Conservation State of Two Paintings in the Santa Margherita Cliff Cave: Role of the Environment and of the Microbial Community

The conservation of ancient paintings sited in humid environments is an actual challenge for restorers, because it needs the knowledge of the materials the paintings are made up and of their interaction with a peculiar surrounding environment; thus, tailored procedures and strategies aimed at restoring and preserving paintings are necessary. The Santa Margherita’s cave in Castellammare del Golfo (Trapani, Italy) is a natural cave, containing the remains of paintings, in a poor state of conservation, belonging to an ancient church dated back to the Middle Age. The present manuscript reports the monitoring of environmental conditions (i.e., temperature and humidity) in a full year as well as a study on the materials constituting the stone support and the paintings together with a survey of the microbial community. The findings allow us to define the causes which mainly involve the degradation of the paintings. In detail, the degradation of the east and the west wall occurred differently because of the exposure to the sea aerosol, which influenced the salt composition, also contributing to diversifying the bacterial community. Some specific actions to plan the conservation and restoration of paintings and to preserve the site are suggested.

Non-standart position of the false door in Giza tombs - a builing mistake or a least-evil solution?

In the chapels of a number of tombs in the Giza necropolis, both rock-cut and stone (mastaba), the false door – the main place of worship of the tomb – is sometimes not located on the west wall. Given that the tradition of placing the false door precisely on the western wall had deep roots for centuries, these cases raise a legitimate question about the reasons for such an anomaly. But the paucity of examples, both in Giza and in other necropolises, made it difficult to conduct a broad analysis of this phenomenon. This question has been repeatedly raised in the literature, but it is still debatable. And after the discovery of new examples at the site of the Russian Archaeological Mission at Giza of the Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS (RAMG), it became necessary to return to this problem to analyze it, to structure and summarize the early information, to try to understand the nature of the occurrence of such cases. A total of nine such cases are known in the Giza necropolis; all of them date from the time of the V–VI dynasties, when the necropolis is drastically compacted – and the tombs are occupied by any vacant space. It was not always possible to place false doors on the western wall of the chapels for each individual burial. As a result, sometimes the builders deliberately placed a false door not on the western wall but in the immediate vicinity of the burial to emphasise the connection between them.

Application of energy-saving structural design under numerical simulation in solar heating buildings

The research is to explore the changes in solar heating buildings under energy-saving structural design. This paper analyzes the changes in solar heating buildings under energy-saving structural design by constructing a numerical simulation method. It mainly studies the effects of the space temperature of the house, different thermal insulation methods, and wall thermal resistance on solar heating buildings. The energy-saving structural design mainly includes expanding the area of exterior windows, increasing heat retainers, adopting energy-saving walls, and improving the building envelope. The results show that after the energy-saving structural design, the indoor temperature of the solar heating building after the renovation has been greatly increased, with an average increase of about 6 ?C. Compared with the external insulation and internal insulation modes, the solar heating building under the sandwich insulation mode has the best effect, and the room temperature increases the most. Also, it shows that the east wall, west wall, and north wall of the building are increasing the energy saving per unit area of the wall as the wall thermal resistance increases. The difference is that the increasing range of the north wall has significant advantages over the east wall and the west wall. The energy-saving structural design for solar heating buildings under the numerical simulation method has significantly improved the utilization efficiency of solar energy. It reduces the consumption of traditional fossil resources and improves the quality of the environment. This paper?s research has a positive effect on subsequent research.

The West Wall of the Portico of Obelisks in Hatshepsut's Temple in 2018 and 2019: conservation and studies

The longest, west wall of the South Lower Portico (Portico of Obelisks) of the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari has been reassessed in terms of its current state, compared to the original documentation by Edouard Naville, as an opening step to the author’s research project organized within the frame of the larger University of Warsaw Temple of Hatshepsut research program. A considerable number of blocks from the wall, including unpublished fragments, was tracked down in storage in the various temple blockyards and storerooms. About two-thirds of the wall decoration underwent conservation treatment in the spring of 2018 and 2019 seasons. The paper discusses the author’s progress in this research.

Hatshepsut’s Punt Reliefs: Their Structure and Function

The article examines the layout of Hatshepsut’s Punt reliefs, proposing a new interpretation of their internal structure and ideological function within the decorative programme of the Deir el-Bahari temple. The author argues that the reliefs form a cycle of subsequent scenes, starting at the southernmost end of the west wall, continuing through the south wall up to the northern part of the west wall. As for the scenes represented on the northernmost end of the west wall and on the north wall, it is argued that they should be viewed as forming a single ideological entity, which at the same time corresponds to the long historical inscription placed on the easternmost end of the south wall. That way the reliefs reflect both aspects of Egyptian eternity: the linear (in the cycle of subsequent episodes) and the circular one (in the ideological link between the southern- and northernmost extremities of the Punt Portico). As for the function of the reliefs, it is argued that they were supposed to magically repeat Hatshepsut’s Punt expedition and thus provide her divine father Amun-Ra with all exotic products necessary in his cult. The author also tries to demonstrate, how Hatshepsut was gradually identified with the goddess Hathor in her aspect of the Lady of Punt and the female counterpart of Amun-Ra throughout the Punt reliefs.