The BA Ancient Egyptian Language Dictionary by Ahmed Pasha Kamal Wins ICCROM-Sharjah Commendation Award
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ICCROM Regional Centre in Sharjah (ICCRIS) announced that the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has won a Commendation Award during the fourth edition of the ICCROM-Sharjah Award for Good Practices in Cultural Heritage Conservation and Management in the Arab Region (2023-2024) for the project "A Legacy of a Lexicon: The Conservation, Documentation, and Management of the Ahmed Pasha Kamal Dictionary.” The award was granted under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Federal Supreme Council of the UAE and Ruler of Sharjah.
The Ancient Egyptian Language Dictionary by Ahmed Pasha Kamal, preserved at the BA Rare Books Library, was selected after it was digitized and restored by the BA Restoration Laboratory over three years. More than fifty projects competed for this award from across the Arab world, and 18 projects were shortlisted from multiple countries, including Egypt, UAE, Bahrain, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Lebanon, Libya, and Yemen. On 26 and 27 November, the judging panel reviewed and discussed these projects with their managers, focusing on how each project reflects ICCROM's objectives in selecting the best practices for cultural heritage preservation.
Dr. Ahmed Zayed, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, expressed his delight at the fact that Egypt, represented by the BA, has received this prestigious award. He pointed out that the selection process for ICCROM-Sharjah is critical and rigorous, to ensure that the most deserving and distinguished projects are being acknowledged and celebrated.
Dubbed the "Hieroglyphic-Arabic Dictionary", the 22-volume dictionary is a unique work, as each volume carries a hieroglyphic character and is translated into French and Arabic, as well as Coptic, Hebrew, Greek, Amharic, and Assyrian (in certain words).
The family of Ahmed Pasha Kamal has gifted the dictionary to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina for preservation and restoration, to be later displayed to the public.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina, represented by the Academic Research Sector, the Cultural Outreach Sector, and the Information Technology Sector, has developed an action plan that involved taking all the necessary measures to restore and maintain the dictionary using modern methods, and later preserve it in the Rare Books Library and display certain parts of it to the public. The Library has also worked on its digitization to be accessible to the largest number of users. In addition, the BA Writing and Scripts Center will scientifically review the dictionary and republish it digitally.