PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Syria’s renowned Ma’arra Mosaic Museum, significantly damaged and in danger of collapse as a result of the country’s long and ongoing civil war, has undergone emergency conservation and protection efforts by Syrian cultural heritage professionals and volunteers.

The emergency project, first conceived during a Syrian cultural heritage emergency workshop in the summer of 2014, was a months’ long initiative of an international group of organizations: the Safeguarding the Heritage of Syria and Iraq Project (SHOSI), which is a consortium of the Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania Museum; the Office of the Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture at the Smithsonian Institution; the Geospatial Technologies Project at the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Shawnee State University, The Day After—a Syrian NGO; and the U.S. Institute of Peace. The consortium planned the project, coordinated necessary governmental approvals in the war-torn country, and paid for the materials required to carry out the work with support from the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

“We’ve seen how the invaluable cultural heritage of Syria has fallen prey to destruction by heavy artillery, targeted explosive attacks and looting as never before,” noted Dr. Salam Al-Kuntar, a Syrian archaeologist, a visiting research scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University and a consulting scholar at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center. “We all know that what a group of dedicated Syrians have done is a small but meaningful act and a courageous act, taking difficult steps during wartime to preserve Syrian history for future generations. Let us hope that this will be the first of many more concrete efforts of preservation.”

Housing one of the most important collections of 3rd to 6th century Roman and Byzantine mosaics in the Middle East, the Ma’arra Mosaic Museum is located about 50 miles south of Aleppo. The Museum was an old caravanseri, or roadside inn, that was constructed in 1595 and refurbished as a museum in 1987.

The emergency protection project aimed to secure the mosaics from further harm during the conflict. After consultation with experts in mosaic conservation, the Syrian team applied a layer of glue and cloth designed to fortify and keep the tesserae together. Several truckloads of sandbags were then laid out to protect the mosaics from further damage. Altogether, some 1600 square feet of mosaics were protected. Holes in the roof were also repaired to prevent further deterioration and possible collapse.

“The emergency protection project of the Ma’arra Museum is a great example of the fundamental link of Syrian people to their heritage. The tremendous efforts by the Ma’arra people to protect the museum is part of their cultural struggle for surviving this atrocious war,” said Shaker Al-Shbib, an expert in Syrian heritage involved with the effort.

Professor Amr Al-Azm of Shawnee State University adds, “The importance of this cultural heritage is nowhere more demonstrable than when it comes to the issue of national identity and what makes a Syrian a Syrian. Once the current violence ends, the people of Syria will need to find ways to reconnect with the symbols that once united them across religious and political lines. The country’s ancient past as represented in this rich cultural heritage will be key to this process. Protecting and preserving Syria’s history and heritage therefore is about safeguarding its future too.”