Libya looks to its past to build a new future as national museum reopens | Libya

IIt was a night like no other at the museum. As the staccato sound of fireworks and explosions rang out in Martyrs’ Square in the heart of Tripoli, this time it wasn’t Libya’s militias fighting for a bigger share of the country’s oil economy, it was a massive fireworks display celebrating the reopening of one of the Mediterranean’s best museums.

The Libyan National Museum, which houses Africa’s largest collection of classical antiquities in Tripoli’s historic Red Castle complex, has been closed for nearly 14 years due to the civil war following the overthrow of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Its ceremonial reopening came at the top of a lavish show that encapsulated Libya’s rich history and was attended by diplomats and Arab celebrities, with a full-size Italian orchestra, acrobats, dancers, fire arches and lights projected onto the castle. The circus was not without drama or expense; It culminates with a billowing Ottoman sailing ship arriving on wires, high above the harbour, to be greeted by an angelic Libyan woman.

Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, prime minister of Libya’s UN-recognised national unity government (Libya has two rival governments, one in the east and the other in the west), was then taken to the door of the museum, where, as if at the opening of the British parliament, he brandished a large stick to hit them with a hammer and demand entry. The huge wooden doors slowly opened and the crowd poured in.

Inside, Libya’s history reveals itself; It is a record of a vast country shaped by successive occupations, from Greek to Roman, Ottoman to Italian. On its four floors can be found cave paintings worthy of Lascaux; 5,000-year-old mummies from the ancient site of Uan Muhuggiag in Libya’s deep south; Tablets in the Punic alphabet; and countless treasures from the still largely unvisited Roman coastal cities of Leptis Magna and Sabratha, including fascinating mosaics, friezes, and statues of well-known great figures and gods. But Gaddafi’s turquoise VW beetle, which once took pride of place in the collection and was one of the museum’s few casualties during the uprising, is gone.

The next day, speaking in offices once occupied by Italian archaeologists on the top floor of the Red Fort, former head of the antiquities department, Dr. Mustafa Turjman reminded that he emptied all the works in the museum into secret hiding places to keep them away from thieves and smugglers. He admitted that there was hesitation about reopening after many artifacts, from the smallest coin to giant statues, were brought back from hiding.

Turjman said the museum showed people what Libya once was: a region with great cultural and economic self-reliance, well connected to the world beyond the sea. “We are part of the Mediterranean,” he said.

Turjman said this is not just a moment for classicists or those who love Libya’s rich history, but also a moment of coming together for a country divided between eastern and western regions. “This is a museum about the whole of Libya… the archaeological masterpieces of the whole country. It is a force for unity,” he said. “So the people of Tripoli [in the west] Come here they see the statues [the eastern region of] When Cyrenaica and Cyrenaicans arrive, they see their heritage, which helps reunify the two regions… We are relatives. “His cousins ​​are here, his cousins ​​are here.”

Turjman hopes the museum will help educate Libyans after the distorted teachings of the Gaddafi era, and the first few weeks of the museum’s opening were dedicated to bringing in schoolchildren. “The most important thing is to teach the mind. To respect time and history, to respect others and to be involved in the world,” he said. “We must build minds. My generation studied Greek philosophy as part of our heritage, but that has now ended. Libya is often an arid and remote region, but we have preserved this heritage: this shows our strength of will.”

Persuading the world to look at Libya with “optimistic eyes,” as the government slogan states, may be a difficult task. True, embassies are reopening, as are luxury hotels that have been closed for a long time. British multinational oil company BP has reopened its office and new oil investments are planned. Luxurious seaside marinas were built. A drive-thru dining complex has emerged. But there is a lot to overcome.

The Libyan passport does not allow free passage almost anywhere, and the country ranks near the bottom in the world in terms of press freedom and corruption. On the museum’s opening night, notorious human trafficker Ahmed al Dabbashi was reportedly shot dead in a gunfight with Libyan security forces in Sabratha. Just last week, Australia advised its citizens to stay away; Some shops in Tripoli’s Medina market say they are only open two hours a day due to the lack of visitors.

Although Dbeibah insists that spending is transparent down to the last dinar, he is extremely frank in interviews about his country’s failings, including the arrest of three of his ministers as part of a corruption investigation. He admitted that the country’s failure to break away from its dependence on the oil economy meant that 2.5 million Libyans – roughly a third of the population – were on the government payroll. The dramatic but popular subsidies also mean petrol is cheaper than water and it costs less than £1 to fill a tank. The price makes it a target for smuggling, which various control agencies cannot prevent.

When asked why the east and west of the country had established parallel institutions that were in conflict with each other since the 2014 uprising, he blamed politicians, not the people.

Dbeibah was not elected to office. Becoming prime minister in 2021 as part of a UN-supervised process, he was due to stay in power only until elections across the country could be held. But as long as political elites in east and west opt ​​for the personal riches brought by separation, a parliament or president with meaningful power remains a remote possibility.

The UN mission to Libya is holding a “structured dialogue” to reconcile the country ahead of elections, possibly next year, but Dbeibah says he is against holding a vote until a referendum is held on a new constitution. The merry-go-round of determining the electoral preconditions of the West and the East never stops. A Libyan official said: “Libyans have no knowledge of politics. Gaddafi prevented this.”

One of the museum’s first visitors was Egyptian comedian and TV presenter Bassem Youssef, who has millions of social media followers and appeared on Piers Morgan’s TV show to talk about the Gaza war.

He said it took time to convince his wife that it would be safe to visit Libya and looked at “the rectangular screen in our pockets that shapes our consciousness and our minds.” He said Libya was only in the news when it was involved in conflict or other problems, and when things calmed down the media was no longer interested. He said it was as if something had to go wrong for an Arab country to be in the news.

“The image of any country or society has nothing to do with reality on the ground, but rather the lens through which one sees reality,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have to admit that this lens that conveys the image of our mostly Arab country is broken, cracked and distorted.”