uffl ed explosions
echo throughout
central Syria. For
weeks now, the
fi g h t e r s w h o a r e
trying to establish
the Islamic State
have been engaged in a bitter battle
against the Syrian Army. Their target:
the metropolis of Homs. The pathway
there leads through the ancient city
of Palmyra, and it is only a matter of
time before the fi ghting reaches the
ruins of the age-old oasis, with all its
magnifi cent cultural monuments. A
handful of residents have been trying
to brave the impending assault, and
one of them calls himself Jamal. His
true identity remains secret. Jamal is
here for a special reason, and if ISIS
were to get wind of it, it would be his
death sentence. He frantically paces
of f the historic site s, from time to time
taking out a small camera to record
what he sees. It’s no regular camera:
This one was custom-built to capturethree-dimensional images. Jamal
takes a deep breath before pointing
the camera at the towering Arch of
Triumph and snapping a photo. His
hand clenches into a frustrated fi st.
He is well aware that soon little will
remain of these glorious monuments
apart from dusty rubble, and there’s
nothing he can do to prevent it. But
with these photos he’s making sure
that the Arch of Triumph will soon be
“standing” somewhere else...
Jamal is one of hundreds of Syrian
volunteers who’ve been working to
preserve the country’s great cultural
heritage. They’re the very last line of
defense against the ISIS demolition
squads. They can’t prevent the acts
of terror, but they can help undo some
of the damage. The work has been
made possible by the UK’s Institute
for Digital Archeology (IDA) in Oxford.
Established in 2012 by archeologist
Roger Michel, the IDA is building up
a digital archive of historical places.
In conjunction with imaging experts,Michel developed a 3-D camera that
transmits the digital images it takes
to the IDA’s server. In late 2014 the
camera was still being tested, but the
reality of the events in the Middle East
forced the institute to take immediate
action. The civil war that was raging
in Syria increasingly threatened the
country’s historical monuments, and
it seemed likely that many of them
would be destroyed in the fi ghting.
Michel made the decision to launch
the mass production of his camera
in order to preser ve as many cultural
sites as possible in virtual form before
they could be obliterated in real life.
“I didn’t want to have people saying:
‘Gee, why didn’t you begin in 2015,
when ISIS controlled only 3 percent
of the sites,’” says Michel. He started
distributing 5,000 3-D cameras to
activists in the Middle East, hundreds
of them in Syria. A secret network of
local volunteers began photographing
threatened cultural sites and sending
the photos to the institute’s server.M
B E F O R E A F T E R
DIGITAL RESCUE
Roger Michel is
the founder of the
Institute for Digital
Archeology (IDA) in
Oxford. Thanks to his
initiative, Palmyra was
digitally preserved.A LIFE FOR ARCHEOLOGY
For more than 40 years,
Khaled al-Asaad oversaw
the archeological sites in
Palmyra. He gave his life
trying to protect them from
ISIS when its fi ghters began
destroying them in 2015.ISIS fighters
destroyed
a large part
of Palmyra
with several
explosions.