The idea of World Heritage Sites emerged out of a crisis. Construction of the Aswan High Dam on the river Nile in Egypt, which had begun in 1960, was threatening to inundate the monuments and temples in the river valley. Amongst these, the temples of Pharaoh Ramses II at Abu Simnel and the sanctuary of Isis at Philae, were the most highly valued.
In order to save the temples, UNESCO launched an international rescue mission which eventually resulted in the temples being dismantled and reassembled on higher ground. UNESCO’s rallying call was that the loss of the temples would be a major loss not only to Egypt’s heritage, but for the world as whole (figure 1).
The ‘Nubian Campaign’, as it was called, became the catalyst for a more structured approach to conserving global heritage. This entails identifying the most highly valued world heritage sites in order to conserve them for posterity, thus preventing another crisis like that at Abu Simbel taking place. To this end, the World Heritage Convention was drawn up in 1972 and a list of World Heritage Sites begun in 1978, initially with twelve sites. Countries which have signed the Convention are able nominate sites which are then evaluated against a set of ten criteria set out in the convention; if successful, the sites are inscribed on the
