Preserving the Old Necropolis; Building a New Metropolis

Lowell house tutor Abraham helps create harmony between the ancient and the modern in the Egyptian city of Luxor

By Lama Jarudi

Special to the Gazette

The old Pharaonic monuments of Luxor, Egypt, are crumbling. "You can easily hear it," says Lowell House tutor Gabriel Abraham, who has just returned from a visit to the city. It's a "crackling sound in the night, the sound of breaking stone."

Luxor is a modern Egyptian city that occupies the site of ancient Thebes. It was the seat of Pharaonic power from 2100 to 75 B.C. and once commanded the most prestigious spot on the Nile River. Sugarcane fields, fronds of date palm trees, and farmers in white galabiya dresses are still typical sights around this city.

These days, though, Luxor primarily attracts attention for its antiquities. It commands a place on the exclusive UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. And its greenery creates a beautiful backdrop for the 4,000-year-old monuments.

Luxor's status in Pharaonic Egypt left it with an abundance of architectural treasures, making it known as the City of Palaces. There is much for the tourist to see. The Temple of Karnak, a tribute to the god Amun, is an imposing, fortress-like building. Alternatively, the column-fronted Temple of Hatshepsut is widely recognized by its sweeping broad terraces. The Colossi of Memnon are the only remaining statues from a temple that also was surely unique. Luxor's visitors rarely stay long enough to exhaust its historic sites. The city boasts some 500 hidden tombs, one of which is the famous Tomb of Tutankhamun.

Luxor's antiquities have proved their lasting power. But, here in Cambridge, Abraham still worries about a dangerously rising water table. Since the principal materials used in ancient Egypt were mud brick, limestone, and granite rock, today's fertilizers and pollutants can saturate the porous blocks. And even more importantly, crystallized salt residue can be left behind. As Abraham explains, when the average tourist hears a crackling in the night, he is hearing "the sound of exfoliating stone."

Abraham, however, has not been the average tourist. In addition to living with undergraduates in Lowell House as resident tutor, for the past several years he has been leading an international consulting team that is designing the Comprehensive Development Plan for the city of Luxor.

Working out of an office in Cambridge, Abraham practices as an architect and urban planner for Abt Associates Inc. In June 1997, the consulting team led by Abt Associates prepared a preliminary vision statement for the Egyptian government. The paper was the first phase in a 20-year project that will oversee Luxor's future as both a modern and a historic city.

A Living Museum

Change comes slowly in Luxor. Today, along the eastern coast of the Nile, Luxor is the City of the Living. Here, the sun rises above agricultural farms as it has for thousands of years. Along the western coast, where the necropolis forms a City of the Dead, the sun continues to set behind the same ancient tombs. Yet, Abraham insists, regardless of whether there is a purposeful mandate, in the next 20 years both fronts of Luxor City will be changing.

Abraham expects that Luxor will exceed 1 million in population and will receive 4 million tourists annually by the year 2017. These numbers represent a staggering 270 percent increase in population and 400 percent increase in tourism, but they are realistic extrapolations from the trends reported by the Egyptian Census, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism, and the World Tourism Organization. Fortunately, the statistics have convinced Egypt's public and private sectors to cooperate on a master plan that addresses issues of heritage preservation, structural development, and investment opportunities.

One element of the plan, for example, calls on the Egyptian government to designate Luxor as a special protection zone. With increased funding and tighter building codes, the city potentially can then become a virtual museum.

Luxor's eastern bank would have open parks for viewing monuments across the Nile. The Avenue of the Kebash, otherwise known as the Avenue of the Sphinxes, would be restored as a major thoroughfare. Meanwhile, the Temple of Hatshepsut would retain its original context: the green agricultural lands before it and the bare Theban cliffs behind. Hatshepsut, an explorer and famously shrewd politician, was a female pharaoh who ruled over ancient Egypt for 20 years.

Individually, the Luxor monuments have been fairly well-protected in the past. But Abraham's project is the first to consider their urban setting as an integral part of the cultural experience. "Cultural heritage work is definitely becoming more important," he says. "There's now greater recognition that the history of a city needs to be preserved."

To improve the quality of the urban environment, Abraham has had to consider many technical problems. The Nile cruise ships were one such case. For decades now, the line of vision to the Luxor monuments has been impeded by 300-foot-long cruise ships that dock along the river. Due to inadequate docking spaces, these cruise ships have parked parallel to the Nile bank. In fact, as many as seven ships have parked side-by-side, causing a serious fire hazard. And passengers on the seventh arriving ship could unload to the shore only by crossing from one ship to another on out-stretched gangplanks. Meanwhile, the sewage on board had to be dumped into the Nile.

