.eeEnglish
                  2•5 months ago

                  They could mold each block, cast concrete into the mold, and use that as the base for the stones.

      • @lolcatnip@reddthat.comEnglish
        7•5 months ago

        It makes me wonder where the cutoff is for maintaining old things. Obviously pyramids fall on the “leave it alone” side because they’re about the oldest buildings in existence, but I wonder about, say, Renaissance-era buildings.

        • FaceDeer
          18•5 months ago

          I’ve seen the occasional controversy about restoring medieval castles. This one comes to mind as a particularly unusual and controversial case - the remains of the original castle were so badly degraded that there wasn’t really much left, so the restorers built obviously modern-looking walls that had the original castle’s fragments embedded in them held up in the correct places and shapes. Sort of like a reconstructed dinosaur skeleton where a bunch of the bones were missing.

          Putting the original limestone cladding back on the pyramids would be interesting, it would probably “look fake” because the original pyramid cladding was extremely smooth and clean much like a modern concrete structure would appear. People don’t expect it to look that way. Sort of like how a lot of the old marble statues and architecture from ancient Greece and Rome used to be brightly painted, but those wore off and now everyone thinks of pure white stone when they imagine what an ancient sculpture from there is supposed to look like.

          Edit: In violation of the norms of social media, I read the article. The plan with the pyramid wasn’t even as drastic as I thought, apparently for the pyramid that they were considering doing this to the original cladding is still available. It’s just fallen off and is lying around the pyramid’s base.