The monuments of world

SHAHAT, LIBYA — More than 2,600 years after the Greeks founded the city of Cyrene in the mountains of northeastern Libya, the ancient gymnasium’s high stone walls still shield athletes from the winter winds as they train among the ruins.

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi disavowed pre-1969 history as colonialist and un-Libyan. Now that he is gone, heritage-conscious Libyans have drafted a plan to preserve the ruins at Cyrene and promote them as a tourist attraction in a rural area where unemployment is high.

Abdallah al-Mortdy, a 52-year-old architect, grew up just a few kilometers from Cyrene, but did not study the ruins, now a Unesco World Heritage site, until he left Libya at age 19 to study architecture in Florence. In the years since returning home, however, he says he cannot let two or three days go by without taking a stroll through the remains of the vast colony blanketing the hills and valleys of the Green Mountains. Spanning 7 square kilometers, or 3 square miles, the excavated and restored ruins include a temple to Zeus, a sanctuary to Apollo, a Greek agora and a Roman forum, Byzantine baths, and more than 1,000 rock-cut tombs dotting the countryside.

In the 1940s, Italian archaeologists raised many of the walls and columns that had collapsed since an earthquake in the year 365, but about 75 percent of the city lies undisturbed, with bits and pieces poking out of the ground.

A modern-day town, Shahat, has risen on the edge of the ruins: For some of its 40,000 inhabitants the fall of Colonel Qaddafi meant a chance to get involved: Mr. al-Mortdy and 11 others founded the Cyrene Friends Society to protect, preserve and promote local heritage. With 120 members, the Society on Monday plans to present at a town meeting a “master plan” for the future of Cyrene, encompassing education, tourism, archaeology and cultural preservation.

Banned under Colonel Qaddafi, such organizations are likely to prove indispensable for the protection of Libyan history. Under the old regime, as with most institutions here, the Department of Antiquities was mired in constantly changing guidelines driven by corruption and whimsy. Today it struggles to solidify a policy for historic sites, reinventing itself during a political transition period where heritage is a low priority.

“Libya is like a rich man who wants to build a new house,” Mr. al-Mortdy, the architect, said during a recent tour of the ruins. “Tunisia and Egypt are renovating their old houses, but we are starting from scratch.”

“History,” he said, “whether it’s Greek, Roman or Islamic, it’s all part of the human experience.”

The Cyrene Friends Society is not undertaking the huge project alone. The Libyan antiquities authorities are working with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and U.S. and Italian academics to develop a plan for Cyrene and additional locations in Libya, including the four other Unesco World Heritage sites.

Unesco said it now had access to nearly $1 million that had been earmarked for cultural and educational projects in Libya, while Italy had pledged another $800,000 for training and conservation. They are drafting a plan to put those resources to work.

The United Nations and Blue Shield, a nonprofit group concerned with the protection of historical sites in conflict zones, sent several teams to Libya over the past few months to assess damage. Some thefts and looting did take place, Blue Shield reported, especially at the Bani Walid museum southeast of Tripoli, but not on the scale of what happened in Baghdad after the U.S .invasion in 2003 or in Cairo during the Arab Spring revolution last year.

During the Libyan upheaval as law enforcement vanished, volunteers mobilized to safeguard the Cyrene monuments and museum from looters. Elsewhere in Libya, workers from the Department of Antiquities and local volunteers guarded sites, welded shut the doors to museums, and hid artifacts. Rebels who had come to Tripoli from Misrata helped to protect the National Museum. The only known damage was to the collection of Colonel Qaddafi’s cars on display. At Leptis Magna, a majestic Roman city 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, east of Tripoli, the chief archaeologist invited shepherds to graze on the site as a measure of added security, a Blue Shield report said.

“Considering the large-scale conflict, our sites are relatively safe,” the head of the Libyan Department of Antiquities, Dr. Saleh Agab, said during a recent interview. “We were worried that something like what happened in Cairo would take place, but the people took the proper steps. Some things were taken, and we’re now working with Interpol and the international community to trace them.”

The worst violation, Dr. Agab said, was the theft of the so-called Benghazi Treasure, a cache that included nearly 7,300 gold, silver and bronze coins, 306 pieces of jewelry and 43 bronze figurines excavated during the first half of the 20th century in Cyrene and neighboring Greco-Roman cities and eventually locked in a vault at the National Commercial Bank of Benghazi. Thieves took advantage of the revolutionary chaos to break into the safe and make off with around 90 percent of the horde, according to Mohammed el-Shelmany, head of the Antiquities Department in Benghazi.

While the Cyrene Friends Society finalizes its master plan, the Department of Antiquities in Shahat and Oberlin College in Ohio — with grants from the U.S. State Department — are conducting an inventory of Cyrene’s artifacts, and preparing to map the site while also assessing risks to other sites in the region. Libyan archaeologists will also receive training in modern techniques for documenting antiquities.

“A database of what we already have is our mission right now,” said Nasser Abduljalil, who took over in April as head of antiquities in Shahat. “It’s what should have been done 40 years ago.”

Despite precautions, thefts have occurred, including that of two sections of a large mosaic.

Mr. Abduljalil was one of the volunteers trying to guard Cyrene. One day he surprised eight looters armed with knives who had found a headless statue. They started to beat him, but he managed to slip free, although the group made off with the statue.

“Cyrene is part of me,” he said during a recent interview. “I was born here, I was raised here, I studied here, and I would do anything for it. If something happens to the antiquities, it’s like something happening to my children.”

But not all of the locals seem to feel the same. Even more destructive than looting, according to Dr. Susan Kane, professor of classical archaeology at Oberlin, is the urban encroachment on the site. People are claiming land and building houses in and around the archaeological area because there is no authority to stop them, Dr. Kane, director of the U.S. mission at Cyrene, said late last month.

Showing a visitor around the site earlier this month, Salem Jedallah, 40, head of the volunteer security force and a former rebel commander, put down his AK-47 and led the way to a partially excavated Greek theater. Talking nonstop in Arabic, Mr. Jedallah was proud to show off what he called “the Athens of Africa.” Once a plan for Cyrene was announced, he said, the people of Shahat would make it happen.

“I caught a guy digging some holes yesterday,” Mr. Jedallah said. “I could have arrested him, but he wouldn’t have learned anything. So I told him, ‘You didn’t fight on the front, you didn’t protest against Qaddafi, and now you’re looting? Explain yourself.’ Later he came to my house and apologized. He won’t be digging any more holes.”