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4. Recovery operations at the national museum of beirut
Muscum
Mmugumm~
Pergamon
und Curarorship, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 173-179, 1997 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Grrat Britain 0260.4779197 $17.00 + 0.00
P11:S0260-4779(970002&9
4. Recovery Beirut
Operations
at the National
Museum
of
ISABELLESKAF Introduction Built in the 193Os, the Beirut National Museum houses archaeological finds excavated on Lebanese territory, but it closed its doors in 1975 because of its location on the so-called ‘green line’ which divided the city between its warring sides. Needless to say, such a strategic location subjected the museum and its collection to a great deal of damage, and protective measures were taken only after the building had been broken into by soldiers who proceeded to vandalize some of the objects. When the galleries were subsequently transformed into military barracks and bunkers, the larger objects, too heavy to be removed, had to be hastily shielded with concrete caissons built around them. Smaller pieces made of pottery, stone, glass or metal which were exhibited in the display caseswere literally smuggled down to the basement, in which they remained sealed for the following fifteen years. The Director of Antiquities at the time, Emir Maurice ChChab, announced that the collection had been moved to another store. This was not in fact the case. Ironically, a few of the objects which had actually been moved for safekeeping north of Beirut were stolen during the war. Some of these re-surfaced a few years later on the antiquities market in Europe and were recovered for Lebanon. Rehabilitation
of Museum Facilities
With the end of the civil war in 1991, the process of restoring the National Museum and recovering its collection slowly began. The first priority was to rehabilitate the offices of the General Directorate of Antiquities and the conservation laboratory. The British Embassy in Lebanon graciously sponsored the visit of three consultants who helped us plan and design the new laboratory according to our needs. Construction work and the purchase of equipment were made possible thanks to the Lebanese British Friends of the National Museum who raised funds among the Lebanese community in the United Kingdom. Two rooms adjacent to the laboratory were also refitted for storage purposes, along with a vault and a photography room. In order to ensure a constant power supply where the public supply is liable to frequent interruptions, the museum had to purchase a generator. An agreement between the Lebanese government and UNESCO provided the necessary funding for hiring experienced non-Lebanese conservators who could work on the objects and help with the training of Lebanese volunteers working in the laboratory. As of September 1996 we have employed four conservators.
174
War and the Conservator
Although the new conservation laboratory has been in operation for the past three years, the staff could not have access to the collections so long as the museum building was not secured. During this time we have had to contend instead with a number of other imperatives, including rescue excavations in Beirut and the preparation of displays. Archaeological excavations in the centre of Beirut started in autumn 1993 in advance of the major re-development of the Central Business District. Now, after three years of fieldwork, 48 field operations have been completed or are ongoing and almost 40,000 m2 have been excavated. The conservation laboratory of the museum has had to deal with some of the objects brought from these newly excavated sites in downtown Beirut. These include those very fragile finds that need immediate treatment and consolidation, and all the metal objects received from the excavation teams are now stored with silica gel in adequate environmental conditions. As noted above, the conservation staff’s tasks have included preparing objects for exhibition purposes in Beirut. Some of these objects were also put on display in a travelling exhibition at the British Museum in London and at the Ins&t du Monde Arabe in Paris. However, the ongoing recovery of the museum’s historic collection began in earnest in 1995 after the restoration of the museum building’s facades had been completed. This has involved both the heavy objects left protected in situ in the galleries, and the many movable objects put into storage there. Recovery of Heavy Objects Left ‘in Situ’ One of the worst damaged pieces was the mosaic of The Good Shepherd since a hole of about 50 cm in diameter had been bored through the mosaic and the gallery wall on which it was mounted, to be used for sniping purposes. The floor mosaics also represent a major problem for which there is no immediate solution. Their surface area is approximately 10 m* each and they limit visitor circulation in two of the museum’s main galleries, but they are backed with a concrete support which is embedded directly into the floor. Lifting them may prove very difficult becauseof their size and weight. There are also traces of salt efflorescence on the surface of the mosaic of The Wise Men, caused by the very high humidity levels in the basement immediately below. The first step towards rehabilitating the exhibit areas was the dismantling of the concrete caissonsin the main galleries. The process of removing the concrete consisted first in lifting the lid section, protecting the object inside and then pushing away the four faces. We found that certain pieces had been defaced by graffiti, whereas others were partially burnt. The Colossusfrom Byblos was not only burnt but mutilated as well (Figure I). Other pieces bear the traces of bullet impacts. Furthermore, we found concrete splasheson most of the sarcophagi although boards of masonite had originally been placed between each object and the concrete for protection. Sand bags had also been used to protect the objects, but the head of a reclining figure on one of the sarcophagi had broken under the weight of the sand. It can be safely said, however, that the concrete caissons served their protective purpose rather well considering the amount of damage that the building itself had incurred. We are now also faced with old repairs that have aged badly. Old adhesives have become opaque and discoloured while the iron rods used to join pieces together have rusted and expanded, thus staining and damaging the stone in some areas.
