A project to rebuild the taller of two giant Afghan Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban is underway in Switzerland. The 53-metre tall statue was carved from the Bamiyan valley mountainside in the third or fourth century AD 鈥� and blown up in March 2001.
鈥淭his will be a symbol of the rebuilding of Afghanistan,鈥� says Bernard Weber of the New Seven Wonders Society, which is coordinating fundraising for the project. 鈥淚t will send a clear signal that in future an act of intentional destruction cannot erase the memory of those things which are valuable to humanity and its heritage.
鈥淎nd on the practical side, it will create a tourist infrastructure for the people of the Bamiyan valley to live on,鈥� he says.
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A team at the University of Zurich has agreed to create a virtual three-dimensional representation of the Buddha, using high-definition photographs taken in 1970 during a survey. Craftsmen at the Afghanistan Institute and Museum in Basel will use the 3D reconstruction to build a six-metre tall model. 鈥淭hen, we will wait until the situation permits and we get invited by the Afghanistan people to create the full-size statue,鈥� Weber says.
In March, Ko茂chiro Matsuura, director-general of UNESCO, condemned the statues鈥� destruction as a 鈥渃rime against culture. It is abominable to witness the cold and calculated destruction of cultural properties which were the heritage of the whole of humanity鈥�.
Exiled craftsmen
鈥淔ortunately, the stone in which the statue was carved was not precious,鈥� Weber adds. 鈥淚t was a sandstone-agglomerate, which can be carved quite easily. We will study the ancient construction methods used by the Greek artists 鈥� and there are exiled craftsmen at the Afghan Institute who will be able to rebuild it.鈥�
The first two stages of the project are expected to cost $300,000. Weber says the full-size statue will take up to $3 million and two years to construct.
There are successful precedents for re-creating ancient monuments as tourist attractions, says Tim Schadla-Hall, who leads the heritage studies research group at the Institute of Archaeology in London. 鈥淟arge numbers of buildings in China that people go and visit are actually reconstructions on the original site, where they have rebuilt on a huge scale.鈥�
However, he questions the team鈥檚 aim to recreate the original statue. 鈥淲hat you鈥檙e really talking about is building a new statue, without the traditional background or struggle or purpose behind it. Once something is gone, it鈥檚 difficult to change that.鈥�
But Weber hopes that the project will secure funding from around the world. 鈥淭hese statues were one of the most obvious links between eastern and western civilisations. They were built by descendants of Greek artists who came with Alexander the Great, and they were one of the very first statue representations of Buddha,鈥� he says.