Fa_64_0120: Polish Excavations at Faras. 15 November, 1963. Official visit of Mr. Ali Vrioni –Director of the UNESCO Service for the Monuments of Nubia (first from the left). Professor Kazimierz Michałowski is showing him around the Faras Cathedral. Mr. Thabit Hassan Thabit, Commissioner for Archaeology of the Sudan, Dr Nigm ed-Din Mohammed Sheriff, Senior Inspector of Antiquities then Director of Nubian Office in Wadi Halfa, and Professor William Y. Adams, archaeologist, UNESCO expert in the Sudan are also present.
Co-operation of Poland with UNESCO seen by an archaeologist
It is a rare event in the 75-year history of UNESCO that a new discipline of scientific research has been created as a result of the activities of the organisation itself. But this is what has happened in Poland in the field of Mediterranean archaeology, thanks to UNESCO’s International Campaign for the Safeguarding of the Nubian Monuments in the 1960s. Its purpose was to save the monuments of Nubia from flooding by the waters of an artificial lake created as a result of the construction of the High Dam on the Nile near Aswan. As part of this international endeavour, UNESCO supervised the process of safeguarding pharaonic temples and coordinated the programme of excavation works. Poles were among the first to join this work. Our architects documented and prepared for re-location a number of temples in Egypt as early as 1960, and archaeologists, under the guidance of Professor Kazimierz Michałowski, who enjoyed international scientific authority, began excavations in Egypt (Dabod) and the Sudan (Faras). The latter, especially, brought a real revelation in the discovery of over 150 mural paintings in the Faras Cathedral. Their rescue and conservation, a pioneering endeavour in which UNESCO also contributed, led to the creation of two Nubian art galleries in the National Museums in Warsaw and Khartoum. As a consequence of the work at Faras, the foundations for further knowledge on the Christian period in Nubia (6th-14th centuries) were created, which resulted in the establishment of the International Society of Nubian Studies (ISNS) in Warsaw in 1972. The continuation of research conducted by Polish scientists in the Sudan led to the extraordinary development of a new field of study in Poland, namely, Nubiology. Since then, Poland has been recognised as one of the leading centres in this field. In summing up UNESCO’s activities in the International Campaign for the Safeguarding of the Nubian Monuments, it is impossible not to mention the relocation of the “flagship” site of the rescue operation, the rock temples of Ramesses II in Abu Simbel. On many issues in this most difficult technical task undertaken at that time advised Professor Kazimierz Michałowski – the chairman of the UNESCO Team of Experts in Archaeology and Landscape Architecture.
Text by Professor Stefan JAKOBIELSKI, historian and archaeologist, member of the team working in the Sudan under the guidance of Professor Kazimierz Michałowski in the 1960s
Andrzej Dziewanowski, courtesy of the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, PAS
