Birth Certificate versus CV / Timeline of Bab Zuwayla

“Birth certificate” versus “CV / timeline” of Bab Zuwayla (built in 1092 AD)
Layers of untold histories of Bab Zuwayla discovered during the Bab Zuwayla Conservation Project The Bab Zuwayla Conservation Project (1998-2003) was funded by the United States Agency for International Development and carried out by the Egyptian Antiquities Project of the American Research Centre in Egypt in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities. Project Director: Dr. Nairy Hampikian.

Lecture by Dr. Nairy Hampikian
All structures are created at one point in history under certain circumstances which are highlighted in history books, and form what I call the “birth certificate” of a structure. Some buildings disappear by time leaving only the memory of their creation in history books, but others “survive”: they fight gravity, they adapt themselves to caprices of later time, they humbly accept new architectural and decorative styles on their older fabric, they surrender to the city around them, they adopt new function, they may even carry new loads and lose loads that belonged to their original composition, etc. By time these survivors earn the title “monuments” mainly because of their quality of surviving. What I call “the CV of structures” is the collection of the events that witness this struggle for survival. Bab Zuwayla is one of these survivors par excellence. As the director of the Conservation Project on Bab Zuwayla, I will take you to a trip to demonstrate how a conservation project was able to discover layers of untold histories of Bab Zuwayla that fed into its “CV / timeline”.