ISABELLE
SKAF
175
1. The Colossus from Byblos recently released from its concrete caisson in the National Museum of Beirut has been revealed to have been burnt and mutilated while the building served as a military strong-point during the Lebanese Civil War.
As a result, Electricite de France sponsored the visit of technicians from the French company, Laserblast, who gave us the opportunity to test a laser cleaning -unit on certain stone objects. These tests were very satisfactory, especially on burnt stone and for removing old varnishes from stone and mosaics, but we have only been able to remove surface dirt from the large objects with brushes, putty erasers and vacuum and steam cleaners. Consequently we are currently trying, with the help of private funding, to rent a laser unit for a short period in order to start cleaning the larger pieces in the museum’s central hall. The visit of a conservator from the British Museum stone conservation laboratory helped us evaluate further the condition of our stone and mosaic collection as well as its conservation needs. Recovery of the Museum’s Bulk Collections The first small objects of the collection we recovered had been stored in the administration building on a floor that was burnt during the war by incendiary bullets. Some objects were very damaged as they had been wrapped and stored in cotton wool and newspaper. In some places, temperatures had been high enough to fuse glassand metal pieces together. Most of the pieces had come from the sites
War and the Conservator
176
of Kharayeb and Khaldi on the south coast of Beirut. The recovered metal objects were brushed and then stored at low humidity levels, while about 900 terracotta votive heads and statuettes were numbered and cleaned, and some of them consolidated. However, the bulk of the collection had been placed in the museum basement which was finally opened in February 1996. We found relative humidity readings there to be around 98%, though they subsequently decreased gradually and stabilized at a level between 85 and 90%. In the first room we opened (Room l), we found the objects of the collection that had been on display in the museum on the mezzanine floor. They had been stored in wooden boxes on wooden shelves which had substantially deteriorated, some having collapsed under their own weight. Terracotta, glass and metal objects were very dirty and mouldy, yet otherwise seemed to be in relatively good condition. Some of the pieces still had their original numbers marked in ink directly onto them. Paper labels were very deteriorated and often illegible. Late 19th century swords, sabres and guns made of wood and iron have suffered the most from the high levels of humidity. Before emptying the room, we removed a few glass objects and air-dried them in the laboratory. Having obtained good results, we decided to empty out the room gradually by placing the objects for three days in an intermediate area at 75% RH and spraying insecticide around them. The objects were then placed in a storage room adjacent to the laboratory at 60% RH while awaiting conservation. All pieces were then examined, dry brushed and cleaned with alcohol. Some were consolidated before being inventoried. We obviously had to establish conservation priorities in view of the enormous amount of material we were recovering. In collaboration with the curator, we decided to treat in the following order: (1) the very fragile objects, mainly of glass; (2) the important objects of the collection which have appeared in the published museum catalogue or in other publications; and (3) the objects which still retained their inventory or accession numbers so as to provide an indication of provenance or site. Metal objects were systematically stored in polyurethane boxes with silica gel in a room with the relative humidity monitored at 45% RH. The next room (Room 2) we opened revealed twenty-seven anthropoid sarcophagi from Sidon. They had remained in their original display area during the war and were undamaged (Figure 2), while another room (Room 3) contained small bronze objects as well as glass beads and pottery placed on the floor in what must once have been wooden or cardboard boxes. Again, we removed the objects gradually and placed them in intermediate environments for slow equilibration.
