In June, Benha University in Egypt hosted a delegation of eight from our faculty to discuss the mutually benefitting fields of cooperation and partnership to be pursued in the future.

Benha University is one of Egypt’s most developing universities with fifteen faculties and extensive inter-university international relations, playing a crucial role in the region’s educational, scientific and economic development.

At the meeting, our faculty was represented by two staff members of the Institute of Civil Engineering, Dr. Eszter Horváth Kálmán, associate professor, geotechnical engineer and Zoltán Horváth, Egyptologist, accompanied by a group of six undergraduate students majoring architecture and civil engineering.

Both parties agreed on supporting and fostering student and staff mobilities in areas such as architectural energetics, infrastructure development, design and operation, issues of sustainability in heritage contexts like historical towns, or the history of Coptic-Byzantine and medieval Islamic architecture.

Heritage protection, including documentation, preservation and management of deteriorating, highly endangered historical sites, has emerged as a most promising field of project-based scientific partnership. Staff members of our faculty are particularly open to assist fellow Egyptian colleagues in the long-term preservation of Pharaonic-built heritage and the mitigation of the negative impacts of ever-growing tourism pressure by carrying out archaeological explorations, creating architectural visualizations as well as performing specific tasks in geotechnical and structural engineering.

This journey also lent the opportunity for our students to visit the ancient sites at Giza, Saqqara in the vicinity of modern Cairo, and the vast archaeological area near El-Lahun on the margin of the Fayum-depression. Guided by Zoltán Horváth, they all had a chance to deepen their familiarity with ancient Egyptian architecture and the recent challenges of archaeological site protection.

(Photos: Benha University, Lilla Farkas, Zoltán Horváth, Eszter Horváth-Kálmán)