The Deputy Minister of Culture, Vasiliki Kassianidou, said the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage is a means of eradicating the identity of a people.
She made the remark during an event on Thursday where the results of the project “Digitising the Museums of Cyprus” (CADiP), organised by the Department of Antiquities were presented. The project was funded by the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism (EEA) and Norway Grants (Programming Period 2014 – 2021), an official press release said.
Kassianidou said “the conflicts in the Middle East region in recent years, but also the experiences of Cyprus itself after the Turkish invasion of 1974, have highlighted the scourge of the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage as a means of eradicating the identity of a people”.
In her address, Kassianidou referred to the digitization of 96,000 ancient objects exhibited in showcases and kept in the warehouses of state museums over the last 36 months.
The Deputy Minister praised the importance of digita
lisation in the management and promotion of cultural heritage and cultural goods.
She said that new technology “is one of the key pillars in efforts to document, protect and recover stolen cultural property, both through the creation of specialised applications to combat illicit trade and through the emphasis placed on high-quality documentation of cultural goods”.
The project “Digitising the Museums of Cyprus” started in May 2021 and aimed at digitizing all objects exhibited in Museum exhibitions under the responsibility of the Department of Antiquities.
Since 2009, more than 100,000 movable finds, 3,581 archaeological surveys and 1,641 ancient monuments have been digitized in the digital database of the Department of Antiquities.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. Repeated rounds of UN-led peace talks have so far failed to yield results. The latest round of negotiations, in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana ended inconclusively.
Source
: Cyprus News Agency
