Sounds more like "reconstruction" than "restoration". I appreciate many original parts may be too damaged, but it risks becoming an archeological Disneyland.
As long as they're done faithfully; there's reproductions of old ships too for museum purposes, since the old ships just rotted away over time (I assume). Rebuilding them with modern knowledge of e.g. wood / rope / sail preservation will be valuable.
It also makes me think of a reddit question the other day - why did people cover up their beautiful wooden flooring with carpets? The answer is that they didn't have epoxy sealants and the like back then so it was maintenance heavy.
I don't see the problem. If a building is damaged we should not reconstruct it? I'd much rather see the Colosseum in its original state, covered in marble, than the current state, after centuries of neglect and looting from the italians.
The value of ancient buildings is in what we learn from whatever survives. How can we rebuild the Coliseum to its original state without first learning what that state was? The Coliseum was operational for centuries and underwent constant modification. Which period should it be restored to, and to what end?
Screw the tourists, bring in the archeologists, maybe start by resuming excavations at Eridu. 99% of our history is buried or looted. And the one or two Assyriologists in the world need new material to study.
After several years, Iraqi Hezbollah recently released their Princeton researcher hostage (granted, she is a dual Israeli citizen). Maybe that will encourage more archeologists to visit.
Tourism is such a wasteful tax on society. I met an Egyptologist who had been leading tours for two years so he could feed his family but he longed to go back to Egyptology and go and study the ruins even though it didn’t pay well
lol. Sure I felt happy that he had something else to keep his family fed. But I as a tourist with more valuable cash come into this country with an artificially low value cash, take up the very resources of that country to … give me a tour! This guy is probably a skilled archeologist who made a huge effort to learn history of an ancient civilization and was actually able to translate whatever we asked him to translate.
And here he is could be doing something so much more valuable … than giving this idiot (me) a “tour”.
I am appreciative that I met him. And that he was my guide. But my money didn’t give him an income. It took away the finite resources of his country.
People generally become tour guides because alternative jobs don't exist. It's extremely common for the local workers who help with excavation to become tour guides for the areas they've helped excavate. Many of these people are more knowledgeable (in certain respects) than the archaeologists they're helping.
I'm fairly certain you weren't taking him away from something more valuable that he would have been doing in your absence.
It also makes me think of a reddit question the other day - why did people cover up their beautiful wooden flooring with carpets? The answer is that they didn't have epoxy sealants and the like back then so it was maintenance heavy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Tsurkov
Many people in this world wish they could do something different with their lives, but to blame the activity they're currently doing is shortsighted.
And here he is could be doing something so much more valuable … than giving this idiot (me) a “tour”.
I am appreciative that I met him. And that he was my guide. But my money didn’t give him an income. It took away the finite resources of his country.
I'm fairly certain you weren't taking him away from something more valuable that he would have been doing in your absence.