Recovery
of Collections
From Flooded Basements
At present (Spring 1997) we are faced with yet another problem in the areas (Rooms 5 and 6) that are currently being emptied out. The level of the water-table underneath the museum is from time to time higher than the basement floor, resulting in the flooding of these rooms (Figure 3). This is an old problem which the museum has always faced and which had been partially solved in the past by raising sections of the basement floor. The floors of the flooded rooms in which
ISABELLESKAF
we are now working had not been raised and show high water marks about a metre above floor-level. In these rooms, the water level at the time the photographs were taken stood at about 12 cm. Silt and mud brought about by rising waters have been deposited all over the shelves and the objects. Samples of water were analyzed and revealed clean water with a conductivity higher than normal, which may suggest a subterranean origin. According to hydrogeology specialists, the source of the museum’s flooding problem could be a high water-table possibly enhanced by poor carface drainage and infiltration of excess irrigation from the Hippodrome race-course to the west of the museum. When we started emptying out the pottery from these rooms, we found it difficult to seesmall objects because of a silt layer covering them in the water (Figure 4). More terracotta heads from the Kharayeb site, a few glass objects, and bone and glass beads by the hundred have been recovered. The glass beads and bone are currently being dried out in ethanol baths and we have set up a desalination area for the pottery. Because of the severely limited means at our disposal (three trained conservators, two volunteers in the conservation laboratory and a small budget), the process of recovering the collection is very slow and, needlessto say, a colossal task remains to be undertaken. More reserve stores have yet to be opened and these will no doubt yield more problems. We are currently looking for ways to raise funds in order to hire qualified staff and purchase more equipment such as an X-ray machine.
War and the Conservator
3. Interior of Room 5/6 in the basement of the National Museum of Beirut which was repeatedly flooded by rising groundwater during the yearsof the LebaneseCivil War.
Evaluating
the Damage to the Collections
The original decision to place the objects in the basement was taken as a temporary precaution in anticipation of the war ending soon afterwards. The temporary storage subsequently became permanent and no other protective measures could possibly be taken. Surprisingly enough, and fortunately, the large portion of the collection already recovered has survived its harsh environmental storage conditions. One reason for this might be the absence of climate control in the museum before it was closed in 1975. As result, the objects could have been already acclimatized to high RH levels, considering that ambient relative humidity in Beirut fluctuates greatly and often reaches 85% in the summer. Furthermore, the environment in which the objects remained for fifteen years was relatively stable, albeit aggressive.
Conclusion The most positive aspect of the Recovery Project at the Beirut National Museum has been the close cooperation between the newly appointed archaeologists at the Directorate-General of Antiquities and the conservation laboratory staff. The process of cleaning, recording and storing is being undertaken by the archaeologists under the direct supervision of the conservators. Close and efficient team work has enabled us to carry the project through successfully, up to this point, in spite of severe difficulties. So far, we have inventoried 13,000 recovered objects,
ISABELLE
SKAF
179
4. Detail of piled up ceramics in Room 5/6 of the basement of the National Museum of Beirut after the collapse of storage shelves and the rotting away of storage boxes and packaging owing to flooding. The water and silt conceals large numbers of beads and other small items.
of which only a small number is being treated. We are, however, doing our best to ensure adequate storage conditions until we can carry out proper conservation of all the recovered objects. Acknowledgements Many thanks are due to Jim Black for his constant and invaluable assistance, to The British Lebanese Friends of the National Museum for their tireless fundraising activities to the benefit of the conservation laboratory, to Michael Halliwell, Franca Cole, Janet Berry, Graham Langford, Badr Jabbour-Gideon and my colleagues at the Beirut National Museum who have contributed greatly to the success of the project, to Fares el Dahdah for his comments and translation, and to Nicholas Stanley-Price for the opportunity to present and publish this paper.
