| The Old City of Akko (Acre) |
| Akko Prison, The Treasury Tower |
| Documentation of inscriptions |
| Orderer | Ministry of Defense |
| Duration | February – December 2005 |
| Implemented by: |
Arch. Oryan Shachar
Orit Soffer
Vladimir Bitman
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As part of the renovation measures undertaken in Akko Prison we had to preserve inscriptions that the prisoners carved into the walls of the jail and in the Treasury Tower courtyard at the time of the British Mandate. The work included the documentation of the inscriptions and their location, the removal of parts of walls bearing inscriptions for display in a museum and preparing copies of a number of inscriptions.
Akko Prison is located in the northwestern part of the Old City, adjacent to the city wall and the moat. The building was construct on top of the Hospitaller center, probably by Dahar al-Omar in the middle of the eighteenth century CE and was enlarged by Ahmed Pasha al-Jazzar. Until the time of the British Mandate the site was the seat of the Ottoman administration in Akko. The British converted the building into the central prison of Palestine and made structural alterations to it. Following the establishment of the State of Israel the building was used as a hospital for the mentally ill and, later on, the building served as a museum to commemorate the fighters from the underground who were taken prisoner.
The project focused on the finds dating to the period of the British Mandate in the Land of Israel when the building was used as a prison. The roof of the Treasury Tower was used as an exercise courtyard by the prisoners who immortalized their names and the details of their prison sentences in inscriptions they engraved with cutlery on the floor and walls. Upon conquering the site in 1948 Israeli soldiers also perpetuated their names in penciled inscriptions on the walls of the guard room above the roof of the Treasury Tower.
One hundred and seventy inscriptions were documented, mostly in Hebrew and a few in Arabic and English. They include names, dates and symbols, such as candelabra and Stars of David; most were done by prison inmates between the years 1922 and 1948.
State of Preservation
The Pavement on the Roof. The paving stones have been exposed for years without any protection from the damaging effects of the weather. As a result of this the engraved inscriptions have worn away over time, and some of them are no longer legible. Other problems that made it difficult to decipher the inscriptions stem from the vegetation growing there, broken stones, the use of cement (on which some inscriptions were also carved) and areas that were covered with a layer of tar.
The Guard Room. The guard room in the northeastern corner of the tower is built of reinforced concrete and is suffering from progressive weathering. On its plastered cement walls are historic inscriptions written in pencil. The inscriptions were reasonably well-preserved and are still legible but they are covered with dust and dirt that has accumulated on them over time. An inscription on the eastern wall was only partially preserved due to the disintegration of the plaster.
Conservation Intervention
The conservation measures implemented at the site include:
· Removing the cement and tar in order to expose the stones and locate additional inscriptions. The removal was done using chisels. Only one inscription was discovered that had been covered by cement.
· Documentation, numbering and mapping of the inscriptions.
· Copies of inscriptions selected by the Ministry of Defense were prepared. The copies of the inscriptions carved in stone were fabricated with plaster of paris and the inscriptions engraved in the cement were prepared in a cement based material.
· In order to preserve the inscriptions when the guardroom was being renovated, parts of the wall bearing penciled inscriptions were cut out after they had been documented and their surfaces protected. Upon the conclusion of the renovations the parts of the walls that were removed will be returned to their original places.
To view the figures, click on the figure caption
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