The renovation of the Mykerinos pyramid, the smallest of the three pyramids of Giza, presented as the “project of the century” by Mostafa Waziry, head of Egyptian antiquities, is already in trouble.
The objective of the Egyptian-Japanese mission: to restore the layer of granite which originally covered the pyramid and which had gradually disappeared over the centuries.
Some Egyptians but also archaeologists question the merits of this restoration, seen as a form of alteration of a monument listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.
Egyptologist Monica Hanna notably recalled that all international restoration pacts rejected this intervention, which she even went so far as to describe as “absurdity”.
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Another point of tension: the project to renovate the Mykerinos pyramid comes right in a controversial context of general redevelopment in Egypt which saw the destruction at the beginning of January of the Darb 1718 art center and all its works to widen an expressway or again that of hundreds of tombs in the City of the Dead, the largest and oldest necropolis in the Muslim world, to build a highway there.