Mmugumm~
Pergamon
und Curarorship, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 173-179, 1997 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Grrat Britain 0260.4779197 $17.00 + 0.00
P11:S0260-4779(970002&9
4. Recovery Beirut
Operations
at the National
Museum
of
ISABELLESKAF Introduction Built in the 193Os, the Beirut National Museum houses archaeological finds excavated on Lebanese territory, but it closed its doors in 1975 because of its location on the so-called ‘green line’ which divided the city between its warring sides. Needless to say, such a strategic location subjected the museum and its collection to a great deal of damage, and protective measures were taken only after the building had been broken into by soldiers who proceeded to vandalize some of the objects. When the galleries were subsequently transformed into military barracks and bunkers, the larger objects, too heavy to be removed, had to be hastily shielded with concrete caissons built around them. Smaller pieces made of pottery, stone, glass or metal which were exhibited in the display caseswere literally smuggled down to the basement, in which they remained sealed for the following fifteen years. The Director of Antiquities at the time, Emir Maurice ChChab, announced that the collection had been moved to another store. This was not in fact the case. Ironically, a few of the objects which had actually been moved for safekeeping north of Beirut were stolen during the war. Some of these re-surfaced a few years later on the antiquities market in Europe and were recovered for Lebanon. Rehabilitation
of Museum Facilities
With the end of the civil war in 1991, the process of restoring the National Museum and recovering its collection slowly began. The first priority was to rehabilitate the offices of the General Directorate of Antiquities and the conservation laboratory. The British Embassy in Lebanon graciously sponsored the visit of three consultants who helped us plan and design the new laboratory according to our needs. Construction work and the purchase of equipment were made possible thanks to the Lebanese British Friends of the National Museum who raised funds among the Lebanese community in the United Kingdom. Two rooms adjacent to the laboratory were also refitted for storage purposes, along with a vault and a photography room. In order to ensure a constant power supply where the public supply is liable to frequent interruptions, the museum had to purchase a generator. An agreement between the Lebanese government and UNESCO provided the necessary funding for hiring experienced non-Lebanese conservators who could work on the objects and help with the training of Lebanese volunteers working in the laboratory. As of September 1996 we have employed four conservators.
174
War and the Conservator
Although the new conservation laboratory has been in operation for the past three years, the staff could not have access to the collections so long as the museum building was not secured. During this time we have had to contend instead with a number of other imperatives, including rescue excavations in Beirut and the preparation of displays. Archaeological excavations in the centre of Beirut started in autumn 1993 in advance of the major re-development of the Central Business District. Now, after three years of fieldwork, 48 field operations have been completed or are ongoing and almost 40,000 m2 have been excavated. The conservation laboratory of the museum has had to deal with some of the objects brought from these newly excavated sites in downtown Beirut. These include those very fragile finds that need immediate treatment and consolidation, and all the metal objects received from the excavation teams are now stored with silica gel in adequate environmental conditions. As noted above, the conservation staff’s tasks have included preparing objects for exhibition purposes in Beirut. Some of these objects were also put on display in a travelling exhibition at the British Museum in London and at the Ins&t du Monde Arabe in Paris. However, the ongoing recovery of the museum’s historic collection began in earnest in 1995 after the restoration of the museum building’s facades had been completed. This has involved both the heavy objects left protected in situ in the galleries, and the many movable objects put into storage there. Recovery of Heavy Objects Left ‘in Situ’ One of the worst damaged pieces was the mosaic of The Good Shepherd since a hole of about 50 cm in diameter had been bored through the mosaic and the gallery wall on which it was mounted, to be used for sniping purposes. The floor mosaics also represent a major problem for which there is no immediate solution. Their surface area is approximately 10 m* each and they limit visitor circulation in two of the museum’s main galleries, but they are backed with a concrete support which is embedded directly into the floor. Lifting them may prove very difficult becauseof their size and weight. There are also traces of salt efflorescence on the surface of the mosaic of The Wise Men, caused by the very high humidity levels in the basement immediately below. The first step towards rehabilitating the exhibit areas was the dismantling of the concrete caissonsin the main galleries. The process of removing the concrete consisted first in lifting the lid section, protecting the object inside and then pushing away the four faces. We found that certain pieces had been defaced by graffiti, whereas others were partially burnt. The Colossusfrom Byblos was not only burnt but mutilated as well (Figure I). Other pieces bear the traces of bullet impacts. Furthermore, we found concrete splasheson most of the sarcophagi although boards of masonite had originally been placed between each object and the concrete for protection. Sand bags had also been used to protect the objects, but the head of a reclining figure on one of the sarcophagi had broken under the weight of the sand. It can be safely said, however, that the concrete caissons served their protective purpose rather well considering the amount of damage that the building itself had incurred. We are now also faced with old repairs that have aged badly. Old adhesives have become opaque and discoloured while the iron rods used to join pieces together have rusted and expanded, thus staining and damaging the stone in some areas.