In their recent report, Abraham and the consulting team proposed an expanded pier further upstream. This solution is part of a general plan to move development away from congested areas and to create a new periphery known as New Luxor. The expanded pier will implement a space-efficient design and allow the cruise ships to park diagonally to the shore.

In one of its most important undertakings, the Luxor project also will try to diversify the visitor experience so that there is less crowding at the monuments. It will accentuate the assets of the desert climate and scenery through recreational resorts, reclaimed lands, and even retirement villages for Egyptians and foreigners.

The dry territory around Luxor thus is expected to attract city dwellers as close as Cairo and as far away as Europe. "By the year 2017, Luxor has the potential to become a multifaceted tourist destination, similar to quality desert/cultural destinations in America's desert Southwest, Mexico, Spain, and Morocco," the plan states.

The expansion of Luxor will require significant improvements for its human resources, too. "The living communities will be an integral part of the west bank landscape," Abraham has said. In fact, throughout the project, Abraham has campaigned on behalf of Luxor's urban population. The problems of this economically disadvantaged Egyptian city are not unfamiliar to him.

After getting his master's in architecture from Columbia University, Abraham worked in urban planning and housing renovation. He later designed a city plan for Asmara in his homeland of Eritrea. But some of his most fulfilling work, he says, was the development of low-income housing, especially the recent evaluation of some public housing properties in Philadelphia.

The experience has made Abraham more sensitive to the interests of Luxor residents. Alongside temple preservation, the master plan already stresses the importance of agricultural farms, revamped water and sewer systems, recreation facilities, and improved schools. Abraham hopes that by 2017, Luxor will vie with Cairo and Alexandria as an important urban metropolis. "In the past," he says, "even a conference on the topic of Luxor took place in Cairo. This has to change."

Tragedy Hits Tourism

Before Nov. 17, 1997, the upcoming year was shaping up to be a particularly good one for Egyptian tourism. Nearly 4 million tourists were expected to enter the country, and at least 1 million were to visit Luxor. Egypt's battered tourist industry, which bottomed out after terrorist attacks in 1994 and had been recovering steadily, was boasting more than $3 billion in expected yearly revenue.

On Nov. 17, however, the Egyptian cabinet held an emergency session after more than 58 people, including foreign tourists from Japan, Germany, and Switzerland, were shot dead at the world famous Temple of Hatshepsut. The act immediately was attributed to politically driven Muslim extremists who were trying to topple the government of President Hosni Mubarak. Even before they could flee, the killers were caught in a shootout with the police.

Unfortunately, though, the intention to maim Egypt's tourist industry was successful. These days, there are probably more police in Luxor than tourists. From Giza to Luxor, foreign tourists are guided every step of the way by armed security officers, while police cars make certain that no local vehicles are allowed close to vulnerable tourist groups.

Egypt is still reeling from the impact of mass cancellations by jittery foreigners. Hotel and tour operators say business is a mere 10 to 15 percent of expected levels, and dozens of idle cruise ships lie tethered to Nile piers. As the city of Luxor waits for a resurgence in tourism, many services and shops have been forced to close.

The tragedy at the Temple of Hatshepsut upset Abraham and the consulting team. Despite the November incident, the international consultants and the Egyptian government have retained their faith in this city's potential.

Framing the Vision

Although the fall in tourism has weakened a baseline premise in Gabriel Abraham's work on the Luxor development, he insists that the November tragedy will not undercut the project. "Tourism has been consistently increasing since political stability returned in 1994 and will rebound after the 1997 incident," he says. "If you chart the Egyptian tourist industry over the last few decades, you'll see a general upward-sloping trend, with only the occasional dip."

In Abraham's Lowell House apartment, where reports, photographs, and CD-ROMs fill the desks and shelves and are now spilling off the chairs, Abraham bends over his computer to demonstrate his work. He launches a presentation of the Luxor vision, and as aerial images of the city appear, points out landmarks such as Avenue of the Kebash, the new Nile pier, and underground Pharaonic tombs.

The working plan, Abraham shows, is still a mandate for growth on both sides of the city. The west necropolis is dead, but will be the site of continued preservation; the east metropolis is living and will be the site of future development.

In the upcoming months, Abraham will continue to divide his time between Abt Associates and his home. As he proceeds with the second phase in the Luxor plan, which includes refining of details, testing the feasibility of the vision, and developing investment projects for public and private sector participation, he surely will remain an active adviser in the Lowell House community.

Students who have conversations with Abraham in the dining hall, where he has shared anecdotes about the Luxor experience, might well consider this to be one of his most memorable contributions to life in the House.