Science defeats the Dark Ages fanatics
RESURRECTED: A replacement part is fitted to one of the funerary busts smashed by IS in Palmyra
PRICELESS ancient sculptures smashed by Islamic State fanatics in the historic Syrian town of Palmyra have been meticulously restored by Italian experts with the help of laser scans and 3-D printers.
The 2nd century funerary busts, one of a man, the other of a woman, were vandalised by IS terrorists after they overran the archeological site and its museum in 2015.
When the ages-old desert outpost was retaken by Syrian and Russian forces, the artefacts were whisked off to safety in Beirut, Lebanon.
They were then sent to Rome, where, for the past two months, experts have harnessed Italy’s formidable expertise in caring for its cultural heritage to repair the damage.
Technicians used lasers to scan the shattered faces of the two figures and 3-D printers to create resin parts that replaced the stone lost during the IS rampage. The male figure was particularly badly smashed, with half its face missing.
Experts in Rome produced a “prosthetic” for the side of the face that was lost. It is removable, so that if the original stone fragment were to be found it could be reattached. The prosthetic is attached to the stone bust by six tiny magnets.
“The resin prosthetics were coated with a very fine layer of stone dust to make them blend with the original stone,” said Gisella Capponi, director of the Italian Institute for Conservation and Restoration, which carried out the work.
The institute, founded in 1939, has decades of experience working on artefacts from Pompeii and Rome, ancient Etruscan tombs and paintings by Renaissance masters such as Caravaggio.
IS was pushed out of Palmyra in March last year but reoccupied it in December.
“There was a small window between IS being expelled and returning,” said Francesco Rutelli, a former culture minister and now head of a cultural heritage association.
“Palmyra is once again a conflict zone, but at least these extraordinary works were rescued.”
The restoration of the artefacts was a tribute to Khaled al-Asaad, the 82-yearold head of antiquities in Palmyra, who was beheaded by IS terrorists after refusing to reveal the location of artefacts that he had removed for safekeeping, said Rutelli.
The busts will be returned to Syria at the end of this month. They will be kept in Damascus until IS is driven once again from Palmyra and the site is deemed secure.
“Palmyra was a very important trading town [dealing in goods such as] ostriches, slaves, olive oil and precious stones and textiles,” said Frances Pinnock, a professor of ancient Near East archeology at La Sapienza University in Rome.
“It was part of the Roman Empire but rebelled. The couple sculpted represent the elite of Palmyra, who were mostly rich merchants.”
On Monday, Russia released drone footage of the latest destruction wrought by IS on Palmyra. It showed that the fanatics have badly damaged the façade of the Roman-era theatre and the Tetrapylon, a set of four monuments with four columns each at the centre of the colonnade leading to the theatre. Only two of the 16 columns remain standing. Syrian government forces have advanced to within 20km of the world heritage site.