TRYING to record the memory of the Arab world is almost an impossible mission. Yet, getting into that venture was just after our Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) had gone on another impossible mission by taking in charge the process of documenting the different aspects of cultural and natural heritage of Egypt.
In that respect, we followed the definition of UNESCO in dividing heritage first into cultural and natural, then subdi¬viding each. The cultural heritage branched into tangible and intangible where the tangible comprises the materialistic heritage like artifacts of the museums, archaeological sites, architectural heritage while the intangible or non-materialistic heritage includes music, art, oral her-itage … etc.
Since the creation of the Centre at the beginning of this decade, we have formed teams of joint IT specialists and content specialists in every field of heritage in order to build an information system and to disseminate this infor¬mation. Dissemination took different forms: books, CD’s, combined books and CD’s as well as websites. In order to carry out this task, we normally break down different levels of details, starting from the basic level then moving into more detailed levels.
An example of that is what we do with archaeological sites. First, we start with one single map for the whole country, then we break it down into the site level with all its components and then finally to the movement level where one can see all the details of every wall with the different inscriptions and scenes on it.
After a few years of operation, the Centre published numerous works about the different aspects of heritage and got a lot of recognition on both national and international levels. It was visited by several eminent people like Kofi Anan, Bill Gates, Vint Cerf (Father of Internet), the Director General of UNESCO as well as many ministers and prime ministers.
Also, the Centre became a common member in many European Commission projects that are concerned about cultural heritage in the Mediterranean basin. In these proj¬ects, many countries from Europe and the Middle East around the Mediterranean are involved. This had already built a good network between the different cultural insti¬tutes.
Questions were raised in the back of the mind of different participants. Can the model of the Egyptian Centre be repeated in different Arab countries? How can they make use of the Egyptian experience? Is it possible to have a common project between the Arab countries to document their common heritage? How can such a project be financed? The main challenge was that the Arab countries usually fail to work together because of their many con¬flicting opinions.
When this question was raised, I answered that this might be true in politics; but it is never true in art and culture. A very good example is how singing icons Omm Kolthoum and Fayrouz are both very well appreciated and admired in all Arab countries.
Besides; we decided that every Arab country will be responsible for choosing and collecting its own content and that we (CULTNAT) will be responsible for designing the system. In the coming articles, we will see how this initia¬tive started and where it is at the moment.
