The
antiquarian city of Amrit….they paved roads to it,
so it became a favorite place for the fiddlers!!
Al-Wahda
newspaper 1-4-2005
What is the
responsibility of the ministry of tourism about the
Antiquities? Why
our
archeological sites and antiquities are always
neglected and abandoned, also
open to
thieves and fiddlers to come and do what they want?
How big is our role
in
destroying what remained from our own rich and
ancient heritage, which the
first human
civilization started from it?
It is nice
what we heard about from a large interest in tourism
and wide
motivating
from the official sides for large touristic projects,
but on the
opposite
where are we from what we have?
I will
invite to visit the forgotten city of Amrit, which
was one of the primary
cities on
the Canaanite Phoenician coast, and also was the
primary city on the
continental
part of the Arwad kingdom, the first Olympic stadium
on earth was
built in it…as
the say to see is better than to talk…. this city is
still around
until now…although
it’s not inhabited, not served, and not discovered
until now
even…
And when
the responsible people decided to take care about it,
they made
subsidiary
roads to it recently starting from the main road and
filled them with
ballast as
a preparation to pave them upon the antiquities, so
the cars and
buses can
get into it and violate it as if we are in a forest
of predating
animals!!
(The
following pictures are to make the idea clear and
they don’t exist in the
original
(Text

Wouldn’t it
have been much better if they did narrow paths for
walkers and paved
them with
black basalt, so the visitors can cross the distance
between the main
square and
the spindles which equals 150 m on foot.
The site is
still in a good situation and it is possible to save
it and prepare
it in a
good way to protect its original identity, and it
can make good
touristic
income because the area is wonderful and flat land
that’s in front of
it is
directly open to the sea.
The second
case I want to talk about is what was improved on
the Arwad western
ledge,
where the ledge was filled by baton and with a
height that was not
studied
well, between the rocks that form the western armor
of Arwad which
protects it
from waves, so the waves there got high as much as
the new baton
walls are
high , so the Turkish bath and the neighboring
houses are now under
the mercy
of waves to destroy them as much as possible, and
that’s what the
neighboring
inhabitants of the Turkish bath confirm.
)The
following picture is not
from
the original text; it’s just to make this idea clear(

The ancient
Arwadians protected the western area by building two
walls of rocks
and they
chose the western and southwestern area of the
island because in winter
this part
of the island is hit 85 % by south-western storms.
What we
want is specialized and competent people in
improving and repairing
instead of
the ignorant which do unorganized and random things,
to protect what
we have
from our cultural heritage and repair what has been
damaged to save what
has left
from our archeological sites and antiquities.
Rana Al-Hamdan
Translated by:
Anas Abbas
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