ISABELLE
SKAF
175
1. The Colossus from Byblos recently released from its concrete caisson in the National Museum of Beirut has been revealed to have been burnt and mutilated while the building served as a military strong-point during the Lebanese Civil War.
As a result, Electricite de France sponsored the visit of technicians from the French company, Laserblast, who gave us the opportunity to test a laser cleaning -unit on certain stone objects. These tests were very satisfactory, especially on burnt stone and for removing old varnishes from stone and mosaics, but we have only been able to remove surface dirt from the large objects with brushes, putty erasers and vacuum and steam cleaners. Consequently we are currently trying, with the help of private funding, to rent a laser unit for a short period in order to start cleaning the larger pieces in the museum’s central hall. The visit of a conservator from the British Museum stone conservation laboratory helped us evaluate further the condition of our stone and mosaic collection as well as its conservation needs. Recovery of the Museum’s Bulk Collections The first small objects of the collection we recovered had been stored in the administration building on a floor that was burnt during the war by incendiary bullets. Some objects were very damaged as they had been wrapped and stored in cotton wool and newspaper. In some places, temperatures had been high enough to fuse glassand metal pieces together. Most of the pieces had come from the sites
War and the Conservator
176
of Kharayeb and Khaldi on the south coast of Beirut. The recovered metal objects were brushed and then stored at low humidity levels, while about 900 terracotta votive heads and statuettes were numbered and cleaned, and some of them consolidated. However, the bulk of the collection had been placed in the museum basement which was finally opened in February 1996. We found relative humidity readings there to be around 98%, though they subsequently decreased gradually and stabilized at a level between 85 and 90%. In the first room we opened (Room l), we found the objects of the collection that had been on display in the museum on the mezzanine floor. They had been stored in wooden boxes on wooden shelves which had substantially deteriorated, some having collapsed under their own weight. Terracotta, glass and metal objects were very dirty and mouldy, yet otherwise seemed to be in relatively good condition. Some of the pieces still had their original numbers marked in ink directly onto them. Paper labels were very deteriorated and often illegible. Late 19th century swords, sabres and guns made of wood and iron have suffered the most from the high levels of humidity. Before emptying the room, we removed a few glass objects and air-dried them in the laboratory. Having obtained good results, we decided to empty out the room gradually by placing the objects for three days in an intermediate area at 75% RH and spraying insecticide around them. The objects were then placed in a storage room adjacent to the laboratory at 60% RH while awaiting conservation. All pieces were then examined, dry brushed and cleaned with alcohol. Some were consolidated before being inventoried. We obviously had to establish conservation priorities in view of the enormous amount of material we were recovering. In collaboration with the curator, we decided to treat in the following order: (1) the very fragile objects, mainly of glass; (2) the important objects of the collection which have appeared in the published museum catalogue or in other publications; and (3) the objects which still retained their inventory or accession numbers so as to provide an indication of provenance or site. Metal objects were systematically stored in polyurethane boxes with silica gel in a room with the relative humidity monitored at 45% RH. The next room (Room 2) we opened revealed twenty-seven anthropoid sarcophagi from Sidon. They had remained in their original display area during the war and were undamaged (Figure 2), while another room (Room 3) contained small bronze objects as well as glass beads and pottery placed on the floor in what must once have been wooden or cardboard boxes. Again, we removed the objects gradually and placed them in intermediate environments for slow equilibration.
Recovery
of Collections
From Flooded Basements
At present (Spring 1997) we are faced with yet another problem in the areas (Rooms 5 and 6) that are currently being emptied out. The level of the water-table underneath the museum is from time to time higher than the basement floor, resulting in the flooding of these rooms (Figure 3). This is an old problem which the museum has always faced and which had been partially solved in the past by raising sections of the basement floor. The floors of the flooded rooms in which
ISABELLESKAF
we are now working had not been raised and show high water marks about a metre above floor-level. In these rooms, the water level at the time the photographs were taken stood at about 12 cm. Silt and mud brought about by rising waters have been deposited all over the shelves and the objects. Samples of water were analyzed and revealed clean water with a conductivity higher than normal, which may suggest a subterranean origin. According to hydrogeology specialists, the source of the museum’s flooding problem could be a high water-table possibly enhanced by poor carface drainage and infiltration of excess irrigation from the Hippodrome race-course to the west of the museum. When we started emptying out the pottery from these rooms, we found it difficult to seesmall objects because of a silt layer covering them in the water (Figure 4). More terracotta heads from the Kharayeb site, a few glass objects, and bone and glass beads by the hundred have been recovered. The glass beads and bone are currently being dried out in ethanol baths and we have set up a desalination area for the pottery. Because of the severely limited means at our disposal (three trained conservators, two volunteers in the conservation laboratory and a small budget), the process of recovering the collection is very slow and, needlessto say, a colossal task remains to be undertaken. More reserve stores have yet to be opened and these will no doubt yield more problems. We are currently looking for ways to raise funds in order to hire qualified staff and purchase more equipment such as an X-ray machine.
War and the Conservator
3. Interior of Room 5/6 in the basement of the National Museum of Beirut which was repeatedly flooded by rising groundwater during the yearsof the LebaneseCivil War.
Evaluating
the Damage to the Collections
The original decision to place the objects in the basement was taken as a temporary precaution in anticipation of the war ending soon afterwards. The temporary storage subsequently became permanent and no other protective measures could possibly be taken. Surprisingly enough, and fortunately, the large portion of the collection already recovered has survived its harsh environmental storage conditions. One reason for this might be the absence of climate control in the museum before it was closed in 1975. As result, the objects could have been already acclimatized to high RH levels, considering that ambient relative humidity in Beirut fluctuates greatly and often reaches 85% in the summer. Furthermore, the environment in which the objects remained for fifteen years was relatively stable, albeit aggressive.
Conclusion The most positive aspect of the Recovery Project at the Beirut National Museum has been the close cooperation between the newly appointed archaeologists at the Directorate-General of Antiquities and the conservation laboratory staff. The process of cleaning, recording and storing is being undertaken by the archaeologists under the direct supervision of the conservators. Close and efficient team work has enabled us to carry the project through successfully, up to this point, in spite of severe difficulties. So far, we have inventoried 13,000 recovered objects,
ISABELLE
SKAF
179
4. Detail of piled up ceramics in Room 5/6 of the basement of the National Museum of Beirut after the collapse of storage shelves and the rotting away of storage boxes and packaging owing to flooding. The water and silt conceals large numbers of beads and other small items.
of which only a small number is being treated. We are, however, doing our best to ensure adequate storage conditions until we can carry out proper conservation of all the recovered objects. Acknowledgements Many thanks are due to Jim Black for his constant and invaluable assistance, to The British Lebanese Friends of the National Museum for their tireless fundraising activities to the benefit of the conservation laboratory, to Michael Halliwell, Franca Cole, Janet Berry, Graham Langford, Badr Jabbour-Gideon and my colleagues at the Beirut National Museum who have contributed greatly to the success of the project, to Fares el Dahdah for his comments and translation, and to Nicholas Stanley-Price for the opportunity to present and publish this paper.